Thoughtful Reporting

San Diego, Calif.

March 27, 1997

Dear Helen,

We want you to know we shared your sadness as news of the tragic loss of the Cavett house reached us via television. It was not until we read Janis Hewitt's article, though, that we felt the impact of the event on the people around it.

We've come to expect this kind of thoughtful reporting from your paper to keep us connected to a part of the world we love.

Thank you,

ELLIE and BILL BERNER

Nice Job

Olympia, Wash.

March 24, 1997

Dear Helen,

Nicely done! I just discovered your website, and it is coming along nicely.

I did notice that not all of the letters which you publish are on the Web. I didn't get my full edition of The Star this week (the middle sections are missing), so I am a little disappointed. Not to get distracted, it really is a nice job.

Yours,

BOB FICALORA

Star On Line

Mountain View, Calif.

March 27, 1997

To The Editor:

As a native of East Hampton who has moved far away, I'm so excited to see The Star on line. However, I wonder about some sections of the paper that aren't, such as wedding announcements, news from the different villages, etc. These are the things I would really like to read about, to be able to keep abreast of happenings in my hometown. Are there privacy issues or something surrounding these? I'm curious.

I would appreciate your reply.

Thank you,

APRIL ROSCOW

Readers who want to read cover to cover are invited to subscribe. They'll find subscription information on the Web. Ed.

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

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

The Music Festival of the Hamptons' 1997 season got an elegant send-off on March 25 when the Festival Chamber Players, with Lukas Foss at the piano, performed Schubert's Trout Quintet in the oak and walnut-paneled library of the Lotos Club in Manhattan as an interlude between cocktails and dinner.

Mr. Foss, the new artistic director of the festival, seen at right above with Maria Cooper Janis, told its supporters that music would no longer be "in the back seat in the Hamptons."

This year's programs will open with the Harlem Boys Choir and close with a performance of Stravinsky's "Histoire de Soldat," for which Gene Saks, Peter Stone, and Larry Rivers, at top left with Alix Michel, left, and Phyllis Tenny Adler, right, will take speaking roles. At bottom left, Julienne and John Scanlon flank the president of the festival, Eleanor Sage Leonard.

Mr. Scanlon offered opening remarks. Ms. Janis was on the benefit committee along with her husband, the pianist Byron Janis, as were the Scanlons and Ms. Tenny Adler, among others. Ms. Michel was a junior chair.

The other members of the quintet are Brian Krinke, violin, Zuill Bailey, cello, Bryan Gumm, bass, and Ralph Farris, viola. Susan A. Ivory and Richard Adler were honorary co-chairs.

As on every other Saturday of the year, the East End Special Players are running through improvisations and small dramas in the open room at the Senior Nutrition Center in Bridgehampton.

Greg Doyle is thinking back to a time when he was very angry, trying to harness that anger and use it to animate his improvisation. Christine Provoost, seated in a chair next to him with her eyes closed, is recalling a particularly sad moment in her past.

Sitting on the floor in front of the two actors, Jacqui Leader, the director of the East End Special Players, encourages them to hold their concentration, stay in character, and bring those moments to life. Kneeling behind her, camera in hand, Don Lenzer of Amagansett films the center-stage dramas and the small emotional asides occurring constantly around the room.

Unique Actors

Mr. Lenzer, an award-winning cinematographer, is collaborating with Ms. Leader on a documentary about this unique group of actors, all of whom are learning-challenged adults. The Saturday sessions are run by Ms. Leader and funded by the Towns of East Hampton and Southampton, and their present project is an adaptation of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," to be staged at Guild Hall.

Most of the group have grown used to Mr. Lenzer's presence. They occasionally play for him or to the camera, but usually they are too involved in the task at hand to pay him any mind.

Greg, in his improv, is watching a man intentionally drop a cigarette on his neighbor's rug to start a fire and, he says, feeling helpless to stop him.

Confrontation

His tale is so dramatic it prompts Ms. Leader to ask, "Is this a real story?" Greg admits it's made up, but, in a flash of inspiration, Ms. Leader tells him to go on with the scene anyway. "What do you want to say to the man?" she prompts him.

"I want to tell him to go away," he says.

"Okay, Greg I want you to say, 'Go away.' And Carol," she says, calling a third actor, Carol Peterson, into the center of the circle, "I want you to say 'No!' "

"But he's going to push me," Carol protests. The other theater group members reassure her that he won't, and she reluctantly takes her place in front of Greg. Their voices rise to an emotional pitch as they run through the scene, but both stand firm.

Later, Ms. Leader, an actress and director of children's theater, explains that Carol and Greg have an on-again-off-again relationship that is played out in the once-a-week rehearsals. This Saturday it was off again and, though Greg's scene was imaginary, the psychodrama that evolved was therapeutic for both actors, Ms. Leader believed.

"By talking to each other and really hearing each other, you are able to respond with a natural reaction," Ms. Leader explains to the group.

Christine, meanwhile, has been deep in concentration, her eyes still closed. "Where are you, Christine? How do you feel?" Ms. Leader asks.

From very far away, Christine answers. She is in a hospital waiting room with her family, and doctors are pushing her to sign some kind of paper. "I feel unjustly treated," she says, obviously moved by the recollection.

Captivated

This level of emotion and concentration was part of what convinced Ms. Leader to take over directing of the East End Special Players in 1994 - and also what inspired her to find someone to make a documentary about the group this winter. A friend steered her toward Mr. Lenzer and she invited him to come watch one Saturday.

"It was an unfamiliar, kind of scary world to me," he admitted this week. "With a certain amount of reluctance," however, Mr. Lenzer accepted the invitation and arrived an hour into rehearsal with his video camera.

In short, he said, "I was captivated. I couldn't resist shooting."

The same qualities Ms. Leader so loved in the East End Special Players quickly inspired the cinematographer to take on the project.

In The Moment

Because there are so few opportunities for challenged adults to show what they can achieve, audiences are often astounded by what the East End Special Players can bring to the stage. "Each time I have been completely engaged by the character, the incredible drama of the situation," Mr. Lenzer observed.

Usually, a documentarian struggles to find emotionally charged moments to flesh out a film. Not so with this subject. "If there were a problem," Mr. Lenzer said, "it would be that the emotional crises are so frequent."

"They act on everything they feel," Ms. Leader added. "If they're upset or feel misused or abused, they let you know. They live in the moment."

Feelings Acknowledged

"And when you're there, you do too," said Debbie Flannery, who is in charge of the sets and costumes for the productions and helps run the rehearsal sessions.

Because the emotions of the Players are so raw, their mood can quickly turn from elation to despair. Indeed, while the three actors work on improvs in the center of the circle, one member of the group hovers at the edge, tears streaming down her face. Two others, all smiles, hold hands while they watch their fellow actors. If ever a fellow actor is insecure, or unhappy in some way, the others are quick to offer hugs and words of reassurance.

When they get down to the business of working on "Cyrano," one actress takes her position, but is fighting back tears.

"The key," Ms. Leader said later, "is to acknowledge their pain or their sorrow with them, then say, okay, let's move on."

Rehearsing "Cyrano"

It takes about a year of rehearsals to mount one stage production. Mr. Lenzer has filmed about seven sessions so far and will soon start editing a short piece to show to potential funders. If they find the funds, he and Ms. Leader hope to make a feature-length documentary about the troupe as they prepare and stage their version of "Cyrano."

It is the most difficult of the plays the Players have taken on, with more lines, less narration, and a more sophisticated story line than previous projects. They watched the film version of "Cyrano" five times to understand the story before starting improvisations on it.

Familiar Insecurities

The story of Cyrano, who, too insecure about his physical shortcomings to declare his love for the beautiful Roxanne, instead gives words to another, more attractive but hopelessly tongue-tied suitor, is an ideal vehicle for the Players' particular talents and issues.

Like Cyrano, they have had to overcome great insecurities to bring their dramatic poetry to the stage. But building up their self-esteem and heightening their sense of self-worth are part of the mission that created the East End Special Players.

Susanne, who plays Roxanne, wanted to give up the part early on. "She said, 'I can't play Roxanne, because look at me.' " Ms. Leader recalled. "I said, 'Susanne, I think you're beautiful,' and she said, 'Am I beautiful? ' "

"She's constantly processing whether it's real or it's theater," Ms. Leader said fondly. "She will ask: Do I really love Christian? Do Christian and Cyrano love me and do they both die?"

Susanne is deeply expressive even in the improvs, but she has had conflicts with the dramatic craft along the way. "Lying really bothers her. And being a character she doesn't like," Ms. Flannery said.

She also has a "love/hate relationship" with the feather eye mask Roxanne holds up to her face when she is at the theater, said Ms. Flannery: "One time she said she couldn't use it because it stank."

Mr. Lenzer wants to capture all of this "inherent poetry" that occurs in the rehearsal sessions, rather than making a "clinical approach" documentary, he said.

"If ever there was a time to do this it's now. The conjunction of different elements is perfect," he said of the play, the actors, and the team working with them - Mr. Lenzer, Ms. Leader, Ms. Flannery, Steve Dickman as music director and composer, and Monique deCock as a set consultant.

Among The Stars

The five seem to be learning as much from the Special Players as the reverse. "It brings us to certain questions about ourselves," Ms. deCock said.

Being in on the process and seeing how the actors make it work, the issues they face from week to week, and the way they interact with each other "makes you really question your own values," Mr. Lenzer agreed. The working title for the documentary, "Among the Stars," describes something of their feeling toward the Players.

The finished product will probably not be in chronological order, but begin just before the staging of "Cyrano" and journey back through the process of bringing it to the stage.

The curtain on "Cyrano" will not rise until at least this fall. When it does, Ms. Leader hopes it will also go up at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, Southampton College's Fine Arts Theater, and other locations.

Mr. Lenzer and Ms. Leader have set up a not-for-profit organization and will begin fund raising for "Among the Stars" in the coming month. One of the main sponsoring organizations is the New York Foundation for the Arts.

They hope to air the documentary on a number of networks and bring it to film festivals around the country. The theater group, Mr. Lenzer writes in a fund-raising proposal for the film, "has enriched the lives of everyone who comes in contact with it."

"It would be crazy not to let people know what these people are capable of doing," Ms. Leader added.

Philip Schultz, recent winner of Poetry magazine's prestigious Levinson Prize, would still be mired in depression today had it not been for the timely intervention of his guardian angel, Stein.

"The novelist in me is always inventing characters," he said during a recent interview at his house in East Hampton Village. "Stein was jolly, portly, balding, and myopic, an Isaac Babel type who'd been demoted to third-string angel by the time he took my case: I was not a high-profile job."

Stein "knew everything about calamity," Mr. Schultz wrote in his 1986 chapbook, "My Guardian Angel Stein." As the dejected poet grimly roams Fifth Avenue at Christmastime, Stein, "overweight and unaccustomed to such devout self-loathing,/hurries to keep pace . . . 'Let's see a movie or have an ice cream,' " he urges, like a Jewish mother.

Farewell, Angel

Stein's mission succeeds, however. In "Stein, Goodbye," the recovered poet bids farewell to his wisecracking angel rather as the rest of us might to a beloved shrink: "Dear Stein, at heart/we're all third-string angels . . . who must keep moving, however slowly,/into the mystery of such wonderful/abundance. . . ."

Mr. Schultz's depression, with its bracing shafts of tough humor, was surprisingly fruitful. From its depths came his first volume of poetry, "Like Wings," which won a National Book Award nomination and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 1978.

In 1984 the despondent poet published "Deep Within the Ravine," the recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Lamont Prize that year. The Academy bought 1,200 copies of the book, to boot.

Over the years Mr. Schultz has regularly contributed short stories and poems to such literary journals as The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review.

Numerous grants and fellowships have come his way: a New York State Council for the Arts Fellowship, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, and a Fulbright Grant, to name a few - serendipitous rewards for a poet "stuck in pain's spiderweb," who had, as it happens, become a poet in spite of himself.

In the poor section of Rochester where he grew up, to say one was a poet would have been tantamount, he said, to "wearing a sign saying kick me."

The offer of a poetry prize would have called for a rebuff, too, something on the order of Groucho Marx's snarl to the Friars Club that he didn't care to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

Tough Kids

As a kid, Mr. Schultz felt called upon to be a tough guy, not a bard.

"I had to fight a lot. In my neighborhood black and especially Irish bullies made Jewish kids pay protection money to go to school, and all the Jewish kids except me coughed up."

"I fought every day, and was kicked out of two schools for fighting, but I never paid a dime. My father and uncle were such tough, scary weirdos I wasn't afraid of anyone."

The first part of his life was "just one big fight for survival," Mr. Schultz said. His father, a chronic failure, finally gave up and "just died of immigrant angst."

At Mrs. Applebaum's

Only an occasional moment at "Mrs. Applebaum's Sunday Dance Class" brightened the poet's sense of foreboding with its "first intimation of splendor, or darker knowledge," as Mrs. Applebaum, "never a winner," urged her class on with a shrill "Und vonce again, voys und gurdles!"

The future poet had severe learning disabilities as a child, and barely got through grade school. Held back twice, he was always in "the idiot section" with a group of boys who were in and out of reformatories.

"There were no teachers trained or inclined to help us. We were basically left alone and told to teach each other."

Somehow his parents found the money to get help for their only child, and after learning to read from comic books, he announced to his tutor his intention to become a writer.

Not In Fiction

Not for him the effete strains of T. S. Eliot, however, but the virile, declarative sentences of Ernest Hemingway, a man drawn to blood sports: boxing and bullfighting.

"I loved the music of his writing; he had a great ear," Mr. Schultz said.

But after trying his hand at short stories and a novel, written at the Iowa Writers Workshop, he realized that "it wasn't going to happen for me in fiction."

He moved around the country for a while, holding teaching jobs in San Francisco, Louisville, Kalamazoo, Francisco, Louisville, Kalamazoo, and Boston, and gradually came into his own as a poet. In 1984, when he was appointed director of New York University's creative writing program, he settled in Greenwich Village.

That same year, he founded the Writers Studio, a private school offering fiction and poetry-writing workshops designed for students at all levels. And, ironically, dogged by his absorbing depression, he himself stopped writing altogether.

"A certain amount of narcissism is necessary, but too much is not a path to understanding others. I'd written my mother poem, my father poem, my grandmother poem, and my "For the Wandering Jews" poem - how many failures and failed relationships can you write about? It was too dark and painful; I had to wait until my life changed."

Student Successes

Meanwhile, the Writers Studio flourished. "You can't teach people to be geniuses, but you can teach them to write - I do it all the time. Give them the skills that allow them to overcome their inhibitions, point them in the right direction, and they'll have all kinds of success."

"People who already have something are promoted by the star-system writers teaching at most university programs. But the ones who need to be taught most - the not-yet-talented, the not-glamorous-enough-for-the-stars - are the ones I was always most interested in."

The need to write is often the need of the fearful and inhibited to express something that can't be said in any other way, Mr. Schultz explained. "I guess I identified with the unchampioned, and liked rolling up my sleeves to get them going. Good writers are often shy."

But if the student's desire and intelligence are strong enough, something will happen, he said. The school has worked for a good number of people who have moved on to publish their novels, poems, and short stories, and who are very grateful.

"They even want to give us money! I'm stunned! Teaching is my passion, not just my vocation. I guess I'm going to have to start a foundation."

A New Life

Even as he busied himself with everything except writing, Mr. Schultz's life changed. He got a dog, Benya, a huge black Lab/Great Dane mix who initiated visits to a neighboring dog run.

There he met his wife, the sculptor Monica Banks, and her smooth-haired fox terrier, Gus. Not only did the dogs become soulmates, their owners fell madly in love and were married two years ago. They now have a 9-month-old son, Eli.

"I immediately started writing love poems to Monica," the poet said. "Now I think I'm writing for all the right reasons: for the music, the excitement of working with language, and from the new happiness that has allowed me to deal philosophically with the darker side of life outside myself."

"Souls Over Harlem"

For the past two years he has been working on a 10-page poem called "Souls Over Harlem," about the black man who shot eight mostly nonwhite customers at Freddy's Fashion Mart on 125th Street, and then set fire to the place and killed himself.

"He was an immigrant worker frustrated by his failure to realize the American dream, and they were people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"It was a case of misplaced xenophobia, misguided racism, and mistaken identity, with strong overtones of the Holocaust, a subject so tragic I never could have dealt with it until I'd put my own demons to rest."

Turning To Mozart

Yet the poem is fun to read, and graced by all kinds of music, metaphor, word-play and narrative drive, the poet said.

"I didn't know I could do in poetry what I just did. It satisfies the fiction writer in me."

"But of course there's no bright side to tragedies like this, no possibility of transcendence, and outrage only makes them worse."

"The only thing to do," he concluded with a smile at his wife and child across the room, "is turn your radio dial from the news to Mozart. That's what Monica and Eli have done for me."

If you are an artist, can your paintings be seen in Tibet, or just at Ashawagh Hall? If you are a writer, can an agent in Hollywood read an excerpt of your latest novel at will, or are its pages curling in the slush pile at Simon and Schuster?

In an ideal world, artists would paint their paintings and authors would write their books and some cultural Tooth Fairy would make sure they always had enough money to continue doing so.

More likely, though, the grimy truth is that creative types must spend as much time hustling the product as producing it. And, as competition gets stiffer, new marketing stratagems must constantly be sought.

There is a new marketplace, but it can only be found if one has a computer and a modem. Like it or not, the future appears to be on the Internet.

See The Sites

Websites where those in the arts can post their work, and where prospective buyers can see it, are multiplying like Energizer Bunnies. Two of the newer ones are right here on the East End: HamptonClick and Now International.

If you're not already plugged in, the labyrinthine passageways of the Internet can be daunting - an endless maze of chaotic information. It's like a nightmarish set of Russian nesting dolls: Inside each doll, there is always a smaller one waiting.

But if you don't want to be left behind, clinging by your fingernails to the withering 20th century, maybe it's time to have a try.

ArtNet: The Biggie

The mother of all art-news web sites is ArtNet (http://www.artnet. com), which features 600,000 full-color images from galleries all over the world, including Marlborough, Knoedler, and Gagosian in New York, and Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses. With a click of the mouse, browsers can specify artwork by artist, category, price, or style.

Amy Ernst, an artist who lives part of the year in Sag Harbor, has chosen to sign on with ArtNet, which provides information about art for sale at auctions and galleries in over 30 countries. Its magazine features breaking art news, reviews, E-mail discussions, interviews, and features.

Within six weeks of joining, Ms. Ernst was contacted by a small gallery in California and has now arranged to have a show there.

HamptonClick

The fledgling East End sites are not in the same league, of course, but may be a better choice for those who are just taking their first steps through cyberspace. And the same 40 million people worldwide can surf these sites as can tune into a bigger operation.

HamptonClick (http://www.hamptonclick.com) was just launched on March 20. Stacey Donovan, an Amagansett writer and the site's webmaster, founded it with Mary Croghan, president of East Hampton Business Service.

"These days it's crucial for people who make art or write to wear two hats: creator and business manager," she said. "There's just an enormous amount of energy and talent focused in the East End, but how many people beyond the Hamptons will have a chance to see the art?"

She noted that many more people have bought computers now that prices have come down, and said getting on the web was the next logical step - like getting an answering machine after you've bought a telephone.

Sample Pages

Among those whose work can already be seen on HamptonClick is Tom B. Stone, who writes horror books for kids and adults which have been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian, and Czech. The opening pages of three of his novels can be called up and read.

Vincent Lardo, an Amagansett writer who has published two excerpts from his latest novel in The Star, has pages from a young adult novel, a gothic thriller, and a mystery available.

There are also selections of nonfiction by a children's book editor in Manhattan and an interview with Fiorella Terenzi, an experimental musician and the first astrophysicist to be represented by the William Morris Agency.

An established East Hampton artist, the sculptor and furniture artisan Hans Hokansen, has a number of his sculptures plus a biographical essay available to view - and they come over beautifully. Maggie Quinn has only just begun to paint, but her work is already out there for the world to see.

HamptonClick also has art reviews of a current show of Georges Braque in London and another of the work of Sophie Calle, a French multimedia artist, in Barcelona.

In addition to designing web sites for businesses and individuals, NOW International (http://www.NOWinter.com), based in Montauk and run by Sunshine Lemme, represents artists and craftspeople.

The work of four artists is already set up: Malcolm Fraser, the Montauk sculptor who won the "Lost At Sea" memorial competition, the late Frank Scott of Amagansett, Ryszard Krasowski, and Renata Hille, a German artist.

Both companies will help artists and writers create their web sites.

The Web represents the birth of a new phenomenon now taking its first stumbling steps. An earlier generation saw both the Wright brothers' flight and the first supersonic plane - who knows what we might live to see?

In the eerie light of the Heaven's Gate suicides, including that of a young Sag Harbor woman whom many here once knew and liked, the Internet, and its World Wide Web, has became the focus of fear and anger. What is not understood, or is perceived as mysterious, is all too often the target of suspicion, and this tragedy fits the pattern all too well.

Because the cultists who died in California made their living as Web page designers, many, among them politicians and the media, have implicated the new technology in their deaths. The Web was wide open to attack already, of course, the home of conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and peddlers of pornography.

"Are your children safe from online cults?" more than one newscaster asked in the days following the deaths.

But fanatics like those in Rancho Santa Fe have been around forever. End-of-the-worlders abound in every culture, East and West. History has shown that their numbers and influence expand as a century winds down, and that they are at their zenith with an approaching millennium.

The people who died in Heaven's Gate did not die because of the Web. If anything, they died because of the age in which they lived.

Another event, also close to home, was announced via the Internet the same week as the suicides. This one attracted just as intense interest, albeit among only 20 or so fifth-grade children.

Osprey X4, having finished her long winter vacation at Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela by way of Haiti, arrived back on her nest, near the South Ferry landing on Shelter Island. The fifth-graders at the Shelter Island School, who call X4 Kid, found out about her arrival almost as soon as it happened - not from the Nature Conservancy volunteers who reported her presence, but from the Web.

The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota, according to a report by Paul Stoutenburgh, the nature columnist for The Suffolk Times, had been following X4 and her Mashomack Preserve buddies X5 (a.k.a. Chestnut) and X7 (Fisher) all winter, tracking the birds' course via tiny radio transmitters and plotting it on a Web page called Highway to the Tropics.

The fifth-graders have a big map in their classroom, on which they have been marking the paths of the migrating fish hawks. As Mr. Stoutenburgh observes, you can imagine how they must feel when they go outside and see the very birds.

On Tuesday, when we checked Highway to the Tropics -http://www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu - Chestnut was somewhere between Richmond, Va., and Shelter Island; Fisher hadn't been heard from for a few weeks.

The value of the Internet is real, and can be life-affirming.

Seattle, as the result of a cooperative effort among doctors, bicyclists, and child advocates, has seen the number of deaths and brain injuries resulting from accidents involving young cyclists decline by two-thirds in the past decade.

Nationally, according to The New York Times, "close to 250 young people die from brain injuries suffered in bicycling accidents" every year. While only about 15 percent of children wear helmets - and that number is much less in poor or urban communities - in Seattle the figure is 60 percent - up from a dismal 1 percent 10 years ago.

"A bicycle helmet is one of the most effective safety devices available, reducing the risk of head injuries by 85 percent. . . ," a spokesman for the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center in Seattle told The Times.

That city has proposed that the National Center for Injury Prevention, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spearhead a national campaign aimed at parents, teenagers, and young adults to see that affordable helmets are required, and worn. Unfortunately, the center has said it can't, citing cuts in the Federal budget.

The last time we looked there was a statewide helmet law on the books in New York, requiring cyclists under 14 to wear helmets, though the law isn't much enforced.

The $80,000 or so such a campaign is estimated to cost would be hardly a blip in the Federal budget and a wise investment in the health of future taxpayers. But there is no reason why a campaign cannot be undertaken at the grass roots.

The South Fork, where rural roads designed for a lot less traffic than they handle abound and where summer brings a confluence of youngsters and adults to the streets intent on recreational running, Rollerblading, and pedaling, is a good place to start. As Seattle's experience demonstrates, organizing an educational campaign and offering financial help where needed can boost the use of helmets - and save lives.

Do we have any takers?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that flushing boat toilets into Lake Montauk, a bounteous source of clams and other seafood, is a bad idea. While marina owners there have been quick to point out that boat wastes account for only a small portion of the lake's pollution and that road runoff and coliform bacteria from flooded septic systems are far bigger villains, everything possible should be done to lessen contamination.

Officials told boating representatives at a meeting three weeks ago that an aggressive land-based campaign to clean the lake was in progress - in the form of revitalizing wetland buffers, rerouting runoff, and preserving some lakefront or wetland properties, among other projects. Now, the suggestion that the lake be designated a no-discharge zone should be implemented.

Such designations go on the nautical charts of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and give the town the right to impose stiff penalties on transgressors. In addition, by showing the Feds that the town means business, it could earn some Federal dollars for land preservation through the Peconic Estuary Program.

Pumpout stations for marine toilets have been in place at town docks and private marinas in Lake Montauk for years. The next step is to provide pumpout boats to make compliance with no-discharge regulations as easy as possible. A pilot program is planned in Three Mile Harbor this summer, and Lake Montauk deserves the same.

It will take until 1998 to get no-discharge designations in place. Now is the time to get the ball rolling - and not only for Lake Montauk, but for every harbor in East Hampton Town.

Euram Management, the real estate division of the European American Bank, has sold the Montauk Yacht Club.

Ian Aitkin, a Euram vice president, refused to name either the buyer or the price paid for the resort. The asking price was $10.5 million.

"Our intent is to get the property up and running. We're looking to open April 15," said the interim manager, Bruce Gillies of the New Castle Hotel Corporation of Connecticut, which has been hired to manage the club. He too said he was not at liberty to disclose the buyer's identity.

Mr. Gillies said the new owners would undertake renovations of the 224-slip marina during the season and of the resort's 107 rooms at the end of the season. The 25-acre property includes what are called the Ziegfield Villas, three pools, tennis courts, and several restaurants.

Readying For The Season

For now, Mr. Gillies said, the management firm was hiring employees, planning menus, and otherwise preparing for the season. A permanent manager will be hired in the coming weeks.

"We want to bring it back to the level people remember it as," he said. Rates will remain between $119 and $295 a night, Mr. Gillies added.

Euram took over the club in 1993 after the former owners, Montauk Development Associates, had financial difficulties. That partnership, which included Peter Brock, Steven Goldstein, Arthur Cohen, and Guy LaMotta, poured an estimated $27 million into the club. It relinquished ownership in lieu of foreclosure on a $25 million mortgage held by E.A.B.

Troubled Dreams

"It got to the point where future investment in the club needed to be made by a longer term investor," said Mr. Aitken in explaining why Euram put the resort on the market last summer. Negotiations with the new owner began in the fall, he said.

The club, on Star Island, was to have been the centerpiece of Carl Fisher's dream to transform Montauk into the Miami Beach of the North. It opened in 1928 just before the stock market crash and Great Depression.

Montauk Development Associates also had its share of problems. In 1988, East Hampton Town denied its application to develop condominiums at the adjacent Deep Sea Club. That building later burned to the ground. The recession in the early 1990s forced the partnership to seek bankruptcy protection. And just before the opening of the season in 1991, a fire caused an estimated $2 million in damage to a newly renovated section of the Yacht Club building.

WBAZ radio of Southold, which broadcasts "light" music, and its country cousin, WLIE of Bridgehampton, have been sold for $1.65 million to MAK Communications, whose owner is Mal Kahn of Manhattan and Southampton.

Joseph Sullivan, the owner of Peconic Broadcasting, the parent company of the two stations, said he would devote his time to a separate broadcast-executive search-and-recruitment firm he owns.

"The time was right to sell," said Mr. Sullivan, adding that he will turn 60 years old later this year. "I had run [WBAZ] for 12 years and it took 13 years of my life to put it on the air."

The station began broadcasting in 1985. Mr. Sullivan launched WLIE with a country music format in 1996.

Used To Own WSBH

In selling the station, Mr. Sullivan said, "it was important for me to get somebody local." Mr. Kahn, who said he has lived part-time in Southampton for over 30 years, used to own WSBH in Southampton.

That station is now known as WHFM and broadcasts the signal of WBAB in Babylon. Both stations were recently part of a huge radio merger that saw Evergreen Media Corporation of Irving, Tex., buy Chancellor Broadcasting of Dallas for $2.58 billion.

The new radio conglomerate, known as Chancellor Media Corporation, owns over 100 stations nationwide, including six on Long Island.

Await F.C.C. Okay

Mr. Sullivan said the trend toward larger national networks did not apply in this case. "This is just one small broadcasting company to another," he said.

The sale is awaiting Federal Communications Commission approval, which Mr. Kahn expects will come as early as May.

He was reluctant to discuss his plans for the two stations. "Everything is currently under review," he said. "We plan no changes at this moment."

When WBAZ was launched in 1985, it was the first station on Long Island to have its "programming delivered by satellite," according to Mr. Sullivan. Although other stations criticized it for not being local, he said the satellite link-up "enabled us to focus our energies" on providing local news and other public services.

Series Of Sales

Peconic Broadcasting expanded with the launch of WLIE. Although the latter station has rented office and studio space in a building owned by Carol Konner on Main Street in Bridgehampton, it now broadcasts from WBAZ's studio.

The sale is the latest in a series involving East End radio stations.

Frederic Seegal of Amagansett and Manhattan, the president of Wasserstein and Perella, a Manhattan investment firm, recently bought a majority interest in WEHM, and WLNG in Sag Harbor sold its AM station to Unity Broadcasting late last year.

And in Hampton Bays, WWHB, formerly owned in part by Paul Simon and his brother, Eddie, was recently sold to Odyssey Communications.