Guild Hall's 59th annual Artist Members exhibit opens on Saturday with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

The oldest nonjuried museum show on Long Island, the exhibit has included the works of well-known artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning over the years. This year works by some 375 artists will hang, including - for the first time - photographs (26, to be precise).

Arthur C. Danto, an art critic for The Nation and a philosophy professor at Columbia University, will serve as this year's judge. The winner of the Best in Show award, $1,000, will be announced at the opening reception, as will winners in other categories, and the winning work will be exhibited at a later Guild Hall installation.

The show can be seen Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. through May 3.

While American cinema basked in its own light at the Academy Awards celebrations this week, three young filmmakers from the East End were on the verge of something big. Not Hollywood glitzy, gold-statue big, but big in the sense of plans coming to fruition and personal revolutions in the making.

One of them, L. Brooks Elms, an East Hampton native and New York University Film School graduate, will launch a monthlong independent film event at a basement theater in New York City on Wednesday.

The other two, Ben and Orson Cummings, will begin shooting their first feature film next week in Bridgehampton, which is their hometown.

All About Money

In a sense, the two projects address the same key player in the film industry - money.

The Cummingses' dark comedy, "Nine Out of Ten," tells the story of Jordan, a young filmmaker obsessed with cinematic success and ready to go to any lengths to secure the funding he needs to make his movie. Driven as he is, Jordan strikes a deal with a ruthless uncle and "basically swaps his soul for a career," the brothers explained.

Some glimmer of inspiration for the character could come from many a young filmmaker strapped for cash but bent on getting work to the screen.

Take the Cummings brothers themselves, for instance. After two years in Los Angeles working on the fringe of the film industry, they got fed up with its insular attitude and moved back to Bridgehampton.

Where To Show It?

A year ago, they formed Sweet Tooth Productions and set out to raise money and gather a crew to bring their screenplay to life. They swear their methods are much more scrupulous than those of the main character in "Nine Out of Ten," but they have had to spend the better part of the past six months raising money to produce it.

Around the time Ben and Orson Cummings were shifting into high gear on the pre-production phase of their film, Mr. Elms was in New York. Having finished his first feature, the microbudget "Snapshots From a .500 Season," he began to realize that, like an egotistical actor, money refused to step out of the spotlight.

He was faced with the very expensive task of distributing his film in a field that has few venues for low-budget independent work. While 1,200 independent films are expected to be made in 1997, fewer than 60 will be shown in existing theaters, Mr. Elms said, a statistic that convinced him he needed to create his own venue.

That venue, New York City's Guerrilla Cinema, a monthlong series of $5 film screenings, will open its doors Wednesday in the Off Off Broadway Interlude Theater, at 45 West 21 Street.

"Movies have been an art form controlled by the very few and the very wealthy," he writes in an invitation to the event. He hopes his efforts will create a revolution of smaller venues where filmmakers can show "their movies in their own space, in their own way," Mr. Elms said. He wants other filmmakers to know that a grassroots project like this can work without enormous sums of money.

Renting the Interlude for a month cost $8,000, a burden Mr. Elms shared with a fellow filmmaker, Marc Gottlieb, and Andrew Rose, an actor who appears in both directors' films. They paid the rent over the course of six months.

Just Like Home

Guerrilla Cinema will showcase two feature films. Mr. Elms's "Snapshots" and Mr. Gottlieb's "Cousin Howard" will run on alternate nights throughout the month, accompanied each evening by one of 10 short films. Showtime will be at 8 p.m. every night but Monday through April 25.

"We're basically just getting some people together to check out some movies," the invitation begins modestly, "but once word starts to spread about how we're doing it, the cinematic landscape may be changed forever." There will also be $2 all-you-can-eat popcorn.

Mr. Elms's career in film began on the mean streets of East Hampton, making movies with friends when he was still a student at East Hampton High School. The finished product would be shown in the school auditorium, followed by a wrap party, with keg, at the beach. Minus the keg, and the beach, Guerrilla Cinema will, he hopes, have a similarly comfortable and supportive atmosphere, and feel just like home to other young filmmakers.

Too Much L.A.

Moving away from Hollywood to make their first film may seem like a step backward, but it was this sort of support that brought Ben and Orson Cummings back East. "In L.A. everybody tries to stop you from doing things, saying you can't do this, you can't do that, it's impossible," Orson reflected this week.

The brothers lived in L.A. for two years. In that time they witnessed fires, a big earthquake, mudslides, and the O.J. Simpson trial and finally decided, said Ben, "it's a fun place to visit, but it's not the place to be." While their main character, Jordan, is not autobiographical, the screenplay, they admit, represents a bit of their own reaction to L.A.

"Jordan starts out likable then goes through changes as the script goes along. Those changes enable him to get further in the business," Ben explained.

Glory Fantasy

The Cummings brothers will take "sabbaticals" from their jobs as tennis pros at East Hampton Indoor Tennis to shoot the film through April. They've already taken an advance on their summer earnings, so they'll have to be back at work by mid-May.

They will direct the film themselves. After spending so much time writing and planning it out, they said, they couldn't imagine passing it on to someone else to direct. The house they rent on Halsey Lane in Bridgehampton will be one of the primary shooting locations. A friend, Brian McQuillan, will play the lead role, and many more friends and local businesses have donated funds or libations.

Music on the soundtrack will be by a local musician, Alfredo Merat of Sag Harbor. Even the postproduction work will be done locally at the state-of-the-art World Cottage in Bridgehampton. The Southampton Publick House will provide post-shooting beer and Once Upon a Bagel a month's worth of bagels for free.

If it's done in time, "Nine Out of Ten's" premiere may be on the East End as well, at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Or so they hope.

Not that they don't dream about going back to Hollywood. "We fantasize about our glory trip, flying in, having one or two meetings, saying hello to all our friends and then coming home," said Orson. "But this will always be home base."

Diet Coke

Montauk

March 18, 1997

To The Editor:

Coca-Cola and I grew up together. When we were kids in the Bronx before World War II, we ordered cherry coke from our corner candy store.

When we got to high school, we felt very grown up and ordered lemon coke.

On prom night we ordered our first Cuba Libre (rum and coke) and then went out into the world working for the Yankee dollar.

Now we order Diet Coke.

GERALDINE MANZARE

Symbol Of Destruction

Springs

March 20. 1997

Dear Helen:

The morning of March 18, I was traveling to Southampton from my home at Old Fireplace. Just after the turnoff for the airport, my eye was drawn to activity at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post. An East Hampton Town Highway Department payloader was pulling the vets' newly acquired M60A30 World War II armored tank onto its recently poured perch. Standing around were a half dozen or so men dressed in army fatigues and hats; they were obviously delighted that their tank (a symbol of destruction) was finally being set in place.

I stopped back later to get a closer look and a few photos. While there, another Highway Department truck stopped. The driver and his associate climbed aboard to have a good look. Undoubtedly there are a number of veterans and many from the younger generation who are thrilled to have such a piece of armor available to climb on, ponder, and fantasize about. I am not one of them.

I volunteered for the Army during the Korean War to get it out of the way and to escape from college for a few years. Fortunately, I never had to face frontline duty. I, too, have been intrigued with the complexities of war machines, and yet I was appalled by our ability to destroy enemy tanks during the Gulf War. Witnessing that war on television was like watching a Hollywood movie where special-effects people make destruction look like fun. Only this time we destroyed tanks with single rockets, and lives were lost at a horrible rate. If the tables were turned, it could be the lives of our men and women.

But now war has given way to peaceful negotiations. Acts of war are being avoided. Just when we are beginning to learn the importance of negotiation in lieu of bullets, it is grossly inappropriate to showcase a symbol of destruction as a celebration of our ability to make and win wars. Surely those who have served our nation in times of war and peace deserve to be commended. They, in their way, must and should be allowed to celebrate their achievements. But in a time of prolonged peace we do not need the symbol of a tank with its gun turret poised down the highway to shock us back to memories when we could only kill or be killed in order to preserve our democracy. There are more appropriate monuments to courage, valor, and life given for one's country.

Installing an armored tank along a highway traveled by thousands seeking asylum from the rigors of work and city life is the most inappropriate act any organization could inflict on its community. How the Town Board could approve a variance for a symbol that is such an affront to the community is difficult to comprehend. This board appears in every other instance to champion the beauty and quality of our town, yet, in this single act, has done much to undo what has been accomplished elsewhere.

Then, adding insult to injury, the town used taxpayers' money - our public money - to propel this tank to its new throne. It is an affront to every peace-loving citizen to be confronted with that tank.

Many men of distinction, of this and neighboring towns, are heavily invested in seeing this symbol raised high on its newly poured foundation. All seem thrilled at the sight of this complex piece of weaponry. They are even planning to invite the children of the neighboring elementary schools to view its interior before sealing it, as required by law. But have they thought through the full implications of mounting this armored tank, a symbol of our ability to destroy life, at the gateway of our beloved town?

Sincerely yours,

RAYMOND H. HARTJEN, Ph.D.

A Jewel

Montauk

March 19, 1997

Dear Editor:

As I sat in my car across the street from the Snug Harbor Motel in Montauk watching Dick Cavett's house burn, the sense of frustration was overwhelming. The flames were shooting incredibly high, and the black smoke was thick and rolling. Others joined in watching, and we felt awed by the power of the fire and our inability to help. It was almost like watching someone die.

A Montauk resident said on the news that evening that the house was a jewel that was forever lost. So true. Mr. Cavett is a jewel also. I think we all like knowing that he and his wife live in our community and have been so supportive of it.

We are terribly sorry about the loss of his beautiful home. We wish there was something we could do to help.

Sincerely,

SONIA H. GAVIOLA

Please address correspondence to [email protected]

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

The quintessentially American menu is generally conceded to be our Thanksgiving dinner. In some households the lineup is set in stone (except for playful anarchists like Calvin Trillin, who substitutes spaghetti carbonara for turkey and stuffing).

But we also have another festive occasion where the gastronomic star is set all across the American heavens: The Easter Ham.

Europeans and Christians around the Mediterranean go for the Paschal Lamb to celebrate the risen Christ, the Lamb of God. Americans, understandably, since we've always had plenty of pigs and, at least in earlier days, not many sheep, elected to choose a prize ham from their smokehouses to celebrate this most joyous day in the religious calendar.

Easter Sunday is the end of the long, somber season of Lent, which, in observant households, meant no meat from Shrove Tuesday onward and a last truly abstemious Holy Week, the seven days before Easter, when meals were smaller and smaller and more austere - to the point where hard-boiled eggs must have seemed a feast.

So what meal could possibly be more enthusiastically anticipated than the joyous Easter feast? On the East End, the Polish butchers around Riverhead and Bridgehampton used to make a special kielbasa for this great meal. Ask around - the Polish sausage is great on the grill, though some people serve it cold, just as it comes, which would not be my choice.

Even if you didn't give up chocolate (as I always did) or anything else (in the days when people were still permitted tobacco, some gave up smoking) for Lent, this is still a great family occasion. Whether gigot or jambon is your dream, here's how to satisfy it.

Though you may have to special-order it, the great old carefully cured and smoked hams that are a treasure of American gastronomy are still the One True Ham, unchallenged for flavor supremacy. (Those spiral-cut mail-order "hams" may be convenient, but they bear little resemblance to the real country hams from American farms in Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and other remote pockets of ham culture.) These hams must be soaked in several changes of cold water over a period of two or three days to rehydrate and de-salt them. This is ab-solutely necessary or the flesh will be unpalatably salty and dry.

Serves multitudes.

1 aged, cured country ham, about 12 to 14 lbs.

1 gallon real, unpasteurized fresh cider or 1 liter dry rose wine plus 3 liters water

4 stalks celery with tops

4 whole scraped carrots

2 dried bay leaves

1 large onion stuck with 3 cloves

1/2 cup brown sugar

Garnish:

1 cup (approx.) fine stale breadcrumbs

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

1/4 cup minced fresh sage (optional)

12 to 24 small to medium hard-boiled eggs, shelled and colored pale pastels with pure food dyes

2 large bunches fresh, stemmed watercress

Water: If you have very hard water with lots of iron and minerals, buy bottled water to cook the ham in - not mineral water, just plain bottled water.

Scrub the ham in warm running water with a stiff brush. If there is any mold, just scrape it off with a blunt knife; it is harmless. These days most ham-boilers, large oval copper vessels the size of a baby's bathtub, are usually artfully filled with flowers in the windows of antiques shops. But if you can beg, borrow or steal one, these are, of course, ideal for both soaking and cooking the ham. A large galvanized washtub can substitute for the soaking. Change the water every 12 hours for at least 2 days and taste the water of the last soaking to be sure it is not still too salty.

The Five-and-Ten

Lay the soaked and rinsed ham in a large pan. A blue granite roaster can still be found in good hardware stores: the Emporium in Sag Harbor, the Ace in East Hampton, or the one on Main Street in Bridgehampton, or, don't forget, Sag Harbor's pride and joy. the Last Five & Dime on the East End - though probably not in fancy kitchenwares shops.

Europeans celebrate Easter with the Paschal Lamb. Americans choose a prize smokehouse ham.

Add all the remaining ingredients except the garnish. Bring it to the simmer and slowly poach the ham, covered with the lid, for about four hours. Test with a long metal skewer for tenderness, then let the ham cool, uncovered, in its broth (which will be discarded).

Cut a shallow slit in the skin all the length of the ham and with a sharp knife remove the skin. Save it for crackling, which is ham rind roasted crisp but not leathery. Pare the ham fat smooth, leaving about half an inch of pure white fat. Mix the bread crumbs with the fresh herbs (not dried) and pat the mixture all over the fat surface.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place the ham on a flat rack and bake it in the center of the oven just until the crumbs are golden brown. Remove and cool to room temperature.

Study Up On Carving

Hot country ham is impossible to carve elegantly, which means in thin slices, as thin as you can make them using a long, very sharp ham knife, most definitely not serrated.

Carving a ham is not a job for the inexperienced. If you think cooking has gone to the bow-wows in this "take-out" generation, imagine what's happened to carving!

Get yourself a video and study it, or watch how a true Parma ham is sliced lengthwise along the bone - maybe "Molto Mario" will show it on the Food Network; he's the best thing on that network and fortunately seems to be on many times a day (which makes me wonder what's happening back at his restaurant Po, one of my favorites in Greenwich Village).

On The Net

Speaking of the Internet: go to http://www.foodwine.com and check out eGGbasket. There's a Virginia company with hams that sound great, and its E-mail address is:

[email protected].

You can get a whole, uncooked, uncarved ham of around 12 pounds for about $43. You can also get them as "fixed" as you like: cooked and sliced thin.

Other purveyors abound, but at this late date, check out the country hams for the summer hilarity season, which is upon us. Ham is so omnipresent on summer buffet tables, I tend to pass it on by.

However, real country ham served in little slivers on tiny biscuits or corn muffins is as different from that as prosciutto is from Spam.

Easter Leg of Lamb

The gigot, as the French call it, couldn't be easier to cook. However, it is just as ornery to carve properly unless the hip chops are removed and the shank bone is left reasonably long. Easiest of all, have the leg "frenched." That's with the hip bones removed and only the long leg bone left in.

You can, of course, have the whole leg boned out, but you lose a lot of flavor that way. Have the butcher remove the "fell," the tough membrane that lies under the fat.

Serves eight

1 whole fresh leg of lamb, trimmed

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves

Olive oil

Kosher salt and coarse pepper

16 slender fresh carrots

2 boxes frozen artichoke hearts, thawed

Wipe the lamb and excise any fat you find left on it. Peel and sliver the garlic, then roll it in thyme. Make little incisions in the lamb with the point of a small, sharp knife and insert these garlic slivers evenly into the leg. Rub it well with olive oil and salt and pepper. If the gigot is "frenched," tie the large end into shape.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. and lay the lamb on a rack in a large open roasting pan. Set it in the middle of the oven. Pour a small glass of water in the pan to catch the first drippings so that they won't burn.

Roasting Time

Roast the meat for 45 minutes, then add the carrots, which have been pre-cooked to the half-done stage in a steamer or the microwave. Baste them in the meat juices. Add the artichokes just about 10 minutes before the lamb is done, which will be in another 30 minutes approximately.

An instant-read thermometer should read no more than 125 degrees for medium-rare. as the lamb will continue cooking on residual heat while its juices retreat into the meat after taking it from the oven. Leave it in a warm place, tented loosely with foil.

Arrange the gigot on a very hot platter and garnish it with the carrots and artichokes. Julia Child has gone over the carving of lamb on her "French Chef" series, which seems to be on TV reruns on the food network (like "Ryan's Daughter," which ran in a Dublin theater for about 15 years) , so I won't.

To Be Elegant:

Again, though, it's more elegant and practical to carve the lamb holding it by the shank bone and slicing downward in longish, thin slices - this can be done in the kitchen if no carving genius is at hand - before arranging them on the platter.

If there's no one around with any kind of carving skills, have the whole lamb boned and tied. Then you can just slice straight down into the roll of meat, like slicing bread. But not with a bread knife, please.

Leg of lamb is a great candidate for cooking outdoors on a rotisserie-equipped grill, or just on a plain grill following the manufacturer's advice manual. Charcoal grillers will have to use the "indirect method" to avoid burning the meat.

I have a new grill awaiting me when I get back to Sag Harbor that I'm itching to try out - you'll be getting everything but grilled ice cream recipes from me when that happens.

(There really is "Fried Ice Cream" featured in a place in Vermont and a Japanese restaurant in Key West - so it can be done, though not by me.)

Incidentally, I'd never found anything very satisfactory to do with leftover cold lamb until I tried it in a sandwich with seven-grain bread and some hot mango chutney.

Kim Snyder remembers how she used to be. Her old self was sharper, stronger, faster. That was before the film producer was knocked flat by a bizarre and widely misunderstood illness known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Now, she has no choice but to accept a new, limited self, one that is a bit slower-thinking and moving, considerably less energetic, but with a stronger spirituality and determination to complete her next project.

That project is a full-length documentary about C.F.S. as a medical phenomenon, called "I Remember Me." It will explore Ms. Snyder's experiences and those of fellow sufferers, but will also, she said, go beyond "what is C.F.S. and why it is so strange and horrid" to more universal themes:

"What happens in society when a medical phenomenon can't yet be explained by science? How do doctors react? How does the media deal with the uncertainty?"

Widespread Research

From a reclining position on a couch, in a converted barn tucked away behind Newtown Lane in East Hampton and with her German shorthair pointer, Lenny, stubbornly draped the length of her, Ms. Snyder said she was trying to move beyond her illness, not entirely successfully, to create something of artistic and scientific significance.

Research and filming have taken her to Punta Gorda, on Florida's west coast, where in 1956 a C.F.S. epidemic struck more than 130 residents, mostly women; to Lyndonville, in upstate New York, where a doctor diagnosed a few hundred cases in 1985, and to an international conference on the puzzling affliction in San Francisco in October.

"Friends and doctors don't understand or believe. This is not an illness you get flowers for. Some people are 10 years in their bedrooms, and I've also come in contact with people who recovered."

Olympic Star

Last month, Ms. Snyder spent an "inspiring" three days interviewing Michelle Ackers, widely considered the best female soccer player in the world and a 1996 Olympic gold medal winner. Ms. Ackers fell ill in 1991 and was not diagnosed properly for two years. Now, as she trains for the next Olympics in the year 2000, she considers herself "80 percent recovered," said Ms. Snyder.

The producer also plans to visit Lake Tahoe, where an outbreak was reported in 1986; London, where she hopes the Duchess of Kent will share her own story, and New Zealand, where research on C.F.S. began after a 1994 cluster of sheep farmers came down with what was then named, for a nearby town, Tapanui flu.

"I work between enormous rest periods. I take it slow. I go through airports in wheelchairs. But I'm improving all the time," said Ms. Snyder.

Team Members: Key Three

Her filming expeditions, she said, would be impossible without an associate producer, Sam Counter of New York City, "who enables all this to happen." Their roles, in fact, sometimes blur, particularly on days when Ms. Snyder feels unable to do much more than make a few fund-raising phone calls.

The other key member of this unusual film team is Don Lenzer, an Amagansett resident and Oscar-winning documentary cinematographer.

Ms. Snyder was born in Bucks County, Pa., into an arts-oriented family. Her father is a painter and sculptor, her brother and mother run an art gallery in Manhattan, and her sister is the director of a contemporary-art museum in Cleveland.

European Connection

Her first career broke with family tradition. With a master's degree in international affairs from Johns Hopkins, she worked in international trade in New York City, making frequent business trips to central and eastern Europe.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, she started her own company, promoting films from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in the United States. Among them was "Crows," a Polish film that was distributed in this country after winning favorable reviews at the Hamptons International Film Festival and elsewhere.

And, supported by foundation grants, Ms. Snyder organized two bridge-building conferences. The first, in 1992, brought film directors from East and West together for five days in a rented castle in Prague. A reciprocal event two years later, called "New Europe, New York," brought central European filmmakers to Tribeca.

One of them, Jan Sverak, was an Oscar nominee for best foreign film this year, for his "Kolya."

In 1994, the year of the Tribeca conference, she was associate producer of "Trevor," a short film directed by Peggy Rajski that portrayed a 12-year-old boy's coming to terms with his own homosexuality. It too was shown at the Hamptons Festival, and later won an Oscar for best dramatic short.

Then Ms. Snyder fell ill.

She was about to start production on Jody Foster's "Home for the Holidays" when she came down with an unusual flu.

"It was different from anything I'd experienced. I'd have these crying outbursts, strange moods." She felt profoundly run down and depressed. Eventually she landed in the emergency room with a 104-degree fever, and was diagnosed with pleurisy.

"I couldn't move. I had this extraordinary head pain. I thought I was going to die. The doctors told me I just had a bad virus. I was delirious. I thought it was malaria."

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Despite insomnia, loss of appetite, and a fever that came and went, Ms. Snyder returned to Los Angeles for seven weeks of production on "Home for the Holidays."

"I felt like I was moving through mud," she said. "I was in an altered state. Everything around me seemed surreal."

Doctors told her it was nothing serious, that she just needed to "take it easy." But things got worse. She saw an acupuncturist, but developed new symptoms. Her throat swelled up. "And still this incredible depression." In the fall of 1995, she began having fainting spells.

Then she read an article in The New York Times about a Johns Hopkins study of chronic fatigue syndrome, linking the illness to a neurological deficiency. She went to Hopkins for testing. The diagnosis was made.

Confined To Bed

Ms. Snyder did not get out of bed for nine months afterward.

"I couldn't look at light. I had mild seizures. I couldn't make sense of things, I couldn't focus. I didn't read for maybe six months. I couldn't talk for very long. I felt like I'd had a stroke. At my sickest, I couldn't fold a shirt."

"C.F.S. is misnamed," she said. "It's not fatigue. It's close to paralysis. The name really stinks."

The late Berton Roueche, an Amagansett resident and New Yorker writer who specialized in medical oddities, in 1965 wrote about the history of the "cosmopolitan curiosity" with an "enormous and confusing array of symptoms."

Various Names

It was known by various names at the time, including atypical polio myelitis and Iceland disease, but was most often called epidemic neuromyasthenia.

Nowadays it is frequently misdiagnosed as Epstein-Barr, the virus that causes mononucleosis, and sometimes dismissed as "Yuppie Flu," hysteria, or some female hormonal imbalance. It seems most often to strike young women, is chronic in many cases, and is exacerbated by stress. There is no cure and no proven treatment.

"I Remember Me" will profile a number of C.F.S. patients, adults and children, some recovered and some not. It will also chronicle some of the outbreaks in this century, including one in 1934 which took down 198 employees of the Los Angeles County General Hospital (mostly nurses), and it will interview medical professionals, both specialists in the syndrome and disbelievers.

Still Controversial

"More and more, there are top immunologists who are looking at this, but it's still controversial in mainstream medicine and some doctors are still saying there's a psychological root," said Ms. Snyder. "This is a stigmatized illness."

She expects the confusion surrounding C.F.S. to make good drama, but is determined also that her film reach beyond the medical controversy - to the politics of disease and eventually to hope.

"A lot of things come up in the interviews that are universal to any kind of suffering. Lost pride and restored pride. Heroism."

Looking Ahead

She recently interviewed the parents of a college freshman who became ill at 12 and is just starting to feel better. "Some of these kids say they're ridiculed for having AIDS, that nobody wants to be around them."

She hopes to finish the film next year and to see it broadcast nationally and used as an educational tool, perhaps by the many C.F.S. support groups springing up all over the country.

And all the time she is fund-raising, looking for foundation grants, and keeping up on the latest developments in medical research.

"There is a lot of wisdom in people who have had to lie down for years, and I want this film to show the spirituality that is possible, but there is also emotional scarring from walking around like that, from the horror of what happens to you."

The funeral of Willem de Kooning at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in East Hampton on Saturday was attended by a crowd of friends, neighbors, artists, and big names of the New York art world, many of whom came from Manhattan.

But where was the press? The family and East Hampton Village police had expected more of a showing and made careful preparations to keep the occasion dignified. They needn't have feared. The pushing papparazzi who attended the DISHES models volleyball game last summer and the polo parties weren't around. The big red and white helicopters that buzzed the beaches when Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger got married here weren't called out.

If this had been Paris and an artist of de Kooning's magnitude had died, the streets would have been closed for the funeral and crowds would have lined the sidewalks.

Especially on a week that witnessed the national folly called the Academy Awards Ceremony, it may be comforting to those who were close to the great artist, but simple man, that he was allowed to go in peace.

Nevertheless, it tells us a lot about culture in the United States in our time.

The blanket of silence imposed on the recent settlement between East Hampton Village and Jerry Della Femina in the so-called "pumpkin suit" is an affront to open government.

Although it is usual in out-of-court settlements for the two sides to tell the public that the gag order was "imposed" by the judge, what is more likely is that one side asked for it, and the other agreed in order to bring the case to a conclusion.

It seems pretty clear in this instance which was which. Private parties may properly seek to keep their agreements from public scrutiny, but it certainly seems unlikely that Mr. Della Femina, a gifted publicist and public figure where village affairs are concerned, would have wanted to keep the lid on. The village, however, is a public entity, and its Trustees ought to feel obligated to let taxpayers know just how much this little fiasco cost them.

In a similar vein, we recently learned that the East Hampton Town Board has been advised against setting up a committee to seek a consensus on where large new stores might properly be situated because of the litigation by the A&P over its use of the former Stern's department store property. The town can't do so, its lawyer said, because it could be seen as helping the A&P find a better site.

How can a town be enjoined from planning for future needs, especially when its failure to designate appropriate areas for new retail development can be said to have led to the A&P choice in the first place?

Something is woefully wrong when a court settlement and corporate litigation stymie the public's best interest.

Do the weekly magazines somehow collude? There they were, all in a row, on the shelf at White's Pharmacy in East Hampton. Time's cover story was headlined "Flying Blind," about a book that promises to heighten even further our fear of flying. Next in line, Newsweek examines "The Mystery of Prayer," wondering if God plays favorites, and then, nearest the street, the U.S. News & World Report heralds a report on near-death experiences titled "Life After Death."

We suppose it was mere coincidence, though you'd probably do well to read them in order.

The skies in April can always be counted upon to rain down "shours swete," but along with the rains this spring has come a celestial phenomenon - Comet Hale-Bopp - that would have made Chaucer's pilgrims tremble in their boots.

Medieval Europe believed, as some societies do to this day, that comets portended one or another evil - plague, fire, war, death. Peering up at Hale-Bopp's two awe-inspiring tails as the comet ascends the northwest sky soon after sunset, those fears are understandable.

One of the brightest comets of the century, Hale-Bopp was said to have entered its "hectic" phase as of last week. If there's a better way to describe a spectacle that has surprised observers with its unexpected luminosity - the third-brightest comet recorded since the year 1400, and gaining every night - we don't know what it is.

On Tuesday, Hale-Bopp will reach its closest point to the sun before it starts to move away. Here on the East End, where it is relatively easy to get out from under the milky glow of the light pollution which washes out the sky over cities and suburbs, anyone who can walk or drive just a short distance can witness the incandescent show.

With the moon on the wane, the sight will be even better. If you can see just a few stars, you will be able to see the comet with the naked eye. Through binoculars, you'll also see the two tails, one straight, narrow, and bluish, the other wider and reddish-yellow.

Hale-Bopp, which was discovered almost simultaneously by two backyard American astronomers about 18 months ago, is said to be one of the most-photographed celestial objects ever. Go on out one of these cloudless nights, and take a look. You'll understand why.

Daniel Silva, the author of the best selling novel "The Unlikely Spy," will read from his book at Book Hampton in East Hampton on Saturday at 5:30 p.m.

The setting is Europe in the winter of 1944. Hitler has ordered his spies to stop at nothing to find out where the Allies will launch their D-Day invasion.

Mixing fact and fiction, Mr. Silva poses the questions: How might the Nazi spy ring ferret out the secret of D-Day and how might British intelligence stop them - or, better yet, deceive them into believing false information?

Mr. Silva, a veteran newspaper and television journalist, is the executive producer of CNN's Washington-based public affairs programming, including "Crossfire." He is married to Jamie Gangel, an NBC news correspondent; they divide their time between Washington and Shelter Island.

Next week's visiting author at Book Hampton will be Katie Roiphe, who will read from her new book, "Last Night in Paradise."