"Everybody likes the number seven . . . it has a mystique that cuts across culture and time," begins a chapter in "The Romance of Numbers."

The latest seven, locally speaking, was rung up at the Glens Falls Civic Center over the weekend as the Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team, the Killer Bees, won the tiny school's seventh state championship since 1978. Their record leaves the runner-up, Mount Vernon, dragging behind with a mere four state titles.

Coached by Carl Johnson - the only coach in the state to have played for and to have coached a state-championship team - the Bees earned their victory in the patented Bee style, with a swarming bee-fense and a marauding offense that yielded, by wide margins, victory honey in the semifinal with Notre Dame of Batavia Friday afternoon, and in the final Saturday night with Hammond.

It's the second year in a row that Johnson's Bees have won the state title. Last year's was the first trip upstate in a decade for the school, whose male enrollment in grades nine through 12 numbers 25. Even for such a fabled school, success is by no means automatic; it comes, as Johnson and the Bees know, from hard work. From talent, to be sure, but talent shaped into a smoothly working team. "Killer Bees" is a fitting appellation: They'll press till you pant. They'll sting you with steals, bee-devil you on the boards. In short, they'll outwork you at both ends of the court.

We are reminded, in this connection, of what Sidney Green, Southampton College's former men's basketball coach, said recently: "You must be willing to pay the price. . . . If you're a player, are you the last one to leave the gym? Are you the first one to arrive? In the summertime, do you practice on improving your skills in the gym, or do you hang out, instead, at the beach? If we all were like that, we'd all be all-Americans."

The Bees have learned the lesson. All they need to do after graduation is remember to remember.

It was in 1984 that this space first suggested a new gym for the state's most storied team. The tiny "beehive," as Bridgehampton's gym is called, is far too small to hold playoff games in. And, as players increase in size and speed, the padded stage at one end and the padded wall at the other present real dangers in league competition. At the least, as one fan has suggested, the stage could be removed to provide more playing room. The optimum, however, would be to build a new gym. The school and the Killer Bees deserve no less.

As Serena Seacat gazed from her hilltop living room in Northwest Woods out across a sweep of scrub oak forest to the Atlantic Ocean in the distance, a visitor was reminded of Dorothy waking up in Oz and saying, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Arguably the East End's most dynamic theater person - she acts, teaches, directs, and develops theater-related projects at Guild Hall - Ms. Seacat, like Dorothy, took off from a farm in rural Kansas.

"The saying goes, find a barn and put on a show," she said. "But I had my own barn with cows, chickens, pigs, my Tennessee walking horse - and my faithful grandfather as my audience."

"I'd arrange bales of hay for the sets and give solo performances in the hayloft, singing away, accompanied by the pigeons in the rafters. It was fun growing up on a farm, but also a lot of hard work."

Stagestruck Sisters

Her oldest sister, Sandra, now a noted drama coach in New York City, was active in interstate dramatics and drew Ms. Seacat into the theater as a young girl. Their middle sister, Sherrell, a special education teacher and the Worthy Grand Matron for the State of Kansas in the Eastern Star Masonic Order, thought they were both crazy.

After attending Kansas State University, where she married her high school sweetheart, Dwayn Hoelscher, a horse-trainer, Ms. Seacat lived on a ranch in Loveland, Colo. The couple trained show quarter-horses, working animals bred to run a fast quarter-mile and to herd cattle.

They had two children, Devon Hoelscher, now a cabinetmaker in Santa Monica, Calif., and a "good little actor," and Shannan, assistant manager of the Coach Store in East Hampton, married to Robert A. Miller Jr., a brick mason, and living in Springs.

Theater-In-The-Round

When Ms. Seacat's marriage broke up, she moved with her children to Denver and launched her career as one of the founders of Theatre in the Square in Larimer Square, then known as Denver's Bowery.

The group gutted the lobby of an old hotel, creating a theater-in-the-round, and starred Ms. Seacat as Polly Peachum in their maiden production, "The Threepenny Opera." Other shows followed. "It was a thrilling time."

A move to New York City in the mid-60s found her studying at the Actors Studio with her sister, already on the faculty, and with the drama coach Allen Miller. She also studied choreography and tap-dancing with the legendary Charles (Honi) Coles.

"In those days there were dance studios everywhere, next to the pool parlor, above the weight-lifting room. Honi didn't really teach so much as just let his feet fly, and you'd have to try to follow - what a guy!"

Hand Commercials

Over the next 17 years Ms. Seacat appeared in countless plays and on major TV networks, acting in commercials, on soap operas, and appearing on the game show "Beat the Clock."

One of her most lucrative jobs was a hand commercial for the Massengill company, makers of feminine hygiene products. Ms. Seacat has beautiful hands, which have appeared in many commercials. She accents them with vivid nail polish.

"During a voice-over my hands would move onto the screen holding the Massengill product, set it down, and move out," she said. "The money was excellent."

Superman Lost It

While commercial and television work enabled her to raise her children in a spacious West Side apartment, it was the learning experiences in the workshops with people who really knew their craft that she treasures, even when the encounters were painful.

"I remember doing a scene from 'Tobacco Road' with Christopher Reeve for Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Chris was doing Van Heusen shirt commercials at the time, and we'd ride around the city on the bus practicing our New York accents."

"In the scene I was playing his wife, whom he no longer loved and actually wanted to harm. Losing himself in the heat of the moment, he threw me across the hardwood floor and really hurt me."

"An actor is supposed to go to the edge but not lose control - it's important to keep one foot in reality - but in this instance Chris lost it. It was a perfect example of what you don't want to have happen, and he felt terrible about it."

The secret of the actor's life? Learning how to deal with rejection. 'Think of yourself as a commodity, I tell my students. Put something between yourself and the business.'

"Working with Vietnam vets could also be terrifying. Those guys were so intense you actually feared for your life."

Directing - a series of productions at The New Dramatists Theatre - was the logical next step.

"I'd done a lot of scene and character analysis in workshops, and what began to interest me most was the playwright's overall vision. As I read a play, very strong images would come to mind, and I'd watch the action moving around in my head."

In the early '80s, with her kids grown and off on their own, Ms. Seacat began visiting the Hamptons on weekends. She fell in love with the area, and in 1983 married George Ryan, now chef at the Atlantic Golf Club. Soon she was acting and directing in summers at the Woodshed Saloon's theater-in-the-round in Bridgehampton.

Ten Musicals, Nine Plays

A gig as Belle Starr in "Jessie and the Bandit Queen," in which she played nine different characters, brought her to the attention of the Community Theater Company. In 1987, she debuted on the John Drew stage as Alice in an acclaimed production of "The Octette Bridge Club."

Since moving to the East End, Ms. Seacat has been involved with 45 local productions. As resident director of CTC Theater Live, she directed the company's last 10 musicals: "The Pajama Game," "Fiorello!," "Oklahoma!," "Guys and Dolls," "Kiss Me Kate," "South Pacific," "Finian's Rainbow, "Bells Are Ringing," "The Fantasticks," and "Annie Get Your Gun."

She's also at the helm of the upcoming "Anything Goes," and has directed nine CTC plays including the much-praised "Dancing at Lughnasa" and the recent "Waiting in the Wings," in which she stepped into the lead on a week's notice, to rave reviews.

Guild Hall Workshops

It's quite a list, to which must be added directing the summer musicals "Nunsense" and "The All-Night Strut" at Guild Hall, appearing in Tri-Light Productions' "The Wo men" and "Cole Through the Night," and performing with Andrea Gross and the late Michael Paoni in their cabaret act, "The Eighty-Eights."

At Guild Hall she also teaches tap-dancing and directs the creative workshops Dramarama at the Drew and Teen Acting.

"The kids get to work in a real live theater. They talk to set designers, lighting designers, stage managers, and see how it all gets put together. We play dramatic games involving improv, mime, and sensory work, drawing on their memories and experiences."

Acting As Teen Outlet

"We also do personalizations, exercises in which an actor evokes a person from his past who enables him to conjure up the emotions he needs to bring his character to life, and make the scene real."

"It's a wonderful outlet for the kids, a way to express themselves. Families don't talk to each other much any more - it's either the Internet or cartoons - and the kids bring some pretty heavy scenarios to class, things they need to work on."

She's in a position to change people's lives, Ms. Seacat said, and she has to be "very careful and spiritual, open and available."

Young Admirer

The best compliment she ever got came from a student whose essay on "The Most Significant Person in My Life" named her acting teacher, Ms. Seacat, for having opened up her life and allayed her fear of speaking her mind.

"That's where it's at," her teacher said. "I feel very lucky to have the venue at the John Drew where I can do things like that."

There are very few good young-adult plays around, she said, so last year Ms. Seacat wrote the show the workshops put on herself.

Called "Sisters Grimm," it deals with the brothers' obscure siblings who decide to dramatize their own fairy tales with puppets.

"Sisters Grimm"

"I was still on a high from doing "Waiting in the Wings," so I rode on that and just went to the computer and let it roll."

"Everyone loved it, especially the character of Willard the Wolf, who's worried he's getting a bad reputation for falling down chimneys and chasing little pigs and jumping into bed in women's clothing."

" 'And always always always, there's the call of the wild,' he groans," Ms. Seacat reported with a smile.

On the actor's life she fosters so tenderly, she said the secret was learning how to deal with rejection. "Think of yourself as a commodity, I tell my students."

"Put something between yourself and the business. Actors are so vulnerable, and so many don't make it. But somebody has to do it, and it's a great life if you don't weaken."

"Anything Goes"

Just as the interview was ending, the phone rang. Over the answering machine came the voice of the costume designer Chas W. Roeder.

"Hi. I'm calling from the city. I've found this terrific red dress for 'Anything Goes.' Let me know about the size."

"Anything Goes," the great Cole Porter musical, will be CTC Live's final production for the season. "The show must go on," as the saying goes, and it will, if Ms. Seacat has anything to say about it.

No felines need apply at Gay Ernst's grooming shop. "I'm allergic to cats," says Ms. Ernst flatly. So it's canines only at the appropriately named Dapper Dog, at the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center.

Ms. Ernst has been around dogs all her life. Being raised among them at her childhood home in Manhattan (her parents bred cocker spaniels) led to an undying love for the creatures and to her choice of profession. "I always knew I wanted to be a professional groomer," she states.

Owners More Attentive

In her late teens, while a boarding student at Friends Academy on Long Island, she began her professional career by apprenticing at a local kennel that bred cocker spaniels for show. With her husband, Bill Ernst, she ran grooming shops in Manhattan and Connecticut before moving to the East End in 1975.

A trim woman of 57, Ms. Ernst has the calm and direct manner so often noted in those who handle animals. She discussed the changes she's seen in the dog world while expertly wielding shears and clippers for the beautification of Max, a brown miniature poodle.

"People are better educated about dogs. Though they are more likely to treat them like children these days. And that can get obsessive. But it's better for the dogs. I'd rather see them obsessed over than ignored. You certainly see fewer dogs just tied out in the yard than you used to," she said.

Relaxed Atmosphere

Ms. Ernst does note that with the long-haired, high-maintenance dogs that make up most of her clientele, obsessiveness is not a bad thing. If the luxuriant hair of the toy breeds is not attended to it will become matted, which can require clipping it all off. Most toy dog breeds do not carry off a crew cut well. As Ms. Ernst observes, "A shaved Maltese, that's a scary sight!"

The breeds that are groomed at Dapper Dog are usually "exotic breeds" such as Shih Tzus, Malteses, and Tibetan Terriers. But Ms. Ernst also works on many representatives of the breed that brought her to her calling, her first love, the cocker spaniel.

Dog owners who are choosing a grooming shop for their pet should look for one with good natural light that is clean and smells pleasant, advises Ms. Ernst. The atmosphere should be calm and relatively quiet.

Evolving Profession

The atmosphere in the Dapper Dog certainly met those requirements. The dogs on the grooming tables were calm and relaxed. Peace and quiet reigned, with the occasional exception of the soft whines emitting from a large white German shepherd. He was not, however, complain ing about his plight but was communicating his concern about his beloved companion and housemate, a pretty little Maltese who was currently on the grooming table. Somewhat unecessarily, it seemed, for the object of his concern was cheerfully luxuriating under the blow-dryer as her long tresses were carefully comb ed out.

Dog grooming has existed for as long as there have been dogs. Initially it was probably practiced by the servants of the wealthy or, in the case of the less affluent, the dog owners themselves. The first indications that independent contractors were making a living grooming dogs are engravings made during Elizabethan times that show professional groomers clipping dogs at marketplace booths.

In the United States, though grooming services were always available to the dog owner through veterinarians' offices and kennels, it wasn't until the mid-1950s that single service grooming shops became widely available. Due to the exploding population of pets, dog grooming had became a viable profession.

Changes are still occurring in the grooming world, at least as far as the equipment is concerned. "The equip ment is much better," relates Ms. Ernst. "The tables, scissors, and brushes have all improved. Everything's bet ter except for clippers, they've gotten worse!"

Pom-Pom's Purpose

But if the means to the end have changed, the end itself remains largely the same. The clips and trim that the various breeds receive are rooted in tradition and have varied little over the ages. Ms. Ernst cites poodles as an example of the unwavering traditionalism of dog grooming. "Poodles were French hunting dogs. The clips we use today originated to protect the joints of the dog while they were working in the field," she says.

Breed historians concur, but they also note a touch of whimsical malice to the practical aspects of the poodle's coiffure. The pom-pom on the end of the tail served not a practical purpose but a taunting one - it was a mocking salute to the lions on the British crest.

Though dog grooming can be a lucrative career, it is by no means an easy one. Ms. Ernst advises prospective groomers to "be sure you're very fit, it's physically demanding work. I've had people, young people, who apprenticed with me and couldn't deal with all the physical exertion." Being a professional groomer re quir es a great deal of lifting and bending, as well as knowledge, cutting skills, a good eye, and a very great love of animals, she says.

Raises Spaniels, Too

Ms. Ernst's other line of work is closely related. In fact, she says, appropriately enough, "one hand washes the other." She carries on the family tradition of raising cocker spaniels. She has 15 dogs residing at her East Hampton home, with three more out on the show circuit with professional handlers.

Though she's experimented with raising other breeds such as Border terriers, Dobermans, and Shetland sheepdogs, she's always come back to the dogs of her childhood. She raises four litters a year. The show quality puppies remain with her to make their way into the judging rings, while the other puppies are sold as pets. Ms. Ernst estimates that at least 50 cocker spaniels with her kennel name, Begay, have been awarded championships.

After a lifetime in dogs and 40 years as a professional groomer, Gay Ernst clearly has no regrets. "Dogs are my life," she says unrepentantly.

AMAGANSETT

McMurdo to Micheline Blum and Michael Jaker, Miankoma Lane, $540,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Ritz to Edwin and Caroleigh Evarts, Ocean Road, $300,000.

Cotton to Bridgehampton Trust, Paul's Lane, $1,050,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Wainscott Prop. Inc. to Sand Land Corp., Hedges Lane (multiple parcels), $1,610,500.

Goodfriend Land & Dev. Corp. to R.I. Realty Dev. Co. Inc., Goodfriend Drive, $300,000.

Scotto to David Fink, 83 Main Street, $1,099,000.

MacVittie to Jose and Carolann Sandoval, Stephen Hand's Path, $230,000.

Fondaras to Richard Salomon, Further Lane (3.7 vacant acres), $2,100,000.

Sullivan to Carl Quinn, Georgica Close Road, $325,000.

MONTAUK

Zukas to Anne Martinson, Central Avenue, $165,000.

Carroll to Michael Bregman, Wood Drive, $395,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Yardley Jr. to Kenneth and Michele Yardley, Fresh Pond Road, $375,000.

NOYAC

State Street Bank to Stephanie Whittier, Northside Drive, $293,000.

SPRINGS

Schreick II to Richard and Arleen Muney, Montauk Boulevard, $219,000.

Levenson to Harriet DeLaney, Bryant Street, $182,000.

WATER MILL

Moran to Carol Finocchio, Lower Seven Ponds Road, $310,000.

As we bumped along the rutted dirt in a canvas-topped jeep, I bent my neck so I could see this alien place through the front window. We had been in India for three days when we boarded a southbound train from Delhi with Arjun's father, rode through the night, and got off 250 miles away at Banda station. The town was supposedly plagued by dacoits, bandits, after dark. Since we were getting in at 3 a.m., the jeep had to meet us at the station; going to the guest house on foot would have been too dangerous.

And now here I was, sitting cross-legged in the front seat, between Arjun's dad, the gear shift, and the Hindi-speaking driver, trying to define this new country so I could understand what we were doing and how we could possibly fit into the picture we were in.

India is chaos. India is full of extreme dichotomies. India is stuck in the past. India is apocalyptic.

My definitions kept evolving as the week went on. It didn't matter then if every idea was wrong, my reaction to the shock was to come up with something tangible about the country in hopes of finding some sense of stability.

What had seemed immovable at home was in flux in India. My sense of direction was off, my intuition had left me. I could figure out only two things before we left Delhi. One, it was probably not a good idea to touch anything, and two, everything was exactly the opposite of how I perceived it.

We were to spend a week driving between primary schools in 12 " backward" villages in Banda with Radh, Arjun's father, observing one small portion of his six-month educational project. His goal was to organize illiterate mothers and fathers in poor and forgotten villages into a sort of parent-teacher organization, the main objective being to provide a forum where their opinions would be heard and considered.

A part of his weekly visits included classes on such things as health and hygiene, but what he really hoped for was to encourage parents to become more involved, both in their children's education and in the overall workings of the villages.

The task was an ambitious and daunting one. First he had to get there, on roads that breed a level of fear usually associated with poorly maintained carnival rides. Then he had to get the parents to attend the four-hour meetings. Finally, he had to make the whole thing work. The week we spent with him, Arjun and I helped him with one part of that task - getting people to come out for the meetings.

This was the ravined territory referred to as the Indian Badlands and we were probably the only foreigners to pass this way since the polio vaccinators came. No sooner would we pull into a village than a crowd of 20 or 30 people would gather around the jeep, staring. If we kept the canvas flaps closed, they'd walk around to the front to peer through the windows.

Radh, who grew up in India, had said this was a nation of voyeurs. Nothing I experienced in my two months there ever proved him wrong.

I had felt strange about going to these areas just to look. Nobody spoke more than a few words of English and I thought my lack of purpose there would offend them. I quickly found out that I was much more the watched than the watcher. To me, the people were so unusual, so beautiful and strange. But I tried at first to curb my desire to stare. After all, we in America consider that pretty invasive.

I had seen photographs of Indian men and women, read books, and watched movies about India. They, however, had not seen many images of people like Arjun and me and even if they had had a book about Americans, most of them would not have been able to read it. We became the object of ceaseless stares. Children would come up and touch me to see what I felt like, then run to a safe distance to watch us.

Needless to say, the parent meetings had record attendance that week.

In each village we went to, even if we were only dropping somebody off, the headmaster of the school would invite us to have some food and a milky-sweet chai. It was impossible to turn down the hospitality, so, sitting at a school desk in the yard with a crowd of children's eyes upon us, we would pause for a cup of chai.

While Arjun's father oversaw the parent meetings, children and adolescent boys tried to make sense of us with an elaborate sign language made more difficult by the fact that so much of our body language was not cross-cultural. The first question was whether Arjun and I were brother and sister. Anyone who knows us will find this a little laughable. He has dark hair and darkish skin, I have blondish hair and rather pale, olive-ish skin.

Second question was if we were married. We said yes because they wouldn't have understood our connection otherwise.

Though he was a curiosity, I, with my head uncovered, my light hair, my lack of jewelry, and my men's clothing, was a total spectacle. Why no children? If I was married, as I said I was, why didn't I wear a dot on my forehead? Why no saree or nose ring or earrings? I bore none of the Indian signs of femininity, yet I was obviously a woman. I was traveling around the countryside, in my men's clothing, with three Indians and a foreign man, something an Indian woman would never, never do. They didn't know what to make of me.

Because we had very limited means of communication with the villagers, we eventually decided if we were going to be a show, we might as well think up an act. Bad as we were at juggling, we began teaching the kids to juggle, and performed any other tricks we could think of. We began to exchange a trick for a trick, an English song for a Hindi song, a dance for a dance. As disruptive as it may have been to Radh's parent-meetings, we had found some rudimentary way of communicating and sharing without more than a word or two in common.

By the end of the week, word of us had spread around the 100-square-mile district. At the school we visited on the last day, they had a table set up at the head of the class with flower garlands and fruit at each place. A group of school children sang a welcome song in Hindi.

I hadn't managed to define India, but I learned at least that the attention and the hospitality are equally disarming.

No matter how much I had read, no matter how much people had told me about the country, nothing at all could have prepared me for being there, because you filter when you read and once you're there, in the beginning at least, that's impossible.

Before we left the New York airport, I had overheard a man say to his travel companions, "I know I'll come back as something different."

Because of India's reputation as a mecca for pilgrims of all sorts - spiritual seekers, monument buffs, adventurers, and idol-chasers - I wasn't sure what this enthusiastic fellow traveler meant by "come back," but it struck me that whatever it was, he was probably right.

He may have been thinking of the big picture, Hindu style - in the next life he will come back as a woman, or a tree, or maybe even an Indian. Or he may simply have been looking toward his return to America, expecting that India would have changed him.

I didn't go to India looking for enlightenment. I didn't expect to be profoundly changed and I don't know that I am something different now. What I do know is that the rest of the world is a different place after seeing India.

Carissa Katz is a reporter for The Star.

It's that time of year when green thumbs get itchy to start digging into the soil. For those seeking a bit of advice or inspiration, several lectures and classes are being offered.

Gardeners who envision the beautiful flower beds displayed in magazines transplanted to their gardens, but who don't know how to start, can gain some pointers at a Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons lecture Saturday morning.

George Biercuk and Jean Coakly, garden designers who are Horticultural Alliance board members, will offer help to beginning gardeners at "Planning a Garden/Renovating an Old Garden." How to match the right plant with the right garden location will be emphasized at the talk, which will be held at the Horticultural Li brary on the ground floor of the Bridge hampton Community House beginning at 10 a.m. A fee of $5 will be charged.

Designing Gardens

The British garden designer David Stevens will teach a five-day garden de sign course in Robert Dash's Sag a ponack studio, on the grounds of his gar den, Madoo, from April 7 through 11.

Mr. Stevens is the author of many garden design books and appears on gardening programs on British television. He is the winner of 11 gold medals and three Best in Show awards at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. His 18th book, "International Roof Gardens," will soon be released by Rizzoli.

The course will open with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. on April 6 and thereafter classes will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The course includes guest lectures and garden visits.

The class is limited to 50 students and costs $925. For a course syllabus and application, those interested can write to Chelsea Management, P.O. Box 2879, Southampton 11969.

Daylong Institute

Registration is being taken for an April 17 Spring Gardening School sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension and Suffolk Community College. It will take place at the Riverhead campus of the college.

The daylong institute will feature four sessions, exhibits, a plant sale by the Suffolk County Master Gardener Society, and an opportunity to have soil tested.

Classes, which include sessions on garden design, herbs, perennials, or na mental grasses, and gardening with children, will be taught by master gardeners.

After more than a decade off the slopes without missing it, I recently conspired in a ski trip with my new friend the Hotshot Skier (a purely descriptive term in ski-patois meaning "master of the slopes" [not to be confused with Hot-dogger, or high-altitude clown]).

By inclination and training I'm more partial to the indolence of the tropics. The climate is ideal for reading. I have a passion for St. Thomas because there, beneath an umbrella during a monsoon, I first read "Brideshead Revisited."

Though I'd once spent a festive week in Aspen, mostly in a hot tub, I wouldn't soon forget the terrors of Vermont ice; the Gestapo stomp of boots overhead in the chalet while I was hunched over "Anna Kareni - na."

Why Not

Assembling the gear would make a crater in my finances, even if I skipped the Hotronic foot warmers. I'm no stranger to gyms, but I'd recently pulled a hamstring while wrestling open a double-hung window, which didn't bode well. I've also long suspected that your basic thinking person doesn't belong on ski slopes or sailboats.

Still, sunning has become a capital offense. And I could rack up points as an accommodating companion - to be redeemed at some strategic future moment. Skiing, if it doesn't kill you, might be a recipe for longevity, operating on the same meat-locker principle as cryogenics.

. . . In the end, the Hotshot Skier's enthusiasm prevailed, and we headed for Alta in Utah, a 40-minute drive from Salt Lake.

Culture Shock

No sooner was I in the van en route to the lodge than I was hit by a wave of depaysement, as if I'd entered a foreign culture. The driver pointed out the roadside compound of a Mormon polygamist with 45 children. The other passengers reminisced about friends lost to local avalanches, agreeing that beepers function mainly to locate the bodies.

I focused on the salutary effect of mountain air on allergic rhinitis - this would be Utah's answer to Davos; and images of lolling hearthside contemplating my upcoming talk on "The Age of Innocence."

Next morning the H.S. led me on a virgin run down a green (beginner's) trail. Then he was off with an elite black diamond squad for a "workshop" in off-piste skiing in deep powder.

Survival Skills

Me, I needed a workshop in ski boot buckling and removal (requires steel talons plus a giant shoehorn); ski-and-pole-portage without clobbering or skewering the neighbors. Techniques

Only in America the earnest, where the health police have outlawed most forms of fun, could you find the vacation as combined self-improvement course and boot camp!.

of triple-chair mounting - and dismount skills to avoid a blow to the coccix from the departing chair, and the mortification when lift stops while you scrape yourself off the snow.

I also needed a course in panic control when lift stalls, rocking you over the abyss, because some other spaz got clipped in the coccix. How to attract attention when you drop a pole or glove mid-lift.

Walking in boots (heel first, I finally figured out); tackling stairs in boots (forget it); negotiating the Ladies in a one-piece powder suit; riding the horizontal rope-tow without dislocating shoulder or when encountering the sport's single greatest hazard: tots on skis.

Wicked . . .

When blazing sun was followed by an arctic blast, leaving me trapped in clammy duofold, I knew I needed an intensive course in underwear management. Everyone on the lift line contributed insights about the respective merits of layering with Polypro, Capilene, thermostat, or DryLayer.

My problem was soon diagnosed: You're wearing cotton next to the skin? people exclaimed in horror. You're not wicking.

After lunch it seemed unwise to return unwicked to the slopes, so I retreated to the lodge "cafe" - which served only Coors or cider. A film came on the giant TV screen called "Doing Air." The insinuating beat of the soundtrack suggested ski-porn.

. . . Not Wicked

Not in squeaky clean Alta, where wickedness is doing bacon with your eggs. "Doing Air," it turned out, was a useful short about flying through space while executing an entrechat with your skis. At least, I thought, lumbering up the stairs sideways, anticipating a hot shower, there would be apres ski.

Wrong, I discovered, eyeing the dim cafe occupied only by two refugees from a David Lynch movie. At Alta, apres ski is not only beside the point, but possibly punishable by law. Hedonistic lolling prevents you from achieving your Personal Best on the slopes. The unofficial curfew was 8:30 p.m. (which maybe explained why the fellow down the road had 45 children).

I had landed in the Ski Puritanism capital of the West. Only in America the earnest, where the health police have outlawed most forms of fun, could you find the vacation as combined self-improvement course and boot camp!

I thought wistfully of Aspen, thatdecadent holdout, its slopes still pristine at 11 a.m. thanks to all the hangovers. The T-shirts proclaiming Give Me Rossignol or Give Me Head; hot tubs overflowing with imbibing Texans in stetsons; indoor-outdoor pools with swim-up bars serving margaritas; posses of just-guys on furlough from their wives; the raunchy ambiance of an overage frat party.

At Alta the only apres ski occurred at a bar we visited one night that actually served chardonnay, when a stockbroker in pink cashmere tried to pick up the H.S., with me perched at his side. Maybe 8,000 feet reconfigures social etiquette? What, I wondered, would Edith Wharton have made of this?

Our own lodge promoted sociability only at meals, when they seated you family style with other guests. At first I wondered what on earth would we talk about, especially without spirits to oil the flow. Where was the commonality? Was this some Bruderhof born of skiing, like groups of battered wives? I suspected my companions had a limited interest in narrative strategies in the "Age of Innocence."

Snow Talk

Ditto for me. I had entered a state of mental white-out resembling the weather conditions I'd encountered that morning at the top of Albion lit.

I had also underestimated the conversational potential of snow. From Athens to San Diego, zealots converge on Alta not only for the quantity of snow, quoting inches of base, plus amount of powder after a "dump." They come for the quality of snow.

Deconstructing the day's powder, crud, junk, hard-pack, corn snow, breakable crust, wet snow, dry snow, frozen granular, ice, or blue ice will easily take you from borscht to beignets.

Injuries

Another consuming topic is past accidents. Curiously, the wounded persist in skiing even without their original body parts; apparently no one has ever told them that with steel plates in both shins you don't absolutely have to.

We dined one night with a dad grimly determined to keep up with his son the downhill racer, though the man was fresh from the arthroscopic ward (he wiped out the next day on "crud"). Then there was the hearing-impaired fellow with double vision who skied in a helmet since scrambling his brains against a tree in Crested Butte . . . .

Of course there are privileged moments. You've ridden without incident to the top of the mountain, layered just right against stabbing winds and blistering sun, burnt schnooz resplendent in zinc oxide. Your eyes sweep the panorama of peaks and cirques of the Wasatch range, dusted in prized powder like confectioner's sugar.

Privileged Moments

The H.S. heads down Devil's Elbow, despite the name an intermediate trail. You mimic his moves; he watches, calling out pointers about the pole plant - "No, don't spear a fish!" You try again, and again, and suddenly it comes together, the one/two rhythm - pole plant, plus pivot - "Just let the skis float around" - and suddenly you catch it, the rhythm of skiing, and the skis . . . float, you with them.

Yet a seductive alternative beckons. Apparently at nearby Deer Valley, which attracts a Hollywood crowd, they have sherpas to carry your skis. I'd want something more along the lines of a full-service personal attendant to suit and buckle you up, carry you down stairs, convey you sedan-style to the lift -

Such pampering contradicts the rugged spirit of skiing, the H.S. objects.

Exactly so. But there's another option. Why not pamper without conflict in the indolent tropics.

Erica Abeel often rents houses in Sag Harbor and Springs, where, she said, she "haunts" Louse Point. Her most recent book, "Women Like Us," is out in paperback from St. Martin's.

Bettina Volz, 45, who has just received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the City University of New York, grew up in the southern German town of Ravensburg, which looks out onto the Swiss Alps. She lives today in the Amagansett woods, on the edge of one of the hamlet's few steep slopes.

When she met Juergen, not long after the Berlin Wall came down, he was in his mid-20s, a student at the University of Rostock. His thoughts, she found, reflected a growing trend among the under-30 generation in her native land.

Germany's history before and during World War II has disturbed Ms. Volz over the years. Her parents, she said, were "typical bystanders" during the war, and the Holocaust has always been a "troubling issue" for her. She wished, she said, that her family "had helped the Jews."

"What did I inherit?," she sometimes wonders. "Could this bad thing come up in me?"

She shared her insights over a tranquil cup of coffee last weekend.

Silent Interval

Seldom in history have a nation's deeds evoked as complex a response - within and without its borders - as the Holocaust. Of specific concern to Ms. Volz is the silence, over the half-century that has passed since the war ended, of both the perpetrators and the death-camp survivors - in particular, how that silence has affected their children. The guilty and their families have kept quiet because they bear "too much shame," she said; the survivors, because they were so profoundly and horrifically "victims."

The silence matters, she explained, because it represents "an interruption in the life narrative." The history curriculum in her own high school, in a suburb of Stuttgart, "ended in the 1930s and picked up again in 1950."

World War II

Ms. Volz's studies come at a time when debate and revelations about World War II are at a high.

Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" was seen by an astonishing 63 million people when it aired on prime time network TV two weeks ago. Swiss bank accounts and art treasures in France and elsewhere, thought to be Jewish property confiscated by the Nazis, have been uncovered. Aging witnesses to atrocities, encouraged by Elie Wiesel and others, are coming forward for the first time.

Not only has the disclosure that three grandparents of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were Jewish and died in Nazi gas chambers "transformed" her personal biography, as The New York Times observed recently, but the war itself is "the source of issues engrossing her department and the foreign policy of the United States."

The number of scholarly works about the Holocaust is surging.

Among them is the recently published "French Children of the Holocaust," translated by Howard Epstein of East Hampton, about the 11,000 Jewish children turned over to the Nazis by the Vichy Government. Photographs of the children have been widely publicized in an exhibit that may go on national tour.

"Hitler's Willing Executioners," on the role and responsibility of ordinary Germans during the war and afterward, has been a best-seller here since its publication last March - and in Germany, where it has set off a nationwide storm of controversy. Its author, Daniel J. Goldhagen, holds the recently endowed Holocaust chair at Harvard.

No Guns In The House

Ms. Volz's father, she said, was recruited into the Wehrmacht, the German Army, and served as a medic, tending wounded at the front. While she was growing up, there was "very little discussion of the Holocaust" at home, but she remembers that he "felt proud" he had not served as a soldier.

Her father never permitted guns in the house, even as toys, she recalled. In fact, she said, he was "suspicious of any group activity."

Both parents "complained that the war had deprived them of their youth," said Ms. Volz, but expressed "no sense of sadness."

Repression Therapy

"I never saw remorse," she said. "They were so repressed, they could not even cry . . . the younger generation is doing more of the crying." She herself took "a week to recover," she said, after seeing "Schindler's List."

Ms. Volz practices psychotherapy, specializing in children and adolescents, at the Harborview Counseling Center in Sag Harbor. Her research, she hopes, may help to uncork the kind of repression therapists often encounter in the children of Nazi-era Germans - in psychological terms, "build a bridge" of resolution.

Almost as soon as she arrived in the U.S. in 1973 after college, to study psychology for a year at Vassar, Ms. Volz realized that Germany was "a depressed place."

"A huge burden fell off my shoulders when I got off the plane," she said. "It's very freeing here," without the "authoritarian" quality she was used to.

Older Germans Can't Let Go

The authoritarianism, obedience, and idealization of leadership that enabled Nazism to flourish "also made Germans unable to come to terms with the Nazi past," Ms. Volz postulated.

Older Germans especially, she said, have trouble "letting go," because that would mean they were wrong about who or what they idealized.

A person who has had an "ambivalent relationship with someone who has died," she explained - a parent or other relative, perhaps - may not acknowledge that person's negative qualities and so gets "stuck in idealization."

The survivor is left with ambivalent feelings, though. To keep the image intact, the negatives are "turned inward, bringing on depression."

Such, Ms. Volz said, is the collective human condition in Germany. To heal, she said, one must "let the idealized images go" and face the truth about the negative past.

As part of her dissertation, she interviewed German students about the Holocaust: how they had learned of it, how they felt about it now, whether they could imagine being part of such a process, how they might tell their children about it.

Ms. Volz measured each respondent's level of "empathy," "tolerance" of uncomfortable situations, and "defensiveness," as well as "how they form relationships."

Many of the students, she said, "fell apart" when talking specifically about the Holocaust. Though they "sounded articulate," they had not "worked through emotionally" the events of the past.

"Willing Executioners"

Nevertheless, she said, young Germans "have a hunger to talk about it," while the older generation is far more reserved. Older people initially "panned" Mr. Goldhagen's book - which charges among other things that the Wehrmacht knew about such Nazi evils as executions and death camps, and stood by or even helped the perpetrators - as "too one-sided."

The German Army had previously been portrayed as removed from the atrocities.

"Hitler's Willing Executioners," summed up Ms. Volz, deals with the "deep-rooted anti-Semitism which allowed individuals to kill - even after the war was over."

"Unable To Mourn"

Josef Joffe, a leading German commentator, said this month that the nation's younger generation "can relive the fascination [with the past] without reliving the fear and stigmatization. It can look the evil in the eye."

Not entirely true, said Ms. Volz. Germany, she said, is still "unable to mourn." The "emotional barrier" remains.

Ms. Volz moved to Amagansett six years ago. She lives with her husband, Don Lenzer, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and their daughter, Antonia, 6. The East End, she said, "is a good place for my daughter."

The 35th annual St. Patrick's Day parade seems to have arrived as swiftly as the winds of March did last week. All told, 32 floats, 15 marching bands, 14 fire departments, and six color guards are expected to participate.

Before the Montauk Friends of Erin get down to making last-minute preparations for Sunday's parade and attending this weekend's parties, they'll have to pick up the green blazers from the dry cleaners and perk up the snazzy derbies they wear. But the rest of us can just sit back and enjoy the weekend's festivities.

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, the East Hampton Town Parks Department will paint a green stripe along the parade route. Starting at 1 p.m. Sunday, the parade will step off at the Montauk Firehouse, head south on Edgemere Road, then turn east and pass the Montauk Post Office before beginning its westward descent down Main Street. It concludes at the Montauk I.G.A. about two hours after it starts.

Preparatory Parties

The festivities actually begin tomorrow afternoon with a lunch saluting the parade's grand marshal, Richard White Jr.

The event starts at noon at Gurney's Inn and includes a chicken or fish lunch, salad, and dessert. The Eastern Long Island Police Pipes and Drums will make an appearance and Mr. White will receive the honorary shillelagh, top hat, and green sash needed to complete the finery required to serve as leader of the parade. Tickets will be available at the door, but reservations with Ann Duffy of East Lake Drive have been requested.

Saturday brings on the Friends of Erin cocktail party, also at Gurney's Inn, from 4 to 8 p.m. The Amityville Highland Pipers and the band Direct Effect will provide the musical entertainment. There will be an open bar and all-you-can-eat buffet. Tickets will be available at the door but cost $5 less if purchased ahead of time at Becker's True Value Hardware Store in Montauk and Balcuns service station in East Hampton.

Excitement Builds

On Sunday the excitement starts to build early in the day. Main Street will be roped off and spectators will start lining up early to get a good spot. A viewing stand for visiting dignitaries will be set up on the green. Government representatives representing Montauk in any capacity have been invited to attend the parade - including President Clinton, from whom there has been no response. County Legislator George Guldi, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., and East Hampton Town Board members have said they will attend.

Meanwhile, across the street, in front of the Chamber of Commerce building, steaming hot vats of soup donated by local restaurants will be sold by Chamber members, who will pick up their ladles at noon and put them down only when the soup is sold out. Nearby, outside Suffolk County National Bank, the Montauk School's Parent Teacher Association will have a bake sale from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

A caravan of cars can always be seen heading into town before the parade begins. Local restaurants and motels do a brisk business throughout the weekend, and many are reopening with that in mind. East Hampton Town police officers will work overtime enforcing the law, particularly the one prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in public places.

Financial Cloud

Unfortunately, this year's parade has a financial cloud hanging over it. Members of the Friends of Erin are pleading for donations to help defray the cost of the parade. This year's has been estimated to cost about $25,000, with marching bands and bagpipers the biggest expense.

Members have approached the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, the East Hampton Town Board, local civic organizations, and business owners for donations. The Chamber has agreed to donate a portion of its members' dues, and the Town Board on Friday approved a $1,500 budget transfer from a general community fund to use for the parade.

On the big day, clowns will circulate through the crowds soliciting donations and large glass jars will be strategically placed in local businesses.

"We're not opposed to those $1 or $20 bills, they're the ones that add up," said Mike Finazzo, the parade coordinator. "If everyone gives just a little bit rather than a few giving a lot, we'd do okay."

And maybe the sun will break through the clouds.

Like many things in our society today, the common potato, Solanum tuberosum, has taken on a complicated, overbred, show-me-something-I-don't-already-know aura. And it has risen proudly, in all its farinaceous glory, to the occasion.

With names like Bintje, Desiree, Rose Fir, Boston Comrade, Rhoderick Dhu. With colors beyond its original humble milky-white, now yellow, purple, pink. Sizes can range from tiny fingerling to a full one pound. It's now considered worthy of infusing with truffles and caviar. Potatoes have been seen towering in gaufrette pyramids at the finest restaurants.

Could this be the musty, dusty, ubiquitous vegetable of our youth? It's gone from comfort food to blank slate for a palate of flavors. From Peru to Ireland to Long Island, the potato has been a staple, the economy, survival.

Once considered poisonous and only grown for its ornamental purple or white flowers, this distant cousin of the deadly nightshade was first consumed in America around 1560. In 1534, Spanish explorers, in their search for gold and silver, found potatoes being cultivated by the Incas, 8,000 feet high in the Andes. The tuber was already a staple for this civilization that stretched more than 2,000 miles from what is now Ecuador to Chile.

Other countries were slow to accept the potato. The English wouldn't eat them with any regularity for 250 years. Many Germans refused to touch them as late as 1744. In France, around 1785, potatoes became fashionable because Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were fond of them.

The Irish were the first since the Incas to cultivate potatoes extensively. Unfortunately, though they relied on them almost exclusively for their diet, they had only bred one strain.

As a result of a tragic blight in 1845-1846, millions of people died. A rapidly spreading fungus rotted the tubers, causing a famine. Many of the Irish who survived immigrated to the United States, greatly altering the population and political makeup of their new country.

Because of its cool temperatures and sandy soil, Long Island was for a long time potato-farming heaven. Its golden age was probably around 1960, when there were 42,699 acres in production and they yielded 11.9 million 100-pound bags of potatoes.

Due to adverse weather, restrictions on certain pesticides, and most of all development, the potato industry here has been in steady decline. While there are few prettier sights and more earthy smells than an expansive field of potatoes as far as the eye can see, it is understandable for potato farmers to give up the hard labor and sell the land to builders.

Hence the East End landscape is now dotted with odd and modern houses and Norman Jaffe wannabes that look as if they sprouted from the fields overnight.

The largest consumers of potatoes are the Belgians, who eat over a pound per person every day. The French are not far behind, consuming 420 pounds per citizen per year. Americans eat about 120 pounds each per year, but half of that is in processed form. (Let's hear it for McDonald's and Ore Ida!)

The Germans built a statue thanking Raleigh for introducing the potato to Europe. The Elizabethans were convinced it was an aphrodisiac. The United States Department of Agriculture assures us that we could survive on a diet of potatoes and whole milk.

So let us celebrate the homely tuber. While it is a common vegetable, accepted into our daily diet, and taken for granted, it is worthy of dignity. Sustenance, thy name is spud!

Laura Donnelly is a freelance writer who lives in East Hampton.