In the driving rain on the interstate on Sunday, a jaunty little red station wagon in the right lane sidles into the peripheral vision of a passenger in the left lane.

The wagon's driver, it turns out, is a round man in a red and white cap with a sweet and wizened-looking woman in wire glasses at his side. Both are dressed from head to toe in red.

"Whoa! Hurry up! Check this out!" the passenger tells the driver and child in the left car before the white-bearded apparition can disappear into post-Thanksgiving traffic. Catching on, he slows the little red wagon down a little, gives a meaningful wink and a wag of his finger, and then hits the gas.

As the little wagon forges ahead, its rear license plate comes into view. "ST NICK," it says. Well no fooling.

The hands are one of the first things that grab you about Walter Channing. They look like they've been chiseled, hammered, splintered, perhaps caught by a chainsaw once or twice - certainly not the hands of your typical venture capitalist. They're sculptor's hands.

Though he spends his weeks in New York putting up the capital to start innovative health-care companies, Mr. Channing has remained true to his chief passion over the years. The evidence is scattered across the expanse of his property off Scuttlehole Road: a small forest of trees impaled into the ground, roots up, in one clearing; a futuristic set of fiberglass spheres in another corner, and, nearby, an immense cherry tree suspended upside down in midair.

Inside his sawdusted studio, strange tangles of roots and trunks wind their way into feminine forms, and more polished pieces hang from the walls.

Grapes, Too

Mr. Channing seemed a world apart from the corporate realms of finance and investment during a recent visit.

"It's such a passion of mine I just can't let it go," he said of sculpting. In fact, he has been doing it for more than 25 years.

Add vintner to Mr. Channing's resume as well. The sculptor-investor has been growing more than 20 acres of grapes on his property since the early '80s. Though most of the grapes have been grown to sell to local wineries, Mr. Channing has produced some wines from the vineyard and plans to release his own label, Channing Daughters, in the near future.

The name is a nod to Mr. Channing's four daughters, who range in age from 11 weeks to 17 years ("estrogen central" Mr. Channing affectionately calls his household, shared also by his wife, Molly).

One Hundred Acres

Though sculpture has been a deep-rooted interest (so to speak), the idea of growing grapes sprouted only after Mr. Channing purchased more than 100 acres in 1977. He had visited the Hamptons since the late 1960s.

"It became my goal to get some land at some point," Mr. Channing said. He eventually stumbled upon the perfect piece and purchased the land with a neighbor and fellow artist, Jack Youngerman. Over the years, the property has evolved into a sprawling palette of sorts for Mr. Channing's creative pursuits. The sculptures that dot the property are visible from Butter Lane, as is the vineyard. The freshman vintner has even thought about building a small winery on the property.

Potatoes were the original crop. Shortly after purchasing the land, Mr. Channing began leasing portions to local farmers. "We had some good tenants and some bad tenants," he said. Eventually, "it got to be too much work," he added, and the idea arose of farming the property himself.

The First Merlots

He chose grapes. Starting with a new tractor and 100 vines he bought from a North Fork winery, he established a small vineyard. The result was a half-success. The cabernet sauvignon vines which made up half the vineyard developed crown gall and died. The chardonnay grapes flourished, however, and their harvest resulted in some 20 cases of wine.

"That was the experiment," said Mr. Channing. Subsequent efforts turned the vineyard into a working one, and Mr. Channing began to sell the grapes. He introduced the first merlot grapes on the South Fork, which were first harvested in 1991 and sold to Le Reve.

In 1993, he began to focus on producing wine from the vineyard, and he has since contracted with Lenz and SagPond vineyards to produce it. He is in the process of securing permits to market Channing Daughters as its own label.

Interests Merged

Though the whole family pitches in at harvest time, Mr. Channing relies on hired help for the day-to-day management of the vineyard. One full-time job is quite enough.

He has headed a venture capital investing business for the past 15 years, and worked as a health-care consultant for 12 years before that. The two interests have shaped an investment fund focused on health-care related ventures.

"It involves basically creating a company from scratch to go after a certain market or to develop a certain product," he explained.

The fund's most recent venture involved a company developing sophisticated computer software to provide health care professionals with accurate models of patient behavior.

"Consulting is not that much fun," said Mr. Channing. "You're just telling other people what to do. When you're in venture capital, you put your money where your mouth is."

Chainsaw Advantage

Mr. Channing has been involved in the science realm since he graduated from Harvard University's Business School and went to work with computers at the Honeywell Corporation. "It was the very early days of the computer age," he said.

The move from his native Massachusetts to New York City helped inspire an interest in sculpting, although growing up with a mother who painted and a father who worked with wood also helped.

"I always loved wood. Growing up, I had a tree surgery business," he said.

That summer job turned out to have an unexpected value. At his freshman admissions interview at Harvard, the nervous applicant was surprised to find his interviewer as interested in chainsaws as academics.

"In my day the interview was like a third of the admissions process. . .he looked and saw I had a tree surgery business and it turned out he wanted to buy a chainsaw. So we started talking about chainsaws for the rest of the interview."

It was shock, he said, to move to New York after living most of his life in a wooded area. No trees and chainsaws here.

"I had no idea what it was like to live in a dense city," he said. "There was this funny feeling of claustrophobia."

He began to tinker with woodworking to reclaim some feeling of the outdoors. The small Black and Decker arm saw he hooked up in his apartment helped, though his neighbors weren't so supportive.

Then an extraordinary opportunity came along. From his office on Rector Street in the financial district he noticed the city ripping up the old Pier 14. Thousands of pounds of well-preserved yellow pine was coming out of the water and being hauled off.

"I found out they were taking everything out to sea on barges and burning it," Mr. Channing recalled. "It made me crazy because it was good wood. That's when I started to hoard wood. People thought I was crazy."

Giant Pencils

With a basement full of timbers he salvaged from the piers, Mr. Channing bought a chainsaw and started carving. Early pieces included giant replicas of pencils, which he produced prolifically.

"Eventually I got the courage to take a couple of pieces down to a gallery in SoHo," he said. "I liked to bike around SoHo, so I saw what type of work was being shown."

His first show was at the O.K. Harris Gallery.

Mr. Channing has shown his work in numerous one-man and group shows since then, mostly in New York and on the East End, but also as far away as Switzerland.

Roots Exposed

His Bridgehampton property, though, still serves as his most welcoming gallery. Moving onto the property in 1977 was a wood hoarder's dream. Most of the trees cleared to make way for the house were saved, including the giant cherry tree.

"I collected an inventory of entire trees with roots and all the branches," Mr. Channing told his friend George Plimpton in an interview several years ago in The Paris Review, "and it was only a matter of a few minutes before I started thinking about hanging them upside down. It seems to me a very natural thing. I don't look at a tree as an object that necessarily has to be right side up. I'm just fascinated by them."

That fascination carries over into Mr. Channing's smaller, carved works. Much of the wood's natural form is left intact. Sometimes roots themselves make the piece - "roots are very provocative" - and other times they play a part, as in "Medusa Mask," a carved face with a system of roots sprouting forth and forming snakes.

Spheres In Pursuit

Another series depicts women's forms shrouded behind curtains that appear to blow against them. Lately, the sculptor has been interested in turning tree trunks into anthropomorphic columns. Last year's "Dryad in Tree," for instance, uses the natural curve of the tree toward its roots as the capital. The tree is halved and a dryad is carved in relief inside.

The giant green spheres, which turn their corner of the property into something that might have come from the movie "Sleeper," were more of a fluke. Mr. Channing had initially wanted to make the spheres self-propelled.

"I had this plan to have them roll around the property. I envisioned them popping out of the woods following people around."

A Sucker For Stumps

Mr. Channing has no problem getting wood now. He has his own stump dump of sorts on site. But that doesn't stop him from being obsessive from time to time.

After a major storm in 1988, he remembers passing the remnants of a giant oak tree that had been blown over in Sag Harbor. Most of it had been carted away, although a massive, six-ton stump remained. Unable to pass it up, Mr. Channing hired the farmer Clifford Foster to haul it to his property.

A year later he turned it into a sculpture of an "octopus and a sphinx in consort," a vision he saw in the tangled roots and trunk.

A Tree That Talks

Mr. Channing said he would like to have more time to devote to his sculpture. "It's a complicated cycle. I don't know what to do about it," he said. "There are a lot of artists who hold it against people who don't hurl themselves into the fiery pits and suffer."

At present, Mr. Channing is caught up in the wine business. Channing Daughters' 1995 merlot garnered a favorable response two weeks ago at a major industry tasting of Long Island wines in New York. Some local restaurants are eager to carry the wine once the label becomes official.

The bottle label, which carries a photo of Mr. Channing's beloved upside-down cherry tree, gives the bottle a quirkiness and individuality that reflects the sculptor, vintner, and investor behind it.

The large building rising on the north side of the Montauk Highway in Wainscott just west of the East Hampton-Southampton town line is not, as many passers-by have speculated, an office park or shopping center.

It's the Wainscott Motel's new office and an attached residence for the owners, the Hatgistavrou family.

It's also something of a statement.

Father And Sons

"We wanted it to be the prettiest building on the highway. We wanted to do something that let people know they're coming to the Hamptons," said John Hatgistavrou, one of three sons and the architect who designed the post-modern, shingled, cottage-like building.

When the building is finished sometime next spring, guests of the adjacent motel will have a cozy place to enjoy a continental breakfast or sit by the fire and read the paper, he said.

The project gave the family, which runs Ionian Construction in East Hampton as well, an opportunity to show off its skills. Two other brothers are also involved in the family business. Jim is an electrician, and Steve is a plumber.

Do-It-Themselfers

Their father, Angelo, who came to this country from Greece in the early 1950s and eventually started his own construction business in the Bronx, is the general contractor, or, as Jim joked, "the guy with the whip."

The father-and-sons team did much of the work on the new building themselves, although they did have the foundation dug and poured and a framing and roofing crew on hand.

The family bought the motel in 1986 after passing up an opportunity to buy another local motel a few years earlier. "It was in bad shape," said John. "There was no hot water, no heat, no TV."

Today, the 24-unit motel serves a clientele of mostly families and young couples, along with a handful of long-term guests.

The Place To Be

The Hatgistavrous came east in 1980 to build themselves a vacation house in Springs. It had not yet been completed when two men asked Angelo if he wanted to sell it.

"I thought they were joking," he said. But when they offered a check on the spot, he knew they were serious.

It did not take the family long to realize the East End, which was at the start of a decade-long building boom, was the place to be.

The Hatgistavrous obtained a variance from the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals in 1988 to enlarge their pre-existing, non conforming motel, but chose to sit on the project for a while. They finally broke ground late last year and got started in earnest in April.

They hope to be finished by Easter.

The worst photo assignment I've had, oh forget it,

it would take too long to explain why I couldn't

follow-focus for a newspaper what would be too

repelling to record and emotionally impossible,

a jumper on the Empire State, and as I tried to

be a committed professional and slunk that way

nauseously, I found a crisis cop had talked him

down. I walked up to this scruffy young Irishman

like Mary Magdalene and gazed as the heavens

exploded and all the fire engines rumbled away,

back to their sheltered caverns of inaction, and

asked, my career reprieved from retirement, how

he did it, and he said "the guy just wanted to talk

to his father and we told him we could arrange it."

Sweet Dreams

Cryptic wisteria, that's an idea, I'll vine myself up

someone's legs. He will experience a vague flutter

like a lost continent below the sea. Crimson reefs

of molten lava surface as an unclaimed Eden through

his mind, nude and primeval, one rib too many, thrown

from a dream like a skipped stone rippling his thighs,

ripples rising and rising. I do not think birds will sing,

however. My imagery is too profusive. I'd boggle his

primeval thinking like a wrench. The machinery would

break down. I'd have to unvine fast before the entire

continent resinks, leaving but a puddle in its wake,

so don't tell me you're all ears, I know that game.

"Well, enough about my problems. What do you think

about my problems?" Excuse me, I'm falling asleep.

These poems are from Star Black's newly published sonnet sequence, "Waterworn" (Tribes Books, $10). Ms. Black, a former staff photographer for United Press International, is a regular visitor to Sag Harbor.

Seven years ago, Chris Harris and Gary Bradhering, who used to scribble the names of their favorite restaurants and hotels on street maps for future reference, decided to turn their idea of a street-map-and-guidebook-in-one into a business.

Working out of their homes, the two produced guide maps for New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C., cities they were well acquainted with, and set off for the American Book Sellers Show in Las Vegas in June 1990, "not knowing if anyone would like it," said Mr. Harris. "But the buying public warmed to the idea."

Imagine, said Mr. Harris, a tourist lugging a guidebook in one hand and a street map in the other. "You see all these great restaurants, but you don't know where they are," he said. "You can go out and buy a $20 guidebook or a $5.50 map."

Targeting Shoppers

Now, with 29 maps of mostly United States cities in publication and four more of Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, and Montreal due out in the spring, the company, Mapeasy, is thriving. Its products are found in bookstores across the country, and the firm also does customized versions for conventions and corporations.

The company is now expanding its line to include maps of major retail centers, to cater to shoppers.

Early next year, MapEasy, which is currently in an office on Gingerbread Lane in East Hampton, will move to larger quarters now under construction on Industrial Road in East Hampton looking over the East Hampton Airport. The move will give the company's 11-member staff some elbow room and also allow it to have an on-site warehouse.

MapEasy's success finds the East End, hardly a central location, becoming nonetheless something of a center for mapmakers. Streetwise Maps is located in Amagansett.

Focus For Mapmakers

"We occupy different niches," said Mr. Harris of the other company. While Streetwise produces more of a standard street map, including one for the East End, "we're not trying to map out the Greater Paris area - we're interested in tourist centers," said Mr. Harris.

The company has no plans to do a local map, he added, because "the market is limited."

MapEasy maps are clearly user-friendly. Printed on waterproof paper, they include pleasant drawings of major attractions and color-coded entries for hotels, restaurants, and retail shops which, thanks to computer graphics, look like they were hand-written by someone with excellent penmanship.

Happy Customers

There is no advertising charge for businesses that appear on the maps. "That's strictly an editorial decision on our part," said Mr. Harris. "We try to weigh a place on what we think our public wants."

A MapEasy user with a hankering for hamburgers while visiting New York, for example, could find choices ranging from McDonald's to the 21 Club.

The company updates its maps at least once a year and sometimes more often. Frequently, it adds new listings suggested by customers, who send in a steady stream of fan mail.

Staff members do most of the field work for new publications. "We take lots of photographs, and people come back with bags full of brochures," said Mr. Harris.

Ideal Surroundings

Not surprisingly, it is not hard to find volunteers. "I haven't had too many people upset about having to go out and do research," Mr. Harris said.

"It's a thrill for me to go to a new city and get the lay of the land and know where everything is," he added. He still does much of the scouting himself. "I have a natural curiosity. I always want to know what's around the corner."

Mr. Harris, who comes from North Carolina, heads the company's production efforts, while Mr. Bradhering, a Boston native, takes care of the business side. Mr. Harris first came to East Hampton to visit a friend. "I thought it was the greatest place I'd ever seen," he said.

The partners have also found it to be an ideal place to run their business. Communications are good, and MacArthur Airport in Islip makes travel easy, said Mr. Harris. Plus, the laid-back approach on the East End allows them to have a "very casual office," which includes a couple golden retrievers lounging under desks.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Davidson to Allan Ryan 3d, Day Lily Lane, $415,000.

A.P. Tuff & Assoc. to Cliffeton Green, Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, $240,000.

Tausik to Loren Skeist and Charles Gilbert, Lumber Lane, $675,000.

Ser to Richard DeRose, Scuttlehole Road, $260,000.

Hsia to Chad Leat, Butter Lane, $575,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Farrell to Elkhalil Binebine, Kettle Court, $650,000.

Greenberg to Dan Saltiel, Springwood Lane, $240,000.

Cavalero to Howard Cavalero and Michael Ehrhardt, Old Orchard Lane, $350,000.

Arthur to Stephan Weiss, Further Lane, $1,250,000.

Schneider to Kenneth and Kyra Rafferty, Newtown Lane, $235,000.

Iammatteo to Joseph Carri, Gould Street, $400,000.

MONTAUK

Matson estate to Wallace and Barbara Zeins, Old Montauk Highway, $314,500.

NORTH HAVEN

Hannigan to Maureen and Raymond Dee, North Drive, $1,200,000.

NORTHWEST

Lipoff to Aston Baker, Old Northwest Road, $765,000.

Rosenman to Barry Miske, Bull Path, $155,000.

Neidell to Nella Costella, High Point Road, $172,500.

Barnett Const. Corp. to Richard and Loree Rosenthal, Long Hill Road, $525,000.

NOYAC

Briggs to Gerald and Terry Shargel, Munchogue Drive, $625,000.

SAG HARBOR

Southwick to Kenneth and Mary Solomon, Harbor Watch Court, $285,000.

SAGAPONACK

Daniel to Ana Daniel, Hedges Lane, $1,375,000.

WATER MILL

Raphael to Katherine Parker, Little Noyac Path, $1,060,000.

It looked like the Alien, its mouth consisting of numerous hooks and fan-like appendages, the eyes oblong and black. Its undulating body looked like an armored snake with dozens of legs and two praying mantis-like arms tucked close and ready to spring.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Capt. Harry Clemenz, who discovered the creature in Lake Montauk while hunting scallops with a dip net. He netted it, placed it in a bucket, and ran to his fish books for help.

Angling For Herring

Squilla empusa was its name, the common mantis shrimp, otherwise known as the slasher shrimp for its ability to slash a fish, other shrimp, or a fisherman's finger with its knife-like appendage. Good thing it was only seven inches long.

Mantis shrimp are native to this area but uncommon. Their range extends from Cape Cod to as far south as Brazil. They like to burrow in sand or mud and can be found both in shallow water just below the low tide line and in ocean depths of 500 feet.

Captain Clemenz's catch was perhaps the most spectacular of the week.

Striped bass are still around but the absence of any surf until Tuesday morning has kept them off the beach. As a result, the standings in the Montauk Locals surfcasting tournament had not changed as of Tuesday afternoon. The tournament ends on Sunday.

The silvery greenish-blue herring have been sought by bass and by fishermen seeking bass. For several weeks now boating fishermen have choked the entrance to Montauk Harbor angling for herring that have congregated there. After taking on a supply, fishermen head for the rips around Montauk Point. Boaters have continued to report strong catches of bass stuffed to the gills with herring.

Two Sets Of Rods

Capt. Mike Vegessi of the Montauk party boat Lazy Bones said he has been rigging two sets of rods for his two half-day trips each day. One set is rigged with tiny herring jigs, with which he lets his customers catch their own bait - easily done as the herring have been thick from the jetty west all along Gin Beach.

The other set of rods is rigged with bass hooks and weights for drifting bunker chunks out into the rips. "It's been absolutely terrific. All big fish, very few throwbacks. We have fish up to 35 pounds almost every trip," Captain Vegessi said on Tuesday. The Lazy Bones will call it quits early next month.

The daily bass bag-limits are filled so fast each day that charter boat captains have been splitting their time between the rips and the slack water out by the Southwest Ledge, where blackfish and sea bass live.

The South Fork Natural History Society will hold a book party and signing to celebrate the publication of three books by SoFo members: "The Pictorial Guide to the Living Primates" by Noel Rowe, a nature photographer, "Winds of the Fish's Tail" by Richard Hendrickson, a naturalist and weatherman, and "Winged" by George Held, a poet.

The reception will be from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Vered Gallery in East Hampton, which is itself displaying an exhibit of nature photography and painting: "Nature at Its Best."

Mr. Rowe is director of Primate Conservation Incorporated, a foundation that funds field research of primates in their natural habitat. He has traveled all over the world to photograph mountain gorillas in Zaire, langurs in India, lemurs in Madagascar, and snub-nosed monkeys in China.

Mr. Hendrickson has been observing weather for the National Weather Service in Albany from his farm in Bridgehampton since the 1930s. His book provides a wealth of information about hurricanes, northeasters, beach erosion, blizzards, and summer heat on the South Fork.

"Winged" is Mr. Held's first chapbook of poems, many of which grew out of observation of his Sag Harbor garden. He teaches literature and creative writing at Queens College and is co-editor of The Ledge, a poetry and fiction magazine.

Mary D. Killoran of Sag Harbor and Sarasota, Fla., president of the Eastern Long Island Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will retire from that office this month after serving 10 years.

Mrs. Killoran said she felt it was time to move on and let someone else assume the burden of leading the organization.

During her tenure as N.A.A.C.P. president, Mrs. Killoran also joined the League of Women Voters, the National Organization for Women, and the Anti-Bias Task Forces of Riverhead, Southampton, and East Hampton Towns. She met with members of Congress and other legislators and representatives of business and other organizations to lobby for her constituents and keep them informed.

She attended every national conference except one, and missed only two state conventions - and those were because of the expense involved.

Mrs. Killoran said she had worn out two cars traveling back and forth to workshops and other meetings on Long Island alone.

Rewards Of The Job

Her branch participated in sit-ins at the County Criminal Court in Riverhead and a three-year-long discrimination suit that was ultimately thrown out of State Supreme Court. The branch also earned at least four outstanding performance awards from the national and state organizations during Mrs. Killoran's tenure.

She said one of the most rewarding parts of the job had been to accompany a parent to court when a child was in trouble. "Just sitting there with the family was often most comforting," Mrs. Killoran said.

She counted many police personnel, County Legislator George Guldi, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., Southampton Town Justice Deborah Kooperstein, and Congressman Michael Forbes among her friends, Mrs. Killoran said.

"I still have little respect for the slow wheels of justice and I will continue to fight against that wherever I am," she said.

A Long Career

In 1995 Mrs. Killoran was honored by the East End Women's Network for outstanding community work. Prior to that her name was entered into the Congressional Record for outstanding work at the request of Congressman George Hochbrueckner.

While she led the local N.A.A.C.P. branch, Mrs. Killoran worked as a medical transcriber for Hamptons Gynecology and Obstetrics in Southampton until 1994, when she retired for the second time. She had worked as a district manager for AT&T for 27 years prior to that.

She won good citizenship and alumni awards from Bridgehampton High School, from which she graduated before going on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees at Brooklyn College, where she majored in business administration. She attended Yale University under the sponsorship of AT&T when she was employed in recruiting and hiring for the company during the early part of her career.

Time To Travel

She is working part-time as a receptionist and writing the "East of Eastville" column for The East Hampton Star. If things had been more open for African Americans in the field of journalism when she graduated high school, she said, she would have aimed to be a foreign correspondent.

She said she hoped to spend as much time as possible in Florida, Europe, and the Caribbean, and has been asked to serve on the executive board of the Sarasota, Fla., branch of the N.A.A.C.P.

When she is not out of town, Mrs. Killoran said, she would be happy to assist whoever is named her replacement.

"When the Eastern Long Island Branch was first formed, I was its only youth member," Mrs. Killoran said. Now, she said, "I am working on my 'Golden Heritage' membership."

Charges that Brookhaven National Laboratory has been involved in weapons development surfaced at the forum sponsored by the World Affairs Council on Nov. 9 at Southampton College.

M. Sue Davis, the associate director for reactor safety and security at the lab, said that "bomb production has never been part of our mission, only research."

Two weeks later at Guild Hall, however, William J. Weida, an economics professor from Colorado State University, read excerpts from the Department of Energy's $415-million budget for the lab to the audience.

Dr. Weida said it showed $250 million related to nuclear research, $12 million allocated to weapons development, and $2 million for weapons testing. Brookhaven has obvious links to the national laboratories at Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico, which are almost entirely devoted to weapons development, he said.

Those scientists representing Brookhaven at Guild Hall suggested that Dr. Weida's information was inaccurate, but he insisted that the Department of Energy had allocated those funds for the purposes cited and he retorted that lab officials were guilty of misappropriation if the money was spent in other ways.

Having been pressed for details on defense research at the lab on Nov. 9, Dr. Davis said such information was secret for national security reasons.

"I could tell you but then I would have to kill you," she joked.