Who better to throw a costume ball than a group of about 100 artists? Once again the Jimmy Ernst Artists Alliance will parade the wildest and wackiest costumes at its Flights of Fantasy Artists Ball, to be held on Saturday from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the LTV Studios on Industrial Road in East Hampton.

The evening's candlelit decor will be enhanced by the artworks on display in the group's annual show, which runs until Nov. 25 at LTV, and by mammoth paper mobiles that will float above the dancers.

Entertainment will be provided by a professional ballroom dancing team, by a performance of the dances of India, and by a bellydancer.

A cash bar and light buffet, including desserts, will be available.

Costumes for the evening should be based on the theme "flights of fantasy." Tickets, which cost $30, are available at Book Hampton in East Hampton and Southampton and the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor.

The Long Island-bashers are at it again. No sooner has a year managed to pass without any Joey Buttafuocos or Amityville Horrors hogging the headlines in the supermarket tabloids than someone decrees that Long Islanders - sorry, Lawn Guylanders - talk funny, and sets out to make us all sound like we just got off the bus from Omaha.

Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising. These, after all, are the dogged '90s, the self-improvement decade that strives not just for personal fitness but for personal perfection, the era of stomach reduction, thigh reduction, breast reduction, and reduction ad every other possible absurdum, so why not "accent reduction"?

"Karen will attempt to make people aware of how their mouths make the horrible sounds they produce," assures a straight-faced press release. "She will help Long Islanders to 'tawk' less and 'talk' more."

What exactly does a Long Island accent sound like? Flushing? Hewlett Harbor? Babylon? Mattituck?

Depends where you come from, and also where you go. A friend who was born and raised in Nassau County but has relatives in the South remembers suffering agonies as a child every Christmas, when it came time to visit the old Kentucky home. His parents would make him stand in front of a mirror saying "cahndy" instead of "caaan-dy" and "ahnt" for "aayent" over and over again, until they were sure Grandpa and Grandma would have no cause to say he sounded like a nasally challenged Yankee.

It does seem too bad, though, when accents and dialects all across the nation, including this region's distinctive Bonac, are disappearing faster than you can say "national television," to help the process along. For those who disagree, Karen will be waiting at the Jericho Library at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

CTC Live threw a benefit party at Guild Hall Friday night to celebrate the smashing opening performance of its 15th season. The stylish silver and black balloons festooning the gallery were perfect choices for the bittersweet Noel Coward play that preceeded the bash: silver for the glitter of the theater - and those threads among the gold; black for elegance - and mourning.

"Waiting in the Wings," written five years after the death of Mr. Coward's stage-struck mother, takes us into a charitable home for indigent retired actresses in England, called The Wings. Here they wait, with varying degrees of acceptance and denial, for that last great curtain call in the sky.

In John Mercurio's splendidly handsome and functional set, The Wings is a drafty old manor house shrouded in an institutional gloom the residents hope to lift with the addition of a solarium, where they could take the sun protected from the frigid east wind.

This matter is up before a committee that thus far has refused to fund such a sybaritic project. But Perry Lascoe (Sandy Rosen), The Wings's cheery secretary, has promised to have another go at it for the sake of these frail "old shadows" he genuinely loves.

Stirring The Plot

At rise of curtain, the buzz among the residents is the imminent arrival of Lotta Bainbridge (Serena Seacat), a former first lady of the stage and a sworn enemy of May Davenport (Vay David), The Wings's reigning grande dame whose husband Lotta stole.

Thus the plot points are deftly established: Will the solarium be built? Will Lotta and May claw each other's eyes out? Which old trouper will be the first to make her final exit?

Gallant Humor

The expert handling of the little skirmishes and incidents that move the drama forward make this one of CTC Live's most moving and memorable evenings.

Theater at its most affecting. Don't wait in the wings for a minute; see it.

"Waiting in the Wings," briskly directed by Ms. Seacat, is also extremely funny. With British jocularity, the actresses try to minimize the tragic circumstances that bring them together, as if old age and poverty were, somehow, egregious errors in taste.

The large, very talented cast captures this gallant humor perfectly.

Blue-Ribbon Cast

While it's hard to pin a blue ribbon on one, rather than all, the actors, the moving performances of Ms. Seacat, Ms. David, and Mr. Rosen must be mentioned first. All are strongly motivated, funny, and beautifully believable: They're the evening's firm foundation.

With this solid base to play off, the other actors are free to go for the abundant laughs, and tears, Mr. Coward so knowingly provides.

Andrea Gross, doing little else than trudge back and forth with trays of rattling crockery, brings the hapless character of Doreen, the maid, to hilarious life. By the end of the play, the mere sight of her brings howls of delight from the audience.

The always amusing Katie Meckert is also wonderful as the sardonic Cora Clarke, while Gillian Ames, a native of Scotland, makes her CTC debut with a bang as the weepy Estelle Craven.

Virtuosos

Sara Beck gives a virtuoso performance as the quite loony Sarita Myrtle, a Norma Desmond type more ready for her close-up than her life.

David Parker is tenderly, and oh so touchingly, charming as the elderly Osgood Meeker, a gentleman caller who brings violets every Sunday to an off-stage old beauty, for years confined to her room.

Laura Flynn, last seen in Dark Horse Productions' "Twelfth Night" and "Glengarry Glen Ross," here plays a hard-hitting television interviewer with considerable panache.

To Die For

The inimitable Vaughan Allentuck is splendid as a rosary-oriented, Irish Catholic religious fanatic, and Stephanie Brussell makes her CTC debut as a singer once known for her squeaky rendition of "Miss Mouse."

Elizabeth Sarfati is sympathetic playing The Wings's manageress, as is Gerry Gurney as one of its saner inmates. Judith Minetree, John Bazazian, and Bill Cowley are fine in smaller parts, while Deede Windust make a final entrance to die for, just when we thought she would never appear.

One of the most remarkable things about this excellent evening is that when an actress's last-minute illness forced the elimination of her character from the cast, whatever plot points she carried were so seamlessly integrated into the script that we never missed her.

Fantastic Ms. Seacat

Another is that the director, Ms. Seacat, is filling in on a week's notice for one of the leads, who also fell by the wayside. She does a fantastic job in both crucial capacities.

What with Eric Schlobohm's evocative lighting design, Chas. W. Roeder's Broadway-worthy costume design, and the Noel Coward show tunes that drift into the John Drew during scene changes, "Waiting in the Wings" is theater at its most affecting.

Don't wait in the wings for a minute; see this soaring performance.

The Arlene Bujese Gallery will open two exhibits, one of paintings and pastels by Paul Brach and the other of photographs by Anne Sager and Evelene Wechsler, with a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Mr. Brach will show a selection of paintings from his "Aura" series in oil on canvas, and a series of recent pastels. The oil paintings, with their Western mountain imagery, are oval-shaped variations on a series that was shown at Guild Hall last year.

Ms. Sager will show a series of high-contrast photographs she has taken of East End gas pumps and Ms. Wechsler, who is having her first show at the gallery, will show color prints of animals taken while on safari in Africa.

All three artists live at least part of the year in East Hampton. The show will run through Nov. 24.

Jean-Michel Correia

RVS Fine Arts in Southampton will show the work of the French artist Jean-Michel Correia for the month of November.

Mr. Correia is a minimalist painter of geometric forms using acrylic paint where the surface is scraped away, creating depth and texture. He lives and works in Paris, where he is artistic director of the Union of Decorative Arts in the division of the Louvre called the Ateliers du Carrousel.

The artist has exhibited with the gallery for 10 years and returns this year with his signature square canvases along with a new series of mixed-media works of collaged cotton and metal and wood fragments on handmade paper.

There will be a reception on Nov. 16 from 3 to 5 p.m.

Ides Of March

Philip Pavia's monumental sculpture "The Ides of March" has been cleaned and restored and will go on permanent display in the lobby of Manhattan's Hippodrome Building, 1120 Avenue of the Americas.

The sculpture, in 1960 the largest bronze abstraction in the world, was first displayed outside the Hilton Hotel. It was removed when the hotel was redesigned and its entrance changed. A reception to celebrate the work's return to public view after a hiatus of eight years will be held on Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Dougenis Elected

Miriam Dougenis of Sag Harbor has been elected a member of the National Association of Women Artists. She will be officially recognized at a meeting on Tuesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at which time slides of her work will be shown.

Ms. Dougenis, who designed the covers of The Star's last two gardening supplements, is active in arts organizations in East Hampton and Southampton and her work has been exhibited nationwide. She is the organizer of the current Jimmy Ernst Artists Alliance show, which can be seen at the LTV Studios through Nov. 25.

Vietnamese Shipment

The Nabi Gallery in Sag Harbor has just received a shipment of furniture from Vietnam, which will be on display together with a selection of works by gallery artists until January.

The pieces include tables, chests, chairs, boxes, and other items in classical Vietnamese form. All are crafted in rosewood and flower ebony at a workshop in Hanoi, for which the gallery is the exclusive distributor in this country.

The paintings on display include work by Anthony H. Stubbing, Roy Nicholson, Rae Ferren, Lewis Zacks, Hilary Knight, and Leo Revi, as well as the Korean artists Noh Young June and Dae Woong Nam.

Albert Reception

A reception will be held next Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Avram Family Gallery of Southampton College for the show of sculpture by Calvin Albert currently on exhibit in the adjacent Fine Arts Gallery.

The show includes large-scale bronze, terra-cotta, and fiberglass sculptures by the artist, who now lives in Boca Raton, Fla.

Other News

Arlene Slavin of Wainscott has an exhibit of screens and work in metal, "Genesis: In the Beginning," at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan through Jan. 9. She will give a talk about her work on Sunday. The college has more details.

Joan Liebowitz, an art collector who lives at 15 Shadow Lane, Springs, is selling original contemporary works by American and European artists from her collection on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through December.

Carl Icahn has threatened to cut down part of a 75-year-old privet hedge he shares with his neighbor be cause of the neighbor's opposition to a concrete patio on Mr. Icahn's property. Nonetheless, as of Friday, the former airline chief has three months to remove the patio, built on a dune in front of his Nichols Lane house.

Just as the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals was about to hand down its unanimous decision on Friday, Mr. Icahn's attorney, Mi chael Walsh of Water Mill, requested a rehearing.

He argued, for one thing, that the neighbor, Nathan Halpern, did not ask the Z.B.A. to rescind the patio's building permit until after the governing statute of limitations had run out. He also claimed that Mr. Halpern's reading of coastal erosion regulations was "wrong."

The lawyer said Tuesday that he planned to file a formal request for a rehearing "very soon."

Neighbor's Argument

The Z.B.A. vote followed a hearing last month in which, for more than an hour and with the assistance of nearly 40 maps and letters, Mr. Halpern made his case.

He argued that construction on a primary dune requires a State Coastal Erosion Hazard Act permit, which he claimed Mr. Icahn did not obtain. The patio, which is situated five feet from Mr. Halpern's property line, also violates the village's 30-foot side-yard setback, the neighbor said.

Thomas Osborne of the East Hampton firm of Osborne & McGowan, who was Mr. Icahn's attorney at the time, did not speak in rebuttal. The Z.B.A. then closed the hearing.

On Friday, Mr. Icahn was represented by Mr. Walsh, who jumped up just before board members voted, stating that he had "filed two new documents" on Oct. 23 relating to the case, and asking the board to reopen the hearing.

Lawyers' Debate

"This is not the place or time to reopen," countered Mr. Halpern's lawyer, William Esseks of the Water Mill firm of Esseks, Hefter & Angel, adding that he had "accommodated" Mr. Icahn by agreeing to postpone to September an original August hearing date.

'I think there are some major problems with the way this thing was handled.'

Michael Walsh

Carl Icahn's Attorney

Mr. Walsh continued to talk, as Mr. Esseks continued to argue, both their voices rising. "He can't do an end run around me and this board," said Mr. Esseks. "If he wants to go to court and force it open, let him do that."

"The hearing should be reopen ed," repeated Mr. Walsh. "I'm asking for a two-week adjournment."

"Mr. Icahn's attorney said he had no thing to say [in September]," count er ed Mr. Esseks. "A new attorney doesn't alter that fact. The question is," he asked the board, "do you feel the building permit is valid, or, as Mr. Hal pern holds, based on false in for ma tion, or lack of judgment, perhaps?"

Telephone, Too

With that, James Amaden, a Z.B.A. member, said, "I think we should vote to have the deck removed. I think the building inspector was in error in granting verbal and written permission."

The board then directed that Mr. Icahn remove the patio and "restore the dune to its original condition."

Joan Denny, another member, said the "telephone and electric appurtenances" at the site should come out too, and sand and dune grass should be replaced.

"I think there are some major problems with the way this thing was handled," Mr. Walsh said Tuesday. "Un der any scenario, the appeal was untimely."

Gould Street Garage

In other matters, the board agreed that Anne Williams could extend by two feet a never-built addition to her Woods Lane house. The plan was originally approved in January 1993.

The board declined to allow Stev en Brown of Gould Street to continue his project to divide his 178.5-square-foot garage. A year ago, Mr. Gould asked permission to create a stor age area in the garage, but did not ask to install plumbing or additional elec tric wiring.

Since then, according to Mr. Am a den, "he proceeded without authori za tion. A plumber has been working there."

Mr. Brown said he was "not aware" he needed a special plan for the plumbing. A year ago, he said, he owned the property with a partner, an arrangement that no longer exists.

The board suggested he reapply, indicating his full plans for the building.

AMAGANSETT

Arnold to Preston and Susan Tsao, Hand Lane, $290,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Richer to Andrew Saunders, Calf Creek Court, $400,000.

EAST HAMPTON

Winston to Andre Mencz, Whooping Hollow Road, $260,000.

Maher to Alfredo Paredes, Sherrill Road, $382,500.

Shanholt to Barbara Kavovit, Montauk Highway, $189,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Citibank N.A. to Charles and Helen Marino, Forest Road, $257,500.

Whelan (referee) to Coolidge-Shore Assets L.P., North Haven Way, $100,000.

NORTHWEST

Wolff to National Brand Licensing Inc., Bull Run, $200,000.

SAG HARBOR

Doerr to Victoria Van Dyke, Redwood Road, $320,000.

Scire to Gerry Logue, Noyac Road, $405,000.

SAGAPONACK

Emmerling to John and Laurie Sykes, Town Line Road, $850,000.

Cohen to Donald and Katarina Mullen, Parsonage Lane, $1,450,000.

SPRINGS

Voynow to Emily Cobb and Ann Stanwell, Old Stone Highway, $170,000.

Schaap to Joseph Carvelli, Pembroke Drive, $159,000.

Geelan to Michael Smithie and Kristin Johnson, Bay Inlet Road, $234,500.

WATER MILL

Holme to Juan Denegri, Cobb Road, $568,000.

Flinn to Beverly Willis, Roses Grove Road, $460,000.

Kemco Leasing Co. Inc. to David and Michelle Tarica, Cobb Isle Road, $640,000.

Attention bird watchers - the Wild Bird Crossing shop at Bridgehampton Commons has scheduled two workshops for Saturday: "Bird Watching for Beginners" at 7:30 a.m. and "How to Get Started in Backyard Bird Feeding" at 10 a.m.

For the first workshop, those interested are asked to meet at the shop for the trip to Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Noyac. The shop is again the meeting place for the backyard feeding workshop.

The East Hampton Trails Preservation Society has planned a hike through the Grace Estate and Cedar Point County Park for 10 a.m. on Sunday. Richard Lupoletti will lead trekkers on a diagonal course through the Grace Estate, passing Samp Mortar Hollow, Standing Rock, and the sunken bridge before dipping into a little-known corner of Cedar Point Park. Hikers are asked to meet at the Northwest Harbor end of Alewife Brook Road along the Cedar Point Park fence.

The peak of the Montauk Mountain is the goal of a Nature Conservancy hike scheduled for 9 a.m. on Saturday. True, it's only 130 feet above sea level, but what a view! It includes Fort Pond and Fort Pond Bay beyond. For reservations and to learn where to meet, hikers are asked to call the Conservancy's East Hampton headquarters.

The ecology of the pine barrens is the subject of a slide show and lecture tonight at the offices of Cornell Cooperative Extension Service at 246 Griffing Avenue, Riverhead, from 7 to 9 p.m. On Saturday, phenomena described at the previous night's workshop can be viewed first-hand during a field trip to the pine barrens.

The time and location of the field trip will be announced at the workshop. The fee for the two-day event is $30. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Long Island Pine Barrens Society. Advance registration is required and can be made by calling the service's marine program headquarters at 3690 Cedar Beach Road in Southold.

All was quiet on the Presidential front here this week, while the race for the seat in the House of Representatives from the First Congressional District drew most local attention.

In East Hampton, there are no headquarters for President Clinton and Vice President Gore or their Republican challengers, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, and other signs of grass-roots activism - signs on front lawns, posters in shop windows, brochures in the mailbox, telephone solicitations at dinner time - only have begun popping up in the last week or two.

Called Important

With the 1994 and 1995 Republican victories as a prologue to Tuesday's election, both Democratic and Republican organizers are concentrating on the Congressional race. The district is made up of the five East End towns, Brookhaven, and a piece of Smithtown.

"It's an underground movement," Christopher Kelley, the recently renamed chairman of the Town Democratic Committee, said humorously. He quickly added that East Hampton's was the only committee in the district to mail Nora Bredes's campaign literature to every registered Democrat in town and that supporters here had started her off by raising $50,000 of the nearly $300,000 deposited in her campaign account so far.

Ms. Bredes, a County Legislator, is seeking to unseat U.S. Representative Michael P. Forbes, a one-term incumbent who has powerful friends in Washington, a strong Republican voter base at home, and about $750,000 in campaign donations so far.

"It's an important race for us here. Mike has been good for the East End and has done good constituent service here, and we'd like to send him back to Washington," said Perry B. (Chip) Duryea 3d, the East Hampton Republican party leader.

Other Spaces

A phone bank operating out of a borrowed office at Riverhead Building Supply in East Hampton and Mr. Duryea's seafood distributorship in Montauk will start ringing up "prime Republican voters" tonight to promote the candidate, with strategists from the County Committee guiding them, said Mr. Duryea.

Mr. Kelley said his law office on Main Street in East Hampton Village is being used by campaign workers running a phone bank to get out the vote for President Clinton, Ms. Bredes, Harold Bennett, their Town Trustee hopeful, and other Democratic candidates. Mr. Kelley is a partner in the firm of Twomey, Latham, Shea & Kelley.

"The bulk of the voters are in the west end so there's no money for a headquarters in the east," said Mr. Kelley of the Presidential campaign. "Anyway, a headquarters is high visibility, but it doesn't accomplish much unless it's a working space," he said.

Seen As Vulnerable

Nationally, the Democrats are targeting four G.O.P. House seats they consider ripe for the taking and essential to regaining the majority position. Mr. Forbes's seat is among them. Fearing there is truth to the theory that an incumbent is most vulnerable after his first term, and mindful of criticism that Mr. Forbes is farther to the right than the average Republican in his district, his supporters have likewise flocked to give Mr. Forbes extra help.

Of the 333,653 persons eligible to vote in the district on Tuesday, the largest bloc, 142,054, are Republicans, compared with 80,403 Democrats. While that might indicate Mr. Forbes has his second term in the bag, the 90,634 voters who are not aligned with a party cause serious doubt.

"If you look at the geographics of this district, it's huge, from Montauk to a corner of Smithtown. And it varies in terms of demographics, with the bulk of the voters between Riverhead and Smithtown. It is considered a swing district. . . . It could go either way," said Mr. Duryea.

Balance Of Power

According to the County Board of Elections, the number of registered East Hampton voters eligible to enter the booth on Tuesday is up by 942 from last year, to 13,698.

The traditional balance of power continues to be weighted for the G.O.P., which this year has 4,921 voters, but the Democrats had the greater increase over last year, increasing their ranks by 405 to 4,397, compared with 225 more for the G.O.P. That gives the G.O.P. a 524-vote advantage.

The unaligned, known in Board of Elections lingo as "blanks," continue to represent a powerful and much-courted bloc in East Hampton, as they do across the First Congressional District and the nation. This year there are 3,730 unaligned voters in town.

Fewer "Blanks"

"We always consider them strong Democratic prospects. However, there was a time when it was said that most of the newly registered were blanks, but that's not true anymore. Most new registrants are choosing to be Democrat or Republican," said Mr. Kelley.

The unaligned showed an increase over last year of 180, proportionately similar to the growth in registration for alternative parties. This year, there are 203 eligible Conservatives, 163 in the Independence Party, 46 Right-to-Lifers, 121 Liberals, and 4 in the Freedom Party.

Local Democrats also will be tapping voters "with certain demographic characteristics and with a sensitivity to those issues that Nora Bredes's record is most in tune with," said Mr. Kelley.

Women And Seniors

That translates into women and seniors, who are considered most likely to find fault with the incumbent's stands on abortion, gun control, and Medicare, and find Ms. Bredes's more liberal positions on those matters and her record on the environment attractive.

As a result, volunteers will be ringing up all the Democrats in town, all the independents, and "targeted" Re publicans, meaning women and seniors.

On the Republican side, getting out as many party regulars as possible for two other incumbents, State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., is the second priority for the phone bank.

Senator LaValle is seeking his 11th term, and Assemblyman Thiele is seeking his second. Mr. Thiele has been elected to office easily in the past, becoming Southampton Supervisor and County Legislator with votes from across the spectrum.

"Realistically, they're in pretty good shape," added Mr. Duryea.

Lots Of Choices

Altogether, voters in East Hampton and Southampton Towns will share 13 choices for elected officials - President, U.S. Representative, State Senator, State Assemblyman, seven State Supreme Court judgeships, and two for the County Court - and five decisions on identical or nearly identical referendums.

In East Hampton, there is additional competition among three candidates for one seat on the Town Trustees. In Southampton voters also will decide on three local referendums related to open space and the town budget cap.

The race for Town Trustee is the only town contest this year. Voters will choose among Mr. Bennett, the Democrat, Gregg de Waal, the G.O.P.'s candidate, who ran two years ago as a Democrat without success, and Stuart B. Vorpahl Jr., running on the Independence Party line.

Needs Truck Parts

East Hampton

October 27, 1996

Dear Editor,

This Tuesday is Election Day. I'll be up bright and early to get to the polls. What an exciting day it will be. Not only do I get to cast my vote for Bill Clinton, I get to choose a new East Hampton Town Trustee to fill the position of my lifelong friend, the late John Collins.

There are three men running for this very important position this year, Gregg de Waal of the Republican Party, Harold Bennett of the Democratic Party, and Stuart Vorpahl of the Independence Party.

While I don't know Gregg very well, he seems to be a nice fellow and is knowledgeable in Trustee matters.

Harold, on the other hand, I do know. He's a comrade of mine down at the Legion Post in Amagansett. When Harold walks into the place, he keeps us all in stitches. He's a great guy and would make a good Trustee. My only concern is that if elected he will no longer have time to come to the Legion. What would we all do for entertainment?

I've decided.

I'm going to vote for Stuart Vorpahl. I've got three very good reasons for doing so:

1. He's the most qualified candidate. No one knows more about Trustee business than Stuart. His knowledge is truly amazing.

2. Mary, his "bride," wants him out of the house.

3. He needs the money so that he can buy some jeep parts for his truck. Have you seen that thing coming down the road lately? I'm told that if the original owner were still alive, he'd now be 115 years old. What shade of green is that anyway?

See you at the polls.

Sincerely,

JOE HOLMES

Headed For A Fall

East Hampton

October 29, 1996

Dear Helen,

I always thought elephants had long memories, but Tom Knobel, Len Bernard, and Nancy McCaffrey, our local species, seem to suffer some genetic defect in this regard. Or else, they simply don't give a damn. But if they can't learn from history, they'll be headed for a great big fall.

Remember what happened in 1981-82, when the Republicans (in the name of fiscal responsibility, of course) abolished the Planning Department? The cry that went up in this community could be heard 'round the world. They had to backtrack on that one, and it cost them a stunning defeat at the polls the next year.

So go right ahead and forget about the lesson of Newt Gingrich too. All over the front page of every newspaper, on the screens of every TV, Mr. "slash and burn" can hardly show his face today. Certain kinds of extreme behavior just don't sit well with the American people. "Fair is fair," they say.

They also know how to recognize voodoo economics and false "savings" when they stare them in the face.

Closing the dump one day a week is a false economy and so is firing Peter Garnham and not hiring the workers necessary to run the plant efficiently. It's supposed to save us $35,000 in a $23 million budget, and that's like a family making $23,000 giving up one ice cream sundae a year.

But, if what they really want to do is kill the dump and say "we told you so" they're on the right track. It won't take long to find out what they have in mind for afterward - but it will probably involve cronies and secret deals with sleazy operators and cost the taxpayers an arm and a leg.

Leave it to the Republicans to come up with garbage once again! And what else is the plan to take the Supervisor's office and her staff from her and then relocate her in the boonies, so that a bunch of useless lawyers can whoop it up in bigger digs?

Talk about the "gender gap." That raunchy little ploy will not set well with the women in this town - nor with their fair-minded mates. Remember when they took the files and all out of Judy Hope's office? Then try to imagine them doing it to Tony Bullock, and you'll see how big their contempt for women is.

But this bit of nastiness isn't going to play well with the people of our town either. Cathy is smart and honest; she's "one of us;" - she's done a wonderful job, and you know you can trust her. I can't say that for the three Republicans trying to demean and humiliate her. Unite behind Cathy!

Any Republican who wants that office let him or her win it, fair and square, on Election Day. By the way you're going about it, though, I rather think the people will have had enough of elephants by then!

With best regards,

SILVIA TENNENBAUM

Foul Deception

Wainscott

October 18, 1996

Dear Helen,

Its gratuitous nastiness and falsehoods aside, your article on "Some Mother's Son" was raw anti-Irish propaganda of a particularly nasty kind, written by someone so eager to besmirch this brilliant new film that he didn't even bother to see it. Later I'm told he admitted it. Too bad none of your sharp-eyed editors spotted the foul deception before you allowed it to pollute the bright spirit of the Hamptons Film Festival.

Terry George, the writer and director, has made a film of uncommon passion and understanding of human nature. The only political propagandist here was The Star's designated hitter.

Sincerely,

SHANA ALEXANDER

Not 'Eirephobic'

East Hampton

October 24, 1996

Dear Helen Rattray,

On the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 17, on my way out of the Anjelica Huston talk at Guild Hall, a young member of your staff told me in a considerable state of alarm that you wanted to see me. I came to The Star's offices and was informed by you that a lawyer representing the maker of "Some Mother's Son," Terry George, had threatened a lawsuit against your newspaper. You were, to say the least, agitated.

At that meeting, you told me that the filmmakers had demanded that you publish a handbill apologizing for my article to be distributed to East Hampton during the Film Festival. This you rightly declined to do. At the same time, you accused me of "sloppy journalism" and demanded that I produce my sources for some of the claims made in my article.

The next day I faxed you two articles that discussed both the film and Mr. George's involvement in "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. One was from The Irish Times of Dublin. The other was from The London Sunday Times. I shall quote from both later in this letter.

During the next few days, we had several subsequent conversations, during which you made it clear to me that Terry George's representatives had demanded that you publish an apology for several points made in my article. I believed - and still believe - that the correct procedure was to publish a correction of the one factual error contained in the article (which I shall discuss later). You made it clear that this would not satisfy Mr. George's lawyers and advised me that you were going to publish a much lengthier article. This appeared in last week's Star under the heading "Director and Producer Criticize Star Article."

To set the record straight: Four days before the opening of the Film Festival, I offered you an opinion piece about the movie "Some Mother's Son." Just as one of the producers claims the intention in making the film was to "make people think," I saw my article as an admittedly contentious starting point for discussion about the tragic, and painful, issues involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland.

We agreed that the piece was not to be a film review. You already had one of those. Rather, my piece was to be an op-ed that sought to give your readers, and people who might go and see the film, some background information about the nature of the struggle in Northern Ireland and about the filmmaker Terry George.

For that reason - and not, as Ed Burke suggested in his letter, because I felt myself "unencumbered by the constraints of journalistic integrity" - I did not regard it as essential that I see the film. Due to the deadline set for the piece, I had no way of doing so before the opening of the festival, anyway, something I asked you to make clear in your article of Oct. 24. This you declined to do, saying only that "Mr. Worrall has now seen the film and said he plans to write a letter to the editor next week about his response."

The views expressed in that article were the exercise of my democratic right to speak out about an issue I feel strongly about, not, incidentally, because I have any particular ax to grind. I am British, that's true, though if anyone tells me that makes me a supporter of brutality, I will tell them they are wrong. William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are my "heroes," not the Earl of Essex or Oliver Cromwell.

I am not "Eirephobic," either, as one of your readers suggested. How could I be, when my great-grandfather was an engraver from Dublin named Whelan, and my cousins in Eire bred and raced some of the most beloved Irish racehorses of the century? I have also been told that one of the best pieces I have ever written was a feature about The Book of Kells which was published all over the world.

In it, I suggested it was a "miracle" that the book was saved from destruction while "Oliver Cromwell's Protestant Red Guards looted and slaughtered their way across the island of saints and scholars."

I do, however, profoundly disagree with sectarianism and the romanticism of political violence, and those who advocate or condone them. I believe, as a very great Irishman, W.B. Yeats, also believed, that the Irish people are badly served by them. If this had been a film about Protestant paramilitaries, I would have said the same things. I also intended no malice toward the filmmaker.

I did, however, want to inform the people of this community which, since 1991, has been my home, who and what they were dealing with. Northern Ireland is a long way from East Hampton, and the complexities of the situation can easily get lost on the way. Gunmen can become confused with heroes.

People in Northern Ireland know better: like the young Catholic woman from Londonderry I met on a plane to London last Christmas. When I asked her if she identified with Gerry Adams, she said this: "Of course I don't. I grew up in a strict Catholic family, so the idea of killing people for your beliefs was absolutely out of the question. My mother, who brought us up in a very religious way, always said that it had nothing to do with religion, or a united Ireland, anyway. The I.R.A. and Sinn Fein, she used to say, it's just a money racket. Same as the Protestant gangs. Then, after I left school, I worked as a nurse in the emergency room at Londonderry's main hospital. I saw the knee-cappings and the burns, the killings and the beatings. Just as many of them were on their own people, too. Now, will you tell me how was I going to support Gerry Adams, after seeing that lot?"

In the course of my article, however, I did make one error of fact - an error that I regret. It was bad journalism. Mr. George was never, as I claimed, a member of the Irish National Liberation Army. He was a member of a group called the Irish Republican Socialist Party. The circumstances of Mr. George's arrest, which led to his serving three years in a Belfast prison on a firearms charge (something he has never sought to deny) do, however, raise awkward questions, questions that Mr. George has never satisfactorily answered.

I will here quote two passages from recent articles in the Irish and British press. The first is from The Irish Times of Sept. 13, 1996.

"George is reluctant to discuss his own involvement in the Troubles. . . ." Interned in 1972 at the age of 19, he became involved with the I.R.S.P. on his release and was arrested in a car in which a gun was found. He was sentenced in 1975 and spent three years in the political compound at Long Kesh . . . in age, background, and personal history, his story is very similar to that of the hunger-strikers themselves."

The second is from The London Sunday Times of Sept. 15, 1996: "It is well known by now that Terry George . . . was a naughty boy in the 1970s. He got locked up . . . on a six-year sentence for possessing a loaded gun, along with other luminaries in the Irish National Liberation Army. Our picture, taken at the time, shows, from left, Dessie Grew, Gerard Steenson, George, John Knocker, and P. MacNeice. Steenson, a.k.a. Dr. Death, was in a car with George when the weapons [sic] were found. While George gave up terrorism on his release, Steenson applied himself very enthusiastically. That all came to a sticky end when his I.N.L.A. comrades murdered him in 1987."

Your readers will have to decide what those two excerpts say - or don't say - about Mr. George and his sympathies.

One of the real achievements of his film "Some Mother's Son," which I have now had a chance to see, is the way that George uses the Helen Mirren character (Mrs. Quigley) as a decoy to confuse our suspicions about those sympathies. We are told, for instance, that this is a film about the dilemma faced by two women caught in "the universal tragedy of war." In truth, there is little "dilemma."

To explain what I mean, I would like to draw a parallel much closer to home. Imagine: You are a hard-working single mother who has spent her life avoiding violent political feuds, when you find that your son has been arrested for bombing an F.B.I. building with other members of a radical militia group in Montana.

Like the young men in the film, he believes that he is being oppressed by a tyrannical central government. Like them, he refused to recognize the courts and the laws of the legitimate Government of the United States. Like them, he begins a hunger strike with his fellow militiamen, to win the right to wear battle fatigues, rather than a prison uniform.

What do you do? Do you, as the Helen Mirren character does, unquestioningly join forces with a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the militia and its agenda (the Mrs. Higgins character in the film)? Do you start marching with the militiamen and their families in support of the hunger strike? Wouldn't you be incredibly suspicious of anyone trying to make political capital out of your son's self-starvation? Would you so blithely join a campaign to elect one of the jailed militiamen to Congress?

Surely, at the same time as trying to save your son, you would adamantly distance yourself from his militia politics. You would plead with the authorities that your son was just a confused young man who had got mixed up with the wrong people. Above all, wouldn't you be incredibly angry? Wouldn't you be torn to pieces by the "dilemma" in which you find yourself?

But, until right at the end of the film, Mr. George allows Helen Mirren no such moments of doubt or anger. This becomes clear if you study what the Mirren character does, not what she says. She says, for instance, after her son stuffs a message down her throat with his tongue (a gross violation of "her space," if ever there was one) that she will not be used as a stooge for the I.R.A.

In the next scene she promptly becomes one, as she not only reads the message to her new "friend," Mrs. Higgins, but delivers it to Sinn Fein (the I.R.A.'s political front). She says she wants nothing to do with that organization, but by the end of the film she is marching at the head of their parades, distributing their leaflets, and attending funerals where masked gunmen salute the I.R.A.'s glorious dead with volleys of gunfire.

No, the filmmaker does not use Mrs. Quigley to explore the dilemmas of war. Rather, he charts the political induction of an uncommitted woman into one of the two camps currently causing such suffering in Northern Ireland. Helen Mirren's real function is to sweeten the Republican pill Mr. George wants us to swallow. No other options, or modes of feeling, are allowed her.

The manipulation of our sympathies when it comes to Mr. George's portrayal of the jailed I.R.A. operatives is less subtle. The scene in which a group of schoolgirls dance a Celtic jig as an I.R.A. gunman runs through the woods with a rocket-propelled grenade over his shoulder, the way Mr. George intercuts their feet pounding on the floor with shots of the gunmen preparing to attack a convoy of British soldiers, is a deeply ominous glorification of political violence.

Mr. George and his co-writer, Jim Sheridan, stated at Bay Street Theatre that this was their favorite scene. I am sure it would have been Leni Reifenstahl's too.

The domestic cameos which precede and follow that scene establish the leading characters (two I.R.A. gunmen) as good Catholic lads with winning smiles and a touch of the Daniel Boone. The fact that they arrive for Christmas dinner at their relatives' remote farmhouse (a "safe house") not with mistletoe and Christmas pudding, but Semtex and Kalishnikovs, is, evidently, beside the point.

This is a war, Mr. George is telling us, and a just one. The "villains" are the British Special Forces troops crouching in the darkness with their spooky hi-tech gear. I beg to differ. But then I would. My father was a highly decorated member of Special Operations Executive in World War II who, while the I.R.A. landed German guns on Irish beaches, risked his life to save us from another violent, undemocratic group.

This pattern continues as the film moves inside the prison. The line delivered to Bobby Sands - "You look like Jesus Christ" - is treated, at first, as a throwaway. But as the film progresses, Mr. George uses every cinematic trick he can to invest that statement with real meaning.

In Mr. George's sanctification of the terrorists, Bobby Sands does indeed become a Christ figure, his fellow I.R.A. operatives, his disciples. The candlelit processions in the street, the mass held on the floor of the jail, and the El Greco beards and lighting are all used to further enhance the impression that the hunger-strikers are not men who have been convicted of violent crimes, but martyrs for a just and noble cause.

Turn up W.B. Yeats's poem, "On a Political Prisoner," for a different view. There, he describes the prisoner, a beautiful young woman he once knew whose mind has become "a bitter and abstract thing" because of her fanatical convictions, as "blind and leader of the blind/Drinking the fould ditch where they lie."

Some people have suggested that, at the end of the film, the Helen Mirren character does renounce the warring factions by choosing her son's life over his political convictions. In truth, and this is extremely cunning of Mr. George, by that point her "conversion" is almost irrelevant. The ideological arguments (like the one whether the hunger-strikers are "criminals" or "prisoners of war") have already been won, with Mr. George's help, by Sinn Fein and the I.R.A. This is confirmed by the two messages tacked onto the end of the film, one listing the names of the dead "martyrs," the other reporting British "capitulation" to their demands.

By that point, Mr. George has telegraphed us numerous subliminal messages as well. As a group of school girls crosses the street, he has a red-headed girl stop defiantly in front of a British armored vehicle. It is clear who he wishes us to sympathize with. But in case we don't get it, he places behind the armored car a slogan painted in huge letters on the wall of a building. It says: "Join the I.R.A."

Sincerely yours,

SIMON WORRALL

According to John Scanlon, whose letter also appears today,the photograph referred to in The London Sunday Times was not taken at the time of arrest, but in prison afterward. Mr. Scanlon also forwarded an op-ed article by Terry George which appeared in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune last summer. In it, Mr. George pleads for peace. "If peace is to prevail," he says, "we must encourage the peace faction to unite, and actively help them overwhelm the war faction." Another point in the London Times article was clarified by a spokeswoman for Mr. George, who said Mr. George did not have a gun in his personal possession, although British law allowed him to be sentenced as if he had. Ed.

Newtown Lane was the scene of two near-tragedies in the twilight hours on Monday.

Just minutes after a 4:43 p.m. car accident in which an East Hampton Middle School student was seriously injured, an underground Long Island Lighting Company cable faulted. The resulting explosion blew two manhole covers, one of which shot into the air a few feet in front of Police Chief Glen Stonemetz's car as he was racing to the scene of the auto accident.

Thirteen-year-old Jessica Dolan of Wainscott was listed in stable condition at Stony Brook University Medical Center yesterday, with three fractures of the skull. According to a family friend, doctors took a series of M.R.I.s, CAT scans, X-rays, and blood tests on Tuesday, trying to determine the cause of slight bleeding and hearing loss in one ear.

However, said the friend, the eighth-grader, who is the youngest member of the East Hampton High School gymnastic team, is "coming through all right." She was expected to be released from the intensive care unit yesterday.

The friend, Robin Metz, who lives with Jessica and her mother, Monika Dolan, said the girl was "conscious, talking; she hurts, and that's a good sign." Ms. Metz said Jessica's motor skills appear intact. The girl reportedly does not remember the accident.

No Charges

Police said Jessica, whose father is Fred Dolan of New York City, was run ning across Newtown Lane just east of the railroad tracks when she was struck by the car and thrown onto its hood. The driver, Norman Altstedter of East Hampton, 76, continued on another 150 feet, police said, past Sher rill Road, with the girl on the hood, until she fell off and the car stop ped.

Chief Stonemetz said the car was not speeding, and that drugs and alcohol had been ruled out as contributing causes. Mr. Altstedter was not injured, but was reported to be badly upset over the incident. No charges are expected to be filed.

Police impounded Mr. Altstedter's Ford Taurus station wagon for a safety inspection, which revealed nothing, said the chief.

Jessica was taken first to South ampton Hospital and then by Medivac helicopter to Stony Brook, after Officer Robert Scott Aldrich and then ambulance volunteers administered first aid at the scene. Mr. Aldrich was stopped at the Newtown Lane-Railroad Avenue stop sign when the accident happened; he heard the crash and then turned around to see its aftermath.

Smoke From Manholes

Jessica was apparently meeting a young friend, Jamie Avoletta, who witnessed the accident. Jamie, who moved to East Hampton just recently, gave police a statement yesterday.

East Hampton Fire Department Chief James Dunlop drove the ambulance to the scene. Then, at 4:52 p.m., a call came over his radio that smoke was escaping from manhole covers farther east on Newtown Lane.

There had been scattered power outages up and down the lane starting about an hour earlier.

Bob Giovanelli, coordinator of volunteers for the Hamptons International Film Festival, called The Star to report that he and fellow workers had heard a boom and seen smoke from their office on Newtown Mews, off Newtown Lane.

A manhole near the Middle School blew its cover in front of Chief Stonemetz's car. The chief said it shot "three feet in the air and [then] flames came shooting up." He heard "cracking, popping, and snapping," he said, and tried to get by as fast as he could.

Street Shut Down

All traffic to, from, and on Newtown Lane was shut down between Race Lane and Main Street. The street was not reopened until around 7 p.m.

Store and restaurant owners and their customers, cars, and pedestrians were evacuated from Newtown Lane.

Some store personnel were called back to the scene after the street had been emptied to guide firefighters to store basements. Chiefs Stonemetz and Dunlop said there was concern that explosions might occur in basements, though none did.

The last time there was an underground LILCO explosion, also on Newtown Lane, a fire was narrowly averted in the basement of the East Hampton Hardware store.

Power Outages

Although reports of power outages had begun coming in about an hour before the car accident, the LILCO crews sent out to investigate did not report a possible emergency to police. A member of the Village Police Department put in a call for the Fire Department after he saw smoke escaping from the manhole covers, Chief Stonemetz said.

Paul Conroy, the general manager of radio station WEHM, said the Pantigo Road station had lost power between 3:55 and 4:50 p.m., and was back on the air by 5:15 p.m. The station's emergency generator was be ing serviced at the time, Mr. Conroy said.

A LILCO spokeswoman, Steph anie Gossin, said yesterday the cause of the incident was still under investigation. She said 144 customers were affected by the outage, with 100 losing their power for 76 minutes, the remainder for 117 minutes.

Trying to put a positive spin on the incident, she said that had it happened a year ago, before LILCO began upgrading its system, about 650 customers would have been affected. The utility is in the process of installing a new 13,000-volt system in the village business district, and only those still on the old 4,000-volt system were affected.

Crews shut down the old system, which apparently caused the fault.

The utility company provided a generator to the East Hampton Middle School, though its power was shut off temporarily by LILCO crews at about 8 last night.

Ms. Gossin said one business had reported equipment damage resulting from the power outage, but declined to say which one.

Chief Criticizes LILCO

Despite Chief Stonemetz's account and those of other witnesses, Ms. Gossin said the manhole covers that blew rose from the ground by only a few inches.

The chief questioned the competence of the LILCO crews. He told a worker to "get this thing shut down," he said, and the answer was, "I did, but it's not responding." Chief Stonemetz thinks the crew did not realize at first that the system needed to be shut down at two ends.

The police chief also offered a guess that LILCO would "be there for weeks" determining the cause and fixing the problem.

LILCO crews were able to get inside the manholes Tuesday afternoon and had begun to make repairs to the older system, Ms. Gossin reported. She said crews would work around the clock until repairs were complete and the cause of the electrical fault was determined.

Mayor On The Scene

East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., who was on the scene Monday, met the next morning with LILCO officials. He said he had demanded that Village Hall be kept aware of any information as it emerged.

The mayor has worked hard with LILCO officials over the years, pushing for the system upgrade and acting as a mediator of sorts between unhappy shopkeepers and the utility. He said Tuesday the company was "totally at a loss as to why this happened."

Chief Stonemetz praised the members of his department, Chief Dunlop, and the members of the Fire Department's fire police, who had a tough job stopping traffic coming from all different directions.

Chief Stonemetz said he had "a few moments of anxiousness" during the incident, agreeing with Chief Dun lop that public safety was the big gest concern.

Mr. Dunlop said yesterday that everyone who was evacuated was "real good about getting out."

He owed an apology, he said, to Tom Johnson, the owner of Sam's restaurant, for failing to alert him when the road was reopened. Sam's lost some business as a result.

Mr. Johnson was angry, said Chief Dunlop, "and he's right. He had reason to be annoyed. . . . I just didn't think of it."