If you follow Fireplace Road in Springs to its end at Gardiner's Bay, you've reached Fireplace. Fires were built there centuries ago to signal across the water to the inhabitants of Gardiner's Island, when people or goods were ready to be transported.

The first fireplace stood at Old Fireplace Road (now Gerard Drive). The landing spot was changed for convenience when the King, Parsons, and Miller families established homesteads farther up the beach.

As of the mid-1980s, a warehouse built there by John Lion Gardiner in about 1791 was still standing, though it had been converted to a summer cottage.

Trade and services went on at Fireplace for many generations; for a time it was considered the busiest spot in East Hampton. Jonathan King (who lived at King's Point) "was the forerunner of the barterers and traders at Fire Place," according to the Springs Improvement Society's "Springs: A Celebration."

David Gardiner, sixth proprietor of Gardiner's Island, noted in his ledger in 1737 that Jonathan King owed him for wheat, wool, hogs, fat, corn, and butter, but David Gardiner owed Jonathan King for, among other things, "bringing me to ye island."

The earliest reference to Fireplace in Town Trustee records dates to 1655. In 1678, the Trustees allotted some meadow there to Richard Brooks and Willyam Mulford. Trustee records note in 1697 that Samuel Brooks sold land at Fireplace to John Gardner.

In 1739, Daniel Miller and Jonathan King purchased four lots lying "at a place called the Fireplace, lying between the Flaggy hole and Hog Creek." In March 1770, the Trustees "sold the Fireplace beach to Benjamin Leek," reserving the public's right to "pass and repass, to fish, fowl and hunt, and to go to their meadows, and to do any business they shall have occasion to do on said beach as they used to do before this conveyance. . . ."

The bay between Fireplace and Gardiner's Island has occasionally frozen over. In March 1934, The Star reported that Clarence King had set a record that winter by walking across the ice to the island three times in three weeks, bringing food and supplies on sleds. On one occasion it took an hour and three-quarters to get across, but two hours and 10 minutes on the return journey after the travelers ran into a snowstorm.

The Parsons Mill, which burned down on July 11, 1924, was moved from Miller Place to Amagansett in 1829. Later, it stood on the west side of Windmill Lane.

Guild Hall was standing-room-only for Saturday's lectures on the history of the Montauk Indians - a highly auspicious beginning for the 350th Anniversary Lecture Series.

Gaynell Stone's and John A. Strong's talks will be excerpted on this page next week. The complete texts may be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.350theasthampton.org . Free Internet access is available at the East Hampton Library.

Often found browsing through the Long Island Collection

On most rainy Saturdays for some years now, Thomas Twomey, an attorney whose hobby and passion is local history, can be found browsing through the East Hampton Library's Long Island Collection, a trove of resources that he believes is "probably the finest example of an archival collection in any small town in America."

While the library has given a lot to the lawyer, the lawyer has given at least as much to the library. Mr. Twomey not only headed the capital campaign that raised $3.6 million to renovate the institution and build its new wing, the John M. Olin Centennial Addition, but has taken the lead in acquiring additional materials for the Long Island Collection.

His current cause is East Hampton's Town's 350th anniversary celebration. He serves as vice chairman and counsel to the executive committee coordinating the events, chairman of the finance subcommittee, and co-chairman of the committee organizing the year-long series of lectures which began on Saturday.

During the months since the lecture committee - Mr. Twomey and Averill Geus, John Strong, and Dorothy T. King - began its work, the number of projected lectures has burgeoned from a dozen to twice that.

At the start, said Mr. Twomey, "We identified some of the most prominent scholars in Colonial history here, on Long Island, and in the Northeast."

Some, he noted, were located through the Internet, which is one of Mr. Twomey's newer distractions. (His law firm, Twomey Latham Shea & Kelley, established a Web site a month or two ago.)

In a few cases, Mr. Twomey said, "We had to convince them not only to come to East Hampton, but in some cases to prepare original research."

Twomey, Latham, which has offices in East Hampton and Riverhead, is a major underwriter of the lecture series and was the first sponsor to come forward in its support. Since then, 24 local businesses have pledged $1,000 each to subsidize the entire series.

Mr. Twomey lives in East Hampton with his wife, Judith Hope, a former East Hampton Town Supervisor who is now the chairwoman of the New York State Democratic Committee.

"I've always been active in helping people who wish to make a difference in their community," he said.

He himself is one of them, by any standard. Mr. Twomey's long list of civic credits includes stints as a Long Island Power Authority trustee and as chairman of Gov. Mario Cuomo's East End Economic and Environmental Institute, which under his leadership helped to establish the New York State Farmland Preservation Program.

Closer to home, he is an active member of Guild Hall's board of trustees and the prime mover behind the East Hampton Rare Book and Map Society, which sounds like a scholarly bunch but is in fact a group of local businesses and a few private individuals who help the Long Island Collection to acquire new manuscripts.

"I'm just a country lawyer," Mr. Twomey said this week. His law firm is about to celebrate its 25th year, he noted, and has grown to 19 attorneys, many of them active in the service of their communities. His partner Steven Latham is working to make the East Hampton RECenter a reality, and his partner John Shea serves as chairman of Group for the South Fork.

The firm is noted for its environmental work, among other things. In the 1980s, Twomey, Latham represented the coalition of organizations that fought successfully to stop the operation of the Shoreham and Jamesport nuclear plants, Mr. Twomey said - an effort in which he himself was "very involved."

Audiences at the series of 350th Anniversary lectures will receive programs giving synopses of the talks as well as a bibliography of related reading. At the end of the year, all the talks will be published in a journal - another of Mr. Twomey's lasting contributions to East Hampton's history.

In Pamplona, there is the Running of the Bulls, but in England there is the slightly less lethal Running with the Stack, which occurs this year on Feb. 24.

This ancient rite, dating from medieval times, is celebrated by coveys of apron-clad women racing each other through the streets flipping flapjacks high in the air at least three times as they head for the finish line at the church door.

The vicar decides the winner and awards the prize, a prayer book. The church bell signals the start of this Shrove Tuesday festival, which originated to use up all the butter and eggs before Ash Wednesday.

All this merry-making led to the grim days of Lent, when observant Christians abstained from meat, ate only one meal a day, and usually elected to deny themselves some particular vice - say, chocolate, tobacco, or booze.

(This may have been the self-inflicted antidote needed by all the backsliders from their New Year's " resolutions.")

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) in New Orleans, Fasnacht in Germany, and Carnivale in Brazil all celebrate riotously on Shrove Tuesday, though I don't think pancakes have much to do with the gaiety in those places.

Of course, there are pancakes, and there are pancakes: crˆpes Suzette are, for example, only pancakes.

This is one of those foods which, like potato soup, seems to pop up in nearly every cuisine in the world, from the delicious scallion pancakes of China and Korea to the huge lacy blankets called crepe Bretonne in France and pannequets in Belgium, which are filled with anything from jam to truffled chicken hash.

To fill the unloved days of this orphan month of February, so boring the Romans gave it only 28 days, we could explore the world's pancakes.

And, like the Romans, also make it a month of atonement by working off the pancakes at the gym, splitting firewood, shoveling snow, or joining those intrepid birders on their 15-mile hikes searching for the Frosty Crested Diving Plover or whatever.

Here are some pancake ideas I collected while "fooding around" on the Internet.

With Berries

Thursday-night dinner in Sweden is traditionally pea soup rounded out with a rewarding treat such as these dessert pancakes. The classic accompaniment is lingonberries, which can be found in jars or cans in food specialty shops.

However, check out the berry possibilities in the frozen-food bins of your supermarket. You may even luck into some kind of fresh berries from our Southern Hemisphere.

I happened to have some of last summer's peaches in my freezer and they were just the trick.

Note: For all pancakes made with a flour batter, heat the skillet over medium flame until a few drops of water dance on its surface and evaporate. Lower the heat slightly after all the cakes are on the skillet, then raise it again for the next batch. Spare yourself some heartbreak by making one test pancake before wasting a lot of batter.

Swedish Cardamom Pancakes

Four servings

Batter:

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp. ground cardamom

1/4 tsp. salt

1/3 cup half-and-half

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Topping:

1 pint frozen sweetened peaches, raspberries, or blueberries

Whipped cream, lightly sweetened

1/2 tsp. ground cardamom

Blend eggs and one-third cup milk in processor until smooth. Add flour, ground cardamom, and salt, and process until mixture is thick and smooth. With machine running, add remaining milk, the half-and-half, and three tablespoons melted butter, and mix until smooth. Cover tightly and refrigerate.

Pancake batter may be prepared eight hours ahead; it should be made at least two hours ahead. (The pancakes themselves can be made ahead of time, stacked after cooling, wrapped in a kitchen towel, then reheated in a microwave . They won't be as good, but at least they will be waiting. Cooking a dozen pancakes, though, only takes about 10 minutes.)

A Minute Per Side

Let the fruit topping come to room temperature. Whip the cream, which should then be refrigerated.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. (Very important.)

Place oven-proof platter in oven. Heat a large griddle or skillet over medium-high heat and brush the surface with melted butter.

Make pancakes by measuring one tablespoon of batter for each one onto the griddle. When the cakes have little holes in them, turn quickly but lightly and brown the other side - about one minute per side. Transfer them to the oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, brushing with more butter as needed.

Arrange three pancakes on each warmed plate and spoon the fruit over them, then the whipped cream lightly dusted with a tiny pinch of cardamom. Serve at once.

Low-Fat Flapjacks

For the remorselessly health-conscious, these wholesome flapjacks are filled with the energy-boosting carbohydrates found in whole wheat flour and multigrain oatmeal. They also taste good.

The fat is kept down by using low-fat cottage cheese, only two egg yolks, and just two tablespoons of milk. Very little oil is required for baking pancakes, and most griddles today are made with non-stick surfaces (they all require some oil, however).

Top them with a peach and berry compote or syrup, and serve with reduced-fat sausages. (I buy home-made loose sausage from either Cromer's in Noyac or the Bridgehampton I.G.A. Both are about as lean as good sausage can possibly be, with very little shrinkage, which indicates a minimum of fat.)

Cottage Cheese Pancakes

1 lb. low-fat cottage cheese

2/3 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup oatmeal

2 egg yolks

3 Tbsp. honey

2 Tbsp. milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

6 egg whites (check out availability of powdered or frozen egg whites)

Vegetable oil

Mix the cottage cheese, flour, oatmeal, egg yolks, honey, milk, vanilla, and cardamom in a large bowl, using a wooden spoon. Beat the whites in another large bowl until stiff but not dry. (This means until they just hold their shape and don't fall from the bowl when it is turned upside down - over another bowl, please - for testing.)

Fold the whites into the cottage cheese mixture in two additions.

Cook Undisturbed

Preheat oven to 200 F. Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Brush with oil, or smear it on with a paper towel.

Use your one-third-cup measure to spoon batter onto the hot skillet, forming four-inch-diameter pancakes. Cook the pancakes undisturbed until pinpoint bubbles form on top, about two minutes. Turn and cook until the pancakes are cooked through, a few minutes more.

Transfer them to a plate in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve immediately.

Pass warm maple or blueberry syrup to trickle over pancakes, or a compote of stone fruits and berries, slightly warmed. Peach butter or home-made hot apple sauce is another delicious topping.

Cornmeal Pancakes

Down East Style

My version of these pancakes differs from the one I found on line, attributed to Figtree's Cafe in Venice, Calif. In this version the blueberries are mixed into the batter rather than scattered on top of the cakes before turning - that seemed a messy and difficult technique to me.

11/4 cups cornmeal

1/2 cup cake flour

1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 cups buttermilk

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

3 large eggs, separated

2 Tbsp. honey

6 Tbsp. butter (approx.)

2 cups fresh blueberries, or frozen, whole, unsweetened, thawed, drained

Maple syrup

Blend, Don't Beat

Preheat oven to 200 F.

Lightly blend the cornmeal, cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Whisk two cups buttermilk, three tablespoons melted butter, egg yolks, and honey in a medium bowl to blend. Blend this into the dry ingredients, but do not beat, or the pancakes will be tough.

Beat egg whites in another bowl until stiff but not dry. Fold whites into batter in two additions, along with the blueberries. A flat wire beater seems to accomplish this most easily without breaking down the air bubbles in the egg whites.

Melt two tablespoons butter in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Pour three or four quarter-cupfuls onto the skillet. Cook pancakes until bottoms are golden brown and bubbles form on top, about two minutes, before turning over. Cook until bottoms are golden brown, another two minutes or so.

Transfer pancakes to large baking sheet and place in a low oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more butter to skillet as necessary.

Serve quickly on hot plates, with heated maple syrup in a pitcher.

Crisp Potato Pancakes

These crunchy discs have little in common with the pancakes above. However, they're just fabulous with eggs (as a supporting player), or steaks and chops, or roasts, or all by themselves as a snack. Small versions, topped with bit of sour cream mixed with caviar, make a wonderful hors d'oeuvre at parties (if you have kitchen help, for they must be served straightaway).

Makes six 3-inch pancakes.

2 Tbsp. freshly minced parsley

1 rounded Tbsp. minced scallions

2 baking potatoes (Idaho or russets), peeled

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil for frying

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix the herbs together in a medium-size bowl. Shred the potatoes using a food processor or a mandoline (a regular hand grater makes them too thin and watery), and mix with the herbs. Heat the oil in a wide skillet until very hot but not smoking.

Drop clumps of potato - about as much as you can hold with your fingertips - into the skillet and immediately flatten them with a wire spatula. Reduce the heat after a few seconds, cook until brown on the first side, then flip, raise heat a bit, and cook the other side until crisp and light brown. Drain on paper towels. Do not salt until they are served, as salt makes them limp.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, fluke, weakfish, sea bass, pollack (pollock), and scup were all abundant. There was a large party boat fishery for weakfish in Peconic Bay, as well as hand haulseining, power seining, and trap fishing from Gin Beach westward.

Photo: Dave Edwardes

Nat Edwards's fish trap, on Gin Beach, would catch enough weakfish in early spring to pay his expenses for all his other gear for the season. In 1952, the bays were chock-a-block with weakfish, mostly small, and when they left that fall, they were totally gone for the next 22 years.

Striped bass and bluefish were few and far between, with generally only a spotty fall fishery. Both these species started showing strongly in the mid-1960s, and, contrary to government claims, have never left since then.

The Montauk charter and head boat fleet was located at Fish Shangri-La in Fort Pond Bay. During the fall season, their dominant catch would be pollack. This is how Pollack Rip got its name. I have seen many catches of 25-30 pollack, with none or just a few large striped bass mixed in.

Occasionally, as I dressed the pollack for the charters on my grandfather's dock, some pollack would have stones in their stomachs. I was told that these fish were taking on ballast before approaching stormy weather.

Prior to 1950, Lake Montauk (Great Pond) was used mostly for storm refuge. The draggers tied up at the Navy dock and No. 2 dock. All other boats moored to stakes south of the Yacht Club and the causeway to Star Island.

My grandparents, Arthur and Eleanor Bengtson, lived in the fishing village. The '38 hurricane ruined their day, as with many others, but it was the Navy who moved everybody out in 1943.

Grandpa Bengtson was a fisherman (swordfishing and hand-lining) and a boat-builder, and he owned the Shell gas station just across the street - northerly from the Blue Marlin restaurant. He owned three boats, and in the late 1940s all three were wrecked, during a southeast gale, while moored south of the causeway. A picture of this storm damage is in Salivar's restaurant.

From three wrecked boats, he salvaged enough to rebuild one boat, named the Judy. This is the boat I fished on with my father, Stuart, brother, Billy, and uncle, Leslie, for several seasons.

In 1950, my grandfather built the first dock for the charter boats. It was just south of Gosman's dock, which was known as the Bonner Oil dock. It had a small shed and finger pier with several oil lines running up the hill to four large oil tanks.

The building for "Bengtson's dock" was built out of redwood from a large water tank which the Navy had built on Star Island. Us kids had to untangle all those boards when Bistrian's crane pulled off the tie rods. At a low tide, we could walk from the dock to Star Island.

During the summer months, most everybody would be hand-lining for sea bass (no rods and reels, they were for the rich folk). Our daily catch would be three or four wooden boxes (400-500 pounds). When you started to catch some large porgies, they would move the boat a few hundred feet to get clear of them. The same with small blue sharks, they were quite troublesome, as they would bite off the body of the sea bass as you hauled in. I was 9 years old at the time.

My very first encounter with a whale was, as they say today, up close and personal. At break of day, in either July or August 1950, we were steaming for the seabass grounds on Frisbies. I was sitting in the swordfish pulpit when out of nowhere, a humpback whale breached right in front of the Judy. To this day, I can still see that huge tail when it smacked the water. The boil the whale made, when it sounded, was larger than the boat. I got soaking wet in the process, but never left the pulpit.

In 1951, fluke were still very plentiful, so much so that several hand haul-seine crews would haul for fluke on Gin Beach. The fluke showed in this area in late summer. All of us kids would fish with whatever crew would take us. Some crews would fish all night, hauling for weakfish. Most everyone shipped their fish from the Edwards Brothers dock at the Promised Land Fish Factory.

Usually, the seine would be set in late afternoon, or just at sundown. The fluke were so thick that they would break water chasing the bait, same as a school of bluefish feeding. At dark, we would listen for a distinct sound of fluke breaking out. A different type of sound would mean daylights, and they wouldn't set the net. Most of the time, the fishermen would wait for a showing before setting. Our job was to measure the smaller fish, and throw back any less than 14 inches. This work was always a big help to whomever we were fishing with. Rarely were any stripers caught.

Nobody owned any four-wheel-drive trucks. The bay rigs were towed by Model A Ford pickups, or Dodge trucks with very wide tires. The Model As were best.

In 1951, there was another individual fishing the same area on Gin Beach. It was a young blue whale, about 40 feet long. The reason fluke fishing was so good was the presence of millions upon millions of fine sand eels. The water would show black with them.

The blue whale would come within a stone's throw from the beach. plowing the sand eels out of the water, much as a farmer's plow turns the soil. The fishermen always had to be alert as to where the whale was before setting the net, as the whale could cause great trouble.

My father had two gill nets, set just east of the jetty over an old shipwreck (so as not to interfere with hauling). The nets were made of linen, and twice the whale went through them. The holes were about 20 feet across. Some days the blue whale would lay offshore, between the bell buoy and inner Shagwong. It stayed in the Gin Beach area for about two months, leaving when the sand eels left in mid-September.

In the 1950s, there was no "plastic fleet" like there is today. If a blue whale, or any whale, tried to set up residence nowadays off Gin Beach, the poor thing would be pestered right to death. In 1951, no one bothered the whale at all.

Stuart B. Vorpahl is a lifelong East Hampton bayman and a five-term East Hampton Town Trustee.

Bryan Bantry, a youthful, high-powered fashion agent who is not much known outside the industry and his Georgica Pond neighborhood, put up $2 million to bankroll the Broadway music-and-dance revue "Street Corner Symphony."

The reviews were dismal. Even the enthusiasm of the audience failed to help improve ticket sales, said Mr. Bantry's publicist, Jackie Bescher. On Sunday afternoon, just two months after it opened, the eight cast members of "Street Corner Symphony" gave their last performance.

Mr. Bantry, agent for supermodels and high-priced photographers, and his estranged co-producer, Kenneth Waissman, could certainly empathize about the capriciousness of show business with Paul Simon. The Montauk resident is still refining his own Broadway production, "The Capeman."

Short-Lived Venture

"If I could tell you what went wrong, I'd be a real soothsayer," said Mr. Waissman. "There are times when a certain kind of show, the way it's presented or whatever, regardless of the audience response, is just not what the critics are in the mood for."

The audiences and several critics have been more in the mood for the third Broadway musical with ties to the South Fork - "Ragtime," which is reviewed below.

Mr. Bantry left Monday on an extended vacation. This was not his first short-lived Broadway venture, but friends said he was exhausted and disappointed nonetheless.

"Assinamali"

In 1982, he produced "Greater Tuna," which returned last year as "More Greater Tuna," and, in 1983, "You Can't Take It With You," starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst. Two years ago he produced "Aren't We All," with Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison.

Mr. Waissman, whose credits include the original production of "Grease" as well as "Agnes of God" and "Torch Song Trilogy," also produced "Assinamali" with Paul Simon a few years ago.

The South African musical was a critical success and ran for several months, but was not commercially successful, he said.

Shoop-Shoop

"Street Corner Symphony" (and "Capeman" as well) had just the opposite problem. The audiences were appreciative, said Ms. Bescher, but the critics "went out of their way to be nasty."

"This show was meant for a relatively young audience and, unfortunately, the average age of the Broadway audience is older," she said.

The show set the pop, soul, and rhythm-and-blues music of the '60s and '70s on the street corners (hence the name) where shoop-shooping teenagers practiced harmonizing, and in the clubs where they danced the mashed potato and the frug.

"Capeman" Picketed

The New York Times acknowledged the lasting popularity of Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder - grudgingly predicting the music would "trigger the desired Pavlovian reflex in some baby boomers" - but called the dramatic presentation as "banal" as a "Vegas lounge act."

Similarly, last week's Times review of "Capeman" shrugged off Mr. Simon's music but used strong words, such as "masochistic," to describe the overall effect.

"Capeman," which opened Jan. 29, was painstakingly reworked after a disastrous preview run. It is now forging ahead, though there are picketers each night in front of the Marquis Theater protesting its "exploitation" of a notorious 1957 crime.

Some, though, say ticket sales may benefit from the publicity, as well as from the star appeal of Ruben Blades and Marc Anthony, who take turns in the lead role.

Mr. Simon's show follows the 30-year transformation of the teenaged murderer from hoodlum to jailhouse poet. It has repeatedly made the 11 o'clock news as relatives of the victims march on the picket lines.

Though songs from the show are now getting some radio airtime, by many reports the score, a mix of rock, gospel, doo-wop, and salsa, is unremarkable.

Not Building

"Street Corner Symphony" had a relatively modest $3.5 million budget for development. The investors, led by Mr. Bantry, will try to recoup their losses next time, Mr. Waissman said philosophically.

Meanwhile, there has been some interest in taking the show on a road tour, possibly to Europe.

"Many shows open to mixed or negative reviews, and sometimes they're able to pull out of that and other times the audience doesn't build at all," Mr. Waissman said. "In our case, the audience wasn't building fast enough to put the show in the black each week."

Critics Booed

He and Ms. Bescher both noted that "The Scarlet Pimpernel" was booed by the critics but is in its third month, dragged along by investors with deep pockets and perhaps too by "Les Mis"-inspired enthusiasm for its French Revolution setting.

The original production of "The Sound of Music" was panned by the critics, too. The rest, as they say, is history.

One night last summer, three East Hampton teenagers who were old enough to know better got a brilliant idea to steal the carved sign in front of Santa Fe Junction, a restaurant in the village. The case came before Town Justice Catherine Cahill last month and she approved a plea bargain that dismissed the disorderly conduct charge pending against one young man, if he stays out of trouble for six months. The others pleaded guilty to the same minor violation and were ordered to serve 30 hours of community service and make restitution. The punishment fit the crime.

But serious questions were raised by the young men's parents about the investigative methods East Hampton Village detectives employed and about the necessity of originally charging the young men, who were reportedly never in trouble before, with grand larceny, a felony with a maximum penalty of four years in prison.

Since the replacement sign had cost $1,700, police said the law left them no choice but to lodge felony charges. They added, however, that they had no intention of taking the case before a grand jury for felony indictments, but of recommending plea bargains.

Police also confirmed that one young man had agreed to make a tape-recorded phone call and then to wear a body wire in attempts to wrest confessions from his friends.

The father of one of the accused complained that the "police took this matter right to the extreme limits of the law." He said his son had aspirations of becoming a police officer himself some day and would now have to answer in the affirmative when asked if he was ever charged with a felony. That could very well cost him his career.

As to the tape-recorded phone calls and body wire to investigate a minor crime, Village Police Chief Glen Stonemetz Jr. said his department used such techniques "a lot more than we used to." Gone are those small-town days, he said, when the police would take young miscreants home to their parents and let the family handle the punishment.

Recently, a Family Court judge ruled that no criminal charges should be lodged against a teenager who hid her newborn baby in a closet while she went to school. Instead of a possible misdemeanor charge - less serious than the charge brought here for sign-napping - the judge ordered strict supervision, counseling, and parenting classes, giving the girl an opportunity to finish high school and learn to be a responsible mother.

Police procedures, as well as justice, should be tempered with a dose of compassion, and that should be more possible in a small town than anywhere else. Unfortunately, with few crimes of a big-city nature to deal with here, the opposite is often the case.

There is a joke that's often told around the table where travelers gather around the world: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a person who speaks one language?

American.

Then the French, the Germans, the Hungarians, the Japanese, and others at the table enjoy a hearty laugh while the Americans try to figure out the punch line. Our big country's tendency toward isolationism seems to make us the butt of everyone else's joke.

In a world that is ever more connected and interdependent, shouldn't our children have the ability to communicate across cultural and political borders? Why is it that educating all our young people to speak two or more languages with fluency has never been attempted? Children have greatest proficiency for learning languages at very early ages, yet many school programs do not begin until the fourth grade.

In this country, bilingual education - teaching certain subjects to non-native English speakers in their native language until they gain proficiency in English - has come under increasing attack in recent years. Politicians, educators, and parents have long debated its advantages and disadvantages.

English is the commonly spoken and understood language in the United States. However, with more and more people in more and more places speaking Spanish, it certainly is becoming this country's second language.

Some rail against this inevitability, as if our hodgepodge nation of immigrants and immigrants' grandchildren is somehow defined by insisting on one and only one language. What about children raised in a strictly English-speaking home? Wouldn't they get an extra boost in the job market or in the college interview, for example, if they were bilingual or even trilingual? It's a new debate that's well worth waging.

The "Give a Swordfish a Break" campaign that is asking chefs to remove the popular seafood from their menus voluntarily has depressed the fishery, but it is not enough to speed the recovery of the North Atlantic population.

That is because if the United States were to ban swordfishing tomorrow, its share of the species would be reallocated among other fishing nations that are members of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

The management of highly migratory species such as swordfish and tuna is a complex international affair. Thinking globally and acting locally, as the aphorism goes, is a good concept except if you're talking about the management of a species shared by the harvesters of many nations.

Without a strong swordfish fishery, the United States might lack the political leverage to force other nations to comply with the strict ICCAT regulations. Since 1989, harvesters of North Atlantic swordfish have cut their production by 50 percent, with the United States responsible for a major share of the reduction via quotas and minimum size limits.Two years ago, ICCAT nations voted to force irresponsible nations into compliance, a move our representatives have long demanded.

Nevertheless, the common goal of improving the threatened swordfish population would be better attained if chefs, seafood markets, and home cooks refused under-sized fish and rejected substandard imports. But at least the recent campaign, by SeaWeb and the Natural Resources Defense Council, has placed the issue on the nation's table.