Toward the end of every monthly Sag Harbor Village Board meeting, Ed Gregory, a board member and longtime volunteer with the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps, reads the corps' monthly report into the record.

The report includes the man-hours for the month, the number of emergency calls, training sessions, trips to the hospital, and nights worked - all routine information that village officials need to know, and that taxpayers often take for granted.

Then, in Mr. Gregory's most disappointed voice, a monotone, he relays the bad news: The ambulance corps has lost another member.

"Please be advised that the following member is to be removed from the insurance rolls," Mr. Gregory has said at every meeting for close to a year.

Elderly, lifelong volunteers are not retiring. They aren't dying at regular monthly intervals. The corps in Sag Harbor is simply losing members because of the circumstances of the times. Eleven of them have resigned in the past year.

"They're dropping out and moving away," Mr. Gregory has told the board. He checks off the names month after month: Phillip Logue in November, Lisa Maffucci and William J. Young II in October. The list goes on.

The math is simple. If 11 members have left in recent months, and the corps has gained only one new member, the volunteer organization is at a loss. Averaging 600 calls a year, the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps cannot afford to lose more members. They are down to 22.

Eddie Downes, the corps' president, and Missie Mahoney, the vice president, are worried. Yet they remain optimistic about the low enrollment, which Mr. Downes called "uncommon."

"Membership hasn't been this low since I joined, and that's 18 years ago," he said. The organization's rolls once topped out at 32, he said. With 2,300 residents and 27 square miles to cover in the Sag Harbor Fire District, 22 members seems awfully low.

Mr. Downes said he believes the loss of membership is "symptomatic of what's happening all over Long Island. . . . People are having to work two or three jobs just to get by." There aren't enough hours in a day to allow people who are struggling to support a family to volunteer, he said.

Many of the recently resigned volunteers have moved away to the north shore of the Island and to the South. "Anywhere that's cheaper to live," Ms. Mahoney said, people are flocking to. Those who can afford the East End's pricey real estate are either second-home owners and part-time residents or too busy to volunteer, she added.

Although Mr. Downes and Ms. Mahoney's take on the situation may hold true in Sag Harbor, the East Hampton Ambulance Association has not been hurt in the same way.

"We've lost as many members as we've gained," said Susie Dayton, the ambulance association's chief. Her organization boasts 40 members, "but we could always use more." They average 1,000 calls a year in the East Hampton Fire District.

The Sag Harbor corps' leaders recognize that, as with most volunteer organizations, there are lulls and peaks. "We're at the down side of the turnover," Ms. Mahoney said.

She said she hopes for a "great rush" of volunteers soon. "We can only get better with more volunteers and more experience."

Of the 22 Sag Harbor volunteers, 16 are certified emergency medical technicians, and three are certified in advanced life support. Unlike in East Hampton, Sag Harbor volunteers do not have to be certified E.M.T.s to join the corps, but they do have to become certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The Sag Harbor corps offers E.M.T. and C.P.R. training at its headquarters.

The Sag Harbor corps is "one of the ambulance companies you look up to," said Tom Field, an instructor and volunteer with the Amagansett Ambulance Company. "It has to do with the training they do. The volunteers spend a lot of time."

There was a time when Sag Harbor Village got by with just two volunteers, although there were far fewer residents then. John A. Schoen founded the Sag Harbor Ambulance Corps 73 years ago as a company of one. He was later joined by Edmund M. Downes, the current president's grandfather. Together, the "two helped anyone that would help," according to the corps' own two-page history.

With no classes to train volunteers how to care for patients, the corps was a "load-and-go operation." If someone needed to go to the hospital, Mr. Schoen was the man to call.

"When a call came into John's house . . . he would make phone calls to other people that might be willing to go with him for a ride, to assist the patients to the hospital," the corps' history says. "Many of times, back then, John would ask whomever he met on the street to go with him!"

In 1982, the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps was incorporated, with 27 members. There were just 200 calls a year then.

In its infancy, meetings were held "wherever," Mr. Downes said.

"Supplies were kept in a closet on the third floor of the Municipal Building" on Main Street, "and at one point they were kept in a closet on the second floor of the Division Street police building," the history states.

The corps got its first building, behind the Brick Kiln Road firehouse, in 1992. It is dedicated to the corps' founder.

At village board meetings, Mr. Gregory uses his position to put out the word that the ambulance corps is in desperate need. Ms. Mahoney and Mr. Downes have sat at tables set up on Main Street to try to get residents to join - usually unsuccessfully.

The incentives to do so, however, include a retirement program after five years are vested, and a rewards program for taking part in a certain number of calls.

Also, it "goes without saying" that it feels great to volunteer, Mr. Downes said. "We're like a little family. Most of the people we take to the hospital we know."

There are other, smaller perks, such as good meals at the monthly meetings and at training sessions, and free sweatshirts. "It doesn't seem like a lot, until you don't have to worry about a $50 sweatshirt during the winter," Ms. Mahoney said.

Ms. Mahoney and Mr. Downes have found another way to reward their fellow volunteers: a tank of gas for every 50 calls responded to. And with an average tank of gas on the East End at around $2.70 a gallon, that incentive might not be so small.

Five weeks after an elderly North Haven couple reported that at least $30,000 had been taken from their bank account by an employee, Southampton Town police arrested Tristan MacLeod, 34, of Maspeth, last Thursday.

Mr. MacLeod was charged with five counts of second-degree forgery and one count of grand larceny, all felonies, after he allegedly siphoned $58,000 from Wilfrid Sheed and Miriam Ungerer's bank account and charged more than $5,000 on one of their credit cards. Ms. Ungerer is a longtime columnist for The East Hampton Star.

Mr. MacLeod was arrested at Get 'Em, a Manhattan retail shop where he is employed, with the assistance of the New York City Police Department. Police soon discovered that Mr. MacLeod is wanted for similar crimes in Virginia, Washington, and Nebraska, where he is known by different birth dates, Social Security numbers, and names, including Simon MacLeod, Raven Thunderhawk, Raven MacLeod, Nico Carabetta, Stephen Cookman, Mark Prew, and Nico Gambino.

Mr. Sheed, a writer who lives on Stock Farm Lane, told police on Oct. 25 that a man who had worked for him and his wife had taken their money. Mr. MacLeod had worked for the couple since January, making purchases for them with their debit card, police said.

During the investigation, police learned that Mr. MacLeod "had befriended the victims when he found out through a casual acquaintance . . . that the victims may be in need of live-in assistance," according to Detective Sgt. Randy Hintze.

After he moved into their North Haven house, Mr. MacLeod allegedly "began a systematic withdrawal of cash from the victim's accounts and utilized credit cards in the victim's name," Detective Hintze said.

Mr. Macleod was arraigned before Southampton Town Justice Deborah Kooperstein on Friday and is being held without bail. Police have notified the other states where Mr. MacLeod is wanted. Those with information about Mr. MacLeod have been asked to call Southampton police detectives at 728-5000 or the police hotline at 728-3454. Calls will remain confidential.

East Hampton Village police arrested Matthew Declan Curran, 35, of Sayres Path, Wainscott, when he turned himself in at police headquarters on Saturday.

Mr. Curran was charged with third-degree criminal mischief, a felony, and making graffiti, a misdemeanor, for allegedly writing "noodles," "7aeto," and another word in fresh cement outside the East Hampton Cinema on Oct. 18. Detective Sgt. Margaret Dunn said that the cement work had to be redone, at a cost of $3,000.

This year at Thanksgiving dinner, there is an added ingredient to the usual turkey entree, the thought of a potential pall of avian flu shrouding the world in years to come. Roasted turkeys don't make you sick; neither do farm-reared ones, for the moment, at least, but recent findings of the bird flu virus in North American fowl makes one sit up and take notice.

The virus itself is not new; it has probably been around for thousands of years. No doubt there have been a number of pandemics from it across the face of the globe through history, but none, as far as we know, that has affected humans or other mammals. The latest mutant strain shows that it's capable of doing just that.

It's hard to accept the popular notion of "intelligent design" unless, perhaps, we apply it to the first virus ever created. Given the power of our present-day understanding of molecular biology, genomes, and medical diagnostics, we are able to see viruses transform from one form to another before our very eyes. If this isn't evolution, in the Darwinian sense, what is?

Similarly, those proto-proteins called prions that cause mad cow disease, scrapie, and wasting disease in a variety of hoofed animals are found in a plethora of forms, some more harmful than others. They are always mutating and remutating, never static, always dynamic.

As we go further we will find more and more examples of such evolution from benign forms of microbes and submicrobes that have been here all along into virulent, lethal ones. The old idea that such agents are species-specific, i.e., are confined to this or that animal population, has been shattered. As they change their forms, they are able to spread from species to species, genus to genus, family to family, as in the H.I.V. virus, presumably starting out in monkeys, or from class to class, as in the avian flu virus.

The old idea that parasites start out as hostile forms, then evolve into nonthreatening, even helpful forms, is no longer the standard paradigm. Modern parasitological studies tell us that a symbiotic form resident in a species and causing no harm to it can mutate into one causing great harm overnight. There is no eternally safe or beneficent symbiont. The E. coli in our guts might aid us in digestion, but let a few get into our bladders and watch out!

It was thought that when a parasite killed a host it meant curtains for the parasite. On the other hand, the parasite that merely used the host, say, the way the Lyme disease spirochete bacterium uses the white-footed mouse to reproduce without harming it, was going to exist for a long time.

Now we know that a parasite can be benign in one animal, disease-causing in another. Malarial plasmodia don't hurt the mosquito that carry them, but they can be fatal to humans bitten by that mosquito.

As long as those parasitic agents that kill their hosts can get to another host before the first one succumbs, they can remain harmful throughout their evolution. Thus, the rabies virus, first discovered by the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur 150 years ago, is no less virulent today than it was then.

As long as the rabid mammal bites another mammal before it dies, the rabies virus will continue to thrive, spread geographically, and pass up through subsequent generations. The mammal that eats the flesh, especially the brains, of the one with a form of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease, will perpetuate the mad cow prion in its lethal form, on and on and on.

The West Nile encephalitis virus is another case in point. Introduced into New York City mosquitoes in 1999, it spread rapidly from bird to bird, and from bird to human via mosquito bites, then took off across the country carried by bird vectors. Within a few years, every state in the Union had a human case or two of West Nile disease. While the disease is often fatal to the birds that carry it, and, to a lesser degree, to afflicted humans, in most hosts it is benign or merely causes a sickness that the host will recover from.

Diseases such as avian flu carried by birds are particularly scary because birds migrate and some cover thousands of miles in migration. Waterfowl, in particular, are great long-distance fliers. Eurasian ducks and geese often wind up in America, and vice versa. The fact that the avian flu virus has been found in North American waterfowl gives cause for worry. The flu virus can be devastating to birds, and, if it's the right strain, devastating to humans.

Knowing what we know now, and didn't then, the history of some of the great die-offs of bird species in the world might be attributable more to diseases such as bird flu, not as much to humans. Take the passenger pigeon's demise in America at the end of the 19th century. Was it the market gunners and "eggers" that did them in or was it a virus, perhaps an avian flu virus?

The mammalian species at this moment in the New World that is showing the most astronomical population growth is not the garbage rat, the feral cat, the coyote, or gray squirrel, it is the white-tailed deer. Wildlife biologists will tell you that in the absence of predators - the coyote, wolf, mountain lion, bobcat, and so on - the white-tail has the capability of reproducing until it covers every square inch of America the Beautiful.

Ah, but what about disease? It is only within the last several years that we have discovered large numbers of deer being taken by a wasting disease that affects only members of the deer family, that is, deer, elk, and moose. This prion-caused malady has been epidemic to deer in Wisconsin and Michigan, and it may become the very agent that limits deer here, having been discovered in a few upstate deer in 2004.

And what about the American turkey? Sure, it was shot by every Tom, Dick, and Harry indiscriminately for 250 years, but it's hard to imagine how a bird so widely distributed and in such great numbers as that species, when the colonists first settled America, could become reduced to a mere handful of native birds in the mountainous areas of northern Pennsylvania and southern New York by the beginning of the 20th century. Overhunting might not have been the only factor contributing to its near-extinction; disease could have played a role.

In nature and humankind too many of one thing is often a curse, not a blessing. Chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other fowl were not farmed by the millions prior to the Civil War in America, but now they are turned out like automobiles and computers at the end of mass production facilities called "ranches."

The same is true throughout the world. Millions upon millions of poultry have already been put to the sword in order to slow down the spread of avian flu disease among them. The grim reaper in the form of lethal strains of this virus knows no constraint. The big question is, will he stop at birds, or cross over into humans or other mammals? As we speak, he appears to be doing exactly that.

It's the time when Postwar Dad put his feet up, lit a pipe, and read the paper. Called "evening" in TV guides, the gray area from 5 to 6:30 p.m. or so is used less distinctly now, with men and women often still at work or at least in commute and a date with a hearty dinner less likely than some take-out food reheated in the microwave.

However rattled instead of relaxed, evening is still a transition time, when the detritus of the day - homework, housework, paperwork, dealing with grumpy clients - is cleared for the tide that narrows into bedtime.

We give up that gray time Sunday, when daylight saving time ends. Cabin fever looms. Waving a white flag at 5:30's black attack, we'll get a little too cozy with our housekeeping, our pets, maybe even our families. No more neighbors now, just twinkling TV hearthfires dotting the block.

But daylight does go elsewhere. Look for it in the morning at around 6 - a good time to steal a walk, read the newspaper, peek at the weather forecast, and have a microsecond of reflection or an unharried word with a spouse or a child. These are enough reasons for good cheer.

And, spring will come, as surely as the sunrise.

A newly opened exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of Jackson Pollock's earliest drawings, the first of its kind, reminds us once again that youthful ineptitude is no herald of what is to come.

"Seldom has so sumptuous a showcase been awarded to such tentative, graceless art," declares The New York Times's critic, Holland Cotter. The work in Pollock's two earliest sketchbooks, says Mr. Cotter, forms an "often mortifyingly awkward record of his effort to achieve even a minimal graphic proficiency."

The young artist apparently would have been the first to agree. In 1930, at the age of 18, Pollock thought his work "rotten." He wrote his brother that it seemed to "lack freedom and rhythm. It is cold and lifeless. It isn't worth the postage to send it."

Shades of Albert Einstein! Shades of Winston Churchill! At 4, according to legend, Einstein had hardly begun to talk; his parents feared he was slow or even feeble-minded. Churchill, so the story goes, had such trouble learning Greek and Latin that it was feared the future Prime Minister would not graduate from his public school.

As Mr. Cotter points out, any insight into the career of such a towering figure as Pollock, who did much of his postwar work in Springs, is valuable - the show at the Met particularly so since its "looping . . . doodles" and "lumpish, mollusklike bodies" are housed under the same roof as many of his great mature paintings.

Comparisons may be odious, but they can be instructive as well. Would-be artists, writers, scientists - students all - take heart.

Though the wheels of government turn slowly, they apparently have begun to turn in regard to a 15-mile bicycle path that in the not too distant future may span the Amagansett railroad station and Southampton Village.

On Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Board appropriated its half of the estimated $28,800 design cost for the first four-mile segment, which would provide cyclists with a paved path adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road right-of-way eastward from the Sag Harbor Turnpike.

"What's remarkable," said Lisa Liquori, the town planner, "is that we have an opportunity, without relocating any houses or structures, to have a path in this location."

The project is estimated to cost $l.8 million in all, though 80 percent is to be reimbursed through the State Department of Transportation. According to a recent Southampton Trails Preservation Society mailer, the state also has obtained a $60,000 grant that would reduce the towns' share from $360,000 to $300,000.

Over in Southampton, government has been somewhat less ardent about this project and the Trails Preservation Society has issued an "alert" asking its members to sign cards in support of the path that the society can deliver to the Southampton Town Board. Perhaps, in past years, the bike path did not have widespread and enthusiastic support due to the price tag, originally projected at $45 million for 15 miles, or more than $250,000 a mile.

Noting the ever-burgeoning numbers of "inline skaters, joggers, bike riders, nannies pushing prams, et cetera, on our crowded roads," the society notes that the time has come finally to move forward on the plan: "It is only a matter of time before a terrible accident occurs."

And the price, at $150,000 per town, seems right.

A fan at Saturday's East Hampton High School football game observed at halftime that it somehow wasn't right that East Hampton was playing the likes of North Babylon, Comsewogue, and Harborfields. "They should be playing in the league they always played in, an East End league with Southampton and Greenport and Hampton Bays," he said.

Unfortunately, with combined high school sports, things have changed. East Hampton is now joined in a number of sports, including football, with Pierson (Sag Harbor) and Bridgehampton High Schools. The idea was to open up sports participation to more students, and that, of course, is a good idea. But, with East Hampton's increasing enrollment, and with Section XI's apparent failure to take into account how few athletes the grade schools feed into the high schools, Bonac sports programs can apparently look forward in the near future to an absurd elevation to Class A competition reserved for schools with enrollments exceeding 801 students. Spring track got the word this week.

Lest a double-bind be created in which youngsters are encouraged to come out for teams that continually get pounded by behemoths and in which the teams must content themselves at best with .500 seasons, Section XI should look again at the numbers.

The National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized insurance to property owners in high risk flood zones, was to have expired on Sept. 30 - but won't. Congress passed a one-year extension for it last week, to Sept. 30, 1998, and President Clinton is expected to sign it.

The Senate has passed a five-year extension, but the House has yet to act on that.

Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, sponsored the legislation.

Of the 85,000 New York State policyholders covered by the national flood insurance, Suffolk County has the most with 22,685. Of those, 1,576 are in East Hampton Town, 164 of those in East Hampton Village. Southampton Town policy holders number 2,695, Southampton Village, 322.

The flood insurance program, to which 3.5 million policy holders nationally pay $1.3 billion a year in premiums, is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The North Fork Bancorporation Inc. announced last week that it would take over the New York Bancorp, the parent of Home Federal Savings Bank, in a stock swap valued at approximately $800 million.

Home Federal, whose chairman is Patrick E. Malloy 3rd of Sag Harbor, operates 30 offices in the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island as well as in Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties.

The savings bank has $3.3 billion in total assets and $1.7 billion in deposits. Following the merger, which is expected to be completed by early next year, North Fork Bank will have total assets of $10 billion and $6.3 billion in deposits.

In a release, the bank stated shareholders could expect to see earnings rise by 15 to 20 cents per share by 1999.

In the takeover, owners of New York Bancorp stock will be able to exchange each share of their stock for 1.19 shares of North Fork stock. North Fork expects to issue an additional 26 million shares of stock to cover the purchase.

Bridge Bancorp Earnings

Bridge Bancorp. Inc., the holding company of the Bridgehampton National Bank, has announced that earnings increased by 11.7 percent, to $1.70 a share, for the first three quarters of the year, up from $1.50 a share for the same period last year. Total earnings for the period, excluding the sale of the bank's former main office on Main Street, were $2,398,000. The sale of the building earned the bank an additional $829,000 after taxes.

Christie's Conference

David Bray and Tim Davis, managing partners of Allan M. Schneider Associates Inc., attended an annual conference sponsored by Christie's Great Estates real estate in San Francisco last week. Allan Schneider Associates, which has offices across the East End, is affiliated with the Chrstie's real estate division, the world's largest international network of real estate brokers who specialize in estate properties.

Besides, the usual sessions on business development, legal issues affecting the business, advertising, and customer service, the conference included a preview of "The World of Resident Sea," a to-be-built luxury ocean liner with 250 private residences, that will sail the world over. Allan Schneider Associates will be among the brokers listing the floating resort.

New Counselor

Maryanne Strong, a certified social worker, ahcoholism and substance abuse counselor, and lifelong East End resident, has opened a new counseling service on Noyac Road in Sag Harbor.

Ms. Strong has worked for a variety of local agencies including Maryhaven Center of Hope, Southampton Hospital, and A Program Planned for Life Enrichment. Among her specialties are family treatment, adult and adolescent services, and alcohol and drug treatment.

About Credit Unions

The Community Bankers Association of New York State is distributing a 10-page booklet, "Credit Unions: Fact or Fiction," to government officials, banking executives, and consumer groups as part of a campaign that, according to a release, aims to "educate and create a balanced understanding of the issues involved in the banking/credit union dispute."

For information about obtaining copies of the booklet, the association can be reached at 200 Park Avenue, New York 10166.

AMAGANSETT

Blossner to Robert and Patricia O'Brien, Pond Park Place, $161,000.

BRIDGEHAMPTON

Barclay to David and Patricia Hansen, Rose Way, $400,000.

Gounaris to Susan Della Corte, Widow Gavits Road, $280,000.

Bridgehampton Sanford House L.P. to George Biondo (trustee), Montauk Highway, $1,050,000.

Woodridge Homes Bldrs. Corp. to Kelly Langberg, Sea Farm Lane, $267,500.

EAST HAMPTON

Kennedy to Y Pay More Inc., Three Mile Harbor Road, $300,000.

Nanigian to Herbert Schmertz, Chestnut Way, $550,000.

Garner estate to Beverly Ainsworth, Dayton Lane, $373,000.

Cuppett to Sheryl Egol, Centre Way, $200,000.

Wald to Harvey Miller, Route 114, $425,000.

MONTAUK

Rice to Joan Capalbo, Fairfield Drive, $200,000.

Ahmad to A-Bissel Holdings Inc., Upland Road, $240,000.

NORTH HAVEN

Sartoris to Christopher Tellefsen, South Ferry Road, $330,000.

NORTHWEST

Tabin to Carol Ientile, Gunpowder Lane, $362,500.

DePauw to Shellie Caplan, Bull Path, $215,000.

NOYAC

Law Bros. Homes Inc. to Raymond and Denise McCarthy, Peninsula Drive, $157,000.

SAG HARBOR

Fleischman to CJMR Realty Assoc. L.L.C., Glover Street, $300,000.

MacNamara to Michael and Elspeth Sladden, Redwood Road, $475,000.

Bellini to Dennis and Patricia Brophy, Woodvale Street, $175,000.

SPRINGS

Lombardi to Frederick and Camille Kleinsteuber, Underwood Drive, $165,000.

Jacobsen to Kathleen Pratt, Fireplace Road, $212,000.

WATER MILL

Castrovinci to Bertrand and Catherine Saliba, Winding Way, $283,000.