The Grapefruit

East Hampton

May 5, 1997

Dear Ms. Rattray:

The first time the grapefruit was pitched in an artists' baseball game was in 1954. Thomas B. Hess was the first to write the story in the introduction of Fred McDarrah's "Artists' World":

"In the summer of 1954, in East Hampton, Long Island, the artists organized a Saturday afternoon softball game. Phillip Pavia, who had enjoyed the advantages of a regular Connecticut boyhood, was the best batter - a home-run specialist. His friends decided to counter this forte."

"A day before the game, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Franz Kline, who were sharing the Red House, bought two grapefruits and a coconut. They worked until 2 in the morning sandpapering them and painting them to look exactly like softballs, with all the essential seams, cracks, chiaroscuro, and even a trade label, 'Pavia Sports Association.' "

"The next day, when the game was about halfway over, Harold Rosenberg came up to pitch. Pavia was at bat. Rosenberg pitched the first ball. Pavia swung, and it exploded in a great ball of grapefruit juice. There was general laughter and little shouts of, 'Come on, let's get on with the game.' "

"Esteban Vicente came in from behind first base (where Ludwig Sander was stationed with a covered basket containing ammunition); he pitched his first ball over easily. Pavia swung. There was another ball of grapefruit juice in the air. More laughter. Finally they decided that fun was fun, but now to continue play, seriously. Rosenberg came back to the mound. He smacked the softball to assure everyone of its Phenomenological Materiality. He pitched it over the plate. Pavia swung. It exploded into a wide, round cloud of coconut. 'Look, look,' shouted Pavia, as if he had always suspected that if you hit a baseball bad enough to break it, there would be coconut inside. Then, from nowhere, a crowd of kids appeared around home plate and began to pick up the fragments of coconut and eat them. They had to call the game.

Suddenly after the funeral of Willem de Kooning I read in local newspapers (not The Star) that Bill de Kooning was pitching to Ben Heller. Where is this story coming from? And one week later, Patsy Southgate repeats the same story in her New Yorker piece, "Remembering Bill."

The further we move from those classic years in American art, the more the actual occurrences of the period are reported wrongly or just plain buried under the embellishments of anti-historical writers and other persons who suffer from some kind of the Woodstock complex -if all who said they were at Woodstock were actually there, there would have been 50 million people in the audience.

Who knows, maybe in 20 years they will say it was Elizabeth Taylor pitching the grapefruit in the Artists-Writers Game, and a young Steven Spielberg was at the plate. (By the way, in The Star's 27 East a few years ago, your reporter Jack Graves did a whole article on this famous incident in the original unrevised form.)

Thank you,

PAUL PAVIA

P.S. Tom Hess was a leading critic and intellectual; also, editor-in-chief of Art News throughout the '50s and '60s to 1973.

A Lousy Deal

Melville

April 29, 1997

Dear Mrs. Rattray,

Your letters page bears a close resemblance to the old-fashioned New England town meetings, albeit in print, so I hope you will indulge me as you do so many others.

Back some time ago, Congressman Mike Forbes of your area decided he couldn't back Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House and, to be honest, I didn't see the reason to do that.

However, just recently, Mr. Forbes beat the forces that opposed him and pushed through an amendment in the House of Representatives that protects small businesses, individual inventors, and universities like our own here on Long Island, from a lousy deal cooked up by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. Their scheme was to weaken the historic protections given to American ideas (intellectual property) through our patent system.

The fraudulently named "reform" bill taken up in the House of Representatives would have required every American who attempts to protect his unique idea by seeking a U.S. patent to publish his idea 18 months after applying. (Foremost, that's well before the patent has been granted). The whole world would then see his idea, and the forces of commercial espionage most likely would put the little inventor out of the game.

The Forbes amendment, fortunately, made it into the bill, thereby exempting our most vulnerable citizens - individual inventors, small-business men and women, and universities - from what would surely be the beginning of the end of American dominance in the global economy. Remember Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, Henry Ford and the Model A, or Thomas Edison and the light bulb? These "Horatio Alger" types defined America as the land of new ideas and new opportunities.

The patent "reforms," even with Congressman Forbes's valiant, winning effort to protect the little guys and gals who are brimming with ideas to enhance American lives in the 21st century, is a terrible bill.

As someone who took his idea to use water molecules in the human body to read patient's internal problems, I saw how strong patent laws made possible my efforts to bring magnetic resonance imaging to fruition and, thankfully, benefit millions of Americans.

The G.O.P. Congress and the President want to weaken U.S. patent laws so foreign countries will give us access to their markets. It's a bad deal by anyone's standards and deserves to die in the Senate.

Sincerely,

RAYMOND DAMADIAN, M.D.

Tax-Reform Junkies

East Hampton

May 5, 1997

To The Editor,

The Sunday Times Week in Review article on the world dominance of the United States economy was a frighteningly bizarre, eerie piece. Quoting Mort Zuckerman and a head honcho at Merrill Lynch (why not Daffy Duck and Milo Minderbinder?), it extolled the virtues of the deregulated free market system over the European and Japanese systems, the economic pre-eminence of the U.S. system, and the American way of life. The article also identified the negative fallout from the system and apologized for this fallout as unfortunate but necessary. Thus the frightening part of the story.

The essence of the story is that while twice as many people now live at the poverty level, real job creation is zilch, our education system is going down the tubes, and our inner cities are falling apart, it's really okay because business is booming, and profits are through the roof. The free market is working, even though more and more people are falling through the cracks. "If it's good for the company, it's good for everybody, because we are all part of the company."

The solution. Eventually these enormous profits will trickle down to the rest of the country. Meanwhile, government programs and tax reform will readjust income distribution.

The answer. The trickle stopped 20 years ago. What's good for big business is not necessarily good for the rest of the country. Tax reform is 99.99 percent garbage.

Tax reform. Our politicians are tax-reform junkies. They gotta propose it. It's like heroin to junkies, Prozac to the depressed, oral sex to the over-50's generation. It's safe, popular, and it never happens. It makes everyone feel they are getting something for nothing. The reality is, if you don't make a lot of money, tax reform means nothing. If you don't make any money, you don't save money.

Tax reform. Two legitimate reforms are lowering sales tax (regressive) and a steeply graduated income tax. Everyone pays the same sales tax regardless of income. How much money does someone need to live phenomenally? After a point it becomes obscene.

Capital gains. Pure scam. If the biggest boom economy ever generates few jobs and more poverty, what will reduced capital gains do? Give more income to people with lots of income. It's a tithe, a taking, a cadeau for the rich. "Because you are who you are." Who does the capital gains tax affect? Five percent, 10 percent, 15 percent of the population. What about the rest of us? We do all aspire to pay capital gains some day, and we must have our dreams. No?

So, we sit here depressed, in the middle of an economic boom. New jobs pay minimum wages, government programs are cut to the bone, and tax reforms are a joke. We are scared every way we turn, and they want us to like it. It feels like a Joseph Heller novel, and we are all pretending to be someone else.

NEIL HAUSIG

Wondering about the two signs that said "DNA" and were posted last week where North Main Street and Pantigo Road diverge in East Hampton?

They were directing vehicles to a house in Springs where a music video was being filmed. Made by a production company called DNA for the pop and rhythm-and-blues singer Mary J. Blige, the video eventually will be seen almost all over the world on such music television channels as MTV.

Despite the many vehicles, including white stretch limousines and several RVs, that converged on what is known to some in the community as "the round house" on Deep Six Drive, few were aware that a time-consuming and labor-intensive shoot was going on. Then again, those vehicles are not uncommon sights on the East End, whose architecture and landscape prove a popular backdrop for filmmakers.

A Hive

But much more is involved in filming a video. In this case, all the equipment used to shoot a feature-length film and many sleepless hours will result in a video of four minutes and 54 seconds, lengthy by song and video standards.

Shot April 30 and last Thursday, the video was made for "I Can Love You," a song off Ms. Blige's most recent album, "Share My World," released by the MCA recording label.

One who was involved estimated there were some 100 people working at the site, between makeup and hair artists, clothes stylists, production technicians, camera operators, caterers, the director and producer, the soundman, "extras," and of course Ms. Blige herself. Bright lights were visible to passing motorists and the many vehicles on the seldom traveled small street gave some clues that something big was going on.

Modern Lines

The owner of the house, a semi-retired photography dealer who asked that her name not be used, was put up in the J. Harper Poor Cottage in East Hampton for the duration of the shoot. She said she was well paid for the use of her house and protected by a security deposit and the production company's insurance, but did not divulge the figure.

It was curiosity to see what was going on, as well as a desire to visit her cat, that led her to return to her house last Thursday evening. The dwelling has been used for fashion shoots in the past, she noted, and is popular for such uses because of its modern lines.

Nancy Grigor of Amagansett, the owner of Hamptons Locations, found the site for the video. According to Ms. Grigor, the director was originally looking for a beach house with lots of windows. The East End seemed a logical choice since Ms. Blige lives in Huntington and DNA would be working out of its New York City office (it has another in Hollywood).

Just A Skeleton

When an ideal house fitting that description couldn't be found, Ms. Grigor rounded up other options and showed them to the director, Kevin Bray, only the weekend before the shoot. He went back to the city to confer with others involved, preferred "the round house," and the decision was made.

The recording label offers its objective, a general idea of what it would like to see in the video based on the song, and from there, the director said, he creates the video. "That's a skeleton and I just put the detail into that," said Mr. Bray, who amid the chaos last Thursday night took time out to speak to a reporter and pose for a photographer.

Except for one opening, the house is a circle with a small round pool and surrounding patio at its center. All along the interior are ceiling-to-floor glass panes, providing the director and cinematographer the perfect opportunity to shoot scenes that began at one end of the house and ended at another.

From Room To Room

"It's actually a very simple and elegant house," offered the owner. "You can't get a real good idea of it like this," she said from a room where she and other outsiders spent some time staying out of last Thursday night's rain and out of the way of the crew.

What viewers will see when the video is released will be Ms. Blige getting out of bed at one end of the house and making her way through the hallways until she comes to a party happening in the living room at the other end. There, goes the story line of the video, she meets a former lover, true to a common theme from Ms. Blige's songs about finding balance in love.

Interspersed will be other scenes also filmed at the Springs location. One was shot in the house's bathroom, where a deep round marble tub was filled with blue milk, it was said, for Ms. Blige to bathe in.

Rain Pains

Another scene was shot in the woods behind the house. To make the shot the director wanted, the camera had to travel exactly where the owner had recently planted ferns. They could not ruined, she told them.

No problem: The production crew built a bridge for the camera that passed over the stretch of ferns and allowed the shot to be made but left the ferns untouched.

Things were a little chaotic on the second and last day of the shoot, to a great extent because of the rain. Equipment set up outside (a camera was to sit atop the pool and pan around the inside of the house) had to be dismantled and moved to drier ground.

"I think they're running behind because of the rain," Ms. Grigor said. "It takes them hours to set up, and then it starts to rain."

Star Was Bummed

Not only did the rain mean problems with setting up and breaking down equipment, it also meant problems with "continuity" in filming. If the ground is glistening with water in one scene, it has to be the same in the next.

Also, because the rain was putting the shoot behind schedule, Ms. Blige was elusive last Thursday night, staying in her camper until the very second shooting was to begin.

"Because of the circumstances, the weather, I think she's a little bummed out," offered the director. "It's her video."

"This is a big production," he continued. "She's a platinum artist."

And, as Twinky, of the Brooklyn-based Picture Perfect Casting company, who picked the group of handsome male dancers who will also be seen in the video, noted, singers are not necessarily actors, and having to star in their own video can be a nerve-wracking experience.

Sleepless In Springs

Since the video consists almost entirely of night shots, filming both days started at night and went into the wee hours of the morning.

"I haven't slept for about 26, 27 hours," the production manager, Hannah Wittich, said when she took a minute to talk. "Actually, that was a while ago. Now it's probably more like 40."

All the work, bodies, and equipment aside, by early Friday morning, everything was cleaned up, the homeowner's belongings were returned to exactly where they had been before the crews arrived, and the crews and equipment were gone. If one hadn't witnessed the activity oneself, it might be hard to believe it even took place.

"You'd be surprised what a good job they do" cleaning up afterward, Ms. Grigor said of the crew. A few small marks on the house's carpet were the only telltale signs, and even those were to be steam-cleaned.

Otherwise, not a cigarette butt was left behind: They even raked the driveway on the way out.

We have received a bevy of facts from the Bureau of the Census in advance of Mother's Day, and don't know exactly what to make of them. Population trends, infant mortality, and the general welfare are noted, as is the fact that "the value of shipments of Mother's Day cards by greeting card publishers totaled $147.9 million in 1992, up from $80.2 million in 1987." This presumably indicates that the economy is strong.

Certainly, mothers deserve all the help and accolades they can get. It's gotten to the point where at least one mother of our acquaintance rues the day. She reasons that just as it should be Christmas every day insofar as good will and mutual fellowship are concerned, so should it be Mother's Day every day insofar as pitching in is concerned.

The Census Bureau tells us that the median age of women giving birth has gone up in the past 20 years, that in 1995 there were "nearly 10 million single mothers with children under 18," and that of the nation's 104.4 million women in 1993, 73.9 million of them who were 15 and over were mothers. The first fact indicates, we suppose, that this country is not at the moment in danger of overpopulation, the second, that single mothers in particular need help in rearing the next generation - help that our Government seems to be withdrawing by the hour - and the third, that the maternal instinct, like the economy, is strong.

Let's hear it for mothers. Where would any of us be without them?

Sometimes the wrong thing happens.

This week what was wrong was the resignation of Dr. Mary Hibberd, Suffolk County Health Commissioner, under pressure from County Executive Robert J. Gaffney. Her resignation was accepted as soon as the word got out, even before she had sat down to write the obligatory letter. She will be gone by the end of June.

Dr. Hibberd became persona non grata with the County Executive after she resigned from a "blue ribbon panel" he had set up to assess how the county could deliver health care to the poor cost-effectively.

There apparently were other reasons, too, such as her reported unwillingness to follow Republican Party protocol in hiring. In addition, Mr. Gaffney accused the Commissioner of creating a "shortfall" of several millions of dollars in the Health Department by being "late" in applying for state aid. Dr. Hibberd flatly denied this accusation and promised a full response before she steps down.

In a letter of resignation from the blue ribbon panel on April 29, Dr. Hibberd told Mr. Gaffney she feared it might "wipe out or [further] weaken" the county's nursing home and clinics, including one at Southampton Hospital.

The latter clinic, the subject of a front-page story in The Star in January, had been in deteriorating condition for years. In 1994, she brought Mr. Gaffney to the Southampton clinic to see it for himself, but no improvements were made.

According to a county spokesman, "Bob likes Mary," but blames her "management" for fiscal problems in the Health Department. Mr. Gaffney noted "eroded confidence" between them.

Dr. Hibberd has been running the department since 1992. Colleagues there use superlatives to describe their admiration for her. And, the medical care at the Southampton clinic was reported to be excellent despite its physical condition.

One blue ribbon panel member who is sorry to see Dr. Hibberd go is John J. Ferry Jr., M.D., Southampton Hospital's president. "She truly has a public health focus, and cares desperately about everyone - employees and patients," he said this week.

It is possible to measure cost, said Dr. Ferry, who has seen his own institution turn a profit. But what he called "outcome data," or effectiveness, is hard to come by.

Dr. Hibberd's resignation is symbolic of a widespread malaise. It is unconscionable that one of the richest nations in the world should be mired in debate stemming from the incompatibility of tight money and good medicine. All of us in Suffolk County are the poorer for her going, the poor even more so.

A handful of Montauk residents have objected strenuously to the East Hampton Town Trustees' push to manage shellfish beds, wetlands, and beaches in the easternmost hamlet. Unlike the rest of East Hampton, Montauk never was owned by the Trustees, although the panel acted as its governing body until about 150 years ago.

The rest of Montauk, as well as other town residents, will get the chance to speak their piece on the issue next Thursday night. Back-to-back hearings at 7:30 in the Montauk Firehouse will air versions of a law that would either designate the Trustees as stewards of Lake Montauk or succinctly state they have no jurisdiction.

The first proposal has the support of the Republican majority on the Town Board, the Town Republican Committee leadership, some baymen, and a majority of the Trustees. They all seem to believe the Trustees are best qualified for the job and that it would be more efficient to have one group manage all the shellfish beds in town.

However, the idea has raised some questions its supporters have so far sidestepped - "Why?" being only the most obvious. The Town Natural Resources Department and Shellfish Hatchery personnel seem to do a fine job of advising the Town Board on Lake Montauk's resources. In addition, the move is perceived by the opposition as part of the Trustees' ongoing grab for power. They note that there have not been any insurmountable disagreements between the Town Board and Trustees over townwide shellfish policy.

As a community, Montauk has long insisted on its distinction from the rest of East Hampton and on going its own way. For that reason alone, it may turn out that what is right for Three Mile Harbor may not be best for Lake Montauk.

Before the Town Board reaches a decision, all five of its members should listen carefully to what Montaukers have to say and take their concerns into account. If it turns out the residents of Montauk feel the same as the handful who spoke out in March, the Town Board should respect their wishes.

In Frederic Tuten's new novel, "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," a wall suddenly appears in a desolate vacant lot on the Lower East Side. Through the wall, which separates the past from the present, steps the beautiful, redheaded Ursula: photographer, morphine addict, and lover of Vincent Van Gogh.

It's a book to be read slowly; there are no wasted words. Each sentence is like a smooth chip of agate lying in the palm of the hand - its striations slightly off-kilter, complex and unsettling, but inalterably right.

The scenes set in Van Gogh's 19th-century Auvers-sur-Oise in the months before his death glow with color and richness of language, while those in the New York City of today are painted in mundane language and tones of gray.

The End Of Elegance

The contrast reflects Mr. Tuten's discomfort with the present.

"I feel a dreadful sense of closure," he said. It's not just the dumbing down of America, but an end of elegance, politeness, and civility - replaced by money and vulgarity."

"I find a deep lack of appreciation of fineness in painting, writing, and music - a fineness that springs from the general historical culture."

"I don't want to sound as if I'm pontificating, but I feel I've earned the right to say this because of my personal and professional investment in what I believed was a meaningful culture."

On The Margins

That Mr. Tuten is both passionate and highly articulate is apparent; his warmth and friendly enthusiasm are harder to convey in writing.

The culture he talks about was first presented to him by the professors of philosophy and literature who taught him at the City College of New York, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student, and their successors during the 30 years he himself has taught creative writing and literature at the college.

"They were wonderful people," he said of the post-World War II professors, "real intellectuals, some escaped from Germany, rare and beautiful people. They were part of a culture I still believe in, which is becoming marginalized as a principle of conduct and moral success."

"I think we believed artists in general had to develop through moral and ethical discipline, hard work, apprenticeship, and a slow and hard-earned maturation."

College: The Way Out

As a boy, trapped in poverty in the Bronx because his father had left home when he was 10, books became both a hope for life and a temporary escape from its dreariness. Later, it was C.C.N.Y., a legendary training ground for working-class scholars, that enabled him to achieve a lasting escape.

"I always wanted to be a writer, from the age of 8 or 9 - by 15, I was sending poetry to New Directions. But I also wanted to be a painter. So I dropped out of high school to study art - this was in the Bronx of the '50s, where only hoods dropped out."

But at the Art Students League, he discovered to his chagrin that he was no good, that art was too difficult for him.

World Of The Mind

While he never attempted another foray into the art world from the working end of the paintbrush, so to speak, art has remained a dominant influence in Mr. Tuten's life. He has written art criticism for The New York Times, Art Forum, and other publications.

Once he entered City College, which was free for students who could not afford to pay, he found himself among people for whom the world of the mind was what mattered. It was a world that had its own reward - not a material one, of course - and that was held in esteem by the community.

"It's as if the exchange was, you can be a man of culture and have honor and esteem; we'll have the money," said Mr. Tuten. "Now, intellectuals have no honor, no esteem, and still no money."

"Van Gogh's Bad Cafe"

In "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," when Ursula passes under the mulberry tree in the back of the Bad Cafe and squeezes through the crack in the garden wall, she brings with her all the artistic passion and intensity of the 19th century.

The besotted narrator, a drab figure known only as N, watches helplessly as she burns up like a comet amid the dross, drugs, and mediocrity of the present.

As one of Mr. Tuten's students, Walter Mosley, has written, the book "is a testament to the sanity of the imagination."

On a more mundane level, Mr. Tuten came up with a metaphor for what he was trying to get across about the diminishment of the spiritual and intellectual life of America.

"The most recent and horrific manifestation of this world of profit and gain, of course, is the closure of Books and Company. Despite the pleadings of the most serious artists, poets, writers, and intellectuals in the city, profit without mercy won in the end."

Mr. Tuten seemed deflated by outrage for a second, but drew breath for more. "There was a deep sense of culture there and I felt it came organically. It wasn't imposed on anyone. The place that should close is the Whitney, because I think what they have done is cultural assassination!"

"I don't even regard the Whitney as an authentic museum," he added, "but a desperate showcase for the latest fashion. I publicly urge all people connected with American culture to boycott the place - if the curators had any courage, they would resign en masse in protest."

Books To Believe In

His arrows spent, Mr. Tuten then allowed the interview to return to its appointed track.

An advantage of his lifetime involvement with City College, he said, was a steady job, which meant he could write what he wanted. He has had a small output because he wanted to produce books he could believe in, books that would live up to those he admires, like Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman," Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano," and Juan Rolfo's "Pedro Paramo."

In 1971, to much acclaim, he published "The Adventures of Mao on the Long March," which has just been reissued in paperback after being long out of print.

"Tallien: A Brief Romance," inspired by an obscure 18th-century French revolutionary, was published in 1988, and "Tintin in the New World," where the French cartoon character grows up and gets a sex life, in 1993.

Sense Of "Closure"

"Most likely, all my novels together, including all the foreign publication rights, have earned me what a hot young writer could have got as an advance in the '80s," said the novelist.

Outside, the trees were weighed down by blossom and redwing blackbirds, the sun shone, and green shoots pushed up through the earth.

"It's so pleasant to be here," said Mr. Tuten, who is an attractive, rumpled man who doesn't look as if he's filling the coffers of Hampton Supergym. "It seems wrong to sound so pessimistic."

"But even here in 'the Hamptons' - I hate to use that dreadful, generic word, like Gstaad or Monte Carlo - I feel this sense of closure. It threatens to become just a resort for multimillionaires' palaces, without an appreciation of the earth, the sea, the birds, landscape. . ."

Friends All Around

"I love this area more than anywhere else on earth," he said. In part that is because this is where his friends, most of them painters, live - Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, who illustrated the covers of two of his books, David Salle, Eric Fischl, whose tender illustrations run through "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe," Eric Kraft, and others.

"I have no children or surviving family," said Mr. Tuten, "but I've been extraordinarily privileged in my friends, and they have become my family."

He also counts himself lucky to have been in the company of many remarkable women - not necessarily lovers - starting from when, as a child, he was on a television show called "Youth Wants to Know," asking "hokey questions" of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Interesting Women

And what about the lovers?

From his first wife, Simone Morini, an older Italian woman "better looking than Ursula Andress" and a doctor in classical philology who changed his life completely, "there is no woman who has been important to me who hasn't stayed with me somehow," Mr. Tuten said. "I'm either haunted by the loss or nurtured by the memory."

"And if my heart has been broken a few times, at least it was by interesting women."

And, like his love of art, they have made their way into his books, which are all about love of one kind or another.

Ursula, missing Van Gogh and having found no reason to stay in 20th-century New York, tries to return to the past, but cannot. She goes back through the crack in the wall but melts away in a blur of light just as Van Gogh finds her.

Anniversary

As the painter settles down in a corner of a field - "Pure was the sky, an icy sheet caught in a sun of pale Dutch butter" - with Ursula's revolver in his hand, a flock of crows rises from the green mown hay.

Just such a flock of crows rose from a field in Bridgehampton one day when Mr. Tuten was passing on a bicycle, startling him by the resemblance to Van Gogh's "Wheat Field With Crows." Having later discovered the day was the exact anniversary of the artist's suicide, he started writing "Van Gogh's Bad Cafe."

So if we can't return to a past we yearn for, and the frenetic experience and fool's gold of the present leaves us unsatisfied, what's to be done? If you are Mr. Tuten, you rely of the sanity of the imagination and turn it all into books.

Back in the '70s I bought a beautiful wooden soprano recorder complete with a how-to book - I believe it was "The Trapp Family Recorder Course." I learned to tootle out a couple of tunes: "Red River Valley" and "Edelweiss" (from "The Sound of Music," of course). However, I never put in the time and effort required to master the small instrument.

I was vaguely aware that the recorder held a place in Renaissance and Baroque music, and I had heard it featured in the works of Bach with "original instrumentation," something that was becoming popular back when I embarked on the Trapp family course.

But it wasn't until Saturday evening, when the Recorder Orchestra of New York paid a visit to the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, that I realized the recorder has possibilities never dreamed of in the 16th century.

Back In Style

Apparently, so-called "early music" is enjoying a revival. You can go into a Borders Books and Music store and find a number of CDs featuring music and instruments that have in the past been relegated to the domain of bespectacled musicologists.

Things like the crumhorn and the shawm, precursors to the modern-day wind instruments, are reappearing, and recordings of vocal styles like the Gregorian chant have risen to the top of the charts. What accounts for this would have to be the subject of another article, but suffice it to say if you have a sackbut buried in your attic, now is the time to dig it out and dust it off.

It's more likely that you have a recorder kicking around somewhere because one of your kids may have brought one home from the elementary grades and accosted your ears with it during the primary school recorder craze some years ago. It seemed that someone decided that plastic recorders would be useful in teaching children to play music, but I think it may have fallen out of fashion when somebody finally realized that this is not really an easy instrument to play.

Master Players

And not an easy one to play well. The recorder requires a good deal of training in breath control and fingering. It has remarkable dynamic capabilities, and in the hands of a master can be an exciting instrument and certainly not one to be underestimated.

And so it is under the fingers of master players that the Recorder Orchestra of New York has teamed up to take the recorder out of kindergarten and onto the concert stage. Under the direction of Ken Andresen, the orchestra is one of only two performing recording orchestras in the United States.

Mr. Andresen is himself a recorder player and an arranger, and he was joined on Saturday night by 20 other Recorder Orchestra members playing a variety of recorders.

Spreading Out

The evening opened with Mr. Andresen's arrangement of "Music Divine" by Thomas Tomkins, a composer of the late Renaissance, and in this work we hear the recorder in its customary historical context.

After the piece, Mr. Andresen assured us that the Recorder Orchestra is not "relegated to what recorder players have been in the past: holders of the position of early music." Rather, he said, they have "spread to other kinds of music, and we'd like to think there's nothing we can't perform."

He emphasized that the evening's program was designed to reflect the range and versatility of the recorder. In "Midsummer," by Edward MacDowell, a 19th-century composer, a recorder was featured which towered over the rather tall man who was standing to play it. Next to him stood another performer working with a long boxlike instrument which resembled a birdhouse. These turned out to be contrabass recorders, the latter being one of recent design.

Like A Choir

Four alto recorders were featured in a concerto by Georg Philipp Telemann, a work of three movements in the standard fast, slow, fast form of the late Baroque and early Classical eras.

Mr. Andresen chose the next piece, "Ave Maris Stella" by Edvard Grieg, because "the realm of the Romantic was not touched by recorders in the past." In this arrangement by Norman Luff, who often adapts pieces for the Recorder Orchestra, the hymnlike quality in the opening was aptly carried off by all instruments. Each recorder voice rose and fell with gentle control through difficult dynamic and tonal ranges. It was as if the group became the Recorder Choir of New York. Lovely.

Mr. Andresen next had players demonstrate the various types of recorders, from the tiny soprano garklein to the contrabass, a physical range between six inches and six feet. The orchestra bravely attacked "Christus, der is mine Leben," an arrangement by Mr. Andresen of a chorale of J.S. Bach in which the full complement of recorders is illustrated.

Venture In Fun

Skipping ahead a few centuries, we were treated to what Mr. Andresen called "a venture in fun," a Dennis Bloodworth arrangement of "Tangerine." "I'm not sure this was meant to be played by recorder," said Mr. Andresen, "but we are going to do it anyway."

For my part, I'm not sure what the composer, Johnny Mercer, would have thought of it, because with the full company of recorders playing there was something reminiscent of a calliope in the result. But it was a bold move. Clearly, now that the recorder has broken out of the confines of 16th-century music, nothing will stop it.

After intermissions, we were back to the courtly style of recorder playing in William Byrd's madrigal "This Sweet and Merry Month of May," a return, as Mr. Andresen put it, to the "roots of the recorder."

Most Beautiful

This was followed by "Six Russian Folksongs" by Anatoli Liadov, wherein performers and instruments seemed to find a comfortable place. This was the most beautiful playing of the evening.

The arrangement by Friedrich Von Huene and Mr. Andresen allowed each recorder voice to sing rather than struggle as they seemed to do in some of the evening's works. The Russian songs were an audience favorite, and I hope Mr. Andresen will incorporate more such works in further performances of the orchestra.

He chose to follow this admirable selection with the disconcerting "Fuge aus der Geographie" ("Geographic Fugue") by the 20th-century composer Ernst Toch, a spoken work where orchestra members surrendered their instruments for musical "scripts" and pursued one another through seemingly endless recitations of names of cities and countries.

Jangled Nerves

This was a puzzling departure from recorder playing and I am at a loss to understand its inclusion in the program. Perhaps it was intended to show the versatility of the performers, but I was under the impression that it was the scope of the recorder that was the subject of the evening.

Nevertheless, we were snapped back to recorder reality with "Diligam Domine" by Jan Sweelink, another Norman Luff arrangement, which soothed my jangled nerves after the Toch piece.

The evening concluded with "After You've Gone," another attempt at jazz that left me feeling as if I had just departed a carnival midway. I was not so much disturbed by the un-recorderlike nature of the piece as I was by its selection as the last work of the evening. We may accept placing the recorder in new territory, but I think it is better to leave the audience with a more noble recorder resonance to carry away from a Recorder Orchestra performance.

A New World

The members of orchestra are to be commended for their masterful playing, but Mr. Andresen's fine stage presence did much to make the evening a success.

He evidently realizes that most audiences need to be educated about both the history of the recorder and the need to keep it on the musical scene. I admire the pluck of the orchestra in exploring new empires for the recorder, and the work of Mr. Andresen and other composers in arranging music for the instrument. It's a new world, and the recorder belongs in it.

The Barnes Country Store on Fireplace Road in Springs has changed hands, but the signs of change are just now beginning to show up.

Dottie and Clarence Barnes, the longtime proprietors of the neighborhood deli, retired in January and handed the reins to their daughter, Barbara La Monda, and a partner, Lenny Weyerbacher. The two bring experience and a fresh perspective to the business.

Ms. La Monda grew up in the business. She has been minding the store, so to speak, since she was 16. Mr. Weyerbacher, a former nightclub and restaurant manager, has worked at the deli for the past three years.

He said he sought advice from an old friend when it came time to update the store's offerings. For a week or so, he "shadowed" Stanley Klasik, who owns a deli in Setauket, picking up ideas.

The Barnes store now offers self-serve coffee and hot dogs, a changing hot-sandwich menu, and egg specials as a result, Mr. Weyerbacher said. Hot pretzels, muffins and biscotti, new salad cases filled with homemade salads, and an expanded grocery and drugstore section are other changes.

The new owners are early risers, so the store continues to open at 5 a.m. to host a gathering of early-morning fishermen. Beginning today, Mr. Weyerbacher said, it will stay open until 8 p.m. seven days a week.

All In The Family

The store is still a family affair, with Kathy Barnes, Ms. La Monda's sister-in-law, continuing to serve customers. The rest of the staff is still at work as well.

He and Ms. La Monda are "in it for the long haul, until retirement," said Mr. Weyerbacher this week.

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes are "delighted," he said, that the store could be kept in the family. It was 30 years ago that the couple, both of whom were born in East Hampton, were beckoned back from a short move to Virginia by the news that the store was for sale.

They bought the business and Frank Saskas, Mrs. Barnes's father, bought the land next door, to run a Mobil service station.

As part of The Star's ongoing series on real estate, each week will include a brief look at the market in a particular hamlet. We start with Springs.

There is a strong sale market in every area of Springs, according to Melanie Ross, president of Cook Pony Farm Real Estate.

Though prices in the hamlet have "historically been on the low end," she said they were beginning to move into line with prices elsewhere in town. She noted that affordability coupled with lots of waterfront brings buyers - both second-home and year-rounders - to the hamlet.

Reginald Cornelia, a broker with Blue Bay Realty in Amagansett, said he had "quite a few" Springs houses in contract. "I'm not saying it's a seller's market, but if you price your house reasonably, you'll find a buyer," he said.

"People are beginning to realize there are some very good buys in Springs," and that the beautiful parts of the area insure that they will get a lot of bang for their buck, said Mickey Dion, a broker at the Amaden Gay Agency in East Hampton. School taxes on the high side don't seem to be a deterrent, several brokers said.

Rentals Sluggish

"For anybody who wants to be on the water, it's the best buy around," Ms. Dion said, adding that Clearwater Beach and Lion Head, with their private marinas, Gerard Park, and areas near Three Mile Harbor such as Briarcroft Drive seem to top many a seeker's list. Ms. Ross added Louse Point to the list.

As in other parts of town, Springs summer rentals had been "sluggish," Ms. Ross and Mr. Cornelia agreed, though both expect them to catch up before Memorial Day. Ms. Dion said Springs's secret attractions were country stores, bay beaches, and tennis courts.

There is plenty of land left to build on in Springs, said Ms. Ross, from a lot just under a half-acre listed at $45,000 to 2.9 waterfront acres for $395,000, with builders attracted to low-end parcels on which to put up houses on speculation.

Though large areas of Springs have been subdivided into relatively tiny lots on old subdivision maps, large tracts around Accabonac Harbor have been preserved. Other areas, such as the 165-acre Jacob Farm, between Neck Path and Accabonac and Red Dirt Roads, have been eyed for some type of preservation. The Town Open Space Plan recommends that it be used for a clustered subdivision, with more preserved areas than usual.

Young Settlers

The market for houses priced between $150,000 and $200,000 has picked up, said Ms. Dion, with the "younger contingency" of year-rounders looking in Springs to settle. "It's not the busiest part of town," said Don Sharkey, a town building inspector who heads to Springs once a week. Mr. Sharkey, who checks on renovations and new construction, said Springs seemed to have less construction going on than Montauk, Wainscott, and Northwest.

According to the department's records, in the first quarter of this year, nine building permits were issued for new houses Springs.

Another indicator of the community's growth, the Springs School, has seen its population of approximately 550 kindergarteners through eighth-graders remain steady over the last year or so.

According to a Board of Cooperative Educational Services enrollment projection prepared for the school, which looked at real estate and population trends, it can expect to see a slow but steady increase in students over the next few years, with a total of 600 or so in 2006, with the bulk of new students entering the primary grades.

Playing as if possessed, the Montauk Rugby Club so dominated six-time Northeast-Regional Champion Burlington (Vt.) in the regional Division II final in Uniondale on Sunday that even the local side's players were somewhat awed by the 52-19 score.

"This is the biggest win we've ever had in the history of the club . . . by far," said Frank Bistrian, Montauk's number-eight man. "Everybody played up to or or beyond their potential. Today, there were no weak links."

Bistrian recalled having said to Rob Balnis, the fly half, who had come up for the game from Frostburg State in Maryland, that the final would probably go down to the last minute.

"I said that based on what we'd seen the day before, when Burlington (a national Final Four finisher last year) won a tough game with Monmouth (N.J.). Burlington wound up winning 23-11 - they scored a try in the last minute. For most of the game, the lead was around five or seven."

Fly Half Rattled

"We all thought we would be in for a tough game - and we were," he continued. "But our game plan worked. We rattled their fly half, who had kept them in the Monmouth game with his kicking. We ran at him out of the lineouts and, defensively, we stuck him whenever he got the ball. Pretty soon, he didn't want any part of it."

Montauk's eight tries (rugby's equivalent to touchdowns) resulted from the open-field play of its fierce forwards, from whose rucks or mauls Tom Piacentine, the scrum half, would play the ball out, either to fellow forwards if Montauk was knocking on the door, or to its fleet backs if the ball was at or near midfield.

Walker Too

Simi Lui, a stocky Tongan wing forward who joined the club recently - much to the team members' delight - broke the ice with a try in the ninth minute, taking the ball from Piacentine, who had formed a ruck within 10 yards of Burlington's try zone. Lui's fellow wing forward Brendan McGorisk's conversion kick was good for a 7-0 lead.

Another forward, Dennis Walker, who plays in the second row, made it 12-0 six minutes later, finishing off a surge that had begun about 20 yards out with an exchange between Balnis and Kevin Bunce, the inside center, who repeatedly leveled opposing backs in the first half with jarring hits.

McGorisk's point-after attempt again was good, and Montauk was on its way.

By halftime, the locals had built up an insurmountable 26-12 lead as the result of a second try by Lui and one, just before the half ended, by Bunce. Burlington had only been able to put

up points via the fly half Steve Jurkovich's penalty kicks.

"Keep Concentrating"

"We only had one try scored on us all weekend," Bistrian said later, noting that in Saturday's semifinal Montauk had blown out Finger Lakes 69-0 (10 tries, eight conversion kicks, and a penalty kick accounted for the massive total).

By the time that try, by Burlington's inside center, Mark Civil, was scored, midway through the second half, the side from the Granite State had long been left in the dust.

During the five-minute halftime break, Paul Cleary, the hooker, who with Kevin Bunce captains the team, told his teammates not to slack off.

"The only way they can beat us is if we keep giving them penalties," said Cleary. "Keep concentrating. Keep the intensity up for the next 40 minutes. We're rattling the hell out of them."

After-Burners

And indeed Montauk continued to do so in the second half. Michael Bunce, Kevin's brother, the loose head prop forward, continued the scoring string with a try from in close seven minutes into the final frame, taking a lateral from Piacentine, and bulling his way into the try zone over a pile of bodies.

Cleary followed suit 16 minutes into the half, tapping the ball down on the mark following a penalty within the 10-yard line, and sprinting unmolested into the try zone for a 38-12 lead.

Burlington replied soon after with its only successful drive of the day, but Montauk then turned on the after-burners. In the last eight minutes, Bistrian combined with Mauricio Castillo and John Peele on dazzling 40-or-so-yard scoring scampers, the latter of which began with a maul spearheaded by Chris Carney, a winger that day.

"A Little Revolution. . ."

If further evidence was needed that Montauk was the hungrier of the two sides, it was provided by the fact that only one player was persuaded to come out of the game because of injury.

Tom Hand (shoulder), Walker (wrist), Cleary (knee), and Piacentine (neck) were all downed for substantial periods, during which the clock stopped, but only Piacentine, the side's eldest competitor at 39, had to come off, near the end of the game, after having been dazed by a blow to the windpipe for which Burlington was penalized.

"He's okay," Bistrian said Monday. "It was a physical game, but we're all healthy."

Douglas Shimel, Burlington's captain and one of its prop forwards, said in accepting the runner-up trophy, "It's said a little revolution every now and then is a good thing. So, I guess," he said with a smile, "we'll see you in San Diego and kick your asses then."

Off To Dallas

Presumably very few who had just witnessed Montauk's historic win, avenging a 28-23 loss to the Vermonters in this contest last year, were inclined to agree with him.

Charlie Whitmore, who founded the Montauk Rugby Club in 1973, and who is its president, accepted the Northeast regional trophy - the first such the locals have won in the club's 24-year history. Brandishing it aloft, to cheers, he said, "It's a tremendous pleasure watching you guys play. I hope I can come here every year and do this!"

Because it is the Northeast champion, Montauk apparently will be seeded fifth among the remaining 16 sides in the national Division II tournament. The side is to play next in a four-team tourney in Dallas, Tex., over the May 17-18 weekend. Other Sweet 16 brackets are being played in Chicago, Denver, and the West Coast.

Final Four?

"We'll be seeded first in Dallas - that's why this game was so important to us," said Bistrian. "If we win both games there, we'll play in the Final Four in San Diego over the May 31-June 1 weekend."

Meanwhile, to keep itself tuned up, Montauk is to play Old Blue, a powerful Division I side, at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx on Saturday afternoon, and it will play in the Long Island Rugby Club's tournament at Eisenhower Park, near the Nassau Coliseum, on May 10.