A raging blaze totally destroyed the oceanfront house of the television personality Dick Cavett and his wife, Carrie Nye, an actress, on Tuesday afternoon. The loss was not only a personal tragedy but one mourned by the entire community because of the historic and architectural significance of the stately residence.

Once called "Tick Hall," the structure was one of seven so-called Association Houses on the Montauk bluffs designed by Stanford White before the turn of the century and later designated national landmarks. Mr. Cavett was nearing completion of an extensive renovation at the time of the fire.

Firefighters worked frantically but unsuccessfully to gain control of the flames, which consumed the two-and-a-half-story, wood-framed house, leav ing just a tall stone chimney looming over the burning debris. A huge funnel of smoke could be seen from as far away as Amagansett.

Devastated By News

Mr. Cavett and Ms. Nye, who split their time between Montauk and Manhattan, were not at home at the time of the fire. But they had been there just the previous day. Gregory Donohue, the caretaker, was able to reach them at their apartment in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon. He said they were "devastated" by the news.

"Mr. Cavett said he could not imagine looking up at that hill and not seeing Tick Hall sitting up there," Mr. Donohue told The Star.

Mr. Cavett and Ms. Nye have lived in the house since 1968. Ms. Nye owns the neighboring house, named DeForest Cottage, which is west of the burnt structure. That property is frequently rented out during the summer. The two houses are connected by a winding, wooded path.

Renovation Work

Workers involved in the renovation project had just quit for lunch before the fire began. According to Mr. Donohue, they had been installing lead flashing around a flat roof with a blow torch and using an electric tool with an extension cord.

East Hampton Town Fire Marshal David DiSunno said he was aware of the construction but stressed yesterday that the official cause of the fire had not been determined.

An automatic fire alarm alerted S.C.A.N. Security of the fire at 12:23 p.m. Dennis Snyder, Montauk Fire Department's second assistant chief, was first on the scene and found the house completely engulfed in flames.

Three fire engines, a power ladder, and two tankers responded from the Montauk Fire Department. Additional tankers from East Hampton, Amagansett, and Springs Fire Departments were called in for help. Emergency medical technicians and two ambulances were also on hand in case they were needed.

Access Problems

The firefighters' work was hindered by the isolated location of the house on DeForest Road. Access was through a quarter mile of winding dirt road. The nearest fire hydrant was half a mile away. Montauk Fire Chief Tom Grenci said the firefighters were able to lay down a five-inch hose and use portable hydrants.

Hot burning embers ignited several small brush fires in the wooded area surrounding the house. Firefighters carrying portable squirt cans continuously scanned the site and extinguished them as they began.

Explosions could be heard within the house as huge billowing blasts of flames shot out of the crumbling structure. The intense heat cracked a window of a Montauk Fire Department pumper parked nearby and melted part of the truck's vinyl seat. Chris Carillo, a Montauk fireman, suffered heat exhaustion and was taken to Dr. Gavino Mapula's office for treatment.

Radio Dispute

When Mr. Donohue, the caretaker, arrived on the scene of the fire, his first words were, "Mr. Cavett does not need this right now." He may have been referring to Mr. Cavett's recent widely reported bout of manic depression and the lawsuit that has followed.

In January, Mr. Cavett quit his nationally syndicated radio talk show. He said he couldn't continue because he was suffering from manic depression, an illness that has haunted him throughout his life. In a Newsday article in 1992 Mr. Cavett mentioned the antidepressant medication he was taking.

The Associated Press reported last week that Mr. Cavett was being sued for $35 million by James Moskovitz, the producer of the radio show. Mr. Moskovitz said he spent more than a year and $650,000 to get the show on the air. The three-hour weekday program had its debut on Jan. 6. Mr. Cavett, who signed a two-year, $500,000-a-year contract, last appeared on Jan. 20.

Ready To Work

Mr. Cavett's lawyer, Melvyn Leventhal, said Mr. Cavett would be ready to return to work in about a week. But Mr. Moskovitz has reportedly said he doesn't want him back. The damage has been done, he said.

When the fire was finally extinguished, about two hours after it had begun, Mr. Donohue walked around helplessly trying to salvage anything. He said the house contained precious antiques and Indian relics collected by Mr. Cavett. Before he was chased from the scene by a fire marshal, he was able to find the charred brass bell that had hung under a copper cupola in the watch tower. It was all he found.

The bell tower that stood on the southwestern corner of the veranda was removed by firefighters before it was engulfed by flames. It was the only part of the house to be salvaged.

Among the many distinctive aspects of the structure was an anchor placed atop the chimney by a yacht captain employed by a previous owner, Harrison Tweed. By Tuesday afternoon, the chimney and its anchor were all that remained of the historic residence.

Willem de Kooning, widely considered the greatest American painter of the postwar era, is dead at the age of 92. The giant of Abstract Expressionism died at his Springs studio at 5:30 yesterday morning from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

De Kooning had lived full time in Springs since 1963. While many other prominent artists have lived and worked on the East End, few have been so immersed in the place, or so profoundly affected by it.

Together with Jackson Pollock, de Kooning was the pre-eminent figure of Abstract Expressionism, the first art movement in the United States to advance beyond European examples and the first to influence art in Europe. Other first-generation members of what is also known as the New York School include, among others, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, James Brooks, Lee Krasner, and, more loosely, Hans Hofmann and Arshile Gorky.

W.P.A. Shaped Career

The artist was born in Rotterdam, Holland, and received a classical art education at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Art. In 1926, when he was 22, he jumped ship illegally in America and found work as a house painter. A turning point came in 1935 when he joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, where he met many other artists.

It was his work with the W.P.A., and the encouragement of the painters John Graham, Stuart Davis, and, in particular, his close friend Gorky, that led to his becoming a full-time artist. His subject matter was the figure and landscape, both of which he explored in varying degrees of abstraction.

De Kooning met his wife, the painter Elaine Fried, in 1938 and married her five years later. It was an unconventional marriage from the start. Both were driven by art, both were heavy drinkers, and both pursued other romances. At one point de Kooning said to her, "We live like a couple of bachelors. What we need is a wife."

Artist's Milieu

Their early life together was characterized by the camaraderie of an artist's milieu in Greenwich Village coupled with extreme poverty. De Kooning did not officially sell a painting until 1943 and he was 44 years old before he had his first solo show in 1948.

He was one of the founders of the Club, the informal association of New York artists that met from 1949 through the late '50s for discussion and socializing, and among the first artists to convert a downtown industrial loft into a studio.

After meeting his wife, de Kooning started to paint large gestural portraits of women, edging gradually toward what he described as the "melodrama of vulgarity" of his famous "Woman" paintings.

No Pretensions

While he was as knowledgeable about the history of art as any American artist in this century, he was drawn to what the art critic Thomas Hess called the "concept of the American banal," always asserting the commonplace view of things over intellectual, social, or political pretensions.

He was a harsh critic of his own work, destroying more paintings than he kept. Many were saved, according to his wife, only because someone bought them straight off the easel.

He initiated works by taking images already available, things seen from the corner of the eye or flashing past on a billboard or studied in a museum, and then worked on the images, transforming them again and again. For example, he worked on "Woman I" for two years, according to Mr. Hess, scraping down and repainting the surface "at least 50" times.

De Kooning described himself as a "slipping glimpser," an odd phrase but one extremely evocative of how the artist experienced things - quickly, spontaneously, obliquely, while off-balance.

In the late '40s, the artist painted a series of predominantly black paintings which were shown at the Samuel Kootz Gallery in a show called "Black and White," along with work by Motherwell, Hofmann, Gottlieb, Mark Tobey, and William Baziotes.

At his first solo show, at the Charles Egan Gallery, he did not sell anything, but the exhibit got a lot of press attention and one painting, "Mailbox," was chosen for the Whitney Annual. Prompted by the reviews - the eminent critic Clement Greenberg had called de Kooning "one of the four or five most important painters in this country" - Josef Albers asked the artist to teach at Black Mountain College.

The "Woman" paintings that dated from just after his return from Black Mountain were shown by Leo Castelli in the famous Ninth Street Show in 1950 and at the Sidney Janis Gallery. But they received their first major public viewing, and caused a critical uproar, at his third solo show in March 1953, also at Sidney Janis.

Of that show James Fitzsimmons wrote that de Kooning painted "in a fury of lust and hatred," in "bloody hand-to-hand combat." Others accused him of misogyny and referred to the woman portrayed as predatory and rapacious, a harridan, a frightening goddess, an evil muse. While Harold Rosenberg remained his staunchest defender, Mr. Greenberg turned against him.

Debate has continued over the years but was eventually summed up by Carter Ratcliff: "We can argue forever about the nature of de Kooning's message. To claim to know precisely what he expresses is to reveal one's needs and fears, not his."

By the mid-'50s, de Kooning had both critical acclaim and financial reward, as well as the kind of fame that would eventually drive him to leave Manhattan for good.

"I have no need to be celebrated," he said to Mr. Rosenberg, "to shake hands with a lot of people. In the end it's just your friends and your work that count." (When he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 he asked in bemusement, "What on earth have I done for freedom?")

He and Elaine de Kooning separated, and in 1957 she left New York to teach in New Mexico. They lived apart for 20 years until she returned in the 1970s to help him fight alcoholism and to enter a new and productive phase of painting.

Meanwhile, de Kooning was spending more and more time on the East End. He had bought a house on Accabonac Road, and when he was in the country he lived there with Joan Ward, who in 1956 gave birth to his only child, Lisa.

Perhaps in response to the pressure of being an art-world phenomenon, the painter moved full time to Springs in 1963 and built a large new house and studio, which he designed himself, on Woodbine Drive. He started painting there the following year, but did not move in for some years, instead bicycling home each evening to the small house on Accabonac Road. He never learned to drive.

The move had a profound effect on de Kooning's art. "Actually I've fallen in love with nature," he said in an interview. "I don't know the names of the trees, but I see things in nature very well. I've got a good eye for them, and they look back at me."

He went to Manhattan less and less often. Once his studio was finished exactly as he wished, he entered upon a productive period of painting that included a renewed examination of the "Woman" theme.

David Sylvester, an English art historian and curator who writes of de Kooning as the supreme painterly painter of the human figure since Picasso, calls 1977, no less than the groundbreaking years of the late '40s, the annus mirabilis of de Kooning's career.

The artist was in his mid-70s and creating both sculpture and a series of transcendental, loosely painted works that teem with energy and belong, says Mr. Sylvester, with the powerful canvases painted by Monet, Bonnard, Renoir, and Titian at the same age.

"I made those paintings one after the other, no trouble at all," de Kooning told the art writer Sam Hunter in 1975. "I couldn't miss. It's a nice feeling. It's strange. It's like a man at a gambling table [who] feels that he can't lose. But when he walks away with all the dough, he knows he can't do that again. Because then it gets self-conscious. I wasn't self-conscious. I just did it."

But the decade also saw its share of violent alcoholic episodes and, by the end, the first signs of Alzheimer's. By the beginning of the '90s de Kooning had stopped painting and needed round-the-clock caretakers. Much of the artist's work dating from the onset of disability until it finally consumed him can be seen in the current show at the Museum of Modern Art.

The show seems to have put critics on the spot, unable to agree whether the simple, pared-down paintings in primary colors, which retain a formal cohesion, show an intellectual decline or merely a release from the violent demons of the artist's youth.

What is in no doubt at all is de Kooning's place in history. In November 1996, "Woman," painted in 1949, was sold at auction for $15.6 million. It was the highest auction price of the year and the third highest price ever paid for a contemporary painting.

Major exhibits of de Kooning's work include those held at the Guggenheim in 1978, a retrospective at the Whitney in 1983 that traveled to Berlin and Paris, and shows that marked his 90th year at the National Gallery and the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, both of which traveled internationally.

Commenting on de Kooning's truly extraordinary career, Robert Storr, who curated the current show at MoMA, drew attention in particular to the continuity of the artist's personality in his work, even in the last sad years, and said of his death:

"All artists have a set of people leaning over their shoulders, either living or ghosts. But nonetheless it's disconcerting when a living presence becomes a historical figure. You're never ready for it."

In addition to his daughter, Liesbeth de Kooning Villeneauve, and her mother, Joan Ward, the artist is survived by three grandchildren, Isabel, Emma, and Lucienne.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday at St. Luke's Church in East Hampton.

Granny Poo's, an annual guide to restaurants on the North and South Forks, is slated to be sold to a Manhattan resident, Emmy Neidick. She plans to distribute it not just in the metropolitan area but around the country, she told The Star this week.

Renee Schilhab, a former reporter for The Southampton Press and the wife of former East Hampton Town Supervisor Tony Bullock, owned and published Granny Poo's for the past two years.

"I'm sad to be giving it up," Ms. Schilhab said this week. Granny Poo's was "a lot of fun."

Ms. Neidick, who owned a house in Noyac some years ago, has both writing and food in her background. Her mother was a caterer in Montreal and her grandmother a baker there. She has worked for corporations in human resources.

Ingredients

The freshness and quality of ingredients will be a focus of Granny Poo's reviews, said Ms. Neidick, who used to work at Manhattan's Union Square green market in the late '70s. "Everything has to do with ingredients, and where they're from," she said.

Ms. Neidick noticed Ms. Schilhab's offering to sell the publication in The New York Times. She had recently been downsized, she said, was looking for something new to do, and was intrigued.

She will follow "the same basic philosophy" as Ms. Schilhab in her approach to Granny Poo's, she said. The biggest change will be in broadening distribution.

Farther Afield

In addition to the East End and New York City, the publication will be available in places where people who live on the East End in the summer might spend their winters, including Florida's east coast from Palm Beach south to Key West, Scottsdale, Ariz., Albuquerque, N.M., and Boulder, Colo.

It will be distributed by Bookazine, which is based on the East Coast.

Writing the reviews will be Ms. Neidick, many members of Ms. Schilhab's staff, and some new faces. This year's edition of Granny Poo's will be available locally by Memorial Day, and in other areas by January 1998.

House, Too

The publication, by the way, isn't the only thing Ms. Schilhab has sold.

The Amagansett house where she and her husband lived has also been sold. The couple has just bought a house in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., where Mr. Bullock is working as chief of staff for Senator Daniel P. Moynihan.

Some have suggested Ms. Schilhab write a restaurant guide to the Washington area, which she said is a "possibility." For now, however, she hopes to return to newspaper reporting.

Joe Pintauro dramatized the vanishing world of the East End's haulseine fishermen when he brought "Men's Lives" to the stage of the Bay Street Theatre. The Sag Harbor playwright's new play, "Heaven and Earth," which will be staged at the theater during the month of August, was inspired by another threatened Long Island community: the farmers of the North Fork.

The play, based on Steve Wick's nonfiction book of the same name, is about an East End very different from the one most people come in contact with.

It is about the farmers who sell flowers and apples, zucchini and melons at small farmstands and who still farm the same acres as their forebears, right back to the first settlers.

Three Cultures

"It's also about the extraordinary circumstances of farming on land whose boundaries are marked by water on three sides," said Mr. Pintauro, "and how the arrival of different groups of European settlers have played out in our present culture."

The English were the first, farming on land previously cleared by the Shinnecock and other Native American tribes. Then came the Irish, who didn't mix with the English because of religious differences, and the Poles, who didn't mix because of language differences.

The three European cultures grew into the North Fork farming community.

The Vanishing Farmer

"Today," said Mr. Pintauro, "the stresses of time, technology, and the limitations of the land have combined to construct a family drama."

Though the play is about the North Fork, it is also about America, he said, and even the world as a whole, as large-scale technological farming drives the small farmer off land cultivated for centuries in more or less the same manner.

And the disappearance of the small farmer raises bigger questions, said Mr. Pintauro:

"What is the soil? Who are we? What have we done to interfere with the relationship of man and the earth?"

Comden And Green

"Heaven and Earth" will be Bay Street's main theatrical offering of the summer.

It is only one of three major attractions, however. Coming up in May is the world premiere of "Make Someone Happy," a musical comedy celebrating the lives and lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, longtime East End residents and songwriting partners.

The musical will feature the lyrics of Mr. Green and Ms. Comden and music by Leonard Bernstein, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne, Roger Edens, and Larry Grossman.

Phyllis Newman, who wrote the book with David Ives, is the director.

Laurents's "Good Name"

The other major production, also a world premiere, is Arthur Laurents's "savage high comedy" about greed, identity, and family honor, "My Good Name." The play, by the author of "Gypsy," "West Side Story," and "The Way We Were," will run from June 25 through July 20.

Bay Street's season will open on April 5 with a performance by the Shanghai Quartet, a celebrated young ensemble whose program will include Haydn's Quartet in G major and Schubert's "Death and the Maiden."

The cabaret singer Phillip Officer will return to the theater on April 12 and the following weekend, April 19, Susannah McCorkle, a jazz-pop singer, will perform. The theater's spring weekend series will conclude on April 26 with "Julie," an evening of comedy and song with Julie Halston.

Conversations

The theater has a starry lineup planned for its August "Conversations With. . ." series.

Promised for these informal discussions are such big names of the stage and screen as Anthony Hopkins, Lauren Bacall, Roddy McDowall, Terrence McNally, and Jon Robin Baitz, all subject to confirmation.

Bay Street will also continue its series of Sunday-morning play readings, starting on April 27. The season will end with a fall cabaret series.

Walter Hinds, the new chef at Southampton's 75 Main, has a mission. He wants to put a dent in the East End culinary scene. If enthusiasm has anything to do with impact, he will.

"Cooking is my passion. It's what I want to do more than anything else in the world. I love it, daily."

Mr. Hinds's dedication to his art is obvious (his eyes literally sparkle when he gets talking about food), and so, too, is his enjoyment of what he does. "It should be all about having fun," he said, admitting he is "obsessed" when it comes to quality.

"I really want it to happen." By "it" he means the achievement of excellence in cuisine, service, wine, and ambiance - in short, being one of the best of the best on the East End.

He has been at the restaurant a month and a half, and feels he's found a team, including the owner, June Spirer, that shares his understanding of food and his aspirations. "That's why I'm here," he said last week.

The Port Jefferson-born chef is a newcomer to 75 Main, but no stranger to the East End. He has lived in Southampton off and on for eight years and spent a year and half of that time working at Karen Lee's in Bridgehampton under its chef and co-owner, Robert Durkin.

Trained at the Peter Kump School in Manhattan, Mr. Hinds worked at some of the city's better-known restaurants - the Gotham Bar and Grill under Alfred Portale, Sign of the Dove with Andrew D'Amico, Odeon under Patrick Clark, and Match Uptown as executive chef - before heading east.

Like any lifelong gastronome, he grew up surrounded by good cooks. "My mom had an immense cookbook collection . . . and my grandfather, I renamed him 'the Cooking Man.' " His parents were from Panama, so he was introduced to more than average American fare in his formative years.

Now, fresh from four months in Paris, where he worked at Lucas Carton with the world-renowned chef Alain Senderens, Mr. Hinds brings contemporary French techniques and principles of cooking along with a love of Asian ingredients to his new culinary home.

Vegetables figure prominently in his dishes. He cooks with a vast variety of spices, and his sauces are based not on cream and butter but on fruit and vegetable juices, broths, bouillons, and oils.

While he appreciates the level of excellence inherent in fine French cooking, he is inspired by the lightness of Asian cuisines and looks to Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cantonese, Mongolian, and Szechuan food for inspiration.

The recrafted 75 Main menu has hints of this - a seared-tuna appetizer with stir-fried Asian greens and crisp rice noodles, for example - but, said Mr. Hinds with a slightly mischievous grin, "It's not as fierce as I want it to be."

His creative flair will be more evident on the spring menu. "I love to play. That's where my spirit is, and spring is my favorite season to play."

Among the Asian-inspired dishes, diners can expect at least one entree influenced by the foods of the chef's childhood: roasted chicken with black beans, coconut rice, and sweet plantains.

Walter Hinds's Warm Chocolate Torte

Ingredients:

5 oz. unsalted butter

1 lb. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6 egg yolks

7 Tbsp. sugar

6 egg whites

11/2 Tbsp. sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter with the chocolate. Let cool. Whip the egg yolks with the seven tablespoons of sugar, then fold into the chocolate. Whip the egg whites with the remaining one-and-a-half tablespoons of sugar into stiff peaks. Fold into the chocolate mixture.

Lightly spray eight six-ounce cake molds with a non-stick spray. Fill each mold three-quarters of the way. Put them on a sheet pan and place in the center of the oven.

Bake for about 15 minutes. The finished product should be slightly underdone in the center. Serve warm.

Serves eight.

Anita Brown was bored in the winter of 1989. She had appeared Off Broadway and in television and regional theater, and had long been working with the Double Image Theater in New York City. She and her husband, Bill, commuted most weekends out to Montauk, where he spent most of the time designing their garden near Hither Woods.

With Mrs. Brown's background in acting and directing, it didn't take long to figure how to fill her time while he planted. Also the longtime director of the the children's program at the New Brunswick Educational Theater, she started up some improvisational workshops in the basement of the Montauk Community Church.

She found her charges by sending flyers home with students at the Montauk School, whose holiday pageants were the only theatrical performances in town at the time.

Evolving Company

Next she went after the children's parents and grandparents, creating a pool of local talent as well as a captive audience for children's recitals, holiday productions, cabarets and variety shows - and a theater company known as Theatre in Montauk.

The group continued to evolve into what is now known as Montauk Theatre Productions, along the way picking up Mr. Brown, a member and former chairman of the Caravan Theatre Company, as a co-founder. In 1993 M.T.P. moved into its own storefront on South Elmwood Avenue in downtown Montauk, and in 1995, when adjacent space became available, expanded to include a separate dance studio.

Today, the group gives playwrights a venue for screening new works in a weekly summer series. Last summer Will Eno, a fellow at the Edward Albee Foundation, prescreened "A Tragedy" - to a "wonderful" re sponse, according to the Browns, who since then have become the producers of the play, which they have submitted for major festivals in New York and Washington.

Community Theater

"Half and Half," a one-woman comedy-drama written and performed by the British comedienne Alison Larkin, was contracted by HBO after Ms. Larkin performed it at the studio last summer, and she is working on a pilot.

Meanwhile, M.T.P.'s year-round performers range from locals to big-city professionals. Smaller productions are held at the studio, which seats an audience no larger than 45, while the Community Church is still used for larger productions.

"Community" theater is probably an apt description. One variety show regular is Frank Borth of Montauk, who performs humorous renditions of such classical tales as " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas." Another year-rounder, Ed Ecker Sr., can be counted on to begin each Christmas show with a carol that conveniently omits the traditional lyrics. And Claire Mayer invariably gets a laugh when she smiles with blackened teeth.

"Enormous Talent"

Montauk Theatre Productions is involved in community projects, also, giving puppet shows and other performances for the Montauk Library and the Chamber of Commerce Fall Festival, for instance, and leading role-playing sessions

Meanwhile, the dance studio next door seems to thrive under the tutelage of Mary Ponsini, its director. It has over 80 participants and a total of 22 weekly classes, Mrs. Brown said, with classes for everyone from toddlers to senior citizens.

Dance Studio

Ms. Ponsini used to give workshops for at-risk children from the Young People's Alternative Program in Brooklyn, and this spring teenagers from the Montauk dance studio will visit the Brooklyn School and participate in an exchange program, with the Brooklyn students visiting Montauk over five days this summer.

She also travels weekly to Shelter Island to teach a tap class in conjunction with the continuing education program at the Shelter Island School.

"We don't want to tell anyone they can't come to dance," said Ms. Ponsini, and to that end the dance studio offers a recently established scholarship program for its students.

"There is an enormous amount of talent in Montauk," Mrs. Brown said. "Seeing that talent developed is thrilling."

"Dewey Defeats Truman" is the intriguing title of Thomas Mallon's latest novel. The author will read from his book at Book Hampton in East Hampton on Saturday at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. Mallon has appropriated the story of President Harry S. Truman's upset victory over Thomas E. Dew ey, the Governor of New York State, in the 1948 Presidential election (and the famous headline run by an overconfident newspaper that went to press before the final results were in) to build a Midwestern fantasy.

Set in Dewey's Michigan hometown of Owosso, "Dewey Defeats Truman" is the story of a local love triangle that mirrors the national election contest. Three generations of Owosso residents are followed, each with his or her own secrets and dreams.

Mr. Mallon is the author of eight previous books, including two, "Henry and Clara," a novel, and "A Book of One's Own," a study of diaries, that were New York Times Book Review "notable books of the year."

The next author to read at Book Hampton will be Daniel Silva, author of the best-selling "The Unlikely Spy," on March 29.

The Star is always pleased to receive correspondence from readers, but, as most are aware, it does not print anonymous letters, even those that are not of a scurrilous nature. This has been our policy for many years.

Now, with the advent of E-mail, and its increasing use as a supplement to or even substitute for conventional postal correspondence, we are faced with a dilemma. E-mailed letters often bear no indication of their author or origin other than an alias, to wit BLUBOY4 or SBSNY.

That may be fine in cyberspace, but it is not so fine for The Star's letters pages. This week, for example, a letter arrived by E-mail inquiring why no police news appears on our Website (http://www.easthamptonstar.com). A legitimate question, but, alas, one that cannot be answered unless and until we can verify the identity of the asker. Mail is mail is mail, and the rule ought not to be waived just because it originates in Cyberia.

Sharp-eyed readers who turn this page over will note a new line in the instructions to letter-writers. It says:

Unsigned E-mail will be treated as anonymous.

Aware of how rents for retail space here have escalated, the Long Island Rail Road saw dollar signs when it decided to close several ticket offices on the South Fork.

The demise of these railroad stations reminds us of those erstwhile potato fields that became too valuable as housing to farm. Unlike farmers, however, who could point to an erratic wholesale market for their produce and high property taxes as reasons for selling their land, the L.I.R.R. and its parent agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, are supposed to be in the business of public tranportation.

We support East Hampton Village's effort to take over the railroad station here, even if the village has to pay the L.I.R.R. to do so. This is a purchase or lease the village should pursue if a fair price can be agreed upon.

Given its location, the most logical use of the East Hampton station would be as a tourist information office.

We see the station's becoming a central clearinghouse where local organizations would offer brochures and exhibits for the benefit of visitors. For example:

The Chamber of Commerce could provide information on accommodations, restaurants, and activities.

East Hampton Town and Village could explain their regulations on the beaches, on parking in shopping districts, on recycling, and the like. The Town Natural Resources Department could offer booklets on wetlands and other habitats and why we preserve them.

The South Fork Natural History Society, Group for the South Fork, and East Hampton Trails Preservation Society could offer trails maps, guidance about ticks, and listings of their walks and other activities and also mount nature exhibits.

The East Hampton Historical Society could have a standing exhibit on local history and supply information about its tours and events.

Guild Hall, Bay Street Theatre, and other cultural organizations could promote their events, and information on the numerous benefits held here could be posted.

And, last but not least, the Ladies Village Improvement Society could describe its efforts in keeping the village beautiful and could promote its fund-raising activities.

As a bonus, railroad passengers could continue to use the space as a waiting room in cold or rainy weather.

Such a plan would require that some entity, perhaps the village or Chamber, take responsibility as coordinator and overseer. We also would hope the L.V.I.S. and East Hampton Garden Club would continue their excellent work with plantings and maintaining the station's grounds.

Putting the station to this use would be a public service of value to residents and visitors alike - unlike yet another boutique.

"Everybody likes the number seven . . . it has a mystique that cuts across culture and time," begins a chapter in "The Romance of Numbers."

The latest seven, locally speaking, was rung up at the Glens Falls Civic Center over the weekend as the Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team, the Killer Bees, won the tiny school's seventh state championship since 1978. Their record leaves the runner-up, Mount Vernon, dragging behind with a mere four state titles.

Coached by Carl Johnson - the only coach in the state to have played for and to have coached a state-championship team - the Bees earned their victory in the patented Bee style, with a swarming bee-fense and a marauding offense that yielded, by wide margins, victory honey in the semifinal with Notre Dame of Batavia Friday afternoon, and in the final Saturday night with Hammond.

It's the second year in a row that Johnson's Bees have won the state title. Last year's was the first trip upstate in a decade for the school, whose male enrollment in grades nine through 12 numbers 25. Even for such a fabled school, success is by no means automatic; it comes, as Johnson and the Bees know, from hard work. From talent, to be sure, but talent shaped into a smoothly working team. "Killer Bees" is a fitting appellation: They'll press till you pant. They'll sting you with steals, bee-devil you on the boards. In short, they'll outwork you at both ends of the court.

We are reminded, in this connection, of what Sidney Green, Southampton College's former men's basketball coach, said recently: "You must be willing to pay the price. . . . If you're a player, are you the last one to leave the gym? Are you the first one to arrive? In the summertime, do you practice on improving your skills in the gym, or do you hang out, instead, at the beach? If we all were like that, we'd all be all-Americans."

The Bees have learned the lesson. All they need to do after graduation is remember to remember.

It was in 1984 that this space first suggested a new gym for the state's most storied team. The tiny "beehive," as Bridgehampton's gym is called, is far too small to hold playoff games in. And, as players increase in size and speed, the padded stage at one end and the padded wall at the other present real dangers in league competition. At the least, as one fan has suggested, the stage could be removed to provide more playing room. The optimum, however, would be to build a new gym. The school and the Killer Bees deserve no less.