The Swamp, the night club in Wainscott, may be in a bog over several structures built onto it and the adjoining Annex restaurant.

The owners of the complex have added a new deck, a dumbwaiter, and a shed roof overhang without approval from the town. The additions could add new parking requirements to the complex's already inadequate parking lot.

A site plan application for the structures was submitted to the East Hampton Town Planning Board in July, but was never followed through. The additions were.

The Planning Board decided to take the matter into its own hands last week and put the application back on the agenda.

"We should really send the applicant a letter saying, 'You haven't done anything yet. Let's get going here and clean up your act,'" said Jim Mangano, the board's Wainscott liaison. Treating the application as if it were for structures not yet built, the Town Planning Department offered its comments on the proposal.

A second-story deck, planners said, depending on the use, could increase the club's seating capacity, and thus require more parking. The dumbwaiter enclosure, meanwhile, juts out into the parking lot, possibly eliminating a space or aisle width.

The lot only contains about 45 to 50 legal parking spaces. When the Annex was approved in 1978, the Planning Board required 72 spaces. Cars regularly spill out along Montauk Highway on summer weekends.

The Planning Board agreed to contact the owners and ask for a revised application.

Two longtime East Hampton insurance agencies with deep local roots, which have been doing business quietly on Main Street for decades, just as quietly joined forces earlier this year.

The Osborne Agency, which was founded by Joseph S. Osborne in 1875, and E.T. Dayton, founded in 1906, merged as Dayton & Osborne in September. However, the merger was not publicly announced until last week.

George Yates, who came to East Hampton in 1976, became partners with Ernie Clark, the owner of E.T. Dayton, in 1980, and acquired the rest of the firm when Mr. Clark retired in 1990, is the new company's president. Charles Osborne, the owner of the Osborne Agency, is its vice president.

Expanded Offerings

The new company will continue to serve its primary market, providing property and casualty insurance for homeowners and businesses, but will also expand its offerings of life and health insurance and estate planning.

"By joining together, we'll be able to work much more efficiently and expand our staff," said Mr. Yates. The firm currently has 27 employees.

Dayton and Osborne has moved into the E.T. Dayton building at 78 Main Street, which is undergoing renovation. It shares the building with Dayton-Halstead, a separate real estate company owned by Mr. Yates and Diane Saatchi.

The building once housed The East Hampton Star. During remodeling, contractors discovered a badly sagging floor in the rear of the building, where the newspaper's presses were once located.

"Enough Boutiques"

Mr. Osborne said he would rent the Osborne Agency's building at 35 Main Street, preferably to a business that will serve East Hampton's year-round community. "I think we have enough boutiques," he said.

One of the biggest problems facing property and casualty brokers in today's markets, according to Mr. Yates, is securing insurance for homeowners near the water.

"It was an exposure that was long ignored until Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992," said Mr. Yates. When claims reached the billions of dollars, insurance companies took note. "Suddenly, everybody got very interested," he said. "But it was a little like closing the barn door after the horses are out."

Times Have Changed

While today insurance companies are abandoning the market in areas that are vulnerable, Mr. Osborne said he could recall no such concern when the hurricane of 1938 devastated the area.

"That was long before the days of people being frightened by hurricanes," he said. But, at the time, he added, "most people didn't insure against hurricanes or wind, just fire and lightning."

Although insurance carriers now use computer models to analyze their risk in hurricane-prone areas, Mr. Osborne believes current restrictions will be relaxed at some point. "In time, the companies are going to recognize that Long Island isn't going to sink," he said.

Broker, Not Insurer

Unlike the Cook Agency, which recently launched its own insurance-writing wing, Mr. Yates said, "I see myself as a broker, not an insurance company."

Because both the Osborne Agency and E.T. Dayton had established "highly profitable relationships with carriers, " Mr. Yates believes the new firm will be able to meet its customers' needs.

The company represents a number of major carriers, including Hartford Insurance, Royal Insurance, Hanover Insurance, and Travelers Insurance.

Family Business

The merger brings together "two of the longest running shows on Main Street," according to Mr. Yates.

Mr. Osborne, who joined the family business "as an insurance peddler" after returning from World War II -- when his B-24 bomber was shot down over Italy, and "we had to walk home" -- concurred. Only White's Pharmacy has been around longer, he said.

The Osborne Agency was founded by Mr. Osborne's grandfather. Its original office was in a house at 135 Main Street now occupied by the law firm Osborne & McGowan.

Nelson C. Osborne, once an East Hampton Town Supervisor and Charles Osborne's father, took over the business before passing it on to his nephew, Edward M. Osborne. Charles Osborne later took over from his cousin.

Merger Of Locals

E.T. Dayton, a life insurance salesman, founded his own firm in 1906. Robert Reutershan took over the business in the 1950s. When Mr. Reutershan was killed in an auto accident in 1964, Ernest Clark bought the business.

Mr. Clark, who is now retired and spends his winters in Naples, Fla., said, "I'm glad to see the merger was able to take place. I think it will be to the benefit of both companies."

He was also happy to see a local merger. "I would have advised George against a merger with an outside firm," he said. "I knew the people I did business with, and they knew me. There was a great deal of trust between us. An outside firm probably wouldn't do business the same way."

Still Active At 74

Over the years, said Mr. Osborne, who stills works every day at age 74, the business has seen some "unbelievable" changes. "It was all done by hand," he said. Today, the firm has what Mr. Yates calls a "state-of-the art" computer network.

But Mr. Osborne, in a typically self-deprecating manner, said, "I don't know how to use the doggone things. I can look up information, but I don't know how to put anything in them."

The Christmas bird counts begin on Saturday. Veteran bird watchers who would like to volunteer for the three South Fork counts - Montauk to East Hampton, Sagaponack and Hook Ponds, and Water Mill to Quogue - can call, respectively, Hugh McGuiness at Friends World College at Southampton College, Mary Laura Lamont of Riverhead, and Barbara Scherzer of Hampton Bays.

Less experienced birders can still feel a part of the National Audubon Society counts by watching their bird feeders; that is, by counting the number and species of birds that visit during the duration of each 24-hour count.

The Group for the South Fork has scheduled an "edge of winter" walk on WHICHDAY through the newly acquired Smithers County Park in Hampton Bays. Vikki Hilles, the leader, will instruct hikers about the importance of ecological "edges."

For reservations and instructions on where to meet, hikers should call the Group at its headquarters in Bridgehampton.

The Bay Street Theatre's High School Playwrights Festival, written about elsewhere in this section, ended with performances on Saturday. The theater has announced a further involvement with East End schools - the possible creation of a master's degree program in theater arts at Southampton College.

Now under discussion, the new program would aim to prepare committed student actors, designers, producers, directors, and technicians with the knowledge and experience for a career in contemporary theater. Just how the collaboration would work has not yet been ironed out, but presumably Bay Street would lend technical support and perhaps its facilities.

In other news, Bay Street is taking reservations for a tour to London and Florence in May that will include seeing five plays in London and staying six nights there, and spending five nights at the Bernini Palace Hotel, next to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, at the time of the Maggio Musicale, the most prestigious Italian festival of the performing arts. Norman Kline can be called at the theater for more information about the tour, which will accommodate about 24 people.

Bay Street will celebrate the holidays with a cabaret performance by Mary Cleere Haran on Dec. 28 at 7 p.m. and with a gala New Year's Eve party with champagne, cabaret, a buffet dinner, and dancing. Early reservations have been recommended for this usually sold-out event.

Most Thorough Job

Sag Harbor

December 12, 1996

Dear Helen,

I just want to thank you, heartily, for that lovely - and lengthy! - review of my book in this week's Star. I don't know who David Muhlbaum is, but he did the most thorough job of anyone who's reviewed it - and that includes The Los Angeles Times, whose writer has been covering electric vehicles from Detroit for years.

With real care, he wove in all the various strands of the story and - happily - made it sound worth reading. If you can, please convey my thanks to him as well.

Best,

MICHAEL SHNAYERSON

Known In The Field

Sarasota, Fla.

December 8, 1996

Dear Mrs. Rattray:

Several years ago, the late Alden Whitman, an obituary writer, wrote a letter to The Star in defense of Alger Hiss, which demonstrated his lack of knowledge of the true nature of the Hiss case.

Now we have The Star's editor providing us with an opinion that Mr. Hiss was wrongly convicted of his spying for the Soviet Union.

During my 25 years of service in the covert intelligence field, including some of the time frame in which Mr. Hiss operated for the U.S.S.R., it was commonly known in the counter-espionage field that Mr. Hiss was a recruited agent of the Soviet intelligence service. It was also known that he was one of several penetrations of the U.S. Government which included Harry Dexter White at the Treasury and Laughlin Currie, a Presidential adviser, among others.

Spies can be cultured, kindly-appearing, and self-effacing. A good example was the British traitor Kim Philby, whom I met in the early '50s. This does not make them less guilty of treason.

I never met Hiss, but I have always had the same disgust and dismay at his actions as I did over Philby's. We will never know how much damage these traitors have caused their countries. They deserve no apologies.

Another subject. I enclose a copy of an article about coastal erosion and the role of the U.S. Army Engineer Corps in attempting to control it. I thought you might find it interesting because of its application to our Wainscott and East Hampton beaches.

Being a property owner in Wainscott for over 70 years, and being very familiar with what the Juan Trippe/Army Corps of Engineers groins have done to damage the beach areas west of them, let's hope we are spared more of the same.

Sincerely,

LAWRENCE GOURLAY

Drowned Out

Amagansett

December 14, 1996

Dear Editor:

I was greatly troubled by this week's "Guestwords" by Roger Rosenblatt, "The Silence of the Liberals." Liberals aren't silent; they are being drowned out.

They are being drowned out by the greedy and those who lust for power, people and interests who regard liberals as the enemy, people who have made the word "liberal" a curse.

We have a cacophony of bought politicians. We have countless highly paid "spin doctors," "political consultants," and other media manipulators. We have an increasingly monopolized media run by interests that are hostile toward liberals.

And, we have a public whose attention span has been reduced through remote control TV clicking to the point where it is measurable only in nanoseconds, a public so besotted by TV that it reads less and less of the fewer and fewer newspapers that still exist. Is it any wonder then that many think that liberals are silent?

But they are not. Last I looked, the Progressive Caucus of the House had over 50 members, none of whom can be accused of silence. Ted Kennedy, Paul Wellstone, and other liberals in the Senate cannot be accused of silence. The Nation, The Progressive, Dissent, The American Prospect, a few of the liberal magazines that come quickly to mind, all appear regularly.

No, liberals are not silent. But those who would like them silenced do everything they can to make liberals difficult to hear. And, they must love it when good people think liberals are silent so liberals can be blamed for that too.

Liberals are not silent. They can be heard if you are willing to listen.

Sincerely,

ARTHUR H. ROSENFELD

Injustice In Silence

New York City

December 14, 1996

Dear Mrs. Rattray:

Thank you for publishing the excerpt from Roger Rosenblatt's lecture "The Silence of the Liberals" ("Guestwords," Dec. 12). Once again Mr. Rosenblatt's elegant humanity confronts evils that imperil our country - in this case, censorship and the silence of liberals who no longer express the compassionate intentions of American democracy.

Thinking back to a recent "Connections" column on the tragedy of Alger Hiss, as well as to your general forthrightness on social issues, I feel grateful that you do not accept injustice in silence.

On a personal note (perhaps somewhat connected to the above), I wish you the best with Bonnie and Clyde. You have given them the second chance at life most mortals need.

With warmest holiday wishes,

D.H. MELHEM, Ph.D.

Please address all correspondence to [email protected]

Keeping a longstanding holiday tradition alive, Guild Hall will again invite the community to attend its annual Messiah Sing-In, at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

Guests can add their voices to the notes of an all-volunteer community orchestra, which includes members of the Chamber Orchestra of the East End and college musicians. Edward Liotta, the founder of the orchestra, will conduct. The soloists who will perform include the soprano Elisa Spiotto, the alto Sheila Wolman, Seamas Ryan, a tenor, and Eric Holte, a baritone.

Those who wish to follow along will be able to purchase vocal scores of Schirmer's edition of Handel's "Messiah" at the door. When the singing is through, participants will be welcomed at a holiday reception in the museum's lobby.

The demand for public water at Lazy Point in Amagansett has officials scratching their heads about how to insure that a water main from the hills of Devon eastward will not encourage development or increase the demand for water.

At the same time, local officials are eyeing neighborhoods elsewhere in town whose residents could someday make the same demand. Sammy's Beach in East Hampton, Gerard Drive and Louse Point in Springs, East Lake Drive in Montauk, and Napeague Meadow Road in Amagansett, which leads to Lazy Point, have similar problems with their water - shallow private wells which often have high iron content and can be expected to draw saltwater or become contaminated when houses put a strain on the natural water supply.

The areas consist of low-lying dunelands or tidal wetlands at the edge of bays or harbors.

Warn Against Growth

East Hampton Town, the Suffolk Water Authority, and the County Health Department agree that bringing in public water is the obvious and immediate solution where there is a shortage of potable water. They also warn, however, that these neighborhoods cannot sustain further growth.

Deep water recharge areas in parts of East Hampton Town already are being tapped to supply water to the Napeague stretch and to parts of Sag Harbor, Noyac, and North Haven. But the quantity is limited.

"It is a well-known, undisputed planning fact that . . . infrastructure extensions, including but not limited to the extension of public water, cause an increase in growth. It is one of the few points on which the town and the Water Authority have agreed," said Lisa Liquori, the town planning director.

Ways To Go

Restrictions prohibiting swimming pools and limiting the size of houses or number of bathrooms in water-poor areas, and a ban on further subdivision of vacant land are among the ways the town could control development after public water is put in, suggested Larry Penny, director of the Town Natural Resources Department.

But government has rarely been able to fend off the demand for residences in these areas, which are on or near the water.

Ms. Liquori said a water main to Lazy Point, like any water main extension in town, would go through extensive environmental review before being constructed. And, she said, recent meetings with authority officials had resulted in a consensus on the concept of controlling development.

Landfall Precedent

She and Mr. Penny also agreed that the town should soon update its water resource management plan, a part of the Comprehensive Plan that is more than 10 years old. It does not recommend water mains through Promised Land to Lazy Point.

With the swift extension of a water main to the Landfall subdivision in Northwest Woods, East Hampton, earlier this year and the extension of mains along Napeague as precedent, the Lazy Point peninsula is starting to look like the third domino in a line that runs from one end of town to the other.

Although groundwater contamination at Landfall was chemical, the apparent result of an illegal cocaine operation, Mr. Penny said it "begged the question for Lazy Point. Because the town responded so quickly at Landfall and a water main was the only real solution that was considered seriously, well, that may have encouraged the residents of Lazy Point to come forward."

Signing Up

It took less than two years for public water to reach Landfall after the county went public with the news that its groundwater contained toxic chemicals. Two months later the homeowners' association on Mulford Lane at Lazy Point began circulating petitions for a main there as well.

More than 100 residents of the area between Cranberry Hole Road and Shore Road at the tip of Lazy Point have signed petitions asking the town to help them replace individual wells with water from the Suffolk Water Authority.

Mr. Penny predicted the owners of houses at Sammy's Beach, a barrier beach at the mouth of Three Mile Harbor, or at Gerard Drive and Louse Point, on either side of the mouth of Accabonac Harbor, would be next.

Critical Problem

"We weren't saying that they got theirs, so now we want ours. We feel we have a critical problem. . . . The older people cannot afford to keep buying bottled water any more, and why should they compromise their health anyway?" asked Maureen Veprek, the Mulford Lane resident who led the petition drive.

Year-Rounders

Ms. Veprek, who works at the State University at Stony Brook, is among a growing number of year-round residents at Lazy Point.

In addition, substantial second homes have cropped up in recent years along Cranberry Hole Road, especially on the south side abutting Napeague State Park, and many of the owners of what once were fishing shanties on Town Trustee land at Lazy Point have made considerable investments in improvements.

Deep Wells Needed

In those places where potable water is scant, most of the wells are driven no more than 50 feet below grade. In comparison the prime aquifers at the Town Airport in East Hampton and in Hither Woods in Montauk, for example, which are tapped by the Water Authority, are 400 feet deep.

"One of our concerns is that we have spots all over town that ultimately will need public water, including much of Springs. These places will need water as much as Montauk and maybe more so; we're eager for the Water Authority to develop those wells in Hither Woods," said Mr. Penny.

An environmental study of the authority's plan to sink three new wells in Hither Woods and to link its Napeague water main to Montauk is nearing completion. The project was prompted by Montauk's water problems, including a deteriorating public water system and a supply that is overtaxed by heavy summertime demand.

Montauk Warning

Two years ago, Michael LoGrande, the authority chairman, warned the town against any further development on Montauk and for each of the two summers since the authority has put the entire isthmus on a water alert, threatening stronger measures if home and motel owners continued to use water indiscriminately.

The County Health Department, which has the responsibility of assessing the safety of the water that would come from every private well being installed, does not consider the future effect of these wells. It now confirms that the situation at Lazy Point is hopeless, that saltwater from too much demand on the supply and coliform from sewage and animal wastes make the water undrinkable.

In addition, the Amagansett Fire Department has joined the call for public water, warning that low pressure of water that comes from the fire wells it has installed makes the job of firefighting difficult.

House Tally

Among those who will be asked to determine the best route for a pipe line, counting along the way the number of taxpayers who will pay for it and trying to assess the long-term consequences, are Mr. Penny, Ms. Liquori, Town Councilman Thomas Knobel, and Vincent Gaudiello Jr., the town engineer.

Mr. Gaudiello had counted 336 houses and 22 vacant lots, some of them eligible under zoning to be divided, along the route of the Landfall main and estimated that as many as 675 houses could hook up to it eventually. He said he would come up with a similar tally for the area from Ocean View Lane in the Devon Colony, through Promised Land, to Lazy Point.

Although the Town Trustees, who own a lot of land at Lazy Point and lease some of it to private homeowners, voted in November for a ban on new houses, many of the existing ones already have been turned into multi-bathroom year-round residences. Councilman Knobel, a former fisherman, owns a small house, and has asked for a legal opinion on his own "possible conflict of interest."

Lot Subdivisions?

Mulford Lane is a narrow road that leads to the bay from Lazy Point Road. It is bordered by modest houses which are becoming year-round residences, although most of the lots, which predate zoning, are tiny.

Ms. Veprek noted that the older lots are only 50 by 128 feet, but added that there are vacant tracts that are privately owned in the vicinty whose owners are eyeing subdivision.

"At Cranberry Hole Road, the question [of what will happen to large undivided tracts of land] is even more pertinent," said Councilman Knobel, observing that public water ends at the corner of Ocean View Lane.

"What do women want?" has become so repetitive in men's magazines, women's magazines now copy with "What do men want?" On and on it goes - as if gender alone determined such a thing.

In my experience, different people want a lot of different things totally unrelated to their sex, gender, whichever term pleases you. But advertising still seems to be cemented into pitches to male or female audiences. And this, I rather think, is why so much stuff gets returned to the stores after Christmas.

Who is to know that Iron John wouldn't really rather have a new Cuisinart than a chainsaw? Or Darling Jenny a little electric hand-sander/drill combo to work on her yardsale furniture coups?

Harking back to "in my experience," the guys I know are getting to be a lot more familiar with the kitchen layout than their good wives. (As one of them recently commented, "in self-defense.") Though in fact, more and more men are taking to the kitchen range simply because they like cooking with a greater range of imagination than slamming a steak on the barby.

True, outdoor grills did permit men to retain their macho image while fussing around with the cooking, and a lot of women who had abdicated the traditional role had the good sense to let them do it.

I do wonder, though, if in 20 years or so women will be complaining that they've been left out of the dinner-decision-making process. (My own dream is to be totally excluded from the plumber, electrician, pool guy, yard-maintenance, appliance, TV, and telephone-repairman selection and arranging-for process.)

I actually enjoy shopping for food - what to cook for dinner will never bore me; hardware stores and housewares shops are places that fascinate me, and despite my panoply of kitchen equipment, there's always some gadget or pan or new book that beguiles me.

All this is by way of leading into A Cook's Christmas Wish-list, be the cook male or female, young or old. Dedicated cooks will want to try out almost anything they haven't tried before, and the hesitant but wannabe-good cooks will be inspired by things they might never have bought for themselves.

Cook's Garden of Wishes

An imported (German or Swiss) V-slicer: This has four blades that make thin or thick slices, julienne slivers, or french-fry shapes for vegetables, and an optional extra shredder for cooked potatoes (or raw ones) or semi-soft cheeses. This shredder makes the best potato pancakes or roesti ever. Costs about $30.

A professional meat-slicing knife (German or French) with a blade about 12 inches long, indented but not serrated, for slicing ham and large roasts. Prices range from $40 to $60.

Full tang, stainless steel serrated knife (German or French) with 10-inch blade that cuts through tough things like heads of cabbage, artichokes, rough country breads, and almost any foodstuff.

Serving platters: Old ones, new ones, decorated or white, especially a long (23-inch) narrow, white porcelain one for fish, pork loins, or a series of roasted game hens. Porcelain or ceramic, to withstand oven heat up to 350 degrees.

More Wishes

Willow basket for storage, containing a selection of Oxo kitchen gadgets with big, soft-grip handles, especially the vegetable peeler, ice cream scoop, and four-inch pizza wheel (which is useful for much more than pizza).

Heavy-gauge steel cake molds, or a Charlotte mold with non-stick finish from France - $15 to $20. These will make any cake-mix look professional and elegant.

Ingredients: Fine bittersweet chocolate, Callebaut or Valrhona; vanilla beans or vanilla extract from Madagascar, glaceed and dried fruits and berries, French flageolet or green lentils or exotic dried beans, fine olive oils, best quality white and red wine vinegars (unflavored), truffle oil, truffles!

Whole roasted French chestnuts in jars, orange and rose flower water, first-quality spices and herbs (try Kalyustan on Lexington Avenue) from high-turnover specialty shops, a whole side of smoked salmon, cheeses, special flours for pasta, pastry, and bread and the pans to bake them in, sea salt from France and England, very concentrated meat glazes (glace de viande) to facilitate sauce-making, a basket of heirloom apples or a basket of different kinds of fresh pears, French mustards, imported honeys, sugars like Demarara, or very coarse white crystals for sprinkling on cookies.

The Makings, Not The Made

In short: give cooks stuff to cook with, not cakes, cookies, jams, and candies that someone else has already made!

Of course, few discerning cooks would be displeased with a mousse of foie gras, a tin of truffles or a fresh one, a little pot of caviar, or a gift certificate for some of the goodies at D'Artagnan in Jersey City, purveyors of game and fresh magrets and goose livers, wild turkeys and ducks (duck fat and demiglace are a cook's delight).

If your cooking friend is really adventurous, he or she might like a gift certificate for kangaroo, ostrich, 'gator, rattlesnake, or caribou from Game Sales International in Loveland, Colo.

For Wine-Lovers

For wine mavens:

A metal wine bucket and stand. Most of those tricky terracotta or insulated plastic coolers don't work - the wine is never cold enough and you can't put a champagne bottle in them - tragic.

Wine bottle coasters. These are pretty and practical. You can find them in antique shops as well as new in housewares stores - give with a fine bottle of wine, perhaps an after-dinner port or Sauternes. Wine coasters save table linens from the kind of stains that make hosts' chins tremble when they say, "Oh, it's all right."

Decanters and wine pitchers for informal meals don't have to be crystal, or even clear glass. Many of the ceramics are amusing and/or pretty for wine.

One can never have too many glasses. Best are wine glasses that can go into the dishwasher, double old-fashioned-size tumblers, and, with the resurgence of the martini, some proper martini glasses (which can, in fact, be used for other things if they're the large size).

Cookery Books

Books: These are some of my favorites, some new, some old that will take a bit of digging to find. What's not available at local bookshops, like Book Hampton and Canio's, can probably be located at Kitchen Arts & Letters, 1435 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Nach Waxman, the owner, knows all there is to know about cookbooks new and old.

Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" (Knopf) explains how to do just about everything, and the recipes are infallible. I'm on my second copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and "In Julia's Kitchen," both of which I've bought for gifts too many times. "Baking With Julia" is the new book that bears her name, though it is really a compilation of work by the chefs who appeared on her TV show - the master baker Nick Malgieri, with whom my daughter studied, is foremost among them.

Patricia Wells's "At Home in Provence" (Scribners) is a new favorite. This American expatriate has truly grasped the essence of French cooking and eating, and her warm and direct style makes the book a pleasure to read. No silly stuff here; just great simple traditional cooking, sensibly updated and presented for modern tastes. Lovely but not overdone photographs.

"Simple French Food"

Richard Olney's "Simple French Food" is a classic and still in print, thank heaven. His latest book, "Lulu's Provencale Table," was published by Harper's a couple of years ago and is also readily available and also a prize.

Shirley King's new book, "Pampille's Table," is a translation and adaptation of the recipes in the French classic written under the pseudonym "Pampille" by Mme. Marthe Daudet in 1919 and called "Le Bon Plat de France," which can still be found if one wanted to give both as a set for French-speaking American cooks.

John Thorne, author of the terrific "Outlaw Cook," has a new book written with his wife, Matt, called "Serious Pig" (North Point Press). This is a collection of essays and recipes with gastronomical writing to appeal to anyone with an interest in the table, cook or not.

Madeleine Kamman, cooking in structor and restaurateur extraordinaire, wrote several marvelous cookbooks, of which my favorite, falling-to-pieces, edition is "When Frenchwomen Cook" (Atheneum).

David's Legacy

Elizabeth David, the grand dame of British food writers who died two years ago, left a legacy of splendid books and I recommend them all. Her last one, "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine" (Penguin), is my favorite. Filled with anecdotes and essays as well as recipes, it's a bedside book to enjoy forever.

Deborah Madison, former chef at the Greens restaurant in San Francisco, wrote "The Greens" cookbook, possibly the best vegetarian cookbook ever and one I consult often for new ideas in vegetable cookery.

Cook's Magazine: any of their bound editions of the year's magazine in hard covers. Also, any serious cook would be happy with a subscription to the magazine. Bon Appetit is better than ever and Food & Wine seems to have a felicitous new look and viewpoint with a change of editors.

Eating Well: this magazine publishes cookbooks, too. The one I use most is "Recipe Rescue," which updates and lightens traditional dishes without ruining them.

Mangia: a witty and useful computer program for cooks, it organizes your recipes, provides a format to create your own cookbook, and offers several cookbooks on separate disks as well. I have to admit, my own newly revised "Good Cheap Food" is among them, as well as that '60s hippie classic, "The Tassajara Cookbook" and a good selection from the former Cook's magazine, resuscitated as Cook's Illustrated.

Under Pressure

Lorna Sass, a cookbook author who used to specialize in historical cookbooks, is a fairly recent convert to the pressure cooker. Her well-received "Cooking Under Pressure" has been followed by the drearily titled "Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure." Her taste runs to more brown rice, pine nuts, and weird versions of chili and gumbo than suit me, but the directions are sterling.

However, this is a book well worth having for the accuracy of its cooking times in the so-called "New Generation" pressure cookers, more of a boon to hurry-up cooks than the microwave can ever be.

Microwave ovens will not produce a decent stew or braise a pot roast or make a good bean casserole - pressure cookers will do a two-hour job in 15 or 20 minutes.

The late Roy Andries deGroot wrote the best pressure-cooker book of its era a number of years ago, and I still use it. However, it was tested with the old-fashioned jiggle-top American cookers, so times have to be monitored and adjusted.

Short-Order World

A pressure cooker. I don't know when I'll ever be able to convince people that the sleek new European pressure cookers present no threat to the safety of the cook and turn out beautiful food in a fraction of the time normally required for the kind of home-cooking we seem to be losing.

In a short-order world (as most restaurant cooking seems to be these days, too) of reheating take-out junk, the new pressure cookers like the Belgian DeMeyere, the Swiss Kuhn Rikon, Italian Magefesa, and the beautiful Fagor from Spain would make a great present for cooks who care about real food. A 6-liter or 8-liter size is best because no pressure cooker may be filled more than three-quarters full.

Most of these cookers cost $100 or more and Zabar's has a huge selection. Williams-Sonoma carries the Fagor. The new cookers can have the pressure released right on the stove via a top-mounted valve that is not removable (therefore losable).

The new pressure cookers are great for canning small batches of jars, useful as plain soup pots, and not in the least bit dangerous. I can't think of a greater boon to cooks who don't get home from work until dinnertime.

Unfortunately, the cookbooks that come with these wonderful pots are terribly unimaginative - written by the engineer's grandmother, no doubt. So one has to adapt favorite recipes to the short cooking times in pressure cookers, but this isn't too hard to figure out once you get the hang of it.

Give some cook a merry little Christmas!

With her long dark hair and gentle manner, the sculptor Monica Banks, whose 164-foot "Faces: Times Square" was installed in the heart of Manhattan's theater district in May, seems to belong more in the formal gardens of some Merchant-Ivory film than in a muddy Springs backyard strewn with mangled dog toys.

More, certainly, than on the streets of New York's busiest intersection, where her gaudy red and black steel sculpture occupies the traffic median running from 45th to 46th Streets between Broadway and Seventh Avenue.

The cup of jasmine tea she served a visitor last week seemed more fitting, too, than the formidable oxyacetylene torch and welding mask in her studio, but it's this couching of the delicate and whimsical in the tough that drives her creative spirit.

Street Smarts

Take the story behind the Times Square piece, seen by over a million people a day, and stopping jaywalkers in their tracks - part of its function.

The 14-ton site-specific work comprises 40 three to five-foot-high line drawings of faces, forged of one-and-a-half-inch steel bars painted red, and welded to a jagged black fence that snakes between the lanes of honking cabs and trucks.

It's a witty, street-smart sculpture with an attitude, brash enough to dominate its garish surroundings, yet sprung from the most fragile of origins.

It all began with slender strands of wire.

Gravity's Curtain

Early in her career, when she was still a free-lance designer, Ms. Banks got an idea for a space divider made of resin-stiffened drapery material that would pool on the floor and rise into the air-an eerie curtain standing on its own, defying gravity.

The creative director of Barney's New York was so excited by the concept he commissioned her to design the windows for the chic department store forthwith.

"Do all 12 windows. We'll be showing rainwear; have them ready in a week. I'm off to the Bahamas, bye!" he said, and was gone.

With the help of many assistants, a resin contractor in Asbury Park, N.J., and a fancy moving company, she got the installations done on time: different kinds of curtains billowing up and blowing open, as in a storm.

Mysterious Leftovers

"They looked very cool and surreal at first," Ms. Banks said. "Then, overnight, half of them collapsed. They hadn't hardened properly."

A desperate trip to the hardware store for dowels, fishline, wire, tape, etc., saved the day, but her goal of defying gravity had been compromised. She went home to regroup, toting leftover lengths of very thin wire.

What to do with them? And with the assorted tiny plastic fish, toy boats, dead insects, and dried hydrangeas she'd somehow accumulated?

She "drew faces with the wire, glued on the boats and fish and insects for eyes and mouths, and topped them with the hydrangeas for kind of 'I Love Lucy' hair."

Serendipity

"I hung them all around the walls of my one-room apartment. They made nice shadows, and nodded and trembled slightly, very comforting after the trauma of Barney's. I thought of them as my friends."

"I also filled my little graphics studio with them. An architect friend took Polaroids and showed them to a friend of his, who just happened to be the director of the art gallery at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst."

"She loved them, and offered to give me my first show in 1991. I did hundreds of pieces for the show, at which point it turned into something else - and that's how I became a sculptor. Like most of my career, it was totally serendipitous."

Slides On File

The problems of shipping, installing, and even storing these extremely fragile pieces were not lost on Ms. Banks; her thoughts turned to working in a sturdier medium.

After the show, she sent copies of her slides to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, which maintains a huge slide file called Percent for Art. A percentage of the cost of every public building must go to art; the file is for the perusal of architects and designers.

Inclusion also makes artists eligible for city-licensed artist-in-residence lofts, Ms. Banks's only, and quite ulterior, motive for registering.

When no affordable loft appeared, she forgot about the slides, went back to graphic designing by day, and began taking classes at Pratt Institute's School of Continuing Education at night.

The Art of Welding

"I signed up for the same courses every semester, Metalworking I and Metalworking II," she said.

"My teacher understood that you only need to learn what you want to know, so he taught me welding and let me use the facilities - the tanks and torches I was afraid of - in this big, safe room."

"I began drawing larger faces with heavier and heavier steel, and welding steel dogs, sculptures of Gus, my dog [a feisty smooth-haired fox terrier], and Benya, my husband's [a huge black Lab-Great Dane mix]."

Ms. Banks met her future husband, the poet Philip Schultz, in the dog run under her apartment window. They were married in January of 1995 and have a 5-month old son, Eli.

City Liked Her Design

Then, out of the blue, she got a call from the Department of Cultural Affairs about her slides, asking if she'd like to do a proposal for a permanent sculpture in a fairly public space.

It turned out to be the Times Square installation and, again quite serendipitously, she just happened to have the training to tackle such a monumental project. Her proposal was selected.

"I've been truly lucky," she said. "It's quite a jump from my little wire friends to the huge Times Square piece."

Ms. Banks was born in New York City in 1959 and moved to Short Hills, N. J., at age 7. Her father was a manufacturer, her mother a traditional sculptor who worked in stone.

Graphic Design

"The suburbs were dull," she said. "Shopping was the only culture, and I knew at an early age that I wanted to pursue art in some way."

After attending various summer camps and a summer session at the Rhode Island School of Design, she decided against art school in favor of a broader education at Vassar, where she took studio art classes but majored in philosophy.

"Out in the world, it became clear there were very few job openings for a 22-year-old philosopher from New Jersey," she said. "So I decided to exploit my art background."

An unpaid internship with the prominent graphic designer Milton Glaser led to a five-year job with his firm, after which Ms. Banks studied industrial design at the Domus Academy in Milan.

Still Personal

Recognizing that new car or chair styles were not on her creative agenda, she returned to New York to work as a freelancer for businesses and restaurants, drawing and doing her own art at home, and subconsciously preparing herself for her daunting public work.

"Every cliche about the actual installation of 'Faces' is true," she said. "It was thrilling. All the traffic was detoured, and six flatbed trucks and these huge cranes arrived. My heart stopped, watching this tremendous personal statement go up out there - it's such an honor."

"But the Times Square piece is really not so different from my earlier work, just bigger. It's still very personal. My friends' faces are in it, and Phil's, and Gus's and Benya's."

Faces Of The Square

"There's one of me getting ready to go to a party, and one of when I got there and saw the dreaded X, who's also in it. There's even one of how I look when I wake up in the middle of the night - I hope it's not sending anyone into therapy." Ms. Banks hung out in the area for weeks while working on her sculpture, studying the people going to the theater, the actors and waitresses and messengers and tourists and the down-and-out: all the faces of Times Square are in it.

"I wanted a big vocabulary, the range of humanity that passes through," she said. "Some are schematic and some cartoony. For me, it's like having friends in the neighborhood now, and I hope pedestrians will come to think of them that way, too."

What to do for an encore? "I'm a whole different person today," Ms. Banks said. "I'm a mother, and the sculptor who made 'Faces Times Square.' I think I'll take a year off to just experiment and have fun playing with metal. I feel a calmness now it would be nice to explore."

Jazz can often be a self-indulgent exercise. Think of it: a group of consummate musicologists on stage holding a private conversation, with each conversant striving to make a more complex point than the other.

Before long, an untrained listener can start to feel like an unwelcomed party guest.

This has never been the case with the Sag Harbor saxophonist Hal McKusick and his quartet, who put on their fifth concert in the Sag Harbor Jazz Festival Saturday at the Old Whalers Church. Welcoming back the trumpet legend Clark Terry for his second time as featured guest, Mr. McKusick and company put on a thoroughly enjoyable, and accessible, evening of jazz.

Anchored The Band

A stage full of poinsettias and a huge suspended wreath added a nice holiday touch to the room, which has become the festival's permanent home - "the Carnegie Hall of the East End," as the festival's co-organizer, Steven Fochios, put it.

The fact that it was Mr. Terry's birthday also advanced the festive mood. The jovial big-band veteran turned 76 on Saturday, so it was fitting the evening's encore would be a rendition of "Happy Birthday," sung by the entire audience.

Two and a half hours before that, Mr. McKusick kicked off the show with John Coltrane's "The Wise One," the type of slow, velvety number on which he thrives. As always, Mr. McKusick's sax lines were fluid, lyrical, familiar, and faithful to the melody. Letting the quartet's rhythm section toy with the improvisational fringes, Mr. McKusick, as anchorman, kept each of the night's numbers true to its character.

Delicate Brush Strokes

Bud Powell's "Time Waits" was next - another breathy ballad, featured in the movie "Round Midnight." It was raining outside, and the delicate brush work of the drummer Akira Tana made it sound like soft rain inside.

Mr. Tana was transfixing throughout, both in his playing and his presence. Each number brought out a different set of drum sticks - brushes, bamboo sticks, even a set with shakers at the end. On Duke Ellington's mystical "Night in Tunisia," he embellished its Latin feel by playing a rhythm entirely on the side of his floor tom-tom.

For those familiar with these concerts, "Night in Tunisia" was no surprise, nor was "Round Midnight." Mr. McKusick manages to pull them out in nearly every one of his shows here. Yet each time they get a different treatment. The addition of two Coltrane gems this time also helped keep it fresh.

Mr. Tana, the pianist Don Fried man, and the young bassist Sante Dibriano formed perhaps the tightest rhythm section Mr. McKusick has played with since the shows began. The three recently toured Japan together as a unit and later in the show got to shine with their own more free-form numbers.

Mr. Dibriano, the newest member of the quartet, endeared himself to the crowd with his bold solos and use of the bow on the slower ballads. His solo on "Round Midnight" was particularly stirring.

Mr. Friedman, a longtime collaborator with Mr. McKusick, played powerfully on keyboards. Using the melody as a take-off point, he brought each solo to its rightful peak, making the keyboard seem a mile long with his rolling scales. Mr. Tana was there to meet every rhythmic switch.

Ah! A Showman!

What the evening really needed, however, was a showman. Mr. Terry was more than happy to oblige. From the moment he was led on stage in his sharp, blue sport jacket, he had the stage presence of a jazz great. Wasting no time, he launched the quartet into a quick be-bop number by Charlie Parker, which he blew effortlessly on fluegelhorn.

Mr. Terry's honey smooth fluegelhorn and more muffled-sounding trumpet complemented each other well, especially during "On the Trail," where he held one in each hand and alternated phrases from each.

Introducing Ellington's "Mood Indigo," he told of how the song's name "really" originated: A cow of Duke's grandfather's happened to swallow some ink from a next-door farm and he, well, you can guess the rest. Despite the deliberately bad joke, the number was one of the night's strongest. Mr. Terry's muffled trumpet whispered the melody over the bass in the evening's quietest moment. The band chimed in on an easy-going swing beat, and then double-timed it, sparking a rollicking solo by Mr. Friedman, before bringing it to an equally quiet close.

Percy Heath, Too

Mr. Terry also showed off his vocal talent in a sassy blues song called "I Want a Little Girl." Mr. Terry held nothing back in his voice, which was surprisingly deep and full. He complemented it with a wonderfully raspy trumpet solo.

The audience got its own chance to sing - and did surprisingly beautifully - on the chorus to "Bye Bye Blackbird." A mini-rehearsal led beforehand by Mr. Terry helped.

Mr. McKusick returned afterward, this time joined by another special guest, the bassist and co-founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy Heath. Mr. Heath's straightforward groove took the band to a new level, and evoked some of the night's best solos - his own included - in the next two songs.

Mr. McKusick and Mr. Terry combined perfectly on the familiar strains of "Blue Monk," before Mr. Terry turned scatman for the final number.

Mr. Terry didn't stop when the music did. Instead he kept scatting and managed to carry on an entire conversation without any intelligible words. The audience was in hysterics. When it came time to sing "happy birthday, dear Clark . . . ," they meant it.