East Hampton

I understand it's possible to visit the former studio of Jackson Pollock in East Hampton, N.Y., but that visiting hours are erratic. Will the studio be open in June?Yes, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will be open then. The site is a National Historic Landmark, situated in the Springs section of East Hampton at 830 Fireplace Road. It may be toured by appointment from May through October on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The site's research collection, which focuses mainly on the development of the abstract expressionist movement -- of which Jackson Pollock was a leading member -- is open year-round, also by appointment.

As I've said before, I'm an “Accidental Hamptonite,” but here I am again in East Hampton. Again I'm visiting close college friends and their families, so I feel at home even though lifestyles of the rich and famous surround us. Besides 44 years of friendships, what draws me to this place is its physical beauty. No wonder artists have always been attracted to Long Island. The light and the green are mesmerizing.  Cooler temperatures and breezes make the climate and gardens more akin to England than to Baltimore.

As I've said before, I'm an “Accidental Hamptonite,” but here I am again in East Hampton. Again I'm visiting close college friends and their families, so I feel at home even though lifestyles of the rich and famous surround us. Besides 44 years of friendships, what draws me to this place is its physical beauty. No wonder artists have always been attracted to Long Island. The light and the green are mesmerizing.  Cooler temperatures and breezes make the climate and gardens more akin to England than to Baltimore.

Home, sweet home. There's no place like it. I returned to work last week after two weeks of sunshine and indolence in one of the most rarified environments of the universe. This was not Mars. But if water is ever discovered on the red planet, some of the people living where I spent my summer vacation surely will be among the first to try to build a mansion overlooking it. This vacation was spent in the Hamptons, specifically East Hampton, Long Island, N.Y., in the home of a relative who is affluent but unpretentious and generous.

David Ignatow,83, a poet who made his art from the stuff of everyday American life, died Monday in East Hampton, N.Y. He had suffered from congestive heart failure. Mr. Ignatow won the 1977 Bollinger Prize, one of poetry's most prestigious awards.George O. Petrie,85, a veteran character actor whose career spanned Broadway, radio, films and a half-century on television, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He recently appeared as Sid, the deadpan film editor, on the NBC series "Mad About You."More obituaries on next pagePub Date: 11/20/97

Doris C. McPhersonAssistant head nurseDoris C. McPherson, a retired assistant head medical and surgical nurse at Union Memorial Hospital, died Sunday at Stella Maris Hospice of cancer. She was 63.She retired in June after 28 years with the hospital. She earlier had taught at the Lutheran Hospital School of Nursing, from which she had graduated in 1953.Born in Baltimore, the former Doris Primus was reared in %J Jarrettsville and was a 1949 graduate of Jarrettsville High School.A resident of Northwood for 35 years, she married Webster B. McPherson, a surveyor, in 1956.

A few weeks ago, after driving straight east from Manhattan onto Long Island for an hour and a half, I arrived at an isthmus bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Great Peconic Bay. A group of towns link together here along Highway 27 like a strand of costly pearls: Southampton, then Bridgehampton, Saga-ponack and Wainscott. Sag Harbor is a detour north, but leads quickly back to East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk. Flat, fertile land that was once potato fields is jeweled with ponds, lakes and salt marshes.

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- "Where's Waldo?"Well, he's not in the Springs Public School library.Not anymore.Not since Kenneth Coleman, a fourth-grader at the East Hampton school, came home with the wildly popular book "Where's Waldo?" from the school library and said: "Mom, look at this!"What "this" was, said his stepmother, Shirley Coleman, was a tiny drawing of a woman lying on the beach wearing a bikini bottom but no top, and being nudged in the back by a boy with an ice-cream cone. "She's jumping up and her breast is hanging out," said Shirley Coleman.

Home, sweet home. There's no place like it. I returned to work last week after two weeks of sunshine and indolence in one of the most rarified environments of the universe. This was not Mars. But if water is ever discovered on the red planet, some of the people living where I spent my summer vacation surely will be among the first to try to build a mansion overlooking it. This vacation was spent in the Hamptons, specifically East Hampton, Long Island, N.Y., in the home of a relative who is affluent but unpretentious and generous.

IT IS GETTING CLOSE to berry-picking time. Around here, the stretch of days from mid-May to mid-June fills up with obligations, like weddings and school graduations, and with fresh local strawberries. This year, thanks to a patch of cool weather, the crop is likely to start ripening at the end of May, state agricultural officials say.You have to wear your best duds for the social obligations. But when you are picking strawberries, you want to wear something old and ugly. Strawberries grow close to the ground, which is often muddy.

A few weeks ago, after driving straight east from Manhattan onto Long Island for an hour and a half, I arrived at an isthmus bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Great Peconic Bay. A group of towns link together here along Highway 27 like a strand of costly pearls: Southampton, then Bridgehampton, Saga-ponack and Wainscott. Sag Harbor is a detour north, but leads quickly back to East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk. Flat, fertile land that was once potato fields is jeweled with ponds, lakes and salt marshes.

The New York county that could be considered Cell Phone Central -- home of the Hamptons and other enclaves where the phones are as popular on the playground as they are at poolside -- has moved to curb the use of the phones in cars. In a 12-6 vote, the Suffolk County Legislature made driving with a hand-held cell phone a crime, carrying a $150 fine. Suffolk is believed to be the nation's first county -- and its largest entity, with about 1.4 million inhabitants -- to adopt such a ban. Similar ordinances have been passed recently in Marlboro, N.J.; Brooklyn, Ohio; and three towns in Pennsylvania.

Joseph Heller, who helped make coherent the innate insanity of the human condition, is dead at 76. A heart attack, suffered at his home in East Hampton, N.Y., Sunday night, ended the career of an intensely professional man. Joseph Heller, the writer, is immortal.By fashioning the title and the concept of the 1961 novel "Catch-22," he became one of a handful of writers to change indelibly the language, and the manner of thinking, of his civilization.He turned the random tyrannies of organization, governments and war into an easily comprehended irony -- a truly great joke.

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- Dan King's back yard is an outdoor museum for a way of life that is fast fading into oblivion.Next to the gravel driveway sits a long, narrow rowboat that King once used to haul striped bass he caught in the bays and inlets around this Long Island town. King is a bayman, the local term for a commercial fisherman, and government regulations have all but ended commercial catches of the prized fish.Behind a fence, he stores the dredges that he once dragged behind his boat to scoop up bushels of scallops.

IT IS GETTING CLOSE to berry-picking time. Around here, the stretch of days from mid-May to mid-June fills up with obligations, like weddings and school graduations, and with fresh local strawberries. This year, thanks to a patch of cool weather, the crop is likely to start ripening at the end of May, state agricultural officials say.You have to wear your best duds for the social obligations. But when you are picking strawberries, you want to wear something old and ugly. Strawberries grow close to the ground, which is often muddy.

David Ignatow,83, a poet who made his art from the stuff of everyday American life, died Monday in East Hampton, N.Y. He had suffered from congestive heart failure. Mr. Ignatow won the 1977 Bollinger Prize, one of poetry's most prestigious awards.George O. Petrie,85, a veteran character actor whose career spanned Broadway, radio, films and a half-century on television, died Sunday in Los Angeles. He recently appeared as Sid, the deadpan film editor, on the NBC series "Mad About You."More obituaries on next pagePub Date: 11/20/97

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. -- Dan King's back yard is an outdoor museum for a way of life that is fast fading into oblivion.Next to the gravel driveway sits a long, narrow rowboat that King once used to haul striped bass he caught in the bays and inlets around this Long Island town. King is a bayman, the local term for a commercial fisherman, and government regulations have all but ended commercial catches of the prized fish.Behind a fence, he stores the dredges that he once dragged behind his boat to scoop up bushels of scallops.

The New York county that could be considered Cell Phone Central -- home of the Hamptons and other enclaves where the phones are as popular on the playground as they are at poolside -- has moved to curb the use of the phones in cars. In a 12-6 vote, the Suffolk County Legislature made driving with a hand-held cell phone a crime, carrying a $150 fine. Suffolk is believed to be the nation's first county -- and its largest entity, with about 1.4 million inhabitants -- to adopt such a ban. Similar ordinances have been passed recently in Marlboro, N.J.; Brooklyn, Ohio; and three towns in Pennsylvania.

I understand it's possible to visit the former studio of Jackson Pollock in East Hampton, N.Y., but that visiting hours are erratic. Will the studio be open in June?Yes, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will be open then. The site is a National Historic Landmark, situated in the Springs section of East Hampton at 830 Fireplace Road. It may be toured by appointment from May through October on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The site's research collection, which focuses mainly on the development of the abstract expressionist movement -- of which Jackson Pollock was a leading member -- is open year-round, also by appointment.

East Hampton, N.Y. -- Say it ain't so, Joe.Surely that was the instinctive reaction of many fans of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" when it was announced last year that he was writing a sequel to his beloved first novel. With more than 10 million copies in print since it was published in 1961, "Catch-22" for many readers redefined how they viewed war novels. Their feelings about his mordant, wildly satirical novel have always been passionate.Did Hemingway write "The Sun Also Sets?" Did Melville break down and give us "Free Moby Dick"?