East Hampton

Dena Love Raitzyk, a commercial artist in Randallstown, died of lung cancer Saturday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. She was 46. Dena Love was born and raised in the Baltimore area and graduated from Randallstown High School in 1979. She then attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, studying graphic arts. While at MICA she met Neil Raitzyk, and the couple married June 27, 1982. Mrs. Raitzyk left school to work in Baltimore for Williams & Wilkins, a Philadelphia-based publisher of specialized media for the health professions.

Maryland's Assateague Island has made a University of Maryland geologist's list of the top 10 beaches in the Northeastern United States -- but just barely.Thanks mainly to its clean water and wild isolation, the Assateague Island National Seashore ranked 10th on the list compiled by Stephen Leatherman, director of UM's Laboratory for Coastal Research and an internationally recognized expert on coastal erosion and geology.Assateague was outclassed by beaches at East Hampton (first) and Westhampton Beach (second)

HIGH POINT, N.C. -- The folks at Martha Stewart Living say it happens all the time. Someone will write, call or e-mail saying she just must have the sofa or the table or the mirror pictured in the magazine. Many of those pieces are part of Stewart's own collection, filling her stone house on the Maine coast or her 19th-century home on the eastern shore of Long Island. They often are antiques or one-of-a-kind items, not available in typical furniture stores. Until now. Stewart's first venture into furniture was unveiled recently at the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point with the 175-piece Martha Stewart Signature collection by Bernhardt.

New positionsGoucher appoints Nuss dean, vice presidentGoucher College announced that Elizabeth M. Nuss will become vice president and dean of students July 1, succeeding Julie Collier, who will retire later this spring. Nuss formerly was executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.She has a bachelor's degree in Spanish secondary education from the State University of New York-Albany, a master's in education from Pennsylvania State University and a doctorate from the University of Maryland College Park.

For 20 years after his military service in Vietnam ended in 1968, Morgan Monceaux roamed the country working odd jobs -- short-order cook, gas-station attendant, janitor. When he got bored, he'd pick up and move to the next place. He wandered from Washing-ton state to Florida and to points in between. He hitched rides and slept wherever he could lay his head. He dug meals out of dumpsters; for a while he was homeless. Then in 1990, when he was 43, he began to paint. He was living in an abandoned building in the South Bronx in New York City.

Longtime educator slain in apparent murder-suicide Earl Jacob Lightcap, 75, a longtime principal of Edgewood High School and former assistant superintendent of Harford County schools, was found slain at his home in Long Bar Harbor on Tuesday, police said. Police suspect that David Allen Johnston, 22, was the killer, said Harford sheriff's spokesman Edward Hopkins. Johnston was found dead in the Bush River on Wednesday with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. A rifle -- thought to be one missing from Lightcap's house -- was found in the river off Long Bar Harbor, Hopkins said.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was on the phone to East Hampton, chatting with James Brady about his new novel, "Gin Lane." It's set in the Hamptons, a place he certainly knows something about, and is filled with all sorts of glamorous, real-life characters. But what I really wanted to know was Jim's secret for compressing celebrity lives into 550-word profiles in Parade magazine. The 12-year-old weekly column is called "In Step With." How does he do it?"I try to focus on the single one or two things that I hadn't known before," said Jim, 69. "And I try to get that up very close to the top of the story.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. - To take the temperature of excess in the Hamptons this summer, join Jay Lieberman in the shower of the new 12,000-square-foot house that he hopes to sell for $8 million, preferably to someone who will pay cash. Lieberman, a builder, has taken a seat in the glassed-in shower stall of the "his" bathroom in the master bedroom. He proudly points to a shower head that is 10 inches in diameter and is capable of caressing the human body with 22 gallons of water per minute (about nine times the maximum flow allowed in New York state, but unlikely to result in any legal woes)

East Regional at MCI Center No. 7 North Carolina State (22-10) vs. No. 10 Michigan State (19-11) Time: 12:15 p.m. Conferences: North Carolina State, Atlantic Coast; Michigan State, Big Ten. Outlook: Of these teams, Michigan State has the greater momentum after winning five of its past six games, a run that has made the difference between playing today and playing in the National Invitation Tournament. N.C. State shot better than 60 percent in ACC tournament wins over Virginia and Maryland before getting blasted by Duke in the final.

Robert Berg, 51, an acclaimed tenor saxophonist, was killed Thursday when a cement truck skidded across a snow-slicked road and rammed into his sport utility vehicle, according to police in East Hampton, N.Y. Mr. Berg, whose career encompassed free jazz, soul jazz, jazz rock and straight-ahead playing, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. His wife, Arja, suffered facial lacerations and broken bones. He was driving east on Route 27 when the cement truck approached from the opposite direction, police said.