This will be an important weekend in Manhasset. On Saturday Manhasset will celebrate its annual Homecoming Day and on Sunday the Chamber of Commerce will honor its Man and Woman of the Year. Homecoming is an annual event, but this year, in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, it has a special resonance. As Ken Dunn, director of student activities at Manhasset High School, said in last week's Manhasset Press: "All Manhasset residents are invited to come to a special homecoming this year that hopes to help in the healing of the community, a homecoming that will bring the community together, one that also celebrates Manhasset's greatest treasure--its children." The Candlelight Vigil that followed Sept. 11 was one of the most emotionally charged and significant events that Manhasset has ever experienced. The community sensed a need to come together and to share our grief and our prayers. Now six weeks later the grief lingers but the high emotions we experienced that evening have, naturally, abated. Now we have an opportunity to come together again as a community--to mourn what we have lost but to look with hope to the future and to dedicate this Homecoming to those who will not be coming back to this home but who will forever be in the hearts and minds of those they left behind.

E.F.B.

Kill the aura and you kill the machine.

Today it's eleven days before election day, and it seems that only a combination of luck, national events and Democratic mistakes can save the Nassau G.O.P. from continued punishment at the polls. Even if they survive, everyone will know that the machine no longer controls events here. They can be taken, and it's the end of an era.

A new generation of Democratic party operatives only knows the Republicans in a state of flux, crisis and weakness. For them, there have always been Democratic officials in town halls, always plenty of places to mount Democratic billboards, always long lists to mine for contributions. Today almost any civic group or fraternal order can be visited by Democratic officials or candidates. But Nassau civic life and the Republican Party used to be intertwined.

Baseball teams in my Little League were named after their sponsoring business. Nuzzi Fuel was the name of one team. Franklin National Bank was another. My first team was called "New Hyde Park Republican Club." Years later I found the official picture taken at the annual League parade. Posing with all the 8-year olds were a phalanx of town councilmen and state legislators.

Growing up, the big annual event in my neighborhood was Abe Seldin's block party. I remember one even had little amusement rides for us kids. At one party, Mr. Seldin introduced my parents to the charming Sol Wachtler and my mother gushed about it 30 years later.

I've lived through the demise of the two last, best machines in the state. In Albany, where I lived as a student and a legislative staffer, the Democratic machine of all machines has also faded away. In Albany the mayor's door was literally always open and even students like me knew our Democratic committeeman. But Albany of the new service economy outgrew its organization, though the annual picnic is still pretty good. Everyone knew that the old connections were breaking down, but it took a series of losses in the '90s to hammer home that it was really over.

It's the same in Nassau County. For years now, both Republican and Democratic candidates have been far more reliant on friends, family and other personal connections to maintain competitive campaigns than on the obviously weakened party structures. The Republicans still have a stronger county committee, but age, time constraints and the ennui felt by newer residents toward our local politics have reduced both parties to legal platforms for the nomination of self-propelled candidates.

Nassau will continue to tilt Republican, but the machine is gone. It's been down before and come back. In the mid-'60s, the wealthy and hip Nassau Democratic organization had them on the ropes. Joe Margiotta adopted fund-raising and field techniques right out of the Democrats'own playbook to remake his party.

But we've outgrown machine politics. It isn't coming back like it did before. In some ways, it'll be a little scary now that we're on our own. And a little sad. But we'll get over it.