May 9, 1993

CONSUMER confidence. It has such a reassuring, solid sound. If only it would come back, the economy surely would get better. It was even up a bit in April, the poll takers reported recently, although not nearly as much as last December when hopes were so high for the newly elected President. But such avid attention to the monthly fluctuations has concealed a most troubling trend. Ever since the 1960's, the optimism of Americans about the economy and their own circumstances has gradually deteriorated. And today millions of people view their future with no sense of certainty that things can get better.

WITH sure strokes, Rachel Vizner applied luminous white paint to the inside of an eight-foot dory she had built from a few pieces of wood. Around her, power tools roared and a thin haze of sawdust billowed upward to the high shed roof. "I love this school," said Ms. Vizner, a student at the Aquaculture School in Bridgeport, a regional vocational school dedicated to the study of commercial fisheries and marine trades. Ms. Vizner, who is 18 years old and lives in Monroe, said she intended to be a teacher, a vocation that does not require a knowledge of making fishing rods, lobster pots or little rowboats like the one to which she was putting the finishing touches. But the Aquaculture School has taught her something about education.

The Mets do not lose gracefully, or peacefully, or without incident. Vince Coleman lost another fly ball in the left-field sun yesterday afternoon at Shea Stadium. Pete Schourek never got his pitches under control, and the offense managed a pitiful four hits across nine innings. Bobby Bonilla could not even smack the ball out of the infield. It wasn't enough, though, that New York lost an embarrassing 4-2 game to the Florida Marlins, an expansion club that has already surpassed them in the National League East standings. The Mets had to fight among themselves as well.

FLUSH with new-found money from the recently imposed 0.75 percent hotel and motel room tax in Suffolk County, East End communities have started an advertising war against one another. "Come to the North Fork and don't forget your glasses," reads the headline of a full-page ad from the Southold Town Promotion Committee. One for the South Fork Promotion Committee reads, "The Hamptons are ready and waiting."

Backstage at the St. James Theater, the director Des McAnuff was summoned to the phone just after the audience had finally stopped cheering for "Tommy" and gone home. "That was sort of the love call," he explained a few moments later, referring to his conversation with Pete Townshend, on whose celebrated rock opera the show is based. Twenty-four hours earlier, Mr. Townshend had been at the St. James on a triumphant opening night, after which "Tommy" set a day-after-opening record of nearly $500,000 for ticket sales. Now, back in London, he was maintaining enough of a spiritual presence in New York to time his good wishes precisely to the final curtain. No wonder. When he wrote "the crowd went crazy as Tommy hit the stage" 24 years ago (in the lyrics to "Sally Simpson"), Mr. Townshend nicely anticipated the effect his work would one day have on Broadway audiences. But it took Mr. McAnuff, the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse in California and the Tony-winning director of "Big River," to collaborate with the Who's mastermind in finding the theatrical heart of "Tommy." Together, they have dusted off this rock-and-roll chestnut and coaxed forth a daring Broadway musical.