East holiday2017

t h e e a s t h a m p t o n s t a r m a g a z i n e • Holiday 2017

DREAMS OF PEACE

Nestled in East Hampton Village, the 4,177 sq.ft. home is a striking example of modern design and casual elegance close to one of the world’s most beautiful beaches and located on a coveted Village lane. The attention to detail and outstanding quality of the gracious 2-story home, perfectly positioned on 0.46 acres, is apparent upon approach.

With floor-to-ceiling south facing windows, the home takes advantage of sunlight all day and positively radiates in the evening. The open first floor flows effortlessly from gourmet kitchen to living room to dining room and out to the tranquil backyard. The master suite with sunset views encompasses a marble bathroom, fireplace, and private terrace. A junior master suite on the first floor and 3 additional en-suite bedrooms are sure to please. Distinctive details like the leather finished white crystal perimeter countertops in the chef’s kitchen is but one example of the eye for detail in this newly constructed home. On the finished lower level the modern refinement continues in the game room, staff quarters, full bathroom, and guest room/au-pair bedroom. Some impressive features of the 6-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom property are an 18 x 38 heated gunite pool with impeccable marble coping detail, a modern pool house with pergola, shower, and marble patios. EXCLUSIVE. web# 32716. $4,200,000

EAST HAMPTON This new 7,000 square ft. Estate in East Hampton has it all... and then some! Grand 2-story foyer, formal dining room, country eat-in-kitchen with fireplace, and an attached outdoor living room with radiant heated floors and fireplace. There are 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bath. A total of 4 fireplaces, 10 ft. ceilings throughout, large mud room with radiant heated floors and attached over-sized 3 car garage. Amazing lower level with gym, sauna and steam room, home theater, playroom and staff bedroom with bath. The architecturally landscaped 2 acre property has stone walls and winding driveway creating a dramatic approach.

There is a large spectacular pool house with bath and kitchenette as well as an open air pavilion with fireplace to comfortably accommodate the 50 foot heated gunite pool. EXCLUSIVE. web# 40380. $4,600,000

TownAndCountryHamptons.com

A masterpiece! Created by one of the most prestigious design teams in the Hamptons. This desirable and detail oriented home offers 6 bedrooms, 5 ½ baths, 3 fireplaces and an attached garage. Ground floor master with French doors opening to the magnificent ½ acre property, designed by Landscape Details Inc.. Every detail has been perfectly executed. From the open kitchen, living and dining, to the finished lower level with home theater, gym, steam, sauna and additional guest /au pair bedroom and bath. To complete the picture, add the 16 x 40 ft. heated gunite pool, spa, cutting gardens and morel. EXCLUSIVE. web# 29998. $4,495,000

EXQUISITE GENE STILWELL

Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker

516.641.3755 (c) GStilwell@TownAndCountryHamptons.com

WHEN THE MARKET FEELS PARTICULARLY CHALLENGING (WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS)

I T ’ S

elliman.com NEW YORK CITY | LONG ISLAND | THE HAMPTONS | WESTCHESTER | CONNECTICUT | NEW JERSEY | FLORIDA | CALIFORNIA | COLORADO | INTERNATIONAL © 2017 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY.

575 MADISON AVENUE, NY, NY 10022. 212.891.7000.

T H E AT L A N T I C T E A M AT D O U G L A S E L L I M A N R E A L E STAT E

REPRESENTING THE BEST OF THE HAMPTONS

BARNES & COY MASTERPIECE ON 1.5+ ACRES AMAGANSETT | $11,495,000

M A S T E R P I E C E A DJ O I N I N G 2 0 0 - A C R E R E S E R V E 1 5 G R E E N T R E E C O U R T, A M A G A N S E T T | $ 8 , 9 5 5 , 0 0 0

EAST HAMPTON VILLAGE SOUTH TRADITIONAL 1 1 P O N D V I E W L A N E , E A S T H A M P TO N | $ 7 , 2 5 0 , 0 0 0

B R I D G E H A M P T O N S O U T H W AT E R F R O N T 2 3 K E L L I S P O N D WAY, B R I D G E H A M P TO N | $ 5 , 9 9 9 , 9 9 9

Approx. 5,800 sf, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 baths, Heated Gunite pool. Web# H44283

Approx. 6,000 sf, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, Heated Gunite pool. Web# H43306

Approx. 6,500 sf, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, Heated Gunite pool. Web# H18108

Approx. 9,199 sf, 7 bedrooms, 8 full/3 half baths, Heated pool. Web# H48404

Top Producing Hamptons Team Since 2009 by GCI and Transactions JAMES KEOGH Lic. R.E. Salesperson

Office: 631.267.7341 james.keogh@elliman.com

JUSTIN AGNELLO Lic. R.E. Salesperson

Office: 631.267.7334 justin.agnello@elliman.com

HARA KANG Lic. R.E. Salesperson

Office: 631.267.7335 hara.kang@elliman.com

elliman.com

2488 MAIN ST, P.O. BOX 1251, BRIDGEHAMPTON, NY 11932. 631.537.5900 | © 2017 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE. ALL MATERIAL PRESENTED HEREIN IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. WHILE, THIS INFORMATION IS BELIEVED TO BE CORRECT, IT IS REPRESENTED SUBJECT TO ERRORS, OMISSIONS, CHANGES OR WITHDRAWAL WITHOUT NOTICE. ALL PROPERTY INFORMATION, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO SQUARE FOOTAGE, ROOM COUNT, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS AND THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN PROPERTY LISTINGS SHOULD BE VERIFIED BY YOUR OWN ATTORNEY, ARCHITECT OR ZONING EXPERT. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY.

U LT I M AT E B E A C H H O U S E

C U S T O M F U R T H E R L A N E E S TAT E

SAG HARBOR VILLAGE CLASSIC

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY

Montauk | $23,000,000 | Web# H53366

Sag Harbor | $1,999,000 | Web# H50959

East Hampton | $14,595,000 | Web# H54297

Sag Harbor | $2,995,000 | Web# H40426

CHRISTOPHER STEWART

Lic. R.E. Salesperson

Office: 631.329.9400 Cell: 917.744.2450 christopher.stewart@elliman.com

elliman.com

2488 MAIN ST, P.O. BOX 1251, BRIDGEHAMPTON, NY 11932. 631.537.5900 | © 2017 DOUGLAS ELLIMAN REAL ESTATE. ALL MATERIAL PRESENTED HEREIN IS INTENDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. WHILE, THIS INFORMATION IS BELIEVED TO BE CORRECT, IT IS REPRESENTED SUBJECT TO ERRORS, OMISSIONS, CHANGES OR WITHDRAWAL WITHOUT NOTICE. ALL PROPERTY INFORMATION, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO SQUARE FOOTAGE, ROOM COUNT, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS AND THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN PROPERTY LISTINGS SHOULD BE VERIFIED BY YOUR OWN ATTORNEY, ARCHITECT OR ZONING EXPERT. EQUAL HOUSING OPPORTUNITY.

The Most Beautiful Spot to Say “I Do”

Contact Michael Capoferri at

631.324.9191

for all Special Event inquiries for the 2017 Season www.easthamptonpoint.com 295 Three Mile Harbor Road, East Hampton, NY 11937

Guiding you home.

From this classic Georgica Pond gem to contemporary

real estate and the best agents to guide you there this fall. compass.com

8 / O U T HERE

WINTER ’ S BONE WHEN THE TR AFFIC JAMS AND L E AV E S FA L L AWAY, T R A C E S O F H I S T O RY A R E L A I D B A R E In this drone image by the South Fork’s great nature and wildlife photographer, Dell Cullum, December lays bare the branches and bones of East Hampton Village, revealing the geography of the broad, ancient commons as it was laid out by the English settlers some 370 years ago. Imagine a grazing green down the width of Main Street, with saltbox houses facing directly south toward the ocean and family woodlots extending all the way into Northwest Woods, outside the frame, to the extreme right.

Dell’s camera rises to a bird’s-eye view in late afternoon, as the sun sets in the west. If you look closely, you can make out the spire of the Presbyterian Church, which, 100 years ago—before modern landscaping obscured the view—could be seen from miles away and to which you could once climb to watch comings and goings clear to Amagansett. The Hook Mill, the church spire, and the flagpole form a straight line from north to south, with what is now North Main Street shooting up toward the camera at right.

If you wonder why we are taking pains to point out the boring compass points in this lovely image of our hometown in a moment of rosy peace, it is because we hope you will notice that the false geographical designations and barriers of the modern real estate industry do not actually exist here, at this bend in Montauk Highway: There is no “south of the highway” in the Village. There is only east and west of the highway. In the beginning, there was only the commons.—EAST

March 20, 2017, by Dell Cullum. In addition to commercial and portrait work, Dell focuses his lens on wildlife and has produced a handful of coffee-table books, including one on the flora and fauna of the Nature Trail and his latest, Local History Like You’ve Never Seen, which features vintage images taken by three generations of his family, dating back to snaps taken in the teens by his grandmother with a Brownie camera, in Montauk, and by his grandfather with a 3-A Folding Pocket Kodak, on Shelter Island, in the 1920s. Details are on his website, imaginationnature.com.

C ONTENTS / 1 1

CONTENTS

Holidays at home: PEACE AND PLENTY, comfort and joy

14

37

15

A book prescription for whatever ails you

ON THE COVER CONTRIBUTORS

17

Reading Remedies

41

59

FEATURES True Oyster Cult

An obsessive’s guide to our beloved bivalve varieties

Artists to Know

64

EDITOR’S NOTE Auld Lang Syne

42

Sweet and sentimental tales of seasonal travel— by plane, train, automobile

21

Non-plasticky trinkets for the stocking

MASTHEAD

19

EAST ILLUSTRATED

By Peter Spacek

23

OVERHEARD O Little Town of Southampton

Hildreth’s, selling Christmas spirit for 175 years

27

Here Be Monsters The strange statuary of County Road 39

29

All Tomorrow’s Parties Priced out of fancy fund-raisers?

33

DIVERSIONS Dear Odette

You have questions.

We have free advice

Meryl Meisler’s disco days on Long Island

GIFTING Get Stuffed

47

The Wish List

What do East End charities need?

49

BOUNTY The Big Chill

Homecomings

72

Around the Year at Quail Hill A photo essay by Michael Halsband, with words by Scott Chaskey

81

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS

Escaping to Gurney’s in winter

Our calendar of favorite events, from Thanksgiving through to New Year’s

55

91

Amagansett School learns latkes

By Nina Channing

Hot Potatoes

MEMOIR Brave

57

96

Homemade eggnog is so much better

The low season does have its consolations

Who Let the ’Nogs Out?

BY THE NUMBERS Peace on Earth

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1 4 / ON THE C O V ER

HOLIDAY 2017 W Ö L F F E R E S TAT E V I N E YA R D

E XQ U I S I T E , YE A R AF TER YEAR Caya Cabernet Franc Awarded 90+ points by Wine Advocate three years running.

MARY JANE ANSELL Tr e a s u r y o f S o u l s ( 2 0 1 7 ) 26” x 26” / Oil on aluminum panel A British artist who has won accolades for her portraits—being featured four times, for instance, in the B.P. Portrait Awards, held each year at the National Portrait Gallery in London— Ansell trained in Brighton, England, but moved recently to the border of North Wales, near Snowdonia National Park, where her studio is a converted barn with double-high windows. “It’s a beautiful and sparsely populated area full of glorious views and peace and quiet,” she says.

Ansell’s name will be familiar to East End art-watchers who include in their rounds the R.J.D. Gallery in Bridgehampton, where some of her pieces appeared in the “Big Art, Small Canvas” exhibition this month and where she will have a solo show next August. She is, obviously, a realist painter, but she’s not big on pigeonholing. “I do think a lot of [my] work gets labeled as Photorealism,” she says, “because it’s so often seen reduced and online, but it looks very different in the flesh.” Her process—a white ground, covered with layers both transparent and opaque—allows her to create great depth of texture, light, and translucence (see: the inner glow of the skin).

The model for this piece was a young Italian woman named Valeria who dropped by the studio and fascinated Ansell with her bone structure and coloring. The piece takes its title from a rhyme her mother recited to Ansell when she was little. It is worth noting that in Jewish mysticism, the “treasury of souls,” sometimes depicted as a dovecote or birdhouse, is the chamber in Seventh Heaven where souls reside.

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C ONTRI B U TORS / 1 5

A F E W O F T H E FA N TA S T I C P E O P L E W H O B R O U G H T YO U T H I S M AGA ZI N E

ISABEL CARMICHAEL “My career,” says Carmichael (pictured here at age 8), “began when my mother, realizing I was a bit lost, gave me a proofreading class as a present.” She worked in her early days as a researcher for Vogue and Glamour, and has been a reporter for The East Hampton Star, and a translator from both French and Spanish. She is also a remarkable distance runner, winning the Metropolitan Fifth Avenue Mile in 4:44 and being second American woman in the New York Marathon at 2:38:15. She still loves to run outside, even in winter—but only if the temperature is above 30 degrees.

DELL CULLUM Dell (snapped as a young buck in 1965) has become a local celebrity not just for his wildlife photographs but for leading fellow citizens on passionate crusades to clean up beaches and roadways.

His fascination with nature has taken him all over the world, including the Galapagos Islands, where he shot his first full-length documentary, Isabela: a Green Explorer Expedition. In winter he loves to observe animals and help them survive as food becomes scarce.

BIDDLE DUKE Our founding editor (seen here at age 4 1/2) was a newspaper reporter and editor in three states and Argentina before moving to Vermont, where he has owned and operated a group of weeklies for the past 19 years. He spends most of his time these days, though, in Springs. His wife, Idoline, is an artist. They have two grown children. During the winter, Biddle enjoys climbing up and sliding down snow, far away from society.

MICHAEL HALSBAND Born in New York City, Halsband (pictured with his dad in Brooklyn) is a renowned photographer specializing in portraiture. He has toured with the Rolling Stones, photographed the School of American Ballet, and captured images of many interesting people. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts and is now an adjunct professor there. In his wide-ranging career, he’s been featured in Rolling Stone, Interview, and Avenue, as well as many galleries.

JOANIE MCDONELL She has written poems, screenplays, and novels—including Half Crazy and Bolero—as well as The Little Book of Hope: Collected Writings on Depression, Despair, & Melancholy, an anthology of quotations and remarks from well-known sufferers of the Black Dog that we find useful come February.

Joanie (shown at far left with her sister, Betty Ann) lives near the beach in Amagansett and says her favorite chilly-season activity is skiing and drinking eggnog spiked with Green Spot Irish whiskey.

in every season

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masthead / 17

“WHAT’S YOUR GUILTY PLEASURE AT HOLIDAY TIME?”

Publishers

David Rattray & Helen Rattray

Founding Editor Biddle Duke

Editor in Chief Bess Rattray

Art Director Maria Lavezzo

Associate Editor Nina Channing

“I’m not a baker, but if someone is making whipped cream for pie at Thanksgiving, I always sneak whipped cream from the bowl with my fingers”

Fiction Editor Iris Smyles

“Drinking gravy straight, with a spoon, like soup! But only when no one is looking, of course” “These days we’re in San Francisco for Christmas, and for family dinner we go out to a Chinese restaurant” “When it comes to overindulging, it’s Bridgewater Chocolate, from Connecticut. It’s become known as the best chocolate made in the U.S., maybe the planet. I do major damage to the dark chocolate toffees”

Contributing Writers & Editors Isabel Carmichael David Gibbons Sophie Griffin Jennifer Landes

Joanie McDonnell Jackie Pape Lang Phipps Taylor K. Vecsey

Illustrators

“On New Year’s Eve I like to come down with a cold and go to bed early” “I have a fake tree that looks like a real tree, and I choose the most hokey wrapping paper at the Sag Harbor Variety Store. Wrapping paper should not be chic. I use good ribbon, though”

Jane Parkes Durell Godfrey Peter Spacek

Graphic Design Matthew Charron Paul Friese Jordy Mark

Advisers & Friends Philippe Cheng Matthew Davis Virginia Edwards Michael Halsband Levi Shaw-Faber

Sales

Jane Bimson Min Spear-Hefner

“If my kids were getting a toy that I thought was cool, I’d get it out of the box and play with it before Santa put it under the tree. It was a ‘safety inspection’ ”

John Wyche Zach Zunis

Business Manager Robin Kuntz

Etc.

Russell Bennett

EAST (2017, Volume 2, No. 4) is published four times a year, in June, July, August, and November

by The East Hampton Star, 153 Main Street, P.O. Box 5002, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937 Subscriptions and circulation: EAST is distributed as an insert in The East Hampton Star on the applicable publication dates and at select locations around the East End of Long Island.

To become a subscriber please call: 631-324-0002, reach us via email at classy@easthamptonstar.com, or go to www.easthamptonstar.com and click on subscriptions We welcome your letters, comments, queries, ideas. Send them to EAST, P.O. Box 5002 East Hampton, N.Y. 11937 or editor@ehstar.com

“I used to get into pajamas, and get my children into their pajamas, and we’d get in the car with hot chocolate and cookies, and drive around to see all the lights.

There are some good ones on Three Mile Harbor Road”

Come Celebrate the Holidays with Harper…

…at East Hampton Gardens’ Open House!

November 24, 25, and 26 – 10 am – 5 pm — Santa arrives Saturday at Noon! —

We are your gifting destination.

William Yeoward Crystal and Barware | Kew garden pots | Caswell Massey soaps and lotions Baobab candles | Kerber Farms gift crates | Ornaments and decor

16 GINGERBREAD LANE, EAST HAMPTON

631-324-1133

E D ITOR ’ S NOTE / 1 9

AU L D L ANG S Y NE A L L I WA N T F O R C H R I S T M A S I S A T I M E -T R AV E L M A C H I N E As anyone who has the misfortune of reading my rants on Facebook is already aware, my personal politics are somewhere to the left of Emma Goldman and the Tasmanian Devil. But when it comes to many of my privately held views, on less political subjects, I’m actually a closet conservative. Conservative in the sense of wanting to preserve things as they used to be. Conservative in the sense of not liking change practically ever.

I am this way to the wild-eyed extent that I think the Windsors should reign on the throne of England all the way until the Resurrection . . . because I don’t want any engangered culture to go extinct, even the monarchy. I believe the Dongan Patent of 1686 still gives the people of East Hampton rule over our waterways, and that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has no business on our beach.

I even get huffy when the State or County Highway Department “solves” traffic problems by rejiggering roads, because, in my view, the natural flow of vehicles, as determined by the long, slow passage of time is—like rivers seeking the smoothest route down to sea level—in some deep-physics sense infallibly best.

I will hold on, and hold on, and hold on to old ways until my fists seize up and my face turns blue.

Which brings me to the holidays.

If I had my way, I’d wave a magic wand and the winter world outside my door would return to that of 75 years ago—after the advent of penicillin, pain killers, radio, women’s suffrage, and the Long Island Rail Road, but before television, landscape spotlighting, Belgian block driveway pavers, fro-yo, and the Brazilian wax. Once or twice a year, I will wake up with bare branches scratching at the glass of my bedroom

window on a cold morning and catch a fleeting sensation of being back in the 1970s, when we children were herded upstreet to paint snowmen inexpertly in tempera on storefront windows, and if someone needed a last-minute pound of butter on Thanksgiving Day we’d trot over to the G & T Dairy (a.k.a. the Chicken House, a.k.a. the “Maison de Poulet”) because it was the only store open and it closed at noon. Black branches, gray skies, and Roberta Flack songs blaring on WLNG. A frozen-hard ground thudding under the heel of a Redwing boot.

In December, I must have Shinnecock oysters roasted with sorrel and Pernod. I must have champagne in my grandmother’s hollow-stem coupes. It gives me a stomach ache, but I must have Chocolate Sundae Pie made from my great-grandmother Huntting’s recipe, as printed in a custard-splotched 1940s edition of the L.V.I.S. cookbook.

What I miss most about the long-ago holidays and holy nights of the 1970s is the stillness of the cold, crystalline air. Whole minutes would go by with no traffic passing on the road. No I Took a Pill in Ibiza ring tones, no hum of the neighbor’s indoor-pool heater, only, if there was a high wind, the dull roar of the ocean a mile away and the rush of high wind in high trees. I think of myself as a young person, perennially a punk rocker and evergreen in my delight over childish holiday treats, but I must be getting older because all I want for Christmas is a few hours of silence.

Before they fall asleep on December 24th, I will force my daughter, age 10, and my son, 8—and unfamiliar with this cornball, old-timey thing called quiet—to come outside with me into the cold yard, close their eyes, and listen for the breakers in the distance.

—Bess Rattray

HOLIDAY ON THE HARBOR Impress your friends, family and colleagues with an exciting holiday experience. Celebrate the season in a picturesque setting featuring stunning views of Sag Harbor Cove from our second oor dining room and private event space.

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Reserve your event by November 17, and receive a complimentary champagne toast.

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O V ERHEAR D / 2 3

OVERHEARD C O N V E R S AT I O N , C O N T R O V E R SY, C O C K TA I L C H AT T E R

Hildreth’s Home Goods

O Little Town Of Southampton On a quiet fall afternoon, Henry Halsey Hildreth III—the fifth Hildreth to run what is the oldest family-owned-and-operated department store in America— sat on a stool next to Colleen Hildreth, his wife of more than 20 years, and talked about what Hildreth’s General Store was like when it opened in 1842 on the spot Hildreth’s Home Goods occupies today on Main Street, Southampton.

Customers who walked through the front door 175 years ago relied on Hildreth’s for anything they couldn’t make or grow themselves. Hildreth’s was a lifeline to the outside world, the only store in town, a one-stop shop for goods that came by ship via the port of Sag Harbor: hardtack, wheels of cheese, vegetables, dry goods, farm equipment, sewing tools, buggy whips, and harpoons. Although some ancient-relic fishing nets, whaling gear, and machine parts still decorate the store, the afore-

mentioned items—save for the sewing and quilting supplies and notions—are no longer on its inventory. Hildreth’s stock-in-trade for nearly a century now has been quality furnishings for the home, as well as all the small things that make life comfortable, from sweet-smelling soaps to baby rattles.

Henry didn’t plan to inherit the family business. “I worked seasonally in the summer and sometimes in the winter when I was a kid growing up,” he said.

“Then I went off to college, and when I

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Live trees and garlands, lights, tree stands, ornaments, ribbons and much more!

See Our Lionel Holiday Train Village Display!

Holiday fun for kids of all ages!

Visit Our Christmas Shop We’re stocked with beautiful items for your home and well as perfect gifts for all the lucky people on your gift list.

Enjoy the Experience of the Holidays at

Fowler’s

Stop By for A Photo with Santa!

Every Sat. & Sun. from 1-4 pm Starting November 28

Formerly Lynch’s Same Great Company, Same Great Staff, Only The Name Has Changed!

175 North Sea Rd, Southampton

283-5515

Extended Holiday Hours:

Mon. through Sat.: 8 - 6 | Sunday 9 - 5

O V ERHEAR D / 2 5

Hildreth’s Home Goods

America’s oldest family-owned-and-run department store, when it still sold margarine and axes. Center: Various Hildreths and employees more than a century ago.

came back I was selling real-estate and working in the store a little. I told my father I would give him a few days a week.”

It was 1978, and he was 22.

It wasn’t long, though, before Henry—like so many young people who promise their parents “a few days a week” but get drawn inexorably into a family business—committed himself to working full time. By 1980, he was overseeing the renovation of the store and the expansion of the warehouse. He took over as president in 1990—the seventh Hildreth to run the place in its 175 years—and today Hildreth’s of Southampton, with 20,000 square feet of sales floor, is the largest source of interior and exterior furnishings on the East End. There is also a 12,000-square-foot outpost in East Hampton, and a patio center behind the Southampton main building.

Thriving as so many other momand-pops falter and fold in the face of not just the big boxes of Riverhead, but the world-changing marketplace that is Amazon.com, does not come without hard work. Happily for Henry, his fam-

ily helps out. Last year, Colleen, who had been a full-time mom for their three children (Kailey, 21, Sayre, 18, and Henry IV, 16), joined the team, becoming manager of the furniture department. Kailey has also dived in, and together the mother-daughter duo has upgraded much of the Hildreth’s range to fit the likings of the persnickety Hamptons customer.

“With my daughter here, she brings in a lot of fresh, modern ideas, versus my more traditional mind-set,” Colleen said.

Henry and Colleen don’t believe in forcing their kids into the business.

Sayre and young Henry have yet to come to any decisions about their careers; Kailey joined her parents because she knew that she wanted to be a part of the long Hildreth tradition. In the meantime, her brothers help sometimes with deliveries and such.

Summer is, naturally, their busiest season, but the Hildreths look forward to winter, which is when they replenish stock, think about the upcoming year, and repair any leaks or cranks of the old building. Henry says the off season is

pretty busy, actually. “There are always projects to do, so we are always busy,” he said. “Most people who work here are jacks-of-all-trades. Some may do deliveries, but they may also be good painters or good carpenters.”

Although the goods on shelves are modern, some things haven’t changed an iota. The heavy wood-and-glass main door is the same one customers passed through in 1842. Hildreth’s is among the small cadre of local institutions—also including The East Hampton Star and the movie theaters in East Hampton and Southampton—to maintain the same phone number since basically the dawn of time. And, as a holly-bordered ad in The Star in 1958 (offering Early American-style pine dining sets, American Tourister luggage, and Westmoreland milk glass) put it, we still “think Hildreth’s is the most wonderful place to catch the Christmas spirit.”

Hildreth’s is redolent with old-fashioned sensations in November, and as the natural sunlight flooding in from Main Street weakens into December:

Levi Shaw-Faber

O V ERHEAR D / 2 7 ison Jennerich, the director of Behind the Fence Gallery, outlines the history of the unusual roadside store—which was known as Yesterday’s Treasures until March of this year, when the establishment was bought for $3,000,000 and renamed by Jeremy Essay. He’s a fourth-generation member of the Nugent and Potter family, which specializes in plumbing and heating supplies, with headquarters serendipitously in the building next door.

When we walk around, we see a spookily lifelike Elvis Presley who sits on a bench with President Obama, both of them eyeing Marilyn Monroe. Not far away, dozens of bronze Buddhas meditate; and available to order are Brenda’s relatives, allosaurus and kentrosaurus.

Collectibles, like ancient typewriters and bright-red gum machines, are mixed in among antique breakfronts, inlaid tables, and unusual lamps. Plus all manner of gambling and sailing appurtenances and a reproduction VicA 12-foot fiberglass dinosaur named Brenda greeted a guest at Adrian Simon’s house in Montauk last summer. trola which is playing old-time tunes on actual vinyl records.

The statuary that we catch an eyeful You listen for the creak of the floor- leading to Adrian’s house in Montauk. boards and the crinkle of tissue paper About 12 feet high and 7 feet long, she’s a of on the roadside—animals, reptiles, raptors, and characters from life and ficor catch an olfactory hint of wood oil fiberglass brontosaurus.

We’ve all driven by the spot where tion—is cast in iron or bronze or shaped or furniture polish, as you peruse glass tree ornaments shaped like dachshunds Brenda was hatched, on County Road in fiberglass. The horses look so real and owls or choose between lavender sa- 39 in Southampton. Outside, there are that a Louisville event planner ordered chets or balsam. The atmosphere in the mammoth marble rhinoceroses, giant a Thoroughbred to serve as a photo-op prop at the Kentucky Derby. store contributes to the pleasantPrices range from around $50 ness of the task of shopping for HaOUTSIDE THE GALLERY, on county road 39, to $50,000, negotiable. What nukkah or Christmas gifts: This is no humming box of glaring-white THERE ARE MAMMOTH MARBLE RHINOCEROSES, would we like to bring home: a working phone booth? a knight GIANT PINK FLAMINGOS, AND A STATUE OF fluorescent light, but a store with in shining armor? or a pair of soul. May it remain ever so.

SUPERMAN. WHO BUYS THESE THINGS? cream-colored porcelain foo —Jackie Pape dogs for the front hall? Maybe pink flamingos, and a statue of Super- the elaborate fountain . . .

Here Be Monsters We return to Alison and ask about man. We’ve all speculated about that Aside from being a gifted musician, place. Who buys those things? Where the customers. She says a restaurant in Adrian Simon doesn’t seem much un- do they come from? But Adrian Simon Queens ordered a crew of pirates in full like other millennials his age, which is dropped in and there he discovered a freebooter regalia. Ralph’s Italian Ices 24. But then you meet Brenda. Well not wonderland. Ten-thousand square feet in Mamaroneck bought an enormous exactly meet her. Rather, you encoun- of magic. Ten rooms filled with treasure. ice cream cone. A set of dinosaurs went Now we want to know more. So Al- to a Las Vegas mini-golf course. > ter her on the side of the long driveway

O V ERHEAR D / 2 9

She remembers an elegant lady who walked in one day and bought a gargantuan Quasimodo to hang from a tree near her house in Sagaponack. Also, a creative Southampton mother who rented jungle animals and peacocks for a party in honor of her son’s graduation from his veterinary school’s exotic animal program.

Sheep and Pop Art cows are trendy.

Giant storks are popular at baby showers. Wedding guests love rock stars, and Michael Jordan looks very real in his Bulls uniform. But wasn’t the famous number on his red shirt 23, not 32? Yes, but there are licensing issues. Same with firearms: You can’t just go around selling imitation guns, so anybody who wants one is out of luck. Nix the stuffed animals, too; no taxidermy. Very few of the replicas are made in the U.S. Construction is outsourced primarily to Thailand and the Philippines.

At length, Alison points to some new one-of-a kind canvas bags. She and Jeremy Essay hope to bring together a community of East End artists and artisans and provide a venue for their work.

Here in this emporium of enchantment, they want to both do good and do well.

Adrian Simon says that he feels an almost childlike excitement, a sense of renewal, every time he drives past his brontosaurus. “Brenda is very welcoming to guests, although some of them are startled when they see her for the first time,” he says. “She’s a tough girl, and stays out in all weather.” Adrian put a three-foot frog in the garden at his house in Connecticut, but the frog is not a patch on Brenda. —Joanie McDonell

All Tomorrow’s Parties Accepting change has become synonymous with life on the South Fork. Old houses and beloved old dives disappear.

Chatty acquaintances bumped into on the popcorn line at the movies are replaced by strangers speaking Italian and

The Brooklyn Peaches prepare to leap into a fountain at the LongHouse Reserve. Photograph by Durell Godfrey.

IN 1964, OUR PARENTS COULD ATTEND A COCKTAIL FUND-RAISER FOR $2.50. TODAY, WITH TABLES AT THE HEADIEST SUMMER GALAS RANGING FROM $12,000 TO $50,000, WE FEEL A BIT DOWNCAST, SOMETIMES, TO HAVE BEEN PRICED OUT OF MOST CHARITY bashES.

Russian. We forget to dial a new area code as we whip out our iPhone X with its facial recognition security system.

When we ask Alexa what the weather will be, the forecast frequently seems weirdly unseasonable. And where did all these Maseratis come from?

While change is an unavoidable aspect of life in 2017, and we all have learned to roll with the punches, change in one particular realm has been difficult for some of us at EAST to accept: the soaring cost of attendance at charity parties, whether it’s a dinner or a performance or a hoedown.

In 1964, our parents could attend a cocktail fund-raiser on the South Fork benefit scene for $2.50, and in 1994 they might get in before dessert for $125— which makes $1,500 for dinner, or drinks and nibbles, kind of hard to swallow.

From where we sit, it feels like the amount you have to dish out to attend benefits has skyrocketed. Are we imag-

ining it? We called Linda Shapiro, an event coordinator responsible for planning many of the most successful benefits out here, and asked her to weigh in.

Shapiro, who moved to the East End in 1994, says that, yes, everything from table settings to flower arrangements has undergone a glamorization, and with it, prices have bounded ever higher. “Backyard picnics,” she says, have become “Broadway productions.”

Shapiro has been mounting magnificent and lucrative events for a couple of decades now, including “A Hamptons Happening” for Samuel Waxman Cancer Research, the Bow Wow Meow Ball for the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, and Love Bites for breast cancer. But even she didn’t foresee the South Fork becoming what she deems the Mecca of American fund-raising.

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have been deemed inadequate when deluxe bathroom trailers—with air-conditioning and wide vanity mirrors—can be brought in to attend to the discrete needs of a deluxe clientele.

As the settings become more chi-chi, the cost to attend such events also becomes headier. Some of summer 2017’s more exclusive events included the Hamptons Heart Ball for the American Heart Association, with tickets starting at $600, and Rush Philanthropic Art Foundation’s Art for Life, at $1,500 a head. Tables at Guild Hall’s Summer Gala went for $12,500 to $25,000. Tables at both the Perlman Music Program and the Nature Conservancy summer bash were priced up to $50,000.

Can people afford to do this? Well, Shapiro says, clearly many can. “There is a ton of money out here in the summer. So if you have the right house and maybe the right celebrity, and you put out an invitation and do PR, and make

people feel like they can’t miss the event, the money is there.”

Charities have certainly reaped the benefits of the new normal in Hamptons benefit-going, as well they should.

It’s kind of ridiculous to complain about what is, indeed, a wonderful thing: Worthy nonprofits need all the help they can get. Inviting people to buy a table, in particular, is a nifty way for these groups to tempt attendees into contributing more than they probably would otherwise. “If people don’t see it in front of them,” Shapiro says, “they don’t think about giving more.”

Call us Scrooge, though, but we sometimes feel downcast that we have been priced out of many of these charitable parties. It’s not that there aren’t other ways and other organizations to lend support to, on a more modest scale.

We love a good firehouse breakfast at $8 a plate, and we consider it great fun to join ARF on the Walk to the Sea at the

$30 “mighty mutt” level.

As December’s charitable season rolls around, though, we have come to realize that for not just the working class but the middle class here, opportunities for giving tend to revolve around the donation of labor and time (as volunteers for the ambulance, the ocean rescue groups, and so on), rather than encompassing those ritual fund-raisers of yore, which brought entire communities together for awkward dancing, good vibes, and so-so wine.

Is this evidence of a broadening economic gap in America at large, of the disappearance of the middle class? We think so. The One Percent has reserved all the seats at the table. Should there be room under the tent for the neighborhood orthodontist, yoga teacher, and deli owner? Again, we say yes. To paraphrase the old labor-union slogan: We have our bread, but can we not have our rosé, too? — EAST

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Dear ODETTE YO U ’ V E G O T Q U E S T I O N S . W E ’ V E G O T F R E E A D V I C E .

B U T B E F O R E WA R N E D : O D E T T E D O E S N ’ T C O D D L E

Dear Odette, I have been dating a woman for five months. I have primary custody of my 7-year-old son, and only have two Saturday nights off a month. I have noticed that if I have to cancel at the last minute she counter-cancels our next date at the last minute. How do I explain I’m not canceling on her because I want to?

Irked in Montauk Dear Irked, The problem here isn’t finding a way to make her understand why you have had to cancel a date.

The problem here is that someone in this relationship—and I’m not sure if it’s her or it’s you, or it’s both—is trapped in a cycle of Trumpian tit-for-tat that was clearly formed by earlier relationships.

Perhaps much earlier relationships.

Keep the conversation light when you broach the subject; light, banter-y conversation is a more effective way, in situations like this, to winkle out the truth. You are Spencer Tracy and she is Katharine Hepburn. Ask her straight up if she is playing the “you did it first!”

retaliation game. If she admits she is, we can assume she’s stuck in an unhealthy, punitive mode of interacting with the world that probably dates back a long time, much longer than five months.

But if you broach the subject and she calls you a great foolish lummox and stares at you with adorable and genuinely believable befuddlement, you might want to look into your heart and ask yourself if it’s you that is stuck in transactional-retaliation mode. Stuck, that is, in a behavior pattern formed in your relationship with someone else: your son’s mom? or your siblings when you were growing up. . . ?

The upshot is that walking through life finding a string of significant others with whom to trade onesies! twosies! blows on top of the head will never, ever lead to romantic or domestic happiness.

And walking through life with the expectation that others will trap you in that game is equally stunting.

Life is not a Tracy-Hepburn movie.

Unless this is all a misunderstanding and you two can come together over a highball, laugh it off, and immediately

cease hostilities, I think this relationship is ultimately doomed. Sorry.

Dear Odette, Can you recommend non-boring things to give as hostess gifts when invited to dinner, or house presents for weekend visits out of town? People always say it’s thoughtful to bring something locally made—a reminder of where the gift-giver is from—but smoked bluefish from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott is pretty much all I’ve come up with. My friends are getting tired of smoked fish.

Empty-Handed Ambassador Dear Ambassador, The first rule of thumb is that you don’t want to give anything that might actually be a subtle nuisance. For example, it can be sort of disruptive when dinner guests arrive bearing bouquets: You, as host, have to fuss around, finding a suitable vase and pretending you have the time to trim and primp the arrangement, gritting your teeth and muttering to yourself as smoke begins to rise from the broiler. >

3 4 / D I V ERSIONS Similarly, a fluffy white Annabelle hydrangea, tied with a ribbon and ready for planting, might look like the perfect souvenir-of-the-Hamptons house gift, but does your host actually want to add another flowering shrub to his or her landscaping? Don’t assume so. Likewise, don’t appear bearing a whole cake or pie, because the host will feel pressured to serve it at dessert time, and they probably already have dessert planned and will find this a bit annoying.

I do think cut flowers are always a good idea, but you should trim them and arrange them yourself beforehand and include a vase with the gift. Go for locally grown and seasonal, as opposed to hothouse: Montauk daisies, late-spring lilacs, boughs of cherry blossoms, daffodils, a holly-and-white-pine swag in December, and so on. As you come in, make sure to tell your kind host that he or she doesn’t need to put them onto the dinner or lunch table, which has probably already been set with care.

You might slip into the kitchen, place them on a side counter, and announce: “I’ll just leave these here!”

Other hostess gifts I’d personally be delighted to receive include: a small wheel of cheese (a whole cheese is better than a cut piece, as it won’t smell and doesn’t scream out to be served immediately during the party) from Mecox Bay Dairy, etc., cellophaned up on a small cutting board or vintage plate; a bag of good coffee from Java Nation or Hamptons Coffee Co.; or bottled drinks made here on the Forks, like Monbrewcha kombucha from Montauk or Milk Pail apple cider from Water Mill.

If you’re spending a weekend or longer at your friends’ place, you could go whole hog and fill a cotton or canvas shopping tote bearing the logo of a favorite business with, say, crisp Gala apples, or paper napkins and disposable plates printed with funny slogans from the Monogram Shop in East Hampton—depending on the hosts’ tastes,

obviously. Pike’s farm stand on Sagg Main Street sells simple totes that could be stuffed with good white corn at the end of summer. To raise funds, most libraries sell branded totes that would be a fun way to deliver a detective novel plus a box of fancy Dobra tea from Harbor Books in Sag Harbor, thoughtfully anticipating a cozy moment in January.

Also in the souvenir-y vein are T-shirts or trucker hats from institutions that you love, like a cap blazoned with a chicken from Iacono Farm in East Hampton; a kitschy WLNG Radio tee from Sag Harbor; or a fire department sweatshirt from wherever. If the hosts have kids, bring kiddie sizes. These work best, though, if the recipient is familiar with these places and shares your enthusiam. If you’re meeting your hosts for the first time, they will think you’re weird if you give them a chicken hat.

Dear Odette: I am mid-divorce, 40 pounds overweight, and feeling extraordinarily frumpy. I look like Kathy Bates in Misery.

My daughter, who is in fourth grade and going through an overdramatic stage, cries every time I tell her I plan to get a new hairdo, because she can’t tolerate any more change in her life and doesn’t want mom to look different or change in any way. I tell her it is good for moms to take care of themselves, and that includes grooming and hairdos. I’ve even offered to let her choose my new hairstyle, but she is fierce in opposition to a mom makeover. Words of advice?

I Used to Be Pretty Dear Pretty, My answer will sound a bit retrograde, especially to second-wave feminists, but . . . schedule a mother-daughter day of beauty.

Well-being hinges on at least a small modicum of self-care (to use that trendy phrase), and your daughter needs to learn that lesson from you. No one can

really feel okay when they’re walking around looking like a psychopath from a Stephen King movie or one of the characters on Hoarders who hasn’t left their apartment in six years.

Brush the Dorito dust from the front of your sweater and make an appointment for a mother-daughter expedition to the day spa. Get day passes for Gurney’s Resort in Montauk. Swim in the pool, share fourth-grade gossip in the sauna. As you get your nails done, talk about how it feels good to take care of yourself. Talk about how appearance should never be priority number one but should never be completely blown off, either. Talk about how you can influence your own future by considering the image you present to the world. Talk about working really hard but granting yourself an afternoon of frivolity now and again, because life is short. Finish up with mother-daughter haircuts. Engage her in conversation with the stylist about what would look best on mom.

This advice sounds stupid, but it’s not.

A line from a Henry Jaglom movie has been stuck in my head for years (not Last Summer in the Hamptons, but maybe Babyfever?). The gist, to paraphrase, is that you should be as kind to yourself as you would be to an elderly favorite aunt.

Teach your daughter to treat herself with kindness, just as you would have her treat some beloved relative with kindness.

It is good for kids of elementary age to start to learn how to let go of their own needs, every now and again, and understand that others, including moms and dads, deserve sympathy sometimes, too.

Your self-indulgent day of beauty is also a lesson in empathy.

Please address queries via email to odette@ ehstar.com or by post to Dear Odette, EAST magazine, The East Hampton Star, P.O. Box 5002, 153 Main Street, East Hampton, N.Y. 11937. The advice offered in this column is not intended as a substitute for professional advice from a doctor or therapist.

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READING REMEDIES W I N T E R B LU E S ? A C A S E O F T H E G R I N C H E S ?

I R R I TAT E D BY A U N T A G N E S ? N I N A C H A N N I N G H A S T H E C U R E

The holidays can be a trying time— financially, emotionally. From unreasonable family expectations to the inescapable strains of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, little mounting annoyances can sour a merry mood.

Sometimes all you want to do is curl up in a comfy chair and wait until it’s all over. We believe that there’s nothing a great book and a mug of hot chocolate can’t improve. So whether you are a mistletoe enthusiast or a misanthrope, here’s a list of literary antidotes for what ails you.

TRADITION, LONGING FOR A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you can’t help but fall in love with this book. Set in the 1930s, it tells the story of a close friendship between a 7-yearold boy, Buddy, and his elderly aunt and

evokes the simplicity of childhood and country life. Tender and charming with a twist of melancholy, it will fill you with nostalgia. Best paired with kids and freshly baked cookies.

DOWN IN THE DUMPS, FEELING Theft by Finding, David Sedaris If you find yourself moping about the house, looking forlornly and a bit accusingly at the jolly carolers, this one is for you. Compiled from 25 years of diary entries, it follows the author and comedian’s rise to notoriety, and the many mistakes (mostly alcohol-related) and realizations (he’s gay) he makes along the way. By the end, you’ll be sore from laughing and feel like Sedaris is your best friend. Best paired with a good sense of humor and a box of chocolates.

COLD, THE COMMON The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie Knocked out by a headache and chills?

This classic paperback mystery will keep you entertained without requiring too much mental energy. Best paired with a bowl of chicken soup and some candles to set the mood.

D I V ERSIONS / 3 9

FAMILY, COPING WITH Autumn, Karl Ove Knausgaard Getting a little too much of the ones you love? This new novel from the Norwegian author will remind you of how to see the beauty in the frustration. Written as a series of 60 short (three-page) meditations for the author’s youngest daughter, it is a straightforward and philosophical look at family life and the many ways relationships teach us to explore the universe. Best enjoyed in the early morning with a cup of coffee and some good light.

FAMILY, COPING WITHOUT Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami Feeling lonely? Well, you’re not the only one. Stealing its title from Hemingway, this new collection of strange and poignant short stories follows various men as they deal with loss and absence. Full of longing, love affairs, and late-night reveries, this most recent book from Murakami, with its moody melancholy, will make you feel better about being on your own. It’s a little spooky and a little surreal; if you like David Lynch, you’ll like this. Best paired with a dark snowy night and a glass of that good whiskey your uncle sent you.

GRANTED, TAKING YOUR LIFE FOR A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara Not for the faint of heart, this stunning 800-page novel may consume many nights by the fire before you finish, but it will be well worth it. The story, which follows a group of four college friends throughout their lives, is difficult and, at times, disturbing, but always compelling. As characters age, secret pasts are revealed, trust is broken and rebuilt, and relationships develop in beautiful, unexpected ways. This book will break your heart, ruin your week, and make you grateful for all of it. Best paired with a box of tissues and an energy bar to keep you going.

HANGOVER, HAVING A KILLER Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck Hit the eggnog a little too hard? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Charming, witty, and a quick read, this all-but-forgotten classic is perfect for a groggy Sunday. Best when paired with a leftover turkey sandwich and hair of the dog.

FAT, GETTING Cooked, Michael Pollan It happens to the best of us, and rather than give you tips to avoid the bulge (we’re sick of those, too), we’re leaning in. A deliciously in-depth exploration of different cooking styles from barbecue to baking bread, Cooked will never tell you to go light on the butter. Best paired with a spicy pulled-pork sandwich from Townline BBQ and your favorite beer.

OLD, GETTING Rules for Aging, Roger Rosenblatt Another year, another reminder of just how long we’ve been stringing tinsel and stuffing turkeys. But fear not, there’s now a handbook for how to grow older with grace (and more than a few laughs). Best read aloud with family and friends, perhaps in the lazy lull after the big meal.

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D I V ERSIONS / 4 1

A R T I S T S

T O

K N O W

AL IVE

BORN

MERYL MEISLER Suburbanites who plied the L.I.R.R. and the L.I.E. between Westhampton and Manhattan in the late 1970s—at least those documented by a nonconformist young woman from Massapequa, who carried her camera to the bars and bar mitzvahs, discos and day camps of Lawn Guyland—spent a lot of time dancing. They danced with abandon at weddings in Rockville Centre. They danced at Hot Dog Beach and at drag parties. They lined up to pogo drunkenly at CBGB. Some of them did the hustle topless in Times Square, some gyrated in G-strings at Cherry Grove. Meryl Meisner’s incredibly evocative book Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy ’70s Suburbia & the City is peopled by indelible New York characters including Ed Koch, Stiv Bators, Patti Smith, and Judy Jupiter (a go-go girl who became Studio 54’s in-house photographer). In the North Massapequa domestic scenes, all butterfly wallpaper and plush wall-to-wall, and in the poignant portraits of high school friends dressed for prom in finest disco white and foxfur chubbies, we see a lost world that is both joyfully hedonistic and bruised, purple and black, around the edges.

On Shoulders at Dance Party, August 1977, Westhampton. From Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy ’70s Suburbia & the City, available at strandbooks.com ($45).

4 2 / GI F TING

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THE WISH LIST S I X E A SY WAY S T O O F F E R A H E L P I N G H A N D I N N O V E M B E R A N D D E C E M B E R

HOLIDAY MAGIC

Organizer: The Retreat Drop-Off: 13 Goodfriend Drive, East Hampton Through December 8, the Retreat runs an “Adopt-a-Family” program, pairing sponsors with families affected by domestic violence who can’t make Christmas or HanuKkah happen on their own. Clients post their needs and sizes online at theretreatinc.org, and donors give what they choose: presents for the kids, gift cards, clothes . . . or the whole shebang. The Retreat’s holiday hotline is (631) 329-4398.

SNEAKERS

Organizer: Max Cure Foundation Drop-Off: Sneakerology, 2 Main Street, East Hampton Sneakerology is a collection point for donations of new or gently used sneakers for the Dunk Your Kicks campaign.

All shoes are shipped to developing nations, where many people of all ages go barefoot, making them vulnerable to disease and parasites. A portion of the value of each pair goes toward fighting pediatric cancer, as well.

TOYS

Organizer: Heart of the Hamptons Drop-Off: South Fork Natural History Museum, 377 Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Bridgehampton Unwrapped toys for kids up to their early teens will be collected from November 25 through December 20, to be distributed on the East End. (The Marine

Corps’ Toys for Tots, organized in Suffolk County by the Kiwanis Club, also collects new toys, of course; their dropoff points can be found by ZIP code search at amityville-ny.toysfortots.org.)

TURKEY & TRIMMINGS

Organizer: Human Resources of the Hamptons Drop-Off: Sacred Hearts Church, 168 Hill Street, Southampton Thanksgiving meals will be packed up and handed out to families in our area.

Needed are lots of big birds as well as nonperishable side-dish stuff. Monetary donations are also encouraged; the organizaton happily accepts checks.

PANTRY STAPLES

Organizer: The food pantries Drop-Off: St. Therese of Lisieux, Montauk; St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, Amagansett; Springs Community Presbyterian Church; Windmill Village II, 219 Accabonac Road, East Hampton; Living Water Full Gospel Church, Wainscott; the Old Whalers Church, Sag Harbor; St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, Bridgehampton; Sacred Heart Church, Southampton.

The pantries tell us they need nonperishables, particularly peanut butter, jam, and jelly; cooking oils; grains (rice, barley, quinoa); beans (canned or dry); spreads and condiments (mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard); breakfast cereals, and pasta and pasta sauces. Don’t forget cleaning products, such as laundry and dishwasher detergents, and baby-care items such as diapers.

COATS, HATS, GLOVES

Organizer: Town and Country Real Estate company Drop-Off: 16 Hampton Road, Southampton; 2415 Main Street, Bridgehampton; 46 Main Street, East Hampton; 1 Carl Fisher Plaza, Montauk What They Need: Until December 15, Town and Country will be collecting winter coats and warm accessories, new or gently used, to help supply their partner organizations: Maureen’s Haven Homeless Outreach, John’s Place Shelter, and United Veterans’ House.

—Jackie Pape

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B O U NT Y / 4 9

THE WORLD KNOWS ALL ABOUT MONTAUK IN MIDSUMMER. BUT THE PLEASURES OF A RESPITE AT GURNEY’S IN THE FROZEN MONTHS? THAT’S A SECRET WE’RE ALMOST RELUCTANT TO SHARE.

Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Saltwater Spa

DAVID GIBBONS DIVES INTO THE INDOOR SALTWATER POOL—AND A SUPPER OF WINTER SCALLOPS

The venerable Montauk institution we all know and love as Gurney’s—official name Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa—has nimbly survived a major renovation and rejuvenation, once again cementing its place among world-class destination hotels.

Few who’ve spent any time on the East End don’t have fond memories of the old Gurney’s, with its Italian-American comfort food and slightly rumpled, Brooklyn-accented charm—and it’s true that with this major face lift, the old dame has a trim and slim and slick new look. Yet her standout features remain: Those gorgeous ocean views, that deserted stretch of pristine beach, the spa with North America’s only heated

indoor seawater pool . . .

Every fall and winter, thrice weekly for the 20 years she owned a house in East Hampton Village, my mother would trek out to Old Montauk Highway for a swim in that pool. There were family dinners out, usually around Christmas, and one memorable December 31, renewing old acquaintances and ushering in the new year. After my mother sold the house, before I managed to work my way back to town, there were the occasional weekend stays in what were essentially glorified motel rooms back then—but the views, those views, and that 2,000-foot private beach . . .

Since purchasing Gurney’s in 2013, George Filopoulos, a real estate devel-

oper and part-time South Fork resident, has spearheaded its upgrade without trashing tradition; Paul Monte, whose uncle Nick was its longtime and legendary innkeeper, remains as a senior adviser. Monte started out washing dishes standing on a milk crate in the kitchen at age 12 and was general manager for 26 years. Now, he’s the liaison to (and unofficial archivist of) the family’s—and the business’s—past.

“Gurney’s has certainly commenced its next evolution,” says Monte. “George has implemented it, and it’s an intelligent move—preserving some sort of links to the past not just functionally but in terms of the feeling, the tradition and culture, at the same time stepping

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Serves 4

This recipe absolutely screams “November.” It can be made with regular sea (or Okeeto Bennett, a member of Dane Sayles’s cooking crew, in the airy dining room of Scarpetta Beach on an autumn afternoon. Photograph by Edward Patrowicz.

things up and catering to the needs of today’s new guests.”

Filopoulos brought in LDV (for la dolce vita) Hospitality, which, true to its name, added some impressive drinking and dining options, highlighting by Scarpetta Beach, the East End outpost of LDV’s flagship New York City restaurant, and the Regent Cocktail Club bar, with its fire pit out on the deck overlooking the ocean and deejay parties in the heat of summer.

In charge of these venues is Dane Sayles, who was elevated to the position of executive chef in 2016 after several years as a sous chef at Scarpetta in New York. If you met him in a different setting, you might not expect Sayles—who is from Kingston, Jamaica, and admits to a secret passion for baking apple and pumpkin pie and roasting venison in fall—to specialize in Italian cuisine, but he has spent nearly a decade immersing himself in its techniques and traditions.

“I really enjoy delving into different cultures and definitely fell in love with the Italian,” says Sayles, who’s done multiple stages in restaurant kitchens in Rome and Florence.

Gurney’s Italian flavor, embodied by natives such as Piero Zangarini, the di-

rector of hospitality, and Tommaso Pintauro, bartender, is also deeply rooted in the Monte family’s history. Angelo and Filomena Montemarano came from the village of the same name, about 50 miles east of Naples, settled in Brooklyn, and lived with their seven sons above their restaurant, Monte’s Venetian Room, on Carroll Street. Nick, son number five, eventually took over the business. He had vacationed in Montauk since the late 1940s and, in 1956, bought Maude Gurney’s 20-room motel, perched on a hillside above the Atlantic Ocean, expanding it to a year-round resort and opening the spa in 1978.

On a crystal-clear October afternoon, in his office lined with family photos and mementos, Paul Monte quickly summoned fond winter memories. “The whole family loved celebrating the holidays. Christmas Eve we would always do a very traditional feast of the seven fishes, with clams alla Monte, shrimp alla Monte, and lobster fra diavolo. The lobster fra diavolo had a little bit of everything—shrimp, clams, mussels, scallops, scungilli—served in a rich tomato sauce over linguine. You had the whole feast almost covered in one dish. It was so good, I’m salivating

diver) scallops; if using the more delicate and succulent bay scallops, don’t cook them as long. Precooked chestnuts don’t require blanching.

• 1 lb. Scallops • 4 Apples, peeled and cored • ½ lb. Parsnips, peeled • 1 lb. Celery root, peeled • 1 Dozen chestnuts, shelled and cleaned (or use pre-cooked packaged or jarred) • ½ lb. Chanterelles • 10 Sprigs thyme, two stripped of leaves • 6 T. Extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling • Salt and freshly ground black pepper • ½ Cup white wine Preheat the oven to 350 ° F. Cut two of the apples, the parsnip, and the celery root into 1-inch pieces. Place the apples and root vegetables in an oven-proof baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, add the thyme sprigs along with 1 cup water, and toss to combine well. Roast the vegetables for 1 hour, until tender.

Remove the thyme sprigs and purée

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the roasted apples and root vegetables in a blender in two batches, adding up to 1 cup of water per batch to achieve a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper to taste; set aside in a covered bowl.

Cut the remaining 2 apples into 8 wedges each, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with stripped thyme leaves, and roast for 15 minutes, until slightly tender.

If using raw chestnuts, blanch in boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes, transfer to a bowl of ice water to cool, then drain.

Break the chestnuts into pieces.

Place about 2 tablespoons oil in a Jarhn DeBortoli mixes up a Margarita Italiana. Photograph by Edward Patrowicz. Left: Nick Monte—who bought Gurney’s in 1956—was hoisted into the surf in 1978, the year he added a spa to the resort’s attractions. The East Hampton Star archive.

sauté pan over medium high heat; when hot, add the chanterelles and cook for 2 minutes. Add the chestnuts and apple wedges, season with salt, and cook for another 3 minutes. Reserve the contents of the pan in a warm place.

Season the scallops lightly with

sitting here just thinking about it!”

Sayles’s culinary approach echoes Monte’s recipe for tradition amid innovation: “We try to mix a little of the old in with the new and always move forward. That’s what keeps us going.”

Sayles sources his seafood, most of which is local, exclusively from another venerable Montauk institution, Gosman’s. There’s always a scallop main course on the menu, which changes several times a year, as well as a crudo, with the bivalves sliced razor thin and dressed in a lemon-and-olive-oil vinaigrette. The big excitement happens each year starting on the second Monday of November with the opening of

the Eastern Long Island bay scallop season. These precious delicacies are then subbed into both dishes. “The bay scallops are a lot sweeter than your regular diver scallops,” says Sayles. “They’re smaller and have a lot of flavor, so we don’t sear them as heavily. We serve them on the medium side, so they stay as juicy as possible and keep all that flavor intact.”

Sayles was kind enough to share one of his favorite scallop recipes, a modern fall classic. For the Monte family’s lobster fra diavolo, go see Angelo “Chip” Monte, Jr.—Paul Monte’s brother and the former chef at Gurney’s—whose retirement job is running the food truck for Sammy’s on the Go, off West Lake Drive, next to Gosman’s.

salt and pepper. Wipe out the pan, raise the heat to high, add 3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil, and, when hot but not quite smoking, sear the scallops on one end for about 4 minutes, until nicely browned. Turn the scallops over and sear on the other end for another 4 minutes. (Smaller bay scallops will only require 2 to 3 minutes.) Remove the scallops to a large paper towel-lined plate.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine and cook down until quite thick.

Spread the root-vegetable purée on plates; arrange the sautéed chanterelles, chestnuts, and apple wedges on the purée and top with the scallops. Drizzle with the reduced pan juices and serve.

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B O U NT Y / 5 5

HOT POTATOES A HEARTWARMING HANUKKAH LATKE TRADITION TAKES HOLD AT THE AMAGANSETT SCHOOL Charlotte Sasso was a reluctant cook as a young woman and never expected to end up as classroom mom-chef-inchief. It started innocently enough with pumpkin bread one autumn for her son, Dante, and his classmates at the Amagansett School . . . but quickly escalated to dumplings for the Chinese New Year, watermelon refrescos and quesadillas for Cinco de Mayo, banana loaves as Christmas presents, and soda bread for St. Patrick’s Day. Charlotte owns Stuart’s Fish Market with her husband, Bruce Sasso, and was able to do much of the prep work and some of the cooking at the commercial kitchen there, but found she liked to involve the children in some aspect of the preparation, preferably the most tactile task. They would stir the applesauce or maybe help mold the matzo balls. “It was fun to watch their skill level improve,” she said on a recent autumn day.

“By the time they got to sixth grade, they could hold a knife and help chop.”

Dante graduated from the Amagansett School in 2016, but somehow, Charlotte kept on going.

“I’d had such fun cooking with them through the years that I didn’t want to give it up,” she said. She was close

friends with Randi Bell, the mother of a classmate of Dante’s, Jonah Bell, and Randi really didn’t have time to cook, so Charlotte was adopted by the class of Jonah’s younger brother, Theo. The holiday parade of food continued.

Because she comes from a Hungarian-Jewish family, Sasso pays particular attention to the foods associated with the Jewish holidays. For Hanukkah this year, like last year, she will be making latkes with applesauce with the kids.

For Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, it is challah with honey. At Passover, it is chocolate-covered caramel matzo crunch, a big favorite, and chicken soup with matzo balls.

The children learn something about each holiday, and she reads them a story connected to it: The Jar of Fools: Eight Hanukkah Stories From Chelm, or The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale.

Many of the kids she cooks for are unfamiliar with Jewish holidays before participating in this exercise in culinary cultural education—but afterward almost universally ask their parents to make latkes at home, following Charlotte’s recipe handout. “No matter how many potatoes,” she says, “all the latkes go.”

—Isabel Carmichael

DANTE ’S L ATK ES Makes 40-50 small latkes

• 7 baking potatoes, peeled and shredded • 2 large onions, finely chopped • 4 eggs, beaten • 2 egg whites, beaten • ½ Cup to 1 Cup flour • Salt and pepper • Oil for frying (suggested: olive oil–canola blend) Squeeze excess water from potatoes and onions. Combine with eggs, egg whites, flour, salt, and pepper. Squeeze again as you form small patties. Fry in sizzling oil until golden on each side. Drain on rack or newspaper. Serve with apple sauce and/or sour cream.

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B O U NT Y / 5 7

WHO LET THE ’NOGS OUT? OKAY, YES, SOME OF US SECRETLY REJOICE WHEN GUILTY-PLEASURE CARTONS OF GLOPPY EGGNOG HIT SUPERMARKET SHELVES EACH NOVEMBER—BUT GUESS WHAT? AS JENNIFER LANDES DISCOVERS, IT’S ACTUALLY SO MUCH BETTER IF YOU MAKE IT AT HOME My husband, Phil, and I had been dating for almost a year when he asked: “What do you think of eggnog?” My thoroughly flummoxed reply: “I don’t.”

The drink I knew from holiday parties came from a carton and was a clammy concoction of sugar, eggs, and cream added to every headache-inducing liquor known to man. Not quite custard and not quite milk, everything about it seemed feeble and drab.

We were in the Waterfront Ale House, a tiny bar on Atlantic Avenue in Cobble Hill, which has since moved to Manhattan. It turned out that Sam Barbieri, the Culinary Institute of America–trained owner of the bar, made some serious eggnog—it’s actually called Sam’s Serious Eggnog—and Phil thought I should try it. Phil, actually, had bartended for Sam for extra income when he was fin-

ishing up graduate school and while he owned a bookstore in Carroll Gardens.

(Eventually, we all became close. Three years after I first tried Sam’s eggnog, he attended our wedding, and he hosted the gathering after Phil’s memorial service in 2007.)

The first thing I noticed about Sam’s Serious—which has been frequently dubbed one of the best, if not the best, in New York City—was the aroma of the alcohol and spices: fresh cinnamon, clove, allspice, and nutmeg. Served over ice, the consistency was perfect, not too thin or thick. The potent blow of the two rums, bourbon, and cognac was cooled and mellowed by the ice and richness of the ’nog. In turn, the alcohol cut into the base’s cloying density.

It was paradigm-shifting. Eggnog is a libation that typically falls into catego-

ries like those I saw in a New York magazine ’nog-rating round-up: “Surprisingly Good” (Do you really want to drink anything whose top category assumes any possible goodness must be a surprise?), “Only Mildly Offensive,” “Pretty Darn Awful,” and “Singularly Hideous.”

New York liked Sam’s version so much they included his tips on how to doctor up the better-rated prefab bases.

I caught up with Sam recently in his Kips Bay location on Second Avenue, and he shared some insights into his process, which is now handled by an upstate dairy that mixes and pasteurizes his recipe’s base in bulk, to which he adds the alcohol, working in batches that produce up to 90 bottles at a time.

He typically turns out 1,200 bottles each year. “A driver who will only tell me he’s picking it up for someone on the

East End—won’t tell me anything else, pays in cash—comes to the bar every year to pick up 30 to 60 bottles,” he said.

Never entirely sure myself what was in eggnog, Sam’s or otherwise—and for the glory of participatory journalism—I grabbed the opportunity to attempt to make some myself for this issue of EAST. Deciding to use a personalized version of Sam’s recipe, my first choice was to cut it in half, since as of this writing it’s only October and not quite Yuletide (despite some hopeful store displays).

One of Sam’s recommendations is to let the spices infuse the alcohol before mixing it into the ’nog. I used a dark rum I had on the bar, opted out of the other liquors, poured some into a ramekin, and added the spices before I started to cook.

I used a tad less sugar by choice, and added vanilla, because I love vanilla.

I whisked the vanilla, sugar, eggs, and most of the half-and-half together in a bowl, set it over simmering water in a double boiler, then whisked . . . and whisked . . . and whisked some more. Finally, it thickened, and I took it off the heat. Heavy cream is added to cool it all down once it comes off the stove; holding back on the cream until after heating also makes it easier to determine when it has thickened properly (which is also how to tell if the eggs have cooked).

Purists may note a problem here.

Most recipes call for separating the eggs and whisking in the whites after cooking. Sam, however, had told me that after years of following those traditional instructions, he once forgot to separate the eggs, and it was fine.

Even though my take turned out decadent and delicious, there are two things I would change when I make it again for Christmas—and I will! Adding the vanilla before it went into the double boiler could have slowed the thickening; I would definitely add it again, but after cooking. Also, I may have kept it on the heat and whisked it more than needed.

This slightly improvised version

turned to have the taste and consistency similar to a thin crème brulée. The alcohol and ice thinned it further, making it pleasant and easy to drink. Making eggnog is definitely worth attempting at home. If you want “Serious” eggnog, however, you should stop by the Waterfront, find the person who is importing those bottles to the East End, or send your own driver (and cash).

SAM’S SERIOUS EGGNOG

• 2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg • ¼ tsp. ground cinnamon • ¼ tsp. ground allspice • Pinch ground cloves • 4 oz. dark rum • 2 oz. 151 rum • 1 oz. brandy • 2 oz. bourbon • 4 whole eggs • ¾ Cup granulated sugar • 2 Cups half-and-half • 1 Cup heavy cream In a bowl, mix the spices with liquors and let sit to infuse for up to an hour. After the liquor has infused, whisk together eggs, sugar, and 1½ cups half-and-half in a large stainless-steel bowl. Working over a double boiler of simmering water, heat the egg mixture, whisking constantly, just until it starts to thicken. Remove from heat immediately and add the cold heavy cream and remaining half-and-half to cool the mixture and stop the cooking. Blend in the liquor and spice mixture. Garnish with additional freshly grated nutmeg. Refrigerate, and if serving warm, only heat the portion you will be using immediately.

TRUE OYSTER CULT AN AFICIONADO’S GUIDE

BY BIDDLE DUKE WITH PAINTINGS BY NADINE ROBBINS

A brief history o f N e w Yorkers ’ passionate lo v e a f fair w it h our fav orite nati v e b i valv e —and a N OYS T E R - E AT E R ’S guide

L

to T H E very best f rom E astern L ong I sland and t h e S ound

ife Is Meals is the title of a cook- pollution filled the rivers, the oysters oysters. They blow his away.”

My own love of oysters has nevbook by one of my literary began to die off, and the eating of New idols, the late James Salter York Harbor oysters ended sometime in er waned. Coming home to New York of Sagaponack. He’s right, of the early 1900s. Those that now remain City always meant Mom would take me course. We measure and remember our in that estuary are too filled with heavy down to one of the last remaining oyster cellars, the Oyster Bar in Grand Central lives and the places we love by the meals metals and other poisons to be edible.

The collapse of wild oyster beds from Station, under the guise of feeding my we have and who we share them with.

I often wonder, when I have some- pollution and overharvesting combined own oyster craving. She would, in fact, thing delicious in my mouth, who first with unending demand spawned the order a dozen Blue Points for herself and introduced this particularly yummy rise of oyster farming in clean bays. wolf them down before I could squeeze thing into our lives. What intrepid soul Oystermen have been seeding oysters my first wedge of lemon. Now I do the had the daring to try the first tomato, on suitable bay bottoms and floats for same when my daughter comes to town.

“It is hard to explain to those who the curiosity to roast the first coffee over a century, but the scale of producbean, the sense to bite into the flesh of tion has increased since the 1960s and don’t do it by what strange impulse humans take these primia snail, the genius to pickle a tive creatures with their tiny herring? Who ate this first? hearts pounding and slide And when? And why? them down their throats,” Which brings us to oysters.

Kurlansky writes in The Big When Europeans arrived in Oyster. It is indeed. Life, as New York some 400 years ago Salter said, is meals, and for they found a native populame a cold oyster has the taste tion feasting regularly on oysof my youth, of my mother, of ters. What is now New York life on the South Fork, where Harbor, that grand estuary I grew up. from the southern Hudson to Oysters, like wine or Staten Island up the East Rivcheese or coffee, do taste of er, was covered in them—the The Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station , circa 1912—around the time their place. They are essensea floor and shoreline from the city’s favorite food began to die off in New York Harbor. tially part of the terrain, and the Chesapeake to Long Istheir flavor emerges from the land Sound were the most productive oyster grounds on Earth, ’70s. These days, commercial and home water and the micro-organisms they and New York City quickly became the oyster farmers abound up and down the filter. You are quite literally eating the oyster capital of the world. When peo- seaboard, encouraged by state and local sea. Like wine’s terroir, for passionate ple thought of New York, they thought governments that recognize the value oyster eaters it’s an oyster’s “meroir.” of oysters. It could well have been not that filter-feeding oysters bring to water This is why, for example, oysters from the Big Apple but the Big Oyster. (Mark quality, not to mention the dinner table. the brackish waters of the Chesapeake We now find ourselves in a sort of Bay taste less salty, in general, than oysKurlansky discusses this in his book ters from open waters in New England. of the same name, about the history of oyster renaissance.

All oysters in these parts—in and “The tastiest oysters the world has New York through this briny bivalve.)

So plentiful and cheap were oysters yet produced can be found in the bays around Long Island Sound and the bays that New York City families would eat at and bars of America at this very moment and estuaries of the East End—are Crasleast two oyster meals a week—stewed, . . .” writes journalist Rowan Jacobsen in sostrea virginica, or Eastern oysters. So if raw, fried—and the city boasted dozens The Essential Oyster, with “more diverse those from the shallows in Hog Neck of oyster restaurants, back then known and delicious oysters in more new plac- Bay in Southold taste different from as “cellars.” But as the city grew and es. These are not your grandfather’s Peconic Golds grown in deeper water in

The table is set for New Year’s Eve. This recent oil-on-linen piece, titled 9:05 (2017, 24” x 24”) was painted by the Hudson Valley realist Nadine Robbins, some of whose figurative work was shown earlier this month in Bridgehampton. A portion of the proceeds of her mouthwatering and rather sexy oyster series goes to oyster-conservation organizations. The work on the first page of this feature is Robbins’s Ice (2016, 36” x 36”).

Peconic Bay, it is that meroir at play.

Could I taste the difference? To find out I sought the help of Ian Wile, who farms oysters on the North Fork with his wife, Rosalie, and owns and runs Little Creek Oysters in Greenport, where they serve dozens of local varieties.

Ian explained that not only do oysters taste different from one creek to

the next, but their flavor changes with the seasons. You might hear differing opinions, but the best time to eat oysters is late summer and fall, when they’re fattening up for winter dormancy in nutrient-rich warm waters. Also, in late springtime, when the bivalves eat voraciously after surviving a lean, cold winter, oysters take on sweeter, fresh, grassy characteristics. Although popular at the height of summer, oysters spawn in those warmest months, depleting them and shrinking their bodies; their taste follows suit. (Traditionally, oysters were eaten only in the colder months whose names contained the letter R—September through March—in part to allow the bivalves to spawn unmolested, but

also because in the era before dependable refrigeration, transporting shellfish in the summer was a health concern.)

My tasting at Little Creek Oysters occurred in early October. There are dozens of excellent oyster farms out here, each producing a product with its own unique flavor and characteristics and story worthy of exploration and experiencing. We tried half a dozen, all raised within 50 miles of East Hampton. Every oyster was perfect, but some were more pleasing than others. Here are my favorites and my notes in ascending order (favorites at the end). Prepare for oyster lexicon, which, as for wine, has a language all its own.

Oysterponds: These are raised by

00

63

Viola Cause works the Shinnecock Nation’s oyster grounds. Opposite: Shinnecock “Chiefs” have a distinctive green-hued shell, with a deep cup and a classic, pearly-white interior. Some (that is, well, we) consider them perhaps the best oysters in the United States. Photographs by Biddle Duke.

Phil Mastrangelo, Reg Tuthill, and the crew at Oysterponds Shellfish Company in tidal creeks off Orient on the North Fork. Medium salinity, with a full dose of tangy seaweedy-ness.

Fishers Island: Briny, rich, with a fresh, mineral taste of the open ocean off that island where the Malinowski family has farmed oysters since 1981.

Fire Island Blues: Like the Blue Points of yore, which were once (but no longer) harvested across the Great South Bay, these Blues are large and plump, with a bright, juicy finish, evoking the sparkling taste of the Atlantic.

They’re raised by the Blue Island Oyster Farm in the algae- and plankton-rich currents just inside Fire Island Inlet.

Hog Neck Bay: These are Ian and Rosalie Wile’s oysters, a product of their Little Creek Oyster Farm, and the house oyster at their restaurant. Grown in a creek off Peconic Bay, these are classic creek oysters, small but plump, with a distinct rust-colored shell and a deep briny, rich flavor.

Montauk Pearls: Grown by Mike Doall and Mike Martinsen in Lake Montauk and finished in Block Island Sound, these beauties are delicate, with hints of minerality and a light salinity.

Cornelius Queens: Big and fat, almost buttery, with delicate grassy notes, these are raised by the newly launched Shelter Island Oyster Farm in waters open to the Atlantic currents between

Cornelius Point and Ram Island. They were our tasting favorites, until . . .

The Shinnecock Nation Oyster: “These are the prize,” said Ian. But he didn’t have any.

There’s something almost mystical about Shinnecock oysters, harvested by the continent’s indigenous inhabitants. The Shinnecocks, an Algonquin people who, with the Montauketts, inhabited this entire region—but whose tribal lands are now 830 acres adjacent to Southampton Village—have been working Shinnecock Bay and its tribTHE SHINNECOCKS HAVE BEEN WORKING SHINNECOCK BAY AND ITS VARIOUS TRIBUTARIES, AND HARVESTING OYSTERS FROM THOSE BOTTOMLANDS, FOR MILLENNIA

utaries, and harvesting oysters from those bottomlands, for millennia.

It is the American Indians who had that first eureka moment, cracking a Virginica open who knows how many thousands of years ago and giving it a suspicious try.

Shinnecocks opened their hatchery out here in 1978, and over the years they’ve sold their “Chief Oysters” to seed local bays and creeks, at the Southampton farmers market, and to

shellfish distributors and a handful of restaurants. But right now the only sure way to get them is to call the Nation and pay it a visit.

Viola Cause, who works the Nation’s oyster grounds among her many jobs with the Shinnecock Environmental Department, waded out into the bay to fetch a dozen. Unlike many farmed oysters these days, these were of various sizes. She opened six and placed them in a row on a nearby flat rock. “I learned all about these growing up, going to the hatchery,” she said, beaming. “It was a great way to grow up.”

We each slid one into our mouth.

There was a light southwest wind blowing on this sun-splashed October day.

Tiny lapping waves licked our feet. Just offshore a flock of seagulls and terns chased schooling fish. In the distance were Southampton’s barrier beaches where I’d grown up exploring before the big houses went up, and farther still the Shinnecock Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean, glinting. The sweet, salty smell of the boundless sea, of regeneration.

“The best explanation” for why we love oysters, writes Kurlansky, “is that a fresh oyster from a clean sea fills the palate with the taste of all the excitement and beauty—the essence—of the ocean.”

To me, those Shinnecock oysters tasted just like home.

F O U R S T O R I E S — S O M E H A P P Y, S O M E S A D , S O M E A TA D S E N T I M E N TA L — O F T R AV E L I N G H O M E F O R T H E H O L I D AY S , BY P L A N E , T R A I N , A N D A U T O M O B I L E

Let It Snow Joanie McDonell’s great-uncle Patrick, who had landed at Normandy with the Screaming Eagles, returned from WW II to Wildmeadow Farm as dour a bachelor as Heathcliff was at Wuthering Heights. One New Year’s Eve, however, the weather (and an interfering niece) changed his fate. . . .

“Journeys end in lovers meeting” —Shakespeare, Twelfth Night My great-uncle Patrick, who had been with the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, and landed behind enemy lines in Normandy, came home decorated and disheartened by the ugliness of war. He chose to live alone at Wildmeadow, a big farm he bought in western Massachusetts. He raised Holstein Frisian cattle, Morgan horses, and giant schnauzers. He saw few people except for Mr. Hunderup, the farm manager, and Bernice, the cook, who lived above the kitchen.

This situation continued for a long time, long enough to become a bee in the bonnet of his well-intentioned but officious niece, my mother.

Patrick had become something of a surrogate father to her when his brother and sister-in-law, Mother’s parents,

were killed in an automobile accident.

Although Patrick never complained, Mother was sure he was lonely and consistently tried to introduce him to young women—graduates of Radcliffe or Wellesley or Bryn Mawr—but he would have none of it.

Finally, she wore him down, and he agreed to meet one of these women on New Year’s Eve. Mother was elated. But not for long, since a condition of this date was that the girl would come to him. Uncle Patrick was going nowhere.

The young lady, Marguerite, agreed to travel three hours north from Connecticut, where she taught French in a private girls school, to attend a party in the village and spend the night at Wildmeadow Farm. My mother had not anticipated this overnight plan, but there was no other choice since the train ran only twice a day.

Marguerite was a proper person,

Opposite: Stevan Dohanos, Back From Vacation. Dohanos (1907-1994) was famous for witty Saturday Evening Post covers and a series of “Don’t Talk” anti-espionage posters during World War II.

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somewhat shy. As for Uncle Patrick, Mother wasn’t quite as certain, so she contacted Bernice, the cook, to assure discreet chaperonage.

Mother saw the introduction as her last chance to help. She had run out of prospects, ideas, and hope. And even in this case she feared that, ultimately, Patrick was too unapproachable and Marguerite, though beautiful, too prim.

As the end of December drew near, Patrick and Marguerite exchanged several notes. My mother mysteriously—or perhaps she’d learned the hard way not to reveal too much—had failed to describe the boy to the girl or the girl to the boy.

Patrick told Marguerite he’d meet her at the train station and that she could recognize him by his wire-framed eyeglasses, his checkered jacket, and the yellow carnation in his buttonhole.

Marguerite said he could recognize her by her prematurely gray hair.

It was already snowing hard in late afternoon on December 31st. When the train arrived at the small West Brookfield station, Marguerite looked everywhere for the man with the yellow carnation—but all she saw was a tall fellow, very handsome, leaning against the wall, with a big dog at his side.

What the tall fellow saw was a stunning girl in a fur coat and high-heeled boots, not a gray hair on her head, walking across the empty platform.

By the time they reached Wildmeadow Farm there was so much snow, with no end in sight, that they decided it would be folly to go out again into the storm for the party in the village.

So Bernice brought trays of food and Champagne—there was always a lot of Champagne around that place—to the library, where my uncle had built a fire, into which he threw small discs of wax to color the flames.

The next morning, New Year’s Day, Patrick and Marguerite were engaged.

THE FABULOUS MORGAN SISTERS John Wyche remembers joyful road trips from Bridgehampton south to rural Virginia each Christmas in the 1960s with his mom and her siblings— with his unforgettable Aunt Mildred at the wheel John Wyche grew up in Bridgehampton in the 1960s, but his family on both sides was from Virginia, from the country—the real country. His mother was from Dinwiddie County, southeast of Petersburg, which some people might remember from Civil War history for the Siege of Petersburg, and his dad is from Capron, not far from Virginia Beach His parents met at the old First Baptist Church of Bridgehampton, one summer Sunday some six decades ago when they were young and came north to visit their respective aunts. (Warning to the reader: There will be many aunts in this story.)

PICTURE THE SISTERS LAUGHING And reminiscing aBOUT OLD BOYFRIENDS IN A huge CHEVY IMPALA, A GAGGLE OF CHILDREN IN THE BACK—little pitchers with big ears

When John and his sister, Shirley, were growing up, they drove back once or twice a year to Dinwiddie to visit their maternal grandparents. Especially at Christmas: Everyone who had migrated north somehow found a way to go back to be with their relatives at the holidays.

John’s grandmother, Jennie Morgan, played a very important role in the Wyche kids’ lives. Everything sort of centered around her. She was, as John says, a very interesting lady. In today’s terms, you might call her an earth mother. She and her husband, James Morgan, were

tobacco farmers who owned a large tract of land; they also kept livestock, chickens, pigs, and cows. Jennie worked as a midwife for 50 or 60 years with a local doctor, too, delivering a good percentage of the babies born in Dinwiddie County. People sought her out for herbal remedies. If the children were ever ill, she had something for them; sweet potatoes, for instance, had medicinal purposes. She was an old-fashioned Southern woman, who went about the farmhouse well-dressed and centered her life around the church.

On warm-weather trips home to Virginia, usually around Memorial Day, John and Shirley were treated with a pitstop at Coney Island, where they’d ride the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone, but when they drove south each December, the big treat was detouring in Brooklyn to pick up their beloved Aunt Mildred.

Sometimes their youngest aunt, Dotty, who lived on Long Island, came along with her kids, too, but there was always Aunt Mildred.

Despite the fact that very few African-Americans were among her neighbors there in the 1960s, Aunt Mildred lived in the Bensonhurst area, where her uncle, Willie Johnson, owned a private bus company and two bars-and-grill.

Mildred managed one of the restaurants, which was open late—really, kind of a nightclub—and the Wyche family would have to schedule their departure from Bridgehampton so that they’d roll into Brooklyn at midnight or 1 in the morning when she was done with work.

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Center: Wyche at the age of 6 or 7. At top right: His Aunt Dotty in the 1980s in Bridgehampton.

Aunt Mildred was an Eartha Kitt type, with a special magnetism. Charismatic, always impeccably made-up, always smiling and talking. She was, as John says, a piece of work. And she smoked a lot. It was part of her nightclub thing, her glamour.

When they reached Brooklyn in the dark of night, John’s mother would slide into the passenger seat, Mildred would get behind the wheel, and John would hop from the backseat to the front, so he could sit next to his aunt and handle her cigarettes. Every now and then she would nudge him, and he would take out the lighter, light one up, and hand it to her. “Mildred!” one of her sisters would chide, “put that cigarette out!”

But she would ignore them.

Picture the Morgan sisters laughing

and reminiscing about old boyfriends in a big, American-made Chevy Impala or Buick LeSabre, with a gaggle of children—little pitchers with big ears—in the back. I wonder what So-and-So looks like now. . . . I wonder what Such-andSuch will think when he sees us again. . . .

They’d cross the Brooklyn Bridge, shoot through the Holland Tunnel, and soon be headed south down the New Jersey Turnpike. John’s father only sometimes traveled with them, but he always made sure there was a new car and that it was road-trip ready.

People had always gravitated to the Morgan sisters. Gladys and Dotty were, like Mildred, very social, very warm.

Mildred loved Sam Cooke and Wicked Wilson Pickett. Cruising through New Jersey and then Pennsylvania and Maryland they’d sing If You Need Me, Call Me or 634-5789. They’d sing Christmas carols.

One December they got stuck in an

unbelievable traffic jam on the Harbor Tunnel Thruway outside Baltimore, stuck for hours. Eventually, some guy got out of his car and put a transistor radio on his hood, and there was a party right there on the thruway. People even started dancing. Later that same day— John thinks it was near a town called Brooklyn, Maryland, oddly enough— Mildred was driving as fast as the car would go when a cop pulled them over.

“Good morning, officer!” Mildred chimed, friendly as could be.

The officer was black, and handsome. “Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked, sternly.

“My nerves are so bad from sitting in that traffic. . . ,” she said, trying to come up with some excuse.

“You have a couple of young people in the car,” he said. “Take it easy.”

She said: “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve, officer?”

Gladys and Dotty laughed about it

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all the way to Dinwiddie.

Cousins, uncles, more uncles, more aunts . . . everyone gathered together again at grandmother Jennie’s farm.

The New York contingent would be reunited with the fourth and much younger Morgan sister, Queen, and see dozens of relations before the day was over.

Jennie had both an old wood-burning stove and a gas stove, but would do all her baking on the wood-burning one, pies and cakes and bread. She considered the Wyches her sophisticated New York family, but she insisted on giving the kids “a country Christmas.”

They knew that on Christmas morning they would be given a shoe box wrapped in bright paper, holding fruitcake, and fruit, and $10 or $20. That, Jenny believed, would bring then back down to earth. They loved it.

On Christmas Eve, in the afternoon before the sun went down, one of their uncles would collar a greatniece or -nephew and march them out back and into the woods to chop down a Christmas tree. It wasn’t John’s style to go wandering around in the cold in the woods in Virginia. But he is still amused by what inevitably happened when the tree-chopping crew returned with their chosen evergreen. It became a ritual unto itself: Someone would start pointing out flaws. “That tree has no back to it!” they’d complain, or “That is one scrawny tree!”

And then the uncle would, without fail, blame whatever kid he’d pressed into service: “He chose it!”

All of this, the family closeness, has changed now.

Mildred is gone, as are Dotty and Gladys. It’s been a very long time since everyone gathered in Dinwiddie in December.

There are many reasons why. One is that the Morgan sisters aren’t there to galvanize everyone, and Jennie isn’t there to gather around. If in the 1960s it took forever to drive to Virginia, today it seems to take twice as long, with so many more cars on the road. You get so caught up in work, there never seems to be a moment when you can stop.

The Morgan land is still there, but nobody farms it.

Queen never left Virginia and lives in the house.

John has a slew of female cousins, most younger than he is, but, he says, they all mother him, and he’s somehow always been the baby of the family. They talk frequently on the phone. Over the last year or two, the cousins keep saying they’re going to get organized, rent a minivan, and go—they need a minivan so that they can drive and talk and make a lot of noise, otherwise it’s no fun—but something always comes up. This year, Dotty’s daughter has arranged for them to meet in Connecticut for Thanksgiving instead. It’s been three years since John has been to Virginia.

Nevertheless, Christmas in Dinwiddie County is still the real Christmas in the Wyche household. John hasn’t handed out any Christmas-wrapped shoe boxes filled with fruitcake, but there are certain foods they have to have: grated sweet-potato pudding— only Shirley still remembers how to make that—and, always, collard greens, baked mac and cheese, baked ham, and Great Aunt Bertha’s pineapple-coconut upside-down cake. Half the family hates pineapple-coconut upside-down cake, and won’t eat it, but it has to be there.

—As told to Bess Rattray

failure to launch Romantic and professional misfires sent a crestfallen Bidde Duke home from a glamorous post-college life in London to his parents’ house in Southampton. Little did he know that the return ticket would allow life to take flight My first serious post-college job was with a large, international public relations firm. It was perfect, I thought: It was in my desired field of communications, offered a stable salary and benefits, and, most important, after months of training in New York, they would send me to their London offices, where I’d live with the girl I adored.

We shared an apartment, she knew fun people in London, and every morning I biked through Hyde Park to a job where I wrote marketing copy for a big British department store and insurance companies. On the weekends we visited new friends in the English countryside and went surfing in Cornwall.

In December I flew home for the holidays. I am one of six brothers and sisters, children from various marriages, but it was just the three of us: Mom, Dad, and me. A Christmas Catholic, Dad invited me to midnight Mass. Later, at home, in the deep dark of Christmas morning, I asked him about his previous wife, who had been killed in a small-plane crash near LaGuardia. The plane’s door hadn’t been closed properly and had apparently swung open after takeoff.

Life can turn on such minuscule things: You lean over to grab something

off the passenger-seat floor, you speak to a stranger on the beach, you decide to sleep in one morning. Had someone shut that plane door correctly, I would never have been born.

Dad had converted to Catholicism to marry Maria Luisa de Arana, as her family had requested. They had two children, my sister and brother, who were raised devoutly Catholic. Although also a Catholic, my own mom rejected the church, so on Christmas Eve Dad would take my brother and sister to Mass, and occasionally I would tag along. I forever associate Christmas with that midnight service, the heavy, musty winter coats, the mumbled, echoing Latin liturgy, the incense, my brother and sister in the pews, a deep sadness in their eyes.

That Christmas after college Dad spoke of their mother with an enviable

affection I’d never heard from him. It was an unfamiliar experience to imagine him and his family before my mother; life as I knew it began with my own memory at 4 or 5. Dad told me his heart had been broken in that plane accident.

Later that fateful year, still wearing a black armband in his wife’s memory as was then the custom, he and my mother kindled a love affair. They were married the following May; Mom was three months pregnant with me. Dad just said, “We were in love” when I asked him about those two sins. But my grandmother was outraged; after I was born and she did the math she raged at Mom on the phone, bringing her to tears, and didn’t speak to her again for months. It all happened so quickly, the marriage only ten months after Maria Luisa de Arana’s death. My siblings must still

have been in deep mourning, in unspeakable pain, confused, stunned.

I can see it in my brother’s face in pictures from Mom and Dad’s wedding, but we’ve never spoken of it.

Dad and I stayed up into the morning talking. I confided that I was growing to loathe writing cheery marketing copy and organizing events to sell stuff.

And the girl, whom my parents had hopes for, wanted a life I didn’t recognize as my own. She was smart, sweet, beautiful, but our moment had come and gone. Life, I told my father, had become a puzzle where I didn’t fit.

“Give it a little more time,” he advised. In late December I returned to work in England and to the girl. But by March, almost a year after graduating from college, I gave up. I quit the job; the relationship grew cool. I began looking

Top: Duke in his itinerant-reporter years, which took him from Southampton to Argentina. Opposite: John Wyche’s beloved aunt, Mildred Morgan.

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for a job as a reporter. I had a degree in political science and a handful of half-decent published writing credits and I spoke two foreign languages. I reached out to the British papers, they ignored my letters and calls. Correspondence from big American papers suggested I begin at a small newspaper.

“You can come home,” Dad offered.

Having few options, I moved back in, sheepishly and with undisguised self-loathing at my failure to launch, dreading dependency and an uncertain future.

“Do you know the culvert in North Sea where fishermen go to catch alewives?” asked The Southampton Press’s editor at the time, Peter Boody. I’d come in for an interview. I knew just where the culvert was, and I knew a bit about alewives.

“Bring me back a story.” It was a reporting test.

In something of a tradition in Southampton’s African-American community, old timers congregated at the culvert over a tidal creek, scooping up migrating, spawning herring by the dozens with dip nets. They smoked the flesh and coveted the rich roe. One of the men recognized my name, and when he asked about my uncle from East Hampton I felt a comforting tingle of connection, of roots.

Peter published my alewife story and I took the job. It was hard work and I wasn’t much of a reporter at first, but I loved it.

A month or so later on the beach a girl in faded print shorts and a tattered straw hat, mud under her fingernails and on her knees, offered me just enough of a smile to give me the courage to strike up a conversation. Life can turn on those little things. We were married in Springs four years later.

FLY ME TO THE MOON A chance meeting on a plane leads to a spontaneous trip to Montauk, a romance, and, eventually, marriage and a baby girl in Maria Lavezzo’s heartwarming, globe-trotting love story You may not know our art director, Maria Lavezzo, and her husband, Santiago “Santi” Campomar, but you want to.

Creative, charming, and always on the move, these Argentine transplants to Bridgehampton have a warm, bright energy that is both contagious and somewhat hard to describe. Maybe it’s how in love they are, maybe it’s the tan, but they kind of glow.

Maria, a graphic designer, and Santi, a woodworker, are part of a growing community of young expatriate professionals to build their lives and careers

leaves the day before the rest of the girls’. Unable to change her ticket (and unaware of how lucky this little travel accident would prove), she headed to the airport alone. “I looked like a mess.

I was wearing these baggy gaucho pants and didn’t brush my hair.”

In line at the gate, Maria ran into an old friend who was assigned the seat next to her on the plane, but when they boarded, someone was already sitting in their seats. Enter Santiago (and his adorable daughter Milla).

After a few minutes of hemming and

SANTI HAD SPENT YEARS TRAVELING THE WORLD SURFING EVERYWHERE FROM HAWAII TO INDONESIA TO ECUADOR AND WAS HEADED HOME TO MONTAUK. “AS WE WERE LANDING AT J.F.K., HE SAID, ‘YOU SHOULD VISIT ME IN THE HAMPTONS,’ AND I WAS LIKE, ‘WHAT IS THAT?’ ”

on the East End. It’s only fitting that the story of how these two charismatic people got together sounds like something stolen from the pages of a Latin romance novel. “Every time we have a dinner party, someone asks to hear it,” Maria says.

And, as with every great story, there’s a long version and a short version. The short version goes like this: They met on a plane. But, as we’ll see, the long version starts well before takeoff.

It’s 2012. Maria is in her final year of design school in Buenos Aires and hitting a wall. Exhausted by schoolwork and with “a relationship in crisis,” she is convinced by a few of her girlfriends to join them on a trip to New York. Maria was excited to get out of town. “I really needed a scene-change,” she recalls.

But, as fate would have it, there’s a mistake in the booking, and Maria’s flight

hawing and calling a flight attendant, Maria’s friend was ushered up to first class and Maria was placed in the seat beside Santi and Milla. “We were kind of fighting about it at first,” she says, but that didn’t last long. Soon she and Santi got to talking and realized that they were from the same neighborhood, San Isidro, in Buenos Aires and had many mutual friends. “The connection was really strange, our families even know each other.” They exchanged stories about the people and places they both knew, and the 10-and-a-half-hour flight passed quickly. “We ordered an in-flight meal, we watched a movie, it was kind of our first date.”

Santi had spent years traveling the world surfing everywhere from Hawaii to Indonesia to Ecuador and was headed home to Montauk, where he had settled

00 in 2000. But, already able to sense the chemistry between them, he invited her out to visit. “As we were landing, he said, ‘You should come visit the Hamptons,’ and I was like ‘What is that?’ ” When they got to J.F.K., Santi walked Maria to baggage claim, and they exchanged phone numbers. Sure enough, a few days later, he called and invited Maria and her friends out for a beach day. With a mischievous smile, she admits: “It was kind of crazy, but I knew I had to go.”

“We had no idea what we were in for. He picked us up from the train with a cooler full of beer, amazing cheeses and olives, and we went to Ocean Road beach. All his friends were wonderful, it was like a dream.” But after spending a beautiful day on the sand with Santi and some of his friends, it was time to leave.

At first, Maria was worried about what her somewhat conservative family was going to think about her leaving her long-term boyfriend for a surfer she met on an airplane, but they were surprisingly supportive, telling her to “trust her instincts.”

For a while, they dated long-distance between Montauk and Buenos Aires, but the separation was difficult. After a few months, Maria’s grandmother offered to pay for her to move to New York and study at Parsons. Maria moved to the East End and married Santi in 2013.

The invitations to their wedding were fashioned to look like boarding passes.

Maria and Santi celebrated four years together last month. When asked about how the relationship is going, Maria beams, “It’s really been everything I hoped for. We are happier than ever.”

Today, the couple live in Sag Harbor with their 2-year-old daughter, Rosa.

—Nina Channing At top left: Lavezzo and Campomar, at home this fall. They are both from a neighborhood called San Isidro in Buenos Aires, but had their first date after an airplane-seating-assignment mishap brought them together.

Around the Year AT

Quail Hill F R O M J A N U A RY T O DECEMBER, DUSK TO A U G U S T D AW N T O D U S K , THE PHOTOGRAPHER MICHAEL HALSBAND R E C O R D E D T H E C YC L E OF LIFE ON AMAGANSETT’S PIONEERING COMMUNITY FA R M . W I T H A N E S S AY

BY S C O T T C H A S K E Y, T H E R E S I D E N T P O E T- FA R M E R

The gate to Birch Hill, at Deep Lane, in midwinter.

Quail Hill Farm was established in 1990 by the Peconic Land Trust, on land donated by the late Deborah Light, and became a pioneering paragon of community supported agriculture. In addition to offering produce shares, it is the scene of yearround events for all ages—from school-kid seedling tutorials to tomato-tastings to ladybug conservation research.

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n winter, from the top of Quail Hill, that great 110-foot Amagansett mountain, one can look out at whiteness to the west and to the gate that will open for the plow and people come April. Coming in close, the curious photographer may find an amusing comment on the white ground, the frozen language of red cabbage leaves left behind after the autumn harvest. The miracle is when the snow melts these cabbages will send out new leaves into the warming air, the practice of plant to renew itself, to strive to go to seed.

In the 13th century the Chinese poet Wang Wei wrote: The fashioner of things has no original intentions Mountains and rivers are spirit, condensed.

And so are ocean, soil, woodland, and the plants that populate a field. If we want to know the essence of a thing we must look at it closely to truly see and to learn from that which is “other.” At the foundation of Community Supported Agriculture—along with the enjoyment of fresh food—is the desire to heal or repair what the Mexican poet Octavio Paz calls “our divided condition,” a state of being that arises from our consciousness of being separate. Through the poetic lens of Michael Halsband we can see, with a fresh eye, the things around us that together express “the stability, the integrity, and the beauty of the biota” (Aldo Leopold’s words). Biota: organic life, a community we are part of.

This is the privilege of a farmer, to witness daily the subtle changes within natural cycles. See it here in the cherry blossom petals, white flakes of snow on dark soil and the imprint of a tractor tire, or in the tiny seeds an apprentice so carefully places in the seedling tray, or in the transplanting of summer squash into silt loam, or in the ripening field of Black Emmer wheat, a grain first cultivated in the Levant at the birth of

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“Winter Share” members may harvest in the field until the ground freezes. The winter C.S.A. box— available from late November through March— might hold rutabagas, turnips, burdock, beets, potatoes, and/or carrots. 1. Cabbages in snow in February. 2. Chaskey in front of unheated greenhouses, in which spinach and lettuce and more exotic greens are grown in cold weather. “In this climate, if it drops below 20 degrees,” he says, “we can cover them with a blanket as long as the roots don’t freeze.” 3. Winter is over. Birch Hill gate, open in early spring. 4. A cherry tree blossoms in April.

5. An advanced apprentice named Mateo turns his attention to seeding. 6. Cherry blossoms fall on dark soil. 7. The farmer, doing direct seeding, on a spring day.

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agriculture, 10,000 years ago, or in the brilliance of a bouquet (we grow over 70 varieties of flowers, 500 varieties of vegetables) of cosmos, zinnias, milkweed, statice, snow-on-the mountain, and Queen Anne’s Lace illumined by the August sun. And here is our beekeeper, Mary Woltz of Bees’ Needs, taking notes so as to better serve the workers that yearly supply us with sweetness. In a poem entitled Cerulean I wrote: In boxed hives and hollows apis mellifera survive on the nectar of aster and goldenrod, transformed and capped in waxen cells, food for the queen of inscape, part of the golden language of renewal.

Inscape, a word chosen by G.M. Hopkins to describe the inner essence, the vitality, the cadence of the heartbeat of a living thing.

And, after all, this is what a farmer or a photographer would like to come to know: spirit condensed, in silt, light, limestone, a seed, sepals and pistils of a flower, a friend in the field. And then even a gate with weight—the “gateless gate” in Buddhist terms—may swing open to a fertile field of possibility.

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Quail Hill produces more than 500 varieties of vegetables over the course of the year, and—to give you a sense of the scope—some 18,00 pounds of potatoes. About 250 families participate as members. Kids are frequently seen on the 30 acres under cultivation, too, including students from Springs School, who get advice from Quail Hill’s experts and help starting seedlings for the school’s own kitchen garden. 8. Moon & Stars watermelons are well on their way in May, harbingers of the summer ahead. 9. Cucumbers and squash are transplanted. 10. High summer is here. It is July, and young Quail Hill Farm members join in the harvest. 11. Layton Guenther, the farm manager, harvesting with a crew.

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A “flower manager” was added to the staff this year, as the potential for blooms to help finance the rest of the farm had become more and more evident. Some of the flowers are sold wholesale to florists, some are sold as bouquets at farmers markets, some end up on the table at Quail Hill events. 12. Brendan McMullen, harvesting under a hot August sun. 13. An August bouquet includes pink cosmos and zinnias. 14. Now it is September. Chaskey surveys the Town Lane fields. 15. Mary Woltz, owner of Bee’s Needs and manager of the Quail Hill hives since 2004, takes notes. 16. Emmer wheat, an ancient ancestor of common wheat. 17. Soft, white winter wheat berries, in September. 18. A cover crop of oats and Austrian winter peas.

17

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D ATE B OO K / 8 1

HO L I DAY HAPPENINGS F R O M G I N G E R B R E A D - H O U S E M A K I N G T O C H I L LY H I L L S I D E H I K E S T O COZY CHARIT Y TE AS, A CALENDAR OF THE SE ASON’S BEST

Airborne off Old Stone Highway, January 14, 1988. The East Hampton Star archive.

THANKSGIVING DAY

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24

COMMUNITY DINNER Free to all.

Seating at 11:45 a.m. for noon meal, takeout available at 11:30. East Hampton Presbyterian Church Session House.

Reservations suggested at (631) 324-0711.

FAMILY MOVIE Leap! East Hampton Library, 2 p.m. Registration online.

TURKEY TROT Three- and six-mile races, sponsored by East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department, starting at the Circle in Montauk, 10 a.m. $10 in advance, $15 day of the race. Registration at (631) 324-2417 or from 8 to 9:30 a.m. on the day of the race.

ADULT CRAFTERNOONS Decorate coffee mugs with watercolors, 1:30-2:30 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration at (631) 324-0222, ext. 3.

COOKIES AND COLORING Grades 9 to 12, 3-5 p.m. East Hampton Library.

Registration online.

HOUSE-TOUR PREVIEW PARTY To

benefit the East Hampton Historical Society, 6-8:30 p.m. at the Maidstone Club, East Hampton. Packages, from $200, include tickets to the society’s 33rd annual house and garden tour on Saturday. Information at (631) 324-6850.

FAMILY DISCO PARTY With pizza and play, 5:30-7 p.m. $15, $5 for members.

Children’s Museum of the East End, Bridgehampton. Registration at (631) 537-8250.

OPEN HOUSE All day, from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Marders, Bridgehampton. >

8 2 / D ATE B OO K

Followed by tree-lighting ceremony at Agawam Park at 5 p.m.

LIVE-ANIMAL SHOW Owls, reptiles, opossums, and other creatures, with Quogue Wildlife Refuge naturalist, 1-2 p.m. Registration at (631) 749-4219.

Mashomack Preserve, Shelter Island.

SMALL-BUSINESS SATURDAY Sag Harbor Village merchants offer specials around the shopping district.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27 3-D PRINTER KEYCHAINS For grades 9 to 12, East Hampton Library, 3-5 p.m.

Registration online.

January, 1987. You could park on Main Street, beside Town Pond, and no one wore skating helmets.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL RADIO PLAY Live 1940s-style broadcast by Joe Landry.

7 p.m. Tickets $25, $15 for students.

Southampton Cultural Center. Also Nov. 26 at 2 and 5 p.m., Nov. 30 at 7 p.m., Dec. 1 at 7 p.m., Dec. 2 at 2, 5, and 7 p.m., and Dec. 3 at 2 and 5 p.m.

WALK-IT-OFF HIKE Southampton Trails Preservation Society, 10 a.m.noon. Meet at the end of Round Pond Lane, Sag Harbor. Registration at (631) 537-9735.

GIFT SHOW Pottery crafted by local artisans, Clay Art Guild of the Hamptons, at the Bridgehampton Museum Archives, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Also Nov. 25 and 26, Dec. 2 and 3, 9 and 10, 16 and 17.

FAMILY MOVIE Cars 3, Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton, 11 a.m. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 HOLIDAY FAIR Handmade items, baked goods, toys, Christmas decorations, handmade rugs, refreshments, and rummage sale, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Montauk Community Church.

HOLIDAY BOOK SALE Friends of the Montauk Library, new and used books, gifts, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Montauk Library.

HOUSE AND GARDEN TOUR East Hampton Historical Society, from 10 a.m., starting at Clinton Academy on Main Street. $65 in advance, $75 day of tour, five houses, 1-4:30 p.m. Registration at (631) 324-6850.

KIDS WATERCOLOR CLASS Ages 4 and up paint an outdoor scene, with an adult if under 7, 1:30-2:30 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

PUPPET SHOW Goat on a Boat presents The Three Little Pigs Build a Better House, 11 a.m. Tickets $15. Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor.

OUTER SPACE OPEN HOUSE “Space The Next Frontier,” co-sponsored by Montauk Observatory, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

South Fork Natural History Museum, Bridgehampton.

PARADE OF LIGHTS Hosted by Southampton Chamber of Commerce, with firetrucks and floats on Main Street and Job’s Lane, Southampton, at 4:30 p.m.

BOOKS AS GIFTS Southampton’s Rogers Memorial Library, partnered with Canio’s Books, suggests favorite titles for holiday surprises, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 523.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28 EMOJI LOCKER MAGNETS For grades 6 to 8, East Hampton Library, 4-5 p.m.

Registration online.

WAND CRAFT Grades K to 3 create their own wand, Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton, 3:45-430 p.m. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29 MOVIE An Inconvenient Truth, 6 p.m.

East Hampton Library.

ROCK CRAFT Colorful spiral sculptures, 4-5 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library.

Registration online.

MOVIE Wind River, 7-9 p.m. Montauk Library.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 AUTHOR TALK Kerriann Flanagan

D ATE B OO K / 8 3

Brosky, Historic Crimes of Long Island Misdeeds from the 1600s to the 1950s, 11 a.m. Rogers Mansion. Registration at (631) 283-2494.

KIDS’ ACTIVITY Perfect parfait, grades 2 to 5, 4-4:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1 TREE SALE Sag Harbor Lions Club 57th annual Christmas tree and wreath sale, at the windmill, continuing until all Frasier firs and wreaths are sold. Hot apple cider and other treats on the weekends.

VARIETY SHOW Best of the Best, by Our Fabulous Variety Show, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $20 to $50, online or at (631) 507-4603.

Guild Hall, East Hampton. Also Dec. 2, 2 and 7:30 p.m., and Dec. 3, 2 p.m.

ART DOCUMENTARY Yigal Ozeri: The Chameleon, by Vincent Zambreno, 6 p.m., followed by a talk. $20, $5 for members and students. Registration online. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 HOLIDAY BAZAAR Arts and crafts, including ceramics, jewelry, bags, soaps, knits. Free admission, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Ashawagh Hall, Springs.

MEET MRS. CLAUS. Holiday open house, with small gifts and refreshments, 2-4 p.m. Ladies Village Improvement Society, East Hampton.

READING Annette Hinkle, Sag Harbor: 100 Years of Film in the Village, with signing, 3-4:0 p.m. East Hampton Library.

Registration at (631) 324-0222, Ext. 3.

HOLIDAY PARADE AND STROLL Parade from People’s United Bank, Newtown Lane, to Hook Mill, 10 a.m. Village shops offer cider and hot chocolate, with carolers and old-fashioned characters strolling about. Santa and Mayor Rick-

enbach at Hook Mill for lighting ceremony at 5 p.m.

LIGHTING OF THE VINES $80 per person, 6-8 p.m. Wolffer Estate Vineyard, Bridgehampton.

SOCIAL WITH MRS. CLAUS She leads crafts and serves cookies and cider at Rogers Mansion, Southampton, 1-3 p.m.

Children must be with adult. Registration at (631) 283-2494.

TREE OF LIGHTS Hosted by East End Hospice, tributes, music, memorials, and remembrances in honor of friends and family, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Shelter Island Public Library. Also Dec. 3 at 2:30 p.m. in Gazebo at Village Green, Westhampton; gazebo at Herrick Park, East Hampton; Cutchogue Village Green, Cutchogue.

POETRY READING Works by Manoucher Yektai, 11:30 a.m. Free. Guild Hall, East Hampton. Online registration.

HOLIDAY BOOK-TREES: Recycle unwanted books into holiday trees, 10:1511:30 a.m. and 12-1:15 p.m. $10. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 523.

HOLIDAY LANTERN WALK: Village stroll, with singing, tree-lighting, and a visit with Santa and Co., Long Wharf. 3-5 p.m. Sponsored by Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce.

CELEBRITY CHEF DINNER: Dine with Jean-Georges Vongerichten at Topping Rose House, Bridgehampton, $200, including three-course dinner and cocktails, 6:30 p.m. Registration at mcsanzo@ hopeworksltd.com or (917) 741-6257. Supporting Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center.

OPEN STUDIO: For ages 11 to 18, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Free with museum admission. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill.

Registration online. >

8 4 / D ATE B OO K

SUNDAY DECEMBER 3 WINTER CRAFTS Ages 4 to 9 create a wonderland with glitter, felt, and paper, 2:30-3:30 p.m. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor. Registration at (631) 725-0049 or info@johnjermain.org.

SILVER TEA Raffles, baked goods, auction, refreshments, merriment, 12-3 p.m. Most Holy Trinity Church’s Ryan Dempsey Hall, East Hampton.

WREATH WORKSHOP Includes all materials, 10 a.m. $65 adults, $55 children. Marders, Bridgehampton. Also Dec. 10. Registration at (631) 537-3700.

HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE Art show, free photo with Santa, crafts, music, treats, 1-4 p.m. Bring unwrapped toy for child in need. Havens Barn, Shelter Island.

HOLIDAY DINNER Free community meal for Montauk seniors. Homebound elders may call ahead to receive dinner at home. Time not announced as of press time. Montauk Firehouse. Reservations at (631) -668-5695.

WREATH WORKSHOP With evergreens, dried flowers, seed pods, berries from Everlastings by Diana, $35, 2-4 p.m.

Bring work gloves, clippers, and decorative items. Peconic Land Trust, Bridge-

hampton. Registration at (631) 283-3195 or events@peconiclandtrust.org.

Southampton. Registration at (631) 2830774, ext. 519.

FULL-MOON HIKE Co-sponsored by Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt and the South Fork Natural History Museum. Hour-long hike led by Jean Dodds in Vineyard Field, 6-7 p.m. Meet in the SoFo Museum parking lot, Bridgehampton. Refreshments after. Reserve a spot at (631) 537-9735.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6

HOLIDAY CONCERT Choral Society of the Hamptons, 3 and 5 p.m. Bridgehampton Presbysterian Church. Tickets at choralsocietyofthehamptons.org.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5 COOKIE DECORATING Create three melted-snowman cookies with butter cream, fondant, and decorations, 4-5:15 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

TEEN COOKIE CLUB Make winter decorations for a local nursing home and enjoy cookies, 4-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 548.

ART WITH AMANDA Create a “Cardinal in Winter Woods” scene. Grades K to 5, 4-4:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library,

PLAY-SET CRAFT Kids make a mini snow village, 4-5 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

HOLIDAY BUS TRIP The festive season in Manhattan, sponsored by Rogers Memorial Library. $34. Departs 8:30 a.m.

Rite Aid, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 523.

GINGERBREAD HOUSES Teens decorate houses with Swan Bakery, 6-7 p.m.

Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7 ITALIAN FLAVORS Holiday tasting, 6:30-8 p.m. Hor d’oeuvres, cioppino, panettone bread pudding. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor. Registration at (631) 725-0049.

PAPER SNOWFLAKES Grades 6 to 8, 4-5 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

MANHATTAN BUS TRIP With Hampton Jitney. American Folk Art Museum, afternoon tea at the Pembroke Room, shopping in Bryant Park. $159. Departs 8:30 a.m. at Omni, Southampton; 9 a.m. from Gabreski Airport, Westhampton.

Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 523.

WHALING TALK History discussion of old Sag Harbor with Richard Doctorow, at Rogers Mansion, Southampton, 11 a.m. Registration at (631) 283-2494.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8

David Halsey (left) and David Lee Brown, DN iceboat championships, 1989. East Hampton Star archive.

THE NUTCRACKER Hampton Ballet Theatre School. From $15 in advance; day of show, starting at $20. Guild Hall, East Hampton, 7 p.m. Also Saturday at 1 and 7 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

D ATE B OO K / 8 5

JOY TO THE WORLD Dramatic reading of holiday stories with seasonal music, 7 p.m. Benefiting local charities. St. Ann’s Church, Bridgehampton. Also Saturday, 7 p.m., and Sunday, 3 p.m.

JINGLE BELL HOP Fund-raiser for St. Therese of Liseux Catholic nursery school in Montauk, 7 p.m. Food, raffles, and music by the Three B’s. Tickets $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Details at (631) 668-2200.

PECHAKUCHA NIGHT Eight presentations by creative professionals, 6-8 p.m.

Free for members, children, students; others, $12. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill. Tickets online.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 FAMILY MOVIE The Nutcracker, 1:30 p.m. Viewers will receive a nutcracker and nuts. Hampton Library, Bridgehampton.

VILLAGE WALKING TOUR Beginning with an open house at Baker House, 181 Main Street, East Hampton, 11 a.m. Stops include Home Sweet Home, the Presbyterian Church, and more. Map of village provided. Free. Sponsored by the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce.

HORTICULTURAL TOUR “Harvesting for the Holidays” at LongHouse Reserve, 1-2:30 p.m. Led by Alex Feleppa, horticulturist. $20, members free. R.S.V.P. to (631) 329-3568 or events@longhouse.org.

FESTIVE FIFTIES PARTY A celebration with holiday food, music, and surprises, 5:30-7:30 p.m. $60, $50 for members. Rogers Mansion, Southampton.

Registration at (631) 283-2494.

A ROCKIN’ HOLIDAY DANCE Featuring Joe Lauro and the HooDoo Loungers and Joe Delia and Thieves, 8 p.m. $25 in advance, $30 day of show. Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor.

ART OPENING Folioeast presents East

Family togetherness, 1974, North Massapequa. By Meryl Meisler (see more on Meisler on Page 41.)

End artists. Malia Mills, East Hampton, 6-8 p.m. Exhibition through Dec. 31, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays 12-5 p.m.

BIRD ORNAMENT CRAFT Make decorations with seed, suet, and dried fruits, 10:30 a.m. Bring box to take home decorations. $5 per child. South Fork Natural History Museum, Bridgehampton. Registration at (631) 537-9735.

GINGERBREAD HOUSE WORKSHOP Sponsored by Citarella, ages 3 to 12 build houses with frosting and candy, 12-1 p.m.

Registration online; $20, $15 members.

Guild Hall, East Hampton.

MEET SANTA Bring letters and cameras, 2-4 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton.

LIVE NATIVITY: Presented by youth of First Presbyterian Church, Southampton. 4:30 p.m.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10 CAROLING Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, 3:30-5 p.m. Followed by soup dinner. Cookies and poinsettias will be dropped off at homes of homebound.

HANUKKAH PARTY “Gates of Jewish Learning” family party, 9:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton. Information at (631) 3249858.

NATIVITY PAGEANT Presented by children during service, 10 a.m. First Presbyterian Church of East Hampton.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11 HOLIDAY PARTY Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt. Refreshments and treats. Location T.B.D. 6 p.m.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12 HOT COCOA CRAFT Build cocoa kits with ingredients and decorations, grades 6 to 8, 4-5 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

CHRISTMAS SING-A-LONG AND MUSICALE Johanson-Markard Piano Duo will play holiday program, 7:30 p.m. Free. Guild Hall, East Hampton.

Online registration encouraged.

COOKIE DECORATING Age 3 years to grade 5, 3:45-4:30 p.m. Rogers Memorial

8 4 / D ATE B OO K

with containers and recipes, 4 p.m. Talk by Kathleen King. Southampton Historical Museum. $20, $15 for members. Rogers Mansion, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-2494 or online.

HORSES ON TRAILS Southampton Trails Preservation Society. Bring a horse and helmet. STPS/HOT membership required due to insurance. Reservations with Leslie Lowery at (631) 603-8661.

PARTY AND TOY DRIVE Movie and drinks. 7 p.m.

Bring toys and clothes for kids in need. Fund-raiser with East Hampton Community Council. Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett.

ASTROLOGY Overview of 2018 with Kate Plumb, 3-4 p.m. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor. Registration at (631) 725-0049.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15 Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519. Also Dec. 14.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13 HANUKKAH COOKING Latke demonstration on behalf of Temple Adas Israel, 5:30-6:45 p.m. Taste latkes and sufganiyot. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor. Registration at (631) 725-0049.

CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR BUS TRIP Hampton Jitney excursion to Radio City. $189. Departs 7 a.m. at Omni, Southampton; 7:30 a.m. at Gabreski Airport, Westhampton. Also Thursday, $169; Tuesday, $199. Details online.

HEALTHY HOLIDAY COOKING Ideas for better treats, 12-1 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 523 by Dec. 10.

CRAFT-A-THON Teens made holiday-themed projects, 4-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 548.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14 FAMILY MOVIE The Polar Express, 4-5:40 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

COOKIE EXCHANGE Bring two to three dozen homemade cookies to swap,

UGLY HOLIDAY SWEATER COOKIE PARTY For teens, 4-5 p.m. Play games, take pictures, decorate ugly cookie. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton.

Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 548.

CONCERT Ustad Shafaat Khan and East Meets West, 6 p.m. Blend of Indian and Western music. $12, free for members, children, and students. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill. Tickets online.

DANCE PERFORMANCE Mixed Nuts, a Nutcracker with a fairy-tale twist, by students of Bridgehampton’s Studio 3, 7 p.m. Tickets $25, senior citizens and children under 10, $20. Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor. Also Saturday, 7 p.m and Sunday, 2 p.m.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16 HOLIDAY STORY TIME For preschool families, 4-4:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Also Dec. 22.

Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER PARTY Featuring Hello Brooklyn band, 10 p.m..

Prize for ugliest sweater. $10, online. Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett.

FAMILY OPEN STUDIO Tour galleries and create art, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Free with museum admission. Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill. Also Dec. 23 and 30.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17

COMMUNITY HANUKKAH PROGRAM Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton, 9:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Information at (631) 324-9858.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19 HOLIDAY REINDEER CUPCAKES Decorate three cupcakes, 4-5 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

HOLIDAY GIFT WORKSHOP Age 3 years to grade 5 make gifts with craft materials, 3:45-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Drop-in or registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20 HOLIDAY STORYTIME AND CRAFT Ages 4 to 6, with an adult, 4-5 p.m. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

OPERATION GIFT WRAP Teens wrap presents, help friends, and listen to festive music, 4-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 548.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21 HOLIDAY CABARET Valerie diLorenzo and Amanda Borsack Jones perform holiday tunes and classics from the great American songbook, 7 p.m. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor.

Registration at (631) 725-0049.

REINDEER CLIP-CLOP Grades 2 to 5, 4-4:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library,

Southampton. Registration at (631) 2830774, ext. 519.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22

1, 10:15-11 a.m. Grades 2 to 5, 11:15 a.m.noon. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

FAMILY MOVIES Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, 3:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774.

SNOWY SNOWMAN Craft for grades 2 to 5, 4-4:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29

HEALTHY WINTER TREATS Learn to make Grinch grape kabobs, melting snowman cookies, etc., 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Family-friendly. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor.

HOLIDAY MODEL MAGIC WORKSHOP Make snow people, magic animals, and more, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

PUPPET SHOW Goat on a Boat presents Holiday Fun!, 11 a.m. Tickets $15. Bay Street Theater, Sag Harbor.

FUN FRIDAY For teens. Snacks, friends, games, and a New Year’s Eve craft, 4-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 548.

SUNDAY. DECEMBER 24 CAPOTE HIKE Southampton Trails Preservation Society’s annual three-mile hike to Truman Capote memorial stone.

Meet at the Long Pond Greenbelt Nature Center. Moderately paced. Registration with Dai Dayton at (631) 745-0689.

NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY For families, 11:15 a.m.-noon. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27

NEW YEAR’S HAT CRAFT Make a celebratory hat using sequins, ribbons, sparkles, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

SOCK SNOWMAN CRAFT For kids age 3 years to grade 5, 1-1:45 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-0774, ext. 519.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28 RECYCLED HOLIDAY ART Make a winter wonderland using recycled ribbons, wrap, cards, 2-3 p.m. Items provided, but more welcome. Ages 4 and up, with an adult if under 7. East Hampton Library. Registration online.

D.I.Y. SNOW GLOBES Teens create winter scenes with figurines, glitter, and fake snow, 4-5 p.m. Rogers Memorial Library, Southampton. Registration at (631) 2830774, ext. 548.

WINTER BINGO Age 3 years to grade

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30

CANDLELIGHT RECEPTION Selfguided tour and refreshments, 4-5 p.m.

Southampton Historical Museum. $10, members and children free. Rogers Mansion, Southampton. Registration at (631) 283-2494.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31 NEW YEAR’S NOON COUNTDOWN PARTY Dance, play, and celebrate, on the early side, 1130 a.m.-1230 p.m. All ages. Treats and healthy snacks will be served. Registration at (631) 725-0049 or info@johnjermain.org. John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor.

Call The Wolf Pack to Plan Your Holiday Party!

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80

Give Your Child

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DR. NANCY COSENZA Dentistry for Children, Teens & Handicapped

Board Certified

97 North Main Street, Southampton • 631-287-8687 www.hamptonpediatricdental.com

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MEMOIR / 8 9

BRAVE In this personal essay, Nina Channing evokes the power of primordial memory—and the kinship of humankind and the sea. The heart of a whale can be as big as a car. . . .

There is a place 120 miles east of Manhattan where the highway falls into the ocean. It is where dry pavement gives way to briny waters, more like a wide sand bar than a true peninsula. Far out past the towns and the bluffs and the beaches, it’s a land of scrub oak, white rocks, and dune grass. It is where the long arm of the Long Island coast

reaches out to separate ocean from bay, forming a jetty. This aisle stretches out to the east. To the south of it is the Atlantic, to the south of that, Brazil. This spot doesn’t have a name but it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter and it is where I am going, for the first time, to see the migration.

It is 4 in the morning. I am staring up

at a rectangle of light on the ceiling. The things I need are already beside the bed: socks, boots, camera, binoculars. I am riding that edge of exhaustion where it takes active effort to remain lucid, a feeling of leaning forward into the day, trusting it to catch you. I’m up now. I tap my feet on the floor. I make a cup of coffee and drink it and then make another

Promised Land in winter: January Day (1978), by the late East End artist Howard Kanovitz. Pastel on paper, 44” x 30”. Private collection.

THE SHOP AT GUILD HALL

One of a kind gifts for everyone on your list We merrily wrap!

Mon, Fri, Sat 11–5pm Sun 12–5pm Guild Hall 158 Main St East Hampton, NY 631.324.0806

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Country Gardens at Bridgehampton

Happy Holidays from our family to yours

125 Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, NY

631-537-0007 Open Monday – Saturday 8am – 5pm, Sunday 8am – 4pm

MEMOIR / 9 1

On Gardiner’s Bay: Interior With Bather (1980), by Howard Kanovitz. Pastel, 40”x 60”. Private collection.

and drink that, and then get in my car.

The highway leading out here is old: two lanes, no railings, no lamps.

My headlights throw pulpy shadows on the sides of the road. There are still long stretches when you can’t see any house or even any other car, just the thin straight line of pavement reaching out to sea. I think of all the stories I have heard of how it used to be out here— empty, untouched, pure. I think about how it probably won’t stay the way it is for very long. I think of how someday in the future I will tell my kids about how it used to be this way.

You know you are in the right place when the high dunes give way to low barren swales. A person walking around is easily the tallest thing in sight.

Pale gold and twisted, the brush clings to the sand, mowed down by the ceaseless ocean wind. I park somewhere out

of the way and step out onto the trail. To someone who didn’t know better, this would appear to be a winter morning indistinguishable from any other.

Geese fly past in sloppy chevrons.

Plovers, tucked in the fold of a hill, sleep in birdy silence. I make my way down to the water’s edge. Between the brush and the bay is a thin strip of sand. I stand facing out, my hands enjoying my pockets, and see that I am not alone.

There are a few other people, mostly in pairs, scattered down the aisle. Other members of the welcoming committee.

So, I haven’t gotten the date wrong.

It is 6 o’clock exactly and I am looking at the blank horizon waiting for something to happen, willing it. Someone shouts. There is a single spray of water, and then: an orchestra. They’re here. Backs emerge, like great black oil spills, breaking the surface of the wa-

SOMEONE SHOUTS. THERE IS A SPRAY OF WATER, AND THEN: AN ORCHESTRA. THEY’RE HERE. BACKS EMERGE, LIKE GREAT BLACK OIL SPILLS, BREAKING THE SURFACE WITH HEAVING CALLS. HUMPBACKS.

ter with heaving calls. Humpbacks. On their way north from the Caribbean to Greenland, head after head cresting from the dark water. They stay here only for a few days, to feed before moving on up the coast. This is their first moment of respite since their journey up the continent and they are exhausted, they are exulting. They roll over into one another with muffled slaps of joy, heads careening out of the water like raised trumpets before reclining back

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MEMOIR / 9 3

Taxi Bay (1976 ), by Howard Kanovitz. Acrylic on canvas, 54”x 74” . In the collection of Guild Hall.

down. The voices, just audible on the shore, are whooping.

I grab my camera and start to frame them. There look to be about nine in total, including one calf, a big group.

Clicking furiously, I get a couple of fins, part of a tail. The bodies are alien, at once incredible and starkly real. They are some of the best-designed forms in the natural world, and yet their proportions make them look like make-believe things, like something a child molded out of clay. A whale in the water is an impossible thing. Too large ever to see all of at once, we must put them together in our minds from pictures, from what we’ve learned in school and the various impossibly beautiful shapes that stick up from the water. On this day, the water is thick with krill and the

hungry travelers are celebrating. Long, stuttering calls shout back and forth from the froth, the clicks and squeals layering with sounds of splashing water, becoming almost rhythmic. A fact I still remember from elementary school comes back to me: All whales within a certain area sing a single song. All North Atlantic humpbacks sing the same song, while those of the North Pacific sing a different one. Each population’s chorus evolves slowly over a period of years without repeating, kind of like a genome or a long story. More is always being added, developed, revised. That means every year the tune is slightly different, slightly new. I suddenly wish I had brought something I could record them with. And then, almost as if choreographed, two of them

lurch out of the water in unison. These two are clearly displaying themselves, not for us onlookers, but for each other. They play, mouths open, listing left and upward with fins outstretched. It is clear they are loving the space between themselves, testing it, almost (but never quite) crashing together in a tumult of white. Almost forgetting myself, I scramble to focus my camera and snap a photo when it looks like they have reached their apex. Faintly, I hear a woman down the beach turn to the man beside her and shout: “I wonder what they’re saying!” I am brought back to another time, years ago, in the light of the not-yet-morning.

It is my tenth birthday and my dad has brought me to see a right whale that

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MEMOIR / 9 5 washed up on Gibson Beach. You can tell a right whale from other whales by its mouth, which is on the top of its head and is shaped like a frown. I feel my small-girl fingers slip into the pocket of his coat to find his hand as we approach it. There isn’t any blood, just a dusty layer of salt and that feeling you get in a church or a museum—like you should whisper but you don’t know exactly why.

We walk around the body a few times, making a circle in the sand with our footprints. No one is on the beach yet. It is calm and the waves splashing at the big belly are gentle. Overhead, seagulls swoop and bark. We know all about whales because we studied them in school. I know all the different species and what they like to eat. Blue whales are the biggest and they are my favorite. They can grow up to be as long as two whole school buses. Right whales have baleen instead of teeth and they eat krill, which are tiny shrimp. I tell my Dad all of this. He says that makes sense because he likes shrimp, too.

I tell him in a whisper that I have never seen such a big dead thing before.

I tell him that I saw a movie once where a little girl can talk to whales and they let her ride on their backs. I tell him that I learned in science class that whales have their own songs and language and if humans could understand them maybe we could learn a lot because they live longer than any other mammal. He puts his hands on the side of the hull and leans his head in close, listening.

“What’s it saying right now?” he asks.

“Well not this one. This one’s dead.”

I explain.

“So what?”

“So it can’t talk,” I insist, “duh.”

“Says who?”

“That’s the rule. When you die you can’t talk anymore.”

“Oh.” “How old do you think it is?” I ask.

“How old do you think it is?” he asks.

“I don’t know. A hundred?”

“More than that,” he says.

“A thousand?”

“Probably about that.”

“How old are you?”

“Probably about that.”

“Dad, I’m serious!” I shout.

“Me too!” he assures me.

We stand like that for a moment. I, emboldened, reach out my hands to feel it. The sun-slapped skin is rough and warm. Just then he grabs me around the ribs and hoists, pulling me up over his shoulders. He plops me on top of the animal just beside a huge fin. My shrieks he calls my name down the beach but i don’t turn around. i get in and slam the door. i can see him standing, not moving froM where we were. next to the whale he looks so tiny, like a bug

scatter the seagulls. Under my legs, the whole body shudders and I bob up and down on the bloated mass. Briefly, I am flooded with delight before my yells turn to tears. He pulls me down. We fight. He tries to calm me down.

“Honey, what happened? You’re okay. Look, you’re okay.” His face mirrors my confusion and upset. Not even I understand exactly where the line had been crossed.

I cover my face and run back toward our car. He calls my name down the beach but I don’t turn around. I get in and slam the door. I can see him standing, not moving from where we were.

Next to the whale he looks so tiny, like a bug. He just stands there for the longest time. He takes off his hat and rings it in his hands. I think maybe he expects me to come back, but I won’t. After a couple minutes, I lean across the seat and honk the horn. Eventually he walks back. He gets in the car too but doesn’t start the engine. I don’t look at him on purpose.

“I’m sorry I scared you on your birthday,” he says.

“I wasn’t scared,” I say.

“Well, I’m sorry anyway.”

I made a little “humph” sound, not quite ready to forgive him. Feeling slightly embarrassed.

“You know you’re very brave,” he says. “You’re just about the bravest person I know, I think, and that’s good. It’s important to be brave.” He looked at me head-on when he said it but I kept my eyes set on the whale out the window.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“You know, bug, things change all the time. And someday I’m not going to be around and you’re going to have to be brave without me.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Well, I’m not as young as I used to be and I’m getting sick. Now, everything’s gonna be okay but it means that I’m going to need you to be brave for me, and Mom, too. She needs you to be brave. Can you do that?” He is not smiling and his face is serious.

We sit there for a while and I ask him if he is going to die and he says no.

I ask him if he wants to be buried in the ocean like a pirate and he says no. I ask him if he will end up on a beach somewhere like the whale and he says no.

He says he just needs me to be brave no matter what. I say okay but I don’t understand the point. I pull on his arm until he agrees to leave. On the way home he reminds me that it has already been my birthday for half an hour. We stop for grilled cheeses and green ice cream.

When I develop the photo it is just as I remembered it. Two immense animals, hanging side by side in the air, fins raised—a pronouncement of joy, of partnership, of bravery rewarded. I pin it on the cork board above my bed.

Three weeks later, I burn it and sprinkle the ashes, alongside his, into the bay.

9 6 / B y t h e Nu m b e r s

Delirious Bridgehampton skaters, December 28, 1972. Photograph by Bill Nagle, from the East Hampton Star archive.

PEACE ON EARTH T H E L O W S E A S O N D O E S H AV E I T S C O N S O L AT I O N S . H E R E , A F E W FA C T S A N D F I G U R E S A B O U T T H I N G S W E F I N D C H E E R F U L I N M I D W I N T E R ’ S G AT H E R I N G G L O O M

Noise complaints filed last year in high tourist season, in East Hampton Town alone. By contrast, from January through March, 2017, we had silent nights, with only six complaints.

Percentage decrease in one month’s rent for a quaint four-bedroom cottage on Lake Agawam for the month of August ($65,000) versus December ($7,500).

Maximum number of weeks, per year, that you can buy clementine oranges. The short season peaks in December. Seedless, tastier than Halos, they fit well in the toe of a stocking.

Years since hail-and-slush season was first brightened by Mallomars. New Yorkers’ favorite marshmallow and chocolate cookies are only available November through March.

Federal holidays in the off season, as opposed to just one (July 4th) in high summer. Most folks don’t get excited about Washington’s Birthday—but we’re psyched for the long weekend.

Renegade taxis caught driving without proper credentials in East Hampton, during the second week of January, 2015. Bad cabs nabbed over Memorial Day weekend? Seventy-four.

Minutes not spent on the Hampton Jitney on the average trip from Manhattan to Montauk in January, versus August, when you are trapped in your seat so long your hair goes gray.

Days you can walk your dog on Sagg Main Beach, and other Southampton Town beaches, in the off season. Days you can do so in summer? Zero. Bundle up and let Fido have his fun.

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