EAST Magazine July 2021 by The East Hampton Star

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12 / OUT HERE

OUT HERE / 13

STRANGE TIDES All good photographers are interested in light, but James Katsipis will go to greater lengths in its pursuit than most. He’ll be the only swimmer in the water, deepest, darkest days of the winter. When Fort Pond Bay is rimmed with salt ice, he’s under a dock looking at patterns between sea and sky. Cold doesn’t bother him, even on days when he can’t feel the camera in his hands and the only way he can tell if he has taken a photo is when he hears the shutter click. Sometimes he uses timed, low-light exposures to abstract the Atlantic Ocean into soft parallel lines in for Donna Karan, Sanuk footwear, and Pucci. Then there is his Mermaids of Montauk series, a by-invitation-only collection of black-and-white photos of naked or nearly so women in watery settings. Portraits of surfers, both traveling pros and friends, are in his portfolio. Then there is drone photography, usually close to nightfall, with the sun low in the sky. In many ways, Katsipis is the house photographer for Montauk. Katsipis was going out to take photos of the lighthouse at night when he stumbled on a surreal scene in Turtle Cove. “I saw a bunch of surfcasters with headlamps circling all around the boat. Not sure if they were picking through it, or what. No one from the boat was anywhere to be found. It was pretty eerie. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened. I just remembered hoping everyone was okay. But in the meantime, I wanted to document it. I shot some with the lighthouse in the background, but I think with the bow pointing back worked. . . . The next day I heard that the operator just ditched it on the beach there and left town.” hundred thousand dollars, was broken up and hauled the Camp Hero overlook parking area for a few days like an open-casket viewing of what only days before had been a powerful, sparkling machine. — East James Katsipis, Adrift, long exposure digital image. Shot on Sony Alpha, 35mm, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

CONTENTS / 15

CONTENTS

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A Happening

Treasure or teardown: What is to happen to John Steinbeck’s house on the Sag Harbor waterfront?

How about yoga — by the sea, with sitar, tinctures, and an art show?

ON THE COVER CONTRIBUTORS MASTHEAD

EDITOR’S NOTE Get Happy

You can’t beat pozole-and-egg tacos from Carissa’s Bakery

Jailhouse Letters with an Amagansett business owner

Making It New at Guild Hall Robert Longo talks about how his exhibit History of the Present tackles the American experience

Last One In How climate change and pandemic population shift created a swimming-pool crisis

A Literary Prize

Object of Desire: The Preszler Canoe

By Peter Spacek

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EAST ILLUSTRATED

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DATEBOOK

Single in the Hamptons Finding love on the South Fork? It comes with unique pressures

1. There’s an App for That Dating at a certain age — post-divorce

2. I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Wonder Weed

Why twenty-somethings have turned to courting the old-fashioned way

Cultivating kelp — a champion carbon-beater and seawater-cleanser

FEATURES Going To Pot Tales from the marijuana frontier

1. No Grass Ceilings

The Petrie Team

NEIGHBORS Memory Keeper

Women at the forefront of the recreational-weed business

Licensed Associate RE Broker 516.885.9365 • ed@compass.com

Meet Brenda Simmons, force behind Southampton’s new African American Museum

2. Grow Your Own Some tips from an (anonymous) expert

MEMOIR The Old Man Bill Aken remembers his father, Robert M. Aken Jr., in this excerpt from his book The

16 / ON THE COVER

CONTRIBUTORS / 17

WHO WE ARE A F E W O F T H E C O O L 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

Kenneth B. Walsh Montauk (1976)

BILL AKIN A well-known presence around Montauk, Akin recently published The Golden Age of Montauk Sportexcerpted in this issue was taken (Page TK. Akin served on the Wild Oceans conservation Montauk for a decade and founded the Music for Montauk concert series in 1980.

Tryptich, acrylic on canvas, 73” x 33” ture a timeless moment, and some mix the time-bound with the eternal — the workaday with the divine, the sacred with the profane. Kenneth B. Walsh (1922–1980), our cover artist, loved Montauk and the South Fork. After his service in World War II, he became a commercial artist in Manhattan and, when he had saved some money, built a house in Hither Hills in the early 1960s. For several years, he spent weekends and summers men who worked on the water. He also used beachcombed items to produce collages, mobiles, and other artworks. Walsh opened the Bonart Gallery at Gosman’s Dock in the 1960s. Roughly half of his paintings from that decade, mainly watercolors, are slices of life in and around the harbor, in a style best described as soft realism. The other half include portraits, seascapes, and scenes of iconic objects and structures, from Broadway to the Point. The 1970s were a time of unraveling, with protests and social chaos roiling the city, and the Walsh family quit Manhattan for the relative calm of year-round life in Montauk. Neighworkers on vacation, Vietnam veterans, hippies. Everyone was trying to move on from the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the violence that unfolded at the tail end of the 1960s, but, as Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In that freewheeling decade, Walsh began painting in a with the artist’s psychological state. Walsh’s vision of Monplay, the resident and the tourist, the good, the bad, and the ugly . . . the reality. More information and reproductions of Montauk — and other works — are available at kennethbwalshart.com.

E R I C A - LY N N H U B E R T Y Erica, who lives on the north side of Sagaponack, has written for The New York Times, The Wash-

DAV I D R AT T R AY The editor of The East Hampton Star newspaper and easthamptonstar.com, Rattray is a co-direcRattray family — over three generations — to serve as editor of The Star. In addition to journalism,

CHUCK REVELL A commercial photographer, Revel is also a collage artist who kindly let us print two of his cool — romantic but slightly spooky — collage pieces for our double-feature on the perils of being Single in the Hamptons (Page tk). He lives in San Francisco, where he can hear the nightly howlings of the Golden Gate Park coyote pack through his open streetside windows.

CHRISTINE SAMPSON A dreamer and award-winning writer — covering education, restaurants, and culture (A Literary Prize, Page ??) — Sampson is the deputy managing editor of The Star. Although now married and

MASTHEAD / 19

“ WHAT ARE YOU RE ADING THIS SUMMER? ” Publishers David Rattray & Helen Rattray

Editors Biddle Duke Carissa Katz Jennnifer Landes Bess Rattray

Art Director Maria Lavezzo

Contributing Writers & Editors Jamie Buffalino Isabel Carmichael Jon Diat Judy D’Mello David Gibbons Erica-Lynn Huberty Bella Lewis Christine Sampson Nower Mark Segal Christopher Walsh

Illustrators Durell Godfrey Peter Spacek

Graphic Design Matthew Charron Paul Friese Jordy Mark

Advisers & Friends Philippe Cheng Spencer Lee Schneider Michael Halsband Doug Kuntz

Sales Victoria Henry Zach Zunis Jane Bimson

Business Manager Robin Kuntz

Etc. Russell Bennett East

For A World Too Full of Sameness®

Subscriptions and circulation: East is distributed as an insert in The East Hampton Star 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 editor@ehstar.com or: East

G A R D E N S H O P · N U R S E RY · L A N D S C A P E · D E S I G N , B U I L D , A N D M A I N TA I N

EDITORS NOTE / 21

GET HAPPY F R E E D O M , PA R T Y F R O C K S , A N D F I R E W O R K S — E X U B E R A N C E ( R AT I O N A L O R O T H E R W I S E ) I S T H E M O O D O F J U LY, 2 0 2 1 As we go to press, the governor has just announced that, having reached an adult-vaccination rate of 70 percent, the safety rules of the pandemic have been thrown out the door. Masks and distancing will still be enforced in schools — but school is almost out for the summer. The kids are counting down the last few days: No more pencils, no more books, no more smell

Barcelona Point

East Hampton

above that nasty old mask. . . . Throw out the mask! Throw We do not yet know for sure if this moment of freedom, as June turns to July, is a window that will close again. We do not know if the Delta variant — or some other as-yet-unalphabetcold weather returns, or if we’ve truly beaten this Covid-19

bration, the governor says. Exuberance is the mood. Exuberance is the word. Is it irrational exuberance? Sometimes, when our head hits the pillow, we are reminded that elsewhere in this world, the good people are not so lucky. But we can feel the energy rising —

like bubbles in prosecco, like a laugh that you can’t keep down — and it’s not yet even July. June, the ladies were dressed to the nines for dinner in BridgeShack Fancy dresses dotted with posies in the uptown crowd waiting on the sidewalk outside Almond restaurant. The college kids have been up all night, partying on someone’s power boat, and their voices are hoarse from shouting dares. The adolescents — 12 and 13 — have already snuck out to their -

more blooms, more color — this year. The lyrics of Jon Batiste’s anthem to happiness, Freedom, play on repeat in our head: “When I move my body just like this, I don’t know why but I feel like freedom. . . . ” Take it, we say. Take this moment. Wear the cocktail dress, vid Austin roses, count yourself lucky, count the stars, look up East

Above: Hot-cha-cha! High jinx at a costume party at the Maidstone Club, East Hampton, in the years following the end of World War II — when the cloud of danger lifted and spirits soared. Anyone recognize any faces? / The East Hampton Star archive All information is from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, prior sale or withdrawal without notice. All rights to content, photographs and graphics reserved to broker. Equal Housing Opportunity Broker. Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons, LLC. 2 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937 • 631.324.6100

E A S T I L L U S T R AETAESDT B I LYL P UE ST E RR A TSEPDA C / E2K 3

Keep off the grass! Stay on the asphalt or pavement. Walk in the center of the path, avoid tall grass, or avoid the woods all together.

Tick checks twice a day. Do a thorough check at night, and then again the following morning. Check the kids and

Tuck & cover. Tuck your pants into your socks and spray your skin and clothing with repellent. (Preferably ones with DEET, permethrin or picaridin.) Most ticks get access to you on your shoes and socks, so don’t forget to of the month during tick season (April through August).

No pets in the bed. Ever! You love your cats and your dogs. So do ticks. So don’t sleep with your pets, don’t even invite them up on the couch. They’ll forgive you (especially if you give them treats).

Dry your clothes, before you wash them! When you come in from the outdoors, put your clothes in the dryer on high heat for 15 minutes. Don’t wash them first! Ticks survive, and even thrive, in a water bath.

Get the facts about ticks. Protect yourself and your family!

Regional Tick-Borne Disease Resource Center Visit EastEndTickResource.org or call our help line at (631) 726-TICK. Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is an equal opportunity employer.

OVERHEARD / 25

WE'RE IN THE HAMPTONS NOW BECAUSE NOTHING SHOULD PAUSE YOUR SUMMER. You didn’t come all the way to the East End only to head back when a health issue comes up. That’s why NYU Langone Health is continuing to expand to new locations. We provide the highest quality, multispecialty care at more than 150 locations on Long Island, including a new office in the heart of Bridgehampton. So you can take care of your health without putting your summer on pause. To schedule an appointment, visit nyulangone.org/eastend

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It has been observed by old-timers, sitting around the metaphorical pickle barrel, that fewer people actually get into the ocean and get actually wet in these modern times. Old photo-vistas of the “East Hampton bathing pavilion” circa 1910 or Asparagus Beach circa

town went down to the water on a hot July day, once upon a time. Today, estate in coastal towns up and down the seaboard has been snatched up at a hysterical pace, but . . . leave the comfort of the chilly air-conditioning, get all sandy and itchy from the salt, and mess our blow-out? The One Percent would

clearly rather browse around town in bikini and kaftan, toting a printedrattan beach bag (“Nobody LikEs a shady bEach”) than linger at the shore. Instead, the entire nation is shouting “Marco! Polo!” as the backyard pool becomes an urgent necessity. July without a pool is like a gin without tonic, tennis without a ball. But just as

Above: Rising tides, 40” x 48”, oil on canvas (2020), by Samantha French — who was one of our cover artists back in 2017 with a similarly watery subject. French was raised in Minnesota, but these days works in a studio in Brooklyn. More of her work can be seen at samanthafrench.com.

26 / OVERHEARD

us each day deeper into the swelter. And sometimes extortionate prices. The Detroit Free Press reports hoarding among Michiganders. The Providence Journal reports panic buying in Rhode Island. A reliable source tells of one

THE DE TROIT FREE PRESS REP ORTS HOARDING AMONG MICHI G A N D E R S . T H E P R O V I D E N C E J O U R N A L R E P O R T S PA N I C B U YING IN RHODE ISL AND. A RELIABLE SOURCE TELLS OF ONE S U F F O L K C O U N T Y P O O L- C O M PA N Y B O S S W H O A S K E D H I S I N L AW S T O D R I V E O U T F R O M C O L O R A D O , S T O P P I N G I N E V E R Y WA L M A R T A L O N G T H E WAY, T O L O A D T H E B A C K O F T H E I R S . U .V. W I T H T U B S O F C H L O R I N E TA B L E T S . H E ’ S N O W S E L L I N G T H E M AT T W I C E T H E R E G U L A R P R I C E . C H A - C H I N G !

and owning a pool more popular than ever before in the history of the U.S.A, maintaining one — or constructing

chlorine gas rose in plumes and residents sheltered in place. Biolab’s main product? Pool chlorine in the convenient trichlor tablet form that is

who asked his in-laws to drive out from Colorado, stopping in every Walmart along the way, to load the back of their S.U.V. with tubs of chlorine tablets that are now being sold at twice the regular price. Cha-ching! Simultaneously, last year’s highpandemic outmigration from the cities to the suburbs has ramped up demand for new pools. If you don’t have one, you want one — but who is going to dig the hole? Who will sweep the pink rhododendron petals from the pool’s That’s the third element in play in Island is in the throes of a labor crunch. On the East End, service businesses across the board — from restaurants and bakeries to landscapers and boutiques — are severely shorthanded,

hopes of luring help. A notice on the entrance door of Citarella in East Hampton in June

radio airwaves to advertise its bonus unexpected challenge. “Pool crisis!” is the cry from the shallow end. First, there is the chlorine shortage, which you may have read about in The New York Times in May. A chemical

water. (This chain of events does seem symbolic in some sinister way, doesn’t it? Hurricane possibly fueled by climate change causes industrial disaster that, as the dominos fall, eventually puts the

August. The storm knocked down power lines, water pressure was weak,

seeking cool respite from the hot sun?) Biolab was one of only two factories in America producing chlorine tablets, apparently, and said tablets have coast to coast, as the calendar marches

crisis at the border to blame? Is it the working people priced out? (Or are

Allan Clark (1896-1950), Bronze, gilt patina. Mounted on original painted wood base. Signed and dated: Allan Clark 1929. Foundry Inscription: Priessman Bauer & Co Munich Bavaria 6. 14 3 8 H × 13 1 2 W × 3 3 8 D inches.

that theory, we say nah.) pool-deprived, the pool-needy, the pool-desperate, the last ones in who

Above: Salt and sun, 20” x 20”, oil on panel (2020), by Samantha French. “My current body of work is focused on swimmers underwater and above,” she says in

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28 / OVERHEARD

are rotten eggs — are complaining that it might cost double what it would have cost, say, two years ago to have most popular pool companies, Swim King, quoted the writer of this article a bare-bones baseline estimate in 2019 in-ground saltwater pool with a sparkly again in March of this year, she was warned it might cost as much as 40 percent more. A complete package for a similar pool in 2019, all in — with a buried propane tank to fuel the heater, slate paving and coping, and reseeding of grass — was estimated at $60,000 by a highly regarded family-owned pool-installation company based in East Hampton Town, but this spring it

was almost impossible to even get the manager on the phone. — bEss R attRay

Jailhouse Letters

British horticulturalist Graham Stuart Thomas, which was published by Ngaere Macray, Seeler’s wife. was arrested in 2008 and sentenced

a book in jail unless it came directly from the publisher. Federal prisoners are not the only inmates banned from receiving care packages of any sort, including literature — the literature of interest here being a rather surprsing book dispatched by David Seeler, who runs the Bayberry landscape design operation in Amagansett. It was The Garden Through the Year: A Month-ByMonth Guide to the Favourite Plants and Flowers of the Greatest Gardener of All Time, an illustrated compendium of suggestions and paintings by the

scheme in history (although you may be surprised to imagine him sitting in his cell reading about English roses). Seeler and the Bayberry had worked on the grounds of his Montauk vacation house, and Rosa rugosa on the ocean beach between Napeague and Montauk, not far from the Hither Hills campground. And, like many others acquainted with

$3,250,000 | 4 Bed | 4.5 Bath | 3,500 Sq. ft. A spacious, bright, multi-level East Hampton cedar-shingled 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathroom home is situated on a private 1.67 acres. Located on a quiet cul-de-sac 2 miles from East Hampton Village.

seemingly miraculous fund, though, he said recently, he had escaped with his

Y O U W I L L R E M E M B E R M A D O F F, W H O WA S A R R E S T E D A N D S E N T E N C E D T O 1 5 0 Y E A R S I N F E D E R A L P R I S O N F O R M A S T E R M I N D I N G T H E L A R G E S T P O N Z I S C H E M E I N H I S T O R Y — A LT H O U G H Y O U M AY B E S U R P R I S E D T O I M A G I N E H I M S I T T I N G I N H I S C E L L R E A D I N G A B O U T R O S E S

Christopher Stewart Licensed Real Estate Salesperson cstewart@compass.com 917.744.2450

30 / OVERHEARD principal intact before the whole 82, still behind bars in Butner, N.C., and Seeler decided it was time to see what interest there might be in two letters his infamous jailbird acquaintance had written from behind bars.

In high school, he was a happy-go-lucky lifeguard in the working-class weekend destination of Rockaway Beach. He from his in-laws, which he lost. Not so long after, however, he was returning 11 percent to his investors on an annual basis, rain or shine. It was a pace too good to be true, of course, but it proved irresistible to clients with dollar signs in their eyes who kept pouring cash

million for himself from the scheme — a sum that in the 1980s or 1990s would have bought a fair chunk of Montauk.

his plea that he be released from prison on compassionate grounds: He had been diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer. The judge explained that it had

important,” wrote Judge Denny Chin. “[T]he public trust had been eroded the system for so many years [and] he deserved to be punished according to his moral culpability.” The Department of Justice and a court-appointed trustee have managed to claw back about $14 billion, so far, whom he had rubbed elbows with out here on the East End. came and the great pyramid fell, he was chairman of the Nasdaq and living well in Manhattan, as well as enjoying two vacation homes, one the Gene Futterman–designed house in Montauk, the other in Palm Beach. His place at the End was unusual not for its 180 feet of oceanfront, but for its site on the brink of the sand, indeed almost within reach of the waves. Still, it was modest by South Fork standards, with just four bedrooms, dated leather furniture, Formica countertops, and a television hidden behind a panel in a

then to spend weekends on a series of out the rest of his life in prison. “The

when she was working on a book about why the famous and not-so-wellfamous love Montauk so much, that his family’s days there — with clambakes, lobster cookouts, surfcasting — were “glorious.” After his conviction, the U.S. eventually sold for $9.4 million. in a looping script. He wanted Seeler to know he was touched to have gotten the gardening book: “Having you think of me at this time means more to me than you can imagine.” Seeler tried to send a second book, but it never reached dispatched another letter to let Seeler know that he was okay. “I wish I could say the same for my family. Both the media and the bankruptcy trustee are a three-ring circus and it’s taking it’s toll on Ruth and my sons and brother,” he about this statement was that by then, both of his sons were dead, the older, his apartment in 2010 and the younger, Seeler said that he put the letters up for sale privately and that a lot of “Wall Street guys” have been interested. Serious bids had reached $9,000 when last we checked. — East

Edward Seisdedps, Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker. Real estate agents affiliated with Compass are independent contractor sales associates and are not employees of Compass. Equal Housing Opportunity. Compass is a licensed real estate broker located at 90 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Fl. NY, NY 10011. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Compass makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. To reach the Compass main office call 212.913.9058.

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MEMORY KEEPER B R E N D A S I M M O N S B E C A M E A C U R AT O R W H I L E W O R K I N G AT S O U T H A M P T O N V I L L A G E H A L L — C O M M I S S I O N I N G S C H O O L K I D S T O C R E AT E A R T F O R B L A C K H I S T O RY M O N T H . N O W, S H E ’ S T H E D I R E C T O R O F A N E W A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L M U S E U M This past June was a very big month for Brenda Simmons. The co-founder and executive director of the Southampton able to open its doors in a former Black barbershop and beauty parlor on North Sea Road. For her, the 16-plus-year journey to get to this point was personal. Simmons’s family was part of the Great Migration of the American 20th century. As was common among peoAbove:

ple from the South, an elder sibling who went to Harlem from Waverly, Virginia. Another aunt followed, then her mother, the more aunts — eight siblings in all. Some 16 million people segregation and a context of violence being passed down by white parents to their children. Her father, Noah Simmons, and his family had come north,

too, leaving Currituck, North Carolina amid hope for a better life. An aunt who had a beautician’s liSouthampton and worked in the latebarbershop, and Brenda Simmons, then 12 or 13 years old, would answer the phone and take appointments. There were two doors on barbershop, one on the right for the women, one on the left

NEIGHBOR / 36

for the men. By no means were the girls allowed to go over to the other side, though from time to time Brenda would peek in to see what the salty languaged world of the men was like. Southampton had juke joints then, one called with perhaps more than a little dose of intentional irony, the Coal Bin. Her father established a landscaping company and took care of properties on Her mother, Pearl, worked in the Sag Harbor Bulova factory and later as a nursing assistant. Nights, Mr. Simmons owned and operated the Cottage Inn on the road to Springs in East Hampton, Acts including James Brown and Aretha Franklin passed through the juke joint and restaurant while Simmons was

a teenager, she and a few friends were turn from Main Street and rolled along corner, where, as Simmons recalled, “A white guy said, ‘What are you ‘N words’ doing here? That happened, right here in good, old Village of Southampton.” This was in the early 1970s or abouts. Simmons was a member of the class of 1973 at Southampton High School, where she had taken part in a sit-out by students demanding a Black studies class. She did not sense prejudice in the classrooms, but there were divisions. Guidance counselors did not really enkids and the parents who did that, she said. Once, when she was asked to go to the prom by a white friend, her parents

M R. S I M M O N S OWNED AND OPER ATED THE COTTAGE INN ON T H E ROA D TO SPRINGS IN E AST HAMPTON (NOW THE TOWN S E N I O R- C I T I Z ENS CENTER). ACTS INCLUDING JAMES BROWN A ND AR E T HA FR ANKL IN PASS ED THROU GH TH E JU KE JOI NT AN D R E STAUR ANT W HIL E S IM M ONS WAS YOU NG. Spoonful, then playing with the Kingsmen, had an early gig there, which the bassist recalled in his autobiography. Their house on Halsey Avenue is gone now, replaced by a spec house. Another barbershop, Mr. Bob’s, with a jukebox and pool table, and, past that, a candy store, neither of which remain. “Those places are gone within the last couple of years. You would never know, you would never know, that this all was there. That was the black community,” Simmons recalled. As prosperous as this new Black Southampton middle class was, the area was still referred to by outsiders as “the Ghetto,” which tamped down property values. Racism was always there, Simmons said, but most of the time, not on the surface. There were clues, though. Parents but not say why. Once, when she was

said no. “I still got to dance with him at the prom,” she said with a laugh. For many years, Simmons worked in Southampton Village Hall, where the the form of Black History Month exhibits of local student art. Even then, she would push things — the show would ther King Jr. Day, and stay on view into March. Before SAAM had a home, Simmons curated exhibits of Black artists at the Southampton Historical Museum, and she became deeply involved in an had belonged to Pyrrhus Concer, who had been enslaved when he was young then became a whaler, business owner, and philanthropist. Concer is believed can to visit Japan, arriving aboard the

his wife, Rachel, became members of the Southampton First Presybyterian Church in 1847 and spent the rest of his life in the village, save for a stint in California during the Gold Rush. Pushback to the museum plan began about the time it became known that Southampton Town had bought the old barbershop property from Randy Conquest, who had bought it from Seymore, icated preservation fund. Nonetheless,

G i v e Yo u r C h i l d A Healthy Smile

lines of, “Why did the town spend our taxes on that piece of shit?” Simmons said that this cut deep and “added to the rows of Nimby scars of the past.” “Opening this museum is obviously a rewarding milestone. To be instrumental in being a major part of establishing not just one but two African American sites in ‘da Hamptons’ is a humbling but profound legacy to leave,” she said recently. Since retiring, Simmons has spent more of the winter months on St. Martin, relaxing and hanging around with reggae musicians (keeping her young, ments there medical supplies with donations from Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and a pharmacy. Time away in the sun, she said, helps give her the stamina to see the museum through to completion. The inaugural exhibits are “Grooming a Generation — A History of Black Barbershops and Beauty Parlors” and a selection of African American art from the collection of Peter MaRoad, summer hours are evolving and will posted, saamuesum.org “A lot of the Black families are gone now,” Simmons said, and that is what she wants the museum to say: “That we were here. We are here. And we’ve contributed a lot to the Town of Southampton.”

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SUNDAY

MONDAY

J U LY TUESDAY

W E D N E S D AY

healthy choices

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

1 Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, et al, at the Parrish: “Women Artists on Eastern Long Island, 1955– 2020”

4 Lobster rolls, farmstand salads, and our fave local indie band, Hopefully Forgiven, at Salt on Shelter Island

Feeding our community, one car at a time… with your help. SPRINGS FOOD PANTRY 5 Old Stone Highway, East Hampton, NY 11937 www.springsfoodpantry.com

Sincere thanks to The East Hampton Star

Top: Howard Chandler Christy, Greek–American Alliance, 1931 Photograph of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock by Robert Stein. Both: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

11 Hung over? Morning-after potato-vodka bloody Marys at Sagaponack Farm Distillery

Feeling Jazz Age vibrations. Drive Gin Lane and Lily Pond Lane to view the Gatsbyeqsue mansions of yore

“Her voice is full of money”— Fitzgerald is your poolside read. The Last Tycoon or The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Up all night? See dawn on the Montauk cliffs, 4:50 A.M. Soundtrack” the Velvet Underground

Ponder woes of the modern man: Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story starts its garden-stage run at Guild Hall

Sticky fingers from the best wings you’ve ever tasted; duck wings at Barrow Food House, Riverhead

All-day sit-in at Asparagus Beach. Set up your lounge area with a chic sun tent from Business & Pleasure dot com

Born to hand-jive, baby! Grease is this week’s free Wednesday outdoor movie in Herrick Park, East Hampton

Pub quiz night. It’s Trivia Thursday at Greenport Harbor Brewing Company

Preview cocktails at East Hampton Historical Society’s annual antiques show, Mulford Farm

Poignant folk nostalgia-fest: Loudon Wainwright III at the Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett

Invite your crush for a cleansing backyard moonbeam bath under the full buck moon

“Monster Truck Night of Destruction” at Riverhead Raceway. Admit it. Your inner child wants to witness that

Movin’ to the country, gonna eat a lotta peaches. . . drive to Calverton for U-pick peaches at Lewin Farms

South Fork Natural History Museum’s annual summer gala — a party with a purpose we can get behind

Restored African Queen screens at Hampton Bays Cinema. (Bogie and Kate first bickered their way down river 70 years ago!)

After-sun skincareshopping spree; test every delicious pot and tube at Botanica Bazaar, Amagansett Square

Feeling witchy. Sign up for moonmedicine workshop (herbal remedies) at Mandala Yoga, Amagansett

Four handfuls of random garden herbs become fish sauce. Whiz in Cuisinart with olive oil, garlic, salt, anchovy

DIVERSIONS/ 41

A HAPPENING YOGA CL ASS AS GARDEN OF DELIGHTS — ART AND SITAR, OCEAN AIR AND CBD The East End is chockablock with yoga classes, some led Journal. We all have our favorites, and out of loyalty to the many don’t often choose to throw the spotlight on just one YOGA + SOUNDS + ART, because it is less a yoga class than a happening. Yogini Ashley McGee runs the scene

distance of the surf, that becomes an encompassing sensory experience — with transcending sound provided by musicians including Gian Carlo Feleppa (seen here artwork from the likes of Scott Bluedorn, Peter Spacek, and Candace Ceslow, and tinctures from Gnome Serum East

Those who’d like to join are asked to email ashleymcgeeyoga@gmail.com to reserve their spot and receive the address.

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DIVERSIONS / 45

In East Hampton, home is where... the ticks are!

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I N A B AC K YA R D I N M AT T I T U C K , A N D U N E X P E C T E D C R A F T S M A N C R E AT E S A N I N C R E D I B LY P R E C I O U S WAT E R C R A F T cared for, and it is temporal, decaying ever so slowly with anything less than ingly limited-edition canoes deserve that sort of care. Each is built to order in his North Fork woodshop and takes about a year to complete, give or take. Narrow strips of sawn red cedar laminated over a frame form the basic shape the surfaces inside and out by hand. He will put juniper, walnut, Alaskan yellow his canoes as the spirit moves him. Cus-

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with the help of books and YouTube, he dived in and, 14 months later, emerged from his Mattituck backyard workshop with 20 gleaming feet of near perfection. more remarkable is that he practices almost entirely nights and weekends. His day job is as C.E.O. of the movie pro200-acre winery in Cutchogue. Despite his successful wine career, he says, it was only when he started making canoes that he felt that his life had a sound footing. His father’s tools, he wrote, “were not so much inanimate objects as extensions of who I was and symbols of the past that shaped me.” beef-cattle ranch on the Missouri River in South Dakota, near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. He was one of eight students in a one-room schoolhouse. After graduating from Iowa State in 1998, he had a six-month internship and Technology. He studied botany in Scotland and agricultural economics at Cornell, where he completed a horticulture Ph.D. in 2012, all the while working his way up at Bedell from salesman. Along this way, his Instagram, where he documented every step of progress East

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THE EAST AWARDS / 49

t s a f k a e r b S T E B SORRY, EGG SANDWICH. THE MORNING TACO FROM CARISSA’S BAKERY BEATS ALL

Enders’ conversation turns to egg sandwiches. We are committing a social crime tantamount to treason by suggesting what we’re about to suggest, but here we go. egg, and cheese on a hard (a.k.a. kaiser) roll, served fast tradition here in Bonac. But this fancy breakfast taco from the Pantigo Road headquarters of Carissa’s Bakery, in East Hampton? It’s so delicious we not only could eat it every day, we could wash our hair with it, give it our favorite

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eggs are priced at $14 for two, and they’re worth it. East have tried every variety of egg sandwich (egg wrap, egg bagel, egg-

Canal, and we’re sure about this. Please don’t throw a brick East

BOUNTY / 51

WonderWEED FAST-GROWING SUGAR KELP IS A NATURAL WONDER, FROM THE NUTRITION IT OFFERS TO THE CO 2 IT SEQUESTERS. CHRISTOPHER WALSH CHECKS IN ON ITS CULTIVATION HERE

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Mike Martinsen, a Montauk oyster farmer and East Hampton Town trustee, grew two lines of sugar kelp in one of his aquaculture plots as an experiment. With him was Stephen Schott of Cornell Cooperative Extension. / Rory MacNish

and Assembly would permit kelp cultivation in underwater lands at GardinCounty to lease underwater lands for that purpose. On the recommendation of its water quality technical advisory committee, the East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last month to allocate for development of a kelp nursery and grow-out program. Hatchery personnel will set up 100-foot-long experimental lines of kelp in the ecologically distressed Three Mile Harbor and, possibly, Accabonac Harbor. Once it has absorbed nutrients and is removed from the waterways, the hatchery’s kelp will be used as compost, said John (Barley) Dunne, its director. “It’s exciting,” he said. “The big picture is capturing nitrogen entering waterways and ‘keeping it local’ by recycling it.” Ideally, this would reduce the volume The Montauk Seaweed Supply Co. took delivery of 792 pounds of kelp from Suzie Flores, a Connecticut kelp farmer and her assistant and deckhand, Elizabeth Ellenwood (pictured), last month. Montauk Seafood Supply, which grew out of Dock to Dish, a fresh seafood delivery service, will convert the kelp to fertilizer. / Jane Bimson

terways teeming with oysters? The

of carbon dioxide from greenhouse gas emissions. They also serve as habitat for

delicacy, an economic boon to aquaculturists and a gastronomic delight to the rest. They also help remove excess nitrogen from the water, cultivators arguing that the practice is essential to mitigating conditions that promote the harmful algal blooms that have fouled waterways across the South Fork and -

Kelp is one of the fastest growing vegetative organisms in the world, second

But we can do more to remediate

is typically a spring-through-fall practice. Seaweed farming is the fastest growing aquaculture sector, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

oyster, sugar kelp is a natural wonder. The species has multiple uses: as nutritious food for human consumption, fuel. Seaweeds also sequester carbon the oceans that results from absorption

more carbon than most land plants can. It sequesters more carbon than eelgrass, mangroves and salt marshes combined based on biomass. Industrial-scale cultivation would complement shell-

conservationists, East Hampton Town, and New York State are taking action. Companion bills in the State Senate

perfectly manicured lawns before its inevitable migration to waterways via “We still need to deal with septic systems,” seepage from which is blamed for the excessive nitrogen and phosphorous that promote harmful algal blooms, Dunne said. “But kelp is growing very well in shallow water in Moriches Bay,” to the west. “It’s exceeding expectations. I’m hoping we can get good production here.” Mike Martinsen, owner of Montauk Pearl Oysters and an East Hampton Town trustee, is also a proponent. “As a it I get to reap is taking pride that I give I’ve learned that kelp farming is very, very good for removing excess nutrients from the water. It’s a nice bonus to add that to the oyster farm.” Martinsen grew two lines of sugar kelp in one of his aquaculture plots in

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Family Charitable Foundation. “Our primary goal,” said Wendy Moore, “is to set the stage for companies who want to make their own business out of this.” The foundation is laying the groundwork to help small businesses gain expertise in seaweed cultivation for implementation in their products, or on their menus. Sean Barrett, a co-founder of Dock to Dish, which delivers fresh seafood to its members, recently launched Montauk

kelp from New England, which it will Kelp farming is well established in New England, he said, particularly in don’t have water quality issues,,” but do have plenty of “latent infrastructure and built-in, much lower labor rates.” Barrett predicts “a very tall mountain to climb before kelp becomes State,” owing to layers of regulation, Bluedorn, an East Hampton artist and environmentalist, isn’t waiting for government action. He harvests wild kelp ing state sanctioning for commercial kelp farming. “There are a lot of ways you can use it,” he said. “I mostly put it in soups as a seasoning, but also in salads, omelets, and you can make a crisp out of it, like chips. It’s altogether a very healthy thing.” Bluedorn helped to raise public consciousness of kelp cultivation when he addressed the town trustees, who have jurisdiction over many town waterways, last winter. “I’m glad that it’s happening now,” he said. “We’re, like, 10 years overdue. New England has been at it for a decade or more. Maine, California, Alaska — they are all way ahead of us.”

EAST HAMPTON

BOUNTY / 61

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WO M E N A R E TA K I N G T H E I R P L AC E AT T H E F O R E F R O N T O F T H E R E C R E AT I O N A L M A R I J UA N A B U S I N E S S . J U DY D ’ M E L LO TA L K E D W I T H T WO W H O S AY I T ’ S H I G H T I M E W E T O S S T H E O L D S T E R E O T Y P E S A B O U T W H O PA R TA K E S . Are you a canna-curious woman of tSearch #womenofweed on Instagram and an image pops up that could, at grandma’s. Captioned “High Tea,” the paper, delicate bone china, and bloomly though and you’ll see there are other buds — dried and green — on the table, as well as a feminine hand holding a are many and seemingly all women, who post pictures of their elegant selves such as, “All women need are each other and some good weed.” The old-school stoner dude imagery has gone up in smoke. Helping with this cannabis “for her” man, co-founder of Her Highness, an online and in-dispensary hemp and high-end, premium quality, transparently labeled, and chicly designed goodies made by and for discerning women,”

according to its website. “We want to be a household name in cannabis for women,” said Eisman, an entrepreneur who founded Girlshop in 1998 as one of the earliest online fashion hubs. In 2019, after teaming up with Alison Krongard, founder of the kids’ wallpaper company WallCandy Arts, she launched Her Highness. The company rolled out, so to speak, in California (a legal state since 2016) as a fun, irreverent, glamorous, and sexy cannabis tinctures, vape pens, pre-rolls, ashtrays, sleek lighters, and the best-selling Pleasure Oil, which comes with the tagline If a shopper lives in a legal recreational marijuana state, in which Her Highness is licensed, they can purchase products with THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive compound that produces the “high.” the same range in the federally legal, non-psychoactive CBD form.

Although in March, New York joined marijuana for those 21 and over, it could take up to two years before retail licenses are granted. Because marijuana is illegal under federal law and cannot be transported across state lines, marijuana products sold in each state must also be grown and manufactured there. So, for now, Her Highness devotees in New York can only buy its CBD products online and in select New York and East End stores, like Havens in Sag Harbor and White’s Apothecary in East Hampton. Eisman is hoping their burgeoning CBD business in New York will be an onramp to a securing a marijuana retail license. One of the provisions set by the censes go to minority or woman-owned business enterprises. If Her Highness Laura Eisman, the co-founder of Her Highness, drives around the Hamptons with a car trunk stocked full with her CBD gift boxes, which she said was this summer’s hottest hostess gift. / Philippe Cheng

is planned. Weed has evolved into a behemoth of an industry — the fastest growing one in the United Sates — going from counterculture drug for hippies and dropouts to multibillion dollar business. Women like Eisman are at the forefront of this lucrative business, not men. Female celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Melissa Etheridge have also established lady-led cannabis companies. Even Martha Stewart, the notorious doyenne of domesticity, is now known as, “America’s Cool Weed Grandma,” after partnering with Snoop Dogg, the rapper and ganjapreneur, in a TV cooking series called, “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge.” For Her Highness, knocking back stoner stereotypes and shifting perceptions of marijuana and its users are clearly foremost in its mission. Packaging draws inspiration from beauty and art, like a 14-karat gold-plated cannabis leaf ring and a gold grinder that could

piece. But even the products have been formulated with a lady stoner in mind. For instance, in legal states, the Her Highness high-THC Giggle vape pen, exquisitely slender and chic, promises a stoney bliss but because the product pound terpene humulene, women can “get high in a female-friendly way,” explained Eisman. It does seem strange that we must still gender our products and potentially perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes. It doesn’t feel terribly modern that in order to lure women into the cannabis culture we need to create products that promise to “protect your nails and eyelashes from getting singed.” Is the implication then that it’s unladylike to be butch to walk into a dispensary and buy the type of weed that puts hairs on your chest? Are we women that delicate? “With all the evolution in the industry, no one has really put their main fo-

cus on creating products that are good answered Ms. Eisman. “And so we feel like that is our mission. It doesn’t mean we’re excluding other genders. We have a lot of male customers and fans, but we felt it was really necessary to do this. The stigma around cannabis still exists and it won’t go away until we change the dialogue.” Meanwhile, another East End resident is also busy developing her canin Sag Harbor, wants to cultivate “the Dom Perignon of cannabis,” she said, describing small-batch craft cannabis gia, who in 2019 helped establish Shinnecock Hemp, a Shinnecock women owned and operated CBD company, is preparing to launch Hamptons Home Grown, a concierge craft cannabis service: Custom-designed indoor container pots, delivered to your home, containing the legal quota of six marijuana plants. “I think there should be a special box for senior women applying for canit interesting that the social equity and pliance licensing has little, if anything, older women.”

TA L K I N G W I T H A S E L F - S T Y L E D E X P E R T W H O S H A L L R E M A I N N A M E L E S S , E R I CA- LY N N H U B E R T Y G E T S T H E LOW D OW N O N P O T C U LT I VAT I O N O N T H E E A S T E N D.

While edible gardens have become a focal point of landscaping in recent

Top: Her Highnees’ early CDB smokes pre-roll packaging / Alexzander Rosa

Ganjapreneurs and co-C.E.O.s of Her Highness, Allison Krongard, far left, and Eisman, are changing the face of the cannabis industry by tapping into female interest in the drug.

GROW YOUR OWN sort of green cropping up on the East recreational marijuana use for those 21 and older, and the already-established medical marijuana allowance, East Enders will soon be able to grow their own seven-leaved, fern-like botanicals. There's a plethora of products that can be made from hemp — from pesto to arthritis cream — so perhaps it's natural it should join the ranks of echinacea, St. John's wort, lavender, and other medicinal garden plants. Hemp, a Cannabis sativa variety, bright green hue. It's quite striking, and can be enormous and leggy or shrubby with smaller leaves, depending on the

variety. The stems of hemp plants are sativa grown for industrial purposes, like the many varieties for altering moods or managing pain, is fast-growing. There are some caveats to the New Right now, adults in the state can possess, obtain, and transport up to three ounces of cannabis and up to 24 grams of concentrated cannabis oil. Under the new law, you'll be able to grow up to three mature plants and three immature plants at your own home. If there are multiple people living at one residence, then six mature and six immature plants per household is the limit. Eventually, adults will be able to their home, but not until 2023 can New

Yorkers really start growing their own in earnest. Truthfully, people on the East End have been growing pot for years, regardless of the law. This is true, too, in states like California and Colorado, where weed has long been legal — there are small-farm growers as well as big cartel-like growers who still prefer to operate under the radar. A very entertaining and informative documentary on this subject — and its relationship to a mythical primate-like monster and a possible triple-homicide — titled Sasquatch, is currently streaming and well worth a watch. In the documentary, we learn that Sasquatch, a.k.a. Big Foot, comes in handy illegal pot farms. I posed this question and others to

63 a local, small-scale cannabis gardener, whom we shall call Bud (note: I asked several in the "industry," both legal-medicinal and recreational, to speak to me but, perhaps for reasons explored in Sasquatch, few would go on the record). Thankfully, Bud is a cheerful, intelligent, and forthcoming sort, who is knowledgeable about growing cannabis in our beachy climate. Harvest time for the plants is between the end of September to mid-November. An annual, you start them from seed indoors around the same time you do tomatoes. And, like tomatoes and basil, it's wise to harden

Island is about six months, as the plants

transplanting. Transplanting should take place only after we're done with

pain suppression, anti-nausea properties, as well as taste and scent" much as monks did in the 12th century with peas and beans. There are websites which crowd-source reviews and help growers

common here in spring. Once it is established, hemp does not need supplemental water, except during very dry periods. This is a major plus, environmentally. "We're blessed with a long, mild fall season on the back end, and this is a late-maturing crop," Bud explains. It's this same reason farmers on the East ful grape crops for wines back in the 1980s. One wonders why it took that long to make a connection between our climate and, say, western France. In fact, France is second in the world for growing pot. Our uniquely mild autumns, and generally salty-damp climate, come with a caveat to gardeners of all crops: the appearance of molds and mildews in early fall. "When buds start to set, you don't want mold to grow on the gins to degrade later in the season." The

Growers on the East End, at present, are doing so under the table for themselves and friends, on a fairly small scale. Seeds can be found through seed companies, just like other garden crops. and there are so many varieties of cannabis, it outdoes anything in the bespoke wine or beer industry. In fact, -

Says Bud, "Growers breed them very

the complexities of the terpenoid and cannabinoid compounds they contain. Some of the tastes and scents catalogued are anything from truck fuel to evening primrose and maple syrup. After their plants are harvested, buds and hang them to dry (avoiding that pesky mold issue). Psychoactive types of weed can be put in jars to cure, "burping" them on a schedule. "It's a good product here on the East End," says Bud. "The freshness is nice because it's not handled a lot or shipped from somewhere else." with it when I was younger," he tells Northwest Woods, hiding in the open places between pine groves. But you wouldn't ever know who was doing the growing." Today, Bud tells me, seeds of pure Bonac Chronic — a possibly mythical heirloom variety of weed — are highly sought after, though no one really knows if such a breed ever existed. Kind of like Sasquatch.

44 / DIVERSIONS

“What a hell of a man a man could become,” John Steinbeck wrote in The Winter of Our Discontent, the novel that decision to award him the 1962 Nobel tious setting, starts to look a lot like Sag Harbor, where he lived while writing it. The Winter of Our Discontent has “all of the components of what is happening in Sag Harbor right now,” says Kathryn

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Morris Cove and Upper Sag Harbor

John Jermain Memorial Library, Local History and Special Collections Archive

A LITERARY PRIZE ON SAG HARBOR’S WATERFRONT

Main Street. “The locals versus the outsiders, real estate versus the people who live in the community . . . the sacred to the secular.” “Everything that is happening today in our world, he wrote about.” One can only wonder what Steinbeck, who has been called the “master writer of the American working class,” would think of the $17.9 million asking price that was assigned in February to his 1,220-square-foot house, with a tiny outbuilding where he worked. Steinbeck often referred to the 1.8-acre prop-

also called it “Eden” (his heirs now call it “The Point”), and he named the writing studio “Joyous Garde,” a reference In describing the property — and — Doreen Atkins, the associate broker and senior global real estate adviser to Sotheby’s International Realty who is in charge of the listing, quotes Steinbeck himself: “I look forward to Sag Harbor to my little house on the point, to sharpEarly in the morning to hear what the birds are saying and to pass the time of day . . . then hitch up my chair to my writing board and to set down the words ‘once upon a time.’” Elsewhere on the property are a

garage and a small guest house that were rescued from demolition as one Cabins.” Grass slopes down to a private beach and the 60-foot dock from which Steinbeck would launch his boat. The current residents are feathered, darting around the grass and beanshaped pool. Moss gives the brick patio a come-hither look, and the sunsets beg for a paintbrush. The lights and bustle of downtown Sag Harbor are out of sight, out of mind. A tree grows within inches of the house’s front door, an entry into history. In the living room, a portrait of a poodle, Steinbeck’s canine companion while he wrote Travels With Charley, mobile featuring wooden birds, carved by the same hands that wrote the PulitThe Grapes of Wrath in 1939, hangs from the ceiling. Since its listing, Ms. Atkins said, there have been two visits to the house by journalists, multiple views by prospective buyers, and numerous trespassers. The reason Steinbeck’s heirs are selling, she said, is that they have neither the time nor the resources to keep up the property as it deserves. They are “everyday people,” she said, who live in Texas. ka started an online petition headlined “Save John Steinbeck’s Home.” That it gained momentum in the form of more than 32,000 signatures is old news at this point, but now a group of Steintoric-preservation advocates has come that — save the house and establish as al public access.” “We’re sensitive to the fact that the property is in a residential area, and we want to be respectful of those in “low-impact” visits by students and a

quiet retreat for writers to work are envisioned. “What better way,” said the bookseller, to foster “new young writers crafting a novel of contemporary times?”

A Map of Precedents This sort of thing is not unheard of in literary circles. Edith Wharton’s estate, The Mount, sprawling across 113 toric interests and exhibits, a bookstore and cafe, a center for writing and art residencies — and, for good measure, a popular place for weddings. Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West, Fla., is a museum and, curiously, a sanctuary for polydactyl (six-toed) cats. Where and William Faulkner lived, their housAmherst, Mass., St. Paul, Minn., and Oxford, Miss. And in Berkshire County, Mass., the local historical society created a learning center at Arrowhead, the estate of Herman Melville, whose classic whaling tale, Moby-Dick, is celebrated annually in Sag Harbor with marathon readings at places like Canio’s, the Old Whalers Church, and the John Jermain “Melville’s family and descendants lived in the house until 1927, and then it was sold to four private owners between the executive director of the Berkshire County Historical Society, which now calls Arrowhead its headquarters. “We

museum. The society itself had been around since 1962 and owned three other houses prior to purchasing Arrowhead. They sold those houses in order to purchase Arrowhead because they knew how important it was. We have owned it and stewarded it ever since.” During the pandemic, in mostly ru-

S I N C E I T S L I S T I N G T H E R E H AV E B E E N T W O V I S I T S T O T H E H O U S E B Y J O U R N A L I S T S , M U LT I P L E V I E W S B Y P R O S P E C T I V E B U Y E R S , A N D N U M E R O U S T R E S PAS S ERS. THE REASON STEINBECK’S HEIRS ARE SELLINGIS T H AT T H E Y H AV E N E I T H E R T H E T I M E N O R T H E R E SOURCES TO KEEP UP THE PROPERT Y AS IT DESERVES -

phy courses, among them Philosophy in

a New York Times short-list of popular places for city dwellers to seek refuge from the virus. A real estate boom ensued. Sound familiar? eyed demographic may ultimately be

“Steinbeck sometimes spoke of a ‘wall of background’ that gave shape and texture to his writing. A large part of that ‘wall’ in his later years was Sag

“It’s always good to have a group that wants to preserve it,” she said. “You say, this is a piece of history we want to preserve, and rally people around that idea. Get people excited, start trying to raise some money . . . If you get a wealthy person who’s really preservation-minded, maybe they’ll lead the charge and fund some of it.” A key turning point in saving Arrowhead was its addition to the National berg noted.

A Place to Start The Steinbeck house preservationists are keenly aware of that point. Richard Hart, a retired university professor who has studied Steinbeck’s works, recently wrote a spirited essay detailing lecting all the right arguments for a spot on the National Register, it has been included in the preliminary appeal to New York State. “. . . [V]irtually all readers and scholars of Steinbeck readily acknowledge in his books the interwoven, inextricably connected linkage between the writer and the natural and social environment in which he lived and worked,” wrote Hart, who for 30 years taught philoso-

whaling village. . . . Whaling was the biggest industry in Sag Harbor in [the] mid-19th century with some 130 whaling ships operating out of its harbor. Such industry brought riches — cultural, architectural, and economic — to the town, and the whaling legacy, if not actual practice, endured well into the 20th century. Steinbeck was keenly taken by this legacy.” Recreation, and Historic Preservation agree, a pathway would be opened to the National Register. This is a familiar endeavor in Sag Harbor, where a historic district protects the architectural integrity of many of its oldest buildings. An appeal for recognition from the historically Black neighborhoods nevah was accepted not long ago by the state, and is going through the national process right now — though time is running out there, as unique properties get scooped up by real estate developers who knock down houses not yet formally protected by historic status. On June neighborhoods as an “endangered historic place.” Rebecca Chapman, a professional fund-raiser who is a former vice presTrust – perhaps the most formidable

advocate for land preservation on the East End — is working with the group hoping to buy the Steinbeck house. “Working with landowners to ac-

if there is a willing seller there,” Ms. Chapman said. “We’re in the exploration stages of that right now. I think we certainly know that there is community interest . . . but that doesn’t translate to money.” Acquisition via the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund, a pot of public money coming from a 2 percent real estate transfer tax paid by buyers to Most often used to buy large tracts of open land to forestall development, the program can also support water quality improvement projects and the protection of historic structures. An example of the latter can be found again in Sag Harbor, where the Sag Harbor Partnership received $4 million to restore and sustain the village cinema, which sustained heavy damage in a December During the pandemic, the community preservation fund amassed record dollar amounts, thanks to those real estate transfers — so, perhaps ironically, there’s money out there. “Preserving these wonderful treasures is really a next step from preserving farmland and waterways and all Island,” Ms. Chapman said. Ms. Atkins, the real estate broker, said Steinbeck’s heirs “would love to keep it in a state of preservation. They’re open to anyone buying it. They love the history.”

Coming Full Circle In 2010, The New York Times described a dispute between Steinbeck’s descendants, including his elder son, Thomas, and the family of Elaine Stein-

In a shaded spot overlooking Morris Cove and Upper Sag Harbor Cove, a tiny studio called “Joyous Garde” — a reference to Lancelot’s castle — was where Steinbeck did his writing. / Christine Sampson

beck, the author’s third wife, over control of the estate. Though that clash focused less on the property than on the rights to the author’s royalties, “the house belongs to Steinbeck’s blood heirs,” Thomas Steinbeck told The Times. Jean Boone, a sister of Elaine’s who lived there for some time, disagreed. “The house belongs to me. Elaine left it to me, and I’m leaving it to my family.” Thomas Steinbeck died in 2016, Ms. Boone not long after. Not much has been said publicly about were not available for comment.On the 2020 Sag Harbor Village tax rolls, the most recent year for which data is available, the Steinbeck house is assigned a net taxable value of $4,003,100, less than a quarter of its listing price with Sotheby’s. For Southampton Town to step in with community preservation fund resources, there would have to be

a new appraisal. There were fears that the house would sell quickly, as has often been the case with East End properties from the start of the pandemic. “That hasn’t come to pass, thankfully,” said Nicholas P. Taylor, the director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for

call with Sag Harbor Village Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy and others who have been pushing for preservation. “As a state-funded university 3,000 that we can do, but we’re here to provide expertise and support should the property turn into something like a

S T E I N B E C K S O M E T I M E S S P O K E O F A ‘ WA L L O F B A C KG R O U N D ’ T H AT G AV E S H A P E A N D T E X T U R E T O H I S W R I TI N G . A L A R G E P A R T O F T H AT ‘ WA L L’ I N H I S L AT E R Y E A R S WA S S A G H A R B O R ’ S L O N G H I S T O R Y A S A F I S H I N G A N D WHALING VILL AGE .” Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University in California. In Sag Harbor, “everyone knows everyone, it seems a lot like the community in The Winter of Our Discontent, as a matter of fact,” Taylor said. Not long after the Steinbeck house hit the market, he found himself in a conference

retreat,” Taylor said. The Steinbeck fans and scholarly community “does not have $18 million. We can’t buy the property and turn that into a center all on our own, but if the property were to be kind of encumbered with a historical designation, then I think it would narrow the pool of prospective buyers

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to people who would want to continue Steinbeck’s legacy there.” That very nearly happened in 2008. That August, Sag Harbor’s Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review recommended protecting the house and its accessory buildings by a historic easement, meaning that any changes to the property would have to go before them for approval. However, a month later, the board rescinded the recommendation. Its chairman, Cee Scott Brown, said at the time that “this is something that needs to be looked at a little more in depth before we start

reaching outside the historic district,” as reported by The Sag Harbor Express. John Steinbeck died in 1968, Elaine Steinbeck in 2003. He wrote before the dawning of the internet age, of course, but his Sag Harbor house and the waters it overlooks certainly allowed him to unplug. “He used to get in his boat and go out into the bay with paper and pencils and he would go out there and write,” Taylor said. “He’d just anchor the boat and write, reminding humans of their own humanity — he liked to say that was his occupation.”

Opposite: John Steinbeck’s beloved poodle Charley, above, was his companion during a road trip that became the basis for his book Travels With Charley. Above from top left: A small cement swimming pool sits about halfway between the main house and the water’s edge in the yard; Nature is visible through all the of windows of the writing studio, Joyous Garde. Steinbeck recorded the height of his friends and loved ones, including Charley the poodle, by marking a particular wall inside the house. / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of the estate of Hans Namuth; Christine Sampson; Gordon M. Grant.

Making ItNewat Guild Hall

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Some locals will recall this scene from The Gay Divorce, which starred Carol Stone, in 1950. Maintaining links with the past — restoring the beloved circus-tent interior — was paramount when the theater was closed in 2007 for a massive overhaul under the supervision of Randy M. Correll of Robert A.M. Stern Architects;. Guild Hall archives

J E N N I F E R L A N D E S TA L K S T O R O B E R T L O N G O A B O U T H O W H I S

‘ H I S T O R Y O F T H E P R E S E N T ’ TA C K L E S T H E A M E R I C A N E X P E R I E N C E rent events.

many of his New York City peers, was a full-time resident in his weekend house here, improvising studio space in a basement, which he called “a storm of chaos,” while he waited to move into another house in Northwest. In the midst of the pandemic, he was exhibition for Guild Hall, recruiting his eager artistic community ready to give back when it was so urgently needed. After shows that opened in between ny, he is preparing the exhibition of his work at Guild Hall originally planned for the summer of 2020 but postponed until some degree of normalcy rePresent,” taking up the museum’s main galleries, brackets the American experience from the postwar period up to cur-

of Cosmos,” a series of acutely and ant Abstract Expressionist paintings in charcoal on mounted paper in a monumental scale similar to the originals. It is a series he actively worked on from about 2012 to 2014. “The Agency of Faith,” in the second room, questions the recent past and the historical narratives relied on to justify policies of repression and environmental degradation. “I think it’s really important as an artist that you can balance things that are highly personal with things also phone from his studio in New York City. “You have to tune in to that balance between those two things, for sure.” Even in a form known for its highly personal nature, he was inspired as well by politics and history in taking on the

New York School. “There were a lot of reasons I did these originally. It was at the time that Obama was running for re-election against Romney. And at the same time there was a lot of young abstract painting that was happening — very anti-intellectual, anti-political, and highly process-oriented.” He imagined that if Romney won, “that would be the art for the next 20 years. And I thought I might as well go back and look at the original guys, because a lot of times that kind of abstract art, to me, looks like bad versions of these earlier artists.” were available, including key drawings after Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock, so he made new ones over the past year. The Pollock, now in Germa“And I desperately needed a Pollock in

Untitled (Warrior), 2021. Charcoal on mounted paper, 88 1/4 x 70 inches. Courtesy of the artist; Metro Pictures, New York; and Pace Gallery

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’ I T O O K T H E S E H I G H LY, V E R Y P E R S O N A L K I N D O F PA I N TINGS AND TURNED THEM INTO COPIES, WHICH IS A KIND OF AN INVERTED VERSION OF EVERY THING. . . . IN A WEIRD WAY, T H I S B O D Y O F W O R K I S A Q U I N T E S S E N T I A L P I C T U R E S G E N E R AT I O N S H O W. I T ’ S P I C T U R E S O F P I C T U R E S .’

with his partner, Sophie Chahinian, they went to Pollock’s grave and his studio. “So that was really important.” Often denigrated for the forced machismo and outright misogyny of its male artists, the Abstract Expressionists and their reputation have been rehabilitated a bit by the female members of the group, who have re-emerged over the last decade in important shows of their work. Indeed, artists like Helen Franbeginning. duction you will see in this gallery. “I remember reading how she was so pissed ing to establish a signature image. She thought it was stupid to waste your time to do that, that as a woman her life was much too complicated to be associated with one image. I thought that was really kind of cool. She was heroic in the way she worked, for sure.” He admitted that all of the artists whose work he recreated are heroes to him and have inspired him in many ways, particularly the monumental scale he chooses for his own works. He noted that the murals they painted for the Works Progress Administration works. Then, there’s the old joke that in America, “if it’s big, it’s good,” he added. Pictures Generation, there are inherent ironies present. “I took these highly, very personal kind of paintings and turned them into copies, which is a kind of an inverted version of everything. .

. . In a weird way, this body of work is a quintessential Pictures Generation show. It’s pictures of pictures.” The process of recreating the paintings became all-consuming. He hired an art historian to dive deeper into their meaning, took hundreds of color photos of each work, and placed them all over the studio “like a forensic site.” Getting the subtle tonality of each color right while working in charcoal was extremely important. “A lot of times, when you see black-and-white photos of these paintings, it’s quite arbitrary. It tends to, like, make a dark red and dark blue look like the same color. So I was trying to make these highly

saw a lot of this work was in the form of black-and-white reproductions. Then there is the prodigious amount of work involved and the manifest differences between the time it takes to make a brushstroke and how long it takes to draw one. “All those kinds of relationships, I really got into it so much.” each artist’s process more intimately.

were so aggressive.” Yet he noted she often couldn’t reach the top of her canvases and would leave those areas blank. “Right where she was standing though, it’s really, really quite intense.” That intensity will continue in the other gallery. There, images from the more recent past will be treated to the same thoughtful and labored image construction, designed to make the viewer slow down and really see the work and its content, instead of merely

“The speed with which we see images in the world and how quickly we forget them is really kind of a tragedy.” He said he wanted to “rip them out of that storm and make them become memothe faithfulness he applied to the AbEx paintings, “I’ve manipulated them. They’re not based upon the original. I’m trying to make the perfect version of these images in that sense.” Geared toward “history and protest and environment and responding to those issues,” the subject matter is similar to what he had been doing before, but it’s shifted away from the “basic balls-out outrage of what was happening politically” during the Trump administration. dark show in this room depending on what happened in the intervening months. This year, he is more optimistic in the approach to his work. “It’s not quite as aggressive as it used to be, which I think is good. Because I’m somewhat hopeful. And I think that I want there to be a bit of hope in the show. Not so headWe have to look forward now and take care of things.” In looking at what needs to be done, he is “well aware that I’m an old white man and white guys are pretty much responsible for a lot of pain in this world.” and improve things, “a lot of white guys are trying to hold on hard to this John Wayne mentality, but shit’s going to change and it’s happening now. In the “Agency of Faith” room, there will be a “complex situation where a triangle exists between the George Floyd Overleaf: Robert Longo in his studio, 2018. Courtesy of the artist. This page: Untitled (After de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle, 1952-53), 2014. Charcoal on mounted paper, 90 x 57 5/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist; Metro Pictures, New York; and Pace Gallery

‘ THE SPEED WITH WHICH WE SEE IMAGES IN THE WORLD A N D H O W Q U I C K LY W E F O R G E T T H E M I S R E A L LY K I N D O F A T R A G E D Y. ’ protests — where there’s a guy who has — and it relates to an image of a cotton close-up detail of an American Indian headdress. It’s like the American scene right there.” bird on the ground allude to the environment, as does a giant wave from revisited for this show. Growing up, he used to surf in Montauk during hurricanes. “The thing about the waves, they weren’t like the waves you saw in Hawaii that were all glassy and beautiful.” These East Coast waves were “nasty and dirty waves. This drawing is a bit like that. It’s kind of really dirty and nasty. I like that.” The wave may be nasty in real life, but he still makes it a thing of beauty.

“I’m pretty much a classically trained guy. I spent an enormous amount of time working on the composition of these pieces.” He is not merely making drawings of photographs. “I piece them the work become more than it is, something that somehow becomes a memory.” What inspires him is “believing in something. I take a chunk of my life to make these works because I believe in them. . . . All these works are really labors of love.” ent” opens to the public on August 7 and will be preceded by Guild Hall’s annual gala celebrating the exhibition on the evening of August 6. As planned, it is a return to galas of yore with an exhibition preview, and cocktails, dinner, and dancing at a private residence.

Single

IN THE HAMPTONS E L I Z A B E T H R O B E R T S O N E X P L O R E S T H E M U R K Y WAT E R S O F O N L I N E D AT I N G AT A C E R TA I N A G E . N A M E S H AV E B E E N C H A N G E D T O P R O T E C T T H E I N N O C E N T . . . A N D G U I LT Y

PART I: There’s an app for that years of marriage, I face rhe Big D. Jeepers, where should I begin? housing. Groan. Think about dating? Hmmm. Where are all the eligible men? Maybe Starbucks in East Hampton. Mingling there used to be fun even in the dead of winter. rules, there are only two armchairs in the window and no one in sight. How about the deli counter at Citarella? Yikes, it’s gone! No more burgers and fries. Or indoor seating. I know: The bar at Cittanuova. . . . Uh oh, it’s partitioned by plastic dividers. I sit down and check out the guy to my right, admiring his long hair and high cheekbones through the Plexi. He’s leaning away from me toward his date. When two of his male friends walk in and start talking, I turn to my right. But the bartender asks them to move to the far end and sit between plastic walls. Standing around the bar is no longer allowed. Opposite: Digital collage / Chuck Revel

Guess, what? There’s an app for that. AARP reports top dating sites for

“This summer, I’m going to move in with him,” was her answer. “Just try it

Meets Bagel, and Silver Singles. I’m one of about 26.6 million people worldwide using a dating app, according to 2020 Business Insider numbers. I search my memory for successful app dating stories in East Hampton. At a BookHampton event in 2019, two women in the audience claimed they met their husbands on Match. I ask my friend Katie what she thinks. She’s gle. She tells me she tried Plenty of Fish Dating, but was annoyed when the app paired her with men in Rhode Island. (Dating apps determine Rhode Island is closer to East Hampton than New York City.) She grew weary of meeting men at the Orient Point ferry. “I’m not going through that again,” she says. Helena, another close friend, had good luck on a dating app before the pandemic hit. Six months went by when a good-looking Nordic man she admired circled back to her photo and said, “I’m weeding out my list. Are you still available?” They went out a few times and hit

Bumble runs around $33 a month. Facebook dating is free — for now. Skimming the terms and conditions — you hold us harmless . . . you are what you post — I chose to allow Facebook to download personal information from my page. That means my age is accurate. Uh oh. Oh well, at least there won’t be that awkward moment when I leave my driver’s license on the counter. Bumble brands itself with the color yellow and kitschy drawings of bees and a hive. Facebook accesses your page and all your friends, and tells you if a man you like is friends with your friends. Good news, bad news. I skip the religious question completely and choose liberal under Politics. I discover quickly some men are adamant about it. One wears a T-shirt that says “Never Trumper.” I wonder what the word moderate means, and ask a man 60 miles away

same religious upbringing. The spiritual side drew them closer and closer. “But how is the sex?” I ask.

“Why does everything have to be about politics?” he answers. “If you must know, I hate Trump.” “Okay!” I welcome all races and religions. Except maybe Mormons because I wor-

ry their church leadership is all male. That’s where I draw the line. What do you want from your Bumble date? R ELatioNship somEthiNg casuaL doN’t kNow yEt maRRiagE There’s a tab “Dealbreaker.” For me, it’s a man with young children. Mine are grown, and I choose to not raise more. No deal. On Facebook I quickly spot the trolls and grifters. They reveal themselves with one-syllable questions and three word answers. “Hello Pretty” is one a “four-star general who is negotiating the peace in Afghanistan.” When I ask about his picture and the medals on his uniform, he changes the subject. I know from my military brat days that all military men tell you about their medals. Next! Several gentlemen claim to live in New York, but when pressed for details,

living in the Middle East. There’s plenty of comic relief: I come with a 14-day warranty subject to terms and conditions. Aren’t you glad I’m not holding up a Opera, Film, Theater, blah blah blah, Food, Travel, Music, Art, blah blah blah. Swipe right if you’re a good kisser. No Russian women. I’ve had enough. I’m currently ranked 4th in the world for snuggling An introverted extrovert. Why does this site remove all my naked photos? Fully vaccinated is a popular one. Some give you their Myers-Briggs score. ENTJ. Am I supposed to remember that

from my leadership training days in New York City? And if I do, should I care little judgy? Should I reveal I sometimes take an SSRI? Others want you to know right up front they are polyamorous. One posts neck down dressed in a suit, and one with his nose and mouth covered by a blue mask. He is looking to have an affair. Claims there’s a loveless marriage. “Wow, you’re honest,” I write. He lives in Connecticut and suggests I move to his town. The posted names show a wide swath of creativity: Bell, Van, Kent, Severino, Mona, Collins, Metin, Sergio, Hannelore, Marcotte, Krista, Dreek. One headlines his name as Panthera, but then lists something else as his real name. One named Rita says his real name is Ray. Facebook won’t let me change it. A man in Bangkok says he is looking for a long-term relationship. look it up. It’s a Bulgarian town in the Star Zagora Province near the Balkan Mountains. Images on Wikipedia show a gold funerary mask of a Thracian aristocrat.

like your pics you’re buying me drinks until you do. No games. I’m a God-fearing man looking for a God-fearing lady. Need steady dose of escapist bliss and passion. I’ll make you laugh. Oh, I’m laughing! Many hold grandchildren. One shows rows in his kayak. Another forgets to completely crop out the blonde next to and semiautomatic weapons. Many hold dogs. One has only pictures of a ing protective masks. One has only pictures with masks. There are attractive

men in New Jersey: a rig operator and someone who plays golf in South Africa. No, New Jersey really is too far away. Bumble allows you to search for men when you travel, but only after you land (your phone signals your location). In April, fully vaccinated, I visit my son in Michigan. I consider what it would be like to move there. Perhaps I could

who has a face I like answers my post “How about 10:30?” I ask. “Oh, that’s way too late,” he replies. “That’s when I do chores for my mother.” Bumble tries to get men who aren’t avid conversationalists to answer a few prompts. One: Two truths and a lie . . . A man answers: “I went to Woodstock. I didn’t go to college after high print reveals he has a graduate degree. Do the math. There are tips from the more meditative among the motley. The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become. The app also allows you to connect to your Spotify playlist. A man who is way too far away sends me a Covid playlist. Don’t Stand Too Close to Me by the Police, Warren Zevon’s “Splendid Isolafused.” Man, you got that right. For all this, I grant a royalty free perpetual worldwide license to use my content in any way. Aaaaaah! I have one successful date — on Zoom. It’s mid-April from my car, near a Montauk beach. My iPad dies unexpectedly so I have to use my phone. The virtual background pops up and is, unfortunately, the ocean. I bob and fade in and out of the waves as I chat. Opposite: Digital collage / Chuck Revel

82 “Oh, no, you’re going to think I am a siren,” I joke. “I guess I’ll have to strap myself to the mast,” he replies. He knows his Ulysses. That’s a good sign.

PART II: I wanna hold your hand IN THE THROES OF THE PANDEMIC, BELLA LEWIS FOUND THAT MANY TWENTYSOMETHINGS —

as “less than one mile away” when she was home one rainy evening on her private property that has nothing around it less than one mile away. The app infrastructure made connections feel all too disposable to her anyway, leaving her to wonder if she shopkeep in remotely the same way online. “Doll yourself up to go to the grocery store and check people out. You can tell a lot about someone by the way they shop,” she said. Henry already knew he wasn’t an

app person and was passing the quarantine days working from home with his parents and college-age brother and sister. Every day from March to May, while walking his dog, he’d pass a womchat with him, sometimes to the detriment of his tight work schedule. connected Henry to her daughter. “And eventually we did the only thing you could do in a pandemic. We went for a walk. Since we were still in the throes of Covid though, after that, we were like

LIKE HER — TURNED TO DATING THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY As of late, youth has not been terribly wasted on the young — Covid took care of that. Once, a world of opportunity, ours to fritter away, during the pandemic getting anywhere and doing anything requires a level of deliberation and care that might as well make us, no The East End’s most eligible singles are one example of today’s youth doing business in the good old-fashioned way. ing in a store old-fashioned, being set up by a parent old-fashioned, wholesome summer romance old-fashioned, doing dishes with your boyfriend’s mom old-fashioned, driving eight hours to meet in the middle old-fashioned. names have been changed. There are still some things that young people don’t post all over social media, if you can believe it.) during Covid: a shopkeep-customer romance. “Especially out here on the East End, everyone is Kevin Bacon, so it’s six degrees of separation every time and it’s the same people,” she said of the local dating app pool. This was after a harrowing app foray, where a creepy match was geotagged

Digital collage / Chuck Revel

room at his parents’ house,” said Joan.

Digital collage / Chuck Revel

ships in night.” They were never able to nail down a second date, but the neutrality of the experience was funnily appealing. “It gave me hope that people are still doing that. It’s not just people getting engaged and having babies or engagements ending and having nasty breakups.” Frances had an old-school introduction, too: a friend of a friend. “I’ve never had a summer romance, a Hamptons sense of just being alone in this beautiful place that was completely closed down,” she said. integrate into each other’s lives as they normally would have in early dating stages. It made things that were less serious feel more full on. “We were kind of wasting time together in limbo,” Frances explained. Beautifully wasting time though, “cooking, eating, drinking, going to the beach or the bay,” an experience so insular that she almost thought, “Oh, this is

from seeing Richard, she said the injustice of her older sister getting out of family quarantine while she had to stay home was high drama, real old-fashioned stakes, sisterly betrayal during a World War. Covid meant “more intensity in the relationship a lot sooner than we expected. In what world does dating mean living with your boyfriend immediately and cleaning the kitchen with his mom?” asked Richard. Things weren’t rule ruled out kissing anyone else. Joan teased Richard for always mentioning the Hungry Man sandwich from Goldberg’s when they started dating because “he was so sad it gave him a stomachache and we had nothing else to talk about.” She allowed, however, that the limited relationship radius highlighted Richard’s ability to light up a kitchen and bring people together with food. tension -- he’s in the home making quesadillas.” She holds dear a memory of Richard literally leaping out of his chair to make her older sister a quesadilla when she walked in the door after a long drive. “normal dating thing” after heavy quarantine, they said. “It was like we were the romantic leads in a Tom Cruise movie,” Joan said of the experience of navigating the outside world as a unit. “No one touch anything! Cover your face! Don’t let them see you!” I, too, played out one half of some

old-fashioned dating in East Hampton while the other half unfolded in Wisconsin. Nik and I met two years ago when we were both living in Norway and dating other people, a detail that led to our falling out and not speaking for half a year after becoming best friends with the only person we ever wanted to speak to again. When we resumed talking, and constantly, it was peak Covid with me home in East Hampton and him home in Wisconsin. To say anything important for And so, the person in my life who comes to mind when I hear the sound of any keep the envelope folded up in the back of my planner. It constantly falls out, which I don’t mind because I constantly get to pick it up again. er with minimum risk to others in our houses, this fall we drove eight hours to a random town in Ohio, the exact midpoint between both our houses. In Ohio, we quarantined in an Airbnb for two weeks after last seeing each other a year ago in Oslo. ing up as each other on Halloween in our Norwegian language class, dating in the Hamptons meant dressing up as each other on Halloween in Ohio for solely our own amusement. East Hampton Star, I worked remotely for a few months from Wisconsin, which I’m sure will prove entirely helpful dating advice for anyone navigating the Hamptons scene. Though the pandemic took away so much of the time that is a young person’s privilege to waste, it is possible to reclaim it at the grocery store, in introductions from parents, introductions from friends, your family home, the Midwest, and anyplace else that time stands still.

BROW N H A R R IS? Photo Courtesy of Bates Masi Architects

what love feels like.” It was not love, not in reality, but it was something very separate from Covid living. “We knew how temporary it was,” she said. For Joan and Richard, however, it was love, it is love, it will be love, and

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86 / MEMOIR

THE OLD MAN

Robert Akin Jr., an electronics innovator who witnessed the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946, started coming to Montauk after the end of World War II to Library, Dave Edwardes Collection

I N A N E X C E R P T F R O M H I S N E W B O O K , “ T H E G O L D E N A G E O F M O N TA U K S P O R T F I S H I N G ,” B I L L A K I N R E M E M B E R S H I S FAT H E R , R O B E R T M . A K I N J R .

There is a naval tradition that the captain of a ship be known as “The Old Man.” It is a title of respect, and not can’t recall precisely when my father picked up the designation, but a good guess would be sometime around when

of the Navy, and although his one blind eye prevented him from ever serving, he considered it a great privilege to have been invited as an industrial observer aboard the U.S.S. Panamint as part of Operation Crossroads to witness the Bikini atom bomb tests in 1946. Soon after returning from Bikini, whether it was from our home in Westchester or the summer house in Westhampton, my father began driving the family’s wooden station wagwas a skeleton of the town it is today. There were only a few charter boats for hire, and my dad soon became well acquainted with the local captains including Ralph Pitts and Frank Tuma. After his own boat was launched and our family moved to Montauk for summers with these Montauk pioneers. These captains were as much his heroes as any of the admirals he met during Operation Crossroads.

ing in the Hudson River near where he was born in Ossining, N.Y., or on Cape Cod in South Yarmouth where his family spent summers, he had always lived near water. As a young boy he would travel alone from Ossining to New York City by ferry and then transfer to anothIsland Sound, past Montauk, and out to the Cape. Today this sounds like an adventure, but not so to my father, or to his family who traced their heritage back to Nantucket whalers. Whether he was aware of it or not, I suspect it was this family legacy as much as his reverence for the Navy as to why he willingly embraced “The Old Man” moniker. But for whatever reason, it stuck with him. Even now my nieces and nephew only refer to him as “The Old Man,” or just the OM. At the factory ing to chairman of the board, nearly ev-

You might think that with such a family history and esteemed title, The Old Man would have been a reserved, buttoned-up kind of gentleman. Actually, he might have even thought so himself. But there was too much of the mad

Robert M. Akin Jr. was a wildly talented self-taught electrical engineer. An early acceptance to Harvard was withdrawn after a disciplinary issue at Morristown Academy landed him in trouble. Somehow he had managed to wire the copper piping throughout the school to allow coded messages to be shared with other students — sort of a pioneer internet, or inter-pipe. The school ignored his gift and dismissed him. Dad was born in 1904, the same year his father had founded a small wire company, Hudson Wire, in Ossining. He grew up obsessed with electricity, a fascination the population of Ossining became suddenly aware of one summer afternoon. Seems the young Akin boy case of dynamite, connected it to a charger, and strung two very lengthy wires up a hill above the village to the friend’s house where they asked the father if he knew how to twist them together. As a result of the explosion, young Akin spent a good part of the next year dospent reimbursing neighbors and shop owners for a host of shattered windows. As he grew older, my father applied his talents more constructively. Staying sion in New York State (it sits on a shelf in my relatives’ Montauk house). He also

MEMOIR

when she opened her new electric oven and heard her husband’s voice emanating from the roast. While my father was best known for his electrical inventions and adventures, he had other eccentricities. The best you could say about how he chose to dress was that it was casual. But that doesn’t cover it. Was he a slob? Not really, but my wife knew him for the last few years of his life and swears she never saw him in a shirt that didn’t have a stain on it. Bottom line, he really didn’t care. At the factory, even when he was

Collection

invented the method for electroplating silver onto copper wire. This doesn’t sound like such a great accomplishment until you consider that only silver can withstand the heat required to insulate copper wire with what was then the lation for all wiring in military aircraft, missiles, and later, satellites. My mother, brother, and I were not immune to dad’s obsession. He had always been an amateur, or ham, radio hobby (and still do) without causing any issues. But not The Old Man. He was cast capabilities, and his go-to option for juicing performance levels involved antennas. Not just bigger versions of the ones you would see on roof tops. Dad’s

improvisations involved stringing various length wires from one tree to another. Or from a chimney to a tree. Or from a tree to a telephone pole he paid to have installed in our backyard. None of these trees or poles were close to each other. Setting it up involved tree companies, a series of pulleys, extension saws, and lots of help from cheap labor, which meant me. (My brother, having reached driving age, was somehow never around.) Our yard back in Sleepy Hollow had so many wires strung from one place to another, the local birds Inside the house, dad kept his radio operation in the basement. I have none of my father’s electrical aptitude, so I have no idea how it happened, but one night when he was talking away down-

presidents do, he would frequently disappear down to the machine shop where one of his oldest friends was the supervisor. Dad was a hands-on guy, and if there was something he could help with, he was all in. I can’t say what that day’s project was, but somehow dad must have spent time sitting on whatever was nearest to the project, probably a spare battery. An hour or two later at lunch in a nearby club, he was helping himself to a sandwich when the company treasurer approached him suggesting he take a seat. I’m sure all was in order when he left home that morning, but an hour after his stint in the machine shop, the back side of his suit pants had disintegrated. No doubt battery acid. He took his seat,

century America was booming, and dad damage to the environment was just beginning to show, but very few peoClockwise from top right, Carl Darenberg with the Broadway star Lisa Kirk at the Montauk Yacht Club; landed in Montauk, with her husband, Dan Topping, the owner of the New York Yankees; at the close of this 1956 made catfood, the Viking Grill, inside and out, where Dave Edwardes Collection and Akin Collection

ple were paying attention. Having witof 1946, my father was a huge advocate for nuclear energy. He downplayed the risks even in later years when the dangers of nuclear energy were better understood. And maybe his attitude was understandable given that he survived for decades after having walked on the decks of bombed-out decommissioned Navy ships one day after the bomb blast. He liked to tell how he rolled out of his bunk the next day, picked

old-fashioned photography plates, and found a perfectly developed image of

Dad was extremely proud of his Bikini adventure. He had become friendly with some top Navy people including Admirals George Blandy and Chester

a letter he sent me from Bikini. I have it framed in my living room along with

the stamped and postmarked envelope from Bikini Atoll, certainly one of the last posts from that ill-fated island. After the war my father took over management of the family business grown to include four factories spread out from Connecticut to Michigan. Still,

in Montauk from the Tuma family, and

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so popular that many weekends our one boat could not handle everyone. My father chartered his old friends, Ralph Pitts, Walter Droebecker, Frank Tuma,

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The house, or weekend hotel, required help to manage the rooms and prepare most of the meals, but my father insisted on making breakfast. As he was not a heavy drinker, or “party -

what the weekends were all about, unlike The Old Man, not everyone was full of enthusiasm at 6 AM. One particularly unfortunate guest had continued the evening party by heading downtown. Just after dawn the next morning, his overnight companion way. The Old Man, oblivious to the situation, was delighted to see someone who he thought was enjoying the morning and ready to head out for the day. The customer was not about to explain

himself to his host. Breakfast was followed by a ride down to the boat, and a full day on the water mostly spent unconscious on a bunk in the cabin. Years later my father heard the full story. His response was typical: “He was invited well what he was going to do.” Most days when boats returned from the dock at the Montauk Yacht Club. My father, the club’s Vice Commodore, was always most comfortable talking with the captains and mates. Soon after acquiring the Fisher house, his friendship with these “professionals’’ resulted in an annual “crews only” cocktail party up at the house. Entertainment included a skeet shooting contest and a 9-iron competition from the backyard to a not-so-well-maintained golf green in a hollow well below the house. (A multitude of Montauk children have grown up knowing the place as Akin’s Hill, the best sleigh riding in Montauk.) As Montauk’s reputation for bigcourage his friends in the charter business to consider using the rod-and-reel -

Businessman, Navy ambassador, Yacht Club commodore, electrical Award for exceptional contributions to electronics), and family man, my father was all of these. But at heart, The Old Man was an old salt. Nothing proves this more than what happened one day when we were anchored chumming for We had two customers on board that day, and neither was feeling well. Nevertheless, my father could not resist an opportunity to have some of what he considered fun. The cod, having been brought up from the bottom, was bloatcaused a sack of row to expel from the cod’s belly. I guess this was considered a delicacy on Cape Cod when dad was a handful, and without hesitating, gulped it down. He threw the cod in the water where it swam away. Both guests rushed to the stern depositing their breakfasts over the side. The Old Man died of a heart attack the contract to sell the company his father founded and where he worked for

harpooning was the most reliable way my father was convinced that the chartomers thought they had a chance to go

small plaques made up for any captain ing rod and reel. He awarded these each year at the annual Montauk Boatman’s Association dinners. The awards were very much appreciated, but more iming a number of customers interested

passed away. It was September 22, 1989. My mother was bedridden with severe dementia, so my father had made it a habit to watch the evening news by her bedside holding her hand. That night Hurricane Hugo as it was slamming into the South Carolina coast. Winds was washing over barrier islands. People were frantically evacuating. The Old Man was at peace.

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