In the end, it was a routine affair — a real estate closing last week that from outward appearances was like any other. The property that changed hands was a large portion of the now closed Boys and Girls Harbor summer camp on Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton. The buyers were the Town of East Hampton and Suffolk County. The tortured route the land deal took before coming to pass had finally come to an end.   

    Money was never the issue. The town was able to tap its community preservation fund, and the county had an account dedicated to land buys like this. Officials agreed to a 50-50 split in 2007. However, a lawsuit from neighbors stalled the proceedings until a mutually agreeable management plan was drafted last year. This document says the tranquillity of nearby residential streets is to be given equal consideration to the site’s natural features and value as a recreational site.   

    The parcel is part of the much stressed Three Mile Harbor watershed. Development of it as house lots would have had a long-term negative effect. It is also thought to contain untouched Native American home sites of archaeological significance.   

    The camp operated from 1954 to 2006, when Tony Duke, who founded it on his own land, and the board of directors decided to concentrate its activities closer to the urban areas from which it had drawn children.   

    Mr. Duke did not have to sell 26 acres to the town and county, nor did he have to agree to the very reasonable $7.3 million price. However, he wanted the property to be used by the public and saw the joint purchase as a way both to ensure that it would and to save it from development in perpetuity. With the deal done, his vision is complete. All involved are to be congratulated for seeing it through.

“Moving to California is a lot like living in the future,” my friend Peter said to me, as I was fresh from the trauma of moving from Sag Harbor to Marin County one year ago. 

Though Los Angeles runs through both sides of my family for generations, our relocation to Northern California couldn’t have come as more of a shock. The early days of moving felt a bit like trying on a foreign country for size — learning new ways of dressing (Patagonia and Birkenstocks) and socializing (make plans but don’t commit too forcefully). Also, fragrance is forbidden, and recreational cannabis has replaced the evening cocktail.

Since graduating from college, I’ve moved about a dozen times now. In my next lifetime, I vow to come back as a minimalist. Mostly, I’m tired of hanging and then rehanging all my artwork. 

I’m as attached to the watercolor paintings by my grandmother that adorn my walls as I am to the hundreds and hundreds of books that have followed me from coast to coast, their spines newly arranged in a different order each time. I never feel quite settled — like I am home — until those things have been put away, breathing familiar life into unfamiliar spaces. 

We last called Sag Harbor home, and our return trips to the East End last summer and fall filled me with a deep and wonderful feeling of nostalgia. The shifting, magnificent light, the seasons, the warm ocean you can swim in, our friends and their growing children. 

I feel as at home in Sag Harbor as anyplace I’ve ever lived.

Some say that after a cross-country move it takes a solid year to fully settle into new surroundings. Or maybe it’s a decade. Regardless, it’s the traditions we take with us, wherever our destination. 

I come from a small, insular family, and it never feels like Christmastime until my father and mother and I are again sleeping in the same house. Last December, our first Christmas in Northern California, was a year of beginning again. My mother’s holiday cookies and flaky pie crust held up just fine. Yet the magic of Christmas morning felt like we had suddenly swapped hemispheres. The balmy, foggy air. The fragrant eucalyptus trees that would never change color and lose their leaves. 

Looking back now, it didn’t feel like we had fully arrived in California until we decorated our first Christmas tree. 

I’m a latecomer to Christmas. For years, when it was just my husband and me living on the Upper West Side, he would dutifully purchase a tree from a nearby lot on Central Park West, hauling it into our 14th-floor apartment and stringing up a few sets of drugstore lights as I sat idly by, thinking only of the hassle of soon dismantling it. 

But slowly I’m coming around. 

Last Christmas, our two children, Theo and Violet, settled on a whimsical, six-foot-tall evergreen. Once home, going into the garage and dusting off our box of decorations moved me, unexpectedly, to tears. Unwrapping the intricate ornaments that my grandmother had hung on her tree in Hollywood those many decades ago, interspersed with others from my own Southern California childhood, next to the ones that our children had made in Sag Harbor, their glitter and sequins still attached. 

Finally, an outbreath. A feeling of coming home. The twinkling white lights. The angel holding court above the dozens of ornaments that together tell the story of our family. The same ones our children will eventually inherit. 

A wise former therapist used to talk in terms of how many summers he had left. He promised to relish each and every one. In our many conversations over the years, he has gently nudged me to do the same. We’re here and then we’re not. Best to dive into the ocean whenever the opportunity presents itself.

And now another December is here. I’m still not used to warm Christmas days spent in only a T-shirt. I’m also unsure on which coast we will permanently reside. But in the middle of finding our way, I vow to make the most of this holiday season — recreating traditions that ground us in our past while also embracing our new community of friends.

Come January, in the spirit of starting over (and with the freezing cold, shark-infested Pacific Ocean in such close proximity), I will keep my East End brethren in mind when I take my first Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day, swapping East Hampton’s Main Beach for Stinson Beach, outside Bolinas.

Amanda M. Fairbanks is a former reporter at The Star.

   Monday is Memorial Day, a time when East Hampton’s Main Street stops for a brief half-hour as veterans and others march to show their support and appreciation for those who have died in the nation’s armed conflicts. Flags come out, old uniforms are unfolded, speeches are delivered at the war monument at the side of Hook Mill.

    While our country is not at peace, this year marks a gradual turn. Troops are coming home from Iraq, and there is optimism that the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan will occur as scheduled.

    In the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden, increasing calls have been heard from the left and the right, however, to accelerate the removal of our troops from Afghanistan. Richard Lugar, a Republican senator from Indiana, said earlier this month that the fighting there was sacrificing too many lives and costing too much. President Obama had set a July deadline for wrapping up combat operations, but support for such a hard withdrawal date appears to be wavering.

    The Afghan war has been the longest in U.S. history. On this Memorial Day, as we think of long-ago losses and those of a new generation, Americans might reflect on whether the time has come to finally bring the troops home.

    The Music to Know festival coming to the East End this August, featuring some of the bigger names in indie rock out there as well as less-easily-pigeonholed acts like the alternative country-folk singer and songwriter M. Ward, would seem to promise to place the patch of land a hundred miles east of New York City on the hipster map, so to speak, if only for a few days.

    The occasion marks, among other things, the first time the headliner, New York City-based Vampire Weekend, plays together in several months, the group having reportedly been on hiatus since concluding a tour in support of its most recent album, “Contra.”

    That ours might become a relevant scene, however briefly, for the alternative-indie set more accustomed to seeing many of these bands play for $15 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, than shelling out nearly $200 for a two-day affair in rural, not-a-stop-on-the-L-train East Hampton would be quite the accomplishment for the show’s promoters.

    Indeed, notwithstanding the logistical nightmare the concert — expected to bring some 9,500 people to a closed-off runway of the East Hampton Airport — might prove itself to be, bringing acts that choose their appearances carefully to a place not exactly known for its indie rock fan base is noteworthy. Vampire Weekend has reportedly turned down offers to play at two massive, well-established music festivals this year: Lollapalooza in Chicago and Glastonbury in London, where they surely would have been met by legions of devoted fans.

    Perhaps it is not intuitive that the Hamptons — which possess a rich artistic and literary community, thanks to their proximity to New York, and are replete, in the summer anyway, with more than a few bigs of the film and fashion worlds — would be desperate for an injection of contemporary pop culture. But they most certainly are.

    Most of the reporting on this issue has addressed local concerns about crowds, noise, and cleanup. Missing is a recognition of the important moment this is for the youth that come of age in a place many outsiders barely realize has year-round residents, youth who sometimes feel themselves to be off the grid when it comes to developing alternative culture.

    In fact, growing up on the East End, it is sometimes tough not to view oneself as if stuck in a musical morass, with few of the voices of one’s own generation within reach. We cannot say that a few festivals or concerts will change this perception; winters in East Hampton will be trying for adolescents hungry for fresh ideas and desperate to see more of the world, for the foreseeable future. This festival’s promoters, though, deserve credit for aggressively seeking out some of the brightest new sounds in contemporary culture for what promises to be a unique experience.

    This all to say that if we have never lacked physical beauty here, and we are proud of the writers and artists who have long called the East End home, perhaps this summer we are somewhat more hip, as well.

—

    Matthew Taylor is a reporter at The Star.

 

    I think my wife would agree that the birth of our son, Ellis, 16 months ago yesterday was the easy part. Having babies is a young person’s game, and this goes for dad as well as mom.

    With both of us in our 40s, the difference between what we were like in 2001 when we had our first child and now becomes apparent in the little moments. When he wakes up at dawn and wants to play, the climb from inaction to action is steeper.

    Ellis is a big toddler and was a big baby. He started off large and never stopped growing. We feel our age as we bend to pick him up.

    One of the things that Lisa and I are surprised about is how different he is from the girls, who are now almost 7 and 10. Unlike them as babies, he is interested in taking things apart, vehicles of all sorts, and, most of all, climbing on anything and everything from which a fall would hurt.

    From the time he was about a year old and just walking he was able to pull himself up onto a kitchen chair, usually selecting the most rickety. He would stand up and rock it back and fourth. Lifted off by one of us, he would whine and protest and try to climb up again.

    Whether or not we can actually, scientifically, ascribe this to differences between the sexes, I am not sure. Perhaps as younger, more agile parents when the girls were this age, it just seems that Ellis is more of a handful.

    Lisa and I think back with longing to the easy strength and energy we had in our 20s, even 30s. While it might have been difficult in many ways for us to have three kids then, the little battles certainly would have been easier. On the positive side, having had two go through the toddler stage already, our uncertainty about child rearing is substantially reduced. I was talking the other day to another now experienced parent about how much we worried about everything when the first was born.

    With age comes enough knowledge to at least keep anxiety mostly at bay, even if our backs are aching a bit as we lift the little fellow from his evening bath.

    The other day, staring out the window at a gray sky (there hasn’t been much else sky-wise to stare at recently), I began to fill out a questionnaire having to do with my 50th college reunion.

    As for hobbies, I listed my wife as number one, following up with tennis, Spanish, and rereading my columns. Kafka, after all, sometimes laughed when reading his stories to friends, so why can’t I, even though I know I’m no Kafka, whose stories presaged a torturous century.

    In contrast, I’m not prescient, having no idea what’s going to happen next. Though, antlike, I trust in Pollyanna fashion that things will continue to go swimmingly in Bonac.

    Along this line, I apologized to Alfredo Corchado, a courageous journalist who covers the U.S.-Mexican border, before he began his talk at the Rogers Memorial Library the other night. “We’re living in La-La Land,” I said. “And I,” I confessed further, “write sports.”

    He was forgiving, as if to say, It’s all right, Jack. I can understand why you would want to live in such a beautiful place.

    He himself, I was interested to hear, had at one time thought of sportswriting. Instead, he chose to continue bearing witness to the grisly truth of the frontera, which, despite his removal from Durango, Mexico, to this country’s central California ranches at the age of 6, and despite his U.S. citizenship, he still considers his home.

    He continues on this dangerous beat because he has reason to hope that things will turn around, that Mexico will regain its democratic soul, and that the rule of law will one day return to his home.

    I applaud him, from the sidelines, averting my eyes and seeking solace from the world’s agonies in the sports pages.

    And when asked by the aforementioned questionnaire to list achievements and to enclose a personal essay, I tell them that in July 1965 I won the United States Army Ryukyu Islands tennis singles championship (the stronger competitors presumably having been diverted elsewhere), was the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club men’s doubles league’s runner-up this winter, and received the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s community service award for 2010.

    There also was an honorable mention once from the New York Press Association for another column concerning a reunion, a high school one, in which I replied, when asked if I had a vacation home, “Yes, a 1969 Ford Falcon.”

    When it came to the personal essay, which was, I gathered, to strike a valedictory tone, I stared out the window at the gray sky, wondering how best to sum it all up, and then wrote, “Ugh, it’s raining.”

    I recently returned from Pakistan, a sentimental journey to Lahore, the place I was born and which I hadn’t seen for 40 years. Providentially timed, it coincided with the brief lull after the assassinations of the politicians Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti and the furor over Raymond Davis’s espionage activities but before last month’s killing of Osama bin Laden. I’ve come home to hear Pakistan castigated as an untrustworthy and ambivalent partner undeserving of the billions of dollars of American aid it has received since 2002.

    “What do you think about Lahore? Can you believe how much it’s changed?” I was asked over and over again there, as my friends listed the traffic, the crowds, the new subdivisions, the restaurants, the box stores. Yes, of course (I’ve changed too in 40 years), but really their question was rhetorical. They were telling me how their Lahore has changed, how it has been transformed from the green and pleasant place of my youth, a place of order and predictability, still basking in the afterglow of the British Raj, where we worried about contracting dysentery from improperly washed fruit or about being jostled by hideously mutilated beggars in the bazaar.

    Today, home, sweet home requires high walls and iron gates, reinforced by fierce dogs and quasi-uniformed men. Today, my Lahore and theirs has grown to a city of over 10 million, still the cherished cultural heart of Pakistan but now also menacing home to the daarhiwallahs, the bearded fundamentalists in traditional shalwar kameez who easily outnumber the clean-shaven men dressed in the Western style of my day. Lahore is also home to the “khaki,” the unpopular and feared military.

    In the military-religious complex that defines Pakistan’s ruling elite, generals, and mullahs are joined in an unholy political alliance that protects them for and against each other but fails to provide large swaths of the citizenry with a decent life.

    Punjabi women have traditionally covered their heads and upper bodies in public with a light, colorful dupatta, but this time I noticed far fewer women wearing the iconic white or blue shuttlecock-shaped burkas. “Being covered” has become a fashion as well as a religious choice, and varieties of black hijab or chador, sometimes elaborately decorated in silver, populate the streets and shop windows. These fashion choices are more than they appear.

    Despite the growing income inequality, especially among the rural poor, Pakistan is also enjoying a new prosperity and class mobility, forces that are shaping the urban working class and creating a burgeoning middle class. The catalyst for this social change is an influx of international money from foreign development aid organizations, multinational corporations, and growth in the telecommunications and media industries, as well as Saudi money, some of it trickling up in remittances sent by workers who have been flocking to the gulf states since the 1980s to earn wages that are inconceivable in Pakistan.

    Saudi money has also been trickling down since the late ’70s, when the dictator Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq (who was responsible for the hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir) imported religion, specifically Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Islam, from Saudi Arabia into the Pakistani Army. Wahhabism is deepening its hold on Pakistani society by spreading the word through mullahs into the mosques, through women into the home, and through madrassas, the Islamic schools, into the minds of younger generations.

    Pakistan is being torn apart by violent disagreements between fundamentalism and modernity and, within the religion, about which branch of Islam represents the voice of God. Because of its extreme intolerance, Wahhabism is responsible for many of the bloody attacks against Islamic minorities such as the Sufi, Ahmadiya, and Shia branches of Islam and also against Christians. Wahhabism has penetrated political parties and religious groups as well as the army, which consumes as much as 25 percent of the budget and controls much of the foreign policy. No wonder that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has lost interest in its people!

    But not in its elites. The new prosperity is reflected not only in women’s fashions but also in the unapologetically named Defense area, a large, affluent, aspirational Lahore suburb replete with golf courses and clubs for the newly ich, including military officers, politicians, celebrities, and returning Pakistanis enjoying the freedom of dual E.U., U.S.A., or U.K. citizenship. It is not unusual to see Arabic Koranic verse sculpted onto the residences, signaling that a Wahhabi adherent lives within.

    Flights in and out of the Lahore airport are packed with the elite jetting to Dubai to shop or continuing on to destinations in Europe, England, or the United States, their language a fast-paced mixture of Urdu and English, their children American wannabes. For the not yet newly rich, it is now possible, as it hardly was when I grew up in Lahore, for the daughters of illiterate parents to become teachers and doctors and for the sons of house servants to become technicians and engineers.

    Rich people depend on servants to run their huge houses, manage their extravagant social lives, and chauffeur their children to school. Poor people depend on rich people for their food and shelter and, with luck, some support for their children’s education. The system has functioned well for centuries but socio-political change is creating a servant class less willing to work for or remain loyal to the rich; dark stories are told of servants turning out to be gang members who rob or kill their employers.

    In conversations with Pakistanis, I sensed a deep despair about the devolution of their country into a failed state or arguably one that is failing. It’s scant comfort to those who live there that the rest of the world, especially the United States, considers Pakistan too big to be allowed to fail (176 million people, nuclear weapons). It’s one thing to pontificate about failed states and quite another to be a resident of Lahore and to experience the reality of life in a failing state, to be hostage to a government that reminds its people on a daily basis of this failure.

    The realities of life in a failing state are harsh. The electricity supply falls so short of demand in Pakistan that “load shedding” outages occur many times every day, at unscheduled intervals for apparently random duration, snatching people’s control over light, heat, and cooling and, since most water comes from tube wells, leaving them unable to manage their daily lives. The cost in human frustration and interrupted economic activity is enormous, as is the anger toward indifferent and corrupt government officials.

    A failing state fails to protect people from one another. Religious extremists have easy entry into the lives of those they consider infidels; rampant theft of cars, laptops, and cellphones and a moribund judicial system in which impunity rules and thieves and assassins go unpunished have all but uprooted civil order.

    A failed state is one that does not protect its people from widening economic disparities, deepening inflation, and escalating food shortages. A failed state is one that taxes its citizens without providing services in return. The government provides free education but in ghost schools, empty of furniture, books, and teachers. The pupils don’t come because the teachers won’t be there, even though they collect their monthly sal­aries. A failed state is one that has abdicated accountability to its citizens.

    To rebuild itself, Pakistan’s first step must be radical reform of the army and Inter-Services Intelligence. Its weakened civilian government unable to provide the necessary oversight, Pakistan will be unable to reform itself without outside help.

    Raza Kazim, a leading lawyer and thinker, told me: “The time is here and now [to] remove the jihadis, their incompetence, and the ideological humbug we’ve been living with for half a century. [We need] positive support from a global coalition, not American imperialism. The time for imperialism is behind us. A new contemporary army, not one in which the state and religion are combined, with corruption pulled out by its roots. We need to change the whole culture; we need agents of change. We are not self-sustaining; we have not earned our keep.”

    Hazel Kahan, the host of the “Tidings” program on WPKN radio, is writing a memoir about growing up Jewish in Pakistan. She lives in Mattituck.

 

    Yes, I know. The English language is constantly changing. But some changes that creep into common use are, well, obnoxious habits that set my teeth on edge. Let me explain a pet peeve about punctuation, something I’ve been fighting — unsuccessfully — for years.

     Unless you are writing about Osama bin Laden, you probably can assume that when a man speaks of his wife, there is only one. The punctuation in the following sentence is simple enough: “Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, is devoted to fitness.” The words “wife” and “Michelle” refer to the same person and are, therefore, set off by commas. Grammatically, they are appositives; if you drop the name “Michelle” from the sentence it still makes sense. “Michelle” is (according to the rules) an appositive, the explanatory equivalent of another noun. 

    If, however, you are writing about Bin Laden and intend to point out one of his wives, rather than another, using commas would be a mistake. “Bin Laden’s wife Amal al-Sadah told Pakistani officials that he never left the house” is correct. (While if you left the commas out when referring to Michelle, you’d be implying our president is a polygamist.)

    But something that really riles me is the use of a comma after a title or descriptive phrase. What on earth is the comma doing in the following sentence? “President, Barack Obama is a married man.” Such nonsensical commas are now found all over the place. But you won’t find them in The New York Times or (I hope) The East Hampton Star.

    Intrusive commas are up at the top the list of things that get my goat.

    There are others:

    Ferns that cover the astilbe

    Not knowing how to line up columns in Word

    Radios left on when no one is listening

    High sodium in food labeled low sodium

    My right foot

    Violence in children’s movies

    Lack of seltzer

    Lack of cookies

    Lack of Teacher’s Scotch

    Empty summer houses

    Tailgaters

    Dust on the baseboards    

 

Proudly Marched

    Montauk

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor,

    They are Dead. I’m alive.

    It has been 43 years since serving in Vietnam with the First Air Cavalry Division, Air Mobile, 2nd Battalion 12th Cavalry. On Sunday I marched in the first Montauk Memorial Day parade. My marching was in recognition of the ultimate sacrifice made by three people who lost their lives while conducting aerial recognizance during an engagement with the enemy on Jan. 7, 1968.

    I was supposed to go on that chopper.

    Lt. Col. Bob Gregory asked if I would like to take a ride on the Charlie Charlie (command and control) chopper. I said, “Sure, I’ll get my gun.”

    This was a big deal, going up with the “six” in his chopper. I was a sergeant (E5) working in the tactical operations center. Lieutenant Colonel Gregory was sort of my hero. He was an impressive man, knew his job and carried it out in the tradition of a cavalry officer.

    I got my gun; my hooch was only a few hundred feet from the Charlie Charlie pad. When I arrived, Colonel Gregory, Major Lawrence Malone, and Master Sgt. Richard Keefe were on board. Gregory motioned that there wasn’t any room. “Oh well, I’ll go next time,” I thought.

    I guessed the new major wanted to get involved. He had just arrived in the unit. Sergeant Keefe was rotating out in two weeks. He was “short”; he had my spot on the chopper. I was disappointed. I really would have liked to have gone up with the six, but there would be other times.

    I held onto my helmet and waved as they lifted off. I walked down the rutted path past a clump of trees. There was a Jeep on the side with its radio on. The Charlie Charlie was down. It had been seen receiving 50-caliber fire and falling into the treeline with smoke.

    We found out about a week later that it had crashed and burned, and all aboard lost their lives. We couldn’t get to it initially because the area was held by the North Vietnamese Army.

    I’m alive. They and the crew of the chopper are dead.

    This Sunday morning I put the three names on strips of leather and secured them to a bamboo pole with an American flag at the top. I put my Vietnam First Cavalry hat on and went to the parade and proudly marched, in their memory.

    For the first time in 43 years, as I walked along the parade route in Montauk, people were clapping, and saying, “Thanks for your service!” I was finally getting some recognition. I quietly cried, we’re all, finally, getting some recognition.

TOM KACZMAREK

Such a Success

    Montauk

    May 24, 2011

Dear David,

    I’d like to extend a huge thank-you to the members of the East End Foundation, the Montauk Fire Department’s Ladies Auxiliary, the Montauk Friends of Erin, and the staff of the Old Harbor House for making the Bobby Huser fund-raiser last week such a success. Thanks also go to the multitude of Montauk, Amagansett, East Hampton, and Springs businesses that donated their time, services, and in some cases, their food for the event.

    I’d like to particularly thank all the people who helped make Saturday so special.

    Thanks to all of you for making Saturday such a great day.

    Sincerely,

    BONNIE BRADY

    Long Island Commercial Fishing  Association

Best Evidence

    East Hampton

    May 20, 2011

Dear David,

     It’s been quite a week. The oil companies fought hard against the repeal of the $4 billion in tax breaks they enjoy despite record profits. After all, Exxon only made $11 billion in profits last quarter; they could eat that $4 billion for this year themselves.

    Then the health insurance companies making record profits are demanding rate increases to hedge against possible losses in the future. A rate decrease would be more appropriate. They are providing the best evidence for a single-payer program.

    And finally, there is Massey Energy, which put profits before the lives of 29 miners. The verdict is in after an exhaustive study. Massey didn’t care and regulators fell asleep. There should be more indictments of high-level company managers and some firings of lazy bureaucrats.

    Enjoy the holiday weekend.

STEPHEN GROSSMAN

Moment of Candor

    East Hampton

    May 17, 2011

To the Editor,

    One can only applaud Newt Gingrich’s moment of candor when he said that Paul Ryan’s proposal for health care was “right-wing social engineering.” Bravo, Newt, certainly the brightest light in the dimly lit cubicle of conservative Republicans.

    Newt was vilified en masse by the party faithful, who should have breathed a sigh of relief and gotten on board with him. Because Newt knows that Mr. Ryan’s proposal was a quasi-demented sack of crap. Factually, philosophically, and socially it was pure garbage.

    In less than one week Newt exposed Republican conservatives as cowardly cretins trending toward fascism, also known as social engineering. Maybe Newt’s new-found Catholicism, not in vogue on C Street, inspired him to tell the truth in his first public declaration. Maybe he felt compelled by some higher power to dissociate himself from Mr. Ryan’s band of philistines. Maybe he was appalled by the self-righteous frig­id­ity of his sexually twisted cohorts and was using Mr. Ryan’s piece of junk as a means of distancing himself.

    Does it matter why he did it? Should we question his motives? Newt has the morality of a male hooker stuck under the 59th Street Bridge at 4 a.m. in mid-February. A strange bit of candor at a time when ideology trumps reason and blind stupidity trumps everything.

NEIL HAUSIG

Almost Double

    Springs

    May 30, 2011

Dear David,

    The article “Striped Bass Population Wavering” (May 26) gives the impression, perhaps unintended, that this fish is in some sort of trouble. The opposite is true, and striped bass continues to be a species that demonstrates how fishery management can work well (perhaps too well, as I’ll explain).

    The article leaves out important information about the population numbers. The last assessment of the population took place in 2009 and it revealed that the numbers of the fish are 185 percent above the level at which managers would become concerned about future reproductive success of the species. That means there are nearly twice as many adult striped bass as are needed to allow continuation of the landings currently made by both commercial and recreational fishermen — almost double what is needed.

    To put this in hard numbers, as of 2009 there were almost 53 million adult striped bass in Atlantic coastal waters. The number harvested by both commercial and recreational fishermen was recorded that year to be about 3 million fish. That left 50 million adults in the water to reproduce the next generation of the species.

    Another problem with the information in the Star article is that it fails to mention that the declines in annual recruitment (young born each year) were measured against the highest levels of recruitment ever recorded (2004) and that the declines in recreational landings were measured against the highest recreational landings ever recorded (2006).

    It is faulty science to expect a fish population to always be at the highest levels ever observed. Fish populations are cyclical: up and down, with some medium level actually the most desirable. This is because constant huge populations in the nursery habitats (our rivers and bays) are likely to cause disease (a natural mechanism to reduce overcrowding), and are also likely to cause excessive cannibalism of new offspring by the younger adults who don’t immediately leave the nursery areas to enter into the annual coastal migration.

Moreover, the striped bass, a skillful predator that is currently one of the most dominant species in coastal waters, has done serious damage to the stocks of weakfish, eels, and winter flounder, all of which are at historically low levels of population.

    Another factor that might help explain the reduction in recreational landings is economic; many charter boat captains along the coast have complained that they have had noticeably fewer customers during the past two or three years. Fewer fishermen means fewer fish landed, not fewer fish in the water.

    Commercial harvest, which accounts for about 25 percent of the total catch by weight, has stayed pretty much constant during these same two or three years.

    The next population assessment will be completed for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission later this year.

    ARNOLD LEO

    Secretary

    East Hampton Baymen’s Association

Sense of Community

    Montauk

    May 23, 2011

Dear Editor,

    I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported the Ditch Witch wagon during the bid process last week. All of those who texted, tweeted, Facebooked, and e-mailed proved that each one of us has a voice.

    I believe the outpouring of support for the Ditch Witch was only in part about the cart. It had more to do with the neighborhood we have helped create at Ditch Plain. This community is a crazy quilt of people, of all ages, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, professions, locals and nonlocals, surfers and those who don’t even swim. The Ditch Witch is just part of the fabric of this wonderful place. We all share a common love for Ditch Plain and Montauk. It goes far beyond a mere business opportunity. The sense of community one feels when sitting at one of the benches or on a rock by the jetty or standing looking out over that beach from the cliffs at Shadmoor is what people were afraid of losing when there was the idea of a change there.

    The town board deserves our respect and thanks for being receptive, investigating the request-for-proposals process, and in the end doing what they felt best served the community.

    I know that the two vendors who believed they had been awarded the sites at Ditch Plain must be very upset. There is nothing wrong with seeing and acting on the opportunity that was offered by the town for those two sites. When I started Ditch Witch in 1994, I too had hopes and dreams wrapped up in the cart. I understand your disappointment. The system was flawed, and I hope that we can all move on with respect for one another.

    Change is inevitable. It is my hope that all those who supported the local vendors will be respectful as the town again tries to work out this process.

    Sincerely yours,

    LILI ADAMS

Uproar Arises

    Montauk,

    May 27, 2011

Dear Editor:

    Let me see if I have this straight. The town asks the vendors for proposals (of which many filled out in detail). Then the board awards the coveted spots to certain individuals according to the criteria established and then reverses its decision when an uproar arises on Facebook! Which means — what? That no matter what, some people are getting screwed and no one gave this much thought.

    No wonder the swans have left Town Pond. They can’t even believe what is going on!

LINDA BARNDS

Accurate Estimate

    Springs

    May 28, 2011

Dear David,

    In an e-mail to The Star quoted in a story, “Spar over Independence Party Nod” last Thursday, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson criticized my financial ability based on a claim that I “predicted an $18 million deficit.” Unfortunately, the supervisor did not identify where I said or wrote this statement.

    One letter of mine that Supervisor Wilkinson may have misunderstood was written to The Star in June 2009. I wrote: “On June 2, Janet Verneuille, the East Hampton comptroller, presented to the town board a current assessment of the town’s finances. . . . Most of the financial attention to date has been given to the approximately $18.2 million in operating deficit that Ms. Verneuille projects through the end of 2009.”

    Unlike Supervisor Wilkinson, Ms. Verneuille — and I — were careful to differentiate the operating deficit from the capital deficit.

    Ms. Verneuille’s prediction of an $18.2 million operating deficit was a more accurate estimate of the operating deficit than was ever given by Supervisor Wilkinson or members of his administration.

    The 2009 town audit was released by the outside auditors in December 2010, 18 months after Ms. Verneuille’s financial presentation and my letter appeared. That 2009 town audit shows that the operating deficit we discussed was $17.7 million. It does take the ability to read a financial statement to see this “hidden” fact.    

     If the town’s finances were still run by a nonpartisan comptroller who answered to the entire board, I venture that Supervisor Wilkinson would have fewer of these misunderstandings.

ZACHARY COHEN

—

    Mr. Cohen is the Democratic and Independence Party candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor. Ed.

Becoming a Joke

    New Boston, N.H.

    May 24, 2011

Dear Editor:

     I was deeply saddened to hear of the meanspirited hoopla directed at my mother, Elaine Jones, after the Independence Party announced the candidate it would endorse for supervisor in the next election.

    One man, a so-called Republican operative, phoned my mother at home and called her an unprintable name. How nice. Words I can’t include in a letter to the newspaper. What sort of man says these words to a 69-year-old grandmother? He should be ashamed of himself, but my mother wasn’t overly concerned. She said it comes with the territory. For me, it’s this sort of behavior and sense of entitlement that makes me feel like the Republican Party is becoming a joke.

    At the very least, I think the moron needs a refresher on the definition of independence. It means “the state or quality of being independent” and therefore as in politics, “free from the authority, control, or domination of somebody or something else.”

    The Independence Party’s screening committee is not one person but a group, and in fact they poll other Independence Party members by telephone both before and after a screening.

    I had the privilege of attending the Independence Party screening and helped cater the event. Like actors at a casting call, many candidates attended and I assume they ran the gamut — Republican, Democrat, Independence, other. After the last candidate had left and I was cleaning up the venue, the committee decided they would have to table their discussion on supervisor until another meeting because it was getting late.

    This committee was thorough in its screening of each and every candidate, and it’s obvious the members care about the town where they live, work, and raise their families. To say that their selection of supervisor was solely my mother’s doing is ridiculous. Perhaps the Independence Party is simply concerned about the town and believes it is time for a change.

    I’d advise the Republican Party to think about its reputation and try to rein in its members and run a clean campaign with a token sliver of decorum (from the Latin, meaning “right or proper” or in this context “dignified behavior”).

    Sincerely,

     ANGELA SULLIVAN

 

Deer Population

    Montauk

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor:

    In her letter in The Star’s May 26 issue, Winifred Rosen says East Hampton doesn’t have time for a pilot contraception project because the deer population is increasing too rapidly. She says “an estimated 10,000 deer are conservatively said to be living among us now,” and the number has been exploding for decades.

    Where does she get the number 10,000? The only scientific study of the East Hampton deer population (and one of the few empirical studies ever conducted in New York State) was sponsored by our group in 2006. This study estimated the total deer population to be approximately 3,300. The density per square mile was slightly higher than wildlife managers prefer, but it was nowhere near crisis proportions. The deer population might have grown since then, of course, but the only way to obtain a reasonable estimate is to conduct a new study. Our group is ready to help do this.

    Ms. Rosen goes on to project a deer population of 40,000 before our four-year pilot contraception study would be completed. If people took her seriously, the effect would be near panic.

    If our town hopes to engage in rational discussions of how residents and deer can peacefully coexist, the discussions must draw on research evidence to the greatest extent possible. This is why our group has proposed a pilot contraception study.

    Ms. Rosen’s letter is also misleading with respect to Lyme disease. Deer ticks are not the only carriers of Lyme disease. We certainly agree that Lyme disease is a serious problem. Its transmission and prevention need careful study. One step the town can take is to discontinue its participation in the November hunting season for turkeys. Turkeys are among the most avid consumers of ticks.

    In addition to a contraception proposal, our group has undertaken several initiatives, including the installation of roadside reflectors that might reduce automobile-deer collisions. At our May 17 presentation to the town board, we also recommended a slow-driving campaign, as well as setting aside specific town-owned nature preserves as sanctuaries, where deer would be safe from hunters; this measure might alleviate the flight of deer into hunting-free residential neighborhoods. In each case, we see the need for the careful evaluation of outcomes before projects are maintained and expanded.

    We appreciated the town board’s invitation to give a presentation on May 17, and we hope readers will write the town board to encourage it to give our various projects a high priority.

    Sincerely,

    ELLEN and BILL CRAIN

    East Hampton Group for Wildlife

Dock Does Harm

    Amagansett

    May 24, 2011

Dear Editor:

    Earlier this week, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals discussed an application for a variance that would allow the Broadview Association, of which I am a member, to repair or replace the Bell Estate dock. It is certainly understandable that a handful of very wealthy property owners whose homes overlook the bay would want the dock to be restored because it is an eyesore and more understandable still that they would want other property owners to foot the very sizable bill despite the severe financial hardship this would impose on many of those property owners — especially full-time residents. Who wouldn’t want someone else to pay for your own so-called improvements?

    But there are very good reasons for the board to deny this request, not the least of which is the town’s own flooding and erosion policy statement known as the Town of East Hampton Local Waterfront Revitalization Program.

    The statement, which is the product of vast information and analysis, explicitly recommends that no new hard structures be allowed. “Existing shore parallel structures are to be replaced only under conditions of “exceptional hardship.”

    While an aesthetic mess may not be the most desirable thing, there is no circumstance, even to the effete, wealthy Manhattanites who vacation here, under which having to look out on a battered dock constitutes “exceptional hardship.” None. 

    The report goes on to recommend that the town “not replace groins and other perpendicular structures, except where used to protect navigational channels.” The Bell Estate dock does not protect any navigational channel. Case closed.

    The report also recommends that the board not “issue permits automatically for rebuilding or emergency replacement of structures.” It calls for analysis of the erosion protection function of the structure, versus natural or non-structural protection and yet again reiterates that the town “not replace groins and other perpendicular structures, except where used to protect navigational channels,” just in case this point wasn’t perfectly clear the first time.

    In short, the town shouldn’t be replacing groins nor should it let private associations replace groins.

    As for the erosion analysis, the report provided an overview in which it concluded that the construction of erosion protection devices generally was “poorly conceived” and “often did more damage than good” and, speaking specifically of the beach from Barnes Landing to the Devon Yacht Club along which the Bell Estate dock lies, it concluded that “shoreline erosion protection structures have had limited effectiveness in controlling upland erosion in Reach 3.” Or put simply, there is no sound reason to restore the dock as a means of erosion control.

    But there is even a huge irony in this limited effectiveness. It turns out that the Bell Estate dock has added to the private beach at the expense of the public beaches farther south. That’s right: The public has sacrificed to the private. Perhaps there is a reason for the zoning board to approve a variance that benefits private individuals at the expense of the larger public, but I cannot think of one, and I cannot imagine how public officials will tell their constituents that their public beaches are not as important as the private beach of a handful of wealthy landholders. In fact, the report calls the “sacrifice of recreational resources and public trust lands in order to protect private property . . . an unacceptable cost.”

    But even if you disregard the report and assume against all evidence that the private beach provides additional recreational resources, there is a further irony: The Broadview Association has campaigned tirelessly to prevent the citizens of this community from using the beach, even to the point of petitioning the town to place boulders at the entrance of the beach and of investigating hiring a guard to patrol the beach and keep ordinary citizens out. Citizens are only permitted to traverse the beach, i.e., walk from one place to another without stopping, which hardly qualifies as an additional recreational resource — except for the wealthy individuals who are entitled to use the beach.

    This dock was not created by nature. It was erected by Dennistoun Bell at a time, apparently, when the dock was actually used to dock boats — a use it no longer has. The opportunity to restore the beach to its natural state seems to me to supersede logically the opportunity to restore a dock to its pristine state, especially since it has in no way improved the beach, except, again, to shift usable beach from the public to a private association.

    I certainly appreciate that when it comes to clout, the wealthy and powerful summer residents have every possible advantage over the people, like me, who live here year round, who have raised our families here, sent our children to school here, conducted our businesses here, attended the churches and synagogues here, contributed to the community here, and vote here.

    I certainly appreciate that some board members may think that sparing the four or five wealthy summer residents who live on the Bell dunes from having to look out on a rotting dock far outweighs saving public beaches or restoring the beach to its natural state and that Dennistoun Bell’s so-called improvements are far better than God’s. But the only earthly reason to provide a variance for this entirely unnecessary rebuilding project is aesthetic — not to stave off erosion, not to provide more recreational resources for the public, not to provide bigger and better beaches to which the public would not have access anyway. In broader terms, it would set a terrible precedent, allowing private citizens to benefit at the public’s expense.

    Make no mistake. This isn’t about saving nature or building beaches. The dock does harm, not good. This is about helping four or five people who don’t want to look out on a rusty dock and are hoping that the zoning board will simply disregard the town’s own recommendations so that they won’t have to. I respectfully ask that the board vote “no.”

    Sincerely,

    NEAL GABLER

Amounts to Isolation

    East Hampton

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor:

    Your editorial in the last issue (“Restoring Old Views”) is a very welcome reminder of an issue which, except for the attention called to it by a few residents and officials like Dominick Stanzione, would go, I fear, completely unremarked.

    There is no question that the very character of the land on the South Fork has changed drastically over the last two or three dozen years. With every dense evergreen hedge added to a new house lot we lose a bit more of the quality, the beautiful views, and the cooling ocean breezes. Now even the Napeague stretch is quickly becoming a stark alleyway between tall stands of pine trees. I remember the wonder of that long, straight drive with ocean to the south, bay to the north. I haven’t glimpsed water from that section of road in a long time.

    This problem is not unique to the East End. I grew up in the Ketchum-Sun Valley area of Idaho. The views from every roadway and house of the almost barren, sage brush-covered hills giving way to pine trees and rocky outcroppings in the mountains beyond was wonderful. Now, like much of the East End and certainly all of the Village of East Hampton, all roads in that valley seem to be cut through dense walls of shrubbery and trees. Like the East End, the very character of the land, the initial attraction for so many of those who came there, is being or has been obliterated.

    I hope anyone who truly cares for this unique piece of land called the South Fork will enthusiastically support Proj­ect Open Vista. All this vaunted “privacy” really just amounts to isolation.

    And a particular thanks is due for printing Fran Castan’s “From an Undeclared War Zone.” I cannot imagine a more fitting way to commemorate Memorial Day.

FRED KOLO

Local Pride

    Springs

    May 30, 2011

Dear David:

    Last week was a good one for my sense of local pride.

    On Wednesday morning I joined my fellow members of the Old Montauk Athletic Club to help with the seventh annual Bonac On Board to Wellness 5K run-walk. It was a joy to see the energy as hundreds of students, faculty, and community supporters streamed across the finish line. Kudos to the village police for their provision of absolute support and safety. Long before the First Lady, this project for better nutrition and exercise initiated by the middle school nurse and health teacher has become a valuable fixture for our town.

    Later that day I heard that Alec Baldwin had donated $250,000 to Guild Hall. As a committee of one I would like to thank him for using his talent, celebrity, and resources to support so many community projects and organizations in our town and the metropolitan area.

    Over the years I’ve served on a number of scholarship committees. Reading the letters and school transcripts has always filled me with wonderment and pride in the kind of children this town produces and their level of achievement. It also leaves me with a sense of sadness and guilt that there are not enough resources to reward them all.

    Like all towns, ours has the good and the bad, but I would not trade it for any other place on earth.

HOWARD JOHN LEBWITH

 

Still Shocking

    Sag Harbor

    May 23, 2011

Dear David,

    The story (May 19) of an aggressive driver allegedly causing a very serious accident on the killing macadam of the Napeague stretch was unbelievable, but still shocking, especially since it was the very same operator of a vehicle who reportedly employed the same tactics five years ago against another Latino in Montauk, repeating nearly the very same modus operandi, except he didn’t struggle with Gustavo Torres in his road rage this time around, nor apparently did he use any anti-Latino slurs, as witness accounts in Montauk had it in connection with the 2005 incident.

    From the quote given by Detective Lt. Chris Anderson, it struck me as possibly the beginning of a cover-up for the driver, an ex-policeman and ex-firefighter. I would like to know why this driver was not given a sobriety test as a routine and fundamental instrument of investigation.

    I would like to know why the police seem eager to discount or question the account of the victim, as well as why the police failed to question the victim in pertinent detail, instead of blaming the victim for not telling the police at the time what he perceived to have happened, especially given this driver’s record as a person well known to the East Hampton police.

    Again, it appears to me there should be serious training of East Hampton police on proper protocols in hate-crime investigation, as this case may glaringly show.

    Thanks,

    MICHAEL O’NEILL

Blue Air

    East Hampton

    May 26, 2011

Dear East Hampton Star,

    Duck leaves tar.

    Windmill and steeple in front of blue air.

    Cincinnatus behind the lawn mower.

    Sincerely,

    FRED GASREL

Miss Moon

For the most marvelous Miss Moon on the day of her passing:

 

Fleecy pillow bed, clean and folded.

little bowl, washed and dried

and finally,

tucked away.

huge brave mighty beating heart

still, and from now on,

resounding silent.

How did such an enormous

amazing

self

ever

ever fit into

someone

so

small?  

 CAROLYN BISTRIAN

Mortgage Mess

    Springs

    May 23, 2011

Dear Editor:

    I wish to call attention to the first inkling that someone is going to investigate the too-big-to-fail, interlocking consortium of thieves who caused the financial disaster of 2008 and the continuing tragedy of the United States economy, indeed the world economy, that flowed from it.

    Apparently shortly before the 2010 election, the attorney general of Iowa, Tom Miller, stepped forward and claimed to enlist all the remaining 49 states’ attorneys general to pursue a united and comprehensive examination of the mortgage mess, foreclosures, etc., but nothing much came of it. Some imply that the extremely heavy donations from investment banks and law firms that flowed into his campaign coffers in those last two weeks before Election Day influenced his subsequent lack of enthusiasm for the task.

    But our own attorney general for New York, Eric Schneiderman, has stepped up. He campaigned that he would be a sheriff to both Wall Street and Albany and is focusing on Morgan Stanley, the Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs for starters. He plans to direct his attention to the securitization process‚ in which all those worthless mortgages were sliced and diced and sold, even sold short to their trusting customers.

    It would seem that Eric Holder should have undertaken this project, but I am grateful to Eric Schneiderman for taking on Wall Street and the banks and await satisfaction (jail time?) for the perpetrators whose greed has caused so much pain. Are you with me?

    Sincerely,

    HELEN FITZGERALD

Rich Man’s War

    Sag Harbor

    May 26, 2011

To the Editor,

    It has been a tradition that every time our nation goes to war, the poor are the first to lose their benefits, often to fight a rich man’s war.

    There has never been a war in history where the invaders openly said, “We’re going to war for money.” There is so much money to be made from war. In wartime the few make huge profits at the expense of the many. Most of the people who benefit from military buildups are already rich. The above is excerpted from an interview with Paul Chappell, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2002 who served in Iraq as an Army captain in 2006 and 2007.

    The Pentagon is the largest office building in the world, 1.7 miles of corridors where the arms merchants make their deals. For many years they have sold 60 percent of the world’s weapons to democracies, third world countries, and dictators and armed 150 nations, planting the seeds for future wars. Chuck Spinney, a former 30-year analyst for the Pentagon, said the Pentagon has $4 trillion unaccounted for. The Pentagon has also been referred to as the death lobby.

    In peace,

    LARRY DARCEY

Cold, Wet Cloth

    East Hampton

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor,

    Until Helen Rattray’s May 26 column, I had heard of many sects of Judaism, but I had never heard of the Oblivious Sect. Now summertime driving in the Hamptons makes so much more sense. Who knew? Do all Oblivions drive alike? If so, it would explain a lot. Also, there seems to be a secular Oblivious Manhattan Sect and an Oblivious Hispanic Sect; those who are obviously driving out here obliviously.

    After trying to decipher her column several times, I still do not understand what her Jewishness has to do with anything. Oblivious, I get. She is religiously a Progressive-Liberal first, foremost, and above all else.

    How dare she trivialize the murders of six million innocent Jews at the hands of the Nazis by making their murders akin to the justifiable and lawful waterboarding of two of Al Qaeda’s main planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks? Is she serious? Does she even know what the American version of waterboarding entails?

    Does she know that many of our combat servicemen are waterboarded as part of their training? It is because that is the least violent act that one might expect to endure as an American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine captured or otherwise trapped behind enemy lines.

    The process of waterboarding the way the Central Intelligence Agency practiced it is as follows: The subject is immobilized by being strapped to a board which rotates so that he is head down. He is blindfolded beforehand and rotated, face up, a cold, wet cloth is placed over his face, and water is poured over said wet cloth to give the reflex sensation of drowning. That is it. My initiation into the Neperhan Club at the Harvey School for Boys was worse than that. I was only 9 years old and I survived it, unscarred.

    Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times for a total of 266 waterboarding events. I hope that each received 11.2 pours at every event — one for each victim of their 9/11 plot. Or, maybe a better way to think of it is one waterboarding for each poor soul who either jumped from or burned to death on the top floors of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

    The point is that waterboarding worked. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed blurted out the code name of a Bin Laden courier during one of his waterboarding events — six years and a lot of hard work later, by many people whose names we, hopefully, will never know — pop, pop — some true evil disappeared from this world, justice at the hands of Seal Team Six. Thank you.

    So, now let’s move on to Stalin and his murder of 20 million (mostly) Jews and her idiotic assertion that there is any comparison to Charles Graner and Lynde England’s despicable behavior at the Abu Ghraib Prison. This rare exception does not prove her hypothesis. This is just more hyperbole, n’est-ce pas?

    Does she really think Mr. Graner and Ms. England’s disgusting behavior compares, in any way, to the barbarity of Saddam, Uday, and Qusay? That point is not debatable.

    Once again, gasp, pop-pop, justice served, thanks to the finest and most humane military force God ever assembled.

    As to her last point and the title of her piece, does she actually mean the United Nations flag? Again, is she serious?

    Al Qaeda declared war in the form of fatwas on the United States and its allies twice, August 1996 and February 1998, prior to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2011.

    In an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Sept. 12, 2001, the United Nations condemned the terrorist acts of 9/11. In a unanimous resolution (1368), the Security Council stated that a “terrorist attack on one country was an attack on all humanity.” The body recognized the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”

    I would suggest that she reread Article I, Section 1 of the U.N. peace treaty that she cites, paying particular attention to the last sentence, “It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

    Or, perhaps, she might mean the stars and bars of the Confederacy and Old Glory? The original Decoration Day was June 9, 1865, and was made a permanent Memorial Day a year later by the Ladies Memorial Association of Petersburg, Va.

    One of the principal active members was Nora F.M. Davidson, the founder of a school for young women. On June 9, she took her students to Blandford Cemetery and decorated the graves of Union and Confederate dead with flowers and flags. Her act inspired the establishment of a national Memorial Day by Grand Army of the Republic General Order Number 11, issued on the 5th of May, 1868.

    A great soldier summed up a true warrior’s view of the day with typical American spirit, bravery, and aplomb: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” — General George S. Patton

    It is too bad that, that sort of fundamental truth is so often missing from the opinion pages of The East Hampton Star.

    Sincerely,

    OTIS GLAZEBROOK IV

These Panderers

    East Hampton

    May  27, 2011

Dear Editor,

    It should be obvious to anyone who follows politics that one of the pre-eminent traits exhibited time after time by those holding or seeking political office is pandering. They see, or think they see, a position on an issue that will be advantageous to them that will enhance their standing with a particular voting group and they go for it like sharks after fresh bait. Truth does not enter the picture, nor do facts or arithmetic; whatever it takes to garner favor with the group is the road they follow.

    Now what better issue to single out as a prime example of pandering than the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts? The pro-Israel side is up for grabs, they think, and we can go for it. So they commence the lies and obfuscations. They color, distort, and do whatever they think it takes to enhance their standing with this those who strongly support Israel.

    Thus when President Obama attempted to restart talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, and referenced as starting point for the negotiations the 1967 borders, these panderers immediately took his comments out of context, dropped portions of his speech, ignored the history of the use of the 1967 borders, and attempted to create a controversy which would inure to their benefit and undermine the president’s stature amongst the Jewish community and other Israeli support groups.

    They did this even though the president’s suggested aims and goals were, somewhat belatedly, elaborated upon, echoed, and supported, almost in their entirety, by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So much for the bipartisan stance on foreign policy utilized by our political parties since the Civil War.

    There is no end to the hypocrisy of those seeking office and power. They fudge mathematical prognostications, make up their own facts, and just lie, lie, lie, and they do not even shy away when their lies are placed before them in the form of videotapes and prior statements.

    But this president moves ahead. His courage, impugned by insignificant former governors of Minnesota and the former speaker of the House and senate minority leader, is abundant and his vision enviable.

    Look and see the pandering, folks, then just ignore it and charge it up to the buffoons who use it.

    Barack Obama will be re-elected in 2012 even without the vote of Jerry della Femina.

RICHARD P. HIGER

One’s Ship Drifting

    Springs

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor,

    This may sound provocative to some, but it is true nonetheless.

    I moved to Springs in 2005, in part to live in the same place that Jackson Pollock did.

    I too consider myself an artist, and I feel that I share the same sense of spirit and resolve as he did to show others a new way of looking at the world around us. Like Cezanne, Picasso, and others before them, Pollock used his vision to channel possibilities from an alternate reality and manifest it right here in front of our eyes, and we then looked at art differently.

     Many others, known and unknown, have changed the way we view our world through their insights and thereby altered our evolving now since our first moment of human consciousness. In recent times, Frank Lloyd Wright did it with architecture, and Thomas Jefferson did it with government. I do it with time. But when it came to living someplace and being from Long Island, Springs was a more convenient move for me than Illinois or Monticello. Besides, I love the ocean.

    But of all those that have come before and offered a new way of looking at things, I feel I have the most in common with Isaac Newton, who I don’t think ever heard of Springs. I feel this commonality not just because we were both born prematurely and small and had difficult circumstances as children our perceivable conditional similarities would seem to end there, but because he too could see what was going on all around us that was invisible to others, just as I do, and he used this knowledge to help us build a better world.

    Even though things had been falling down in plain sight of others forever, in a thought of enlightened vision  evolved through years of contemplation and knowledge he saw the reason that things fell down. In an identical fashion, I see the reason why each moment in our universe becomes the next, and why everything becomes as it does. Kind of like Newton’s theories of universal gravity apply to the back-office force that seemingly controls the movement of things, my view of our electromagnetically dynamic universe applies to the back office force that controls the creation of our individual and collective reality, the whole universe, and causes the illusions of time and gravity themselves.

    I know. You don’t believe me, but it’s true.

    Time has been seen and used as a measurable force by man for over 15,000 years, starting with moon phases and ice age hunters, gravity for a (big) tad less. Both are not real or essential forces, but rather local manifestations of electromagnetism as everything in our universe constantly repels and attracts from what it is to what it will be, based upon its nature and environment. To us it appears as time and gravity, things getting older and things falling down, but older and younger and up and down are terms that are relative to a fixed perspective of limited view, and not representative of the Big Picture.

    We have created ways of measuring the effects of the constant attraction and repelling of all things in our universe into systems that beget formulas that allow us to constructively use this power to create our man-made world, like time and gravity. But just as the understanding of those invisible forces and the creation of systems for their measurement and use of the knowledge and understanding from this facilitates the construction of our buildings as well as our individual life experiences, understanding the essential force that creates the illusions of time and gravity can improve our accuracy in creating a world of our liking and choosing.

    Much like vulnerable sailors of days gone by whose lives were lost for the want of a proper longitude (a manifestation made possible by the evolved accuracy of our system of portable timekeeping), charting one’s course for the future without proper declination can result in one’s ship drifting way off course and into unfavorable conditions, with tragic consequences. Understanding where time comes from and at what speed and from which direction can help one better use the tool of time to more effectively sculpt a preferred reality.

    I enjoy showing people this new and interesting way of looking at how our world works. Anyone interested in finding out for free in a nondogmatic way how and why the world around us works as it does and where time comes from can contact me via e-mail or Google my pseudonym, Michael Galileo and visit my Web site.

    By the way, there are 101 days from the beginning of Memorial Day weekend until midnight on Labor Day this year. That’s 8.726 million seconds to be experienced and savored one at a time. Happy summer, everyone!

RICHARD M. KOSTURA

 

 

    In all, nearly a mile of East Hampton’s oceanfront shoreline could become off limits to the public if parallel lawsuits brought by a group of property owners prevail. There is a great risk that stretches of beach in Amagansett and on Napeague would be, in effect, privatized after centuries of being open to all who wished to pass. The property owners are claiming that a 19th-century sale by the East Hampton Town Trustees reserved for them alone the use of the area above the high-tide line. If they win in court, everything from beach driving to birdwatching could be blocked when the tide is up.

So far, the trustees and town board have mounted a lackluster defense of a tradition considered almost sacrosanct. The trustees chose Sag Harbor’s village attorney to handle the case, and the town, also named in the suit, has had an inactive town attorney, who was removed from daily responsibilities in July after a dispute, on the case. Neither has the kind of litigation experience necessary for taking on a matter this important. 

It is to some measure the fault of the trustees and town board that the claim of private ownership reached the point of litigation in the first place. The rules governing beach driving are rarely enforced, especially in the early morning and evening hours, and the so-called “truck beach” on Napeague has become too crowded in summer. During the fall bass runs, pedestrians find the beach almost impassable because of all the tire ruts. This is not to say that the plaintiffs would not have filed the lawsuits had, for example, four-wheeler permit checks been more rigorous. However, a more active role by police and marine patrol officers might have helped avert the current high-stakes legal confrontation.

Faced with the prospect of being reviled as the group that lost the beaches, and perhaps resigning themselves to defeat, officials are said to be privately considering the possibility of condemnation if the town does not prevail in court. But well before the matter advances that far, the town board and trustees should re-evaluate their defense team and its strategy, and take immediate steps to increase their firepower.

The public trust doctrine, which involves access to waterways and other assets, and the East Hampton Town Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, which carries the force of state law, could perhaps be brought to bear on these suits. Furthermore, a reasonable question might be whether the 1882 land sale cited by the property owners in itself violated the law by giving away something the trustees did not have the right to abandon, namely, free passage along the shore.  

From colonial times onward, the public has had a vested right to use the beach. Those who value the continued freedom of the beaches should demand that town officials spare no effort or expense in taking on this fight.