Charity Robey

Metered Spot on Columbus- Metropolitan Diary, Sunday February 7, 2021.

        

 

 

 

Despite pandemic, volunteers pitch in to provide Thanksgiving to 70 seniors

Brian Westervelt and Cathy Driscoll stand by at 18 Bay Thanksgiving morning to deliver hot meals, as soon as Mary Faith Westervelt and Father Peter DeSanctis get them packed and blessed. (Credit: Charity Robey)

 

 

 

 

THE UNMISTAKABLE FRAGRANCE of roast turkey flowed through the kitchen door at 18 Bay on Thanksgiving morning, as a team of volunteers assembled a feast of turkey, green beans, dressing, gravy, and cranberry sauce for a party of 70 scattered all over the Island.

The elegant front room of the restaurant was taken over by long tables holding rows of paper sacks, and plastic clamshell containers, each with a generous slice of pumpkin pie.

Working down a list of names and addresses put together by the staff at the Senior Center, Lions Club volunteers Mary-Faith Westervelt and John D’Amato packed the stay-warm containers of turkey and fixings as fast as Chefs Jaime Cogan and David Juzapavicus could bring them out of the kitchen.

As each meal was packed, it passed under the eyes of Father Peter DeSanctis just long enough to receive a quality control check and benediction. “That’s 15 done,” Ms. Westervelt called to Chef Cogan as the first wave left. “We’re ready for more.”

A volunteer deliverer stuck his head in the door about three minutes before his shift, and was met with a look that went through Ms. Westervelt’s glasses and right over her mask.

“Later,” she said. “You are here too early. Everybody is spaced apart for a reason.” 

Fifteen minutes later he was loaded with dinners and rolled out. 

The delivering volunteers who fanned out across the Island in a race against cooling gravy included Brian Westervelt, Cathy Driscoll, Lucy Browne, Mike Russo, Jeanne Woods, Thom Milton, Anna Marie Rampmaier, Jo-Ann Robotti, Joe Messing, Chuck and Linda Kraus, Ken and Marilynn Pysher, Suzanne Louer and Glen Whelpley.

The recipients were seniors, living alone with few possibilities for visitors in this terrible year. One of them was George Strom, celebrating both Thanksgiving and his 94th birthday without family.

A birthday card packed in with his dinner brought a smile to his face, which lifted the hearts of the volunteers who delivered it.

Hirotsugu Aoki, an artist afoot

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last spring, a man commenced to walk the roads of Shelter Island every day. Accompanied by a beautiful brown dog, he carried a camera. Hirotsugu Aoki, (everyone, including his wife calls him Aoki) follows a daily ritual — walk seven miles, and take pictures. Soon he noticed that he had become an object of curiosity,

“There are not too many little Japanese guys around here,” he said.

Last week, Aoki agreed to sit for a few minutes outside STARs Café and tell me who he is and how he got here.

He was frequently interrupted to greet friends and allow Finnegan (the aforementioned beautiful, brown dog) to accept high-value treats. 

Aoki was born in Yokohama in 1943, the fourth of five children. His parents were doctors.  A traffic accident when he was 15 left him hospitalized with a brain injury.

“I heard the doctor saying to my mother that he did not think I was going to make it,” he said. “Somehow I survived, but I stopped growing.”

He graduated from high school, but admits he didn’t go much in the last year, in part due to the lingering effects of his brain injury. “I realized how fragile and unreal life is, and that I could be gone forever,” he said. “I think that’s why I stopped going to school.”

Trained as a painter after seeing a show in Tokyo of contemporary art including paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Josef Albers, he decided to move to New York in 1967 to pursue his interest in avant-garde art.

“At that time in New York, you didn’t have to do much to support yourself,” he said. Working as a carpenter, he painted and hung out with a lot of other poor artists, some of whom, such as the conceptual artist On Kawara and the video artist Nam June Paik, later became famous.

“I was a hippie,” Aoki said. 

In 1969, living in an unheated loft with winter coming on, Aoki met Teresa O’Connor, a professor at CUNY. “I needed a girlfriend with a nice warm apartment,” he said. “And I needed to learn English, and she was an English professor.”

They married in 1972.

A commercial photographer asked him to construct a prop for a photo shoot, and impressed with how much money he was paid, Aoki decided making models for commercial photographers was a good way to make a living.

In 1974, he was one of a group of artists who bought 132 Greene Street, a 19th-century cast iron loft building in SoHo. He took an entire floor of the empty warehouse — 3,000 square feet, as his studio and home.

“I had to make it livable and I needed a lot of money for lumber,” he remembered. “So, it was good that I got into model making.”

Aoki’s and Teresa’s son Owen was born in 1981. Eight years later, they adopted a boy they named Siever. Their third child is Leilei, who Teresa met and fell in love with in China. Leilei became their daughter three years after Siever arrived.

Today, Owen works for a financial company and lives in Singapore, and Siever and Leilei came to Shelter Island from New York with Aoki and Teresa in April.

Aoki’s side of the family still lives in Japan, including his mother, who is 107. “I think she’s tired of living, but she’s OK,” he said. “Every time I go to Japan, I say this is the last time.”

As his career developed, Aoki began to work in movies, where his designs and creations had to do things, like explode, or move across the sky. He began to design and direct his own special effects. In 1990, he worked on “Back to the Future … The Ride,” visualizing and designing the film effects for the wild ride in a flying DeLorean that thrilled visitors to the Universal Studios theme parks.

Aoki’s talents were in high demand, but 60 to 70 hours per week of work was ruining his health, and in the early 80s he was diagnosed with angina. He resolved to change his living habits by getting outdoors and out of the city on weekends.

He and Teresa had been regular visitors to her brother Jack O’Connor’s Shelter Island home but after his death in 1983, they decided to buy a house and land in the Catskills for weekends, which they later sold when the kids lost interest.

A second health scare in 2011 prompted Aoki to begin walking seven miles every day around his SoHo home. In April, with the virus raging in New York, they left SoHo with Siever and Leilei for Shelter Island, and in December they’ll move into a rented house owned by an old Shelter Island friend, Wendy Murdock. 

When Aoki began his long daily walks in April, he was one of very few pedestrians on the Island. “I took photographs of scenery at first and it was so boring,” he said. “As I got to know people, I could ask people to be in my picture.”  

Finnegan made many friends too, and Aoki took pictures of folks holding Finnegan’s leash. “Taking pictures is kind of a hobby but I really enjoy doing it. I just want to do it for myself, but I would like to be better,” he said. “I’m not a weird guy.”

The images of Shelter Island on Aoki’s Facebook page are luminous; a spacious, open-hearted take on the Island’s big skies, scenic corners and unusual architecture, starring the dogs and people who live here.

In Aoki’s eye, an abandoned boat in an untended lot is a still life. The hundreds of images he has posted are a portrait of an unpretentious place during a fraught time in its history.

He said, “Some people here have a lot of money, but there is less concern with social status than East Hampton. I like that very much.”

The O’Connor-Aoki family have been celebrating Thanksgiving in SoHo with at least 30 people for many years, a sort of friends and family pot luck. This year there will be just five around their Shelter Island table. Although they have been invited to join friends on the Island, they’re staying close.

Aoki said, “I’m enjoying my life, and I don’t want to make it any shorter.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A camera.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? I like the Heights because of the architecture.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? London.

What exasperates you? Mr. Trump.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? When Cristina Cosentino at the Sylvester Manor Farm told me I can just go in and walk around the farm. I didn’t know that.

Favorite movie or book? ‘The Deer Hunter.’

Favorite food? Sushi.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  The painter, Vermeer.  

Most respected elected official, present or past? Mr. Obama.

Love in a cold climate: The secret to finding true love? Shop local

I WOULD NOT wish any companion in the world but you.

— Miranda to Ferdinand in “The Tempest,” by William Shakespeare

There’s something special about finding true love on an island. Here are the stories of four Island couples whose love was kindled on Shelter Island. Some required more kindling than others, but all have stood the test of time.

Pat and Steve Lenox,together for 52 years

In 1968 the Chequit had a great bar on the ground floor, and when Pat and Steve Lenox met there a band called Jacob’s Ladder was playing. Before that night, Pat had already decided she was moving to Boston to try big city life, but in three months she was back.

“She couldn’t live without me,” said Steve, and there must be some truth in that because they were married a few months after, and are still inseparable five decades later.

Asked what was (so far) their best moment as a couple, Steve said, “First child, second child, third child. I told Patty, I wanted to have three children, and she kept saying two’s plenty, two’s plenty. She walked in one day and said, “You got your damn wish.”

In 1998 they built a diner-style restaurant called Pat and Steve’s that quickly became a center of Island life. “Doing the restaurant, that was a big thing in our lives,” Pat said. “It was something that I always wanted to do, and I was lucky enough that Steve agreed to it.”

Today it’s still going strong, called The Islander, and owned by Ashley Knight and Chris Chobor.

Pat and Steve are in Florida right now, fishing and getting outside, and on a recent drive Pat saw a billboard offering quickie divorces. “Holy cow, a divorce for $350?” she said.

They have a way of agreeing on most things, so they won’t be taking advantage of Florida’s bargain prices on divorce.

“We’ll be back next month,” said Steve.

”He’s always there,” Pat said. “My best friend.”

Mary Fran Gleason and Tom Bliss, together for 20 years

Mary Fran and Tom met in high school on Shelter Island in the 1970s. “We met on the basketball court, I was playing basketball and she stole my sunglasses,” Tom said. 

But then there was that thing at the tree. Tom had been seeing other people, and Mary Fran asked him to meet her under one of the Island’s oldest trees to talk it out. 

“I never showed up,” Tom said. “Shortly after that I left the Island and headed for California and I never did get those sunglasses back.”   

Thirty years passed. Mary Fran and Tom married other people, lived far away, and established careers, but something was missing. 

At the Shelter Island School’s all-class reunion in 2000, they found each other again. Initially, Mary Fran thought she’d skip it. “I never liked anyone in my class, and then my sister said, ‘Tommy Bliss is here and is asking about you.’”

Tom confirms that he wondered aloud if his old flame might be there. “When we met at the reunion, we knew there was still something going on.”

In the reunion’s golf tournament, they played in different foursomes and when Mary Fran told him she shot a 46, he said, “I knew I had to bring up my game.” 

The end of the reunion left them both shaken; married to other people, regretting what could have been. “When I got home I wrote him an email,” Mary Fran said.

It took a few years to sort it all out but by 2002 they were married, this time to each other.

One thing that’s remained unchanged in the 50 years since they met in high school, is Tom’s unique way of showing affection. “I like to pinch her ear,” he said.  “Yeah, we tease each other incessantly,” Mary Fran said. “He’s a pest. I hit his arm, like a little kid would hit his mean brother. We’re very compatible that way.”

The matter of who is the better golfer remains contested.

Marie Eiffel and Jason Penney, together for 12 years.

Marie Eiffel’s life on Shelter Island started after a 2002 automobile accident that very nearly killed her. In 2005, living in an unheated garage in Sag Harbor, she opened a consignment store in the Center, and one day Jason Penney, a New York-based photographer with a wife and two kids walked in and bought a lamp.

Marie found out later that a mutual friend advised Jason to visit the shop, “and see if you can buy something because that poor girl has no money.” When he bought the lamp, she told him it was her favorite piece, “It was!” she said. “And because I thought he was cute I added, “I want to see how it looks in your place.’”

Whenever Jason visited the Island, he stopped by Marie’s store, and one day he asked her where she was living. She confessed she was living in the unheated garage, and was totally broke. “He said, ‘But it’s so cold,’ and I thought, this guy has a heart.”

He offered her a room in his under-construction home while he was away for three months, and Marie later found a heated apartment on the Island.

During the 2008 recession, Jason lost most of his photography clients, separated from his wife, sold his apartment and was looking for a place to live. “When I said, you can stay with me … we started kissing. He moved in to my apartment and that’s how we started our relationship.”

He brought along the lamp.

Marie Eiffel has expanded her businesses since then, with Jason at her side.

“Everyone says it’s impossible to meet someone on this Island. I always say maybe you want a job with me. It’s a great place to meet people.”

Shelby Willumsen and Michael Mundy, together for 10 years (unless you count elementary school).

Mike and Shelby were childhood sweethearts, although Michael swears he was still playing the field at the Shelter Island elementary school. “I was always looking around,” he said.

When it got too weird in middle school to be dating someone who was more like a sibling than a sweetheart, their relationship became a friendship, and they dated people they didn’t know so well.

In 2010, Michael enlisted in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Afghanistan. Shelby was at college in North Carolina, and missing Michael, she wrote him a letter. They started corresponding, and every three or four weeks, when Michael could get to a computer or phone he’d call her.

In 2012, when he arrived at Newark Airport at the end of his deployment, his siblings were holding a welcome home poster large enough to hide Shelby, who popped out from behind it.

“I was in complete shock,” Michael said. “I had no idea that anyone knew we were talking to each other.”

“I think his mom got excited when I said I wanted to come along to surprise him.” Shelby said. “They knew something was up.”

After being apart during his second deployment to Okinawa, they were finally able to live together, and married in October of 2018.

A year later, they experienced what they both say is their best moment as a couple, the birth of their son, Maverick.

“It was hard. A lot of sleepless nights, of Michael seeing me the most emotional I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Shelby said. “Needing him to be there to tell me it’s all right, we’re doing this together. It’s definitely opened up our communication even more.”

While Michael and Shelby were telling their story, Shelby had given Maverick some cherry tomatoes to play with, and the toddler was happily making a marinara sauce as she described the support of their large Shelter Island-based families. “I love Michael’s family. I love his sisters. They’re my sisters now. ”

“Starting a family,” Michael said, “puts a whole other level on it.”

via shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com

Remembering Forrest Compton- Soldier, actor, Shelter Islander-who died Sunday April 5, 2020.

Forrest Compton, the actor who played Mike Karr on The Edge of Night, is dead at 94 of COVID-19.

Forrest Compton, the television actor who for 12 years played Mike Karr in the soap opera The Edge of Night,died on April 4 in Stonybrook Southampton Hospital from complications of COVID-19.  He was 94. Tall and handsome, with a voice that carried the authority of the word of God, he often represented the moral center in his television roles, and his experience of war and soldiering informed his acting.

Born in 1925, Compton grew up in Reading, Pa. In 1944 he entered the Army and served with the 103^st Infantry Division in France, where he was wounded by a German mortar shell, recovered, and returned to his company in time to witness the liberation of a concentration camp. He later recalled that moment: “Skeletons in purple and white stripes— Jews from the concentration camp…hundreds of them asking us, Warum, Why?  Why did you take so long?”

Compton attended Swarthmore and the Yale Drama School, where Paul Newman was a classmate. “He was a great guy, charming sharp, six months older than me.  I remember Paul making salad dressing, even back then.” Cast in Playboy of the Western World, Compton remembered his fine blond hair falling out from having a curling iron applied to it every night.

In television comedies of the 1960s, he played it straight, appearing in 42 episodes of Gomer Pyle as Lieutenant Colonel Edward Gray and in five episodes of Hogan’s Heroes as a German soldier. He also appeared in The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, Mannix, That Girl and Mayberry RFD.

            In 1971, while visiting his ailing father in New York, Compton was cast as Mike Karr, the principal character on the long-running soap opera The Edge of Night. Slated to appear in two episodes a week for 13 weeks, he needed an apartment in the city immediately and asked the super of a building on East 72^nd about a one-bedroom he’d heard might be available.

Compton later learned that the super was such a devotee of The Edge of Night that he locked his office door every day at 2 p.m. to watch uninterrupted and was once ticketed on a Florida highway when he stopped on the shoulder to watch the soap opera on a portable television. When Compton mentioned that he had just been hired to play Mike Karr, the super said the apartment was his.

Compton's wife, Jeanne Sementini died less than a month after him. They met when she was almost 40 and he almost 50, and neither had been previously married. “She was just different enough from me that it was going to be an adventure,” said Compton. “I think she felt the same way.” They married in 1975.

After his work on The Edge of Night ended in 1984, Compton began spending most of his time at the home he and Ms. Sementini bought in 1978 on Shelter Island, N.Y. Compton was active in regional theater and served as president of the Shelter Island Friends of Music.  As erudite as he was charming, he sought out up-and-coming classical musicians to perform for Shelter Island music lovers at the Presbyterian Church, introducing each artist with a timbre that gave their biographies the heft of scripture.

Opening day is a no show–for scallops and baymen

A deserted Congdon Creek dock at sunrise on Monday’s Opening Day of scallop season. (Credit: Charity Robey)

AS THE SUN rose on the first Monday in November, Shelter Island’s Congdon Creek town dock was deserted — not what you expect on opening day for bay scallop fishing.

A few minutes later, bayman John Kotula arrived, but not to go scalloping.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Kotula said, ignoring a stiff wind and soul-sapping 39 degrees. 

One of the few remaining Shelter Island commercial fishermen, he stood in his boat, Nancy’s Devotion, trying to decide whether to check his conch pots, or go home. Going for scallops was not an option, even if the wind hadn’t been blowing hard. As he knew all too well, there weren’t any to be had.

Shelter Island bayman John Kotula was one of the few fisherman who showed up at Congdon Creek landing on Opening day for the 2200 scallop season. But it wasn’t worth it to go for the shellfish, he said. (Credit: Charity Robey)

For hundreds of years bay scallops have been a source of joy and income to East End fishermen. Tiny and sweet, their season spans the coldest months when there’s not much else to fish for. Even after the adult bay scallops died last year, there was a glimmer of hope with a bumper crop of juvenile scallops.

Keith and Louise Clark of Shelter Island renewed the license for the scallop-processing facility in their basement, an act that was equal parts stubbornness and ungrounded optimism.

“We registered our shop and got our licenses all squared away, but got nothing to deal with,” said Mr. Clark.

The advance reports were so grim, the Clarks didn’t even go out long enough to see for themselves, although Mr. Clark put the culling boards on the boat, and will go out for a look later this week if the wind dies down.

“Most of us need some type of income,” Mr. Clark said. “We’ve just come to the conclusion that there is no money to be made on scalloping.”

Island bayman Tom Field was also a no-show for opening day 2020. Last year he took 12 scallops the first day, and spent the rest of the winter on an 86-foot squid trawler, work he used to do in high school, before he was on his own. This year, he’s fishing the Hudson Canyon instead of the Peconic Bay, even though he said, “I’d rather be working for myself than somebody else.”

Mass mortality

The death of the adult bay scallops in 2019 was shocking, but hope truly eroded in August of this year when researchers and baymen documented a second mass mortality.  According to surveys conducted by Cornell Cooperative researcher Stephen Tettelbach, Ph.D., at three sites with the highest density of adult scallops in the spring of 2020, close to 100% of the adult scallops were dead by the end of August. 

While some scallopers were finding new work, like Mr. Field, researchers were trying to find out what killed the shellfish, and what if anything could be done about it.

An initial study, conducted by Bassem Allam,Ph.D., of the Marine Animal Disease Laboratory at Stony Brook University, reported in January 2020 that 100% of the scallop samples gathered in Peconic Bay carried a parasite that could kill the scallop under stressful environmental conditions. Parasites were also found in bay scallops taken in the waters around Nantucket, where the water is cooler, and where no mass die-offs have occurred.

Although he must conduct more research to prove it, Mr. Allam suspects that stressors, such as increased water temperature and low-dissolved oxygen–symptoms of climate change, in combination with the parasite, may be causing the death of the adult scallops.

Funding any kind of research in the current climate is difficult to find, but the Cornell Cooperative Extension got some federal funds through the Paycheck Protection Program, and hired baymen to conduct dredge surveys to monitor the scallop population over the summer.

One such contract went to Wayne and Donna King of Shelter Island. “We did find some bugs,” said Donna, speaking about immature scallops. “But almost no adult scallops.” They skipped opening day this year. Mr. King said. “You don’t go out in wind like this if you don’t expect to get even a bushel.”

The couple hoped to go later in the week and find enough for their dinner.

A human-induced catastrophe

The progress that Mr. Allam made in understanding what is killing bay scallops gives him hope that it can be addressed. By testing scallops with different genetic backgrounds, he discovered that some are more resistant to disease and death due to environmental factors such as temperature.

“All scallops are not created equal. Some succumb more rapidly to disease,” he said. “That means there may be a way to improve the stock with selective breeding.” 

Mr. Tettelbach’s collaboration with Mr. Allam has solidified his view that the ultimate enemy of the bay scallop is the environmental effects of human-induced warming.

“High temperature, low dissolved oxygen, in combination with the disease,” he said. “Now I feel more strongly that it’s likely due to climate change.”

With the worldview of a historian, and the practicality of a fisherman, bayman Keith Clark doesn’t see how technological advances have done much to improve scallop numbers so far.

“I don’t think there is any hope that we could get back to where we were at the turn of the last century, when it wasn’t unusual for the big sailing sloops to come in with a hundred bushels a day,” he said.

He worries about the bay scallop’s ability to bounce back as it has in the past, “We had brown tide, and a bad run in the 80s,” Mr. Clark noted, “but when you see back-to-back years with zero scallop population, it’s not good.”

 

Making history, and making dinner

(Credit: Charity Robey)

THE THANKSGIVING SPREAD at my house this year may be heartbreakingly modest, but I’ll still take pictures of the toy turkey and the mini-marshmallows on my sweet spuds.

I’m not just making dinner, I’m making history.

There is nothing like the weight of history to feed my urge to document what we eat. On the day my first child was born, I made stew, chili and soup, went into labor, and did not step out of the kitchen until every bite was labeled and stored.

People said it was “nesting instinct” but my instinct was to preserve and document every dish I made on the most important day of my life.

I reacted the same way to the COVID emergency that forced me to cancel all plans and shelter in place last spring. I started keeping track of every meal on a chalkboard in the kitchen.

Eight months later, looking back at the list of dishes I made that first week, the fear (will I be able to buy another ham hock, or is this my last batch of Cuban black beans, ever?) and the anxiety (why, Oh Kitchen Gods, did my oven have to die now?) of the first week of shut-down returns.

I wasn’t the only one creating a record of repast. Linda Zavatto started baking cookies for homebound friends years ago, but when suddenly everyone was homebound, she decided to ramp up production.

Starting in March, she baked a different cookie recipe every week, and as of this week has baked 24 batches of cookies from a mix of favorite recipes and new discoveries.

Keeping four cookies from each batch for herself, she posts the beautiful bakes on Instagram and distributes the rest. “I’ll keep baking and waiting for this virus to subside,” she said. “Although I have been told recently by one of my recipients that I cannot stop, ever!”

What we eat expresses our experience; not just what fruits are in season, or what kind of fish is running, but the need for comfort, to make do with what is on hand, and the deep appreciation for a treat, whether it’s a fancy homemade cookie or a take-out meal.

Farm Manager Cristina Cosentino sees how food creates the connections so many of us are desperate for. Sales of Sylvester Manor-grown produce at the farm stand this year increased by 200% over last year, and sales in November are still at levels usually seen at the height of the summer season.

“People are more willing to go to small farms for their food as a result of the pandemic,” Cristina said.  “With few opportunities for outings and socializing, the farm stand and CSA pick-up became people’s chance to get out and socialize.”

To preserve the pandemic history being made right here, the Shelter Island Historical Society put out a call for accounts of life on the Island during COVID. In came a book of photographs documenting 60 days of meals cooked and eaten by Karen Kiaer, a long-time Island resident, and her friend Jaquelyn Ottman, who came East from her home in New York City to ride out the storm in Karen’s Hay Beach aerie.

What started as an open-ended invitation from Island-dwelling Kiaer to city-dwelling friend, became a journal of the plague year when Ottman, who was researching a book about food waste and leftovers, decided to pivot to pandemic food history. Together they cooked and ate meals while sheltering in a community Ottman wrote, “where everyone seemed to be pulling together.” 

Ottman documented each meal in pictures and prose. The result, “Connecting from a Quarantine Kitchen” tells a story of friendship and resilience expressed in daily meals.

When Terry Lucas, the director of the Shelter Island Library, was exiled from the stacks by COVID, she also documented her kitchen activities with an eye to history. Shots of her ferry-commute on Instagram were replaced with mouth-watering photos of weekend cooking projects, including a puffy, olive-oil soaked focaccia that still haunts me in a good way.

Terry found connection through her food in the real world as well as the virtual one as she and her neighbor left packages of goodies on each other’s doorsteps when face-to-face meetings were not safe.

And she started keeping a journal. “I think the urge to document things during this time was really strong,” Terry wrote. “My great-grandkids might want to know about life during the pandemic someday. This time is something I could have never imagined, and I feel like it should be remembered.”

A different Thanksgiving, but pie is always on the menu.

Turkey Pot Pie, Onion Raisin Pie and Apple Pie. (Credit: Charity Robey)

THANKSGIVING AT MY house will be the same as every year in one way only. There will be turkey.

Missing will be the crack team of side-dish cookers, and the army of eaters. Missing also will be the SWAT team that descends on the kitchen to clear away the rubble as the cooks lie exhausted on the couch. 

We’ll do all that again next year. This year I’ll comfort my podmates (a man and a dog) with a rich and flaky turkey pot pie.

My preferred method for a flaky piecrust is to tip a barely-mixed glob of flour, butter, egg yolks, and milk onto the counter, gather it into a hill, and mash the heel of my hand down through the dough.

Then I shape it into two one-inch thick disks, wrap them tightly in plastic and refrigerate them for at least two hours, before rolling and baking.

The result is dough with streaks of smashed butter sandwiched between layers of flour. Once it’s rolled out and baked, the resulting crust is delicate and buttery, and very flaky. It’s a terrific top crust for a savory pot pie and just as delicious as the base for sweet pies such as these two traditional Thanksgiving treats, Onion Raisin Pie and Apple Pie. 

Rich and flaky pie crust

Adapted from Joanne Chang’s recipe, “Pastry Love,” 2019

Makes two 9-inch piecrusts, or enough for a 10-inch apple pie and lattice top.

1 and ¾cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

2 egg yolks

3 tablespoons cold milk

1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand-mixer.

2. Add the 12 pieces of butter all at once, and use the paddle attachment to slowly combine until the mixture just holds together when you grab a handful. There will be visible lumps of butter.

3. Mix the yolks and milk and add all at once to the butter/flour mixture. Mix very briefly, just until it comes together into a shaggy mess.

4. Dump the mixture out onto the table and gather it into a tight mound. Using the palm of your hand, smear the dough from the top down the side of the mound to the table piece by piece, until the butter chunks are smeared into the dough, and the whole thing comes together. Press the dough into two flattened disks about 8 inches in diameter and an inch thick, and cover tightly in plastic wrap.

5. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

6. Roll each dough package out into a 10-inch circle, to line a 9-inch pie pan, or to drape over the top of your pot pie.

7. If you are going to blind bake the crust, refrigerate it in the pie pan for at least 30 minutes.

8. To blind bake, line the crust with a coffee filter or parchment, held down with dried beans or pie weights. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, until the edges are pale brown.

9. Remove the crust from the oven, and remove the pie weights and coffee filter.

Turkey Pot Pie

8 servings

1 cup sliced shallot

1 cup sliced carrots

2 garlic cloves, crushed and
coarsely chopped.

2 cups broccoli rabe trimmed and very coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cups roasted turkey

3 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons flour

2 cups chicken or turkey stock

1 cup heavy cream

1 9-inch unbaked pie crust

1 egg mixed with ½ teaspoon of water to make an egg wash

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Toss the shallots, carrots, garlic and broccoli rabe in the olive oil, and roast on parchment or foil in a sheet pan for 20 minutes until tender, stirring once.

2. Cut or tear the roasted turkey meat into bite-sized pieces. Mix the turkey and vegetables together in a large bowl.

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan until it is foamy, add the flour stirring until it is thick and bubbly, about 2 minutes. Add the stock, and stir over medium high heat until it cooks down – about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat, add the cream and continue stirring until the mixture thickens again. Add a pinch of salt and four grinds of pepper.

4. Combine the cream mixture with the turkey and vegetables. Scrape into a 10-inch diameter deep dish pie plate.

5. Roll pie crust to a 10.5-inch circle, using short, fast strokes, and working from the middle of the circle out to the edges. Drape the pastry over the rolling pin, and use it to transfer the dough to the top of the pie pan, draping the pastry over the top of the dish, and sealing the edges with your fingers. 

6. Brush the pie with the egg/water mix, cut four slits in the crust to allow steam to escape, and place the pie pan on a sheet pan.

7. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, lower the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for another 25 minutes, until the pie crust is golden, and the contents are steaming up through the vents in the crust. Let the pie sit for 10 minutes before serving it.

Onion Raisin Pie

8 servings

One 9-inch blind-baked piecrust

¼ cup butter

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 pounds of onions, peeled, halved and sliced.

¼ cup black raisins

¼ teaspoon of salt

Ground pepper

3 eggs

½ cup of sour cream

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Make an 9-inch piecrust and blind-bake until light brown.

3. Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet, add the onions, raisins, salt and pepper, and cook over low heat until the onions reduce in volume by at least half, and are soft and golden.

4. In a bowl, beat the eggs, and add the sour cream, beating until the mixture is smooth.

5. Spoon the mixture into the baked piecrust.

6. Scrape the onion mixture into the pie, place the pie on a sheet pan, and bake at 350 degrees until the egg mixture is set, about 15 minutes.

Apple Pie

8 servings

One 9-inch piecrust, plus another crust for the lattice top.

8 cups of peeled, cored and sliced apples, preferably a mixture of tart (Granny Smith) and sweet (Gala), crispy (Honeycrisp) and soft (Macoun) varieties.

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup flour

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

An egg mixed with ½ teaspoon of water for a wash.

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll one of the unbaked piecrusts into a 10-inch circle, line a 9-inch pie pan, leaving a ¼ inch lip of crust all around, and blind-bake until light brown, about 30 minutes.

2. Roll the second (unbaked) pie crust into a rectangle ¼ inch thick, and 11 inches long. Refrigerate it until ready to use.

3. While the crust is baking, combine the apples, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and salt. Mound it into the still warm, baked crust.

4. Cut the refrigerated dough into eight 11-inch strips.  Drape four strips parallel to each other across the pie. Drape the four remaining strips perpendicular to the first four to make a lattice top over the apples, and press the strips into the lip of the crust with your fingers.

5. Brush the lattice and crust with the egg wash. 

6. Place the pie on a sheet pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 30 minutes. The lattice will be golden brown and puffy, and the apples will soften and collapse. Remove from the oven and serve warm.

Kitchen table issues

YOU COULD GO about your business on Shelter Island for years without thinking about your neighbor’s political party or who they are likely to vote for.

You might know where the person who delivers your propane stands on the question of whether yard sales should be regulated, or the school budget passed, and still have no idea how they feel about who should be the president of the United States.

But not this year. Everyone is wearing their yard sign on their sleeve.

Last week, one presidential candidate mocked the other for talking about the importance of the kitchen table as a place where Americans share ideas. Worse, it happened during a debate intended to give the candidates an opportunity to share those ideas. It’s one thing to attack the media. This guy went after my kitchen table.

In my house, the kitchen table is a sacred space. Even if the table is actually a sink, and the one standing over it holds a dripping slice of pizza, if the eater is receptive to the views of nearby household members it counts as a kitchen table, a place where ideas are exchanged, and policy discussed, often in proximity to food. 

My friend Susan has a kitchen table. Sitting at it, she wrote 160 letters last week, and mailed them to voters in Florida where she grew up, and still has family, urging them not to vote for the guy who mocks the power of the kitchen table.

I enjoy talking to strangers on the phone, so in presidential election years, I generally volunteer to call registered voters around dinnertime, and encourage them to vote. I can tell they are near the kitchen table, when I can hear the sounds of food preparation in the background.

Four years ago, enthusiasm for voting was tepid everywhere I called. This year, while calling Texas voters to make sure they knew they were entitled to a mail-in ballot, I kept hearing the same thing, they were taking no chances that their vote would be misplaced, thank-you; they would vote in person.

One 85-year old woman said in spite of a serious health setback, she would get to the polling place to vote in person with the help of friends. She asked me to pray for her.

The dinnertime phone calls I made another night generated the most concentrated one-hour blast of good karma I’ve ever received. The person who answered their phone at 6:01 p.m. local time was a registered voter. I identified myself as a volunteer for the Democrats, and did not ask about party or preferred candidate.

My job was to make sure they were ready to vote or had already voted, reminding them to use blue or black ink and sign the envelope of their mail-in ballot. That voter, and the next, and the next, were way ahead of me.

Ms. Parker of McClean, Texas answered her phone at 6:16, and shared that she doesn’t talk politics with her neighbors and most of them have no idea she is a Democrat. She’s 91, and voted for Truman in her first election. She is a Yellow Dog Democrat.

Did I know what that means? At 6:21 she told me that even though I was from New York, I seemed like her kind of people, and thanked me for calling.

At 7:42, I helped Wesley in Tarrant County request a mail-in ballot. After I helped Anastacio sign-up for a ballot at 8:03 p.m. he said, “God bless you.”

Another night, I spoke to a 68-year old man in Houston who was coughing so hard I had to ask him if he was O.K. Getting better, he said, recovering from COVID. He was tracking his mail-in ballot through the Texas system to make sure that he got it, and it would be counted.

I also reached three Spanish-speaking voters that night, one who was so amused by my attempt to speak Spanish that she asked me to call back later when her daughter was home.

The voters in Texas are not the only ones who won’t take a chance that their vote goes uncounted. In Manhattan, where I used to vote, people who have avoided entering a grocery store for the past eight months willingly stood in a line for early voting that stretched at least four blocks.

In Riverhead and Southold, on the first day of early voting, people came hours before the polls opened to wait, and vote.

Because this time, our lives really do depend on it.

Mary Fran Gleason, a Shelter Island life of sadness and joy

WHEN MARY FRAN Gleason came to live on Shelter Island in 1969, she was the 13-year old daughter of a family in crisis. Her mother, Marion Gleason, had sold their home in Virginia, moved the family of six to Shelter Island, and found work teaching second grade. At the center of the crisis was Mary Fran’s father Harold, whose mental and physical deterioration left him unable to work. His increasing debilitation, they would later learn, was caused by Huntington’s Disease, an incurable brain disease that strikes in mid-life.

 

After her father’s death in 1989, Mary Fran learned that his condition was actually a hereditary disease, and that she and her siblings, Thomas, Kathleen and Patrick were at risk of developing it too.  

“You have a life to live, and you have to find happiness wherever you can.”

MARY FRAN GLEASON

One of the ways the Gleason kids coped with their father’s situation was to work. At 14, Mary Fran got her first waitress job at the Ram’s Head Inn.

“I took an order and the customer said, I’ll have the filet, and I thought they meant fish because I’d never heard of filet mignon, never seen it before. So, I brought a fillet of fish.”  

Mary Fran graduated from the Shelter Island High School in the enormous 32-member class of 1972, and says she would not like to repeat her teenage years: “We were hellions.”  She graduated from the College of St. Elizabeth and after an unsuccessful attempt to spend the ski season working in Colorado (there was no snow) returned to Shelter Island. She waitressed for awhile, and in the early 80s answered an ad for a reporter working for Bob and Barbara Dunne, owners of The Shelter Island Reporter.

Bob Dunne ran the paper.

“Bob Dunne was exasperating, and I learned a lot from him,” she said. “Short. Simple. Declarative. Sentences. That was his style.” 

When Barbara Dunne ran the paper after her husband died, Mary Fran, who was managing editor, learned even more about the newspaper editing from her, but it soon became obvious that Barbara Dunne was ready to sell the paper. 

In her early thirties Mary Fran decided to get a master’s degree in public affairs journalism at Columbia College Chicago on a full scholarship. 

“It was the best experience. We (students) went out and covered stories. I was there when Mayor Washington died, and when alderman were chucking ashtrays at each other…I loved Chicago.”

In 1989, she went to Syracuse Newspapers, working for morning and afternoon editions that were bitter rivals within the same newspaper company, and becoming their first female sports editor. In 2002 she moved to the Albany Times Union, where she was a managing editor. In 2008, seeing the decline of the newspaper business everywhere, she decided to take a job as communication manager for the New York State Teachers union.

Mary Fran’s family and friends were still on Shelter Island and even though she had married and lived upstate, she never was far enough away that she couldn’t get back.

“But sometimes coming back I didn’t have good feelings about it. There was just too much sadness.”

All three of Mary Fran’s siblings developed Huntington’s Disease. In 2009, her brother Thomas died; her younger brother Patrick, who served with the Shelter Island Police in the 80s died in 2015; and her sister, Kathleen, who was a teacher at the Shelter Island School, now lives in a nursing home in upstate New York. Mary Fran is still at risk of developing the disease.

In 2000, Mary Fran decided to attend her Shelter Island High School class reunion, persuaded by her best friend Vivienne and her sister, who mentioned that an old high school boyfriend, Tom Bliss, had been asking about her. He was also married, and living in Florida. At the reunion they reconnected and did a lot of talking.

“I cried all the way home, for what could have been, for different decisions I could have made,” she said. “I emailed him and said how wonderful it was to see him again.”

Mary Fran was six years into a childless marriage, and her husband seemed to know that their breakup was inevitable. But Tom’s wife of 25 years was told about Mary Fran by a friend, and although Tom and his wife had no children, their split was difficult. Tom moved to Albany, and he and Mary Fran were married in 2002.

In 2017, Tom retired, and a year later Mary Fran retired, two years after being diagnosed with an inoperable Stage 3 lung cancer.  Treated with chemotherapy and radiation, the tumor is gone, and four years out from treatment, she feels and looks great.

She and Tom split their time between Florida and Shelter Island where she is on the board at Shelter Island Country Club, and chair of the 120th anniversary of the nine-hole course known as Goat Hill. She’s working with the Shelter Island Historical Society to create an exhibit on the history of golf on the Island. “That story needs to be told, so I’m going to tell it,” she said. “It’s a huge project, which will include a vintage tournament with hickory clubs.” 

She says the Shelter Island she grew up in has largely been absorbed by a newer, more suburban lifestyle.

“There were all these characters,” she said. “Like Dudley Griffing who ran a bulldozer off Bridge Street into Chase Creek because he wanted to go clamming, and liked to shoot squirrels out of his bedroom window. When there was a big fight over replacing First Bridge, somebody erected a toll booth down there.  We’ve become a little too decorous,” she said. “Maybe that’s what happens to rural places when development moves in.”

In 2017, Mary Fran moved back into the house on Baldwin Road that her mother bought after she moved the family to Shelter Island. Mary Fran tells her sister Kathleen’s children, who are at risk of Huntington’s, the same thing she has told herself: “You have a life to live, and you have to find happiness wherever you can. Don’t let it take over.  Don’t shrivel up and die.  If we all knew the day we were going to die and how, we wouldn’t leave the house.”

 

Mary Fran Gleason waves goodbye as golfers drive off into the darkness for last Friday’s Midnight Madness Tournament at Goat Hill. (Courtesy Photo)

 

Lightning Round

 

What do you always have with you?

A little note that my husband wrote me. It says, “I love you.”

Favorite place on Shelter Island?

Shell Beach.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?

Wrigley Field.

When was the last time you were elated? 

Just now, I chipped a birdie on #5.  I have a witness.

What exasperates you?

Small-mindedness.

When was the last time you were afraid?

At my friend Vivienne’s birthday party I rode a roller coaster on top of New York, New York in Las Vegas that went completely upside down. 

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island?

The day after Labor Day.

Favorite movie or book?

‘Seabiscuit’ by Lauren Hillenbrand.

Favorite food?

Baby lima beans.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? 

Barbara Dunne. 

Most respected elected official?

Robert Kennedy.