Charity Robey

Phil Power, the guy who has Shelter Island's back

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Phil Power during a rare moment when his pager isn’t going off, enjoying his backyard with views of West Neck Bay

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on May 19, 2016

When Phil Power joined the Bellerose Terrace Fire Department in 1968, he was 18, just barely old enough to serve. Located near the Belt Parkway, the department saw a lot of action. He’s come a long way from the adrenaline-loving teenager who, by his own account, thought he was Superman.

 Today, he’s the most experienced member of Shelter Island’s Fire Department where he’s been a member since 1974, our longest-serving Emergency Medical Technician, captain of the Shelter Island Rescue dive team, and the winner of the 2016 Lion’s Club Citizen of the Year Award, an honor he will receive at the Citizenship Award Dinner Meeting on Thursday, May 26.

If you find yourself in a tight spot on Shelter Island, whether on sea or land, Phil is the guy you want to help you out of it, a good reason to avoid having an emergency next Thursday night.

He grew up in Queens with his brother, Dennis, and sister, Debbie, but his Shelter Island ties go back three generations. For many years, Ketcham’s Store, a grocery and butcher shop, had been the family business of Phil’s father, Jerome, and operated on the spot where the Tuck Shop now stands. Phil’s mother, Roseanne Smith, also grew up on the Island and Phil and his siblings spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s house on Congdons Creek.

It was there he met Steve Lenox, whose family lived and farmed lima beans on the other side of the Creek, when both boys were in their early teens. Phil and his brother threw a few rocks at Steve by way of introduction.

“Stevie and I go back,” he said. “He taught my brother and me how to smoke corn silk.” (For the curious, when asked what happens when you smoke corn silk, Phil replied, “Nothing.”)

Phil and Steve have served together in the Fire Department for many years. About 40 years after the rock throwing, Phil responded to a cardiac emergency call at Steve’s Congdons Creek home along with fellow EMTs Mark Karnavogel and Sam Case.

“Good guys to see standing around your bed,” Steve said.

After graduating from Floral Park Memorial High School in 1967, Phil tried college and then spent four years in the Navy as an Airborne Early Warning squadron flight technician. His training included several weeks in the Navy SERE program learning survival, evasion and resistance techniques in case he went down in enemy territory,

“Not the most fun thing I’ve even been through,” he said. “We were told give them your gun, don’t look at their women. That was the extent of the briefing. I’m sure it’s gotten more specific.”

Fresh out of the Navy in 1973, Phil went to Shelter Island. He was tending bar at Candlelight Inn, when Phyllis Clark came in with her fiancé who, according to Phil, “was sitting in the corner like a lump,” possibly because the couple had just broken up.

Full of confidence if not tact he asked Phyllis, “Who’s the [deleted] in the corner?” and added, “One of the worst things you could ever do is get married.”

In spite of Phil’s advice to Phyllis, the couple married in 1976. They have two daughters, Theresa and Sharon, both graduates of the Shelter Island School, where Phyllis has taught music since 1978.

Phil worked as a ferry captain for many years, starting with South Ferry in 1975 and at the Cross Sound Ferry, where he was fired for union organizing, sued, won and was reinstated. He also worked as a captain on the North Ferry.

In his years as a firefighter, Phil has been through some harrowing experiences, including a fire that destroyed most of the Taplin residence on Menantic Road in the late 1970s.

“Probably the coldest one we ever fought,” he said. “We had problems with the hoses freezing and we froze the ladder in its position.”

Thirty firefighters responded, including Steve Lenox, who Phil described as looking like Santa Claus with a beard that became entirely encrusted with ice.

Phil was named Firefighter of the Year in 1999 and is now the safety officer for the department, a role that calls on his years of experience to assess specific dangers at the scene of fires.

When the Pine Barrens wildfire consumed almost 5,000 acres in 1995 it became the worst forest fire on the East End since the 19th century. Phil was one of 2,000 area firefighters who responded.

He remembers going into the burning area with the Dix Hills Fire Department. “It was spectacular, looking at a pine tree right before it exploded because all of the needles light up like a Christmas tree,” he said. “They glow, they turn bright white, and then the sap in them blows apart.”

Phil was in a team that went to the fire line on a truck, but when it rolled over a berm it got stuck, with the fire quickly covering ground toward them. Phil and other men abandoned the truck and made a run for another truck nearby, which was also moving away from the oncoming fire and unwilling to stop.

“I didn’t think this fat old bastard could run that far or that fast,” he said.

In 2011, with over 35 years of service, Phil was named Emergency Medical Technician of the Year.

“I’ve saved some lives, and I’ve delivered some babies on the way to Southampton Hospital,” he said.

Although both are high stakes situations, Phil said he prefers the maternity cases to “jumping up and down on some old guy’s chest.”

By far the most experienced EMT on the Island, he’s also a captain of the Shelter Island Dive Rescue team, a group consisting of fire department and police department professionals.

About 10 years ago, in the middle of planning for the wedding of his oldest daughter, Sharon, Phil discovered he had prostate cancer. “That was a life changer,” he said. “Dr. Kelt noticed something in a blood test, I had it removed, and I’m still here.”
Frank Adipietro, medical director for the Shelter Island ambulance, called Phil a few weeks ago and asked if he could come over to talk at 7 p.m, on a week night. Phil was worried enough to sit down while Frank was on his way.

When Frank walked through the door with Lions Club members Frank Vecchio and Jack Monaghan and said he had been chosen Lion of the Year, Phil was surprised, delighted and relieved.

So let’s keep it together next Thursday night, Shelter Island, so Phil can savor without interruption the recognition and thanks he has earned for being our most reliable and experienced first responder.

Vicki Weslek, making Shelter Island healthier every day

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Vicki Weslek — wife, mother, community organizer and self-described ‘work in progress.’

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 31st 2016

Anyone who has gone to an Empty Bowls event can tell you it’s all about filling things. The bowls made by children get filled with soup donated by local restaurants and everyone who attends is filled with the satisfaction of doing some good for the community.

It’s been a success from the very start; the third annual event takes place this Sunday at the Shelter Island School.

One of the guiding spirits of the program is Victoria Shields Weslek, a 37-year-old wife and mother of three. She’s one of the original organizers in 2013 of the Shelter Island School Edible Garden and Empty Bowls, the Garden’s primary fundraiser.

When Vicki talks about the Garden, and the benefit and especially the life she has built on Shelter Island, she often uses the same words: “It’s a work in progress. Every year is going to be better.”

Long before Vicki was born, her grandparents summered here and it’s where Vicki’s mother, Maria, and her young son, Jason, from a previous marriage became full-time residents in 1977. Maria then met and married Alan Shields, an artist whose brightly colored, three-dimensional art was popular and influential in the 1970s art scene and collected by major museums.

Alan adopted Jason, and Vicki came along in 1979. Today Jason, former Reporter editor and author of the poignant Island memoir, “Louis’ Beach,” lives here with his family and has a carpentry business. Vicki’s parents split up in 1990, her mother remarried and her father continued to live on Shelter Island until his death at 61 in 2005.

She started her education at a tiny Catholic school in Sag Harbor, and from 4th to 8th grade she attended the Shelter Island School, where her 4th grade teacher, Mr. Morgan made an enduring impression on her. “He was a big man, nice but very stern. I remember liking him but being a little afraid of him.”

She left Shelter Island for high school and then went on to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, graduating in 2000. Vicki planned to pursue landscaping, following up on work she had done during college breaks, but while working as a bartender the summer after graduation, fate intervened in the form of a handsome Islander who somehow she had never met — Ian Weslek.

Their first date was dinner at the Chequit on an October night. “I could see right away how sweet he was and how well he treated me,” she said. “He still does to this very day. “

At the time, Ian’s mother was very ill, dying of cancer the next month. “She was too ill to visit,” Vicki said. “I do remember getting two kittens from her when I was young. So even though I honestly didn’t know her, I remember her.”

Ian and Vicki married in 2005 and over the next few years their children were born, Harrison in 2007, followed by Evan and then Elizabeth in 2011.

About six months after Evan was born, Vicki said, “I was crying all the time and I didn’t feel right.” She decided to get some help and discovered she had postpartum depression. “The therapist kept asking me what makes me happy, what do you like and I kept saying, ‘I don’t know, I’m drawing a blank.’”

Her doctor encouraged her to get out of the house regularly to give herself a break from tending the children. But she said it wasn’t in her nature to just turn over the kids to her spouse.

“My husband was very accepting, it was me worrying that he wasn’t doing it the right way,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m their dad.’”

Slowly she learned to relinquish control and find a better balance.

In 2013, Vicki was one of the organizers of the innovative educational project for Shelter Island children, the Edible Garden. She helped break ground for the garden and has organized the Empty Bowls fundraiser every spring to benefit the garden and the Shelter Island Food Pantry. Each year the proceeds go to a specific goal; a fence around the garden in the first year; a garden shed in the second year; and this year an irrigation system.

Last year, when a design flaw in the original plan of the garden became evident — the rows allowed weeds to encroach on the crops — Vicki called on the community tradition of a barn raising by organizing a “bed raising.” Technology teacher Jack Reardon built eight wood enclosures. Farmers Julia Trunzo, Maggie Higby and Kurt Ericksen from Sylvester Manor provided muscle and expertise and together the team assembled, and installed raised beds in time for Cheryl Woods’ 1st grade class to plant this spring’s first crop of sugar snap peas.

Vicki is excited by the teachers who have incorporated the garden into their teaching, such as Stephanie Sareyani, who “adopted” a large section to grow vegetables for her home economics class. With a kitchen in her classroom and four rows of the garden at her disposal, she plans to plant the tubers for a potato crop before the end of the school year that students can harvest and cook in the fall.

In spite of the changes for better and worse on Shelter Island in the past 30 years, Vicki is glad her life is here.
“Crescent Beach is not the beach of my youth,” she said. “It’s the best bathing beach on Shelter Island and on a typical week day it’s beautiful, but on weekends it gets busy and touristy. Still, I know that being an island has kept away a lot of what has tainted the South Fork and threatens to taint the North Fork.”

An improvement from her youthful days is the Shelter Island high school.

“A real shift started when [Superintendent of Schools] Michael Hynes was here,” Vicki said, “He came along and developed a long-term vision for the school and the progressive shift that started with him has continued with Len Skuggevik.”

As Vicki learned to take better care of herself spiritually, she learned to look after herself physically as well, which meant losing over 30 pounds that she’d carrying since Elizabeth was born. She found a program called “Beachbody,” and liked it so much she now sells it to others.

She’s even recruited Ian. They just returned from a cruise, in which one of the world’s largest ships was taken over by hundreds of Beachbody participants who did their workouts on the top deck and ate healthy foods for five days.

“Energetic people.” Vicki said.

Now she has professional goals to go with the personal ones. “It’s all about progress,” she said. “Not perfection.”

Lightning Round — Vicki Weslek

What do you always have with you?  My purse.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Menhaden Lane in spring before the green, biting flies come out.

Last time you were elated?  On a five-day Beachbody cruise out of Fort Lauderdale, I was elated the whole time.

What exasperates you?  My schedule, finding the time to get it all done.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?  Any day in September.

Favorite movie or book?  ‘The School of Greatness,’ by Lewis Howes, a lifestyle entrepreneur.

Favorite food?  Indian food.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  Kathy Lynch, she’s lived here about 10 years, but she’s connected as if she’s been here forever.

Favorite elected official?  Cory Booker, U.S. Senator from New Jersey

Off the Fork: Skin in the Game

 

 A preheated iron skillet in a hot oven produces a perfectly cooked filet of weakfish

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on May 5, 2016

To April I say, good riddance. I’m trying not to take it personally, but really what was that stuff that fell from the skies on April 8, like one of the Biblical plagues of Exodus–Sleet? Locusts? Thank goodness the lilac is starting to bloom which means I am about to be treated very well, and I don’t mean Mother’s Day. I’m talking weakfish.

Every year these slim, silvery, spotted fish with yellow fins swim up the Atlantic coast from Florida to New England starting in April. As they pass the East End of Long Island, they are met by an army of anglers, backed by salivating cooks with iron skillets, oiling them up for the feast.

You can buy weakfish at Southold Fish Market, and other local markets in May and June, but for avid surfcasters like Adam Flax of East Hampton, there is no substitute for catching your own dinner. "Unlike bluefish or striped bass, weakfish have a very soft mouth,” he said. “It's easy for them to slip off." Despite their name, they are strong fighters when hooked he said. “They're not as strong as blues or striped bass, but a large one will put up a battle."

If you have been removing the skin from your weakfish, or even worse, cooking it skin-side down it’s time to mend your ways. When cooked well, the skin is delicious, and you don’t need breadcrumbs or butter to make it tasty. Think of fish skin as nature’s bacon, doubtful in the good-for-you category, but definitely tasty.

Whether you scale your weakfish yourself, or buy it cleaned check for stray scales by running your fingers over the filet from tail to head, to ensure that all scales have been removed, especially around the tail and edges.

There are two conditions that produce a crispy skin- high heat and dryness. Resist the temptation to give your filets a bath before cooking them. Wipe them with a paper towel, gently scrape the blunt side of a knife across the skin to remove any remaining moisture, and blot them again with a paper towel. Leave them uncovered while you are preparing to roast them.

Weakfish is a mild, flaky fish, and minimalist’s approach to cooking lets that nutty taste come through; just olive oil, something fragrant and green, and a blast of heat.

Roasted weakfish

Serves 2-3

1-pound filet of weakfish

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 ounces chopped young garlic, ramps, or scallions

Salt

Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Wipe the filets with a paper towel, Check to make sure all scales have been removed. Gently scrape the skin with the blunt side of a knife to squeeze out moisture, and blot all over the filet with a paper towel.
3. Rub 1 tablespoon of olive oil on the filets, concentrating on the meaty side.
4. Preheat an iron skillet large enough to hold the filets with space between them. Heat 2 teaspoons of the olive oil in the skillet and sauté the chopped garlic or scallions for not more than 3 minutes at medium heat.
5. Position the filets on top of the garlic, skin side up. If necessary, fold the thin, tail end underneath the rest of the filet so it won’t overcook. Drizzle the remaining teaspoon of olive oil over the fish.
6. Roast in the oven at 450° for 7-10 minutes, until the skin is turning up at the edges, and the flesh is beginning to flake.

Chanin Inturam and Rodrigo Barros, exchanging cultures and friendship

CHARTIY ROBEY PHOTO An enthusiastic and skilled photographer, Thai-born Chanin Inturam has been taking pictures for the school yearbook and the Shelter Island Reporter website during his time here.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on April 28, 2016

It’s been four years since the Shelter Island School has welcomed an international exchange student. So long, that before Chanin Inturam, from Bangkok, Thailand, and Brazil native, Rodrigo Barros arrived for the 2015/16 school year, few Shelter Island High School students could remember the fascinating experience of going to school with someone from halfway around the world, who speaks a different language, observes different holidays, and eats foods never seen in the IGA.

Last August, thanks to the Academic Year in America (AYA), Chanin and Rodrigo began a nine-month visit that ends in June.

There will be some tears when they leave.

Both young men are 17 and living with Father Charles McCarron, the pastor of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. As their host-father, he is responsible for their well-being during their stay, along with Sharon Gibbs, the local representative of AYA. School guidance counselor, Martha Tuthill also offers support for Chanin and Rodrigo during the school year.

Chanin Inturam

Life on Shelter Island has many surprises for the Thai-born high school junior, but one of the biggest is seeing creatures walking around that were considered exotic wildlife back home.

“I knew there were deer, foxes, raccoons and turkeys,” he said. “We have them in Thailand too, but they are in a zoo. They don’t walk around in your backyard.”

Chanin spoke to the Reporter on the first day of the Songkran festival, a Thai celebration of the Lunar New Year that involves splashing or pouring water on other people: whether you know them or not.

Chanin thought better of spraying water on anyone that day, but to his delight, Father McCarron sprayed Chanin’s face with water before he left for school in the morning.

He grew up in Bangkok with a younger sister. His father works for Thai Airways and his mother is a financial broker. Although this is Chanin’s first time in the United States, he’s traveled extensively in Australia, South Africa and Asia. Shelter Island, he says, is one of the nicest places he’s seen. “I really like it,” he said.

When he started researching the Island before deciding to come, he thought it looked very quiet. Coming from a high school of about 1,000, Chanin wondered how he would fit into a much smaller school, especially as he worked to master English, a notoriously difficult language. “I’m glad that people have helped me improve,” he said.

Still, he notes it could hardly be more different than his native Thailand. The roaming foxes and turkeys are the least of it.

Everything from the government to dating practices is different.

“I had a culture shock,” he said. “Thailand is a kingdom with a king and a queen. They are very good … In my country, couples cannot kiss in a public place.”

When it comes to following classes taught in a language he’s still learning, Chanin said “Google Translate” is a useful tool, but slow internet connections are a challenge. He took a full load of classes, including mathematics, science, English and U. S. History.

“U.S. history is very short compared to Thai history,” he noted.

Within a month of arriving, Chanin was already into the whirl of high school activities, joining the Shelter Island Cross Country team and competing in his first race ever on September 29 in Sag Harbor.

At his school in Bangkok, Chanin directed the school play last year, so he was glad to participate in this year’s Shelter Island School play, “The Drowsy Chaperone,” working with the backstage crew building and moving scenery.

President of the photography club at his school back home, Chanin found ways to stay involved with his passion during his year abroad, taking pictures for the yearbook and for the Reporter website.

Chanin credits Father McCarron’s cooking with keeping him well-fed despite the differences between Thai and American food.

“In Thailand, food is hot and spicy. His food is very awesome,” Chanin said. “I like to eat everything,”

A practicing Buddhist, Chanin was grateful to be able to pray at a Buddhist temple on Long Island several times during his stay when Father McCarron took him. After the deaths of Chanin’s uncle and grandmother in Thailand during his time here, his visits to the temple were especially important to him.

A student of Japanese, as well as English, Chanin plans to study linguistics, possibly to work as a translator of books or guides. Or he said, maybe as a flight attendant.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO São Paulo native Rodrigo Barros wears a chain with good luck symbols, including a handcuff charm from a Shelter Island friend, Julia Labrozzi.

Rodrigo Barros

“I have always lived close to all my friends,” said Brazilian-born high school senior, Rodrigo Barros.

He grew up in a tiny São Paulo neighborhood called Itaim Bibi, a district of about four square blocks and a few thousand residents, the approximate size of Shelter Island, but surrounded by a city of 11 million people, with a sister, Julia, and his parents, Marcelo and Lilian. His father grew up in the same district and Rodrigo said he intends one day to raise his own family in Itaim Bibi.

When he got word he’d been chosen for a student exchange program that would bring him to the Island, he jumped at the chance. He had been to America twice, including Florida and New York, and he had traveled to Chile, but what he learned about the Island when he Googled it caught his imagination.

Rodrigo’s English is outstanding. He credits the fact that he began studying the language when he was 6 years old. Still, he says it’s not the same as being a native speaker.

“I’m comfortable in my English,” he said, “but it’s always going to be a barrier.”

Most Brazilians are at least bilingual, he said, speaking their native Portuguese and English. Rodrigo, who is trilingual, also knows Spanish.

The transition from Brazil to Shelter Island had rough spots in the beginning. First, there was the matter of the crickets. “It was so weird at night,” he said. “There are no crickets in São Paulo.”

Then there was being far away from family. “At the beginning it was very hard not being able to go to my mom’s lap, to get a hug,” he said. “We are a very close family.”

Never having had the experience of being the new kid, Rodrigo had to cope with a role-reversal. “It was a really awkward experience at first, but then it got better,” he said. “Serina Kaasik was the first person who talked to me.”

Although he doesn’t find as much flavor in American food as Brazilian, like Chanin he gives high marks to Father Charles’ cooking. He also credits Ms. Kaasik with introducing him to a local delicacy. “She was shocked that I never had a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich so she took me to the drugstore to have one.”

Rodrigo has been in love with theater and acting since he was 7. At home he participates in dramatic arts outside of school, but there is nothing comparable to the well-developed school drama program here on Shelter Island. His role as Aldolpho in “The Drowsy Chaperone” is the tenth play he has participated in, but up until now all have been outside of school, and none have been musicals.

“I think one of the reasons Father Charles picked me is because I’m a drama geek,” Rodrigo said. “He knew I would have a great time here.”

As anyone who saw Rodrigo play Aldopho can testify, he is a wonderfully talented person, who stopped the show.

“On the last day of the play it kind of hit me,” he said. “As we were singing the last song I was tearing up.”

He confessed that prior to this role, his self esteem had been down, due to being rejected in a couple of auditions. “Here on the Island,” he said. “ I fell in love with acting all over again.”

Rodrigo plans to go to college in São Paulo and study to be a journalist in Brazil.

“I’m really thankful for this community,” he said. “Shelter Island will always be my home.”

Janet Culbertson, artist, feminist, environmentalist

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Janet Culbertson with a painting that refers to an important event from her childhood – a canoe trip on a polluted river.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on April 21, 2016

Janet Culbertson’s identity as an artist was formed during a canoe trip she took with her father, sister and brother on a luridly polluted river in Western Pennsylvania when she was 9 years old.

“The river was bluish green, but then it started to turn orange, and then deep brown with puffy rocks floating in it, like cinders, and Dad said not to touch it,” she said. “I became an environmentalist that day.”

Janet’s distinguished career as an artist spans four decades and she’s spent most of it on Shelter Island. With more than 35 one-woman shows and numerous awards, her work is in the permanent collection of museums from the Galeria-Nacional in San Jose, Costa Rica to the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her painting incorporates many materials on a foundation of skilled drawing, including acrylic and iridescent paint, glitter and found objects.

But her inspiration is singular: an interest in the beauty and fragility of the natural world. She is an activist artist, with a viewpoint shaped by her girlhood in the coal mining region of Western Pennsylvania, her travels in the American West and the Galapagos Islands, and the environment near the home on West Neck Bay where she’s lived since 1971.

Janet was in 3rd grade when the artist Dorothy Riester taught her to draw and later became her mentor. “She was a huge influence,” Janet said. “It was so important at that age because she showed me alternatives to my parents.”

With Ms. Riester’s guidance, Janet went to Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) to study art, embracing the departure from the conservatism of her family. “Art college encouraged you to be a  little bohemian — you’d wear your jeans until they fell off. Bathing was something the middle class did.”

In the 1950s, with a Master of Fine Arts in hand, Janet made her way to New York with $50 she had won in a bingo game. “I thought real artists had to go to New York and face obscurity and despair,” she said. “So I chose obscurity and despair.”

She found an apartment with the tub in the kitchen and work in textile design, but hated the business.

“If it sold, it was good,” she said. “Brigitte Bardot wore a gingham dress in a blue check and suddenly the bosses said, ‘Make blue checks.’”

Janet and her husband, Doug, first met at work. They ran into each other in front of the subway after work one day and decided to have coffee. Then, as Janet recalls, Doug changed his mind. “He said, ‘Coffee? Let’s have a drink.’” Janet loved his sophistication — a real New Yorker. “He went to Bronx Science,” she said, “and he could always find a parking spot.”

Doug was married with children when they met, but their relationship endured and they married in 1964. He passed away in 2006.

Janet started teaching art at Pace University. In the late 1960s, she began to create silverpoint paintings, a technique that involves drawing with a sharpened stick of silver on coated paper. She worked from old family photographs to create powerful pieces with the ethereal feeling of daguerreotype and established her reputation with shows in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta. Ten of her silverpoint works are now part of the permanent collection of the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia.

When she was 5, her parents took the family on a memorable vacation to Sag Harbor. She remembered, “horrible sunburn and horrible chowder with clams like rubber.” In spite of these hardships, the trip made such a positive impression on Janet and her siblings that years later as adults they returned to Sag Harbor, and eventually, Janet and Doug bought some land on Shelter Island. In 1971, they had a Stanmar House, a modular structure, delivered to the lot in bundles and assembled. She lives in the house to this day.

The 1970s were an important period of productivity and success for Janet, with four one-woman shows in New York City at the Lerner-Heller Gallery. In the early 1970s, Janet created a beautiful series of paintings, works entitled “Jessup Pond” and “Crab Creek,” using acrylic on canvas, depicting creeks, islands, and bays around Shelter Island. “I like islands,” she said. “It must be some terrible psychological thing. Either I want to be alone or I am afraid to be alone.”

In the mid-70s, Janet began a series of paintings based on what she observed during a visit to the Galapagos Islands; “barren but gorgeous,” she said. In 1976, she had a show with the Galapagos works. Her fascination with the place was so persistent that she returned 10 years later with Doug, determined to show him the place she found so inspiring, a trip intended as his retirement gift. Although he enjoyed it, on one of the islands, they had to sleep in a tent, prompting Doug to remark, “I had all the camping I wanted in the service.”

In 1980, on a snowy North Fork road, Janet was nearly killed when a car struck the passenger side of the car where she sat. “It took me a year to get over being frail and another year being depressed,” she said.

After the accident, she began a series that incorporated billboards and became fascinated with images of traffic. Her view shifted to incorporate darker messages, which still inform her work today.

In 2005, The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington exhibited Janet’s series entitled, “Mythmaker.”  Dubbed “eco-feminist,” these paintings explored ways to depict women in a more heroic light and show the disturbing reality of our threatened environment.

In 2014, Janet had a one-woman show, a 40-year retrospective, entitled “Paradise Gone” at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, in Cazenovia, New York.

Currently, six of her works hang in the lower level of the Shelter Island library in a special exhibit in recognition of Earth Day on Friday, April 22. At 7 p.m. on the following Friday, April 29, Janet will appear at the library in a Q & A with artist Roz Dimon to discuss the work on view.

“I’m going to get a gold tooth.” Janet said, explaining her plan to have one of her porcelain-capped teeth transformed. “That’s what they do in some countries to show that you have arrived.”

Jim Hull: A taste for life. The many skills of a self-taught man

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Jim Hull creating the recipe for a new porter, as yet unnamed, featuring vanilla bean, bourbon and Island honey at Shelter Island Craft Brewery on North Ferry Road.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on April 7, 2016

In the early 1970s, Jim Hull was one of the 3,600 ironworkers who built the World Trade Center.

He lived in Queens but he loved to get to the site early in the morning, sit on a bench with a cup of coffee and listen to the city come to life.

“Total silence, then the fans started up on top of the buildings, then the traffic started and the horns and by 9 o’clock the jack hammers were going and the beast was alive,” Jim said. “It was just beautiful.”

Working since he was 13, Jim started out in construction and then spent 25 years in the jewelry business. In 1998 he became one of the most sought-after charter boat captains on Long Island with his business, “Light Tackle Challenge,” fishing for bluefish and striped bass. And, to the delight of many Island hopheads, in 2014 he got a farm brewery license and began what he calls his last venture, making and serving beer at the Shelter Island Craft Brewery.

Born in Brooklyn, Jim grew up in East New York, a rough neighborhood then and now. His mother was a housewife, his father a machinist, and Jim was the oldest of three brothers. His parents split up when he was 13, and Jim became responsible for providing some household income, which he did until he was “emancipated” at 16 when his mother remarried. He eventually graduated from Erasmus High School in Brooklyn.

Instead of college, he joined the Ironworkers Union and went to work. “It was a very high paying job but to be honest, the II-A deferment got me out of Vietnam,” Jim said. “I did not want to be drafted.”

In the mid-1970s Jim went into the jewelry business. Starting with nothing, he built up a business with seven retail outlets, designing, manufacturing, and selling in the diamond district market where he was in a distinct minority.

“Someone asked me five or six times a day: ‘Are you Jewish?’ I’m not,” Jim said, “but there was absolutely no resistance to me.”

In 1971 Jim married, had twin daughters Jeanine and Alison, in 1975, and divorced in 1988 when the girls were in their early teens. Today, Alison works at the brewery with plans to open her own brewpub in Long Beach. Jeanine is involved in the jewelry business with the help of Jim’s ex-wife. Jeanine’s husband, Angelo Marchica, masterminded the renovation of the brewery, transforming the one-time insurance office into a comfortable space for drinking Jim’s fragrant brews.

In 1986, Jim was selling jewelry at Caesar’s Bay Bazaar, an indoor market near the Verrazano Bridge, when he met Clarissa Williams who was selling dancing tights. “We fell in love right away,” Jim said. Both were married at the time, and although they were together for three decades, “We never really wanted to get married,” he said.

In the late 1990s, the couple were looking for a place to live within striking distance of New York. Jim’s jewelry business still needed his attention but they wanted a place rural enough for him to hunt and fish, finally settling on Shelter Island.

Jim went about recreating himself as a fishing guide. Although he had fished since he was eight, he took time to learn the water, the geography and where to find fish. “I’m not a shoot-from-the-hip kind of person,” he said.

Jim fished out of Shelter Island for May only. From June to September he fished out of Montauk, commuting each day to work. On the Island he kept a low profile, while Clarissa was a much-loved waitress at Pat and Steve’s Restaurant.

“I’m the most boring person,” Jim said. “Before Clarissa got sick, no one knew who I was on the this Island.”

They had seriously considered buying Pat and Steve’s when the Lenoxes decided to retire. But Jim had started brewing beer at home and was getting more and more interested in brewing as a business. “It’s cooking actually,” he said. “I’m a wanna-be chef.”

Both in their early 60s, they decided a brewery made more sense than the daily pressure of a restaurant. “When Clarissa knew she was terminally ill, she said ‘you have to go forward. I want you to do it,’” Jim remembered. “And I wanted to do it too.”

Clarissa died last February at 63. “She only cared about other people, not herself,” said her partner of 30 years. “She was a one-of-a-kind person.”

Now 65, he mentioned two things that have helped him become a successful brewer — his sense of taste and the conviction that if he puts time into thinking things over he’ll have a good outcome. “I don’t drink, but I love to taste,” he said. “And I‘m a control freak.”

Most craft beer is made using at least some local ingredients. In New York State, a Farm Brewery license requires at least 20 percent of ingredients come from within the state. Jim’s brews not only fill the bill by using local hops and New York State malt, but the flavor profile of many of his brews follows the flavors of local fruits and herbs in season. “I feel pride in this Island,” he said.

His “Forbidden Apple” brew was made with Mutsu apples grown by Darrin Binder, “Liquid Sunshine” and “Bees Knees” with honey from hives managed by Sarah Shepherd, and “Nude Beach” with beach plums harvested by Al Kilb.

On the first Monday of last November, Jim seared a batch of local Peconic Bay scallops and added them to an orange and fennel flavored brew to make Scallop Ale. “It was gone real fast,” Jim said.

Even the mash, a slurry of fermented grains, herbs and flavors, goes back into the local ecosystem when farmer Julia Trunzo from Sylvester Manor Educational Farm hauls as much as 100 pounds at a time from a barrel outside the store to feed the pigs and chickens.

“It stays on the Island,” Jim said.

“Make beer and make people happy,” he added. “Part two is the most important part.”