Charity Robey

From dust to delicious, baking with kids

 

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Oatmeal frosties.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 21, 2016

I will never forget the first time I made a cookie. I put my 5-year old fingers in the flour, tasted and thought, this cannot possibly become something delicious. But it did. The sugar cookies I made were misshapen, and probably under-cooked, but never mind, they were delicious, and I couldn’t wait to make that magic happen again.

The holidays are a good time for baking, and making cookies is one way to instill a love of cooking in very young children. Of course, this only works on children who like cookies.

Don’t do what I did with my own child. My oldest son’s first independent experience in the kitchen began when I put out the ingredients for a tender, crumbly butter cookie called Oatmeal Frosties, and set him loose without a recipe. I had a dimly-formed idea that if I removed constraints it would allow him to be creative and enjoy the experience, like the policy of his elementary school to allow creative spelling for young writers. The resulting cookies contained most of the same ingredients as Oatmeal Frosties; but were inedible. I did save his “recipe” (pictured below) which he helpfully wrote down for future reference.

Much later in life he became a very good cook, and learned to spell.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | My son’s riff on this recipe. Do not make this!

I should have started him off with the recipe; an ideal one for kids. The best way to mix the dough is with small (recently-washed) hands. It has very few ingredients, and none of them is potentially poisonous, like uncooked eggs. But the best thing about the recipe is the way it shows a budding baker the magic of taking ingredients from dust to delicious.

Oatmeal Frosties

Makes 50 cookies

1½ cups rolled oats

2 cups flour

1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar plus 1 cup

1 teaspoon vanilla

I cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

1. Mix oats, flour, vanilla, one tablespoon of the sugar and the vanilla in a large bowl.

2. Cut in the butter with two table knives or a pastry blender or mix with your hands until the mixture is crumbly. It’s ready to shape into cookies when you grab a handful and it starts to hold together.

3. Shape the dough into cookies about two inches long and an inch around — like very short, very fat pencils. Don’t worry about making them all exactly the same or smoothing the ends; the rougher the cookie, the better it will hold the sugar. (see the final step.)

4. Bake at 350 degrees on an ungreased pan or parchment for 15 minutes, until the bottoms are very light brown.

5. Cool the cookies in the pan about 15 minutes, and roll in the remaining confectioner’s sugar while they are still warm. If you want them to be very sugary, roll them in the sugar while they are still hot.

Jean Ely, Cooking, caring and finding the right bolt

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Jean Ely at The Islander.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 15, 2016

Sometimes irony makes a nickname stick like glue, and so it is with “Mean Jean.”

Five years ago, Jean Ely was an unfailingly friendly and generous presence at the Shelter Island IGA, so when fellow worker Billie Howland Mulcahey came up with the nickname, Jean responded in kind. “She was ‘Bad Billie,’ Jean said, “and I was ‘Mean Jean.’ I put it on my badge.”

Born in New York City, Jean and her family, including brother Hugh, lived in Greenwich Village. Her household was full of books and music; her parents were open-minded and well-educated. Jean’s father, Hugh, worked as a management consultant and her mother, Jean Ely, was an editor of science textbooks, including a very influential biology textbook written in the 1960s by Helena Curtis that is still popular today.

In the mid-1960s when Jean was a little girl, her family rented a carriage house on Shelter Island in the old Artemas Ward property for two or three weeks every summer. “I was fascinated by those lion heads in the formal gardens,” she remembered.

Jean’s mother became sick with cancer and died at age 47 when Jean was 11 years old. In 1973, shortly after her mother’s death, the family moved to East Hampton. In 2012, Jean wrote an essay, “Waiting for the Ferry,” about that difficult time of her life.Her piece won second place in Dan’s Papers Literary Contest, and earned her a $500 prize.

Jean graduated from East Hampton High School in 1979 and went to St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, a small college with a curriculum based on the so-called Great Books of Western Civilization. Success at St. John’s demanded a strongly motivated and scholarly kind of student. Jean stayed only a couple of years. “I’m not sure it was really for me,” she said. “I needed a little more whipping.”

She had met a guy and followed him to Maine, and then to Nepal where they studied Buddhist philosophy and practice for six months in 1981 and 1982 — without her family’s blessing. “I’m sure they weren’t too happy about it,” she said. “I didn’t talk to them about it much.” Her interest in Buddhism continues today.

She came back to the East End at age 21 and moved in with her father and stepmother, Sandra Ferguson, in 1983. Jean began working as a gardener and then as an aide and cook in a rest home. She enjoyed the work, although she had to cope with a staff dietician who did the meal planning, and had a disgusting way of letting nutrition and budget overrule all other considerations.

“There was a dish she called Patio Salad, a revolting concoction of cottage cheese with chunks of Spam and Italian dressing,” Jean recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not going to feed them this [expletive].’” Instead, she made apple pancakes.

Jean waitressed at the Newtown Café for a few years. One day a man named Omar Theodore (Teddy) Dottin came in. “He was a brilliant, brilliant man,” Jean said. They married in 1991 and lived together in a house that was always full of monitors and other techno paraphernalia from his work building computers. He passed away in 2003.

For over a decade, starting in 1999, Jean worked at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor, a space that carries an eclectic curation of folk art, decorative objects, music and books. Located next door to The American Hotel, it drew many celebrity customers.
Jean was working at the gallery one evening when a fabulous woman wearing an over-the-top white creation walked in and said, “You don’t have any of my CDs.”

Jean apologized and said, “Tell me who you are and I’ll get them in.”

“Aretha, honey!” said Ms. Franklin.

The Queen of Soul completed her shopping and as soon as she left, Jean called her boss and several of her friends to tell them who had been in the store. Suddenly the door opened again and in walked Julie Andrews. “The same night,” said Jean. “I recognized her because I knew she lived in Sag Harbor.”

Jean used to go to Murf’s Backstreet Tavern in Sag Harbor to have a cocktail. In 2007 she met Robert Jacobs one day after work. After Jean and Robert married, they thought they’d like to live on Shelter Island where Jean’s brother Hugh was living, so when they saw a rental listing for an apartment above the barber shop of Louis and Anita Cicero, they raced over from the South Fork.

“Robert had a look like Jerry Garcia,” Jean said. “I was amazed they would rent to him. The first thing Louie said to Robert was, ‘Son, you need a haircut.’”

A lifetime writer and reader, Jean has been active with a writer’s group, a book club and also with 2Rs4Fun, the organization run by Mary Dwyer that helps encourage writing in elementary-age Island school children.

After Jean left the IGA, she brought her practical intelligence and unflappability to bear on the world of coupling nuts and carriage bolts at the Shelter Island Hardware Store, where some of her fans still insist on calling her Mean Jean.

“When I began working at the hardware store I knew absolutely nothing about hardware. I didn’t even know what a Phillips screwdriver was,” she said. “They are so patient over there.”

Jean’s brother Hugh died in 2013, another loss for a woman who has endured so many. “Most of the crises I’ve had were people I love dying. The thing about people dying is it is something you just muddle through. You can’t consult a book and say, ‘I did this, I did that, now it is resolved.’ You recognize it as a demarcation in your life.”

Jean Ely — Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  After my Dad died, my stepmother gave me his two-dollar bill. I carry it with me, along with my brother Hugh’s ID.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Home with my two cats.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  Height of Land in Maine. It’s an overlook up in the mountains, a beautiful lake.

When was the last time you were elated?  When you told me you wanted to put me in the paper.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island?  I’m very fond of Christmas. I have an open house and Louie and Anita come and my stepmother, Sandi. How many people get to invite their landlord for Christmas dinner?

Favorite movie or book?  ‘A Passage to India’ by E.M. Forster. I was in India when I read it for the first time.

Favorite food?  Cheese.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  Vivian Abuelo. We have been friends since we were 16. She lives in New York city.

Most respected elected official?  Bernie Sanders

On the half shell-Not dressed to impress

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO The height of fashion for Shelter Island.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 15, 2016

A strange thing occurred in the summer of 2013. A website called fashionista.com called out Shelter Island as “the chunk of land right smack between the North and South Forks of Long Island, which, if our Instagram feeds are any indication, has become something of a hotspot for the fashion set.”

At the time, I thought it was mysterious (Instagram?) and wrong-headed (how does the fashion set get to a place that stops accepting visitors at midnight?). Since only a few locals were among the 2.5 million monthly readers of fashionista.com, most were blissfully unaware that the Island was a hotspot for anything.

Here we define fashion, like every other aspect of modern life, in our own way. The most important fashion rule seems to be — not too fancy. A few years back I was invited to a get-together with a new group of friends and I asked one of them what I should wear. “We don’t dress up here,” she said severely, looking me in the eye over her readers. I wore jeans and a T-shirt.

Designer and artist Jonathan Adler and his husband, Simon Doonan, of Barney’s New York are the rare combination, Island residents and bona fide fashionistas, so when Adler told W magazine, “Shelter Island is about a rustic modernism and being outdoors,” it had the ring of truth.

He could have been talking about the Island’s summer uniform, a signature look that involves wearing trousers tucked into socks, a practice so ubiquitous it’s easy to forget it started as a way to keep ticks from climbing up your legs on their way to a darker place.

The town supervisor is often seen tooling around town in a blue convertible wearing an outfit that perfectly expresses rustic modernism; the slightly-worn collar on his faded red T-shirt worn under a tattersall shirt that could have been purchased anytime in the last half of the 20th century.

The first and second Mondays in November, the dock at the Congdon Creek Town landing is transformed into a fashion runway with baymen and women parading in vintage scallop-harvest apparel, much of it waterproof.

Dressing up Island-style means something different than in the Hamptons. Setting aside Italian loafers and cashmere sweater, Tim Purtell appeared at the Historical Society’s annual oyster festival sporting a large, pearly shell which hung from his shoulders like a sandwich board, accessorized by silvery gloves that left no doubt he was dressed up — as an oyster.
In November the annual Turkey Plunge took place at Crescent Beach where 10 weeks earlier, beach cabanas sheltered fabulously well-oiled visitors in tiny swimsuits. The Plunge is a chance for Islanders to put it on while taking it off for a good cause, and one of them showed up dressed as a turkey.

Here business casual is camouflage, especially in January. The preferred men’s hat has been a baseball cap (usually plain, without team logos) for as long as anyone can remember, especially since business generally involves working outdoors.

Bill Cunningham, the late New York Times fashion photographer, documented contemporary style by people-watching at 5th avenue and 57th street, and in that same spirit, watching the flow of Islanders in the vicinity of Piccozzi’s Gas Station is a good way to get a sense of Shelter Island style. Flannel appears to be more popular than velvet this holiday.

Another measure is whatever is for sale at Bliss’ Department Store, the only place on the Island that offers a range of clothing for men, women and children. There you can purchase a fleece vest or a pair of sweatpants and, at some point, most of us have.

Also available is a very smart hooded wind jacket, with the map of Shelter Island embroidered on the breast, available in green, navy or yellow, an item that will undoubtedly be under more than one Island Christmas tree.

Many local shins are protected, waterproofed and ornamented by a pair of the high, rubber boots sold at Bliss’. I can personally attest to the excellence of these boots, a lifesaver when I attempt to walk my dog on the beach at high tide on a winter afternoon and she decides to roll in the partially-submerged carcass of a horseshoe crab.

When it comes to exercise, no one is more tolerant of personal style than Islanders. Do you like to run in a large floppy hat and micro shorts? No one will judge you. Do you climb onto the stationary bike in khakis and a shirt with a collar? Enjoy your workout. The only ones wearing spike heels on Shelter Island are the Bucks.

It’s been four years since fashionista.com’s Instagram feed identified the Island as a hub of fashion, and in retrospect it hasn’t caused much trouble. Maybe the fashionable people they were talking about were never really here. Because real Shelter Island fashion has more to do with washing instructions than Instagram, at least until someone opens a dry cleaner. So much for that cashmere sweater.

David Browne, choosing a profession between jockey and judge

David Browne of New York and Shelter Island.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on December 8, 2016

When David Browne panned Rod Stewart’s 1975 album, “Footloose and Fancy Free,” saving special derision for the first song, “Hot Legs,” he was a student at a New Jersey high school. It was his first record review.

“People noticed,” David said. “They were either angry at me or agreed with me. That was one of my first indications of the power of the written word.”

In the decades since, David used that power as a music critic for The Daily News, a writer for Entertainment Weekly, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, and author of four books about music and music culture, including in 2015 “So Many Roads,”  a history of The Grateful Dead.

David’s father was a night janitor in a factory and his mother was a bank teller. He grew up in New Jersey with two sisters, who were 10 and 13 years older. When he was in high school, his sister, L. Virginia Browne, a school principal, wrote a novel and embarked on a new career.

David remembers how excited he and his parents were when they spotted his sister’s novel in an airport bookstore.

David loved reading Rolling Stone, thinking it was different kind of magazine that took music and pop culture seriously. He wanted to do that kind of writing but had no idea if it was possible to make a living at it. With his sister’s success and the help of a high school career-planning test that listed possible professions (journalist was listed between jockey and judge), “I realized that it is an actual job,” he said.

Determined to become a professional writer, David went to NYU and majored in journalism. Working on an alternative weekly paper in the spring of 1982, he was standing outside the office when a friend introduced him to another member of the paper’s staff, Maggie Murphy. Campbell said, “Here’s Dave, he’s a really funny guy.” Maggie later admitted her first thought was, “That guy is funny?” They got engaged a year later and married in 1984.

Although David didn’t discover Shelter Island until 1990, portents of this place appeared as his career developed. His first job after college was at Testa Communications, a small magazine company that published several titles including Music & Sound Output, based in Carle Place, up-Island. Years later, David would discover that the publisher, Vincent Testa, is a long-time resident of Shelter Island. In 1987, David’s high school dream came true when his first piece in Rolling Stone was published, a review of an album by Loudon Wainright III, also a Shelter Island resident.

By the spring of 1988, David was a staff writer at The Daily News, going to concerts and interviewing — regardless of his own musical tastes — a broad sampling of stars from Phil Collins to Tony Orlando.

“Sometimes it helps to not be a huge fan of the person you are writing about,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about offending the person whose music you like.”

David moved to Entertainment Weekly and threw himself into his assignments. He decided to embed as a roadie with the 1996 Kiss Reunion Tour. Every night he had a different job, starting with wiping up copious amounts of fake blood (red dye, yogurt and eggs) after the concert.

He shadowed the security guys whose job was to survey the crowd and pick out hot girls for ticket swap; five or six tickets for seats up front, offered to attractive, unaccompanied women because the band liked to look at pretty girls in the front row.

His judgment was questioned. “There was one girl I pointed out and they said, ‘nah,’” he remembered.

In his last night with the tour, David worked the dry ice machine underneath the stage, blinded by thick smoke and pushing vats of frozen carbon dioxide into place. “I lost a fingernail,” he said. “I got home and Maggie said, ‘You look gray.’”

David’s story was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

In 1992, Rolling Stone assigned him to interview Leonard Cohen, the legendary writer, singer and songwriter who died last month. As David tells it, the interview was particularly memorable. It took place at Cohen’s home in Montreal at 9 a.m., an hour unheard of for rock stars. The first question came from Cohen to David, “Have you ever had a Canadian bagel?” David had not.

He was particularly impressed by the collection of reading material in the Leonard Cohen bathroom.

“Very esoteric, high minded literary reading,” he said. “Luckily, I had my pad with me to take notes after I washed up.”

At the time Cohen was 58 but seemed older. When David left, Cohen insisted he take his scarf because it was snowing.

David and Maggie discovered Shelter Island in 1990 when a friend invited them to take a share in a ramshackle summer cottage near North Ferry, that came to be known as the “Sleeping With the Enemy” house because the eight mostly-unrelated people renting the rooms were young professionals working for competing publications in the world of New York publishing.

“We loved it right away, coming over by ferry,” David said. Every weekend they arrived without a car, getting groceries and visiting the Recycling Center by bicycle and on foot.

Eventually David and Maggie bought their own house, and a few years later, daughter Maeve came along. Now 14, Maeve goes to school in New York where the family lives with a large, fluffy dog named Ellie when they are not at their Burro Hall Lane home.

The Island proved to be a productive place for David to write. In addition to his book about the Grateful Dead, he’s written books about James Taylor, Sonic Youth and is working on a biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to be published in 2019, the 50th anniversary of the band and the anniversary of Woodstock.

In the 26 years David has been coming to the Island, he said the important things have not changed.

Even if there are a lot more houses, there are still kids selling lemonade in front of them.

“So much of the world is changing and Shelter Island isn’t,” David said. “Even though we like to think of ourselves as progressive people, we’re fine with Shelter Island staying the same.”

LIGHTNING ROUND

What do you always have with you?  A picture of my daughter Maeve from several years ago: in it she looks like a TV newscaster with a million dollar smile.

A favorite place on Shelter Island?  The stretch of Ram Island Road with that steep downhill to the Ram Island Drive and the causeway. It’s thrilling to go down that road on a bicycle.

Last time you were elated?  I took my daughter with me to vote.  She filled out the ballot for me, she was so excited that a woman was running for president.  We did it together. Even though the result didn’t go the way we planned, it felt really special.

Last time you were afraid?  The Wednesday after the election, I was hearing about some of the people who might be in the incoming cabinet and administration.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?  We love the day of the fireworks, whatever day it is.

Favorite book or movie?  A Gay Talese collection, ‘Fame and Obscurity.’

Favorite food?  I like Greek food, anything on the menu at the Hellenic Snack Bar.

Most respected elected official?  Obama. He’s been a remarkable leader. No matter whether you agree with him or not he is a thoughtful and intelligent guy.

Q & A with the big man in red

Published in the north forker on November 26, 2016

Do you believe in Santa Claus? I do — and that’s why I arranged to interview him at the home of Tony and Mary Yarusso in Northville, on Long Island Sound.

He answered a bunch of nosy questions with his customary good humor.

Full disclosure: At the end of our interview, he gave me a candy cane.

Q: How did you get into this?

A: I had white hair and I decided to let my beard grow, see where it went and what I would become. So it grew and grew and I said, “Hmm, let me get a red suit and see where I go with this.” Once you put on the suit, it’s a different day. You’ve got a lot of responsibilities. Children are watching you and you have to set an example for them. You are a Santa and you have responsibility to what Santa represents: kindness, goodness and helping.

Q: Santa, you’re looking pretty fit. How do you do it? And why?

A: We are getting away from the tradition of the fat Santa. I wear the hat to protect me from the sun. Santa doesn’t smoke a pipe anymore. I learned something years ago: When you’ve grown the beard and you wear the red you are a Santa 24/7. Today Santa Claus realizes that health is a big part of what he should be projecting.

Q: What do you say to the children who come to see you?

A: I thank them for those chocolate chip cookies — the ones they left for me last year — and they just beam, because it’s nice to get a thank-you from Santa. I usually ask them, “Are you helping your mommy and your daddy?” I encourage them to read books with their parents and remind them that it’s very important to eat all your veggies and fruits, and that it’s not all about milk and cookies — except for me. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Q: Sounds like your approach to being Santa means taking advantage of teachable moments.

A: I don’t teach a lesson, but I do want to convey a few things that they can take away with them. I have a big map next to the sled. When a child asks, “Where do you go first, Santa?” I tell them, starting from the North Pole, I always go to Poland first because it is very cold there and I like to get it out of the way early. Then I go around and down through South America. When I get to Alaska I know I’m almost home.

Q: Have children’s requests changed over the years?

A: These days a lot of technical stuff, but children still want dolls and trucks.

Q: Are you famous?

A: I’m not interviewed all the time, maybe once in the past year. I did go on “Good Morning America” a few times, in 2012, 2013 and 2015. It was grand.

Q: Where can kids go to see you?

A: I do a lot of volunteering at schools. I’ll be at Mercy High School in Riverhead on Thanksgiving Day. I’m also at Santa’s Christmas Tree Farm in Cutchogue.

Q: Do people ever ask you if Santa Claus really exists?

A: Practically every person that comes to see me has the question, “Are you Santa?” Know what I tell them? “That’s for you to answer, for you to make up your mind.” Then I take my hat off and ask, “What do you think?”

Sobering Thought

 

Published in Long Island Pulse on November 23, 2016

Joe McKinsey grew up in South Ozone Park Queens, got a high school education and managed to land a series of good jobs…then proceeded to lose every one. By the time he was in his 30s, he was living in Los Angeles with a wife, a 5-year-old daughter and an addiction to drugs and alcohol that would nearly destroy him.

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Remembering the day he finally called a treatment facility for help, McKinsey said, “They told me it would take 21 days to break a bad habit. Well that was an understatement…but it was a great start.” In the course of his recovery, McKinsey made a discovery: when he was open with others about his problem, they would describe their own struggles with substance abuse. “I’m not very anonymous about my recovery,” he admitted. “If you are with me for more than 10 minutes, you’ll find out.”

McKinsey soon found a calling to help others with the same problem. This often meant assisting them in finding treatment, something most addicts never receive. According to the most recent data published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2013 about 8.6 percent of Americans needed treatment for a drug or alcohol use problem, yet less than 1 percent received it at a specialty facility.

As McKinsey helped more people into recovery he “became a go-to guy on both coasts” and began to notice unaddressed need: “People who have some wealth want a place where they are going to be comfortable.” In 2010, years after moving back East and building a successful computer business, he founded The Dunes, a high-end addiction treatment center in East Hampton that accommodates up to 10 people in a family-like live-in environment.

Although The Dunes is a luxury rehab center, McKinsey has made its services available to those who cannot afford the full cost. He estimates that these “scholarships” have amounted to about $3 million over the past six years. When McKinsey first had the idea to open the center, he sought advice from Dr. Howard Shaffer, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and expert on addiction. Shaffer eventually became the senior project consultant for The Dunes and is now conducting a five-year study of program outcomes.

McKinsey said it’s these outcomes that have helped bolster his own recovery. “It’s amazing the change in people. When they come, they are nervous and angry. They start to turn back into the person they should be. That is the thing that gives me the most pleasure. When it works, it’s magic.”