Charity Robey

Shark Week for an Island family

COURTESY PHOTO This thresher shark fed a family of three for more than a week, with lots left over.

It took three members of the Mastropietro family 45 minutes to bring in a 177-pound thresher shark 15 miles due south of Montauk, but over a week to fry, roast, grill and give away the hundred-plus pounds of meat.

Fortunately, they have plenty of seafood-loving friends and family on Shelter Island.
As sharks go, it wasn’t even that big. This year’s top three winners of the Star Island Yacht Club’s Shark Tournament — the Mastropietro didn’t compete — were 453, 333 and 288 pounds respectively.

The Mastropietros landed their beast on August 8, fishing with Captain Frank Braddick, and first mate Donnie Briand on the Hurry Up. It was their first time fishing for — let alone catching — a shark. Eighteen year old Dino Mastropietro said his father, also named Dino, his Uncle Paolo and he, spelled each other as they fought the fish to the death.

Dino, who is a computer engineering student at the University of Michigan, was awestruck at what they had done. “It was a big, majestic thing,” he said. There was a lot of blood.

Dino’s younger brother Dante got a little queasy, but rough seas were to blame.

The Mastroprietros have rented on Shelter Island every summer for most of Dino’s life and his mother, Karen Pandiani has summered here for 30 years.
Dino was determined to make good use of every scrap of  thresher, snout to caudal fin. “I thought if we are going to take this thing home, we are going to honor it.”

The first beneficiary of shark largesse was the Pridwin; the Mastropietros brought in about 30 pounds of meat for the chef to cook.

As for the rest, a large extended family, and endless days of fish feasts took care of it.

They grilled shark steaks with the skin on, like swordfish, but started trimming them when the steaks warped and curled as the skin shrank on the grill. As days went by, they made shark tacos, shark po-boy’s, shark fried in olive oil and even shark ceviche.

By August 16 Shark Week at the Mastropietros was over, and all parts of the creature had been honorably dispensed. “That definitely gave me consolation,” Dino said.

Megan Hergrueter, living a life of kiln and kin

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Megan Hergrueter with her work. The white and black vessel is an example of a specific technique — applying horsehair to very hot pottery to create a singed effect.

The week leading up to Shelter Island’s ArtSI open artist studios event, Megan Hergrueter had her hands full. As in full of clay.

A potter whose studio in the Heights has been a popular stop on the studio tour for years, Megan spent part of the week working near an outdoor oven heated to 1,200 degrees, with a garden hose at the ready, and a buddy on call, in case of conflagration. In spite of this burst of production — and fire-suppression precautions — before the end of the first day she had sold most of her one-of-a-kind vases, bowls and art objects.

The hand-built, wheel-made and raku-fired pieces Megan creates are not all utilitarian objects for home and kitchen. Many pieces are etched with carbonized cracks and ridges formed when super hot pottery is removed from the kiln and suddenly cooled. Therein lies their charm.

“Raku is dangerous and it stinks,” Megan said. “And how it will turn out when you open the kiln, you never really know.”

Organic shapes of birds, scallop shells, blowfish and sheep find their way into her pieces as an expression of her personal natural history, and the fact that she’s spent every summer of her life on Shelter Island, and calls this place home.

Born in Cranford, New Jersey, Megan was the youngest of five in a family that has summered on the Island for generations. Megan’s 94-year old mother, Elizabeth, (Betty) Hansel lives at Peconic Landing and is in possession of so much obscure and fascinating family history, that Megan would only agree to discuss it after her mother had briefed her.

Megan’s great-grandfather visited the Island during a trip to Montauk on business in the late 19th century. “He worked for the railroads,” Betty Hansel told me, emphasizing the “s” in railroads, and thus clarifying that his work did not involve stoking an engine or taking tickets.

Megan’s grandmother started the family tradition of finding true love during an Island summer when she met her husband-to-be at a party and became engaged in 1917. Two World Wars later, Megan’s parents, Charles (Cap) and Betty Hansel took a cottage in Montclair Colony.

Starting in the 1960’s the extended family occupied a pair of houses near the North Ferry, one of which was generally rented out. These were beloved homes to Megan and her four siblings as well as 19 first cousins and various aunts and uncles. Known to all as “the red house” and “the brown house,” they stand to this day, although no longer red and brown.

The summer Megan was 16, she met Charles Hergrueter, whose family had long had a summer home on the Island. Megan’s brother worked with Charlie at the Bohack, the Island’s grocery store, and although Charlie and Megan noticed each other, they didn’t date until three years later, when Megan took a break from Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire to spend a winter here.

Charlie was also spending the winter on the Island, working for George Costello at Costello Marine.

In 1974, Charlie and George decided to go to Alaska and work as crane operators on an oil platform in the Bay of Alaska, the experience of a lifetime, and a sure way to make money. Megan, who was back on the Island, and Charlie had to communicate primarily by letter. She claims to have saved every one he wrote, so he must have been pretty good at it.

Megan waitressed and worked as a chambermaid during the summers, but said the best job she ever had was the fall she worked as a culler for Chip Edwards during scallop season. Up at 4:30 every morning, by 5 a.m. they were on the water, and were back by 11 a.m. with their limit of “many bushels,” in time for Megan to work the lunch shift at The Dory.

She remembers scallops so plentiful that they came up near the surface, jetting upwards like aquatic butterflies.

In 1978, Megan and Charlie got married at Hay Beach. “Right on the beach,” Megan said. “That’s our favorite place.”

The couple studied biology at Stony Brook, and while Charlie went to medical school in Boston, she went to work as a buyer in the ski business. They settled in Newton, Massachusetts and Charlie became a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Megan and Charlie’s children, Gretchen 31, Anja, 29, and Charles (Gus), 25, grew up spending summers on the Island. In May on Shell Beach, Anja will marry Edward (Ted) Barber, whose mother, Betsy Dinkel, is related to Megan’s by friendship and marriage since Megan’s sister Kathy married Peter Dinkel decades ago.

“We are a close family and extended family,” Megan said. “Shelter Island brings and keeps us together.”

When she was a student at Colby-Sawyer, she took ceramics and fell in love with making pottery. From the very start, she knew she loved hand building, a process by which the potter pinches, smooths, bends and burnishes the pot with her hands instead of a mechanical device like a wheel. “I prefer it because it’s challenging, and extremely satisfying,” Megan said. “Making pottery is a tactile craft. An art, really.”

On the Island the summer of 2000, Megan was working with friend and fellow-potter Harriet O’Halloran when she realized she had created a pot too large to transport safely back to Newton.

Harriet suggested she take it to Barbara Wright at Shelter Island Pottery, a studio on Manwaring Road. Wright agreed to fire it, and was so impressed with Megan and her work, that she invited Megan to teach a hand building course.

Megan taught for 10 summers, and when Wright closed her studio, Megan continued the group in a donated garage space they made into a pottery studio. “Every summer I do my best work,” she said. “I have such a connection with these women, we’ve had it since 2009.”

After a trip in 2002 to the San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico to learn pottery techniques, Megan returned to the Island fired up — so to speak — and ready to dig a pit. She had long been fascinated with native American pottery, which is usually hand built. But the firing techniques she learned, creating smooth black-on-black surfaces by firing in a low oxygen environment, captured her imagination.

She announced to her pottery group that they had to try it and convinced a member of the group to allow the digging of a pit on her property. They lined the huge pit with sawdust and filled it with pots they had treated with more sawdust, banana peels and other organic matter.

The fire burned all day, slowly down to embers, whereupon they smothered the burning pit of pottery with more sawdust, depriving the fire of oxygen until it burned out completely. All that was left were blackened pots looking like ancient relics of an archaeological dig — a thrilling sight.

Megan said she closes her eyes every time she opens a kiln, full of the thrill of discovery that comes from seeing her creations come out of the fire, “Creating something beautiful from a lump of clay.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  I document everything with the camera in my phone

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Hay Beach. My sanctuary.

Last time you were elated?  When I opened the kiln up today. It’s like Christmas.

What exasperates you?  Impatient people honking their horns.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?  Thanksgiving. We always have a crowd and that’s pretty special.

Favorite movie or book?  “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Favorite food?  Fresh flounder.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  I totally respect Jane Leighton, a woman in my pottery group. She started when she was 88, saying she had always wanted to learn pottery. Now she’s 96.

Most respected elected official?  President Obama. He brought some civility to our world.

Island Profile: Marcus Kaasik, a natural Islander

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Marcus Kaasik and one of his hens.

You can tell a lot about a man by his chicken coop.

Marcus Kaasik’s is a wooden masterpiece made entirely by his hands, with a chicken-sized ladder for entry, and windows and doors fitted with black iron handles and latches — it’s like something from a German fable.

The hens seem to love it, and if I had any doubt, I set it aside when one of his Buff Orpingtons emerged from the laying area cackling with pride at her accomplishment, bringing the interview to a halt while she celebrated.

“They always do that when they lay an egg.” Marcus explained.

He grew up foraging and fishing on Shelter Island, activities that many summer visitors consider leisure pursuits. To Marcus, they are also meditative, spiritual practices. His decision to run for Town Board is partly motivated by the belief that a naturalistic view of Island life is largely missing from local government.

“All that time spent in the woods and fishing, I realized that Shelter Island has its own soul. And my soul is very close to that.”

As a young man, he hated to miss the first bluefish run of spring off Menhaden Lane, but on a sparsely populated island in the days before cell phones and Facebook, it was easy to do. One year, he decided to fish every day starting April 1, no matter what the conditions. Finally, on May 1 he caught his first fish of the year.

“I fished every single day of April and caught nothing,” he said. “From that I learned not to expect anything.”

The story of how Evi and Joannes Kaasik, a pair of Estonian immigrants, found their way to Shelter Island in 1966 with six children in tow is a family legend.

Marooned on Shelter Island by an unexpected car repair, Marcus’s mother liked what she saw. They bought land on Cartwright Road and in 1968, Joannes built their house in six months.

The family moved in that June and in March of 1969, Marcus, nine years younger than his youngest sibling, was born. His brothers John and Karl, and sisters Marian, Marika and Veronica still live on the Island. His sister Alice passed away a year ago.

Estonian was the language spoken at home, and Marcus learned English when he started attending the Shelter Island School. His mother, who didn’t drive, walked him to school and home again to Cartwright Road after school. She died of cancer in 1981 when Marcus was 12.

His mother’s illness and death was a dark period of Marcus’s life — the memory of his father doing the laundry and taking care of the house still makes him emotional.

Marcus and his father spent a lot of time together, going out to spear eels, to smoke or freeze them. “That’s how we survived,” he said. “I spent a lot of time in the woods, getting close to nature, analyzing it and questioning things. That’s when my spirituality grew.”

After graduating from the Shelter Island High School, Marcus spent time at the University of Helsinki in Finland, where his siblings had gone before him. His father wanted his children to spend time near Estonia, but there was another reason — it was practically free. He studied psychology, but after enduring two Helsinki winters, decided not to go back for another.

In 1990 at a New Year’s Eve party at his sister’s house in Philadelphia, Marcus made a resolution to go back to college. Alice encouraged him to do it, and offered to put him up if he got into college in Philadelphia. Marcus went to classes at Temple University during the week, traveling to Shelter Island on weekends to work as a carpenter.

He thought he’d go back to his original major until he asked a professor, “When do you think we’ll get to the good stuff in psychology?” and the prof responded, “We’re never going to get to any good stuff in psychology.” He changed his major to finance and economics, studying for five years, but gave it up two courses shy of a degree to move back to Shelter Island and make his living with his hands.

Marcus had developed a construction business and became a skilled wood worker.

He now has a circle of customers he’s worked with over the years, doing additions, renovations and woodwork.

In 1995, Marcus met Eda Volmer, an Estonian working as an au pair taking care of his brother John’s children. Eda and Marcus married in 2005; their daughter, Johanna, was born in 2007. “We grew to be great parents,” Marcus said. “With the Kaasiks, the kids come first.”

For over a decade, he’s assisted his brother John with the annual Shelter Island School musical, doing lighting and set work for a cherished annual event that seems to involve every student at the school from January through March.

Marcus began to think about running for office in 2015, when he realized he had never heard of two of the candidates running for the Town Board that November, and one of them, Jim Colligan, won a seat.

When Ed Brown resigned his seat, too late for the November 2015 election, Marcus decided to join the list of candidates lining up to be interviewed by the Republican committee for the interim position. Marcus wasn’t chosen, and the experience convinced him that town government was not working the way it should. “They picked the least qualified person, with the least experience,” he said. “That process got me involved.”

He describes himself as “not really a party person,” and is currently registered as an Independent, but plans to switch to the Republican party seven days after the November election.

“Shelter Island needs somebody local, who is open to the new people realizing their value and their contributions,” the candidate said. “Otherwise we get broken up into two camps.”

Marcus has strong opinions about Jim Dougherty, seeking his sixth term as town supervisor, and Councilman Jim Colligan, who he sees as promoting excessive regulation.

“Jim Dougherty is very divisive,” Marcus said. “I see him playing both ends of it. He tries to cozy up to the new people saying the local people are a bunch of buffoons and he tries to cozy up to the local people saying, we have to keep things low key. I see Jimmy Colligan doing the same thing. They say things that curdle my soul. This is Shelter Island, this is not the Bronx. We don’t need all this heavy-duty regulation.”

On affordable housing, Marcus said, “When I was 20 years old, a person with two hands could make enough money to buy land. I’ve been to every Town Board work session on this. Nothing is going to happen with Jim Dougherty at the helm.”

He agrees, however, with the supervisor about new regulations on short- term rentals. “I see the law bringing a lot of headache to good people who just want to pay their mortgage and I don’t see it bringing any relief to people who don’t want noise,” he aid. “I really don’t like laws that could turn honest people into criminals.”

For Marcus, the brown tide of 1985 was the worst thing that ever happened to Shelter Island. He remembers trying to get eels at Burns Point and not being able to see the bottom. He said, “We were crying. At the dump people were throwing out their scallop dredges.

“No one is exactly sure why the brown tide happened,” Marcus said, adding that he suspects that heavy use of pressure-treated lumber on docks, an accumulation of copper from boats, and the release of sewage from a facility in Riverhead could have been factors in the brown algae bloom that wiped out scallops, clams and other living things. “Our defense against the brown tide are shellfish. We need a robust seeding program.

“Shelter Island is a provider,” he added. “It wants you to dig the clams, it wants you to go fishing, and if you participate in that you become blessed, get a deeper communion with the Island and its soul.”

Lightning Round — Marcus Kaasik

What do you always have with you?  A picture of my daughter.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  The porch of the Taylor’s Island cabin looking north toward the second causeway.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  Montauk.

When was the last time you were elated?  When Johanna was born, looking into her blue eyes was like looking into the universe.

What exasperates you?  Those sticky labels on fruit.

Last time you were afraid?  Seventy miles off Shinnecock in a storm at night, the boat next to us was hit by lightning and caught fire.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?  The day the striped bass come in.

Favorite movie or book?  “The Meditations,” by Marcus Aurelius.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  Dick Petrie. Calm, thorough, level-headed.  He lives in a trailer near his hotel, the Pridwin.

Most respected elected official alive or deceased?  Thomas Jefferson.

Island Profile:Gary Gerth, finding the way forward in politics and life.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Gary Gerth at home on Shelter Island.

On a quiet evening a few years after he moved to Shelter Island, Gary Gerth’s phone rang. The caller, who identified himself as Leon, had misdialed. This was in the days before apps, when people made a local phone call to a friend to find out the weather, but Leon got Gary instead, so Gary stuck his head out to check the cloud cover, came back to report, and 45 minutes of conversation later he asked Leon his last name.

“Uris.”

“Leon Uris? You wrote ‘Exodus!’”

“I know. I did!”

Gary had an extensive career helping Long Islanders solve problems, whether issues of development and land use, veterans denied their benefits or Leon Uris wondering if it would rain. Now in his first run at elected office, Gary is the Republican candidate for Shelter Island Town Supervisor, running against Democrat Jim Dougherty in the November election.

The first time Gary saw Shelter Island he was in an Army helicopter flying over the East End in the late 1970s on his way from the Naval War College to a base on Long Island. He grew up in Wantagh and went to college at Hofstra, but until that day he had never seen the Island, and the view from above of the emerald-green land was unforgettable. He came to learn more about the Island when he served on the Long Island Regional Planning Board, and in 1979 he bought a home here.

Gary’s father was in the army medical corps during World War II and his mother worked at Grumman inspecting airplanes. Gary and his brother, Grant, were born at either end of the war, Gary in 1942 and his brother four and a half years later.

Gary went to elementary and high school in Wantagh and was a senior at Hofstra in 1965, one credit-hour short of qualifying for a student deferment, when he opened a letter informing him he’d been drafted to serve in Vietnam.

He enlisted in the Navy, went through boot camp and ended up in Communications Intelligence School, serving at Homestead Air Force Base and in Southeast Asia, but never in Vietnam, although he is a veteran of that war. He completed his degree from Hofstra in 1971.

Before he joined the Navy, Gary married his high school sweetheart, but the years of separation during his service took a toll and the marriage ended. “I have nothing but blessings from that marriage,” Gary said. “I think we both could have worked a little harder.”

In 1972, a friend introduced Gary to Joseph Margiotta, the longtime chairman of the Nassau Republican Party, who selected him as Republican Party press secretary, a job Gary held until 1974. Mr. Margiotta continued to wield great power as head of the Nassau GOP until 1983, when he resigned after being convicted of federal mail fraud and conspiracy charges more than a decade after Gary had moved out of doing PR for Republican candidates.

In 1974 he became executive assistant to the Hempstead presiding supervisor, Francis Purcell. Mr. Purcell assigned Gary to constituent services, a kind of ombudsman, and he loved the work. When people called with complaints or questions, Gary’s office was there to solve the problem by interceding between the citizens and departments and agencies.

When Al D’Amato succeeded Mr. Purcell as Hempstead presiding supervisor in 1977, the nature of Gary’s job changed.

“I was no longer ombudsman,” he remembered. “There was a blizzard, right after D’Amato came in, and I was sleeping in his office for a week, helping to direct the highway department. He came in one night and threw a blanket over me.”

When Tom Gulotta became the Hempstead presiding supervisor in 1981, he made Gary the principal legislative advisor to Nassau County, expanding his role.

During his time working in Hempstead and Nassau County, Gary was on several governmental boards and the Cornell Cooperative Extension Association. “I saw how regional government works,” he said.

From 1996 until he retired in 2001, Gary was director of the Veterans Service Agency, working with a team to resolve cases for people who had been denied benefits, sometimes because of missing records. His agency was able to reconstitute many of those records and get benefits to veterans and their families.

He grew up in the Lutheran church and converted to Catholicism when he married, but his work in local government convinced him that the only permanent way to help people is to change their hearts, and for this he would need training.

Over a period of years studying part-time, he earned a Master of Divinity in 1998 from New Brunswick Seminary at St. John’s University and subsequently worked part-time as a preacher at First Congregational Church of Bay Shore from 2005 until this year.

He is currently a member of Our Lady of the Isle Church.

Gary joined a group that started meeting a year and a half ago to discuss local political issues in the hope they could identify candidates for office. His involvement with this group, which includes former councilman and one-time supervisor candidate Glenn Waddington, and Town Board candidate Marcus Kaasik, spurred him to begin attending as many board meetings as possible. Since March, Gary said he’s been a regular fixture at the Tuesday work sessions.

“When I worked for the Town of Hempstead, I was at every town council meeting, and every board of supervisors meeting,” he said. “It brought back a familiar feel, and I was glad to be a part of it.”

When the local issues group asked Gary to run for supervisor he declined, mentioning that he is 75. His colleagues pointed out that Jim Dougherty is even older. When they asked again, he agreed to run.

“I love the Island and I understand the issues,” he said. “It seemed like a natural thing.”

His decision is not motivated, Gary said, by any dislike of Mr. Dougherty. “I’m not outraged at anything that Jim has done,” he added. “I don’t comment on other people’s values or morals or sense of humor. I have no enmity toward him. I would just do things a little better.”

Compared to Mr. Dougherty, Gary described his approach on issues such as water and the aquifer as “more prudent” and on control of the deer and tick problem, more aggressive. He feels the short-term rental regulations were hastily crafted and should be reviewed from the perspective of enforcement, constitutionality and the effect on young homeowners. He asked, “Is it really what we need on Shelter Island?”

The failure of the town to preserve the St. Gabriel’s site from development is a sore spot with him. “I was hoping the town would come out to save the place,” Gary said. “I felt like this was a rare parcel and it was such a blessing. Eleven million [dollars] could have saved it.”

Gary sees a big difference between politics on Shelter Island and the rest of Long Island. “Nassau and Suffolk County are much more partisan,” he said. “Here, we all seem to work together. Someone wins, and someone loses and then they get down to work.”

In his eyes, public service is a process of working toward consensus and it’s more important to accomplish something than to worry about getting credit. Public service is also consistent with Gary’s faith, he said, adding,

“We are all on a journey, part of something so much bigger than ourselves.”

Lightning Round — Gary Gerth

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  St. Gabriel’s. A wonderful, spiritual, uplifting place.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  The Peconic Estuary.

Last time you were elated?  I’m satisfied with little elations.

What exasperates you? If I hit a block, I regroup, and try to work through it.

Last time you were afraid?  I was on a military transport plane, a C-141 out of Vietnam when we lost part of the right wing, the fuel poured out and we were going down. We had to land on the foam.

Favorite movie?  ‘The Quiet Man.’

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?  Father Peter DeSanctis. He’s twice a citizen — volunteer fireman and a veteran.

Most respected elected official?  Ronald Reagan.

When calcium phosphate was the key to heavenly cobbler

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO
Without baking powder, there would be no peach cobbler. Not a world I want to live in.

In 1856 Eben Norton Horsford, the lord of Sylvester Manor, patented the first leavening to include calcium phosphate, and subsequently made a fortune marketing Rumford Baking Powder, a combination of chemicals that did for baking what the washing machine did for laundering.

The pancakes, cookies, cobblers and biscuits that came in the wake of this invention are either delightful treats, or sugar and chemical-laced threats to public health, depending on your view of food history.

A new book by Linda Civitello about the history of baking powder, “Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking,” describes this fascinating history. The author will describe the book at a special talk in the Shelter Island Library’s Friday Night Dialogues series that will be held at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm on August 25th at 7 p.m.

If you need convincing that chemical leaveners have been a force for good, try this recipe for peach cobbler, one of the singularly American dishes made possible by baking powder, and especially popular during that part of the summer when the peaches are so tasty that you eat them outdoors so the juice won’t drip down your chin and onto the floor.

You can get fresh local peaches from Goodale Farms or Wesnofske’s at the Shelter Island Historical Society’s farmers market, and Kilbs farm stand on Route 114.

This cobbler recipe, which appears in Civitello’s book, is from Adrian Lipscombe, a gifted baker who relocated from Texas to Wisconsin, opened a café and bakery, and started showing off what a golden, crusty baking powder drop biscuit can do for fresh peaches.

And if you need a fresh can of baking powder, you can always pick up a can of Rumford, Eben Horsford’s brand, and put locally-invented baking powder on your local peaches.

Adrian Lipscombe’s Peach Cobbler
Uptowne Café, LaCrosse, Wisconsin from Baking Powder Wars  |  Serves 12

Filling
1 and ½ tablespoons cornstarch
¼-1/3 cup brown sugar depending on how sweet the peaches are
½ cup water
4 cups fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Topping
3 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable shortening or butter
1 cup milk
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 C)

To make the filling
1.    In a large saucepan, mix cornstarch and brown sugar with water.  Add peaches and cook until mixture is thickened, about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2.    Stir in butter, lemon juice, and cinnamon.
3.    Pour into an 8-inch round baking dish.
To make the topping
1.    Mix sifted flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
2.    Cut in shortening until mixture looks like coarse meal.
3.    Add milk and stir just enough to hold dough together.
4.    Drop the batter topping by spoonfuls onto the peach mixture, and spread evenly.
5.    Bake until topping golden, about 30 minutes. Serve warm.

Shelter Island Souvenirs

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on August 10, 2017

Memory is a tricky thing.

I’ll never forget that afternoon on the beach, the setting sun, the waves breaking. Wait. Waves breaking? That must have been Montauk.

Or maybe I’m remembering spring break at Clearwater Beach? Wish I’d kept a souvenir.

We live in a resort, and for hundreds of years visitors have left here with objects to remind them of a special time and place. Island retailers have sold souvenir postcards since the 19th century, and in the mid-20th century you could go home with a can of Shelter Island scallops, an idea I find deeply disturbing.

Not more disturbing than the “Shelter Island Cuff,” available on eBay from designer Amrita Singh, “encrusted with crystals and various shaped stones in red, black or turquoise,” presumably to remind the wearer of the subtle colors of the glass bin at the town Recycling Center.

The bracelet is said to make a glam statement, so why not pair it with a “Shelter Island Head Pendant”  — same designer — to solidify those memories by wearing a jewel on your forehead made of gold-tone brass with resin stone and Austrian crystals?

I was feeling pretty smug about the Shelter Island Head Pendant when I remembered that I have some slightly glam Shelter Island souvenir jewelry myself, a silver pendant in the shape of the Island.

And when I asked around, I found out that many current, former and some-time Island residents also have an object in their lives that reminds them of Shelter Island.

For instance, Katherine Hammond keeps an arrowhead that she found in the yard when her house was built 30 years ago. It’s a link to the Island’s past, since she’s pretty sure it is hundreds of years older than her house.

Deer antlers are the physical representation of Joe Denny’s connection to the Island. He found them in the woods, and said they remind him of what an honor it is to be able to live close to nature on a perfect island. They also help him think. “I display them inside a small building on my property where I spend a lot of time contemplating in the space between thoughts,” Joe said.

Jean Dickerson is a harelegger with family that goes back 10 generations, which qualifies her DNA as a souvenir of the Island. Her list of souvenirs starts with her house, which her father built, and in which she was born, but also includes maps, sweatshirts, paintings, a table and a blanket. “I keep all and love all,” Jean said.

Cindy Belt doesn’t consider things she finds on the Island to be souvenirs since she lives here, but she does have a personal rock. “It fits exactly into my loosely closed hand and reminds me of the calm, happy day when I found it on Wade’s Beach several years ago.”

Jeanette Flynn and her daughter Tara have made a project of collecting souvenir beach glass for years. So far, they have three glass jars of multicolored glass from Island beaches, to remind them of times together.

Katherine Garrison and her family relocated to Dayton, Tennessee at the end of June, right after her son Will graduated from the Shelter Island School, making the question of souvenirs of Shelter Island an especially poignant one for her. “My most cherished souvenir from Shelter Island is the beautiful plate with a painting of the library on it, given to me by my co-workers. A piece of my heart will forever belong to this amazing library.”

Not every memory recalled by a souvenir is a happy one. Paul Shepherd broke his walking stick during a temper tantrum over some doggish behavior while walking his canines.

No animals were injured, but the stick took significant damage. “I glued it and still use it,” he said. “There is something about wood and the hand-rubbed finish … and the reminder to chill out. After all, dogs are only human.”

Joanne Sherman’s favorite souvenir is a green and blue magnetic map of Shelter Island, even though the memories it invokes are closer to “I Love Lucy” than “Remembrance of Things Past.” She said the original map was made in 2001 by her son Matthew as a Father’s Day present for his dad, Hoot Sherman.

The magnetic map stuck on the back of Hoot’s truck was so widely admired that Matt and Joanne went into production, making dozens of maps every weekend for years at the kitchen table with magnetic paper and decals, selling them by word of mouth, and donating the proceeds to local worthy causes. Nowadays, you can buy the maps at Bliss’ Department Store, and Hoot still has the original.

Although Lois B. Morris hasn’t gone into the souvenir-selling business, storage considerations might force her hand, since she lists Shelter Island hats, license plate, notepad, stationery, car magnet, coffee mug, T-shirts, and local scenes painted by local artists among her current souvenir collection.

Now I lay me down on my Ralph Lauren Shelter Island vintage linens (which Etsy describes as pink and red roses “like what you’d find in Grandma’s attic”) and dream of a place where nature was something I could hold in my hand, and peace could be carried in my pocket.

My souvenirs are symbolic of a time and place, and a physical reminder of what was important about it — a relationship, the peace of a day on the beach or a walk in the woods, or connection to people who died before I was born.