Charity Robey

Carol Galligan- A writer's life

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Carol Galligan at home on Shelter Island, where she wrote her new book, “Collision Course: The Vatican, the Nuns of America and the Meaning of Obedience.”

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter in February, 2018

In the 1970s, Carol Galligan was a working, divorced mother of two teen-age kids. Once they made their way from Manhattan to Shelter Island on Friday nights she looked forward to a few moments of bliss.

“The kids would go off and do stuff and I would sit on the back lawn and look at the water and the city melted away,” she said. “It was a Manhattan antidote.”

A full-time resident of Shelter Island, Carol is a psychologist, playwright, journalist and author of the forthcoming “Collision Course: The Vatican, the Nuns of America and the Meaning of Obedience.” Her book is an account of the Vatican’s two-year standoff with a large leadership group of American nuns. Spoiler alert — the nuns prevailed.

Carol’s maiden name is Wolfe, born and raised on the West Side of Manhattan, where her family had lived since their 1847 arrival in the wake of the Irish potato famine.

Arthur Galligan, a friend of Carol’s older brother, began having dinner with the family when she was 13. When she turned 18, they married. “Boys at school were of no interest to me,” said Carol. “I was already engaged.”

She went to Barnard, got a doctorate at NYU and opened a practice in clinical psychology in 1963.

“I stumbled into being a psychologist and it captured me,” she said. “It was the religion I was looking for.”

Arthur was practicing law and became a founding partner of a prominent law firm. Their daughter, Jessica Galligan Goldsmith, is an attorney in New York. Their son, Zach Galligan, is an actor who played the role of Billy Peltzer in the movie “Gremlins” and lives in Atlanta.

Arthur Galligan’s work was demanding. He insisted his family spend weekends no farther than 45 minutes from Grand Central Station. When the marriage ended after 20 years, Carol said her summers were suddenly her own.

One day a friend called her from Shelter Island to say she was debating which of two pieces of land to buy. Carol impulsively told her friend, “Tell the broker I’ll take the other one.”

Frank Hallock, the broker, said he wouldn’t agree to sell land to someone who had not seen it. “I told my friend to put him on the phone,” Carol said. “I said, ‘Mr. Hallock, I know that land well, and I want it.’ I lied. I knew that if I made a mistake I would suck it up.”

After buying the land, Carol came out to see what she had done. Her deception was exposed when she had to ask Hallock to show her where it was.

“I thought it would be an adventure,” she said. “I was on my own for the first time in my life. I didn’t have to ask anyone if I could do it, so I did.”

She built a home for herself and her children in 1969 and after more than four decades of spending weekends and summers, she went full-time in 2004 when her daughter built her own house and invited Carol to live there.

It was about this time that Carol answered an ad seeking a proofreader for this newspaper and became a journalist, going from proofreader to garden columnist to feature writer.

She was well into her 50s when she completed a program in playwriting at Columbia University and began getting her plays and screenplays produced. In 1993, when her play “Out of Purgatory” was performed at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage of Balboa Park’s Old Globe Theatre, the critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote, “the surprise of ‘Out of Purgatory’ is the unobtrusive wit, truthfulness and tenderness of the writing.”

Carol has a new play under way and is holding first readings in her living room.

“Collision Course” tells the story of the Vatican’s struggle, starting in 2012, to control the activities of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that includes 80 percent of the nuns in America. Many American Catholics were outraged at the Vatican’s belief that the nuns had strayed from Catholic doctrine, and the decision to put them under the control of an archbishop whose permission was required for any action.

“I wrote the book because I have a thing about bullies, and I think the Vatican is the biggest bully on the face of the planet,” Carol said. “They have all the power. They answer to nobody.” Although raised Catholic, by the time she was 17 she’d often go to the local coffee shop instead of Mass. “I’ve always had a dim view of the Catholic church,” she said.

Carol got to know a number of nuns in the course of researching her book and was particularly inspired by their reaction at attempts to control their actions. “They never asked permission. They did what they needed to do,” she said. In the end, the nuns were cleared, and the Vatican backed down. Carol’s book describes how the nuns resisted and also attempts an explanation.

The book will soon be distributed by Amazon.

Active in the Democratic party, Carol is a keen observer of Island politics. “I like the intimacy of the political process here,” she said. “You could tell how it was going to go 10 days before the last election. You could feel it in the air.”

She’s also a member of the Executive Committee for Shelter Island’s collegiate league baseball team, the Bucks, and can be found sitting behind third base at every game. Anyone with a spare room should participate by housing a member of the team, she said. “I think the Bucks are one of the best things that ever happened on the Island,” she said.

The constraints of religion, marriage and societal expectations controlled the early part of her life, but when she came to Shelter Island she began to create a life on her own terms. “I love the city, but I’m a Shelter Islander now,” Carol said. “Just don’t interrupt me when I’m reading on the treadmill at Project FIT.”

Lightning Round

Favorite place on Shelter Island? A table outside at the Ram’s Head Inn during the first week of June.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? In New York, when I went running, my route was along Central Park South, and at the end, I’d walk through the enormous lobby of the Plaza Hotel to cool off in the summer and warm up in the winter.

When was the last time you were elated? The play I am writing is doing it for me.

What exasperates you? The waste of people not being honored, not being heard.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The day after Thanksgiving. Everything wonderful is in front of you, the tree to be bought, the lights to be hung. The parties to give and to go to.

Favorite movie or book? “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” It meant the world to me when I was 10.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? My best friend, Elizabeth. She’s smarter than I am and she’s also something I am not — balanced, not impulsive.

Most respected elected official? Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Justine Karen: A self-described 'lopsided student' with her head on straight

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Justine Karen at the Islander.

A very articulate 16-year old is sitting in a corner booth at The Islander talking about her life. It’s the height of lunch hour and just about everyone in the busy dining room knows who she is, where she lives, who her parents are, who she is eating lunch with, and why.

What’s weird is that Justine Karen is totally O.K. with it.

Actually, she revels in it. “Shelter Island may have given me a false sense of security,” Justine said. “I’m very comfortable. But I’m about to graduate, so I’m on the cusp of being very uncomfortable for a decade or so.”

She’s in the middle of deciding where she will spend the first part of her decade of discomfort. Hunter College and Brooklyn College are both strong possibilities. But she’s also applied to schools in Ireland and Scotland, such as The University of St. Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow and University College Dublin, where she has already been accepted.

Her interest in going to school overseas is partly fueled by her desire to study humanities and partly by a desire to travel. “I have a little bit of an impulsive streak,” she said. Justine was born in Brooklyn in May 2001, and when 9/11 happened a few months later, her parents, Reed and Kyle Karen decided they were ready to leave the city.

One of their friends had a summer house on Shelter Island and when Justine was six months old and her brother Ray was three, the family moved here.

Justine’s dad was a cabinet-maker at the time and most of his clients were on the East End. These days he’s a Shelter Island Town Building Inspector and her mom Kyle is an occupational therapist specializing in pediatric therapy and an adjunct instructor at Stony Brook Southampton.

When Justine was 12, she began making regular trips to New York City on her own, starting with a 7 a.m. Jitney from Greenport that dropped her off at 86th street on the East Side. From there, she made her way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent the rest of the day sightseeing on the Upper East side.

She missed her return bus but was able to get another one as far as East Hampton, forcing her mom into an unscheduled trip to the South Fork to pick up her adventuring daughter. On a later trip, she figured out the subway system and visited the borough of her birth on the F train.

Justine describes herself as “a lopsided student — graduating a year early — terrible in math, but very strong and very interested in the humanities.” She credits her social studies teachers with helping her develop an interest in history and politics.

“When I think back about my experience here, I’m definitely going to be thinking about the social studies classroom, and Mr. Brennan and Mr. Miedema,” she said.

She’s also working with the Living History Project at the Shelter Island Historical Society, an oral history project that archives video interviews of graduating seniors.

She loves to read, loves history and is also interested in politics.  Her senior thesis on the Watergate scandal makes the argument that Watergate ushered in an era of entertainment value in politics, where facts became less relevant and political appeal had more to do with who is the most entertaining person to watch.

Justine reconciles her love of reading with her love of socializing by feeling free to combine the two.

“Both proms I’ve attended, I’ve been sure that my purse is big enough for a book,” she said.

When she broke out a copy of the Colm Tóibín novel “Brooklyn” at one prom, her brother intervened. “Ray came over and asked me to stop reading,” she said.

An enthusiastic participant in the annual school musical, Justine is never on stage. “I play from the sidelines,” she said. “That’s how I like it. I applaud the people who can get in front of people.”

Her specialty is the management of props and last year’s production, which involved more than the usual number of fragile and roughly-used objects, was a challenge she accepted with evident relish, especially as she had to make sure that nothing broken made it on stage.

Justine is a member of the women’s cross-country team, participates in spring track, is a co-editor of the yearbook, and writes for The Inlet, the school’s newspaper. Her love of running opened the door to her first experience as a journalist, writing articles about the cross-country and varsity boys basketball teams for this newspaper, in which her supple and vivid writing skills were evident.

“I want to write professionally,” she said. “I’m not sure if that means being a journalist or in some other medium.”

It dawned on her that going to high school here is a rare experience when a summer friend who attends Bronx High School of Science told her stories of competitive behavior that Justine can hardly believe.

“Here, you know everyone, from the moment you are born until the moment you leave,” Justine said. “I love how informal you can be with your teachers.”

She pointed with pride to the fact that a group of high school students spoke at a Town Board meeting last year to voice their opinions about short-term rentals and affordable housing.

“That was driven by concern,” Justine said. “People want to come back and have this life and they’re worried they won’t be able to.”

She said most students here are awake and aware of what’s going on in town. For example, she said, when former Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty told an offensive joke in a speech last year at the League of Women’s Voters sponsored State of the Town event, a large contingent of high school students were present, including Justine

“We were really upset by his comments,” she said. “There are kids who don’t care, but there are more who have an extraordinary amount of hometown pride. Those kids want Shelter Island the way they want it to be.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A book.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? I like long runs out in Dering Harbor and Ram Island. Those courses are my favorite places.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? In New York, the walk from 42nd Street and Third Avenue down to Union Square, passing through Gramercy Park.

When was the last time you were elated? My friend Francesca is extremely excited about prom and took me and two other friends shopping at Estelle’s Dressy Dresses, a five-hour ordeal. Seeing how elated she was, it wore off on me. Francesca and I got dresses. Both were red.

What exasperates you? People who don’t have a sense of humor.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? A Wednesday in May because at that point no one is out and the weather is beautiful.

Favorite food? Ice cream.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Margaret Doyle. I look up to her. She took me with her family to London and on many trips to the city.

Marika's eclectic boutique: Shelter Island's hidden gem for furniture finds

The storefront at Marika’s Eclectic Boutique on Shelter Island. (Credit: David Benthal)

Published in the March issue of northforker magazine 

More than 30 years ago, Marika Kaasik and her sister Marion decided to open a store on a remote island reachable only by ferry. In those days, Shelter Island was inhabited by 2,000 people for 40 weeks of the year, and most of them already had plenty of furniture.  

At first, the boutique offered sportswear along with vintage furnishings, but as the clientele grew, its offerings narrowed.

Today, Marika’s carries mainly furniture and lighting — some refinished and some in need of TLC.

Kaasik’s eye for what makes a vacation house a second home is unwaveringly accurate. It’s the secret to her success.

Tell me the story of how and why you opened your store on Shelter Island.

I’ve been here since 1984, more that 30 years. I grew up on Shelter Island, went to school in Finland; and then my mother got ill, I came to see her, and my father said why don’t you open an antique store? My sister Marion was interested in antiques and I was doing sportswear and then we slowly were selling more and more furniture and less and less sportswear. You could take a nap on Route 114 in those days; there was nobody here.

What kind of furniture sells the best?

Everything made in Scandinavia sells really well. I’m Estonian, and I’ve been looking at furniture for 35 years, so I know what I’m looking at. Pairs of night stands, because a pair is harder to find.  Large furniture always takes longer to sell than small; good lighting sells fast. In a beachy community, white sells, except wicker.

What do you think of discount retailers who offer antique-like furniture?

Walmart makes mid-century-style furniture. Does that hurt me? Absolutely. When Bombay & Company got started it brought the antique market down because they were so cheap. Now, West Elm is doing antique-style, but it is not cheap. For a real Danish modern credenza, I’m still better on price than West Elm.

Kaasik inside her store in December. (Credit: David Benthal)

Do you consider your work to be one part recycling, one part selling?

What I do is very green. Instead of this furniture going away, it’s being used again. I don’t want anything thrown out. I get great pleasure from finding the right home for something.

On an island, it’s not so easy to get rid of things you don’t need anymore. Does that affect your business?

When I buy the contents of a house, I often have to buy the whole thing, and I don’t want to throw things out. My dumping fees are high, but it also costs me a small fortune to save things. Like this beautiful mahogany set. This row of furniture cost me $400 just to move it in here.

When is the store open?

I don’t really close at all. In the summer people come over on the ferry every weekend, and never miss a weekend. If they missed, I knew they were sick. Some weekends 100 people come through, but a lot of them just like to socialize. They come because there is always something interesting here.

You are open anytime. Really?

Yes, that’s right. You can shop anytime you want. Once a guy who came over on the first South Ferry of the morning called me up at 6 a.m. and said, “I want to buy that statue.” He was standing in front of the store and he saw some statuary in the front and wanted it. I said, just leave the check in the back door. I don’t know how he lifted it into his truck, but he took it.

True to its name, the store offers an eclectic array of antiques. (credit: David Benthal)

FAVORITE FINDS

These are just some of the items we enjoyed on our recent visit to Marika’s.

• A pair of Herman Miller Eames reception chairs and Bubble lamp in the window of the shop.

• A Finnish Domus chair,  an example of Marika’s eye for quality Scandinavian pieces.

• Solid construction and Art Deco touches are characteristic of the Heywood Wakefield chests the store carries.

• An elaborate, folding traveling chest that opens into a vanity and is definitely not a carry-on.

A deep dive into the gene pool

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Our columnist had her dog Mabel’s genetic makeup tested.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 22, 2018

In 2017, millions of Americans paid to send off a plastic vial of saliva and have their DNA analyzed.

My dive into the gene pool began with animal testing, meaning my three-year old hound Mabel, and a question: Is there something about her breeding that accounts for her vociferous howling when anyone approaches our home?

I’ve lived with several dogs. But I’ve never known one that objected as much as she does to the arrival of strangers bearing packages. Could her breeding account for it?

The first step was to get a DNA sample from under her dewlap. The special chicken treats that usually get her to hold still were not allowed, lest the residue prove that my dog is 100 percent Rhode Island Red. Getting the swab into her mouth between cheek and gum took a strong and wily assistant.

The verdict came by email a few weeks later. The adorable puppy that the rescue organization thought was half beagle/half Lab was actually a mix of beagle, coonhound and Chow Chow, a dog once raised for food in Asia and turned up in the western part of the U.S. in 1780.

Suddenly, Mabel’s aversion to deliveries from Chinese restaurants made sense.

I know almost nothing about my own genetic background. My parents were both only children so I have no aunts, no uncles, no cousins and so few direct relatives that when my son and his fiance asked for a list of relatives to invite to their wedding, I considered adding distant relations I have never met.

We all have our idiosyncrasies, but could some of mine be explained by genetics? Was there a good reason that I had to have braces twice before the age of 18? An explanation for why one of my feet is significantly larger than the other? Perhaps an analysis of my chromosomes would hold the answers.

My son gave me a genetic test for Christmas. I produced the requisite amount of saliva for a DNA sample, sent it off to be analyzed and waited for an answer to my questions about my forebears.

Six weeks later I received an email with the results. I am 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish from my mother’s side, 49 percent British/Irish from my father, and the other 1% is Northern European — the most boring outcome possible.

The disappointing truth is that my dog’s chromosomes are a lot more interesting than mine. My maternal grandmother was born in New Orleans and I thought it possible that she was not 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. I was wrong.

My father’s people were poor farmers in Simpson County, Kentucky and I thought it was possible there were African relations in my mix. There are none.

It’s too bad there isn’t a Hindu version that would generate a report on all of the animals I had been in previous lives.

One surprise was my Neanderthal ancestry. Neanderthals were one of the three types of early humans and before they became extinct, they apparently mixed it up with the early humans that I descended from. Since scientists documented the markers for Neanderthal ancestry in 2010, it’s been possible to identify those markers in analyzed DNA.

I hoped that I would find an explanation for what I consider my Neanderthal habits, such as my predilection for roasting vegetables over a smoky fire and my interest in hunting for food.

There was no genetic explanation for these things, but the genome-mappers at 23andMe did find markers for two traits associated with Neanderthals; I am less likely to sneeze after eating dark chocolate and have less back hair than most people.
Thank goodness those mysteries have been solved.

Did I go into this with unrealistic expectations? I spoke to Sheila McCormick, a molecular biologist whose husband gave her a gift of one of the first 23andMe tests back in 2012.

Like me, she wasn’t surprised by the results, which included the information that her eyes were blue, a fact she had been previously aware of. She described the information she got as “bland.” But she was glad her genetic data backed up ancestry and health information she already had.

I’ve had a few weeks to digest the results and talk to people who have also had their genes examined and I’m starting to feel more clear-eyed. My sister’s friend Sophia was thrilled to have confirmation of her Scottish and Irish roots. Why was I disappointed that my DNA sample revealed no connections to the people of Oceania?

Now I know for sure that I am the result of the sweeping immigration of people from different parts of Europe to the U.S. in the 19th century. Once they got to America, they pretty much stuck to their own kind until my parents met and produced me a century later.

We don’t have back hair, we don’t sneeze when we eat chocolate and our dogs­ — mutts like us — are liable to bark at strangers.

Seth Nathan, a chef rising from his roots

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Seth Nathan at Isola in the Heights.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on January 11, 2018. 

Seth Nathan is the executive chef at Isola, a restaurant in the Heights. Halfway through his first winter on Shelter Island, he’s still — remarkably — smiling. For a guy born in Ojai, California, and raised in Malibu, staying warm and cheerful in a Northeastern winter is no minor accomplishment.

He points out that it’s been a rough winter in SoCal, as well. The area ravaged by the largest wildfire in California history is still home for most of his family, including his aunt and uncle who had 15 minutes to get out of their house, which was reduced to ash.

“It is a part of life there,” Seth said.

When he was 6, his parents split up. He and his father settled into a beachside community called Paradise Cove, where his father still lives (and surfs). Seth’s mother stayed in Ventura, where Seth’s grandfather, Jaime Santana, ran a popular bakery — a place that had been supplying wedding cakes and challah to the community since the 1960s. Seth had his run of the place.

A 6th-grade chemistry class on the science of chicken parmesan stimulated the boy’s first solo foray in the kitchen. After taking copious notes on the recipe, not the chemical principles it demonstrated, Seth found all the necessary ingredients on hand when he got home from school, and decided to surprise his working, single father with dinner.

“I can’t tell you if it was any good,” Seth said. “And I didn’t do well in chemistry, but the science of cooking has always intrigued me.”

Chicken parmesan is now a regular item on the menu at Isola, and judging from its popularity, Seth overcame any difficulty he may have had with the recipe when he was 11.

In spite of his early interest in cooking, Seth bounced around after graduating from high school, thinking about culinary school, but never quite getting there. It took an accidental visit to San Sebastián on the Spanish coast to lead him to a career as a chef.

“It was a wrong turn that turned out right,” he said.

In the summer of 2000 while traveling around Europe with friends, the group rented Vespas to tour the area near Biarritz, France. Seth, who was not familiar with roundabouts, got disoriented as his friends rode off in one direction, and he rode in the other.

He found himself on a highway, crossed the border into Spain, and arrived at a beach in San Sebastián at sunset, where he felt something special about the place. “That night I made it back somehow,” he recalled, “and told my friends, we have to go there.”

Seth stayed for close to six years, working in a bar, and later enrolling in the Escuela de Cocina Irizar, a small, excellent culinary school with a list of prominent alumni, some of whom have become stars in the cooking world. The school is known for the internships that place its students in one of San Sebastián’s renowned restaurants for hands-on experience at the highest level.

For Seth, that meant a stint at Urepel, a family-owned restaurant with one Michelin star. The green American intern who barely spoke Spanish was put in charge of cleaning artichokes, a complex and spiny vegetable that requires knife skills and dexterity to process. His internship became a job, and he worked at Urepel for three years. “I became part of the family,” he said.

Back in Ventura for the funeral of an uncle, Seth noticed the food scene had undergone a renaissance while he was away. Farm-to-table restaurants were opening up, and even his grandfather had closed his bakery and gone into farming.

Seth stayed in Ventura, doing pop-up events, and opening restaurants using his European experience to create a menu, train a staff, and establish relationships with vendors until the new restaurant was on its feet and he could move on to the next one.

While running a wine bar in Ventura, Seth met Casey Garrison — a journalist who is now his partner — when Casey came in with a mutual friend. The friend was the one trying to get cozy with Seth, but that was not what Cupid had in mind.

“Casey and I just knew there would be something,” he said. Casey moved to Washington state and for two years they kept in touch.

When Seth agreed to open a new restaurant in a 40-room hotel in Solvang, California, he and Casey embarked on the adventure together, naming it Mad & Vin, (Danish for food and wine) and it was a hit.

In the spring of 2017, Seth heard that Brad Kitkowski was looking to hire a chef for the new restaurant he was opening on Shelter Island.

Shelter Island was not what Seth was expecting. “I expected the Hamptons,” he said. “I grew up in Malibu, so I’m familiar with that. I’m glad it’s not that.”

In April 2017, Seth and Casey got engaged, and moved to a cabin on Rocky Point Road behind the Pridwin.

Seth was delighted to find a supportive restaurant community on the Island.

“Everyone has a huge amount of pride in their establishments, and could see us as direct competition,” he said. “But we help each other out. On an island where vendors can’t always get here, if we run out of something it’s nice to know we have good neighbors.”

At Isola, Seth is finding a good match for the skills and interests he’s developed, from his 6th grade chemistry class, to Basque Country cooking to contemporary farm to table.

He’s excited by the rich variety of seafood here, including some fish he cooked with in Europe, but could not get on the West Coast, such as hake, which he prepares at Isola Basque-style with an Italian-influenced salsa verde and local littleneck clams — a dish equal parts Europe and the North Fork.

He loves to cook slow. “The technique of braising is my calling card,” he said. “There is always a lamb shank or a short rib on my menus. I’m enthralled by the science of it, the way meat will break down at the right low temperature. The change in aromas, when everything softens and gets caramelized.”

As Seth’s tattoos reveal, he’s an admirer of David Bowie. A large inked area on his chest is a portrait of Bowie as the Goblin King Jareth, from the 1986 film “Labyrinth.” The other, a lightning bolt, was added to Seth’s forearm on the day the star passed away.

“Bowie reinvented himself, but he always kept a signature,” Seth said. “It’s how I’ve fashioned my career. Ever changing but still keeping those roots.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  A photo of a Chihuahua named Peaches.

Favorite place on Shelter Island?  Rocky Point Road, leading down to the beach.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  San Sebastián, Spain.

Last time you were elated?  Last time I bought a plane ticket.

What exasperates you?  Lack of work ethic.

Last time you were afraid?  I’m always afraid of things not going out of the kitchen properly.

Best day of the year on Shelter Island?  The Tumbleweed Tuesday beach party, a day when all the restaurants are closed after a season of hard work.

Favorite movie or book?  The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Do you have a most-respected elected official?  I’d like to.

Tracy McCarthy: Finding the real deal on Shelter Island

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Tracy McCarthy at home on Fred’s Lane.

Tracy McCarthy was 40 when she moved permanently to Shelter Island. But in all the ways that count, she lived here all her life.

Her recurring childhood ear infections? Doctor Grunwaldt treated them. First job? Bussing tables at the Ram’s Head Inn. Name a milestone — first boyfriend, learning to parallel park, the moment she spotted her future husband. She can tell you exactly where on this Island it happened.

She moved here in 2011. Seven years later she’s the mother of a 6-year-old daughter, a member of the Shelter Island School Board and the new director of operations at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. “Shelter Island has been a constant in my life whether or not I have physically been here.” Tracy said. “It all comes back to Shelter Island.”

Tracy’s parents, David and Donna Perrson, raised their family in Port Washington, .

Her father worked in the city and her mother as an administrative and teaching assistant in their local high school. Four summers in row the family, including Tracy’s older brother, Scott, made a two-week trip to Shelter Island on a 28-foot motorboat named Personality.

Tracy remembers swimming with Scott in the Coecles Harbor Marina pool and taking the van to the grocery store in the Center. Every year, she got an ear infection and a visit to Dr. Grunwaldt, the Island’s beloved medical practitioner.

In 1980, Tracy was at summer camp when she got a postcard from her parents, staying at Kraus’s Motel (now known as Sunset Beach) announcing they had bought a house on the Island.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tracy and Scott were summer kids, working hard and avoiding adult supervision. “My parents would leave us during the week and we had the house to ourselves,” she said. “In the back of my head, I always thought I would either marry someone from Shelter Island or end up on Shelter Island.”

She majored in recreation management at the University of Vermont and during her time in Burlington, got involved with community service, participating in building projects with Habitat for Humanity in Burlington, the Lower East Side of Manhattan and rural Mississippi.

Vermont college students with money to travel went to warm places for spring break, but Tracy participated in an alternative spring break, a service trip to work in soup kitchens. After college, she joined the Peace Corps and went to Guatemala where she built latrines, planted seeds and helped mitigate the negative impacts of development on the environment in a rural town where indoor plumbing was scarce.

Tracy’s father bought a publishing company in Connecticut called Media Ventures, whose core business was producing local content for telephone books in the aftermath of the breakup of AT&T. In 1995 at a crossroads in her own career, Tracy asked if he had something she could do while she sorted herself out. In the days before smartphones and GPS-powered apps, the company made local maps for their publications.

Tracy had map-making experience from a GPS class she’d taken in college, and spent most of the first two years at Media Ventures keying in street names.

Eventually she did just about every job in the company from production to editorial, to managing the entire company when her father retired in 2009. She stayed for 23 years.

“Working with my dad, I got to know him as an adult,” Tracy said. “We have a very special relationship.”

In October 2007 Tracy was on the Island for the wedding of a friend, when she spotted a guy standing at the end of the bar at Planet Bliss. She asked her friends who he was. Advised that his name was Bryan, he worked at the ferry and was “a good guy,” Tracy decided to say hello. “I went over and said, ‘What’s your deal?’”

Although she admits it wasn’t the greatest conversation-opener, they talked long enough to exchange numbers. By Thanksgiving weekend they had their first date.

Tracy and Bryan McCarthy were married in 2009 in Florida, and later had a reception at the Ram’s Head Inn. Married to an Island guy, she was still living and working in Connecticut. Their honeymoon in January 2010, Tracy said, was the longest period of time they had ever spent together.

Finally, in August 2011, three weeks before their daughter, Eliza, was born, Tracy moved to the Island full-time, and began a once-a-week commute across the Sound to Connecticut to Media Ventures. Last summer, she closed her family business and accepted a position as director of operations at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm.

In 2014, Tracy’s father was seriously injured when he fell down a flight of stairs while visiting her brother in Connecticut. Tracy’s mother was on the Island when she got the call at 3 a.m..

Tracy and her mother got the first boat in the morning and went straight to Bridgeport, Connecticut where her father was hospitalized with a brain injury. After a lengthy hospitalization and rehab, he managed to recover, an experience that Tracy said taught her something.

“I learned to appreciate the really important people in your life, and to make sure they know that,” she said.

A few years back, Tracy wasn’t happy with the direction she saw the Shelter Island School going, and with Eliza entering elementary school, decided to help by serving on the School Board. She was elected, and is very encouraged by the recent changes, especially the selection of Christine Finn as superintendent, a decision that predates her role.

For Tracy, home is a place to cherish the good times and learn from the tough ones in a place with a small, hometown feel. “I don’t know if that is the best thing all the time, but it is a good thing,” she said. “I can’t get off this Island without someone saying, ‘Hey Bryan, I saw Tracy on the ferry.’ I have such good feelings and connections to this place. Even when there are bad times, the good overcomes. I feel happy to be here.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you?  An old ferry token. A good friend Johanna Johnson gave it to me when I left for the Peace Corps with a note, “So you know you can always come back.”  I’ve had it in my wallet for 25 years.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The round table under the awning at the Ram’s Head Inn. Our wedding reception was there, and every Mother’s Day since I became a mother.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?  Kauai.

When was the last time you were elated?  This morning when over the sound of my hairdryer I could hear Eliza singing, “Santa Claus is coming to town…”.
She was in her room, singing Christmas carols.

What exasperates you? People not following through.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The first day I see that floating Christmas tree in Chase Creek.

Favorite movie or book? The Black Stallion.

Favorite food? Lasagna.

Hoecakes–the breakfast for a president

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO | Hoecakes and honey: The favorite breakfast of the first POTUS.

I imagine that one of the great things about being president of the United States is getting to have whatever you want for breakfast. In George Washington’s case, according to written accounts by his friends and family, it was hoecakes — pancakes made with cornmeal, egg and water. He liked them served with plenty of butter and honey.

Hoecakes were the food of enslaved people and Native Americans in early America. Cornmeal was cheaper than wheat flour, and cooking the cakes on a hoe or griddle in the ashes of a fire did not require cooking utensils or even shelter.

In 1796, when Amelia Simmons’ recipe for hoecakes appeared in “American Cookery” — the first American cookbook — corn had been the staple grain in America for centuries. Simmons’ recipe was a little fancier than just cornmeal and water; she called for scalded milk, mixed some wheat flour in with the cornmeal, and instructed her readers to “bake before the fire.”

Culinary historian Adrian Miller’s new book, “The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas,” tells the story of the African-American people, many of whom were enslaved, who cooked for the presidents, and he includes a number of recipes including this one for hoecakes. It’s not exactly the same recipe written by Washington’s step-grandaughter, Nelly Custis Lewis, but hers required a large stone pot and an overnight ferment next to a warm fireplace, conditions that are tough for cooks today to reproduce.

To see whether I liked the hoecakes thinner or thicker, I experimented by holding back on the amount of water I added at the end. The thicker ones were best, tender and delicious, especially when served hot.

Hoecakes from ‘The President’s Kitchen Cabinet’ by Adrian Miller 

Makes eight 4-inch pancakes

½ tsp. active dry yeast

2 ½ cups white cornmeal, divided

3 to 4 cups lukewarm water

½ tsp. salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Melted butter for drizzling and honey or maple syrup for serving

Mix the yeast and 1 ¼ cups of the cornmeal in a large bowl. Add 1 cup of the lukewarm water, stirring to combine thoroughly. If needed, mix in ½ cup more of the water to give the mixture the consistency of pancake batter.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.

When ready to prepare, preheat the oven to 200F.

Add ½ cup of the remaining water to the batter.

Add the salt and egg, and blend thoroughly.

Gradually add the remaining cornmeal, alternating with enough additional lukewarm water to make a mixture that is the consistency of waffle or pancake batter.

Cover the bowl with a towel and set aside at room temperature for 15 to 20 minutes.

Heat a griddle on medium-high heat, and lightly grease it with lard or vegetable shortening.

Preparing one hoecake at a time, drop a scant ¼ cup of the batter onto the griddle and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the bottom is lightly browned.

With a spatula, turn the hoecake over and continue cooking another 4 to 5 minutes, or until the bottom is lightly browned.

Place the hoecake on a platter and set it in the oven to keep warm while making the rest of the cakes.

Serve the hoecakes warm, drizzled with melted butter and honey or syrup.

DEC decides against extending the scalloping season

Published in the Suffolk-Times on Thursday, February 15, 2018 and the Shelter Island Reporter on Feb. 22, 2018.

The last time Peconic Bay scallops were this plentiful was the winter of 2015, just before six weeks of hard weather put what should have been a five-month harvest on hold. Back then, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation responded by extending the season for commercial scalloping in state waters by a month to make up for lost time, but this year, the season will end in March, right on schedule. 

In a statement on Monday, the DEC announced it would not extend the 2018 season which began on Nov. 6, 2017. Spokesperson Erica Ringewalde said although ice had clogged creeks, bays and harbors for several weeks in January, they are now clear and baymen have the opportunity to harvest scallops until the season closes March 31.

The decision — made with the long-term health of the Peconic Bay scallop population foremost — affects the bottom line for baymen, seafood distributors, and restaurants. Baymen and fishmongers have been speculating about the possibility of an extension ever since the January freeze made it impossible for scallopers to get boats out.

One bayman who would have liked to see the season extended this year is Sawyer Clark of Shelter Island. “With the ice, it’s dangerous work. A lot of people went out early in the season this year, now there are only 35 or 40 real baymen still out there scalloping. We lost several weeks of revenues with the ice.”

At Braun Seafood Company in Cutchogue, Keith Reda said no one from the DEC contacted him about extending the scallop season, “If they had asked me, I’d have told them not to do it. Demand has lessened, retail and wholesale.”

Once the bays froze, the restaurants Mr. Reda supplies in New York and Long Island saw the prices rise and the supply dry up, disrupting the stream of local scallops that had been strong and steady throughout the fall. Now that scallops are available again, he has little demand.

According to Mr. Reda, scallop retail prices over the course of the season told the story; starting with the first weeks after the early November opening, when bay scallops went for as little as $15 a pound. “At that price, a restaurant was crazy not to choose the premium product, Peconic Bay scallops, over cheaper bay scallops from elsewhere.”

Gradually the price climbed through the fall, to a high of around $23 a pound before they became unavailable for part of January. Shucked scallops are now back down to about $18 or $19 a pound as baymen have found plenty of large ones still alive under that cold water.

Mr. Reda pointed out that the quality of the bay scallops late in the season is different than in November, since scallops have a very short lifespan and by spring will die of natural causes if they are not caught. As for the ones he’s seeing now, “They are very large and very old.”

The DEC spokesperson said the decision not to allow commercial scallop fishing in state waters to extend into April was based on the weather, not the economic climate, and not concerns about the upcoming spawn. “DEC’s decision is based on the number of days of ice-covered embayments,” Ms. Ringewalde said.

The DEC and local commercial fishermen are on the same page when it comes to the long-term viability of the Peconic Bay scallop. The collapse of the scallop population in the late 80s was a calamity that brought the DEC and the baymen together in agreement that scalloping season had to be changed to maximize the chances for scallops to spawn.

“We used to start in September,” recalled bayman John Kotula of Shelter Island in a 2015 interview. “But we were finding scallops with roe in October, and we all really wanted this industry to come back.”

The people who sell and distribute the local delicacy agree.

“I can only hope for a good season next year,” Mr. Reda said.

Photo: Blue-eyed scallop on the culling board. (Credit: Charity Robey)