Dead Pines on the way to Montauk..... page 5
THE AMAGANSETT
STAR REVUE
FREE FOR ALL
NOVEMBER 2023 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
They don't change the stuff that works
T
by George Fiala
wo issues ago I ended my turtle odyssey in Jamesport at the Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons. That's when I discovered Woodside Orchards, right across the street, which became the cover stories of last month's issue.
ground, and the food retains a German heritage, which is the kind of food I grew up with. My mom used to buy fresh flounder at a fish store near my Friday piano lessons, and what I ate that day was as good as how she cooked it.
There was one place I couldn't resist stopping at on each trip, intrigued at first by the wonderful sign out front, which I found out has been made a town landmark. And it turns out that the Modern Snack Bar not only has a great sign, but great food and also a great story!
My second time I ordered what I love to order at diners (I would call the Snack Bar somewhat of a mix of a diner and fine restaurant), a turkey dinner. I love to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, and I love having it served to me the rest of the year. I again chose the turnips and red cabbage. My waitress asked if I wanted both white and dark meat, and I said sure. What I ended up with was home cooked turkey with the dark meat tucked under the white, taking the place of what is normally cheaper bread stuffing, and unbelievably delicious.
I'm guessing many of you already know the joint, and others have read about it, as they get lots of publicity.I hadn't known of them, however, until I had the good fortune to drive on Main Road in Aquebogue which enticed me in. When I entered I spent more than a few moments looking at all the family photos on the walls, the bright 1950's style menu boards on the wall, and the various newspaper and magazine articles. A friendly face directed me to an empty table, and I ordered a flounder sandwich plate, picking red cabbage and mashed turnips as sides. I didn't realize it at the time, but the Wittmeiers, who have run the Modern Snack Bar since 1950, have a German back-
"We did actually put paninis on the menu for a while, but they weren't really popular so we dropped them." After I ordered I asked my waitress if I could ask her a few questions for this article. She left and a few moments later a gentleman came to the table and introduced himself as Otto, one of the two Wittmeier brothers who own and operate Modern Snack. He is the older brother–at 83 he still works every day. He told me that after school he worked for the Howard Johnson corporation for 22 years, learning all about the restaurant business, before taking over the family business. He noted that there used to be a number of brother-run restaurants around, now he and John are the only ones left. He said that a lot of restaurants come and go, many of them failing because they are absentee owned.
Otto Wittmeier who owns and operates Modern Snack with brother John. (photos by Fiala)
"I have to physically be here to make sure that every customer leaves happy, that all our meals are cooked correctly, and everything runs smoothly." Spoken by someone who takes
The pride of Aquebogue features a landmarked sign
pride in the family legacy and with what he does with his life. The menu hasn't changed much over the years, and I would say that is partly what keeps them popular, since some of the dishes, like the cabbage and turnips, are hard to find elsewhere, especially cooked correctly as they are here. He has resisted fads. "We did actually put paninis on the menu for a while, but they weren't really popular and we dropped them." When they can't get the right quality ingredients for an item, they stop making it–one example being sauerbraten. I will add here that newspapers are not the important media as we used to be, I guess we are not 'influencers,' so it was so nice to be treated with the old fashioned respect that Mr. Wittmeier gave to me. The food is reasonably priced and well worth it. The Key Lime Garlic Oysters are very popular when they are available, as is their soft shell crabs and Roast LI duck. My roast turkey was fabulous, and a bargain at $22.95. I think my next trip will be on a Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday when they serve roast pork loin complete with mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and applesauce. Modern Snack Bar sells lots of pies - all are made on premises and you can get a slice with coffee or whole some whole ones to take home. Very intriguing is their sea salt caramel cheesecake, although the one I bought was strawberry-rhubarb. Otto told me that they are closed for indoor dining on Thanksgiving week, sothey can handle all the takeout orders. "We have to put cones in the parking lot to control the lines." They are already taking advance orders for
the pies, which include apple, apple crumb, pecan and blueberry; sides including mashed turnips, stuffing, red cabbage and sliced white meat turkey. You can place your order in person or by phone at 631-722-4747. I asked whether most of the restaurant business is local, and Otto told me with scientific precision that they once analyzed the zip codes of the credit card owners and found that 80% were from out of the area. Meaning the place is worth driving to.
It's seasonal
By the way, Otto, who as I said was quite attentive to this newspaper, is very much the promoter, even at 83. Every Thursday, sometime around 9:30 in the morning, he appears on Gary Sapiane's program talking about food. They do close for the winter from the middle of December to the middle of May. The address is 628 Main Road (Route 25) in Aquebogue, phone number (631) 722-3655. And in a nod to post-modernity, their website is modernsnackbar.com
Amagansett
Community Directory
STAR REVUE 32 Winding Way Amagansett, NY 11937 gbrook@pipeline.com
Editor & Publisher George Fiala FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email gbrook@pipeline.com text or call (917) 652-9128
Publisher of the Red Hook Star-Revue, Brooklyn At other end of the Island! The Star-Revue is published monthly 12 issues per year. Editorial and Advertising deadlines are the last day of the month for the next month. Look for us on Facebook
The Amagansett Star-Revue Merry Band of Contributors Joe Camacco Joe Enright Taylor Herzlich Julie Evans George Grella Kelsey Sobel Dante Ciampaglia Michael Quinn Kurt Gottschalk
Amagansett Library
215 Montauk Highway, Amagansett 631-267-3810
Amagansett Public School 320 Montauk Highway, Amagansett 631-267-3572
Marine Museum
301 Bluff Road, Amagansett 631-267-6544
East Hampton Chamber of Commerce 44 Gingerbread Lane, East Hampton 631-537-2900
East Hampton Town Offices 59 Pantigo Road, East Hampton 631-324-4141
Southampton Hospital 240 Meeting House Lane, Southampton 631-726-8200
Worship First Presbyterian Church of Amagansett
350 Montauk Highway, Amagansett 631-267-6404
First United Methodist Church of East Hampton 35 Pantigo Road, East Hampton 631-324-4258
St. Michael’s Lutheran Church 486 Montauk Highway, Amagansett 631-267-6351
St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church 286 Montauk Highway, Amagansett 631-324-0134
St. Peter’s Chapel
465 Old Stone Highway,
East Hampton 631-329-0990
St. Thomas’ Episcopal Chapel 102 Montauk Highway,
Amagansett 631-267-3080
The Jewish Center of the Hamptons 44 Woods Lane,
East Hampton 631-329-6654
Golf South Fork Country Club 730 Old Stone Highway,
Amagansett (631) 267-3575
East Hampton Golf Club 281 Abrahams Path,
East Hampton (631) 324-7007
Sag Harbor Golf Course Barcelona Neck Road, East Hampton
(631) 725-2503
Montauk Downs State Park Golf Course 50 S Fairview Ave, Montauk (631) 668-5000
Tennis East Hampton High School
2 Long Lane, East Hampton
Pizza Fini Pizza Amagansett
Terry King Rec Center
Amagansett
67 Newtown Lane, East Hampton
385 Abrahams Path, East Hampton
237 Main Street,
Herrick Park
Springs Pizza
SPORTIME Amagansett
(631) 907-4039
Amagansett
631-394-5654
841 Springs Fireplace Road
Call Me Today For All Your Hamptons Real Estate Needs
320 Abrahams Path,
(631) 267-3460
ADVERTISE in
THE AMAGANSETT
STAR REVUE WE SERVE FOUR SIZES: Small (1/8 page) .... $100 Medium (1/4 page) ... $175 Large (1/2 page) ... $350 Extra Large (Full Page) ...$600
ENGINEER • BUILDER • BROKER UNIQUELY EXPERIENCED WITH LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Thomas Fantini
Licensed Real Estate Salesperson Cell: (631) 353-8250 | TFantini@Saunders.com
cost is per ad, ads are in color. Publication is monthly.
You can create or own ad or tell us what you want and we'll design it. Deadline is the last day of the month for the next month's paper
OUR NEXT ISSUE COMES OUT IN DECEMBER Call or text George at 917 652-9128 or email gbrook@pipeline.com
“Saunders, A Higher Form of Realty,” is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Please refer to our website for the names under which our agents are licensed with the Department of State. Equal Housing Opportunity.
Page 2 Amagansett Star-Revue
www.star-revue.com
November 2023
PUBLISHER'S COLUMN
Coming and going George Fiala
A
couple of pages away, our writer Joe Enright writes about history and historians. The other day I had an experience which made me think about my own personal history. I was making the Amagansett to Brooklyn trip alone, which gives me the opportunity to listen to the music I want at the volume I like (loud). In the old days of 8 tracks and cd's, the musical choices were limited by your collection. But now, using my Amazon subscription, you can listen to just about anything. What I like to do is explore the entire recorded catalog of particular artists. This particular trip I decided on Elvis Costello. Except for drumming on Pump It Up in a band I was with a decade ago, this Elvis hasn't been on my go-to list. One of the reasons had to do with a taping of a television program that he once hosted. I went to a live taping with John Prine at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. This is how rock writer Iman Labedi described that night: "I was watching Costello tape an episode of Spectacle and a more longwinded loud mouth I have never seen. He wouldn't shut up. The one hour program took four hours to tape because he couldn't give it a rest. Both John Prine and especially Lyle Lovett couldn't get a word in edgewise. Every time Lyle opened his mouth to answer a question, Elvis interrupted him and told another story. Stuck there because they won't let you out once they
close the doors when they're filming, I missed a 9pm Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig at Radio City Music Hall for the sole pleasure of watching Costello unable to edit his brain." This is not a column about Elvis Costello. It is about the idea of having been different people at different times of life, as seen through the same eyes. As I ran through the different albums of the Costello career, I was made to think about the different places I was in at the corresponding times of what might be called my own career. I found myself trying to remember who I actually was at these different times. When his first few albums, "My Aim is True," and "This Year's Model" came out in the late 1970's, I was living in the East Village with my college buddy Harry. This was a second wave of music for me, or maybe third, as I grew up with the top 40 singles of WABC and WMCA and then progressive FM radio featuring the Doors and others. I listened to those two records over and over again. By the time of the third album, "Armed Forces," I had gotten married, still living in the East Village, still working for the Villager newspaper, but with a different lifestyle, and my days of listening to an album over and over again came to an end. My new persona of a married person was modeled both on my parents, and also the Honeymooners, where Jackie Gleason's only life outside of driving a bus was an occasional night out at the Moose Lodge with his pal Ed Norton. Before marriage, a big part of my descretionary income had been on music. That changed as I entered a life of
what was described to me as beingmore responsible. Back to my drive, I found the album "Almost Blue." This was Elvis Costello and the Attractions moving from punk to country. I remembered that I really loved that album. And did again as the LIE exits flew past. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't remember who I was when that particular record was released. Kind of like a John Prine album he called "The Missing Years." Except for a brief spell when I fell in love with a song called Indoor Fireworks, and the album wrapped around it, "King of America," I pretty much moved on from Elvis, as I confirmed by sampling the very many other albums on the Amazon page. Other stages of my life have included fatherhood, which included Tom Petty, the Elton John song Daniel (a first grade friend of my daughter's), and a couple of decades seeing the kind of music that you would hear at The Bottom Line in the Village, or the Stephen Talkhouse out here. More recently there were about five years when I played club owner, hosting music at a kind of private club I ran in a loft-like office that I rented for my mailing business, and also the ten years when I finally moved from the audience side to the musician side of the stage as a drummer in a giggingband. Then of course there's the publisher side, which I've been doing for over a decade with another paper and now this one. And yes, every different girlfriend is another different life. I remember once thinking how cool it must have been to be Jerry Garcia,
because by definition he would have been at every Grateful Dead concert. Same thing with Tom Petty, and Picasso would have painted every Picasso. But thinking now, at what admittedly is an advanced age, I realize that goes for all of us. We have all been around for all of our lives, and every life is unique and at least much of the time interesting. So it's the current me that's been all of these people, taking in all the experiences making all the mistakes and doing all the good things. The sum total of all of this stays in our memory and becomes what some call our wisdom. I like it that I can put myself back in these previous minds and in many cases remember how I felt at the time, complete with the insecurities and the little victories. Of course, the fact that my good health has been relatively the same all these years–fortunately–makes all these lives somewhat stary on an upward keel. That's lucky. My mom used to be well known, both in Amagansett and in Queens, due to her daily weeks all over the neighborhood, stopping to chat with neighbors in the street and in various coffee shops. That was a very important part of her life after my father died. In her early 80's she slipped and fell in an East Hampton laundromat, and lived with back pain for the rest of her life. It was only then that she began telling me "I don't wish old age on anyone."
Cartoon Section with Marc and Risha FUNNY SIDE UP
BY MARC JACKSON
GARY,THis JUST ISN’T
mj
WORKiNG.
by Risha Gorig
Amagansett Star-Revue
©COPYRIGHT 2023 MARC JACKSON AND WEIRDO COMICS
www.star-revue.com
#6
November 2023, Page 3
Remembering the past never gets old
M
y high school history teacher said something I never forgot: “Listen, you morons, and I’ll explain it again! Most of you have a relative who’s fifty years or older. When he or she was born, they probably had a relative who was also that old. Keep going back like that and it will take just 40 consecutive fifty-year-old ancestors before you wind up in the time of Julius Cesar and Jesus Christ. In fact, it would only take 600 consecutive ancestors to trace the entire history of man before we were apes. Why, they could all sit together in the balcony of the Loew’s Kings!” Images of Celtic cave men clobbering Red Hook longshoremen in my favorite childhood movie theater still haunt me to this day. Anyway, I grew up on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. And the only thing reminding me of something older than the day I saw Godzilla, King of the Monsters at the afore-mentioned Loew’s Kings was the steel remnant of a trolley track – dating back only one ancestor – that peeked out here and there from the crumbling asphalt in front of my home. But in less hardscrabble environs, such as the far eastern end of the very same loooong island on which I lived, the past can be better appreciated. There, history is a living thing, particularly in East Hampton which was the first English settlement in all of New York. For instance, every two weeks the East Hampton Town Trustees meet. This is not the Council that manages all the Town’s affairs. No, the Trustees merely oversee the harbors, bay beaches and freshwater ponds. But they’ve been doing that since 1686, when patents from the King of England told them to keep meeting lest they forfeit their oversight. Today’s living embodiment of East Hampton’s institutionalized respect for history is its Town Crier, Hugh King, who can also trace his lineage back to Colonial times despite his birth in Bay Ridge (which might explain his affinity for National League baseball). Retiring after three decades as a Springs teacher in 1996, Hugh became caretaker of an historic Main Street home- turned-museum. And calling upon 35 years as an amateur thespian at a local theater, he would also dress in a Crier’s colonial garb to give walking tours on behalf of the Town. In 2018 King and his wife, the late Dr. Loretta Orion, an anthropologist, published a study of the 1657 witchcraft trial of an East Hampton midwife. That trial would be only seven 50-something lifespans ago if you’re keeping score at home.
by Joe Enright
non-paying appointment, Hugh acknowledged the contributions of his predecessors. One of the names he mentioned was Morton Pennypacker. Frank Knox Morton Pennypacker was the only Town Historian born off the Island. He emigrated from Philadelphia by way of Asbury Park, Kew Gardens, Mineola and finally, East Hampton. History seemed to run in his family’s blood: when he was four years old, a cousin named George Custer went toes up at the Battle of Little Big Horn and during his Asbury Park days running a printing business, cousin Samuel Pennypacker, a combatant at the Battle of Gettysburg, became the 23rd governor of Pennsylvania. During his New York travels as a greeting card salesman, Pennypacker began collecting old books about Long Island, then expanded to old letters, maps, pictures and basically any artifact that would help inform its history. In 1928 he began contributing articles to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about his Colonial era findings, filing almost sixty stories in the next two years. In 1930, he donated 2,600 books and thousands of pamphlets, manuscripts, clippings, and other items to the East Hampton Library, where the chief librarian since 1899 was Ettie Hedges, descended from 17th Century settlers. They would wed six years later and reside in Ettie’s venerable wood shingle house down the block from the library. In 1935 East Hampton named Pennypacker its second Town Historian. Four years later he became famous for confirming the identity of a pivotal player in George Washington’s spy ring during the Revolution – Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay – thanks to his dogged pursuit and analysis of handwriting samples. And in 1943 he was appointed the official historian of Suffolk County. He stepped down
from his posts only a year before his death in 1956. Not quite one ancestor later, East Hampton citizens residing on Montauk Avenue – a very short path off Old Northwest Road – got tired of their mail and packages being misdirected to the much longer Montauk Avenue off Hands Creek Road. They petitioned the Town Clerk, Fred Yardley, to rename their little street and he obliged, dubbing it Pennypacker Drive to honor the memory of the little old man who helped him out whenever he visited the library as a kid. But when the new street post was pounded into the ground it read: “Penny Packer Dr.” Groan. The same residents complained about that new name, no matter if it was one word or two: it was just too weird. So the name was changed again in 1993, this time to one they chose: Country Lane. One has to wonder if their runner-up choice was “Generic Lane.” But the preservation instinct still lives on in East Hampton. Take the November 4th annual Landmarks Luncheon of The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society (not to be confused with the Kinks 1968 hit, The Village Preservation Society, with its chorus of “Preserving the old ways from being abused / Protecting the new ways, for me and for you / What more can we do?”). Their focus now is on protecting homes built in the twentyyear period immediately following World War II: “Small, often whimsical beach-house pavilions with flat roofs and floor-to-ceiling glass…the most architecturally significant architectural idiom of our region.” As the eighth Town Historian, Stuart Vorpahl, might have said in his old Bonacker patois, harking back to Kent and Dorset seafarers: “History never gets old, yes, bub, bub.”
The Ten Town Historians of East Hampton
Hugh King (photo by Tara Israel)
Bonacker speech patterns of Baymen like Stuart Vorpahl which dated back hundreds of years. Following the scattering of his ashes in 2005, friends toasted to his life at the Amagansett library he loved so much. Nettie Sherrill Foster (1990s-2007) An East Hampton native born on the Sherrill family farm, purchased in 1792, she was Town Co-historian with Stuart Vorpahl until her death. As a WWII WAC, she met and married an Army Air Force officer and moved to Dunkirk along Lake Erie. Returning home following her divorce, she was named director of the East Hampton Historical Society in 1979. “Sherry” was an expert in the development of “resort architecture” in East Hampton during the post-Civil War era. Stuart Vorpahl (2009-2016) A US Navy vet (naturally). In 1963 a neighboring potato farmer handed him a typewritten copy of a 1686 document, saying “These are your rights. Defend them all.” A life-long fisherman, he carried a laminated copy of that document, known as the Dongan Patent, issued by King James II to his New York governor, Thomas Dongan. It described the rights of six English towns then established on Long Island to “enjoy without hindrance” the “fishing, hawking, hunting and fowling” within its borders forever, subject only to the administration of “one corporate body to be called by the name of trustees.” Which explains why East Hampton has been electing
(continued on page 8)
J. Calvin Hadder (1920-1934) Owned a poultry farm with 250 hens as of 1921. A World War vet, he compiled a book about East Hampton’s role in the Great War.
Supervisor. Richard A. Corwin (1959-1969) Former treasurer of the Town Historical Society which owns and oversees the Clinton Academy Museum and the Mulford House & HomeMorton Pennypacker (1935-1956) stead. An expert at restoring antique furniWrote The Two Spies, Nathan Hale and Rob- ture, in 1961 he reported receiving a letter ert Townsend (1930) and General Washing- at his Springs Road home with a return adton’s Spies on Long Island and New York dress of Race Lane, not far away. It was post(1939). marked in 1930. Kenneth Hedges (1956-1957) Nephew of Ettie Hedges Pennypacker. Had been Town Assessor, making him intimately familiar with the area’s houses and lands.
Carleton Kelsey (1973-1985) Teacher, furniture restorer and Amagansett librarHugh King was officially named the ian for 35 years. Born in an old Devon Road Town Historian in January 2020, the house where he said, “When the winter wind tenth resident to take that role since blew, the rug would lift right off the floor.” Governor Al Smith signed the “His- Richard T. Gilmartin (1957-1959) A In 1997 he published Amagansett: A Pictotorian’s Law” in 1919, requiring ev- Town Clerk for 20 years prior to appointment, rial History 1680-1940. An amateur actor in ery “city, town or village” to have one. he surrendered the post when elected Town his youth, he was very good at imitating the {See Sidebar} In an interview after his
Page 4 Amagansett Star-Revue
www.star-revue.com
November 2023
Dying pines along the Montauk Highway by Taylor Herzlich
A
s most Suffolk County natives probably know, the drive into Montauk is a beautiful one. Even on Montauk Highway, tall pine trees line the road and birds coast overhead. Hardwood trees transform into rich colors of orange and red as they prepare to lose their leaves. But this year, it’s quite a different sight. Some local residents may have noticed an abundance of dead, barren pine trees lining the roads, trees whose needles won’t return in the spring. The culprit behind these depleted forests? A small bark beetle known as the southern pine beetle, only the size of a grain of rice. The southern pine beetle is native to the southern United States, but made its way up the coast, first detected on Long Island as far back as 2014, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). They says this migration is most likely due to warming winter temperatures, which allow the beetle to expand its territory. Adult southern pine beetles make their way into the tree through crevices in the bark and carve out S-shaped tunnels in the cambium tissue, the layer located right underneath the bark, producing a fungi that eventually kills the tree’s tissue. The beetles then lay their eggs in the tree. Southern pine beetles mostly attack pine trees, but can also infiltrate hemlocks and spruce trees. These needled pine trees know how to fight back, secreting resin along the outside of the tree that can push out the beetles and act as obstacles for more beetles still trying to enter the tree. Ultimately, though, the trees are almost always doomed, falling victim to attacks by thousands of beetles at a time, says DEC.
These new beetle populations pose an incredible threat to local Long Island forests. “Once an infestation reaches approximately 1,000 trees, it can start moving very quickly across the landscape and can devastate an entire forest in one growing season,” says one forester. At this point, the forest reaches an unfortunate point of no return, when the only options left are forest regeneration efforts, invasive species control and forest burns, says a DEC forester. That is why “preventative management is far more effective than reactionary management,” according to the forester. There has been an uptick in southern pine beetle activity in Long Island since 2021, killing thousands of pitch pines in Napeague State Park, Hither Hills State Park and other areas along the Montauk Highway. Eradication of the beetle is not feasible according to the department, since the southern pine beetle is a quick-moving pest found in many neighboring states. As a result, once the beetles begin to infiltrate a forest, the only resort is suppression of the infestations – which, in plainer terms, means cutting down the forest trees. Suppression of the beetle infestations began shortly after they were first discovered on Long Island in 2014, leading to thousands of pitch pine being cut down since in an effort to slow the spread of the beetles, says the DEC. Bats can also be used during suppression efforts, since they are known natural predators of night-flying insects like mosquitoes, moths and, most importantly, beetles, according to the United States Forest Service. However, “the recent listing of the northern long eared bat as an endangered species has reduced the management options,” says the forester. “But DEC is working with
These dead trees have already been chopped down. Many more are to follow. (photos by George Fiala)
Amagansett Star-Revue
"It is not necessarily a question of whether or not most Montauk locals care about the infestations, but whether or not they are aware of the beetles at all." its partners at the US Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure that beetle management can continue while still protecting the bat and its habitat.” Infestation suppression has not gone entirely unnoticed by Montauk residents. “I know that there was a lot of talk about cutting the trees down [and] I’m pretty sure that that’s been happening,” says Malia Guebli, a longtime resident of Montauk and a recent college graduate. “A lot of people are upset with that because they’re taking away, you know, a lot of the native trees and whatnot, but I also think that that’s the only way to stop the beetles from spreading.” The DEC cites multiple reasons for cutting down the trees to fight the infestations. Firstly, cutting down trees can help decrease the beetle population in the area by killing the young beetles surviving in the trees over the winter. Secondly, since beetles are able to communicate with one another using their pheromones, a thinner tree population helps spread out the trees, thus increasing the distance between the beetles and hindering their ability to communicate with one another. Lastly, a thinner forest reduces the competition between the trees themselves, which helps to foster healthier trees that are readier to fend off beetle attacks. Guebli says she has noticed the declining forests firsthand, noting an excess of dead trees, specifically along the Napeague stretch, a road that she says “almost everybody takes when you’re getting, you know, from Montauk to Amagansett to East Hampton.”
www.star-revue.com
Another Montauk resident, Jayleen Schiappacasse, says that she has also noticed an expansive stretch of dead trees on her drives into Montauk. Yet both women said they had never heard of the southern pine beetles before our interview. “For somebody that’s been living in Montauk forever now, sadly, no, I had no idea about the beetles and dead trees,” says Kyla Vigilant, a third Montauk resident, who perhaps sums up the attitude around these beetles best. It is not necessarily a question of whether or not most Montauk locals care about the infestations, but whether or not they are aware of the beetles at all. Guebli suggests that a larger focus should be placed on spreading awareness about the beetle infestations. “I’ve talked about it with some of my friends and we had no idea that the dead trees were because of these beetle infestations,” says Guebli. “And these dead trees have been an issue for years.” Vigilant believes that many Montauk locals, including herself, would take action against the beetles if only they knew what to do, especially since they live in such a “compact community.” “We locals really admire the beauty of Montauk and the nature her],” says Vigilant. “This is very upsetting. I don’t want all the trees in Montauk to die down.” Montauk residents can help support forest management and prevent beetle infestations by making reports to iMapInvasives App or emailing foresthealth@dec.ny.gov when they spot an infested tree. According to the NYSDEC, southern pine beetle infestations manifest themselves in three visible ways: deep orange or brown needles on newly dead pine trees, s-shaped tunnels visible just under the bark or pitch tubes, which are the popcornshaped clumps of white resin that appear on trees as they attempt to fight off the beetles. “I mean, these infestations remind] me of the lanternflies, and the issue we’re still having with those, and how there’s only so much you can do as an individual to stop it,” says Guebli. “[But] nobody wants to see the town that you love and grew up in fall apart and crumble.”
November 2023, Page 5
Life After Death – Surviving Suicide Book Review by Kelsey Sobel
R
ichard Brockman’s novel, Life After Death, Surviving Suicide (2023) details the intimate and visceral story of his mother’s death by suicide, her hanging body discovered by Brockman when he was seven years old, and his lifelong attempts to untangle himself from the aftermath of this profound tragedy. In 2022, according to the CDC, America lost 49,449 people to death by suicide. The permanent loss and lasting damage to the psyche of those left behind is bravely addressed in Brockman’s first hand account. Brockman’s vulnerability and confusion wind their way through the memoir. Brockman, who is a clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University, intersperses scientific endnotes from greats such as Pavlov and Freud, along with several diagrams of the brain sprinkled throughout the short episodic chapters. As Brockman states at the beginning of the memoir, the book hopes to meld the world of biology, that is the story of biology, with the experiential narrative arc of losing a parent. Brockman’s memoir tries to combine his two worlds – and while Brockman is a fine writer who captures his mother’s
long battle with mental illness from a grimly close perspective, the memoir is bogged down by the inclusion of scientific facts, drawing readers away from the compelling narrative. For someone who isn’t well versed in the finer details of psychiatry, I was taken aback by the granular level of detail. From the first page, Brockman already has his reader's compassion, and I wanted a stronger portrait of his mother, all of her idiosyncrasies and furthermore, Brockman’s feelings towards her. Although readers see what Brockman sees, his internal feelings remain opaque to the audience. I found myself thinking of Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments or Sherman Alexie’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me where difficult mothers come to life in such a vivid fashion that they linger with you long after they’re dead and gone. Alexie’s memoir manages to successfully work in various mediums, including poems and photos. While I admire the clear intellectual and academic work Brockman has poured into this book, all the while keeping his head above such dark emotional waters, I found the combination of information jagged. We don’t arrive at his mother’s death until over halfway through the
book, and I tensed expectantly from early chapters. After recounting the grisly scene of discovering his mother’s body, Brockman follows with a short chapter explaining, in detail, how exactly people die from hanging: “...the classic hangman’s fracture with severe subluxation of C2-C3 crushing the spinal cord and disrupting the vertebral arteries.” This type of jump, from the literary to the cerebral, caught me off guard, and I struggled to switch emotional gears, feeling deeply sorry for the young Richard Brockman while pausing to throw on my lab coat. The innate humanity in the memoir comes organically: a Jewish New York boyhood, strong neighborhood bonds, a healing relationship between boy and dog, a distant father who remarries at breakneck speed after his wife’s death. Brockman’s world is a time capsule in of itself, and the memoir would be strengthened by more of these details: references to Loehmann’s and Coney Island, the beloved teacher he wants to marry. When Brockman’s writing is at its best, I found threads of a Philip Rothesque landscape and I wanted more of this specific Brooklyn – specifically American memories that are fast dis-
appearing, replaced by matcha and expensive strollers. Although I don’t think the literary and scientific cannot live together, I do think that Brockman loses sight of his own emotionality – the very thread we’re all trying to follow, most especially when reflecting on our own losses. Richard Brockman is an East Hampton resident.
Italian Prime Minister unwittingly expresses her feelings on the Ukraine by Dario Pio Muccilli, EU correspondent
T
elephone pranks are usually seen as an entertainment for kids – but international politics has actually discovered that it could also be a very serious issue, moreover if the victim is Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, a frontrunner of Ukrainian support. On November 1st, a Russian comic duo, Vovan and Lexus, released online the audio of a prank where Meloni was deceived by one of the two comedians who pretended to be the African Union President. The alleged President soon made Meloni talk about the Ukrainian crisis, after pretending to be focused on migration issues in Northern Africa. Asked about the feeling towards the Ukrainian crisis among international leaders, she said that “I see that there is a lot of fatigue, I have to say the truth, from all the sides, we are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out.” Those statements, even if not public, would have been capable of sparking a serious outrage among the international community, but the latter didn't blame Meloni for her words, as it has happened before that other leaders such as former German Chancellor Angela Merke or former British PM Boris Johnson were
"There’s no doubt that Tel-Aviv will do whatever it takes to foster the attention on its needs." caught in the same trap. Moreover, the international community has no interest at all in dividing itself on a supposed joke which is just the product of Russian propaganda attempting to undermine the western public support for Kyiv’s cause. Nevertheless, the “fatigue” expressed by Meloni is somewhat a real danger for Zelensky, who has made countless appeals to his allies in order not to lose their active support. Zelensky feels that an enduring crisis could have the potential to tire the USA and the European Union of Ukraine. That is why he’s also trying to capitalize on the current moment, as he stated that the Ukrainian goal is to obtain
Page 6 Amagansett Star-Revue
a political decision on Ukraine’s EU membership by the end of 2023. If the goal seems unreachable, it’s clear that Ukraine is in a hurry, as the “fatigue” of the international community could be the actual end for Kyiv’s project to win the war without any major concession to Russia. That’s because it is clear that if all the weapons suppliers and political stakeholders supporting Ukraine want it to negotiate, it would be impossible for Zelensky, or whoever would come, not to. The current crisis in the Middle East will also weaken the attention drawn to Ukraine, as Israel is historically a closer ally and more strategic country for US interests. And there’s no doubt that TelAviv will do whatever it takes to foster the attention on its needs, reducing resources available for Kyiv, whose diplomacy is also less experienced than the Jewish state’s. Since the Ukrainian crisis broke out, multiple other heated scenarios appeared or kept burning. Therefore, Meloni’s words don’t help thinking that Kyiv’s issue will still be a top priority in the agenda, as anyone is starting to lose trust. Of course, Italian institutions, and the other countries’ mentioned before as well, did not show their best side.
www.star-revue.com
The silence on that call by other leaders is good for unity, but not for reassuring public opinion which shares that “fatigue” in many countries and has the need of new wood to fuel its proUkrainian will. Zelenskiy knows this now more than ever and it’s not hard to think that Meloni’s call, which had a wide international coverage, would eventually play a harmful role on Kyiv’s stance, exactly as planned by the comic duo, probably on behalf of the Russian State and its head in the Kremlin.
Italian Premiere Meloni
November 2023
BORDER CROSSING I
by Joe Caccamo
hit my regular joint the other night. I mean Serafina. It’s my Cheers, my default spot, my Go To where several people know my name. I hole up at the bar. Claudia, the sweet-acerbic-brilliant-adorable-raven-haired-pain-in-my-ass bartender rolls her eyes at me as I walk in. It’s her form of hugging and the light abuse is familiar affection, a reaction I’ve expertly cultivated as the sensitive yet quasi-charming Gemini, youngest of seven boys that I am. I consider anyone who isn’t messing with me to be cold. I pretend to hate it but how can one hate the suckle to the most familiar teat?
goddamn drum roll … a Billy Reed camel-colored blazer with a purple, silk pocket square. I flash to an image of Ian (who is back in Manhattan now) who boasts he wears the same clothes all the time, and he does: white, Chuck Taylor high-tops, black jeans, black t-shirt, black jean jacket. I picture the hugs, the high fives, the shoulder rubs, ugh. I then pan the bar and most of the guys are wearing hooded sweatshirts or dark jackets, like Ian.
I order a chicken parm and Claudia pours me a generous thump of an adolescent Italian red. I nod at some other familiar faces, including patrons and waitresses as I settle into my seat, trying to follow the puck on the television as it slides past an advertisement for Geico at the red line, Honda at the blue line, Pizza Hut behind the goal line … Good Lord, NHL, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Icing.
“He keeps his mouth shut and people like that,” Claudia says. “You’re” … she pauses … “talkative, friendly. And
It dawns on me that when I come into Serafina in the off-season with my buddy Ian, half the staff and at least three or four regular patrons will approach him with a hug. Even Goran, the Serbian owner, who can hospitalize people with his death stare, smiles and rubs Ian’s shoulder. For me, nothing but the abuse from Claudia, and a couple of reciprocated nods from people acknowledging that I consume oxygen and expire carbon monoxide. “Claudia, how come everyone hugs Ian when he walks in here and they pretty much ignore me?” Ian is my summer bromance. We met at the bar in Serafina in July and talked golf and music, and twenty dismal rounds at Montauk Downs and several stony jam sessions later, we’ve become great friends. Granted, Ian is very handsome, intelligent and cool. He used to manage a very famous rock star whose mere mention causes middleaged women to swoon and their husbands to shuffle their feet and tighten their jaws. Only hours into our courtship, Ian was giving me shit, and he hasn’t stopped. He clearly likes me. “Ian dresses like a local,” Claudia shot back. “You don’t.” I pan my eyes down to … myself. I’m wearing a pair of brown leather cowboy work boots, most affectionately known as “shit kickers,” a pair of faded Levi’s, a plain white t-shirt and …
Amagansett Star-Revue
“But I’m a friendly guy,” I protest. “Ian’s kind of a dick and he’s not even a local!” I mean that in the sweetest way possible.
“You’re talkative, friendly. And you dress like an out-of-towner.” you dress like an out-of-towner.” There it is. The line in the sand. The barbed wire fence. Hadrian’s Wall. The Great Wall of China. The demarcation between acceptance and tolerance, hugs and high fives, and … and nods, if I’m lucky. It’s a story as old as time itself. Straw Dogs, Gilmore Girls, Trading Places, Grapes of Wrath Outer Banks, Point Break, The Outsiders … locals versus interlopers, Haves Versus Haves a Bit More, Act Like You Don’t Haves Versus Wears a Stylish But Not Ostentatious, Well-Priced Blazer Purchased from a Boutique off Bleecker Street. Nowhere is this dynamic of local versus interloper more obvious to the point of cartoon illustration, smackon-the-top-of-your head, than in the lineup and in the parking lot at Ditch Plains. It’s taken me 20 years of regular surfing at Ditch Plains to get nods and occasional hellos. You start off getting eyed with suspicion and work your way up. Be too aggressive claiming a wave too early in your inden-
tureship and you might get yelled at, or worse. Drop in on someone else’s wave and you might lose a limb. Once, in my first season at Ditch, my leash ripped off my leg and my board almost hit a pretty girl. The pretty girl’s boyfriend (a local whose family owns a meat distribution company in Brooklyn and who is a dead ringer for Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull but 50 pounds beefier) paddled up to me as I was apologizing to the girl profusely and said, “I am going to fucking kill you. I am going to cut you into quarter pound slabs and I’m going to marinate you in a briny, vinegar sauce and I’m going grill you at 450 degree heat and then I’m going to take out my Ginsu knife and slice you into translucent pieces and I’m going to lightly salt you and flash sear you and brush a teriyaki glaze over your body parts and feed you to my dogs” … or something quite similar to that. My large intestine was trying to squeeze out of my ear lobes in fear so I might not have caught it precisely, but you get the gist. I became a persona non grata for about three years at Ditch and within the locals’ social scene in Montauk. Sun-kissed, button-nosed blonde girls I didn’t even know would look at me as I meekly paddled into the lineup like someone who broke the valve on the sewer plant. Guys would make a point to aim their boards at my head as they came down the line and caught me paddling out. One night, I went as a friend-of-afriend to one of the Ditch Old Guard’s houses for a barbecue. I drank good wine and participated in a drum circle in his living room. I handwrote a thank you note and mailed it to him. To this day, when I see him at Ditch, he looks right through me, if at all. The hierarchy of local accreditation appears as complexly formed as the tectonic processes. Ian is not a local. His mom has a house in East Hampton that he spends a lot of time at when he isn’t in the Manhattan sipping martinis at speakeasys with hipsters on the Lower East Side. But he dresses like a local, shows up at the same restaurant every night, tips well and only speaks when spoken to. I own a home in Amagansett, I’ve been a surfer at Ditch for 20 years, I frequent the same restaurant as Ian but I wear a blazer on occasion and apparently other non-local attire. I also try and strike up conversation. So I’m treated like a tourist.
NYFD) who is frequently seen surfcasting off a paddle board and wrestling Sandy Tiger Sharks) who gets first dibs on any wave like a Hawaiian Chieftain. There are beautiful women who’ve ascended from kook/weekend warriors and who’ve traded their Brooklyn Brownstone for a beat-up Tacoma and a 9’ Andreini nose rider who now charge Ditch and North Bar on the heaviest of days, and they are rewarded both with waves and social access like Queens. There are the blessed restaurant and other service workers who scrape a living, putting up with a ton of entitled shit, and who live like Ukranian immigrants stacked seven deep in an in-law apartment, but have a better-than-expected lifestyle based on a barter system of free meals, drinks and zero cover charges, and who are also the swells and darlings of the off-season social scene. There are overt weekend warrior posers who pull into the main lot at Ditch in shiny, stupid Rivian pick-up trucks, with boards with no dirty wax on them and medically enhanced girls who’ve clearly, frequently had wax on It, who get eyed with a mixture of intrigue and derision, everyone rightfully assuming the dude is a kook, praying he’ll drop in on one of the old timers so they can watch the Ditch equivalent of a lamb at sacrifice. There are the trades people who live in a different economy, 40% less than what they charge us, God Bless Them (and I pray they don’t read this newspaper). They are the Dukes and Earls. And then there’s me, with a goddamn eye for a little bit of style, who feels choked in a hooded sweatshirt, who is genuinely curious about people, who looks both ways before he takes off on a wave and who always defers to the pecking order, and who barely gets hello. That’s fine. The leaves are bursting in all their glory, my fire is roaring, my Martin guitar is tuned, my bookshelf is stacked and my apparently too-fancy-for-this-town-in-the-off-season blazer is hung in the closet, awaiting another opportunity to alienate me from humanity. Oh, and there’s a war going on, some tribal conflict as old and complicated as time itself, that the U.S. is inching towards full inclusion. Peace on Earth.
There are the hard core older guys at Ditch like “Fireman Dave” (retired
www.star-revue.com
November 2023, Page 7
STAR SIGN NOVEMBER FORECAST Julie Evans
A
strologers have followed a guiding principle since astrology’s ancient beginning. The rule is, “ So Above So Below”. This means as planets speed up and slow down or appear to move backwards in the sky, their heavenly movements will affect our personal lives in ways that are promised in our natal birth charts. The October Partial Solar Eclipse and Full Moon Lunar Eclipse have magnified Mars-like events on our planet that are far reaching. Enduring the same in our own lives depends on where and how Mars falls in your own chart. For everyone, restrain your impulses this month.
Happy Birthday Scorpio! - For the first third of the month it is best to think before you speak since your words could be misunderstood as fighting words however seductive they are. It would be much better to put that energy into constructive endeavors or an exercise program as you will have a lot of energy. Midmonth that energy disappears for a short while causing an emotional let down. Energy rebounds stronger than ever after the 17th and the path appears easy. But, if you choose to walk your path aggressively expect significant push back.
Happy Birthday Sagittarius! - This month, take time to review or pause projects that are not cost effective. Until the New Moon on November 13th, it is best to only meditate and contemplate issues of expansion. As the Sun enters your sign communication picks up and healing energy flows through and brings in the abundance of the Thanksgiving Season. There are opportunities for new business opportunities. People seek lighter moods so time for flirting. Your good vibes are appreciated. Capricorn - Powerful transformative Pluto remains in your sign until early next year. The early part of the month finds Venus making an easy aspect to
Pluto. Power struggles are likely. But the planet of transformation could also transform the things we value or love. Art, money, beauty, love, anything Venusian, are all on the table and could change. Cryptocurrency and gold will continue to rise.
Aquarius - Offers to deal with foreign businesses should not be dismissed. Relocation should be considered. Wanderlust may be satisfied by going off with a loved one to a warm place or a wellness hotel. If that is not possible, warm those bones with a spa day. Time to be good to yourself after one surprise upset after another one makes you hesitate to open the mail. Pisces - The planet of structure is about to move forward in your sign after marking time. Saturn will bring some relief in that we will see progress after a period of stalled murky confused communication. Projects will benefit now from concrete answers to questions that were left hanging out in the air. Love stories will finally resolve. The answers come but are they the answers we want? Aries - You can do important things for people this month. Important in that you can help others move through issues with your sense of caring and love. It will make you happy to help and be of service to others. If
Boxes of old COMIC BOOKS lying around?
I PAY CASH! Call or text George at 917-652-9128 Page 8 Amagansett Star-Revue
a casual flirtation turns and becomes a serious relationship be careful to keep the balance of power in check. Healing yourself is a priority.
sions over feelings be aware of your partner’s position and treat them as gently as you can. You can enlist siblings in this effort.
Taurus - The bull is tiring of the forward motion of the markets. He may want to rest in a field and eat a sandwich. Before he does it is time to review your investments and let the non- performers go. With wildcard Uranus in Taurus we will see more earthquakes and storms throughout the world. The Acapulco Hurricane recently took that coast by surprise. The Earthquake in Afghanistan killed 2,000 people. Earth shaking events will continue this month.
Virgo - Try to keep your private stress out of business matters. A new venture may suddenly appear so try to keep the important elements of the deal in the bag, Try letting others clean up their own messes. New structure you are able to provide to others may not be as appreciated as you think. But, providing the details you see to friends is the right thing to do.
Gemini - Emotional outbursts at work are a bad idea. Much better to take option number two since Gemini always has a back up plan. These days those not in a committed relationship may experience deceit. But when relationships get overheated it might be better to break it off. Relationships with your kids however are strong. Cancer - You may have to move out of your comfort zone at work. Sticking up for your work is warranted and if you want to move up you must make others aware of your abilities. This is hard for Cancer who loves to nurture but there will be times for cuddling at home with your partner or your kids this month. Keep that hard outer shell strong. Leo - Your creativity is boundless. It is time to put it to work. Negotiations with business partners run in your favor. At home things can be tense at times. Be sure you are in the right and not blowing up an issue left over from the summer. When in discus-
HISTORY
a Board of Trustees ever since. Vorpahl (continued from himself was elected to the Board for ten years. Four times he fought State arrests for fishing without a license, waving the Patent in his defense. Notwithstanding counter-arguments – that acknowledging the primacy of the Patent would also require East Hampton to pay a substantial annual tax to the ruling monarch of England – Vorpahl retired undefeated. Eulogized as “a fierce defender of the rights and traditions of the common people [who] could spin a tale and recite history at will with a good sense of humor while making his point,” Vorpahl generated nineteen New York Times stories about his Patent, his Bonacker culture, and various Town disputes. Always good copy, the Times nevertheless failed to publish his obituary. His ashes were burned on a float-
www.star-revue.com
Libra - You may meet someone that checks all the love boxes, however there are elements that raise concern as the month progresses. Hold off on extravagant gifts, luxury trips until you are sure you won’t be throwing knives at each once the glow fades. Be up front about how you feel.
If you know your rising sign or where the moon falls in your natal chart, you should read the forecast for that sign also. If you do not know your birth chart and want to know about the promise of your natal chart, I can be contacted at jevansmtk@gmail.com for a reading. My natal promise readings are $100 for a half-hour and this month I am giving one free reading away to the first person who contacts me. Be aware and be kind! Look up, the stars are all around us!
ing miniature Viking vessel off his beloved South Fork in 2016. Averill Geus (2009-2019) Named cohistorian in January 2009 with Vorpahl, she had an ancestry just as long. Together with Hugh King, she rescued the head of John Howard Payne from Randall’s Island after the statue on which it rested had been vandalized in Prospect Park. Hugh King (2020-Present) Amagansett resident who has delighted generations of East Enders with his humor, broad knowledge and humility. In October the 1804 Pantigo windmill was renamed in his honor, located behind the Home Sweet Museum, commemorating the birthplace of Mr. Payne who penned the 1823 chart-topper, Home Sweet Home – be it ever so humble and such. November 2023
Dispatch from the NY Film Festival: Of Documentaries and the Civic Need for Movie Theaters
A
t this year’s New York Film Festival, the marquee documentary event was the American premiere of 93-year-old Frederick Wiseman’s latest opus, Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros. La Maison Troisgro, a three-star Michelin restaurant in central France, is at the center of the film, which radiates outward to explore the supply chain of farms that provide much of the place’s food and the lives of the staff. Mouth watering, perhaps, but also, at four hours, eye watering. Anyone complaining about the three-and-half-hour runtime of Killers of the Flower Moon should be immediately dropped into a screening of Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros to be set straight. Not to say Wiseman’s film isn’t worth it; he’s the American master of observational non-fiction cinema and can do what he wants. It’s just that asking audiences to spend 240 intermission-free minutes in a theater watching a documentary about an exclusive French restaurant is a bit, how you say? Decadent.
And, anyway, there were more compelling doc options on offer at the festival: Orlando, My Political Biography (103 minutes), about the intersection of Virginia Woolf ’s Orlando and trans lives; Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (103 minutes), a portrait of the poet as she reaches 80; The Night Visitors (72 minutes), focused on moths; Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (102 minutes), a final one-man performance from Japanese composer and pianist Sakamoto. (Director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) also had Occupied City, his 262-minute “mammoth confrontation” with Amsterdam during World War II, at the festival, which feels more deserving of that kind of epic length and scope.) Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts, though, was a standout. A 93-minute interrogation of the civic role of public spaces centered on the faded (and lost) movie palaces of Mendonça’s hometown of Recife, the film is less nostalgia and more elegiac provocation. And it arrives at the right moment, when theaters in all forms are threatened by shifting industry priorities, changing audience habits, and a general cultural indifference. Broken into three sections that generally track the rise, slide, and current state of Recife through architecture, demographics, and moviegoing, Pictures of Ghosts is an urban biography and a deeply personal memoir. The center of the film,
Amagansett Star-Revue
by Dante A. Ciampaglia
literally and metaphorically, are Recife’s great movie palaces: Veneza, Art Palácio, Trianon, Moderno, São Luiz. Mendonça clearly loves them all. In fact, he draws on copious amounts of camcorder footage he shot, particularly inside the Art Palácio while documenting its demise for two student films he made in the early 1990s. He also has deep affection for the people who work there, with a special place reserved for longtime projectionist Alexandre Moura. In the footage and narration, he’s treated like the lord of the manor — probably because he is — even as Mendonça never backs away from the reality that Mr. Alexandre is, in the end, an employee. When the projectionist says, on the eve of the final screening at the Art Palácio, “I’ll lock up the cinema with a key of tears,” he’s voicing the sentiment of someone whose choices, vocation, and fulfillment are, in the end, controlled by some other, nebulous entity: a boss, a population, capitalism. (He also speaks for all of us who weep when a beloved place closes forever.)
Mendonça’s fondness for these spaces is boundless. He luxuriates on auditoriums, projection booths, interior design, box offices, marquees, poster displays — usually in archival footage, since so much of it is gone — then on what has replaced them: shopping malls, blank and painted walls, churches, sometimes nothing at all. Only one palace, São Luiz, is still operating as a theater. It is a public cinema managed by the state, and remains a community hub, not just for cinephiles but the city as a whole. “I don’t know of anywhere in Recife as unanimous,” Mendonça says in the film. “A cinema like this helps build character.” The others, the ghosts of the title, exist in the rutted groove of memory. The structure, the body, might still be there, but the guts have been torn out, the heart extracted. And what does that mean for the place itself? Nothing good, Mendonça argues. We get glimpses of Recife in the decades between the 1930s and ‘70s, when it was a beacon for Hollywood business interests and stars alike. The city was roaring, elegant, important. Then the industry began pulling back, theaters started sputtering then closing, and Recife lost its luster and, eventually, its people. While it’s possible these theaters’ fates were sealed in the 1980s and ‘90s — by changing viewing habits and the forces of benign neglect that went to work on cities all over the Americas — it’s clearly not the sole doing of the invisible hand of the markets. There was
a very real hand — many of them — not-so-gently pushing residents toward the suburbs and audiences to shopping mall-bound multiplexes (a moviegoing experience Mendonça has little love for).
People are the lifeblood of a city. Disinvest in the urban needs of a population and direct that money elsewhere, the people will follow, leaving the city blanched and half dead, like being visited once too often by a vampire. The infrastructure frays, crumbles, teeters. Storefronts and restaurants and cultural institutions shutter, waiting for their turn in the revolving door of real estate speculation and quick-buck absentee landlordism. The people who sustain a city are abstracted, commodified, disdained, which repels more than it attracts. It’s the urban doom loop we’re all so familiar with, and there are shots of post-palace Recife that look strikingly familiar. As do the moments of contemporary Recife, a cityscape dominated by all-night pharmacies beckoning with their neon signs and blindingly antiseptic interiors.
But there’s another ghost haunting the film: Mendonça’s past. The first part, running nearly 45 minutes, is focused solely on the house he grew up in, his mother and her purchase of the home, and how he used it as a set for films as a kid and as an adult, ultimately turning the place into a throbbing hub of creativity and cinema activity. There are mentions of moviegoing, but they’re always background details to a larger anecdote or specific memory. It’s all interesting insight into one of Brazil’s most important working filmmakers (his 2019 Bacurau won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was an international hit), but it at first feels tangential to what got us into the theater to watch this documentary in the first place. But at some point it clicks that his home is also a kind of movie palace and focal point of film culture. Mendonça, his friends, his family, his neighbors — everyone’s participating in cinema, be it making it, discussing it, or watching it. And it’s always communal. (Yes, he must have watched movies on his own, but that’s not really important. We’ve all been to movie theaters where we’re the only ones in attendance. That doesn’t change the meaning of the place.) The section closes with the house empty, as Mendonça and his family move out. And seeing this once vibrant space as an empty, hollowed out collection of rooms, it’s impossible not to feel moved. What
www.star-revue.com
will become of it? Will the new owners treat it as lovingly and fully as the previous ones? What history will stick to the walls, the ceilings, the floors, the air? They’re the same questions — with the same sad assumptions — that we consider when a movie palace closes, or when we walk into a stuffed-to-theceiling discount retailer and see a leftover detail and realize that it used to be something else, something vibrant and alive and communal. And in that way Mendonça mines his memory to prepare us for the journey of the rest of the film. Pictures of Ghosts isn’t an in-your-face, echo-chamber statement the way so many other politically-minded documentaries are today. Mendonça doesn’t hide his allegiances or point of view — spoiler alert: he’s pro-city and critical of the capitalist imperative that destroys them — but his film is confident in its beliefs, and therefore can be comparatively more subtle in its voice. And razor sharp in its incisiveness.
It’s impossible to leave this film not wanting to book the first flight to Recife to catch a film at the São Luiz. But it’s also impossible not to see your city with fresh eyes. We’re used to being harangued by politicians that office towers and billionaire-vanity-project districts like Hudson Yards are the thermometer by which we gauge a city’s health. If they fail, it all fails. Mendonça, though, poses a different argument. If the centers of culture — like movie palaces — disappear, then people disappear. And if people disappear, cities disappear. Those office towers and new-build commercial centers are transactional, anti-people, allergic to permanence. Theaters, sites of continuity and shared experience across generations, root themselves into people and communities and allow both to thrive. Is this a lot to make of and put on a movie theater? Probably. But if you’re given the choice of walking into an office building or a movie palace — or, yes, sorry Kleber, a multiplex — which would you choose? For all this talk of Return to Office being the salvation our civics and culture requires, watching Pictures of Ghosts is confirmation that we should instead be talking about a different return — to theaters. I had intended to use this space to also discuss Wim Wender’s brilliant new film Perfect Days, which also screened at NYFF, but I got a little carried away. It’ll be in these pages soon.
November 2023, Page 9
Quinn on Books
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 10
7 pm Talkhouse Trivia Night 10 pm Landline
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 11
8 pm Johnny n the Basement 10 pm Rated Fresh
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 17 8 pm Annie Trezza 10 pm DJ flykai
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18
8 pm Gene Casey and the Loan Sharks 10 pm Rum Punch Mafia
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 22 8 pm Big Karma 10 pm Hello Brooklyn
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 24 8 pm Nancy Atlas Band 10 pm LHT
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 25
8 pm Andrew Weiss & Friends 10 pm The Memberberries
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 28 8 pm The English Beat
161 Main Street
Amagansett, NY 631 267-3117 www.stephentalkhouse.com Page 10 Amagansett Star-Revue
This One Will Put You to Sleep Review of I Must Be Dreaming, by Roz Chast Review by Michael Quinn
H
earing someone tell you about a dream they had can make your eyes glaze over. It could be because dreams follow their own logic, unique to each of us. Dreams can feel specific, urgent and compelling after we’ve experienced them, but vague, meandering and uninteresting in the retelling. Cartoonist Roz Chast understands this completely—but she still wants to tell you about her dreams anyway. Her latest book, “I Must Be Dreaming,” mines her lifelong interest. She writes, “I’m fascinated and thrilled by that moment when one’s thoughts stop being everyday thoughts and…fly away.” The beloved New Yorker magazine cartoonist and New York Times-bestselling author has made a name for herself with her crabby, neurotic and anxietyridden observations about what’s weird, wonderful and ridiculous about urban life. In “I Must Be Dreaming,” she tackles the surreal inner world we all uniquely experience with her signature kooky humor. What are dreams? Chast wonders. A way for our unconscious to convey important messages to our waking selves? A chance to tap into the collective unconscious, the hive mind? Or something disturbing we try to rationalize as nonsense? (Think of how, in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Ebeneezer Scrooge, visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley, tried to dismiss him as a bad dream: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”) Are dreams messages from the beyond, predictors of the future, or just a way for us to creatively solve problems? Chast doesn’t have the answer—she doesn’t think anyone does. Here’s what she does know: None of us has ever had a dream in which we didn’t appear or weren’t central to what was happening. (Even as an observer in dreamland, we’re less narrator, more main character.) Chast has a near-lifelong habit of keeping a legal pad and pen beside her bed to jot down her dreams. Sometimes, she gets “a very specific, yet very idiotic, cartoon idea” (which The New Yorker has sometimes rejected). Yet Chast continues to scribble. In “I Must Be Dreaming,” she shares dreams and fragments of dreams. She recounts recurring ones (being alone at a party, discovering a secret New York City neighborhood, losing her purse), lucid dreams (controlling how big or small she can make her body), celebrity dreams (in which Elizabeth Taylor and Danny DeVito make surprising cameos). Even nightmares (especially fears of disease, dentists and fire) are a source of fascination. Chast illustrates all this in her signature scratchy style, depicting herself in glasses and a bob haircut, frumpily dressed. Throughout the full-colored illustrations, longtime fans will recognize familiar Chast motifs: wallpapered rooms, rotary telephones, printed aprons, and hats with flowers sprouting out of them. Chast grounds the flightiness in “I Must Be Dreaming” with the wisdom of philosophers and poets. “A Brief Tour Through Dream-Theory Land” enlists the insights of psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the mystic teachings of the Kabbalah (which Chast says indicates that dreams refresh the soul), and science. She tacks this section on to the end, but I would’ve put it at the beginning because it gives people more points of entry into the subject beyond the rectangular shape of Chast’s pillow. (If you get this book, trust me: Read this part first.) Do dreams serve a purpose? Who cares? Chast seems to say. Dreams are free, everyone can have them, and if not always entertaining, they are always surprising. That said, you just might want to keep yours to yourself.
www.star-revue.com
November 2023
Jazz by Grella Bucking the Tide
I
n art music (meaning music not designed for mass commercial success), there used to be a general consensus about forms and styles. That’s obvious when you look at classical music, but also things like folk music (in the English speaking world) and the blues; things were generally done within certain guidelines and outliers were less revolutionaries than eccentrics and avantgardists, working to extend tradition, not refute it. This all started to change for classical music around the turn of the 20th century—there was Luigi Russolo and his noise music—then much more so after World War I and drastically after World War II. Since 1945, there hasn’t been one tradition in classical music, but multiple ones, some of which (John Cage, electronic music) are barely within that tradition, if at all. A curious thing to me is that the same cannot be said of jazz. The music came about later and there’s certainly a sociological argument to be made that it itself is one of the fallouts from World War I, both psychologically and materially via James Reese Europe’s Harlem Hellfighters band’s presence in Europe for the war. From 1918 on, jazz has added new styles that build on the previous ones at the pace of modern life, an evolution rather than a branching away or a disassembly and rebuild. Even the free music revolution of the 1960s and the rock and funk of Miles Davis and others in the 1970s didn’t question jazz in any fundamental way, they just extended it further. This isn’t a bad thing, and comparing this history to classical music is a useful way to see that advantages and drawbacks of these differing paths. Classical music, stylistically, has been fragmented for the past 80 years, which has meant some truly extraordinary breakthroughs that questions the very nature of music, sound, and time—that’s the legacy of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt, Alvin Lucier, electronic music, etc. It’s also meant a kind of dissipation of intellectual and aesthetic resources that has produced an accumulation of great music but few transformational works, ones that redefined the possibilities of compositional thinking and instrumental playing. The last was György Ligeti’s Etudes, which are almost 30 years old. Jazz has had a pretty uniform aesthetic since it began, marked by progressive ideas that at first encounter have seemed outside of the music, but that in retrospect are easy to see as the natural development of the music’s possibilities. Cecil Taylor is a great example, a musician who seemed to be at odds with jazz at first but, through
Amagansett Star-Revue
by George Grella
exposure and close listening, clearly connects in a straight line to Duke Ellington, just as one of his great musical partners, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, was a logical and even inevitable development from Charlie Parker. Being able to hear those origins in Taylor and Lyons is one of the great pleasures in being a jazz listener. There were arguments between the mainstream and the avant-garde in the ‘60s, and the mainstream and rock and funk in the ‘70s. Those weren’t won so much as they disappeared in the face of the clear evidence that jazz could mix with, work with, and incorporate music that was happening around it while keeping the line of history going. And again, that dialogue with history that takes place inside the music is profound and unique, a simultaneous popular and art music that celebrates its own life in a beautiful and invigorating way every time it’s played. This has meant, though, that jazz tends to drive an idea to stagnation, even death, innovations at first vibrant then turning baroque, then rococo, finally decadent. This happened with the formulas of swing and hard bop, and is always a danger with free improvisation, which can turn into a series of hollow gestures. And my accumulated listening to the 21st century has been raising warning signs about some trends that need some rethinking: Before IDM there was EDM, and the daring, complex rhythms from Autechre and Squarepusher were good. So good that jazz drummers like Tyhshawn Sorey began to replicate them live, extending virtuosity and expanding the rhythmic possibilities of jazz— already a rhythmically sophisticated music. This moved from a flow to broken rhythmic patterns, compound meters that have become something of a way to prove bona fides, played not because they make any sense but because they identify the player as a certain kind of musician. This is mannerism, and has become complicated in an unmusical way, discontinuous to the point where it comes in irritating fragments. There are vocal records, and singers, many good ones, and then there’s albums from instrumentalists that drop in a singer for a track or two. This is invariably a mistake. The vocalist changes the sound of the group so much that these tracks never fit with the rest of the album and don’t show a clear musical purpose. There’s also the problem with the songs themselves, which are never on the same level as the rest of the album, often made in a way that accommodates the singer rather than having them fit into the group, and that lyrically
György Ligeti
are sophomoric. That’s a high school sophomore.
dition but establish new ways to play the piano.
Since Bix Beiderbecke sat down at the piano to play “In a Mist,” jazz has adapted many great structural and formal ideas from classical composers. But, with a very few exceptions, this has meant borrowing from the same small group of composers for the last 100 years: Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, some Bartók. But what about the music, as seen above, since WWII; revolutionary ideas in spectral harmony, the timbral possibilities of electronic music; minimalism, microtonality? One of the exhilarating things about the Ligeti Etudes is how they incorporate Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell (and African and Asian music) into the classical tradition and not only renews the tra-
It’s worth reflecting on that this year, which is Ligeti’s centennial. He was a music student, and when he escaped communist Hungary he taught in the West, but there’s nothing academic about his thinking, it’s all driven by his personal curiosity and the simple pleasure of making the sounds he imagined in his head. Academia took over jazz training in the last century, and pretty much every jazz musician born since 1970 has been through the conservatories. They come out as hellacious instrumentalists, but often disregard the original lesson of jazz education: learn everything, then forget it. Do your own thing, be a trend of one.
ADVERTISE in THE AMAGANSETT
STAR REVUE WE SERVE FOUR SIZES: Small (1/8 page) .... $100 Medium (1/4 page) ... $175 Large (1/2 page) ... $350 Extra Large (Full Page) ...$600
cost is per ad, ads are in color. Publication is monthly.
You can create or own ad or tell us what you want and we'll design it. Deadline is the last day of the month for the next month's paper
OUR NEXT ISSUE COMES OUT IN DECEMBER
www.star-revue.com
Call or text George at 917 652-9128 or email gbrook@pipeline.com
November 2023, Page 11
You never can tell who will read your stuff if you write for the Star-Revue. Freelance for us! gbrook8344@gmail.com
Page 12 Amagansett Star-Revue
www.star-revue.com
917 652-9128
November 2023