Autumn Flower: Montauk Daisy

This plant blooms in early autumn at our house on Fire Island, While it's a cheery blossom it does signal the end of the season for me. I closed the beach house last Wednesday until next Spring.

Jim

Ted Kennedy: An American Hero

Senator Kennedy is an American hero, a champion those of Americans who lack the power, wealth, and position to advance their own situation. No one has been more of a public champion in government for the gay community than this man. I wish him well as he battles his health issue. He certainly has fought many battles for us.

Jim

PHOTO: Fox kit from last year's litter - this photograph was taken at this time last year near the Sunken Forest on Fire Island.

Cherry Grove Fire Island Beach

Sometimes conditions on the beach make it difficult to walk in the sand, especially when there is a high tide produced by a storm or strong Northeasterly winds. While this scene looks bad, usually the beach levels itself off after a while and returns to a relatively flat condition. The sand leaves and the sand returns, most of the time.

Jim

Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Bayside Erosion

We had a mild winter this past year, but it seems as though erosion on the bay side is continuing. This is the outlook between the Grove and Sailor's Haven. The platform is sturdy still, but looks precarious. Note the tree that is down due to the sand having been washed away underneath it.

Jim

Fire Island Birds

One of the real joys of being on the island at this time of the year are the birds. They are a hungry bunch in the Spring before their natural sources of food are plentiful. We have a feeder just outside of our TV room. It's fun to watch and count the different species of birds that are drawn to the feeder. These colorful Grackles really do a number on the seed supply.

Back To The Beach

Bradley (the dog) and I opened the summer house on Monday. It's always "exciting" to return to Fire Island in the Spring, but not always in pleasant ways. This time I returned to find the power lines broken so I had only limited power, and I found two pipes that had burst over the winter due to water freezing in them. Why that happened is a mystery, since we hire a plumber to blow out the pipes and close the house for in the Fall. Luckily, I was able to get the power company to come out within a few hours and fix that problem. The plumber repaired the pipes on Tuesday morning.

Wednesday was a beautiful day. On our afternoon walk we saw these two gulls standing in the bay shallows.

It's great to be back out at the seashore.

Jim

Just A Thought

This photo, taken yesterday, captures the beauty and serenity of Fire Island on an early Fall October afternoon. I'm going to miss this place.

Jim

Road Trip

I've been on the road today with Bradley. We drove up from PA to New York. No real rain to speak of, just some light drizzle from time to time. It sure did get cool all of a sudden! Time to tune on the Vermont stove in the beach house.

Jim

A Summery October

The water is still warm, the breeze is light, the temperatures well above normal, and so the beach was still delightful this Columbus Day weekend. I spent a few nice hours on the beach,, met with friends, and Braddy and I went for many long walks and two swims each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I write down the first and last dates that I'm able to swim in the ocean, and this year it looks like October 7 will be the end date, unless conditions still permit a dip next weekend.

Here's a nice piece of undeveloped land, one of the last in any community on Fire Island, that is included in the Federal and New York State Dune District or Coastal Erosion Hazard Area. It's never been built on but now it is for sale. Some of us are opposed to development, but, according to Fire Island National Seashore Superintendent Mike Reynolds, Fire Island is under siege by developers. Will environmental and other community concerns triumph over development?

Jim

An Autumn Altar

Fall has been my favorite season for as long as I can remember. The days grow shorter, there is a chill in the air, and there is much anticipation of the busy and joyful holidays that will be upon us all to quickly. In the evening at the beach these early autumn days, good music and sake by candlelight is soothing and warming after a late afternoon swim in the still relatively warm Atlantic waters. Soon the ocean currents will turn too chilly for swimming, so I treasure these last few opportunities to enjoy the ocean and the beach.

Jim

Late September At The Beach

Fire Island has its own schools. This school bus is a regular sight on the beach after schools open.

It's that time of the year again for opera. We have performances to attend starting this month. We enjoy both live performances in the houses and the new high definition performances in movie theaters. We're looking forward to a great new season.

Jim

New York Times: "Fire Island Heats Up"

One tough job...digging up and dividing our Iris. Here's the before and after. Hopefully we'll have more blooms in the Spring.

The article in Today's Times on Fire Island real estate values is an interesting read. Here in Cherry Grove we've seen some of the recent changes mentioned in the article. We've noted the increase in values as well as the influx of straight people into overwhelmingly gay and lesbian Cherry Grove. Apparently, this is just the beginning. The word is out. We'll have to see if these trends continue.

Jim

Summer Returns

Here's a pretty new house located in the community of Seaview, which is between Ocean Bay Park and Ocean Beach. Seaview is quiet by comparison to many other communities on Fire island (there are no bars!) Fire Island's only synagogue is located in Seaview.

This past week was most unusual with the unseasonable cold weather and rain. We turned on the house heater and wore long pants and sweaters. Today summer is supposed to return with temperatures around 90 degrees.

Jim

Point O' Woods, A Private Fire Island Community

Walking to the West from Cherry Grove, the first hamlet you encounter is Point O'Woods, founded in 1894 as a religious enclave. POW is a "gated" community as these signs indicate. We often walk through the hamlet on our way to Ocean Bay Park or Ocean Beach for dining or other events. The hamlet is fenced only on its Western border, which directly abuts Ocean Bay Park, so we have to go out to the beach to get around the fence. POW is a quiet community of large, shingled houses that remind one of something you might see in Maine or in the mountains. While it is a private community, they do have an art show every other year that is open to the public. Attending the show gives many people a rare opportunity to see the community.

Jim

Brigadoon on this Side of the Atlantic

Lerner and Lowe's famed musical Brigadoon is about a town in Scotland that comes to life for one day every hundred years. Many of us who spend the summers on Fire Island believe that this place is another Brigadoon--only we're luckier, because we're able to spend more than just one day, and we migrate back here from elsewhere, every year.
When I moved back to Cherry Grove for the summer months a few days ago my life partner Jim asked me if the island was as I remembered it. Absolutely! In some ways Fire Island never changes. There's the beauty of the dunes and beach, and the sky touching the sea; these wonders may change with the seasons, but not in our hearts. Sure, there are new houses being built where old ones were torn down, repairs are constantly made, and some important larger buildings are being constructed. (For example, see Jim's photo posted today that shows the magnificent new John Whyte Hall in the Fire Island Pines.) People come and go, some move away or others die and presumably land up in a different paradise in the heavens. We, the denizens of this special place, consider ourselves lucky to still be here.
Like many other locals, we started out as "day-trippers." A day at the beach led to a weekend, and then a few week-long vacations. In the 1990s Jim and I rented various houses in the Pines for a month at a time and finally for an entire summer. Then one day in 1999 we decided we were lucky enough to be able to buy a house. The house we own in the Grove isn't large, but it has a wonderful garden that Jim created, unique for the toy train layout he installed. If he didn't have responsibilities back in the city (i.e., yours truly and a winter home) Jim would spend seven months a year on Fire Island. There's no place he loves better.
What happens in Brigadoon on the American side of the Atlantic? Well, some people come here to paint or write, sing and dance, act, take yoga classes, sail sailboats, paddle a kayak or run on the boardwalks. Many more simply swim, read or snooze on the beaches. The island is only a half mile wide, but it's also 32 miles long and full of small towns, houses and docks. Yet there are no cars here, because we're living on a National Seashore; the exceptions are vehicles owned by the police and utility companies. Some of the towns have cement sidewalks but in the Grove and Pines (and in Davis Park) we're lucky enough to have wooden boardwalks. And for those of us who live as a minority in places like New York, Long Island and Philadelphia, the Grove and Pines are unique for another reason: where else can you live where 99% of the town is gay?
Despite the bickering that sometimes occurs in small towns like this one, I like to think the majority of people here realize there's no place else like Fire Island. We know this is a Brigadoon well worth coming to year in and year out. Come visit us and you just might fall in love with this small barrier island yourself.
Dan

Immigration Compromise

8:00 AM: On Fire Island we have a shrub called the Beach Plum covering the dunes. In mid Spring the Beach Plum produces a beautiful white flower. For a week or so it looks like winter has returned because the dunes look like they have a covering of light snow. Eventually, the flowers turn pink before withering. In the late summer the Beach Plum produces fruit that is edible. Some people collect the fruit and make jam. I'd like to try that sometime.

The immigration compromise legislation hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House seems to have merit. Anything that the rabid right immediately attacks must have some good points. It will be interesting to see how the senate debate unf0lds on this one. The right wing nut cases are opposed to anything humane, such as a plan to allow undocumented aliens to stay and work toward citizenship, which they consider "amnesty." They conveniently forget that undocumented workers do the work that few others would do for wages that few others would accept. The businesses that have hired these workers for so many years and profited from their cheap labor will suffer no penalty, so why should the workers themselves pay a heavy penalty?

Jim

Close Encounter With A Beautiful Pup

6:30 AM: One of the highlights of the early season out here on Fire Island are the walks I take with Bradley down through the dunes on a path through the middle of the island. On a few rare occasions over the years we've been treated to the sight of red fox kits, as they romp just outside their den in the late afternoon. Yesterday was a foggy afternoon, and the pups were out enjoying themselves, foraging for food or just lying in the sand outside the entrance to the den. I had my camera with me and the cubs cooperated, even after one of them saw Bradley. The kits are growing big now, and more and more humans are in the area, so it's time for mom to move the den.

I enjoyed Marc's essay on Iraq as a distraction. Dan and I often chuckle about how easily the American public is distracted, especially by sports, or just plain fooled, especially by politicians. Sometimes the politicians can by quite subtle. Ms. Clinton, for example, was recently asked why she thought that our troops would need to remain the the Middle East after the end of our involvement in Iraq. She quite candidly and smoothly answered, without batting an eyelash, that it was because of the oil reserves in the region. Now, did I miss something or is that not a candid admission that the real reason we're in Iraq in the first place is because of oil, not WMD, etc? This should have been front page news! But, as Marc pointed out, too many Americans just go along with the program and think it's OK for us to continue to act like the world's energy hogs, forgetting conservation, even going to war to insure that our gluttony when it comes to energy can continue. Hillary's refusal to admit that her senate vote authorizing Junior to invade Iraq was a mistake, is, unfortunately, better understood in this context.

A reader writes:

"By the way, VA is NOT the site of the worst mass murder in US history,not
even of the worst school massacre in US history. That happened in Bath,
MI in 1928, and guns were not involved (seehttp://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/bath/index_1.html).
A really depressing read."

Thanks for the information, I guess.

Jim

Monday Open Thread

7:00 AM: Yesterday I came across an interesting essay on what is wrong with conservatism penned by a professor of information science. Read it here.

I'm off to the periodontist this morning, then my canine buddy Bradley and I will make our way back to Fire Island. Temperatures this week are supposed to rise. It's going to be a good week to work outside in the garden and on the house.

So this is an open thread day. That means that you, the readers are supposed to discuss posts or leave comments. How about it?

Photo: Brazil Feb. 2007

Jim