long island for a year

You can still find me around the corner! I know, I know... it has been one year now. Actually a bit longer than that. And we'll be staying some more months. But I am not a fan of extended projects; this has to end. Now. Also, I am not a fan of goodbyes. But this is a secret. As mentioned here and there, I need to take care of another little writing project with a friend and as much as I like reading couple of books at the same time, I am not able to concentrate on writing more things at a time. Some other things that were happening (or not happening) made me take this decision. I got to go. I will go. I will miss writing about Long Island, but there are such wonderful people writing about this island and me, I am kind of a "part-time lover" to use the words of Stevie Wonder. Before I go, I really need to say: you should read the blogs I put in my blogroll. On the left-side; the other left! I am very selective, so just expect to find la "creme de la creme...

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.   Albert Einstein      Einstein must have been really besorgt when he said that.   Certainly, back in 1939, he was preoccupied with the situation in Europe, where - he knew - Germans were working on a new lethal device, the atomic bomb. In Cutchogue he wrote letters to the President Roosevelt who, taking Einstein's words seriously, decided to launch what is known as the Manhattan Project *. What was Einstein doing in Cutchogue though? He was on vacation, sailing on the Tinef; but he was a sailor who couldn't swim. You might read more in this article about Einstein in Cutchogue.       *I don't need to explain more about the Manhattan Project, but  today  (August 9th) I want to give a personal contribution: I have been to many places related to WWII: Hiroshima, some concentration camps in Europe, the lab (and now Muse...

The Old House in the Village Green After the little disappointment for not being able to see with my eyes  what's left of Fort Corchaug - now property of the Peconic Land Trust - I moved to the other historic spot of Cutchogue, where the English house stands. This house was built in Southold in 1640 - and is therefore the oldest English style house in the State of New York - to be moved to Cutchogue in 1660. I have written in a previous post about my fascination for the history of some of the villages in the North Fork.  Not only am I a big lover of things east, here in the little village of Cutchogue I found an incredible concentration of what is the history of Long Island, of the US but also a  little piece of world history: starting with the American Indians, to proceed with the English settlers, other immigrants from Eastern European countries, Italians...and one well known scientist who had - it seems we are never able to learn from our past! - to leave the Ol...

After writing a post about the beaches , I knew there was a part of me that wasn't completely satisfied. Truth is that I am a very curious person and my first time in Cutchogue was NOT driven by the search for a nice beach. That just happened. In fact, what I was looking for were the rests of an old ruin, namely that of Fort Corchaug: the gathering place for the Corchaug, one of the Algonquian tribes, which lived on Long Island before the English settlers set foot in the East End (in the mid 17th Century) and which was decimated either by weapons or disease. Even though I am not an expert, I find Native American history very fascinating. Sure it has been a succession of genocide and killings in the past. And in the present it is characterized by a difficult struggle in order to keep alive minorities with their traditions and laws, without creating a group of individuals isolated from a society that - in turn - doesn't recognize nor respect these traditions and ...

View of the Bay from the New Suffolk Park Houses in Cutchogue are very pretty, I am totally envious... Sweet memories of my childhood are almost all related to summers spent at the beach (back in Italy). My nose memory recalls the smell of sunscreen, granita alla menta (crushed ice with mint syrup), watermelon, seaweed... Growing up, the thing became a little wilder, with a "gang" of cousins my age, poetry, bonfires, the guy with the guitar and the dark eyes, a good amount of fun and very little sleep. Now, sleep has become more important and I can do without the guitar guy, but one thing didn't change: I still like sitting on the sand and staring at the horizon. Don't need anything special (although crosswords would be a fantastic companion), just to let the thoughts float. This kind of pastime, which is close relative with inner peace and absentmindedness, is something I am always looking forward to. ...

I'm not so much a visual person as I am a word person, and especially when telling a story - best done in my own language - I'd concentrate on words very much.  Sometimes, though, looking at an image a story just pops out of my mind. This was the case looking at a picture I recently took. I was driving through Southold in a warm afternoon (after having unsuccessfully planned my morning) and I wanted to take a walk on the beach. Which beach? There are many in Southold, in fact. The one in the picture is on North Bayview. But don't try to get there! Unless you have a Southold parking permit, that is. The town of Southold put this sign e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e: on every possible street that might take you to whatever sight of the water. You are not on a boat?Not the lucky owner of a waterfront estate (read: filthy rich, because those are huge!) ? Well, you might as well forget you are on an island.  Many times I resisted the temptation of ringing the bel...

From this point, the West Meadow beach is on the left (north-est) side. To know more about the little brown cottage, Stony Brook and the Three Villages, I recommend you read what Soundbounder has to say (he has nice winter photos and his blog is always an excellent source of information for all the Long Island Sound area!).   The mouth bars are supposed to be changing their shape continuously In the past months I have been hanging around the Stony Brook and Three Villages area a lot. Earlier this summer I spent some time with the kids walking and having picnics between the harbor and the Wetland Preserve in Stony Brook and visiting the Long Island Museum , where an interesting carriage exhibition took me back in the history of means of transportation on Long Island and the US altogether. I had the chance to walk in East Setauket, Old Field and Poquott (here we were looking for a house about a year ago, but I opposed any waterfront  option for fear of flooding and stro...

I certainly told before the story of my mom finding many excuses not to come visit. First it was about the flight - she has never gone further than Berlin, so I understand a certain preoccupation. Then it was about my dad and his health - he's perfectly fine apart from some high sugar level. There is also an upcoming wedding (end of August) to keep her busy - she basically has to go to the wedding, after getting dressed. I don't know what she found out next. Maybe the fact that she didn't want to be left alone with me. Who would??? Anyway, after months trying to convince her, I eventually gave up. Just recently I was mentioning how beautiful some of the harbor towns are and how nice it is to be able to go to the beach whenever we please. Well, guess with that I unexpectedly convinced her. It might well be she was a bit sad we are staying three months longer than the original plan and she wouldn't be able to see her grandchildren, but I really had the impression she was...

The big pond on North Country Road Since my sister mentioned she is spending all of her time in Venice, and I know that springtime is the most beautiful season to be there, plus Sunday was wrapped by a mist so familiar (and so unhealthy!) I got a bit into a Venice-mood - which brought to my mind some of the things Long Island and Venice have in common. Did you know that Venice is also fish-shaped? Little digression. On Sunday I ended up (literally, I was just trying to get out of the way) visiting Wading River. Until few weeks ago, this place meant for me not more than the Wildwood State Park and the trailer park you'd see driving to there. I thought of Wading River more or less as an abandoned place. Truth is that the Park is great - even though, after the last nor'easter, erosion damaged a lot of its beach, so the concession stand on the deck overlooking the shore was (at least until last week) not accessible and it seemed to me nobody was going to take ca...

The weather is getting more summer-like with somewhat sticky days, which are OK  if you are used to live in a former swampy area - and I am; with the summer at our doors - my doors at least - I feel it is good and right to be at the seashore and breath that special watery smell - is it the seaweed?the crab-shells?the salt?... As my spouse has to concentrate a lot in his work, during the weekend he puts  his brain in the stand-by mode and lets me boss around and decide where to go and what to do (with cheap excuses  like "men need directions" or "no matter what I decide, it will be wrong", followed by "do I need to have an opinion about everything?"). After the usual discussion (let's spare the details, or we won't celebrate our anniversary this year...) last Saturday we spent our morning  in Greenport, which turned out to be a good decision, because there was a bit of fun for everyone of us: the nice village with lot of old buildings, the ...

Driving through the Flanders we got (finally) to see the so famous landmark.  I didn't stop by the duck, this image is from www.lukecole.com The Big Duck used to be a store where one could find ducklings and duck products; this is a fun example of road-side architecture, but what I didn't know is that the word "duck" specifically defines a kind of building which shape refers to its product; in other words, if you had a peanut-shaped store  you'd immediately know where to buy peanuts, peanut butter, reese' s, P&J sandwiches...and that'd be a duck. Ducks don't need any ads (like decorative shed do): their shape is the ad itself. The idea of a duck-store wasn't an original of Long Island but it was  patented here: the inspiration for it was a Californian coffeepot-shaped coffee shop, but the triggering motivation was that in the '30s the duck commerce on LI was so huge one had to stand out among the masses of farmers selling ducks. Far...

 Looking east... Traditionally Italian people say you should  spend Christmas with your family and Easter with whom you please. In the last five or six years, living in Berlin and having there my "new" family, I was spending Easter - or at least Easter Monday - with them, which is actually nice and fun, because Ralph has a pretty large family too: with uncles and aunts, cousins, some of whom have kids as old as our kids; plus Ralph's grandma is still alive (103 years old and rather healthy), so there is a  four generation get together eating delicious homemade German Kuchen (lucky me). Anyway, this year it was just the four of us, and we enjoyed the two beautiful sunny days to be outside and explore more of Long Island. Since Carlotta was wishing so much to ride her bike, we needed a place which was not the usual Heritage Park in Mount Sinai and still bike friendly, so we headed to Sunken Meadow State Park, which has a 3/4 mile boardwalk wide enough to practice biking...

I recently wrote a post on US food but I tried not to be too  hard in the first place because if there are obvious targets I could hit, there are certain other I don't want to hit. One of this is the American breakfast - at least one style of American breakfast: that with eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and - if there is still some room in my tummy - pancakes... This isn't something I would have everyday, unless I want to run two or three miles up and down the hills around here; but I really like it once in a while. I am not afraid of eating something savory in the morning or something more than coffee and croissant (I hear most Italian people have this habit - my mom was very impressed when I told her about the scrambled eggs). After months we finally managed to go out to have breakfast - kids are part of the being lazy but sometimes it isn't fun when under your table lay two or more spoons, straws, jam boxes and you are responsible for this mess. Even less fun  it's...

We are confined at home these days, with Carlotta having a cold and the snow. It is supposed to snow all day again so, let's consider shoveling a bit as a winter sport - if I practice enough I might make it to Vancouver!!!

Marty and Irma - on the left - on their pontoon boat What was I doing lately, apart from running after my son who is now a professional walker? Some days ago we had some Lab related meetings, meaning that there were colleagues-friends coming over to Long Island for work, which led to some dinner and nice talk afterward. We met our friend Marty - who used to be Ralph's colleague back in 2000, in Chicago - and Shen Pen - a Chinese Californian colleague with whom we were sharing our compartment on the night-train from Shanghai to Beijing two years ago: thanks to his human engineering AND knowledge of chinese language we managed not to spend the night with perfect strangers. Aren't we relaxed? We were all invited at Nancy and zio Bob's (that's how Carlotta calls him) place and had a very good time, with me trying to protect the kids from Sierra (their dog). If you know how scare I am of dogs - childhood shock - then it might sound amusing... We were all brave, indeed, and...

If you are not a resident or you don't pay an outrageous charge for parking, you won't see the beautiful beaches in Westhampton. Unless... you are here after Labor Day.

Cedar Beach is a very nice place by the Sound, in Mount Sinai Harbor. Lot of pebbles, clear water, relaxed atmosphere and...not too far from our house.

One of the most annoying things of our "on-site", i.e. at the Lab, life is definitely washing our clothes. We don't have a washing machine, so we have to walk (or take the car) to the laundry and WASH WASH WASH. Nothing so special about that, just that our clothing don't get clean, no matter how much detergent and no matter how hot the water. Maybe we should sew the washing-machine company for that, or buy more clothes. Both things are quite common.

Carlotta and Buster - that's the American name Bastian got! - are having fun together.