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features

56 WOMEN AND WINE: ARE WE OVERSERVING OURSELVES? Seeking emotional release in a glass. by Bonnie Adler 68 YOUNG MONEY Wall Street recruits learn the ropes. by Kevin Roose 80 GWYNETH AND MARTHA A feud for the ages. by Rebecca Harrington 90 STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR AT THE WALDORF WITH 16 REPUBLICANS by Maureen Pilkington

102 THIRD EYE Seventh and Madison Street Style. by William Helburn 114 FICTION: MY BALLOONOSCOPY Prepping for the parade. by J.C. Duffy 122 LEXUS They were destined for Greenwich. by Dave Housley

CONTENTS . ISSUE 54

In 1839, Vacheron Constantin created the famous pantograph, a mechanical device allowing for principal watchmaking components to be reproduced with total precision. Elevating the quality of its timepieces even further, this invention, which also revolutionized Swiss watchmaking, would propel the brand into the future. Faithful to the history upon which its reputation is built, Vacheron Constantin endeavours to maintain, repair and restore all watches it has produced since its founding: a sign of excellence and confidence, which continues to elevate the brand’s name and stature.

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1986 “THE GLASS MENAGERIE.” KAREN ALLEN AND JOANNE WOODWARD. PHOTO BY T. CHARLES ERICKSON

departments 22 TRAIN OF THOUGHT Two Cats, Fat and Thin. by Jacob M. Appel 33 THE LOCAL SCENE Neighbor to Neighbor 130 GREEN ROOM Long Wharf Theatre Celebrating 50 years. 140 I’LL TAKE MANHATTAN Uptown and Down

148 DA MO DA MERRIER Where the Gettin’s Good by Simone 156 LIKE A ROLLING STONE Adventures around the world. 170 BEST OF BOTH WORLDS Telluride – Where lifestyle is king. 172 MEDICAL TOURISM

Achieve your personal goals. 174 HEALING AGENT Seeking and finding wellness. 180 APPRAISED AND APPROVED Alex And Ani and Susan Durkee. 197 INDEPENDENT SCHOOL GUIDE Day and Boarding, Higher Education and Summer Programs Semester Abroad by Simon Rich Can this relationship survive study abroad? 272 COMMUNITY ROOM

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Editor and Publisher Eric S. Meadow Editor Celia R. Meadow Art Director TimHussey Executive Editor Debbie Silver Travel Editor Susan Engel Editors at Large Paula Koffsky, Simone Meadow, Rich Silver

General Counsel Bruce Koffsky, Esq. Contributors

Bonnie Adler, JacobM. Appel, Natalie Axton, Eric Boman, J.C. Duffy, Amy Levin-Epstein, Amy Ferris, Mary Ellen Walsh, RebeccaHarrington, DaveHousley, Rev. Jen, MairaKalman, RichMonetti, GregO’Brien, Maureen Pilkington, SimonRich, KevinRoose, Vivian Shipley, Allie Silver, Hal Sirowitz, Nina Sutton, ElizabethTitus, AlineWeiller Contributing Photographers MaryBar,JoelandAnneDarelius,PeterFriedman, KerryLong,LizaMargulies

I n fifth grade, we are asked to sacrifice: our prized possessions must be inventoried and surrendered to the state. This is, mercifully, an exercise. I am a sheltered ten-year-old boy in an upscale bedroom suburb of New York City, a community so flush that its grade school teachers must simulate hardship for their students. We have already suffered through a sugarless week in solidarity with the over-taxed colonists of eighteenth century New England; we have wandered the classroom blindfolded, rendered sightless by a barrage of Confederate bullets. Now we are studying the immigrant experience—or possibly the Holocaust—and each of us has been ordered to bring from home a personal treasure that our teacher-turned-jailor, Mr. G., intends to “confiscate” as the price for our freedom. This crash course in palm-greasing takes place several years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, before the Challenger explo- sion, before the death of my beloved grandmother—and I confess the details are misty in my memory. (It is also an age of laxer classroom mores, when Mr. G. can still have his young charges massage his shoulders, not because he harbors ulterior designs on children, but because he enjoys having his muscles loosened.) What I Two Cats, Fat and Thin By JacobM. Appel

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do recall vividly is Mr. G. as Kafkaesque bu- reaucrat, shuffling between our tiny desks on his reconstructed knees, inspecting one boy’s meticulously-labeled coin collection and another girl’s sepia photograph of her great- grandparents in fin-de-siècle Vienna. When he leans down to demand my offering, I gaze intensely into the Formica desktop. I have brought him nothing. I have not even told my parents that he’d asked. “I don’t have any favorite things,” I mutter. “I’m sorry.” “Well, well,” says Mr. G. “Nothing will come of nothing.” How can I know he’s quoting Lear ? I want to sink my teeth into his fleshy hand. “Surely, you must have something worth sacrificing,” says Mr. G, sporting the perpetu- ally bemused smile that defines his benevolent, leonine face. “Maybe you could bring in some- thing for us later this week.” “All of my prized possessions have been tak- en!” I snap. “You’re too late.” This earns me yet another afternoon with the school’s psychologist. T HE PRIZED POSSESSIONS that I no longer possessed were two miniature rubber cats, one fat, one thin, given to me by my grand- mother’s eldest sister. The thin cat appeared hungry and scheming—a synthetic, feline Cassius. The fat cat looked as though he’d just swallowed an obese goldfish. They were not a matching pair, manufactured as companions, but two independent creatures forced into unsought friendship. Neither of them had names. Merely Fat Cat and Thin Cat. Al- though they’d once been the most treasured objects of my brief existence—at the age of six, I had carried them everywhere, even the bathtub—they lacked any other social or economic value. Unfortunately, our school’s psychologist, a tense, hyper-analytic fussbud- get, got hung up on determining whether Aunt Emma was an aunt or a grandaunt. We never came around to discussing Fat and Thin, so my unspoken anxiety continued to slosh around inside me like battery acid. Even now, I shiver when I recall my private apocalypse. It was the final autumn of the Carter Presi- dency. My family was driving through north- ern Florida en route to New York, because, to my mother, every commercial jet was an airborne coffin. She’d been arguing with my father, insisting that a presidential vote for

John Anderson would throw the 1980 Elec- tion to Reagan and usher in nuclear winter. We’d just visited my grandaunt in Miami Beach, the last time we would ever see her. I had my two travel companions, Fat and Thin, securely buckled into the back seat of my mother’s foul-tempered Dodge Dart. I sup- pose my brother was also in the vehicle—he must have been about two years old—but I cannot be certain. I was too busy making sure that Fat and Thin didn’t grow carsick, and later, that they were tucked under the covers in the gloomy motel room outside St. Augustine, where we’d all spend the night. We’d only entered the room long enough to inspect it—we hadn’t even emptied our lug- gage from the trunk—but my cats decided to enjoy a nap, a fleeting, indolent snooze while the rest of the family ducked out for breakfast at the local Waffle House or Den- ny’s. Who was I to insist otherwise? Maybe we also collected seashells and pink coral on the public beach. Or we scaled the ramparts of the historic Spanish fort. I have no reason to remember that breakfast, any more than I recall the events of the day, two months later, on which my father drew me aside, following dinner, to reveal that my grandaunt had suc- cumbed to stomach cancer. It was a morning without omens, all prologue to an unforeseen horror. How could I anticipate that, when we returned, joyful and sun-drunk, to our other- wise undisturbed motel room, both Fat and Thin would be gone? As in any self-respecting whodunit, suspicion immediately fell upon the servants—in this case, any of the depleted, middle-aged African-Amer- ican maids who vacuumed and scrubbed toilets while the Caucasian guests scaled the Spanish bat- tlements and collected pink coral on the beaches. These women had opportunity. They hadmotive. Who else would pilfer a pair of worthless rubber cats except a mother or grandmother too impov- erished to purchase her brood feline companions of their own? That’s how my father explained it to me. I had lots of toys. Most likely, the poor Black child who’d been given Fat and Thin had

none. Nor did my parents believe there was mal- ice involved in the catnapping. Rather, entering an empty motel room that contained only two rubber cats, the well-intentioned maid probably believed the creatures had been abandoned. So my parents would buy me new cats, they pledged. Better cats. But to hope that Fat and Thin might return home was simply unrealistic. If we pursued the matter doggedly, a blameless working mother might lose her job. What good would that accom- plish? Besides, even if it were possible, did I really want to yank these cheap, well-worn toys from the hands of a deprived little boy? So we continued our journey up the sea- board. Past unmarked police cars scanning for Yankee plates, through palmetto thickets blanketed with Spanish moss. We drove by the hospital where, the previous winter, my mother had undergone emergency surgery after dropping a can of tomato soup on her left big toe. Soon the air turned crisp and we crossed the endless brooks and runs of Virginia. Then Delaware, where I was bun- dled into a windbreaker and rewarded with a sour gumball. And New Jersey, an endless colonnade of chemical drums that looked like giant toadstools. Finally, we were back in New York, passing the playing fields where I would soon master the arts of lollygagging and wearing a baseball mitt on my head. We parked opposite the neighbor’s stone wall— the wall that my brother would later reshape with the bumper of his first car. But there were now only four of us in the vehicle, not six. I stared out the windshield at our over-lit house, the carefully timed lamps blazing in the upstairs windows, thinking of that needy boy back in Florida whose toilet-scrubbing mother couldn’t afford to take vacations. Did I really want to yank Fat and Thin from his deprived little hands? Yes, I did. Yes, I did! YES, I DID! T WENTY YEARS AFTER the crime of my centu- ry—for Fat and Thin are my Great Train Rob- bery and Lindbergh baby and Manson family

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24 WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM

murders all rolled into one—I was hired to teach an introductory course in applied eth- ics at Brown University. Whether by coin- cidence or subconscious design, much of my syllabus focused on the countless moral ques- tions surrounding property rights: Should my neighbor have to compensate me if she builds a house that obstructs my view? Why shouldn’t private business owners be permit- ted to discriminate on the basis of race or reli- gion? Who has the most convincing claim to a stolen painting that is subsequently sold and purchased in good faith by an unsuspecting third party? These are the conundrums that try eighteen year olds’ souls, during those ephemeral salad days before they start amass- ing property of their own. When you ask them: Is it ethical for a poor maid to steal a cheap toy for her son from the motel room of a wealthy family, they grapple with the mat- ter quite intensely. On the whole, they tend to be surprisingly forgiving of the well-inten- tioned and indigent cat burglar. Some even defend the working-class bandit who actually knows that the well-heeled family will return for the toy, yet steals it anyway, comparing the theft to pilfering apples for starving chil- dren or swallowing a phone company error in your favor. In contrast, my thirty-something friends—professional, civic-minded couples raising overindulged children of their own— see no ambiguity in the situation. Stealing is stealing. To the last, they are surprisingly lacking in sympathy for the imaginary servant who, in my concocted scenario, makes off with a pair of hypothetical rubber cats. Why are my Brown students so lenient? I often suspect it is because they have never before considered the injustice of a social sys- tem that allows some children to amass toys while others have none. Sure, they are aware of poverty: kwashiorkor and marasmus in the starving, dust-clad villages of the Sahel; hemorrhagic fevers ravaging war-torn swaths of the Congo. The more socially-conscious among them feel guilty that they have the leisure to study Gramsci and feminist the- ory, while millions of their chronological peers work fast food counters in urban ghet- tos and raise toddlers on food stamps. My

lessness. They side with the maid because, accustomed to an arsenal of Xboxes and mul- tiethnic Barbie dolls whose shoe collections rival that of Imelda Marcos, they do not see much cost in losing a single toy. When I de- scribe to them the vanished immigrant world in which my grandmother and Aunt Emma grew up, where one home-fashioned rag-doll was handed down like a cache of jewels from sister to sister, they listen with tolerant incre- dulity. I might as easily be telling them that when I was their age, I hiked fifty miles to school every morning—uphill, both ways— through drifts of year-round snow. Occasionally, of course, a student will take the side of the wealthy family. I recall one par- ticular girl—a sharp-thinking beauty, well on her way toward professional school and civic- minded childrearing—who had already learned

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students find these inequities fundamentally unsettling, even unjust—though, in all fair- ness, few will devote their lives to eradicat- ing poverty, and even fewer, if any, would voluntarily exchange places with their less fortunate brothers and sisters. What my students have never done, however, is reflect upon a life without toys. In a society where mass-produced plastic action figures cost ten dollars a piece, and every middle-class family has a closet well-stocked with such whole- some board games as Monopoly and Risk, my students find “toylessness” as alien as home-

WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM 25

not to tinker with the rules of social organiza- tion. What about the boy whose toys were sto- len? she wanted to know. What if those were his most beloved possessions? What if they’d been given to him by his grandparents on their deathbeds? I admired her eloquence, but I also sensed her passion was not personal—that she had never actually lost anything of value. Think about what being victimized like that could do to somebody, particularly a small child, she urged her skeptical classmates. For all you know, that kid will never get over his missing cats. For all you know, taking those cats away ruined his entire life. I WON ’ T CLAIM that the loss of Fat and Thin ruined my life, but their disappearance cer- tainly changed it. Even today, I am a far more cautious—even suspicious—person than I might have been if not for that episode. I am

particularly careful not to leave shopping bags in my car while I run a few additional errands or an attaché case at a restaurant table when I visit the rest room. I never loan out my door keys, not even to a close friend or relative for a matter of seconds. When I travel, I phone my home answering machine at least once a day—not principally to check my messages, but to assure myself that my apartment build- ing hasn’t burned down. And every morning, if I’m staying at a hotel, I pack up all of my belongings and stash them inside the trunk of my car. So while I give generously to charity and even to panhandlers, no slippery-fingered room cleaner’s toddler will ever acquire a stray sock or a ballpoint pen at my expense. Of course, even without the St. Augustine mas- sacre, I might have grown into a thoroughly maladjusted adult. Hitler and Stalin could still have proven butchers, notwithstanding

loving childhoods. What I can say with con- fidence is that not a day passes during which I don’t actively fear being robbed of what I care about most deeply: not tangible objects, but friendships and loved ones. I imagine psychiatry has a label for this walking dread. That is why I don’t see a psychiatrist. Another consequence of this traumatic incident has been my longstanding discom- fort with the housekeeping staff at hotels and motor lodges. The winter after Fat and Thin disappeared, I slammed the door in the face of another African-American mo- tel maid—this time on the resort island of Sanibel—and nearly shattered her nose. The woman, a plump battleaxe with a soli- tary gold tooth, accused me of racism. My prejudice, of course, was of a different sort. Alas, my parents, who had long since moved beyond the previous autumn’s horrors, forced me to apologize. Later that week, my father drove our rental car through the shanty towns where the cleaning staff lived, so that I might witness the corrugated zinc roofs and the un- dergarments drying in the open air. Yet what most interested me were the dozens of young children, scampering among the chickens and guinea fowl. I scrutinized them care- fully, wondering if one of these boys might somehow have acquired Fat or Thin from a cousin who lived further upstate. I had long ago given up hope of recovering both of my cats. My deal with the cosmos was that if one of them returned home, I would behave irre- proachably forever. Many nights, I lay awake in bed, trying to determine whether I would prefer the jovial, fun-loving Fat or the wise, worldly Thin. I was trapped forever in my own micro-version of Sophie’s Choice . What- ever the outcome of my fantasies, I ended up sobbing myself to sleep. I am self-aware enough to recognize that while stealing may be stealing, the loss of the rubber cats was far more than merely the loss of the rubber cats. My aunt had died, after all—or my grandaunt, to please the sticklers. Even at the age of six, I understood that this was the ultimate of all calamities, a disaster so unspeakably horrific that we pretend the suffering is bearable and struggle on with our lives. Many people close to me have died since that evening when my father explained that we wouldn’t be visiting Miami Beach anymore, but I’ll never shake the genuine terror I felt when he revealed the true course of human events. I’d been introduced to the

26 WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM

ghastly secret that separated the adults from the children : Homo sapiens were like rubber cats. You could return to your motel room one night to find them gone forever. M Y AUNT WAS one of six siblings, all deceased, only two of whom produced biological chil- dren. One brother, Harry, eloped with a non- Jewish woman and was banished from the life of the family forever. A second brother, Mor- ris, traveled by train to California at the end of World War II—and his children, in perpetual exile, are prosperous restaurateurs in Los An- geles. While I think of Emma’s sister, Ida, as my grandmother, she is technically my moth- er’s stepmother. (My biological grandmother discovered a lump in her breast in 1953 and was sent home from the hospital to die.) The comedian Jerry Lewis is a distant cousin, as was the stage actor, Bert Lahr, but neither Lewis nor Lahr’s son, John, have answered my multiple letters. I mention all of this to emphasize how few visitors come to Aunt Emma’s gravesite at Mount Ararat, in Queens, where she is buried alongside her parents and thousands of unfor- tunate strangers. When I visit, on a warm au- tumn afternoon nearly twenty-five years after her death, the markers are overrun with desic- cated vines and thorny creepers. It is amazing how little I know of my aunt. She was born in 1898 and worked her entire adult life as an executive secretary at the Al- lied Chemical & Dye Corporation. She never married. As far as my surviving cousins recall, she never dated. Most of her time was spent in the company of another single woman named Alice McCarthy, but whether they were merely friends, or romantically involved, is a mystery lost to the ages. What I do re- member are visits to her single-occupancy apartment in the old Sherry Netherland Ho- tel, and how she showed me a paperweight made from glass-encased butterfly wings, and one time she called me on the telephone and I innocently nodded my head to answer her questions. And I remember vividly the eve- ning she gave me Fat Cat and Thin Cat, after a quiet afternoon in which I downed numer- ous glasses of chocolate milk and she nibbled fruit-flavored baby food, the only meal her esophageal strictures permitted. That is all I remember of my grandmother’s eldest sister. Yet I still love this octogenarian spinster, who is now but a smattering of flashbulb memories in my consciousness, an image of a perpetu- ally impish woman with dimpled cheeks and

appropriated toothbrush. I was thinking of my long lost friends. My plan was to scour the city, making in- quiries of desk clerks. Yet what could I possibly ask? Do you recall if I left a pair of rubber cats here thirty-two years ago? Would you mind if I asked your housekeeping staff if they’d stolen my toys? As I drove past the Pelican Island Wild- life Refuge and the Kennedy Space Center, the absurdity of my scheme grew increasingly clear to me. The woman who had made off with my prized possessions would be long-since re- tired. Or worse. Her son might well have a six- year-old boy of his own. Most likely, the motel itself had been purchased by a national chain and then sold off again in a series of complex transactions that might well have concluded with a wrecking ball. The bottom line was that any sane motel clerk would have laughed me out of his lobby before I made it within shout- ing distance of a housekeeper. I would have had as much luck convincing Dellwood to put the cats’ photographs on its milk cartons. So I turned my car around and drove back—to my bare motel room, to the life I lead without my childhood toys. The irony, I realize, is that if I could find the grown man who’d been that deprived child, I would let him keep the cats. Gladly. I can’t say I would have at the age of fifteen or even at twen- ty-five—but as a thirty-four-year-old university professor, I’ve finally found enough peace in life to forgive the misguided motel maid who did me a small injustice a quarter of a century ago. Honestly, I don’t even want to see the cats again. Fat and Thin are far more vivid in my memory than they could ever be on a stranger’s shelf—or even, for all I know, on his pillow. So what do I want from this man whom I will never meet— this man who probably doesn’t even know that I exist—this man who has never even once asked himself where his mother or grandmother found the toys she brought home from work? All I want is to see who he is—to discover what became of the boy whose mother gave him a pair of rubber cats, one fat, one thin, on a fateful au- tumn night in 1980. That’s what I want to ask him: Did they change his life as much as they changed mine? Jacob M. Appel’s most recent books are a collection of essays, “Phoning Home,” and a short story collection, “Scouting for the Reaper.” He is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at theMount Sinai School of Medicine, where he teaches medical ethics and creative writing. *

a penchant for turquoise hats. I remember loving her and I remember her loving me. I still own the butterfly paperweight, one of the few possessions I carry with me from apart- ment to apartment. Alongside this heirloom, there is always an empty space on the shelf, a final resting place perpetually waiting for Fat or Thin. I am like a war mother, keeping free a chair for her missing son. At some point reason eclipses hope, but the opening must remain as a tribute to the long departed. T WO MONTHS AFTER I visited my aunt’s gravesite, I found myself once again on the east coast of Florida for the wedding of a childhood friend. I made the terrible mistake of staying in the Best Western at 1505 Belve- dere Road in West Palm Beach—an error I wish to encourage all readers of this essay to avoid. The motel appeared a suitable enough lodging at first glance—not too pricey—al- though the soda machines didn’t work and assorted household debris floated atop the pool. Lulled into lowering my guard by the lush, subtropical air and the swaying palms, I took the risk of packing only my computer into my trunk and leaving my other belong- ings inside the motel room while I attended the nuptials wearing a tuxedo. How could I ever have anticipated that the housekeeping staff would confuse the day of my departure? When I returned at two a.m., feeling festive but fatigued to the bone, I discovered that the maid had turned over the room in my ab- sence. She’d taken with her my beach clothes, my toiletries, even the prescription medica- tion that I take before traveling on airborne coffins. To this day, despite my repeated pleas, the motel has proven unable to track down my missing belongings. I will not keep an open space of my shelf for them. Of course, as a result of this screw up, I found myself with a day to kill on the Florida coast, lacking so much as a bathing suit to wear or a paperback novel to read. Seized with an irratio- nal impulse, I immediately phoned my mother in New York and asked her for the name of the motel where the rubber cats had disappeared. Which rubber cats? she asked. When she final- ly understood what I wanted to know, it be- came clear that she possessed only the faintest memory of the entire episode. My father didn’t remember the rubber cats at all. That left me no choice but to drive up the seaboard toward St. Augustine—intend on stopping at each roadside motel. I didn’t care about my recently

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the local scene

In Your Own Backyard by Nina Sutton Long Island’s new tick crisis Roomwith a View by Eric Boman The Paper Doll’s House of Miss Sarah Elizabeth Birdsall Otis Speaker’s Corner byMary EllenWalsh March for Independents: a celebration of Long Island’s Book Stores Acts of Kindness by Amy Levin-Epstein PinkAidcompassionuntil there’s a cure Arts Area exhibits and performances Gallery Live on the Vine and East End Arts Gala 36 34 42 44 46 47

in your own backyard

LONE STAR AND ALPHA GAL THE DUO RESPONSIBLE FOR ANAPHYLAXIS TO RED MEAT by Nina Sutton

L one Star and Alpha Gal – their names suggest that they are a couple of superheroes. Quite the contrary… saliva from the Lone Star Tick may trigger the human immune system to produce antibodies to a carbohydrate called Alpha-Gal (aka a-gal), which is found in red meat. In the world of tick borne illness, they can be considered a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, responsible for anaphylactic reactions in persons ingesting red meat. It may sound like the stuff of tabloids, but this relatively recent health concern is very real and is happening in your own backyard. The Lone Star Tick is not from Texas, and exposure to it causes an al- lergy that is unrelated to Lyme. Imagine that you enjoyed a delicious dinner earlier in the evening. The lamb chops were exceptional, cooked to perfection. Around four hours later, you begin to experience a se- vere anaphylactic reaction, unaware that this reaction is the result of exposure to the Lone Star Tick. The Lone Star Tick A very aggressive tick that bites humans, the adult Lone Star female is dis- tinguished by a white dot or “lone star” on her back. Lone star tick saliva can be irritating; redness and discomfort at a bite site does not necessarily indicate an infection. The nymph and adult females most frequently bite humans and transmit disease. In indigenous areas, tick bites are a frequent occurrence. Primarily found in the southeastern and eastern United States, adults and nymphs are generally active from early spring through midsum- mer. Larvae are active from late summer through early fall. Lone star ticks are also nonspecific feeders. They feed on a wide range of wild and domestic mammals, ground-feeding birds and humans dur- ing all of their life stages. Pets can be “vectors” despite tick prevention methods. Ticks might not bite or infect a pet, but might hitch a ride into a pet owner’s home, eventually finding its way to a human host. Most of the a-gal cases reported in the medical literature came from southeastern states. However, the Lonestar tick has become ubiquitous on the East End of Long Island, and so it serves to follow that cases of a-gal allergy are on the rise, according to Dr. Erin McGintee, an allergy specialist and native of eastern Long Island. “While the East End is a hotspot for a-gal allergy, it is also a hotspot for tourists and visitors from all over the New York Tri-State area.” For this reason, she expects to see an increase in the incidence of a-gal allergy throughout the entire region. “Any patient with a history of possible tick exposure, who is experienc- ing unexplained allergic reactions, should seek out consultation with an experienced allergist.” Few patients seem aware of the risk, and even doc- tors are slow to recognize it. “Why would someone think they’re allergic to meat when they’ve been eating it their whole life?” With the number of tick-borne illnesses in existence, it is not surpris- ing that it is difficult to keep up with so many variations.

Delayed Anaphylactic Reaction Unique to this particular allergy is that the reactions are delayed. Symp- toms don’t appear until several hours after exposure, which can make them difficult to diagnose. According to Dr. McGintee, patients de- velop allergic reactions 3-6 hours after ingestion of mammalian meat, such as beef, pork, or lamb. Poultry, fish, and shellfish do not trigger allergic reactions in these patients. “Patients with a-gal allergy can pres- ent with symptoms ranging from generalized hives, swelling, and itch- ing, to anaphylaxis, which is a multi-system allergic reaction that, in severe cases, can lead to death. Due to the fact that reactions to a-gal occur 3-6 hours after meat ingestion, the classic patient gives a history

LONE STAR TICK

of awakening in the middle of the night with severe itching, redness, and hives over their entire body. Patients with more severe episodes may also describe abdominal cramping, vomiting, diarrhea, wheezing, shortness of breath, or even loss of consciousness.” Reactions do not necessarily occur each time a patient ingests meat. Reactions are more likely to occur when a large quantity of meat is con- sumed. Meats that are higher in fat are more likely to trigger a reaction than leaner cuts. Gelatin, which is usually derived from beef or pork, contains a-gal, and there have been cases of patients experiencing clinical symptoms after gelatin ingestion. Tick-Borne Diseases: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published “Tickborne Illnesses of the United States,” the 2014 Second Edition Reference Manual for Health Care Providers. However, there is no mention of the meat aller-

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ROOM WI TH A VI EW

THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE OF MISS SARAH ELIZABETH BIRDSALL OTIS, AGED TWELVE by Eric Boman

I n 1884, a remarkable twelve-year-old girl made a paper doll’s house. While these were fashionable enough at the time, they were usually drawn and painted. However, Miss Sarah Elizabeth Birdsall Otis (nicknamed Birdie) chose the atypical medium of collage: scraps of wall-paper, gilded trim, colored-in cut-outs of fur- niture, and engravings from mail-order catalogues, all glued down unselfconsciously in book form with no regard for scale or realism. What makes this particular album so special is its creator’s stunning, innate artistry. Throughout THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE , Boman’s photo- graphs capture Birdie’s vivid fantasy world in all its quirky splendor. Exploring the household, from the conservatory, parlor, and library to the dining room and bedrooms, the images portray a domain of astonishing color and aesthetic daring. Birdie also populated her house with paper dolls, their delightful cut-out costumes preserved in envelopes marked with the names of characters and their accesso- ries stored in paper squares marked “House and Bonnets” or “Um- brellas and Parasols.” Period photographs depicting the era of Birdie and her family’s privileged Long Island life provide context for the creation of her charming paper doll’s house. Photographer and writer Eric Boman, who has lived for the last thirty-three years in a house on Long Island that once belonged to Birdie’s aunt and who had previously researched the family and their houses in and around Bellport, discovered images from the paper doll’s house at an exhibition at the local historical society in 2011. Working with the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, which had been bequeathed the album, along with other materials from the family, he decided to bring “this token of the twelve-year- old Birdie’s creativity before a larger audience.” Eric Boman is a photographer and writer, whose work has appeared in V ogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and The World of Inte- riors. Swedish-born, he has worked in London, Paris, and New York. He currently divides his time between New York and Long Island. His previous publications include Blahnik by Boman, (2005) and Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel (2007).

EXCERPTED FROM THE PAPER DOLL’S HOUSE OF MISS SARAH ELIZABETH BIRDSALL OTIS, AGED TWELVE, BY ERIC BOMAN. © 2014 ERIC BOMAN. PHOTOGRAPHY © 2014 ERIC BOMAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THAMES & HUDSON, INC. WWW.THAMESANDHUDSONUSA.COM

36 WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM

© 2014 ERIC BOMAN

WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM 37

speaker’s corner

CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW:

JENNIFER WOLF KAM AUTHOR OF THE CHILDREN’S

BOOK “DEVIN RHODES IS DEAD” (2014) CHARLES BRIDGE PUBLISHING, AT A DEBUT

READING AT THE BOOK REVUE IN HUNTINGTON; LEFT TO RIGHT: ROBERT AND

I ndie bookstores are on the rise! This might sound like the headline of yester- year. In a market where big bookstore chains have been tanking and closing stores nationwide, mom-and-pop shops on Long Island are thriving. The message: people still love real brick and mortar bookstores. These days, with Amazon a click away, the con- venience of owning Ebooks is greater. The biggest challenge bookstore owners face today has a lot to do with location and creating enough foot traffic in the store. In certain towns, this can lead to parking prob- lems and what owners call “showrooming,” where non-loyal browsers won’t commit and just take pho- tos of book covers to shop online. But, many people still enjoy the physical paper book and the personal- ized attention you get in a boutique book- store that’s a mainstay in the town. Community Independent bookstores offer a dreamy lure. Maybe it’s that big comfy couch or that one- stop shopping mecca where you can pick up knickknacks, hear an author read and sign books, grab a cup of coffee, or meet with like- minded readers. Indie bookstores are a home- away-from-home where an actual human being listens to you and helps select books on subjects that you’re interested in or authors you love. For Judith Mitzner, owning The Dolphin

RICHARD KLEIN, OWNERS OF THE BOOK REVUE IN HUNTINGTON; THE CHILDREN’S

SECTION OF THE BOOK REVUE IN HUNTINGTON; THE FIRST BOOK SIGNING AT THE

BOOK REVUE IN HUNTINGTON: ALAN DERSHOWITZ (SITTING) SIGNING “CHUTZPAH”

(1991) WITH OWNERS RICHARD AND ROBERT KLEIN.

MARCH FOR INDEPENDENTS! LONG ISLAND’S INDIE BOOKSTORES byMary EllenWalsh

Bookshop in Port Washington (www.thedolphinbookshop.com) fell into her lap two years ago. After battling breast cancer, she stepped up to buy The Dolphin where she had previously been a bookseller. “Owning a bookstore is kind of a dream that you don’t actually do. I’m very lucky,” says Mitzner. “The dream became reality.” In an idyllic location in a bustling town, The Dolphin Bookshop backs Manhasset Bay and offers more than just books. There’s a café for snacks and the children’s department sells books and accompaniment toys. There are many products including stationary, journals and candles. The Dol- phin has a long tradition of providing free music every Friday night from 7 to 9 PM. Mitzner says community outreach is also a big part of being an indie bookstore as well. The Dolphin Bookshop developed an author program with various school districts headed by Vivian Moy. “We bring authors in to visit classrooms across all counties fromQueens to Jericho as well as Port Washington,” says Moy. Sonia Arora, a PortWashington resident originally fromPhiladelphia, is an oral historian who enjoys storytelling activism, and teaches individuals and groups creative writing in various forms, from poetry to short fiction. Arora began teaching continuing education in Shreiber High School, branching off to form “Writers on the Sound.” The group holds meetings and readings at The Dolphin Bookstore, highlighting writers like Tracy King Sanchez. “Dolphin has been great in accommodating us and helping to promote

42 WESTONMAGAZINEGROUP.COM

TOP TO BOTTOM: PATRON BUNNY DELL HANGING OUT WITH THE BOOKSELLERS OF

BOOKHAMPTON IN EASTHAMPTON; BOOKHAMPTON IN EAST HAMPTON. LEFT TO

RIGHT: CHARLINE SPEKTOR, OWNER, AND KIM LOMBARDINI, BOOKSELLER.

our readings,” says Arora. “I love heading up a group like this. It helps you to grow and develop discipline as a writer. I find that people are still starved for a literary community. The bookstore is a wonderful place to cultivate that.” Farther east in East Hampton, Manhat- tanites Charline Spektor and her husband, Jeremy Nussbaum, had opened BookHampton 15 years ago (www.bookhampton.com ). They expanded to Southampton and then Sag Har- bor, which recently closed its doors after Jer- emy’s death two years ago. Spektor says knowing the community and

who meet for lunch at Rowdy Hall across Main Street (www.RowdyHall.com ) and get their books at BookHampton. History Huntington’s Book Revue, (www.bookrevue. com) owned by the Klein brothers, has been at the same location for more than 37 years, first opening their doors on “Black Friday” in 1977, starting with just $20,000 and a dream. Owners Bobby and Richard Klein, originally Long Islanders, began their book business first in Washington D.C.

“I worked at Savile Book Shop in an old converted Brownstone in the Georgetown area,” says Richard. “Bob- by came to D.C. after college.” Richard convinced his brother Robert to come back from the Pacific Northwest, where he was finishing up college. They learned the book business by first starting in the warehouse and then worked in another bookstore, Sec- ond Story Books, which sold used and out-of-print books. Richard says, “We

Arts and mother of two from Syosset. Her novel, “Devin Rhodes is Dead,” (© 2014, Charles Bridge Publishing) is a middle grade, supernatural mys- tery alternating with re- alistic fiction about com- plicated friendships. “It was such a well-run

THE DOLPHIN BOOKSTORE IN

PORT WASHINGTON. LEFT TO RIGHT:

VIVIAN MOY, JUDITH MITZNER, OWNER,

AND LAURA KAVANAGH.

event,” says Kam. “the Book Revue is supportive of local authors and made it very easy for me.” Hipster Vibe Long Island author Carol Hoenig, (www.carolhoenig.com) whose latest book “Of Little Faith,” (Steel Cut Press) is slated for 2015 publication, knows that this is the best time to open a bookstore. As a former Borders Na- tional Events Coordinator at the Park Avenue Manhattan location, Hoenig met and formed a business partnership with Peggy Zieran, for- mer manager of the Syosset Borders. They’ve selected Rockville Center as the site for their new indie bookstore, Turn of the Corkscrew, and are gaining grassroots backing through an Indiegogo fund-raising campaign. “We envision a major community center where we will offer wine and beer and literature and a place for the community to stop by and enjoy books, ” says Hoenig. “We want younger people to feel that books can be exciting.” They won’t only focus on the bestseller list, Hoenig says, but instead will highlight mid-list and local authors. The Rockville Center Book- store Turn of the Corkscrew is scheduled to open this spring. www.turnofthecorkscrew.com Mary Ellen Walsh, from Syosset, is an award- winning journalist and fiction writer who teaches creative writing at various universities in the New York area. *

got to thinking about opening our own store.” “I said the only way I’d come back to Long Is- land is if it were to a town I could live in. I always liked Huntington. And he did it. Richard found this place and we opened a bookstore with John Teague,” says Robert. “We started with 3,000 square feet and four plywood tables. We learned by trial and error.” The store is now 17,000 square feet, including the upstairs bay. The secret to their success, the brothers say, is flexibility and willingness to try new things. The Kleins branched out and learned how to buy vin- tage books and collectibles, selling used and new books side-by-side. They don’t just want to be known as the bookstore that throws great book signings, but they have had an impressive clientele, starting first with Alan Dershowitz’s “Chutzpah” in the early ‘90s. Since then, the Book Review has had authors such as Pete Hamill, Lauren Bacall,Whoo- pi Goldberg, Neil Simon, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, andNelsonDeMille, to name a few.With a list like a Who’s Who, it’s their patrons and the town of Huntington they feel most connected to. “Huntington is a great place for a bookstore. It is a true town, not just strip malls. The peo- ple are diverse and love books,” says Robert. Author Jennifer Wolf Kam was thrilled to have had her book launch at Huntington’s Book Revue in October. “My friend even made an interesting cake for the event,” explains Kam, a 2007 graduate of Vermont College of Fine

what they want makes a huge difference. “The people of a town have to want to have a bookstore in their community,” Spektor says. “It’s a conscious choice to make.” BookHampton’s staff, including longtime book- seller Chris Avena, and newDetroit transplant Kim Lombardini, are committed professionals who know books. They say it’s a family at BookHamp- ton and there is never a dull moment in the store. “M,” a Maine Coon cat, wanders around the aisles or is often perched on the counter as patrons shop. “The first thing I ask a new customer is— what was the last book you read? Then, I can get an idea who this person is and where their interests are,” says Avena. “I tell them to come back to discuss the book, and they do.” BookHampton’s booksellers often help east- enders and vacationers build personal libraries in their homes. They also created “Your Own” book program identifying and donating books to schools in need. “It’s my favorite bookstore. I read whatever Charline recommends,” says Bunny Dell, long- time patron of BookHampton in East Hampton, who picked up the latest Richard Ford novel, “Let Me Be FrankWith You,” during fall shopping. BookHampton supports many book groups including the “Rowdy Hall” readers

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