Catering in the Hamptons...
published in Landpaper
...For three years in a row, Starr Boggs catered a private event that began on the beach and moved to the house for dessert and dancing. The house overlooked the dunes but a quarter mile drive separated it from the beach. From his Starr Boggs restaurant at Dune Deck Hotel in Westhampton Beach, Boggs groaned that the logistics of putting the party together were difficult.

"It must be seamless," he added. "You cannot afford to forget something. You must do it right, the first time." Doing it right meant bringing to the beach the bar, grill, dishes, pots in which to boil the lobsters, tables, and chairs.

When a young woman approached the Inn at Quogue about catering her wedding, inn director Elizabeth Murray learned how very particular different cultures are with their weddings. The bride-to-be was from Hong Kong while her intended was from the U.S. Working with a Buddhist priest still required considerable research on Murray's part. She discovered that red and black symbolize death in Chinese culture. That meant the inn's burgundy drapes had to be replaced with ones made especially for the wedding. Even paintings and prints that carried those colors had to be taken down. The tea ceremony mandated strict protocol and the process of getting the bride to the altar had to be thought out. The bride's feet were not allowed to touch ground. She had to walk on cloth.

In spite of the unexpected, the wedding went on without a hitch, no thanks to the bride who insisted on hiring the band and changing its location at the reception.

Written for a Georgia Law Firm

The Nature Conservancy Goes Under Water
After years of global initiatives to protect terrestrial sites through acquisition, The Nature Conservancy whose mantra is "Saving the Last Great Places on Earth" realized that it could not continue to wrap its protective arms solely around above ground bio-diversity. The diverse amount of life along the coast and in the waters is so vast that the global agency now has a tax-exempt presence underwater. It is at work on coastal marine resources in the Caribbean, on the Middle American Reef in Central America and the Great Barrier Reef, and in many parts across the United States, including the Peconic and Great South Bays on Long Island.

"The Conservancy's commitment on Long Island is a hands-on project," said Nancy Kelley, director of the organization's South Fork/Shelter Island Chapter. In other words, she explained that work is at the bays' bottoms where the Chapter hopes to restore the shellfish population to the level before the late 1970s. There was a time when the Great South Bay was known with a certain amount of seriousness as "the greatest clam factory in the world." After all, the island's baymen harvested some 700,000 bushels of hard clams from there in 1976. But by the new millennium, hard clam seeding projects undertaken by local municipalities failed to improve the annual take. In 2002, the numbers dropped to a blip on the screen, a mere 10,000 bushels....

Flyer for book
Animal welfare is at the crossroads of change. Change in Attitude, Action, Education, Language, Tradition.
The need for change was underscored in 1998 with publication of an in-depth report on why people give up their pets.
If you are involved in animal humane work as a volunteer or as a professional or, if you are contemplating becoming part of animal rescue in any way,
you need this book.
"On Equal Footing" is filled with pages of successful programs introduced by animal humane societies, private and public shelters, and grassroots activists. Each initiative is another step towards ending a societal problem, pet overpopulation, without killing the animals. And each one of them can be replicated or adapted.

THE RUN AWAY SPENDING TOWN SUPERVISOR

Ask yourself these questions

• How can I stop the runaway spender sitting in the Town Supervisor's office?

• Does the town have a New York State-mandated management plan in place for properties bought with Community Preservations moneys?
  
  
• Why not?

• Can mismanagement of CPF funds affect my ability to buy or, sell property, whatever its size?
  
  Remember these Points
   
• Contrary to the Town Supervisor's ill-begotten knowledge, the Community Preservation Fund is funded by tax monies.

• The CPF is a valuable asset of East Hampton Town government.
  
• All decisions concerning use of CPF moneys must be porous. A mechanism of review and a means of challenge by you the people of East Hampton, must be put in place.