Shelter Island Reporter editorial: A time to celebrate

If Shelter Islanders were to count their blessings this week, the categories would have to include food, art, ducks and staring at the sun.

The annual Chicken Barbecue was a delicious reminder of our shared blessings, with the community coming together for a late summer feast hosted by the Fire Department. Even though it’s a cruel irony that the firefighters who must drop everything to respond to emergency calls to keep the Island safe all year don’t even get a day off, but have to work the barbecue for all the rest of us. And then clean it up.

The open-air communal meal went off without a hitch. It’s been estimated that all of the effort to make the event happen, including getting permits and filings completed, setting up Fireman’s Field for deliveries, parking, cooking and serving, along with cleaning up and tearing down the site, takes — are you ready? —2,060 man and woman hours. That comes to about 86 days.

But if you were there on Saturday — and lucky you because the chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender and the corn sweeter than ever — you saw that our Fire Department’s men and women and those of the Emergency Medical Services were all smiles down to the last chicken grilled and eaten.

The same can be said for all the Islanders and their guests who went home with full bellies and warm memories of a splendid community gathering. About 1,500 people chowed down, and more than $36,000 was raised.

Saturday and Sunday also marked the 8th annual ArtSI Open Studio tour, where with no admission price Islanders and guests could explore the places where art is made, and speak with the makers, the magicians who enchant, educate and touch us all.

Saturday kids and adults could see how a duck — rubber, yellow, but a duck nevertheless — races. Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for again sponsoring the annual Duck Race, which kicks off with one of the great images of the summer ,when a barrel of the ducks flow as one yellow mass from Bridge Street into Chase Creek. No matter how old you are when you see it, you are immediately 5 years old again.

Finally, the eclipse, witnessed by people all over the Island, in back and front yards and at the beaches, was more than a rare celestial event. It was something shared with friends and families, but also with strangers, and not just here.

All across the country, Americans stopped, even for just a short time, and were connected by awe and wonder.

Blessings numbered, counted and remembered.