Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Built to last

If you’ve passed by my house on the corner of Midway and West Neck in the last few weeks, you may have noticed something being built. 

There’s been some speculation. Some have guessed a garage, some a swimming pool, but by now it’s pretty clear that it’s some big addition of some kind. I can tell you that it looked a lot smaller on paper. But it’s really not all that big — living space downstairs, a bed and bath upstairs — it’s just that it’s … naked right now.

Aside from its size, what really astounds me is the fact that it’s getting built at all, that it will be part of a house that I have owned and lived in for nearly 43 years, on an island that as a summer kid six decades ago I thought would be the last place on earth I’d ever live.

When I arrived in 1982 to live here full time with my cats and kids (puzzled from the get-go as to why I was doing so at all) I would occasionally hear snatches of conversation of Island residents decrying the expense of supporting an entire K-12 school when high school students could be ferried off to Greenport or Southold or Sag Harbor or somewhere else for their benefit as well as the taxpayers.

Personally, I found the students and teachers to be very welcoming, though I did hear older kids joke derisively about having to go to school on “The Rock.”

Also, the library, cool and dim with its creaky floors and crowded shelves and my favorite place as a lonely summer kid, had been moved to its present location in 1965, a brand-new, modest brick building with creak-less linoleum floors. 

Also, quite new to me was the Shelter Island Reporter, founded in 1959 and originally combined with The Bargain Hunter.

By 1981 it had become a newsy little community paper, quite charming in its parochial reporting of the usually mild, often amusing items from the police blotter, the doings of the Town Board, the School Board, school sports, the community calendar, etc., and helpful to me in preparation for our ”eastern migration,” for which, I was to learn, there was no real preparation.

Back then, those were the three pillars of community life that were the most important to me: the school, the library, the local paper. They seemed like shaky pillars, however, vestiges of earlier, better days.

Frankly, having spent my first year as a full-time Island resident regretting our move, I was pretty much convinced that our tenure here would not be a lasting one if only I could get rid of this albatross of a fixer-upper.

Well, I’ve been here over 40 years, not exactly an eternity, but I think my stay qualifies as “lasting.” And how do I find those three shaky pillars today? The school has expanded physically and educationally and has become a far more diverse, dynamic launching pad for both students and teachers.

Kids are being “built to last” as life-long learners and citizens. And I can’t recall the last time I heard one of those school-deprecating jokes.

Far from maintaining its modest status quo, over the last few decades, thanks to some enlightened leadership and community support, that modest little library has transformed itself into an engine for the arts, information and community connection.  It had expanded back in 1990, just as the slow nationwide shrinkage of school and public libraries had begun. 

Now, in the face of book bannings and revisionist “history,” it plans to grow again to meet the increasing needs of its community.

What about that provincial little paper where the police blotter was the first thing readers turned to?

Well, it probably still is, but the blotter has real competition in sharp, in-depth reporting on thorny community issues from affordable housing to climate change and entertaining and informative articles from a variety of expert voices that speak to this often treacherous, ever-shifting societal landscape we’re all trying to navigate. 

In this age of “truthiness,” when so many local papers have met their tragic demise, the scrappy Reporter continues to survive and deliver objective facts as well as a variety of perspectives while still honoring the uniqueness of Shelter Island.

That albatross of a house? Over time it’s become a loved metaphor for who I am — hardly perfect, never “done,” but perfect for me. And somehow my long-running daydream of an addition is materializing, the one that hopefully will allow me to remain on this special island and provide my family with a link to its future.

Last week someone speaking of my “annex” used the term “built like a brick bleep-house.” Who knows today what’s transient, what’s permanent, but, with my addition, my community, my country, I hope they’re built to last.