JULIE LANE PHOTO Codger triumphant after the Shelter Island 5K.
Cranking up for the approach of Christmas and the New Year, which sometimes can seem like an onrushing caravan of desperate cheer, Codger has been replaying the joyful buzz of a terrific Thanksgiving — 16 people! Five days! Youngest grandchild wins a Turkey Plunge prize in a squid costume! — until a pit bull squeezed under a fence and attacked Cur II. (more…)
CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO A cake for Codger.
This is a big week for birthdays, including Martin Luther King Jr., Benjamin Franklin, Al Capone, Muhammad Ali, Edgar Allan Poe, Janis Joplin and last and certainly least, Codger, who will have to blow out the candles for all of them. (more…)
BEVERLEA WALZ PHOTO
The election is over and the winners have been declared — right?
Well, not quite. (more…)
50 YEARS AGO IN HISTORY
China downed two U.S. Navy bombers that had strayed into its airspace following a raid on North Vietnam and the only survivor was held by China until 1973.
Muhammad Ali, at age 25, married his second wife, Belinda Boyd, then 17, and she converted to Islam taking the name Khalilah Ali and bore four children before the couple divorced in 1977.
Judy Garland was on Broadway in “At Home in the Palace” that played a limited engagement of 24 performances at the Palace Theater.
“The Trip,” a psychedelic movie written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda and Susan Strasberg, was pulling in audiences throughout the United States.
And on Shelter Island . . .
CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Gary Gerth at home on Shelter Island.
On a quiet evening a few years after he moved to Shelter Island, Gary Gerth’s phone rang. The caller, who identified himself as Leon, had misdialed. This was in the days before apps, when people made a local phone call to a friend to find out the weather, but Leon got Gary instead, so Gary stuck his head out to check the cloud cover, came back to report, and 45 minutes of conversation later he asked Leon his last name.
“Uris.”
“Leon Uris? You wrote ‘Exodus!’”
“I know. I did!” (more…)