Phyllis Meras
Last Friday was a perfect day for a boat trip and at 4:45 p.m. the Seastreak started up the East River on her five-hour trip from Manhattan to Martha’s Vineyard. Skies were blue. Fluffy, cumulus clouds — “cloud islands,” one poetic passenger called them — wafted above New York city’s skyscrapers. Helicopters buzzed over the pier at East 35th street as 207 Seastreak travelers boarded the 141-foot-long, high-speed ferry that last summer and this has sailed between New York and the Vineyard on weekends.
Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search For Jewish Cooking In France by Joan Nathan of Washington, D.C., and Chilmark, is a delectable-looking cookbook with hundreds of delicious recipes. And, best of all, since many of them come from the hot climates of southern France and North Africa, you’re sure to be able to find in it just what you want to serve at a mid-summer Island dinner party.
All winter, my venerable sailboat, Blue beard , has sat on her trailer in my Music street backyard. But as spring turns to summer, I have been sensing from the stirrings of the tarp that has kept her cozy on snowy days, that Bluebeard is longing to return to the water. Not that she controls the actions of the tarp. The wind does. But in my years of tending Bluebeard, I have learned a bit about her temperament — and mine.
By PHYLLIS MERAS
Last week while the snow was still fresh on fields and in woods, I went out animal tracking. I am said to be a descendant of Robert Gray, who discovered the Columbia River on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and that may be, since it was water that he discovered. But it has never been suggested in family genealogy that the Kentucky tracker and guide Kit Carson was a forebear. My “track” record would clearly show that I inherited no tracking genes.