Photography by Rich Gigli

Mount Desert Island - Somesville Maine is the oldest settlement and a beautiful little village on Mount Desert Island just minutes from Bar Harbor. It is an excellent opportunity to take some of the best photos while you are visiting Acadia and Mount Desert Island. The white foot bridge is one of the most photographed scenes on Mount Desert Island for it is renowned for having the only fjord on the U.S. East Coast known as Somes Sound. The Somes Sound is a result of a mile high glacier which formed the gouges in the land and left the 7 mile long Somes Sound with mountain tops, lakes and boulders. There are many hiking trails, picnic areas, beaches in and near Somesville.

By Michael Kaufman

Dustin Hoffman has been a favorite actor of mine ever since I saw The Graduate in 1967. His performance in Rain Man ranks as one of the greatest pieces of acting in cinema history.  He was magnificent as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway in 1987. (I had orchestra seats for that one.)

But I passed up the opportunity to see him play Shylock in Merchant of Venice for free in Central Park during the summer and I will not pay to see it on Broadway now either. I wish he hadn’t taken the part. I wish the New York Shakespeare Festival had chosen another of the Bard’s great works for Central Park this year and that it was so successful they took it to Broadway. But not Merchant of Venice.

“One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognize that Shakespeare’s grand, equivocal comedy The Merchant of Venice is nevertheless a profoundly anti-Semitic work,” wrote Harold Bloom, literary scholar and critic. This is spelled out in detail in Morris U. Schappes’ pamphlet, Shylock and Anti-Semitism, originally published in 1962 and later reissued by Jewish Currents magazine. As Jonathan Freedland wrote of the 2004 movie version with Al Pacino as Shylock, “There is no getting away from it: Shylock is the villain, bent on disproportionate vengeance. Crucially, his villainy is not shown as a quirk of his own, individual personality, but is rooted overtly in his Jewishness.”

Shakespeare depicted Shylock as “obsessed by money, a man who dreams of moneybags, whose very opening words are ‘three thousand ducats.’ When his daughter betrays him and flees with a Christian lover, it is her theft of his money which is said to trouble him as much as the loss of a child,” said Freedland.

 “As the dog Jew did utter in the streets/’My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!’ ”

Shakespeare, added Freedland, “is dealing here not with a specific trait of Shylock the man but an anti-Semitic caricature.”    

Similarly, Shylock’s demand for revenge (“An eye for an eye …) plays on the ancient notion of the Jews as vengeful people.  A Jew seeking Christian flesh stirs memories of the anti-Semitic “blood libel,” that Jews use Christian blood for religious ritual. “Above all,” wrote Freedland  “it evokes the accusation that fuelled two millennia of European anti-Semitism—that the Jews killed Christ.”

Both Schappes and Freedland point out that Shylock’s villainy is depicted as a specifically Jewish villainy. “And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn/To have the due and forfeit of my bond.” And both reject the notion often put forward by the play’s defenders that the anti-Semitism is trumped by Shylock’s poignant and humanizing “Hath not a Jew eyes…” speech.  When Christian characters in the play behave badly, it is because they are not living up to and honoring their Christian faith. However, when Shylock acts badly, says Freedland, “Shakespeare suggests he is fully in accordance with Jewish tradition. Shylock plots Antonio’s downfall with his friend Tubal, promising to continue their dark talk ‘at our synagogue.’”

By the time Shylock makes his renowned speech, it evokes little sympathy. Indeed, says Freedland, it turns out to be an “over-clever” defense by Shylock of his own bloodlust—an argument that, since Jews are the same as Christians, he is entitled to exact the same revenge they would.”

None of this is to suggest that those involved in staging the play in Central Park or in bringing it to Broadway are anti-Semitic.  Many, including Hoffman, are Jewish. Their view of the world, from the culturally diverse arts scene in Manhattan, might well assume that their audiences are free of such antiquated prejudice. In that context, says Freedland, “stories of anti-Jewish hatred take on an almost allegorical quality—as if they are not about Jews at all, but are, instead, parables for racism or intolerance in general.

“This might work if Shylock was, say, an Inca, or a Minoan—if, in other words, the Jews were no longer around. But Jews are still around—and so, unfortunately, is anti-Semitism.”

Michael can be reached at Michael@zestoforange.com.

By Jason Poggioli

Nothing is new about pornography being available on the Internet, but its segregation from more innocent subject matter may be. The organization responsible for determining the end portion of domain names on the Internet, such as .com, .edu, .gov, and all the others, voted in June to approve a new one – .xxx, and it’s likely that this will be used chiefly by purveyors of pornography. Predictably this resulted in contentious debate, but the corners from which the proponents and detractors were from may surprise you.

The last parts of domain names are known as the “top level domain” and the organziation responsible for, among other things, determing what they are is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This past June ICANN voted to approve the addition of .xxx to the stable of possible top level domains a web site could use.

Ever since the first image of a naked body was posted there have been people trying to block such displays. As a result there are dozens upon dozens of different means available to sanitize the Internet and make it safe for kids. The problem with most, if not all, of these solutions is that they aren’t flawless. Almost all can be easily circumvented, but equally frustrating is how imperfect they are at doing what they are supposed to do. Often times they filter legitimate web sites while simultaneously failing to block something that they should. Anyone using a computer in school or at a public library can encounter this firsthand.

The plethora of existing filtering programs and their authors really aren’t to blame for these shortcomings. It’s pretty understandable why writing a program to automatically block unacceptable content is challenging without an artificially intelligent HAL 9000 capable of making off-the-cuff decisions. How exactly can a program be written to distinguish between a helpful sex-ed site and a Penthouse posting when similar words can be found in each? Perhaps you’re fine with blocking both, but the complex algorithms in these programs have been known to be triggered by even the most innocuous content.

The purpose of having a new .xxx top level domain is to reserve a corner of the Internet exclusively for adult content. The first, most obvious, result of this is that adult material can now be easily identified and filtered by automated software. However, usage of the new .xxx designation is voluntary so lack of adoption could bring us back to where we started. It’s voluntary because even the adult industry is divided over the issue. Not because anyone is saying kids should have unfettered access, but because mandatory application could make censorship that much easier.

Once all adult content is easily identifiable it would be a minor effort for a local service provider to shut down access for everyone – whether they asked for it or not. This might lead you to believe anti-pornography groups and parental watchdogs would be in favor of this new top level domain, but that’s not universally the case. Their concern is that by creating a domain dedicated for adult entertainment it becomes legitimized, popularized, and makes it easier for kids to find. It’s also been said, perhaps in jest, that some of the most outspoken morality crusaders may not want their surfing habits to be so easily recognizable in log files.

Along with censorship fears associated with mandatory usage there is also a very real dilemma of how to determine a site should designate itself with the .xxx ending. If usage of the .xxx domain suffix is required then someone or some group will need to create the rules. The Internet is a big world where one man’s art is another man’s smut – writing regulation would be no easy task.

In the end, of course, successful monitoring of children on the Internet can not be fully automated in a fool-proof way and parents will need to have a hand in their kids’ Internet usage. Parents can’t always be there every second, though, and a big step in making it easier for automated filtering to work is to first make it easily identifiable.

Jason can be reached at jason@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

In the 20 months of the Obama Administration, the president and his allies in the House and Senate have been called every name in the book. The right’s sliming of President Obama has been constant, significant and, oh yes, breathtakingly false. Never forget the Bush factotum who declared that Sept. 11 occurred on Obama’s watch and that he is somehow responsible for the tragedy.

I’ve heard the president called a Marxist and I’ve heard him called a fascist – occasionally in the same sentence. He has been condemned as a socialist. He has been dismissed as a presidential pretender because he was not born in the United States, which of course is precisely where he was born. (Slight digression: If anyone in the idiotic birther movement raised a peep about John McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone, would he please step forward? And if anyone in the movement said anything about Mitt Romney’s father George – born in Mexico – when he sought the Republican nomination in 1968, could he raise his hand?)

The latest lie about President Obama is that he is a Muslim. The most intelligent response to this was as follows: “I wait for the day – perhaps when my young grandchildren are adults? – that when an official of the United States government is ‘believed to be’ or ‘accused of being’ Muslim, the response will be: ‘And?’”

The problem for Democrats is that this retort didn’t come from Obama or Pelosi or Reid or anyone else with a national constituency, but in a letter to the editor of The Times from someone named Susan Klee of Berkeley.

The left needs an army of Susan Klees, intelligent, fearless and articulate, but also angry and with runaway mouths. People on the left have been polite, well mannered, and cordial for far too long – and the right has cleaned their clocks. It’s time to fight back in a way that’s as forceful as the Republicans have managed ever since Barack Obama was elected.

Actually this form of defense and counterattack should have been instituted the afternoon of Obama’s inauguration. But the left was too busy being civil and accommodating and looking for bipartisanship. Ever try to find bipartisanship with a water moccasin? It was just four days before Obama took the oath of office that Limbaugh actually expressed his hope that Obama would fail – and got a free ride. Any outrage with Limbaugh’s bizarre view of citizenship and Americanism and love of country faded quickly.

Sure he’s obnoxious, and the left needs a couple of people just like him – people who are loud, relentless, and who have an audience that stretches beyond the Upper West Side. It needs its own Ann Coulter, its own Limbaugh, its own Sarah Palin. And it needs its own Newt Gingrich, someone who is always there, always available, always ready to comment. In 1994, Gingrich’s constant presence got the right the unobtainable – control of Congress for the first time in years. And it got the speakership for Gingrich.

Now it looks like the right may seize Congress again.

Hey, it’s 2 in the morning, time to take off the gloves, and ask the right wing to step outside and around back to the parking lot.

Would be nice if Obama led the way.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

And the beat goes on.

Apparently, thinking about thinkers is contagious, or at least a welcome diversion from thinking about how Bristol Palin is so much her mother’s daughter.

In case you somehow managed to avoid the news, the unmarried 19-year-old daughter of the former governor of Alaska and former vice presidential candidate, recently, in rapid succession, reunited with the father of her 18-month-old son, getting a hefty fee to announce it on the cover of People magazine, broke up with the scoundrel when he apparently told her he had gotten another woman pregnant, also rejecting his offer to be on a family reality show (“He’s just obsessed with the limelight and I got played.”) and announced she would appear on TV‘s “Dancing with the Stars,’ wearing “modest” lace and fringe outfits. Charming.

She’s also been ordered by Mom to move back home, apparently to obtain the continued benefits of her responsible adult supervision. Which is all a kind of cheesy, roundabout way to sheepishly admit I had somehow left off The List the names of the guys whose thinking broke the code on DNA.

The omission was brought to my attention in a humbling e-mail:

“How can you not include those whose thoughts led to the genomic era?  At the very least, Watson & Crick (Nobel laureates for their work on DNA) should be on your list. Genomics has revolutionized medicine and deepened our understanding of evolution, genetic susceptibility to disease, etc.”

Toby G. Rossman, Ph.D.

Professor of Environmental Medicine

NYU Langone School of Medicine

Before I get to Watson and Crick, let me say I am thrilled that a seriously heavy thinker is reading and commenting on this blog. This is not to suggest that the rest of you are not legit thinkers, but I Googled Dr. Rossman and she’s the real thing. Plus she’s local and is actively involved in the Science Café, which is, oddly enough, exactly what it sounds like — a bunch of scientists sitting around drinking coffee or wine and talking about the kind of topics that switched my major from engineering to writing.

So welcome, Dr. Rossman, and thanks for the double helix duo, unarguably two of the most influential thinkers of the past 110 years. Not that I’m too thrilled with some of the other stuff that came out of Watson’s mind … and mouth. You know, how genetic screening and engineering could be useful I curing the “really stupid” 10 percent of the people and turning out lots of pretty girls. Or letting a woman abort a child if she didn’t want is to be homosexual or heterosexual. Or his infamous “[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

The profoundly positive significance of DNA science would seem to overwhelm Watson’s other thinking and Crick, his fellow Nobel scientist, had no such socially dubious baggage.

Moving on, Valerie Lucznikowska had some thoughts on Nikola Tesla, the focus of my previous column: “Tesla should be there at or near the top. He also invented sonar during WWI, and when he died, at the beginning of WWII, the U.S. government whisked his papers away, and to the best of my knowledge, still have them under lock and key. In his studio in NYC he had lamps with no electric cords, and he played with others, tossing a ball of light back and forth; that has never been reproduced. Yes, he was very sensitive, strange and a compulsive, counting the spoonfuls of soup he ate. But his unusual love of a white pigeon whom he fed at his window reminds me that years later, pigeons were found to have internal magnetic sensors that locate them and point their way home. Did he know or sense something there?”

Gotta love the guy.

The other suggestions continued to attest to the wide range of interests of our readers:

• Jeffrey Page (fellow Zester): Groucho? (Love him.) Clarence Darrow? John Ford?
• Carrie Jacobson: Ted Williams? (Huh?) Al Gore? (Hmm.).
• Michael Kaufman: “Glad you included Dorothy Day. I saw her speak a couple of times in Union Square on May Day. I don’t know why you didn’t go with Charlie Parker, considering his influence on jazz musicians to this day, but how about Louis Armstrong? As Miles Davis said, “You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him…” And/or Duke Ellington, of whom Miles said, “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.” (OK, but how influential was jazz in the big scheme of things?)
• Christine Young: Jon Stewart. Ah. A woman after my own heart.

Here’s my original List of 29: Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison, Picasso, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

I can keep going as long as you can.

Bob can be reached at bob@zestoforange.com

Buttons

Little Buttons here was at one end of the leash, and Wanda, his owner, was at the other, when I met them, in Margaree Forks on Cape Breton Island this summer.

A painting friend and I toured the Atlantic provinces for three weeks, exploring, seeing, ooohing and aahing, and mostly, painting – and laughing, too. We met Buttons at a point of hilarity that was pretty much unrivaled through the trip.

We were trying to be frugal, and so, while we did stay in hotels, we tried to eat food from grocery stores instead of restaurants.  But this night, in the urban mecca of Margaree Forks, we arrived moments after the grocery store closed.

There were no restaurants in town, and we were hungry.

The owner of the hotel, a not-so-ebullient German named Werner, grouchily informed us – after arguing with us that the grocery store was open (we’d seen the last one out lock the door) – that if we drove to Northeast Margaree, we would find a gas station where we could get a couple slices of pizza.

Werner made it sound like Northeast Margaree was just to the northeast of Margaree Forks. Well, it was, but about 30 miles to the northeast.

We got to the gas station… and the pizza was gone for the day. So we got ice cream instead. But by the time we got back to the hotel, we were hungry again.

In the cooler, we had bread, cheese and CheezWiz … and so we had cheese-and-CheezWiz sandwiches.

For some reason, this struck us as absolutely hilarious, and while we were eating our delicious meal and laughing about it, we looked up and saw the cutest little dog ever. It was Buttons, and he and Wanda had heard us laughing (well, all of Margaree Forks had probably heard us, as we’d left the door to the room open). Wanda took pity on us, left Buttons with us for a while (OK, I admit it, I begged her to leave him), went back to her room and returned with muffins for us.

We talked and laughed, and hugged Buttons, and had muffins for dessert, after our gourmet meal. It was a fun evening indeed.

If you’d like me to make a portrait of your pet, send me an email at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Some farms grow more than just fresh food, some grow the future of the foodshed in our region and Phillies Bridge Farm is one. It’s a farm, run by a nonprofit corporation with the mission of educating people about the importance of sustainable agriculture, and training new farmers in organic and biodynamic practices.  It the kind of farm you can bring your kids to and have them directly experience what it means to grow food, and be connected with the earth and it’s seasons.

Phillies Bridge Farm is located in Gardiner, about five miles from New Paltz and sits on 65 acres of local history. The farm is the ancestral home of the Ottaway family that built the newspaper empire that once owned the Times Herald Record and Wall Street Journal. The farm is a wildlife sanctuary, and one of the few places that is habitat for the rare Bog Turtle.

The farm started in 1995 as a C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) meaning you pay for a portion of the harvest up front, and pick up a weekly share of whatever comes out of the fields. Its one of the largest and most successful C.S.A. projects in our region, and has expanded over the years to serve many other communities including Rosendale, Kingston, and many foodbanks.

My studio was once the drop off for Orange County shareholders, and I have had a long and fruitful relationship with this farm. The nonprofit Wallkill River School worked with Phillies Bridge more than six years ago to start a benefit art auction. Many of us artists have painted on the farm through the years, and offer our artworks at auction. This year the auction is Sat. Sept. 25 at 1pm.

In addition to growing fresh, organic vegetables, selling directly to the public and donating to local food banks, the farm also has extensive children’s programs. I’ve been on the farm when busloads of inner-city school children have arrived and experienced a farm for the first time. One child was astonished that green beans grew on a bush, having never experienced anything that wasn’t canned. The farm welcomes children through the school system as well as at the “Farm Camp” in the summer.

My son was lucky enough to go to farm camp several times and came home singing songs like; “Dirt, you made my lunch! Thank you dirt! Thanks a bunch!” As a mom who’s had to listen to a thousand advertising  jingles, that was music to my ears! Where else will our children learn how important top soil is to our health and the planet?

I will never forget the experience of picking cherry tomatoes with my son one bright summer day on the farm. The tomatoes were golden and orange, a special heirloom variety, and were barely warm in the sun. We would pop one in our mouths as we picked and the juicy globes would explode tasting like pure sunshine. My son relished fresh tomatoes, and would eat many things on the farm that he scorns today.

Farms like Phillies Bridge make a huge difference in our community, connecting people with no access, to the land that sustains us. Bringing eaters in direct contact with the people who grow their food, putting a human face on the local food system. Please join me in supporting this farm by becoming a member, and attending the annual art auction. Get more info at www.pbfp.org

Linguini Gremolata-Courtesy of Phillies Bridge Farm (reprinted from Orange County Bounty local foods cookbook available through Wallkill River School)

½ pound zucchini (about one large, or two small squash)

1 ½ c. cherry tomatoes

3 cloves of garlic (pressed or finely chopped)

2 tsp. lemon zest

2 T. parsley

3T olive oil

1 ½ tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

½ lb linguine

2 T pine nuts

Fresh basil leaves

Grated parmesan

To make the gremolata (a sauce to coat the pasta); combine the garlic, lemon zest, and parsley; set aside. Cook pasta per directions. In a saute’ pan, heat olive oil and sauté squash with garlic, salt and pepper. Add ½ c. boiling pasta water to the squash with cherry tomatoes. Cook for a few minutes, then toss with gremolata. Spoon onto plates, and grate a bit of parmesan and a few sliced basil leaves and pine nuts.