Hampton- Her reputation

Hampton- Her Reputation? ‘It was the same Clayton Morey who had been Evan Frankel’s bête noire on the town planning board. Frankel long gone, but now Morey had Jerry Della Femina after him. After all these years. Morey had consolidated power as one of the most influential men in the village, in terms of how it looked. He has served fourty five years of cumulative time as chairman or member of the myriad of different appeals, zoning, and design boards….(In larger New York history the all time most powerful individual shaping the flow of transport and parks was Robert Moses coming to power as an official with the La Guardia administration p297-303 ‘Imperial City’ G Moorhouse 1989) Jerry described him as ‘the guy in charge of beauty. He tells people what’s beautiful and what’s not. If he doesn’t think it is beautiful they can’t have it. This is a powerful post. He can make people squirm. He can keep them from opening a store and making a living. He can hold up their lives for months’. What pissed of Jerry most was the ‘Coney Island’ remark. ‘Coney Island’ is a code word among the Old East Hampton crowd. It meant and outsider, the ethnic, the newly rich. The ‘Coney Island’ remark especially burned Jerry…. When the village administration first ordered Jerry to remove the pumpkins from the triangle of glass in front of the Red Horse Market in Oct Jerry said, ‘No, I will not remove them Pumpkins are not signs’… East Hampton Justice Court appointed a special prosecutor, Scott Allen of a Brentwood Long Island law firm that handled village zoning cases to pursue the pumpkin matter….they extended their arms and the officer fastened the steel bracelets lightly around the men’s wrists. Then Jerry and David were led out a back door into the parking lot, where a police car was waiting to take them to the court house… for a moment it seemed so surreal that he wanted to laugh. But in another instance it stopped being funny. David Silver’s nine year old daughter, Annie who was watching from the sidelines with her mother began to sob. Silver had promised her that despite what he frineds said at school that he was not going to jail… Ironic as it might seem in light of present day East Hampton litigious culture, between 1650 and 1665, the first fifteen years of the town’s existence, slander was the most single most common law suit in East Hampton. Sociologists say that societies in formation sometimes use slander lawsuits to establish pecking order and status among themselves. Perhaps that is why almost every adult member of the thirty five or so families in town were involved in a slander suit… But the slander lawsuits didn’t reach their apotheosis until Goody Garlick was nealy burned alive for being a witch. P273-277, 81-82 Philistines at the Hedgerow Steven Gaines Hodder New York `1998 –Excerpts quote without permission for review of an excellent must read book- With thanks. Most important of all American literature is the book by the alcoholic author published in 1956 and running to over twelve million well read copies since- Peyton Place and while not set in East Hampton in that immediate pre WW2 setting –faithfully reproduces the genuine tensions and cultures of small town New England of which New York State and New Jersey is part thence spreading out to embrace the rest of small town America and the world. And in fact as reported somewhere in the text of this book I have been studying- one of the village elders of East Hampton claims some situation is ‘Peyton Place’ illustrating that every educated person in that community was in the 60s and 70s aware of the massive double standards and hidden evil underling the Pretense End of Empire State. Now as a theologian and bible translator I get involved in utter obtuse and obscure yet vital to Christian religion fights such as with St Paul against Jude and St Peter ignoring and casting aside the Hebrew text of the Book of Enoch; And going to the heart of that first century struggle do not accept the way that St Barnabas translates into Greek and quotes a well known passage from Isaiah chapter one about the sacrifice animals being in some way unacceptable to God- His opinion. I guess –and not wanting to take sides as being a translator I must be impartial and let an author say what he is saying…. I go with Ben Adam in being as much as possible a humanist to the point of ignoring the possibility of demons, Satan, angels etc. as not relevant to the world of Adam/Earth and ignore ‘Replacement’. Hence the Salem Witch trials and the same intense phase in the establishment of East Hampton both in the religious 17th Century East Hampton Court and faithfully re-enacted in the late secular 20th Century in the same judicial venue fighting mainly over planning rules this time around… theologically I reject the Ultimate- Supreme Court approach to law of an utterly mythical American Declaration and Constitution- And playing God when it comes to calling someone evil. But what I grab hold of and see as the wisest thing which our author has observed amongst the trashy gossip about Martha Stewart or late coming Miss Goldberg is this eternal struggle of people living for a time in some place- To establish Eternal ownership on that land. Ertz- Territory –Homeland for the Jews- Reputation. Pray with me as we close this review of the Steven Gaines –Hodders 1998 book ‘Philistines at the Hedgerow’ Passion and Property in the Hampton’s. Eternal Jew - for some of us a mythical religious concept and for others of us a real person with whom we consult in respect of our Jewishness and religion and life here on earth- We regardless of whether or not we have spoken to you consciously before- Do now ask you in the context of East Hampton for us a picture of The End of Empire State- Ask you to confirm if we – our family lines are now so deep –sixteen going on twenty generations in North America or coming from Indian tribes where the generations are into the hundreds- We ask you if by faith we surviving in what so ever will come in the future can confidently continue as a Bonacher or similar in the place where we have been planted as a family. Or failing that we now ask you as Jews for a sign. Something as big and not able to be missed as Super Storm Sandy- largest metrological event in the history of the North Atlantic coming ashore on this fragile coastline- Something which enables us consulting the Hebrew text of our ancient books to know the time has come to avoid now since the release and callous response to the Senate Report into the conduct of the CIA and spy agencies- Is it is now for us unsafe to remain here and it is time to go to land you have promised us? Or as a third group of those praying this… Not having a 400 year attachment to this land. Not having a known about Jewish bloodline. We ask simply that you will help us to live despite the pressures of the Pretense of daily life in our Empire State- that maybe catching here a glimpse of The End of Empire State- We will in little baby steps begin as a little child to trust you and do intuitive things we wouldn’t normally do so that little by little we will become vital parts of humanities largest Isaiah 60 Exodus New York. Amen