By Russell Drumm on 11/25/2008 3:27 PM

A well-liked and respected Montauk party boat captain was cited last month for taking anglers out past the state’s three-mile territorial limit, where it’s legal to catch striped bass, into federal waters where it is not.

This may or may not be true, but the alleged infraction says something about boundaries. In this case, the boundary was not an insurmountable Great Wall, or a double yellow line like the kind that discourages head-on collisions. The offshore boundary is invisible. It has existed for centuries in the minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude and these days, in a digitized satellite signal from outer space that appears on the screen of a small G.P.S. unit -- in this case held in the sweaty palm of a federal undercover agent.

Endeavor Shoals, the area where the infraction allegedly occurred, is known for its fast currents and tidal rips, which are the reason for the great fishing there. Picture a boat ancho ... Read More »

By Russell Drumm on 11/13/2008 2:04 PM

All of us who write at The Star spend part of our week serving as obituary drones, at times an unpleasant task. We live in a small town and The Star is a community newspaper. Chances are good we will be writing about the death and former life of friends. More often than not obit writing is an opportunity to learn about and appreciate the colorful life of this place.

Families with generations-worth of memories. Individuals with surprising histories. The occasional Eleanor Rigby obit, a life that began and then ended years later with nothing in between that anyone remembers, or cares to share. Interviews are either somber ordeals or celebrations. I recall one woman who expressed unabashed joy at her husband's demise. The quote didn't make it into print.

What any one life has meant to the world is impossible to say, of course. Since the death of Frank Mundus, Montauk's self-described Monster Man, I have had a surprising number of conversations about ... Read More »

By Russell Drumm on 11/7/2008 3:35 PM

Bonnie Grice interviewed a guy named Daniel Leviton this morning on WLIU. An excellent interviewer is Bonnie, her guests most always interesting.  Mr. Leviton has written a book called "The World in Six Songs," which is generating a good deal of interest.  The idea is that the human condition can be divided into types of experience all of them expressed in song -- love songs, songs of community, songs of faith, etc.

At one point Bonnie asked if her guest thought other types of animals sang the way humans sing.  Mr. Leviton responded that humans were the only animals capable of reflection, able to look into the past, or future, and presumably sing about it. Birds, whales, and apes vocalized only instinctually to expedite reproduction. Birds when alone don't sing, he observed. Balderdash, I say.

    Now, I'm not a new-age weirdo who imposes every human emotion on my dog.&nbs ... Read More »

By Russell Drumm on 10/31/2008 11:44 AM

    My story in the current issue of The Star about the piece of tarred hemp rope to be featured in a rejuvenated exhibition at the town Marine Museum next summer got me thinking about the appreciation of old stuff. The two-foot length of two-inch diameter rope with a right-handed lay was found in what's left of H.M.S. Culloden, whose hull sits in relatively shallow water off the point on Fort Pond Bay where she ran aground during the Revolution.

    I remember when I was a kid going to see the King Tut exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. Cool gold statues of people walking like Egyptians, but the thing that blew me away were the gold rings and jewelry in the glass cases -- the idea that people, actual people, wore those very things a few thousand years ago. Had them on their fingers and around their necks.

    I got the same kind of chills when confronted wit ... Read More »