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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: Since two thousand, four hundred towns across America have lost

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Speaker 1: local newspaper coverage. David Rattray wages a weekly fight against

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Speaker 1: that trend. As the tireless editor of his hometown paper,

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Speaker 1: The Star. He puts out the fishing report, as his

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Speaker 1: predecessors have done for a hundred years. He holds the

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Speaker 1: town board accountable. There are little League scores and a

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Speaker 1: lively police blotterer. But Rattree has a unique challenge because

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Speaker 1: the Star is the East Hampton Star, and it has

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Speaker 1: to cover the very different town that forms for three

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Speaker 1: months a year when it's coverage area triples in population

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Speaker 1: and becomes the center of an elite New York social universe.

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Speaker 1: It's an editorial conundrum not faced by Ratrey's grandfather father.

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Speaker 1: My family was in a position in the nineteen thirties

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Speaker 1: to buy the East Hampton Star. Um it was not

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Speaker 1: terribly expensive. It was the Depression. But nonetheless we and

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Speaker 1: other quote unquote leading families of East Hampton. Oh, by

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Speaker 1: the way, I'm thirteenth generation to serve set the context,

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Speaker 1: you know, in looking at the history of the paper.

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Speaker 1: The first thing I thought was, what do all of

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Speaker 1: this line of rat Trays have in common? Your grandfather,

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Speaker 1: your father, and mother and now you what what? What?

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Speaker 1: What does that line have in common? What all five

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Speaker 1: of us, across three generations have is this very very

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Speaker 1: strong attachment to place, a sense of place and a

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Speaker 1: sense of wanting to preserved, defend and understand it. Which

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Speaker 1: is interesting because my mother was a nice Jewish girl

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Speaker 1: from Bayon, New Jersey. My grandfather was a Scottish immigrant

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Speaker 1: by way of San Francisco. But we all had that

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Speaker 1: sense that we loved East Hampton, loved the South Fork,

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Speaker 1: and wanted to keep it that way. When I first

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Speaker 1: came out here as a renter eighty two, your mother

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Speaker 1: was in charge, I think, and then you had sold

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Speaker 1: an equity stake in the company too, in the in

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Speaker 1: the paper to somebody else. That's right. It became a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a power struggle. Um. This is um.

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Speaker 1: About year two thousand, I came back to take over

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Speaker 1: the paper and my mother said she was tired and

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Speaker 1: would I do it? And she'd throw in a house.

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Speaker 1: Basically she threw it. Yeah, And my girlfriend and I

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Speaker 1: at the time wanted to get out of New York City.

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Speaker 1: We wanted to have a dog, and we didn't want

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Speaker 1: to subject a dog to New York and so everything

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Speaker 1: lined up. So Arthur Carter was the partner, and he

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Speaker 1: was fairly back seat partner for the Star for many years.

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Speaker 1: But the moment when I came back and I sought

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Speaker 1: to assume the editorship was when he could exert a

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Speaker 1: little bit of pressure. Um. You know, it's a very

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Speaker 1: strange agreement. And he and my mother were at fifty

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Speaker 1: fifty and I mean that's a recipe in a small

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Speaker 1: business for write nothing with war and uh, you know.

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Speaker 1: So then there's his lawyers involved, and eventually things are

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Speaker 1: settled and we are now owners of the Star um

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Speaker 1: with the help of local banks. When when you see

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Speaker 1: you were in the city, You grew up out here,

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Speaker 1: you went to Dartmouth, you were a study, you were

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Speaker 1: going to be a museum designer. One could argue you're

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Speaker 1: still a museum designer in the newspaper business. But how

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Speaker 1: long were you in the city. I was there for

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Speaker 1: most of the nineties, moved out here in Did you

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Speaker 1: really not want to live in New York and woden

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Speaker 1: It didn't I really did hit the wall. I mean

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Speaker 1: I realized I was spending all of my week thinking

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Speaker 1: about getting out here and looking out of my window,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of pining for this. Yeah, it really was. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what do you remember most about your childhood out here?

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Speaker 1: There certainly was a sense of freedom there. There really

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Speaker 1: weren't houses much in the woods, so the woods were

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Speaker 1: these open places where you know, we would entertain ourselves

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Speaker 1: during breaks and high schoo cool by, you know, taking

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Speaker 1: my nine seventy dodge dart on the horse trails and

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Speaker 1: you know, Cage three children. That was before, of course,

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Speaker 1: the tick epidemic, when you actually could go outside, So

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Speaker 1: there was a sense of you know, you could sort

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Speaker 1: of go anywhere that the Maidstone Club, which is famously

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Speaker 1: sort of exclusive, didn't really care that we would fish

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Speaker 1: off the golf dock and that sort of thing. You

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Speaker 1: try that now and they probably have you taste if

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Speaker 1: you're lucky. So childhood here was I think we're bored

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Speaker 1: out of our minds, but at least we had some

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Speaker 1: open space in which to express that boardom in mostly

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Speaker 1: constructive ways. Do you think you've got a good education

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Speaker 1: at Eastema High School back then? Yeah? I think I did.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for college level volume of work. But

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Speaker 1: you know, it was a good high school then, it's

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Speaker 1: a good high school now. It was non diverse. I

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Speaker 1: think we had one Latino family, the Sonabrias. Right now,

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Speaker 1: it's about Latino. I loved it, and I loved knowing

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Speaker 1: the kids from Montauk. It seems like half my graduating

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Speaker 1: class ended up being East Hampton Town cops. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a you know, despite all of

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Speaker 1: the glitz of the Hampton's and all of that, there

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Speaker 1: is a small town quality that's kind of endearing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the village chief of police recently really retired. He and

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Speaker 1: I had a fist fight in seventh grade and I

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Speaker 1: I clocked him in the head and then what I

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Speaker 1: all I remember is his head was really hard. Comes

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Speaker 1: in and ye lane of work now and your car

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Speaker 1: has been getting ticketed ever since? Right, yeah? Yeah? Now,

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Speaker 1: the the this area also, I mean, I'll get off

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Speaker 1: this invention, but this community. I mean, for you and

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Speaker 1: your staff, you must get like whiplash come Labor Day

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Speaker 1: weekend in the distinction between what you're doing in those

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Speaker 1: three months and the rest of the describe what that's like,

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Speaker 1: what you're reporting on for one season, and then what's

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Speaker 1: it like the rest of the year for you. What's

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Speaker 1: really interesting. One of the weirdest things about the difference

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Speaker 1: between the season is you almost can't even put your

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Speaker 1: finger on what it is that changes that. Why the

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Speaker 1: why the level goes from zero to ten overnight. And

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Speaker 1: it's certainly the volume of people, um, you know, the

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Speaker 1: the volume of police news and the creativity of the

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Speaker 1: perpetrators and that sort of thing. Um everything it's more

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Speaker 1: dangerous every think it's more dangerous here. But there's also

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Speaker 1: this quality of um friction. I think that local people

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Speaker 1: get more heated up in July metaphorically than they do

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Speaker 1: in February about whatever the neighborhood conflict is, the thing

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Speaker 1: that's bothering them, um, and so so that sense of

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Speaker 1: um calamity increases, so that even that's that's it's the

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Speaker 1: same people between February and July. The anxiety and the

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Speaker 1: feeling like this really really matters and that the community

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Speaker 1: is going to hell in a handbasket is very palpable.

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Speaker 1: In the summer, everything is turned up. My description of

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Speaker 1: it is that people come out here to have a

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Speaker 1: particular experience, and if they don't have that experience when

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Speaker 1: they're here, they get really angry. They get a house,

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Speaker 1: whether they have a really really fancy house on Lily

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Speaker 1: Pond Lane and it's private, or they get a share

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Speaker 1: with a bunch of friends, and they're gonna find romance

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Speaker 1: and they're gonna drink this the perfect cocktail and have

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Speaker 1: the perfect steak, and they're gonna be out of that

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Speaker 1: pool at four in the morning and pass out and

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Speaker 1: sleep till noon and wake up and have bagels at

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Speaker 1: Goldberg or whatever. There's like a whole thing they have

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Speaker 1: lined up. And if it doesn't happen in those two

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Speaker 1: weeks or however many weeks they have their share out here,

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Speaker 1: they're very piste off. I think it's right. There's a

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Speaker 1: frantic quality to it. You know. One of the things,

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Speaker 1: it's so funny. It manifests itself a lot with driving,

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Speaker 1: of course, I'm sure you know. You know, there's the

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Speaker 1: off season driving, and there's on season driving, and you

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Speaker 1: there's that level of driving can actually be relaxing in

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Speaker 1: in October um and and you can get a sandwich

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Speaker 1: without a mont Talk you haven't forbid. Southampton can forget. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's a big deal, you know, like my friends in

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Speaker 1: sag Harbor, I don't see I live in m Aganst. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, I don't see him until October, and you know,

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Speaker 1: and I'm willing to drive to sag Harbor. The sag

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Speaker 1: Harbor people won't drive to Emaganst. There's a whole thing.

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Speaker 1: But but this also feels like time expands and contracts,

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Speaker 1: like I can't I used to do this. I used

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Speaker 1: to come out for the weekend and and pack it

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Speaker 1: all into two days. And now I can't even conceive

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Speaker 1: of doing that. It seems impossible to operate at that speed.

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Speaker 1: But I think you're absolutely right. There's a quality of

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Speaker 1: perfection that didn't exist when I was a kid and

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Speaker 1: even a young person here. That the quality of having

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Speaker 1: the perfect weekend, the perfect margarite, of the perfect lobster

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Speaker 1: bake or something like that. Um. So if there's a

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Speaker 1: shift too, I think there's one of tone and expectation

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Speaker 1: among people here. I mean I worked for as a

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Speaker 1: caterer for a while, and you know we're pretty loosey goosey,

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Speaker 1: you know, lobsters and things like that. And you know

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Speaker 1: I would show up in jeans or whatever. That just

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Speaker 1: wouldn't cut it today. You have to sort of look

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Speaker 1: a certain way and tell you what to though in

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Speaker 1: a weird way, alex is cheaper to get a piece

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Speaker 1: of the Hampton's now than it used to be so,

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Speaker 1: right because used to rent for a whole season and

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Speaker 1: that would be thirty dollars or whatever it was. Well,

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Speaker 1: now with Airbnb and and home sharing like that, basically

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Speaker 1: anybody with credit card and a few hundred bucks can

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Speaker 1: scratch together a tiny little piece of the East Hampton experience.

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Speaker 1: So there's this whole other set and one of the

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Speaker 1: things they do or is kind of pack it in.

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Speaker 1: So if you're an airbnber and you're here for three

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Speaker 1: nights with your family and your uncle and your aunt,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna play tennis, swim, go to lunch for lunch,

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Speaker 1: and you're gonna rip out to Montalk to see the book.

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Speaker 1: So there's this this um increased amplitude I think of activity.

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Speaker 1: So you know, so there's could hate to say, maybe

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Speaker 1: a little bit more of a democratic or egalitarian quality

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Speaker 1: to summer in East Hampton. When you asked by your

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Speaker 1: mother to come, was there a period of a year

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Speaker 1: or two of you sat there and said, what have

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Speaker 1: I got myself into? You know, it's interesting my When

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Speaker 1: I first got back at the newspaper, I started doing

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Speaker 1: sort of menial stuff, and then I was assigned to

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Speaker 1: cover the local zoning board. And you know, I remember

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Speaker 1: distinctly making a mistake which is not terribly important now,

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Speaker 1: but it was about a ferry. There had been a

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Speaker 1: giant fight in Montauk whether or not there'd be a

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Speaker 1: passenger ferry to block island was at the high speed ferry. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so there was this critical juncture of how many

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Speaker 1: cars were going to be parked in the ferry parking lot,

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Speaker 1: which had with the whole thing was based on how

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Speaker 1: many cars is, how many people and so on. And

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Speaker 1: I had no idea that this had been a tenure

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Speaker 1: fight over this parking lot. And I wrote a little

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Speaker 1: story about it, and I got it acent wrong because

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Speaker 1: it was the final chapter, the anima of of this

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Speaker 1: epic struggle over the future of Montauk. And and that

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Speaker 1: was a moment of like, Yeah, what the hell is

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Speaker 1: going on here, this minutition that I don't understand. I've

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Speaker 1: been away for ten years, just coming out as a

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Speaker 1: weekend er um but that's kind of the whole community

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Speaker 1: journalism thing. It's the coverage of the the incremental steps,

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Speaker 1: and you know, eventually I began to amass enough familiarity

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Speaker 1: with what was going on to make sense of things

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Speaker 1: that might to the outside seem insignificant number of cars

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Speaker 1: in the parking lot, which actually was the you know,

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Speaker 1: the finish Yeah, and when when when you took the job,

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Speaker 1: was there a bit of a chasm between what you

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Speaker 1: thought the job was and what you eventually found out

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Speaker 1: it was? Yeah, there really was. I don't think I

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Speaker 1: appreciated how much the newspaper matter to the community and

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Speaker 1: how mad people would get if their item didn't get in.

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Speaker 1: That's a big deal, And I think that was a

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Speaker 1: lesson to to realize. Give an example, there's a you know,

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Speaker 1: a guy had collected some sort of dolls from there's

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Speaker 1: this life work collecting these dolls, and he was going

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Speaker 1: to have like a one day show at the library.

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Speaker 1: This goes back to years, and we didn't get it

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Speaker 1: in the paper, and the guy came in and he

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Speaker 1: was outraged, And that was a lesson to me. Like,

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Speaker 1: this guy he spent twenty years collecting these dolls and

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Speaker 1: this is his moment. He's going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: dolls at the library. He wanted you to care. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a big deal. And and that was a

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Speaker 1: lesson that I don't think he was working in documentaries

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Speaker 1: and museums and all this stuff in New York, sort

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Speaker 1: of bouncing from one subject to another, and I don't

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Speaker 1: think I understood the the closeness and humanity of people's

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Speaker 1: interests and how that's reflected in local media. That was

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Speaker 1: a big lesson. Over the arc of the last twenty

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Speaker 1: plus years that you've been doing the job, there were

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Speaker 1: in the situation where in now with the American political landscape,

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Speaker 1: and part of that has been this evolution of news

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Speaker 1: and media. What are the tropes, what are the rules

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Speaker 1: of journalism that have affected that field over the last

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Speaker 1: twenties that affect you as well. UM, I think audiences

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Speaker 1: are so fractured into various silos that are not necessarily

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Speaker 1: going to cross over. Any sized media organization has to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to bring the brand to the consumers

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Speaker 1: where they live, whether it's digitally or on print. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, we had this unbelievable monopoly newspapers for two

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Speaker 1: or three hundred years I mean the United States, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, middle of the eighteenth century starts publishing newspapers.

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Speaker 1: We had no competition. Television and radio didn't really do

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Speaker 1: what print could do. We don't anymore at the scale

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Speaker 1: of these temp and starts, and so we find ourselves

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Speaker 1: competing with all of these different channels, basically competing for

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Speaker 1: people's time, competing for their news consumption, and trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out, you know, how to reach them in what

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Speaker 1: they need. And and that's an interesting puzzle. And that's

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Speaker 1: i'd say about the last decade or so that's really

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Speaker 1: come to the four where where we realized we're not

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Speaker 1: the only game in town anymore, that we have to compete.

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Speaker 1: It's more didn't even compete. It's like we we could

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Speaker 1: sort of do whatever we wanted. When when at a

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Speaker 1: certain point now we have to understand the canoes consumer

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Speaker 1: more and really hand deliver walk it to them what

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Speaker 1: what we our best guess is that they need? And

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Speaker 1: are you you're up in the morning and what is

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Speaker 1: it for you? Watch? Listen, read what New York Times online,

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Speaker 1: Washington Post online. You know, we have home delivery at

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Speaker 1: the Times, so it doesn't show up till I leave

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Speaker 1: for work, so that so I am reading digitally. Twitter

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Speaker 1: is important, I think, you know, you get a feel

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Speaker 1: for what's what's going on at the Atlantic or somewhere

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Speaker 1: like that. And then you know that there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of sort of academics who post things, which is which

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Speaker 1: is interesting because it's get back to this this question

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Speaker 1: of a fractured me do you need you know, even

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Speaker 1: editors need editors and curators now to figure out and

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Speaker 1: help who is yours? Maggie Harman at the Times, anything

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Speaker 1: she recommends I'm going to read. Uh. There's a wonderful

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Speaker 1: historian of contemporary fitness culture, you know, writing about aerobics

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Speaker 1: and things like that, Natalie Petrozzella, and she's a as

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Speaker 1: the storian. I think she's at City College or somewhere,

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Speaker 1: and she will post a link to some wonderful piece

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Speaker 1: about contemporary life and history. And you know, that's one

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Speaker 1: of the wonderful things about the age we're living in

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Speaker 1: is is we are we certainly have the ability to

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Speaker 1: come into contact with so much more than we used to.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, and you know, I mean, who thought I'd

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Speaker 1: be interested in someone who wrote about aerobics culture and

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Speaker 1: the rise of you know, fitness culture in the eighties.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting, not that I ever did it,

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Speaker 1: min't you. No TV news, No TV on a on

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Speaker 1: a screen on mute. In the offices of the East

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Speaker 1: Hampton Stone. No, we have a television. It's never on.

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Speaker 1: Not kidding. In fact, I think it's one of those

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Speaker 1: old fashioned ones, the glass you know, CRT tubes, the

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Speaker 1: tube however that works. Yeah. Um, we get the Post

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Speaker 1: in the daily News and newsday hard copy in the

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Speaker 1: office and it's always a pleasure. And we have a

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Speaker 1: Jack Graves who is our sports writer who's been with

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Speaker 1: us since nineteen. Part of his daily rituals to sit

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Speaker 1: in the front office and read the Post. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: you can find out a good sports page the Post.

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Speaker 1: It does. I feel that as far as I'm going

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Speaker 1: to go a sports page that you know headlines. Now,

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Speaker 1: do you get a lot of pressure from people politically

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Speaker 1: or you must get some Well, it's wonderful. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think the Democrats think that I'm some sort of

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Speaker 1: lout and the Republicans think I'm some sort of Democratic stooge.

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Speaker 1: It's a cliche in the business if both sides are

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Speaker 1: piste off at you you're doing something right. Um, But

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Speaker 1: it's interesting what you talk about like outright political hostility

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Speaker 1: or blocking it thing. You know, you run into these

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Speaker 1: folks in the supermarket here. You know, I know the

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Speaker 1: chairman of both political parties fairly will and you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's interesting. I've always found like the the side

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Speaker 1: that doesn't agree with you, at least locally is generally

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Speaker 1: the more polite, um and and and frankly easier to

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Speaker 1: talk to. Um. You know, we're a paper with with

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Speaker 1: definite liberal leanings, but not um crazy people might say,

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Speaker 1: I'm completely crazy. Editor of the East Hampton Star, David

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Speaker 1: rat Trey. Janice Men got her start as a beat

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Speaker 1: reporter at a different small town newspaper. She ended up

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Speaker 1: running US Weekly and changing celebrity reporting forever. You know.

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Speaker 1: The first year that I started US Weekly, I think

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Speaker 1: that was the first year American Idol came on air,

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Speaker 1: and so it was his whole explosion of reality TV.

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Speaker 1: So this intimacy that you know, that's when people started

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Speaker 1: to call celebrities on their first name basis, like Brittany

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Speaker 1: at Jessica, you know, and the whole thing was like

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Speaker 1: some like giant cotton candy machine. The rest of my

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Speaker 1: conversation with Janice min is in our archive at Here's

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Speaker 1: the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're

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Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. David Rattray is the editor

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Speaker 1: and with his mother, the owner of the East Hampton Star.

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Speaker 1: Most debates playing out on his pages revolve around who

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Speaker 1: can build what and where it might take a very

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Speaker 1: very strong anti development stance. Basically, I think we just

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Speaker 1: need to stop and we're pa I agree with you

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Speaker 1: speak about that. Describe what you think happened development was

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Speaker 1: because he go other places like the Vineyard and the Cape,

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Speaker 1: and you go to Nantucket and it's completed. It's the

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Speaker 1: speculative real estate is not going to change that. They

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Speaker 1: won't allow that. What happened out here in your lifetime, Well,

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Speaker 1: there's been successive waves that I think each time the

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Speaker 1: wave hits, we think, well, it just couldn't get any worse,

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Speaker 1: It couldn't get more more developed. Um, there was a

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Speaker 1: big push in the eighties people coming out here and

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Speaker 1: beginning to settle in the woods, driven by people who

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Speaker 1: wanted to be here. The speculative money began to roll

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Speaker 1: in sort of in the next wave so there's a

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Speaker 1: nineties boom, and then there's a two thousand boom which

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Speaker 1: got really intense, and and you know, you begin to

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Speaker 1: see a lot of um anonymous partnerships coming in. I mean,

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Speaker 1: for example, Paul Manafort was spending Ukrainian blood money to

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Speaker 1: build himself a palace and watermel Um. There was an

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Speaker 1: internationalization of the money flowing into real estate here that

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Speaker 1: I think has really caused a break architecturally and socially

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Speaker 1: between what came before and kind of where we are now.

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Speaker 1: And I know that sounds dark and dire. Um, but

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Speaker 1: if you could, if you can kind of like two

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Speaker 1: groups as the people who wanted to be here because

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Speaker 1: they loved it, people like you, and and then there

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Speaker 1: are people for whom it represented something else or wasn't

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Speaker 1: it was just part of an investment portfolio or place

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Speaker 1: to you know, burn ill gotten gains and launder cash

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Speaker 1: into American dollars. So so there is a quality I

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Speaker 1: think now of unfamiliarity. Um, what are you suggesting might

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Speaker 1: be done? I really think there should be a no

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Speaker 1: net growth strategy, so that if the town okay's an

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Speaker 1: expansion of our restaurant, for example, that's offset in some

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Speaker 1: other way. There's there's a great deal of public money

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Speaker 1: or now for property acquisitions, so it's not an impossible

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Speaker 1: idea to to think that you could do that. Why

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Speaker 1: do you think the why do you why do you

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Speaker 1: think the appropriation of that money has been so slow?

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Speaker 1: These boards these last few they're not spending arely any

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Speaker 1: of that CPF money? Why? That's a good question. I

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Speaker 1: think there's certainly been a little bit of pushback, and

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Speaker 1: there's a strange myth that um taking land off the

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Speaker 1: out of the market, if you will, If an acre

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Speaker 1: is taken out of the market and m against it,

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Speaker 1: suddenly that means we're not going to have affordable housing,

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Speaker 1: name against it, which is of course insane because an

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Speaker 1: acre and arm against it would set you back, you know,

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Speaker 1: a million dollars or something like that. Um. So there

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Speaker 1: is this sort of political local rumbling that land preservation

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Speaker 1: is good, but you don't want to go too far.

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Speaker 1: It's causing many problems as ald you think about it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, other than real estate, probably the

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Speaker 1: other big industries really the sort of landscape industrial complex,

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Speaker 1: which is building, building and renovating, rendom aiding and planting,

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Speaker 1: you know, arbor vite, so you don't see your neighbors. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it does kind of make sense that that a

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Speaker 1: zero growth there's a threat, is a real threat. But

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Speaker 1: you know, there's been an extraordinary effort at land preservation here. Um.

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Speaker 1: The east end of Long Island is surrounded by fertile

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Speaker 1: marine environments have been protected. Um, so you can still

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Speaker 1: get away from Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's

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Speaker 1: still indoors and that's a testament to really there's there

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Speaker 1: was really a period when I was growing up here

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Speaker 1: when there's folks with a lot of foresight decided we

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Speaker 1: are going to save the woodlands, We're gonna save the bays,

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Speaker 1: We're going to stop the mega development, um. You know.

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Speaker 1: And I mean there's still plenty of pressure. Mont Talking

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Speaker 1: particulars is coming under just extraordinary um, both sort of

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Speaker 1: corporate and ego driven development. But they're still wonderful places.

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Speaker 1: So you can get away, um back roads that are

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Speaker 1: essentially back roads. Still. I don't think it should be

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Speaker 1: allowed to get much more crowded here um. And it

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Speaker 1: could there's plenty of redevelopment that could happen. There's still

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Speaker 1: vacant land down zoning. Sure they were like, Wow, you know,

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Speaker 1: we'll just put the town water in. Then we can

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Speaker 1: down zone from five acres to two acres and build

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Speaker 1: a hell of a lot more houses out here and

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Speaker 1: don't have to worry about septic I think there was

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Speaker 1: a moment where that probably was true, that there was

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Speaker 1: a sense that we can run utilities and and get

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Speaker 1: greater development from suburbanized. There are still a lot of

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Speaker 1: very small lots here. I think that the question of

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Speaker 1: suburbanization is interesting because the property values are so high.

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Speaker 1: It's really a question of who is building now and

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Speaker 1: for what reason? And it's it seems like a lot

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Speaker 1: of what goes on here is being built for churn

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Speaker 1: and for turnover, and so a density is not quite

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Speaker 1: as attractive as it might have been once because you

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Speaker 1: want to have houses that look a certain way, so

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Speaker 1: they've got that curb appeal for for resale. It's hard

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Speaker 1: to know how much of the real estate industry here

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Speaker 1: really is speculative still, but I think it's you know,

429
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: sake of argument. You know, does public water fit into that?

430
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 1: I think so it is interesting you go to a

431
00:24:23,119 --> 00:24:26,679
Speaker 1: place like Bellinus in Marin County, and the way that

432
00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:30,120
Speaker 1: Bellinis has put the clamps on development is by limiting

433
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 1: the number of water hookups, which you know both makes

434
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 1: them very valuable. But but it's interesting, yes, suppose well,

435
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:41,399
Speaker 1: I mean we've hit saturation. I don't know if you

436
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 1: try to use your cell phone today, but you know,

437
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: essentially you can't make a cell phone call. And when

438
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 1: more areas than I'm used to write, you know, and

439
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,920
Speaker 1: then the internet's overloaded. I can only not make a

440
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 1: phone call when I drove past Pearlman's property, right, yeah,

441
00:24:57,520 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: now I can make a phone call many places. Well,

442
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Of course, there was rumors that

443
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:04,360
Speaker 1: someone on Newtown Lane in East Hampton had a cell

444
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:07,800
Speaker 1: phone jammer, but that was never Army lying on new

445
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: for the facts, just the facts. Now in the time

446
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:12,920
Speaker 1: we have left like a two more questions if you

447
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: want to tell me about the Slaveholder project. You've been

448
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 1: working on the origins of that and where is it

449
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,240
Speaker 1: at now? So this is really interesting. About two years

450
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: ago we started, really I started asking the question, um,

451
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 1: you know, what what was slave holding like in East Hampton?

452
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 1: I knew about two enslaved persons out of all of

453
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: East Hampton history that you know, we're here, and what

454
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: was surprising was the church records essentially listed something on

455
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:43,400
Speaker 1: the order of three hundred, three hundred thirty people who

456
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 1: may well have been enslaved. So from that starting point,

457
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: we've been trying to use census records and primary source

458
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 1: documents of all sorts to make a list of every

459
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: single enslaved person who ever lived in the town of

460
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:01,240
Speaker 1: East Hampton, and at this point where up to over

461
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:05,480
Speaker 1: two fifty people. But what's interesting about that is what's

462
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: emerging is a much more complicated picture of the American origin,

463
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 1: frankly um because the argument has always been that sort

464
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: of America came out of the colonies, that these townships

465
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: became colonies, became sort of unified colonies, became states. You

466
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: have the Revolution, Declaration of Independence, Constitution United States. So

467
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:31,959
Speaker 1: the concept, really, the way we've learned history is that

468
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: these white settlers built America. But the truth is that

469
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: enslaved Africans worked side by side, and that the records

470
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: are really everywhere where. For example, well, the East Hampton Library,

471
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 1: for example, has a wonderful collection, as do many communities

472
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:52,040
Speaker 1: of old Ledger books. So one of our greatest sources

473
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: is uh several generations of shoemaker's account books and they

474
00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: would write something in there, like Cato, who belonged to

475
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:04,560
Speaker 1: Mr Malford, got a pair of shoes on such and

476
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: such a date, and they would identify him as a

477
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: negro um. They were scrupulous about keeping records. There wasn't

478
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: really a lot of cash in those days, so it

479
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: was an economy based on exchange. It wasn't barter per se.

480
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:17,240
Speaker 1: I gave you a pair of shoes, and so you

481
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: gonna work for me for half a day or something

482
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 1: like that. So, but that's all written down, and so

483
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 1: these records begin to get a picture that really anybody

484
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: of means in the colonial period here, and we're talking

485
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: from sixteen fifty onward, had at least one or two

486
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: enslaved persons in their homes. What about you, may do

487
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: I want to engage in this in part it's picking

488
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: up something in the zeitgeist m violence against black men.

489
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 1: And early on in the project, I was talking to

490
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:49,760
Speaker 1: a historian in Cambridge, mass and he got choked up

491
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: and he said that he could draw a direct line

492
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: from the omission of enslaved Africans from America's sense of

493
00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:00,359
Speaker 1: self to violence against black men today. You know, if

494
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 1: you think the Pilgrims made America, the Africans sort of

495
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 1: don't fit into that myth. And you know, maybe it's

496
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: easier to shoot him in the back because I think

497
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: most Americans still think of slavery's a southern institution. They

498
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:13,719
Speaker 1: think or maybe they think of roots, or they think

499
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 1: of cotton. Maybe if they know a little more, they

500
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:19,640
Speaker 1: think about say Rice and the Carolinas. But the fact

501
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: is that the coastal New England economy was based on slavery,

502
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 1: not just in the labor here. But what we're beginning

503
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:29,520
Speaker 1: to understand is places like Shelter Island and East Hampton

504
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:35,480
Speaker 1: and Gardners Island were deeply involved in provisioning uh Caribbean

505
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,719
Speaker 1: slave plantations where they grew sugar. Sugar was the big Atlantic,

506
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: uh you know, economic driver of the time, and East

507
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:45,959
Speaker 1: Hampton was playing a big role in that. I'll give

508
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: you one example, not to labor the point seventeen fifteen

509
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: that the East Hampton town fathers get together in commission

510
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,160
Speaker 1: at church. It turns out to be the largest and

511
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: most expensive church on Long Island. You sort of pause

512
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 1: for a second. He well it a minute, what why

513
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: do these hard scrabble farmer, fishermen. But we've been told

514
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: settled eastern Long Island, what are they doing building this?

515
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: You know, Presbyterian p right, So what's the point, where's

516
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 1: this money coming from it? And then you have to ask,

517
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: so what they're doing essentially, um, what are hypothesis is

518
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: is provisioning places like Barbados and Antigua and Haiti where

519
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: all land was really given over to sugar production. It

520
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: was not a good place to grow cattle. Given another

521
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:33,040
Speaker 1: example in I think it's sixteen eighties six their thirty

522
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,680
Speaker 1: two hundred head of cattle in Montauk Montalk was just

523
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: a giant cattle ranch. But there's only about two hundred,

524
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: you know, people living in East Hampton. What a two

525
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: hundred people need thirty two hundred heads of cattle? Right?

526
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: You know, Boston's got its own cattle. New York's got

527
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: its own cattle, Hertford's got its own cattle. So so

528
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: you know, it is likely we haven't found all of

529
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: the records yet to really support the hypothesis, but it's

530
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 1: very likely that the agricultural production and other household industries

531
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:07,120
Speaker 1: here were part of provisioning this vast slave driven economy

532
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, and that's causing us on the project

533
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: to really begin to rethink what East Hampton and coastal

534
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: New England is all about. And we think by by

535
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: trying to expand this inventory of slavery among other communities

536
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: on Long Island and into southern New England, we may

537
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: be able to move in the American origin myth. I

538
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 1: figured what the heck we aim high, So that's really

539
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do. And we use students, which

540
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: is actually interesting, use a lot of high school students

541
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: to to do the research. They've sharp eyes and good

542
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: memories and they will read, you know, if if you

543
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: pitch it to them right, they will read an eighteenth

544
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: century shoemaker's log book and find it fascinating. What do

545
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: you think about the subject of reparations as it's being

546
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: discussed now? Coats and people like that. Boy, I'll tell

547
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: you something, Um, I never really thought much about slave

548
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: owning in my own family, and one day I was

549
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: it sort of dawned on me that I ought to

550
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,360
Speaker 1: trace a couple of my lines and see, and I

551
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:09,360
Speaker 1: traced my great grandmother's family. The hunting's back to Reverend

552
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:15,160
Speaker 1: Nathaniel hunting, and he had several enslaved people in his house.

553
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:17,080
Speaker 1: And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized,

554
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 1: Oh crap, I'm part of this story. To the South

555
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: had its sort of day of reckoning for slavery. It

556
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,640
Speaker 1: lost the Civil War. They burned Atlanta, you know, so

557
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: the South kind of paid the North never did. North

558
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: never really owned up, owned up, and never it was

559
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:38,920
Speaker 1: never taken away. So to some tiny extent, the social

560
00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: position or wealth or relative comfort that my family enjoys

561
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: here today is derived from the labor of enslaved people

562
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: here at the end of the hell. Yeah, and here's

563
00:31:54,400 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: the other thing about reparations. Reparations, in my mind, are

564
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: at least as much for the giver as the receiver.

565
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: In fact, it's probably more important to have the conversation

566
00:32:06,520 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: about reparations so that we as a country understand our origins.

567
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: Whatever amount of money is almost irrelevant. But the point

568
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: is is that it's really the conversation about reparations. It

569
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: forces communities like he's tamped Innerstone in Connecticut or Boston

570
00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: to to acknowledge and understand its slave owning past, and

571
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: particularly from the Northeast to recognize that the wealth that

572
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: it continues to enjoy today is based in some part

573
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: on enslave labor. My father was someone who watched his

574
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 1: own father's casual kind of racism. You know, Jesus Christ,

575
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 1: these colored fellows sitting out there drinking all day on

576
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: that sofa. Jesus Christ. That disrubs me the wrong way.

577
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: And my father would later say to me that my

578
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: grandfather would then go in his apartment and sit on

579
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 1: a sofa and drink beer all day and smoke cigarettes

580
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: and watch their basis. And he said, the only difference

581
00:32:58,400 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: between my father and those guys was a rent controlled

582
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: lisa in an apartment. Otherwise they were exactly the same.

583
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: I'm someone who reads the news now as I'm older.

584
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: I'm sixty one years old, and I'll listen to like

585
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 1: the BBC News Hour. The announcement will come on and say,

586
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: you know, the the body stacked eight high on the

587
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: road d M. And and I think to myself, what

588
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 1: the hell can I do about this right now? Like?

589
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: What can I do? And therefore the journalistic experience that

590
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: I like, in terms of not only seeking truth but

591
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: understanding my place in a community, that I can have

592
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 1: some effect on is always Thursdays reading the East Hampton Star.

593
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:40,840
Speaker 1: I sit with my East Tempting Star on Thursday afternoon.

594
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: I make everybody go away, and I read the Police

595
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: Blotterer and the obituary page, and I read the obituaries

596
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: word for word, and I go through the whole thing,

597
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: the little village columns and Isabelle Carmichael and all this

598
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 1: and the restaurant reviews, and I read the whole thing,

599
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: and what are land sales? One third of an acre

600
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: off of Springs fireplace? Where I see what are they

601
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: getting for a third of an acre up in Springs

602
00:34:04,280 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: these days? And I need to know these things, and

603
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: I need to read that as much as I need

604
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: to read the Post or the Wall Street Journal. I

605
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: think it's universal. I think people want to know about

606
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: the communities they live in. Pingo, Pingo. Thank you for coming.

607
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure. David Ratre of the East Hampton Star,

608
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 1: which he publishes on a strip of coastline his family

609
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:32,399
Speaker 1: has fished and farmed and preached to for almost four

610
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 1: hundred years. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to

611
00:34:36,960 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 1: here's the thing, And I think, o tolp me. I

612
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 1: mean from Thest me I