Intro

Esperanza and Irwin reference a 2006 NY Times article by Dorothy Spears. It provides a unique perspective to present day, as it is a 20 year look back, written almost 20 years ago. The themes Ms. Spears writes about will be familiar. The youthful artists and writers who discovered the east end of Long Island in the 1950's and 60's encountered potato fields, endless green marshes, empty beaches and inviolable dunes. They made an artistic haven there, and what they saw and felt informed their plays and novels, their paintings and sculptures, for decades after. Quite a bit of that idyllic landscape is now gone, and many of the famous are gone as well. But there remained a circle of friends, then in their 70's or older, who continue to paint and write in the ever more crowded, less peaceful Hamptons. Their tales of that earlier era, when the Montauk Lighthouse was just a quick jaunt away, and most restaurants closed for the winter,serve as a reminder not only for what has been lost but also for what continues to endure. As timely then, as it is now.