Pelicaneye Letter: Magical Thinking On Dauphin Island

“The flighty purpose is never o’ertook, unless the deeds go with it.”
Shakespeare

Joan Didion in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, shows repeatedly how her own addiction to magical thinking, brought on by grief over her husband’s death, froze her mind in a way that made her, for a time, incapable of responding rationally to the surrounding world and the day-to-day events in her life.

The person afflicted with magical thinking believes that if he or she simply repeats ritualistically a familiar pattern of behavior performed in the past, all will be well, all things will again revert to the familiar security of the time before an “avulsive” event. The avulsive events in Didion’s case were the death of her husband and the terminal illness of her daughter. These real events, in her case, rendered a known and familiar security either impossible or extremely unlikely to come about again, but that did not stop Didion’s imagination from taking flight from the reality of death to replay scenes from the past in the delusive hope they could or would return her world to its former known and familiar dimensions, and so displace the agony of loss and separation.

Seven members of the Board of Directors of the Dauphin Island Property Owners Association (DIPOA)—John Reed, Phil Fuselier, Jackie Previto, Linda Smith, Tom Brennan, Ron Benoit, and Jim Druhan—have been reviled in recent months by a small minority of West-end property owners because these Board members refuse to participate in head-in-underwater-sand magical thinking. Apparently what these Board members took to be a creative initiative—an initiative to deed DIPOA beach property to the Town of Dauphin Island—probed a deep sore in the psyche of some West-end property owners, including some property owners on other areas of the Island. However, it was not immediately obvious that the Board’s resolution had poured salt in a running sore.

What was obvious almost immediately was a puzzling pattern of irrational behavior that grew in intensity at every succeeding public meeting of the Association. Whereas Joan Didion learned to cope effectively with her mental disorder, our magical thinkers have grown increasingly irrational as the March-24 date for the referendum to deed DIPOA West-Surf beach property to the Town of Dauphin Island draws near.

When the Board’s initiative was first broached, several rancorous meetings ensued, so, at Tom Brennan’s suggestion, the Board agreed to consider the findings of an independent committee which, under the banner “Save Our Shores” (S.O.S), was soon constituted with S.O.S, choosing its own members. The Board had already charged its own Beach-restoration committee to investigate the beach-nourishment programs in our region and in Florida. After carefully researching the beach-nourishment programs of Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Navarre Beach, and Panama City, the committee concluded that none of these programs were feasible as long as the West-Surf Beach continues to be privately owned by the DIPOA.

Beach experts in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores strongly advised against using the WRDA (Water Resources Development Act), which is a Corps-sponsored program. That route would take many years to implement and once used it would prevent gaining access to FEMA funds. The Board concluded that its best chances for gaining State and Federal funding for the long-term meant the West-Surf beach had to be owned by a public entity, preferably the local municipality. Nothing since shown to the Board, including Glen Coffee’s ex-cathedra pronouncements and nasty aspersions, changes that opinion.

Concurrently, S.O.S, was researching these same programs in order to prove to the Board that feasible alternatives to deeding our property to the town do in fact exist. Months went by, and though Board members kept asking for it, this committee never delivered their promised report. Rather, at each succeeding monthly public meeting of the DIPOA, partisans of this committee became increasingly obstreperous, impeding the legitimate business of the Board with dubious claims delivered as gospel. (S.O.S. never identified it members, though Lisa Young and Jim Hartman were apparently their designated spokespersons.)

It soon became patently obvious that these persons were impervious to any and all forms of reasonable discourse. S.O.S’s arguments started from some reasonable premises, but quickly devolved into absolute claims about the Constitution and about the original 1954 deed, asserting the Board has no legal right to deed or sell any DIPOA property to any person or entity. S.O.S’s strict-constructionists, Hartman and Young, read the phrase in the Constitution, “the property owners beach,” as expressly prohibiting the transfer of all of the DIPOA’s beach-front holdings regardless of location. The Board, on the other hand, interprets this phrase to mean only its beach-front property contiguous with the golf course. A further complication is that the language of the original 1954 deed from the Mobile Chamber of Commerce states DIPOA property is to be held for the “exclusive use and benefit of the current and future members of the POA.” S.O.S, narrowly construing this stipulation, takes it to mean that it strictly prohibits, in perpetuity and regardless of any and all circumstances, transfer of DIPOA property to the Town for the creation of a public beach or for any other use.

From 1954 until recently, beach-front property owners had a virtual lock on access to the beaches of the Island, and this has been especially so on the West end of the Island. Hurricane Katrina and other avulsive storms, however, have made it imperative that this situation change so that beach nourishment funds can be procured not only to rebuild the south-side beach but also to protect the entire Island from major-storm devastation. Major storm action upon the Island, as a natural product of Nature, comes in two varieties: 1. sand removal and sand accretion elsewhere caused by wind and waves, 2. An avulsive cut or tear in the fabric of the Island itself, separating a portion of the Island from the main body of the Island. Katrina visited both kinds of action, in spades, upon the Island, and other storms have, in the past, visited similar natural “devastation.”

Katrina literally tore a mile-wide gap in the Island, separating approximately a four-mile portion of itself from the main body. It also tore some minor gaps which have since been partially filled by the Town to make Bienville Blvd. passable in good weather. And the Berm, almost completed and already eroded slightly in several places, will keep Bienville and side roads dry as long as it holds. The property owned by the DIPOA on the West end, known as the West-Surf Beach, is approximately three miles long and is currently mostly underwater with much of its sand blown and washed to the north-side of the Island.

S.O.S dismisses beach conditions on the West end as a minor matter, and maintains that the West-surf beach is regenerating itself. Of course, to a minor extent it is, but that’s not unusual since the shoreline changes almost over night from bad to a little better and from a little better to drastically worse when major storms hit the Island. Recent storms have been relatively kind to the Island. We have been struck with only glancing blows. If we experience a direct hit, there’s no telling what the results might be. BJ Lyon would have you believe the Board is prognosticating a “doomsday-Ckicken- Little scenario.” Maybe so, but property owners would be wise to be wary of any scenario Mr. Lyon cooks up.

The high dudgeon and legal maneuvering of S.O.S and its partisans—property owners James Hartman and attorney John C.Williams have filed a restraining order with the District Court in Mobile aimed at preventing a referendum —makes it very likely that the court will decide which interpretation of the Constitution and original deed makes the most sense given that the intent of both documents is to preserve in perpetuity “exclusive use and benefit of the current and future members of the POA.” Obviously, since the property is largely under water and/or removed to the north-side, can it be said that it exists in any beneficial way? Benefits and use in perpetuity become problematic when said property is now under the rule of Neptune and the Fish and Wildlife Service. That word, “exclusive,” is, in my non-legal opinion, the rub. If the word is interpreted to mean the West-Surf beach must remain in perpetuity an exclusive, private preserve, regardless of its viability as useful property, then a relatively few property owners will have succeeded in denying the majority of owners the right to pursue avenues, using the good offices of the Town and Congressional resources, that may produce means to re-nourish the West-Surf beach and beaches on the East end also.

But that’s not all. West-end owners will continue to enjoy what’s left of their property while they, and the rest of the Island, remain precariously vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature. Moreover, our Mother seems increasingly ill-disposed to act with our profit in mind. On the contrary, there’s a good possibility that south-side property will continue to find a new location on the north-side of the Island with each succeeding storm depositing more sand on the north-side, smearing the Island northward so that, in effect, the birds and other wild life are enjoying the benefits of what was once property designated for the “exclusive” use of the membership. Moreover, the sand that has accreted on the north-side, due to the action of wind and waves, cannot be returned to the south-side since it is now the property of the Fish and Wild Life Service, a Federal entity. Damn those Yankees!

No fewer than five lawyers with different agendas have either started court action or have intimated they will sue the seven members of the Board who voted for the proposal to deed the West-Surf beach. They are BJ Lyon, John Lawler, Skipper Brutkiewicz, Dennis Knizley, and Knizley’s office mate and front man, John C. Williams. Knizley has so far limited his role to chest-puffing rhetoric at monthly DIPOA meetings, meanwhile, lo-and-behold, BJ Lyon has stepped up to the plate as the well-groomed, alpha-male lawyer, pinch hitting for Lawler after he muffed S.O.S’s effort to obtain a court order to stop the referendum. But, no amount of ranting incoherently at public meetings of the DIPOA, including threats to sue and courtroom antics will magic into being any program aimed at protecting not just the property of West-end owners but the property of all members of the community.

What is it about this place, this southern island that seems to bring out the worst sort of magical thinking in people? Aside from supposing they are living in a Disney- Land reality, my conclusion, based on nearly fifty years living in Louisiana and Alabama, is that Dauphin Island, as one corner of a larger sector, namely the deep-south, has over the years evolved, along with the entire region, some peculiar institutions and some peculiar reactionary traits, and while the South has no monopoly on magical thinking, nonetheless, magical thinking, displaying many novel degrees of decadence, has been the subject of some the South’s most articulate sons and daughters (Mark Twain, William, Faulkner, Walker Percy, Charles Frazier, Tennessee Williams, Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullars, Flannery O’Connor, and Harper Lee to name just a few). William Faulkner memorialized the southern penchant for reactionary sentiments when he said, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” If you haven’t read it recently, I suggest you, re-read Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily.” That story is, of course, just one of Faulkner’s many fictive commentaries on the several varieties of magical thinking lingering on in southern states.

The need for brevity prevents me from illustrating at length my point about reactionary sentiments in the South, but here is one “aptial” instance: In 1984, the Mazda Motor Co. was considering several southern locations as suitable sites for a new auto plant. The Greenville-Spartanburg area of South Carolina was among them. Eugene Stone, chairman and founder of a textile company that employed over 1,500 workers in that area, wrote to Mazda and asked them not consider the South Carolina location because such a plant would upset existing wage scales in the area. Mazda ultimately decided to build their plant in Michigan. In its monthly newsletter, the Spartanburg Development Association, opined that its sentiments were the sentiments of many in the surrounding area. Its editorial stated: “it is our considered view that the Mazda plant would have had a long-term chilling effect on Spartanburg’s orderly industrial growth. An auto plant, employing over 3,000 card-carrying, hymn-singing members of the UAW would, in our opinion, bring an abrupt halt to future desirable industrial prospects.”

Of course it’s true that industrial growth causes social and economic dislocations, but it also true that Japanese auto companies have sprung up like mushrooms all over the south (the latest one is in Tupelo, Mississippi) and they don’t appear to have caused any irreparable harms—at least they have not caused the kinds of harms that the oil and gas industry is currently wreaking on the states of Wyoming and Montana. But they’re not in our backyard are they? What I wish to call your attention to is the peculiar mindset manifesting in the writer of the newsletter of the Spartanburg Development Association. Without actually knowing what the consequences would be, his imagination seizes on the most fearful magical thing he can think of—the threat of imminent unionization. The Mazda plant “would have a long-term chilling effect” because the plant would be employing 3,000 card-carrying, hymn-singing members of the UAW,” who, he also imagines, will “bring an abrupt halt to future desirable industrial prospects.” As far as I know, wherever Japanese auto plants have set up shop in southern states, they have prospered, so have their employees, and so have the communities in which they dwell.

With just a slight tuning of our ears, we ought to be able to hear in this writer’s prejudices, the interminable gonging of the West-end owners opposing the Board’s initiative to cede its beach property to the town. Their hue and cry is that if the membership votes to pass the initiative it will lead to all sorts of dire consequences, such as “the unwashed masses” thronging to the beaches, garbage everywhere, higher taxes, and worst of all condo development, as if condo development were not an ever-present threat to what’s left of the Island’s “fishing village atsmosphere,” which lawyer Skipper Brutkiewicz is so enamored of (see “Residents Should Resist Change,” Mobile Press-Register, Mar.10, 2007). The whole community, they shout, will suffer from the proven ineptitude of the Town’s administration and from the Town’s failure to live up to the restrictions placed on the deed. In the frenzy to fix blame that has not yet materialized, there seems to be no recognition that the town’s voters are ultimately responsible for the fate of the Island.

The human faculty of imagination is a wonderfully creative organ, but when its flights of fantasy are propelled by fear and loathing instead of being firmly anchored to a solid foundation in the real world, conferring a clear understanding of what’s possible, and what’s not, a dis-eased imagination will quite happily build castles on sand, and on other slippery slopes, and it will readily demonize all others—including friends and neighbors—perceived as evil threats to the magical thinker’s dearly held delusions. Imagination, untethered, has no moral compunctions; it will attach itself to any desperate position. It will stab a neighbor or friend in the back and it will quite readily contribute to our own bamboozlement by dressing up our desires in a fine suit of kingly or queenly garments so that these desires appear more alluring than plain-Jane reality—if she were to have her say—would allow. Hence, motives naked to any honest eye go unnoticed by all who indulge themselves in magical thinking.

To explain why humans have a predilection for magical thinking would take me too far field for the purposes of this letter, though for starters you might read Shakespeare’s Othello. Suffice it to say that a diseased imagination and a nasty disposition appear to be Nature’s revenge for the destructive behavior that goes hand-in-hand with self-indulgence. Some property owners on the West end, owning beachfront property, have had the luxury of indulging themselves in a free beach treated as their own personal property for many years, and now that they imagine they will lose that seigniorial and paternal privilege, they have reacted with venomous contumely toward some members of the DIPOA Board of Directors. This aggressive and obstinate behavior manifests in a self-centered need to dominate the discourse of the Association, making it difficult to consider other important matters, such as how to find a long-term solution to the DIPOA’s long-term financial problems.

Moreover, some West-end beachfront property owners protest loudly that they do not want the Town’s assistance or the assistance of other external entities, yet if they were taken at their word, their condition would be a sorry one indeed. The Town can’t test the verity of their protestations by cutting off services to the West end because too many people on the West end, who do want the services the Town provides, would be hurt drastically should these services suddenly disappear. You can be sure that those shouting the loudest would be the first to sue. They want their cake and eat it too.

The amazing phenomenon, to me, is that the Town, the County, the State, and FEMA, come to our rescue at all, and, of course, with the increasing visitations of recurring disasters, and all the other problems facing state and nation, is it any wonder that these entities are shying off? The day of reckoning, is of course, not waiting to happen in the next world; it’s waiting to happen in this world. While our unanchored spirits bloweth where they listeth in search of a most congenial and a most appealing satisfaction of our appetites, so too does Mother Nature bloweth where she listeth and cares not a fig for real or imaginary needs. But while we can do much as rational beings to track our Mother’s course and forecast our need to take cover and prepare for worst case scenarios, we have yet to find a reliable meteorologist to track the shifting flights of human fancy. The human weather of the mind is predictable only insofar as we know how unpredictable it is. Who in his right mind—a mind capable of reason—would have thought the wind of inspiration would carry the dreams of magical thinkers before them and refashion those dreams into vacation homes on the fragile strip of sand known as the West end of Dauphin Island? Yet, there they stood and many still stand, though for how long is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps building on the West-end was a reasonably sane thing to do back when the island gave the appearance of being more stable than it really ever was. But even then a sensible mind should have known that that was a precious delusion, permissibly held as long as one recognized it as a precious delusion. But to reiterate, magical thinkers are largely incapable of recognizing a precious delusion. Even now, as we speak, although the West end has been battered into a ghost of its former self, developers and property owners, in an attempt to thwart the whims of Mother Nature, build “robust” new construction, thinking that if it’s higher and stronger, it will survive whatever wallop our Mother can deliver. These homes may survive the highest surges of the waves, but they may not survive their vulnerability to a higher wind-field. One can’t help thinking that these persons are driven by clockwork mechanisms of wish fulfillment even when they know our temperamental Mother will, sooner or later, smash and scourer again, with a vengeance, their delusive dreams, scattering the material detritus to the four winds. If I were a gambling man, I’d takes bets on it.

On the morning of Mar.1, 2007, I opened my e-mail to find yet another magical thinker making demands on the Association as if we are, like George Bush is, the “decider.” This gentleman, having lost a house in Katrina, has replaced that loss with a new home, completed, he says “with huge out of pocket additional expense.” That’s his first complaint. His second complaint asserts that the current dispute over, I assume, the Board’s initiative, is causing “a larger agenda that should take priority,” to be set aside. He never says what that “larger agenda” is, but I guess he means the Town and Association are not acting expeditiously enough to do whatever’s necessary to protect and enhance his investment. He rather peremptorily wants answers to several questions, questions which, it turns out, the Board has done its best to answer time and time again. Okay, so he’s been too busy building a new beach dream to take notice. Also, he wonders why the business of deeding the West-Surf beach, if it’s feasible, had not been thought of and implemented sooner. Clearly he believes that this should have been done sooner so that his property would have been better protected and he might not have had his Katrina disaster.

Maybe he should go ask B.J. Lyon that question. B.J. Lyon, when he was president of the Board, had plans for the property-owners property. He wanted to sell the golf-course property to developers and use some of the profits to buy property on the far West end, owned by the Boykin family, to set up a public beach. Had that scam come about, Katrina would have made short work of that “public beach,” and we would have condos on the golf course. (Incidently, Board member, Dave Connolly, has graciously made himself available as a back channel to funnel B.J.’s opinions to the Board. According to Connolly, BJ “advised” him that each member of the Board will be sued if the referendum succeeds.)

My question for the gentleman with the complaints is: Do you really think it’s appropriate to ask to be reassured that the DIPOA is taking steps to guarantee the safety of your enterprise when you know from past experience, or should know, that building on a sand-spit, is, at best, a long-shot in a crapshoot controlled not only by Mother Nature but also, more or less, by a lot of dubious players with profit-making agendas? The current Board is, sir, doing it’s very best to begin a process we believe is the only path to a viable option, and we can’t guarantee that it is, indeed, a viable option. We’re open to a better alternative, but as yet we haven’t seen any and unfortunately we’re not magicians.

Doubtless, too, the gentleman’s rebuilding venture is beset with problems created by the dismal situation existing currently, and probably for some time to come, in the housing market. That collapsing bubble, created by greed and by encouraging magical thinking in millions of Americans, who seemed quite willing to gamble away their future retirement security by signing mortgages that reset at higher rates when conditions warrant. Dean Baker says, “the experts either looked the other way or said everything was fine. And, the politicians pushed policies that persuaded many moderate-income families to buy overvalued homes that they could not afford. And the mortgage brokers made a fortune selling bad mortgages, sold them, that is, to gullible, magic-struck Americans.

Such complaints as those voiced by the gentleman above, are, however, a lot more reasonable than those from the contingent of West-end owners feverishly squirming about in an effort to take hold of some illusion that will save their property without any further sacrifice on their part. One desperate lady would prefer to have the DIPOA cut up its West-Surf beach property into micro-lots and give them to those who own beachfront property on the south-side. That, she imagines, would be a better solution than giving the property to the Town. Here we have a classic example of protectionist thinking and free-lunch mentality coalescing to invent a crackpot scheme. I’m sure that such a deal would be good for her bank account. It would boost the value of her property and the value of all the other micro-property owners to the point where they might-could sell for a tidy profit to the condo-predators lurking in the wings. But, if placing deed restrictions on the Town would be a problem, think what a problem it would be if the DIPOA had to go to court to stop all those micro-property owners from violating deed restrictions. In addition, she wants all south-side owners, to use their own funds to build pimple-size berms in front of their property. Madame, it’s long past time to get real!

Nothing could be madder, more irresponsible, more dangerous than the rule of imagination untethered to an anchor in the real the conditions of human existence—in our case, in the real conditions of living on an Island in the Gulf of Mexico frequently visited by major storms. We know perfectly well what these conditions entail, and we know perfectly well that when they are uncontrolled by the shrewd old instincts of our animal nature and by continual contact with the realities of everyday life, we will be the losers. The funny thing is that a loud minority of West-end property owners desperately wants to keep losing.

Two DIPOA Board members, David Connolly and Pam McDermott, after originally voting for the Board’s resolution to seek the membership’s approval to cede the West-Surf Beach, have recently enrolled in the loser’s cause. (In a phone conversation with Connolly, he said he was worried about being sued.) In a recent production, sent out via Island-Watch’s e-mail list (substantially the same list as the one owned by the DIPOA), Connolly and McDermott did their best to spoonfeed their audience with power-point pablum.

Connolly and McDermott proclaimed their goals to be: to prevent the Board from taking precipitous action; to insure the best interest of everyone on the Island; and to return Dauphin Island to its pristine pre-storm condition. Connolly and McDermott are against deeding the property to the town because they don’t believe it will facilitate funding from the state and federal government. They state as a “fact” that it’s not feasible when they can’t possibly know whether it’s feasible or not until efforts are made. What they believe is feasible is private funding, which will somehow emerge from better cooperation between the Town and the DIPOA. That claim is the sum and substance of what they have to say about where funding might come from. No details, no explanation about how cooperation will produce the needed money. And everything else they say about the Board’s initiative to deed the property is nay-saying. They have nothing concrete to offer, no alternative other than private funding. We should just wait for those with deep-pockets to pony up. Doubtless, the deep-pockets are out there waiting to pounce and take their pound of flesh.

Moreover, the delusive and absurd nature of Connolly’s and McDermott’s power-point production reminds me of a dog urinating, against the wind, onto a tree in the hopes that a little warm piss will mark its territory. The absurdity is especially apparent in their 3rd goal, in which they aver they want to return Dauphin Island to its pristine pre-storm condition. Pristine condition? That’s a nice sentiment, but when was that? Are they referring to the Garden of Eden? And how is the myth of re-pristination to be achieved? Will they invite God and Mother Nature to take a hand, or do they mean they will seek private funds to fill the mile-wide cut in the Island? Do they mean they will seek private funds to tote all the sand blown over to the North side and into the sound back again to the South side? (Maybe they’ll train some amphibious pack-rats to tote back, grain by grain, only choice bits of sand.) Do they mean they will promote the use of private financing to rebuild all the houses lost (200 plus) on the West-end? Do they mean they will use private funds to rebuild the infrastructure on the West-end every time it’s wiped out by a storm? Whatever “pristine” may mean, it won’t be cheap and it won’t be feasible without a great deal of local, state, and federal assistance, and a great deal of organization and effort from the town’s administration and persons in the Dauphin-Island community.

Do not, however, leap to the conclusion that I would have you forthwith suppress the wonders of the faculty of imagination and its many fictions. The point I would urge you to consider is that some fictions are better than others. Imagination is a boon when matched and tested by the realities of everyday life. Whereas, when vaporous fantasies go unchecked, imagination grows magical and chimerical and sends us bouncing off, like puppets dangling from a hot-air balloon, in some new and fabulously mythical and traditionalist direction. In the case of the loser’s deeply-dyed in magical thinking, I mean the direction the losers believe is feasible, namely the myth of raising private funds. To believe this is to believe the tooth-fairy will wave her magic wand and change a rotten molar into pure gold. Children may be fooled, but adults should know better.

The DIPOA, in its initiative to cede the property to the Town has, doubtless, made many tactical errors, but, nonetheless, the overall strategy is as sound as it can be given many unknown variables. We have reiterated, time and again, that it will take a great deal of committed effort on the part of all concerned to implement a beach nourishment program that has any chance of mitigating the West-end’s vulnerability to major storms. Chip James, in an e-mail message commenting on Judy Thornton’s message, posted on http://www.di-bbs.com, says that her message and others like it “all have the same shortcoming—they fail to offer any realistic alternative for addressing the problems on the west end (and in some cases they offer no alternatives whatsoever aside from vague references to ‘tolls’ or ‘the settlement.’ Having seen the level of bickering among homeowners over the last few years, [James] find it impossible to believe that [the] private DI community [Italics mine] can ever come together. . . and convince the various govt [sic] organizations to fund and build an engineered beach. Who is going to volunteer the thousands of hours needed to bring the community together AND work through the bureaucracy? I don’t believe this is an achievable alternative.”

Lawyer, Skipper Brutkiewicz, says that since 1955 he has “been enjoying the fishing village atmosphere of Dauphin Island,” and wants to preserve it from the condo predators by urging other property owners to vote against the referendum. Speaking on behalf of those opposing the Board’s initiative, he used an inaptial (my coinage) metaphor in an attempt to explain why the initiative is bound to go awry. He said the Board was putting the “cart before the horse,” in not first seeking to find out how the Town might come up with the financial resources to nourish the West-Surf beach over the long-term. My reply is that the position of horse to cart or cart to horse doesn’t matter much if there’s no road laid through the thicket created by reactionary sentiments that want to hold fast to an imaginary past. Mother Nature is quite willing to replace, for a time, the “fishing-village atmosphere,” with empty space and more property for the Fish and Wild Life Service. Ironically, though, should that likelihood occur, the “fishing village atmosphere” will be the first to return to the Island as magical thinkers retreat to safety and those hardy folk take up their trades again. The Board’s initiative is merely the first of many ax strokes needed to cut a path forward, and if the DIPOA’s initiative is defeated, it’s a stroke that may never be delivered.

In addition, Mr. Brutkiewicz raises the specter of condo development should the West-Surf beach be deeded to the Town. He says, “look at Orange Beach.” Well, if you do look at that case, you will certainly see what condo development can do to a community, and you will find that the former mayor, Steve Russo, was convicted of taking bribes in the form of kick-backs from condo developers. But regardless of who owns the property, Town or DIPOA, there are no guarantees. With changes in the make up the DIPOA Board and with changes in the make up of the Town Council, either entity could, in the future, attempt, at their peril, to make the property available to developers. Or individual property owners, seeing no other recourse to recoup their losses, may gradually sell out to the condo developers. Doubtless, there will more court battles in the future over the Island’s assets, assets growing scarcer with each passing year. One battle at a time please. The present battle depends on how property owners on and off the Island decide to express their wishes in the upcoming referendum.

My theme has been that Nature is less of a threat than the oscillations of the needle of imagination, magnetized by belief in special protection for traditionalists whose imaginary propensities are a danger not only to themselves but to all who have to deal with them in a civil fashion. That self-deceptive needle never points to the true North; nor do those mesmerized by it, ever stay fixed long enough to be liberated from fanciful conceptions.

In comparison to the unimaginable scale of nature, growing more irascible with each succeeding year, the little camp-fire of traditionalists and protectionists is a puny endeavor, hemmed in by ghosts from the past. Yet these folks would have the rest of the Island’s property owners, join them in a séance to conjuror up and hold reverently in place charming and romantic illusions swiftly receding before the winds of change, winds that are both natural and man-made. Stubbornly building and rebuilding beach homes on the thin sliver of West-end sand disappearing before our very eyes will, of course, be just another brief interlude (if we’re lucky maybe another 30 hears or so) before the curtain finally comes down on the West end. In the mean time, in order to assist those who believe something more realistic can be done to make the interlude livable for all, the DIPOA will continue to pursue its efforts to deed the West-Surf beach to the Town. However, should we lose the referendum, the magical thinkers will have won the day and the rest of us will be entirely left to our own mundane, and very likely, ineffectual devices.

Yours, Tom Brennan

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