Thanks Gov. Cuomo!

On the sunny afternoon of Saturday, June 25, Cherry Grove celebrated Pride with its 13th annual parade, organized by "Violet Letter" publisher Denise Harbin and dockmaster Paul Jablonski. There was a special reason to celebrate in the state Legislature's passage and Gov. Cuomo's signing, the previous night, of a law making same-sex marriage legal at last in the Empire State!

Grove organizations and businesses were represented, including the Fire Department. There was a lesbian contingent in a rainbow of hues and a leather contingent of former Messrs. Fire Island Leather and friends, marching behind the Leather Pride flag. Sherri Rase proudly led the parade, carrying the American flag, Lorraine Michels was Miss Gay Pride, and Bud Hendrickson was Mr. Gay Pride.

A panel of judges, including Dan Evans and Jim Kelly, awarded prizes to participants: Best Float went to Dune Point, winning a gift certificate to Cherry's; Best Group went to the Arts Project of Cherry Grove's Summer Camp contingent, including Homecoming Queen YaNeeda Dunes, winning a gift certificate to Island Breeze; Best Individual was Don Robb, as Lady Gardener's evil sister, winning a Grove Market gift certificate; Lorraine Michels won as Gayest, a gift certificate for the Top of the Bay. Most Colorful was Color Us Gay, the rainbow lesbian contingent, winning a bar tab at the Ice Palace; Worst, but encouraged to try harder next year, was Jumping Jack's Seafood Shack, winning back its own gift certificate; the Most Green-Save our gay earth prize was won by the Ice Palace, featuring Logan Hardcore in emerald green and Miss Grove Hotel crown, winning APCG tickets; and Most Resourceful use of unusual materials was Cherry's, including Miss Fire Island Sabel Scities, awarded a gift certificate to the Grove Market.

Isaac Steven Vaughan's annual "Ocean Aires" classical music series brought a refreshing breath of serious culture to Cherry Grove and on June 25, at the Community House, under the APCG auspices, "Ocean Aires 13", marked molto misterioso, the musicians created an eerie atmosphere, projecting sinister characters and entering with faces streaked with blood, courtesy of Richard Cooley and Michael Coffindaffer, to go with their wonderful music-making. Philomena offered pithy narration, after entering in darkness, Lady Macbeth-like, candle in hand, before commanding 'lights on.' Martha Pitkin, Esq., and Dr. Ellen Biggers served as stagehands for the performance.

The evening began with violinist Christopher Minarich, violist Seth Bedford, cellist Kurt Behnke, flautist Christine "Chris" MacDonnell, trumpeter Laura Ann Giusto, accordionist Vaughan, and pianists Clarence "Kye" Perry and Gene Rohrer playing Bedford's over-the-top variations on "God Save the Queen" to accompany the entrance of YaNeeda Dunes-bound and gagged in accordance with the theme. Vaughan was at the piano for a performance by tenor Brent Weldon Reno, sporting a dapper hat with a feather and blood on his face, of Bedford's songs "Early Chill," a torrid tango about the louche lusty life, and "Ethyl," a tale of murder and mayhem in the Weimar-esque Roaring '20s, with Minarich, Bedford and Behnke, on strings, assisting.

Pianist Perry took on the challenge of holding down the innards of the piano, to achieve a mysterious Eastern sound, in Turkish composer Fazil Say's "Black Earth: Homage to Asik Veysel." With Vaughan at the piano, baritone David Auxier captured, in Franz Schubert's Lied "Der Doppelganger," from the song cycle "Schwanengesang," all the ominous ness of meeting one's alter ego or double. Assisted by Vaughan, MacDonnell, on oboe, played the molto allegro third movement of Camille Saint-Sa�ns' Oboe Sonata in D Major, Opus 166, an unusually merry assignment for an instrument that often conveys melancholy.

For the finale of the first half of the concert, soprano Sherri Rase made a haunting Marguerite, pious if erring, menaced in church by handsome devil Eric Coyne, as M�phistoph�l�s, assisted by demons Ruth and Susan Freedner and Tim Webster in "Seigneur, Daignez Permettre � Votre Humble Servante"-the 'church scene'-from Charles Gounod's "Faust." We remained in demonic territory for the opening of the second half, Arthur Seymour Sullivan and William Schwenck Gilbert's "When the Night Wind Howls" ("the ghosts' high noon"), the horrific cry, in comic operetta style, of the spectres of the "bad Baronets" of "Ruddigore," sung by Auxier, with a chorus of Bedford, Behnke, Minarich, Reno, Rohrer, and Curtis J. Strohl, with instrumentalists Giusto and Vaughan.

In a break from the frightful, Minarich and Behnke played a pair of contrasting selections from Reinhold Gli�re's "Huit Morceaux"-the serious and subdued prelude and the brisk final �tude-and, with Vaughan, baritone William George McGarvey sweetly sang Giuseppe Torelli's aria antica "Tu lo sai". McGarvey also designed the set, an elegant salon, for the concert, and built it with Charlie Balmer. Anthony Chiocchi, making an "Ocean Aires" debut, nimbly negotiated demanding passages of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata Number Eight in C minor, Opus 13 ("Path�tique").

We returned to fire and vengeance for the evening's finale, with Molly Watson delivering a fully dramatic coloratura account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Queen of Night's "Der H�lle Rache" (the wrath of hell), from "Die Zauberfl�te," with Rohrer at the keyboard.