“We opened scallop season yesterday in town waters,” Francis Bock, clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, told his colleagues on Monday. “All the reports I've gotten are that it was very good.”

According to those in the know, the bay scallop population in town waterways, many of which are under trustee management on behalf of residents, has experienced a modest rebound after two consecutive years that were assessed as “not great,” “bleak,” “very bad,” and “horrible.” 

While state waters opened to the harvesting of bay scallops on Nov. 6, the trustees set Sunday as the opening date for harvest in waters under their jurisdiction. Opening the season on a Sunday, when use of a dredge or other powered device is prohibited, gives everyone an opportunity to scoop some up, Mr. Bock said. 

The town’s shellfish ordinance sets a daily limit of five bushels per day for holders of commercial permits; two or more such persons occupying the same boat may take in the aggregate up to 10 bushels per day. “Two or more persons, only one of whom holds a commercial permit and occupying the same boat while taking escallops, may take in the aggregate not more than five bushels in one day,” the ordinance reads. 

All other permit holders are allowed one bushel per day, but if there ar more than three non-commericial permit holders on a boat, they can only take a total of three bushel per day.

“There was a solid abundance of mature scallops in Three Mile,” said Rick Drew, a deputy clerk of the trustees, who was at Three Mile Harbor on Sunday. “It was a great opening. A nice turnout by a lot of local folks. A lot of people got their recreational limit, commercial guys out there getting their limit. Marine Patrol was out checking licenses and takes. It was a nice community setting.” 

In recent years, the hotly anticipated delicacy’s harvest has been affected by factors including blooms of cochlodinium, or rust tide. While not injurious to humans, rust tide can be harmful to shellfish and finfish. Predation by marine life, including crabs and conch, has also hurt, and is worsened by sparse habitat, such as eelgrass. Warmer water temperature may also be a culprit. 

In this season’s early days, however, a number of baymen quickly reached the commercial limit. “Better than last year, a little bit,” was the positive but qualified assessment of Stuart Heath, a longtime bayman, speaking on Monday of Three Mile Harbor. Mr. Heath said he had filled five bushels by 11 a.m. that day, but “I don’t know how much it will hold up.” 

“Pretty decent, but not tremendous,” was his prediction for the harvest. “The amount of guys thins out a bit” as the season progresses, “but guys that work on the water all winter will be able to work on it. There’s a nice healthy set, anyway. All nice, legal stuff — nice, plump meat, in state waters and Three Mile, too — and a few bugs for next year, though I don’t see a whole lot.” 

Barley Dunne, director of the town’s shellfish hatchery, was less sanguine. The harvest, he said last week, “looks pretty reminiscent of last year. I know there’s one harbor in particular that looks pretty good — I don’t want to name it for fear of getting in trouble. The other harbors look pretty bleak.”

“I think most of the reason is there’s simply no habitat out there. There are scallops spawning and setting, and once they set to the bottom they’re being devoured,” Mr. Dunne said.

State waters, however, “do look pretty good,” he said. “There’s a lot of boats out there.” 

The hatchery, which was established in the wake of algal blooms that decimated shellfish populations in the 1980s, seeds town waters with scallops, oysters, and clams. 

The town must embark on “a big push” for habitat restoration, Mr. Dunne said, “whether it’s eelgrass or codium,” a seaweed also known as sputnik grass.

At Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett, Charlotte Sasso said bay scallops were “plentiful this year.” As of yesterday, “it’s a good season,” and at $21.99 per pound the price is far below last year’s, when the supply was meager. “There’s a lot of demand locally,” Ms. Sasso said. “Everyone’s giving them to their relatives — Grandma comes first — and then they sell them.”

At the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, “Bay scallop season seems to be starting off quite well,” Colin Mather said last week. “As in most years, there seem to be a lot more coming in on the North Fork than the South Fork presently. . . . In any event, it’s much better than last year, and the price is down from last year at this time as a result of the quantity.” Bay scallops were priced at $20 per pound at the Seafood Shop, he said. 

Anticipation this year ran as high as it always does, Ms. Sasso said. “For the month before the season opened, that was the question of the day: ‘When does scallop season open?’ ” she said. “The anticipation has been good for building up demand for them, they're more precious. Even though they may be a bit of a luxury item, they’re so satisfying. You don’t necessarily need a huge portion to have a very fulfilling, delicious dinner.”

Property owners in Northwest Woods who have already suffered the loss of hundreds of pine trees to a beetle infestation are learning that they will have to bear the cost of removing the trunks and debris after crews hired by the town cut them down.

David Cataletto of Swamp Road in East Hampton is one such resident. After giving town officials permission to identify affected trees and cut them down, he was left with approximately 100 trunks in tall stacks and told he would have to remove them at his own expense.

At a house nearby owned by Gregory Press, 179 trees have already been cut, with others still standing with orange tape indicating that they will have to go. Like Mr. Cataletto, Mr. Press said that he wondered who should pay for removal of what the work crews leave behind.

Just up the road, Susan Metzger looks out of her kitchen window onto her own mountain of logs, 80-foot-tall trees now piled up like matchsticks. “I am overwhelmed and kind of sad. I have no recourse. I don’t know where to turn,” she said.

The rice-grain-size creature responsible for starting all this devastation is the southern pine beetle, whose spread northward is thought to have been caused by climate change. As winters have gotten milder in recent decades, the tiny scourge has moved north, extending its range from Florida to New York.

In East Hampton, so far, the damage has been mostly confined to pitch pines, a rough-barked tree that can grow to about 100 feet. However, in highly infested areas other pines, as well as hemlocks and spruce, can be attacked as well.

They do their damage by feeding on the growing area just beneath the bark, leaving reddish serpentine patterns reminiscent of a henna design that can be seen if the bark is pulled away. Trained eyes can easily spot infested trees from the popcorn-shaped clumps of resin that emerge or “shotgun-blast” patterned holes in the bark.

In addition to East Hampton’s Northwest Woods, the beetles have been found in the Long Island Pine Barrens, the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge in Shirley, Connetquot River State Park in Islip, and Hubbard County Park in Hampton Bays.

In October, East Hampton Town officials began sending letters to property owners seeking access in areas where pine beetles were suspected. Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell declared a state of emergency on Oct. 26 once it became clear that as many as 2,000 trees were already affected. The declaration allowed contractors hired by the town to work on private property, but not to remove or chip the trees at the town’s expense once they were down.

Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land management, said it has been a fast-growing challenge. Mr. Wilson said that at the end of October about 800 trees on just over six acres of public and private woodland were thought to be infected. By this week the figure had grown to 4,500 trees and counting. The strategy is to topple the trees, cut off their crowns, and score the bark so that the beetles are exposed to predators and the cold in an attempt to halt their spread. 

Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc’s own Northwest Woods house lot has infested trees on it, as does Councilman-elect Jeff Bragman’s. Mr. Van Scoyoc will take over as supervisor from Mr. Cantwell in January; he excused himself from a discussion of the beetles during a board meeting in Montauk on Tuesday, although he said his property had been devastated and that there was almost nothing left standing.

“The problem is taking the pieces away,” John Cataletto, speaking on behalf of his son, David Cataletto, said at the Tuesday meeting. “What if a homeowner does not have the wherewithal; I am not sure what he does.”

“The homeowner is saddled with a financial burden of getting rid of these logs and taking them to the dump,” he said.

Michael Sendlenski, the East Hampton Town attorney, said that the town was blocked by state law from helping property owners with the cost of disposing of the trees. 

“It would not be legal for the town to remove them beyond the point of knocking down and felling trees. Removing or chipping the trees goes beyond the state of emergency. The town’s hands are tied,” Mr. Sendlenski said. “They would be dead anyway, standing, and would have to come down anyway,” he said.

Mr. Press said in an interview that a worker who had been on his property had approached him about taking his logs away but that he had been vague about the cost. Mr. Cataletto said that his son had yet to seek estimates.

Mr. Wilson said Tuesday that there had been some difficulty getting the agreement letters signed by homeowners, speculating that many may be away at this time of year. The town initially set aside $80,000 for tree cutting. More money, perhaps from the state, is expected soon, Mr. Wilson said.

“It is a suppression effort, not eradiction,” Mr. Wilson said. He urged landowners, especially in Northwest Woods, to phone his office if the suspect beetles might be on their properties. “There is a distinct possibility that we could lose all the pitch pine trees in Northwest,” he said.

The East Hampton Town Board is contemplating waiving fees at the town recycling center on Springs-Fireplace Road for property owners who drop off trees from the affected area. It may take up the question at a meeting tonight at Town Hall.

“I am in mourning. You have no idea,” Ms. Metzger, who has lived in Northwest since 2004, said. She said that her daughter had told her to look on the bright side and consider all the light that now reached her property.

“I didn't want more light. If I had wanted more light, I wouldn't have bought here,” she said.

He or she could be yours, if you get your bid in soon! A life-size giraffe sculpture that has been moldering in an East Hampton Village holding pen since it was discovered "grazing" at the edge of the Nature Trail a year and a half ago, will be sold to the highest bidder, the village board agreed Friday.

The giraffe had first appeared in various places in and around Napeague State Park starting in 2012, visible to a discerning giraffe spotter with binoculars or farsighted vision from Cranberry Hole Road. It eventually disappeared from that savannah-like habitat only to reappear in May 2016 chained to a tree near the Huntting Lane entrance to the Nature Trail in East Hampton Village. It is hard to imagine that the giraffe, at nearly 15 feet tall, could be moved about undetected, and yet no one ever admitted to having seen it arrive at the Nature Trail.

The curious story of its arrival and movements on the South Fork stands alongside such other local antics as the overnight greening of Town Pond and the fake submarine conning tower in the sump off Route 114.

Once the giraffe turned up in East Hampton Village, it was considered stolen property, and was relegated to the East Hampton Village Department of Public Works impound yard on Accabonac Road, where it is still unclaimed.

Now a lucky new owner could give it a happy home in time for the December holidays.

The village administrator will accept sealed bids for the giraffe at Village Hall until 2 p.m. on Dec. 12, at which point the winning bid will be announced. Those interested in obtaining the exotic creature, certainly not one native to these shores, have been asked to contact Rebecca Hansen for details and bidding requirements weekdays between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at 631-324-4140, extension 11.

Whoever gets to take the creature home will be responsible for obtaining whatever town or village permits and variances are required to display it.

On June 21, 1913, the First and Second Cavalry Regiments of the New York National Guard departed for Montauk for what The Brooklyn Eagle called nine days of strenuous work. 

Their visit to the easternmost point in the state is all but unknown today, but the regiments’ stay there in the summer of 1913 was big news at the time. Now, after the Montauk Library purchased an album of photographs likely taken by one of the participants, this important history is coming to light.

When one thinks of the United States military and Montauk, Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and the Camp Hero cold war radar tower and World War II artillery emplacements come to mind. There are far more data points, however, including a Navy torpedo facility at Fort Pond Bay and dirigibles based there near the end of World War I. 

The 1913 National Guard and Army exercises, which included a contingent of artillery later in the summer, were designed to answer repeated criticism of the military at the time that it was unprepared for actual combat, having last seen action during the Spanish-American War, and that it often still drew on the Civil War as a model.

The failures were also the result of haphazard instruction and inadequate field training. Officers were insufficiently grounded in wartime theory and lacked experience managing a campaign. Medical officers were unable to read maps; few knew the principles of horsemanship. There were problems distributing food. 

Many of the deficiencies had been brought into focus the summer before during war games in Connecticut, when heat stroke and dehydration had taken down both men and horses. Ammunition was not where it was supposed to be. Some of the troops, having gone without food or water for 24 hours, collapsed on the battlefield, Maura Feeney, the Montauk Library’s local history librarian, said.

“The average infantry officer is unfamiliar with routine life in the field, and the fact is frequently cited that such officers have difficulty in obtaining rations for their commands,” Major Gen. John F. O’Ryan of the National Guard told The Brooklyn Eagle before the Montauk operation. 

Turning this around, General O’Ryan said, would take a systematic rethinking of how officers were trained. The exercises at Montauk placed seasoned veterans under the command of the green officers. Enlisted men who took part would go back to their companies more disciplined and trained, which, so the thinking went, would spread within the units. Officers would learn how a unit at what was called war strength was expected to perform.

Tests were to be run on new machine guns capable of firing at a rate of 400 rounds in a minute with a range of more than half a mile. According to The Brooklyn Eagle, based on how the guns performed, the military would decide whether to make them a standard part of cavalry equipment.

Each evening there would be a lecture in the mess tent and the day’s work gone over and criticized. The final night in camp was celebrated with a party and clambake on the ocean shore.

A reporter for The Brooklyn Eagle went to Montauk with the officers to watch as the camp with the latest sanitary improvements was laid out between Fort Pond and the ocean beach.

Drinking water was supplied from a well at the Montauk Inn. Orders were issued against the men going in the ocean. “A good many soldiers were drowned during the camp in 1898,” according the account in the The Eagle.

“During the coming week, drills and sham battles will be engaged in on the hills between the camp and the lighthouse, eight miles away, and the troops will also swim their horses across Fort Pond Bay.”

Much of the cavalry’s activities during the Montauk exercise are depicted in the photo album, which was purchased from a Connecticut bookseller. Images show horses being loaded onto railcars and being led off upon arrival. Others show the men in camp, grooming the horses, or on maneuvers. 

Ms. Feeney has been studying the album closely since it arrived at the Montauk Library. Among the officers in the Montauk exercise she identified was Col. Charles I. DeBevoise, a Yale graduate and former stockbroker who commanded the First New York Calvary. DeBevoise was sent to France early in World War I and commanded the 107th Infantry during the battle of the Hindenburg Line. He was promoted to brigadier general in October 1918, one of the few National Guard officers to reach the rank. He survived the war and received the Distinguished Service Medal.

Money for the album came from the library’s special fund and was approved by the board of trustees. “They were really excited about it,” Ms. Feeney said.

The cavalry’s days began with reveille at 5:30. The animals were to be fed first, then the men. Boots and saddles were to be on by 6:55 a.m. School for officers and the men would continue until dark. 

Despite the best intentions by the officers, everything did not go according to plan. Chief among the complaints by artillerymen returning to Brooklyn was a shortage of food. Rumors were that their exercise was provisioned for only 125 men. Some, the newspaper reported, resorted to foraging on the fat of the land.

“Here is the way it was the first week: Chicken and ice cream sometimes for supper, with delicious milk for coffee and all the butter we wanted to eat. And then at the end all we could get was canned stuff and with no butter and no milk,” one of the Brooklyn gun troop said. “Fancy yourself coming down from chicken and ice cream to such a layout as we had on the last day of the hike, the day we made the twelve miles from Amagansett to Montauk.”

“I tell you there were some gentle words said that night after our miserable apology for a dinner. We were all so mad that the canned salmon almost stuck in our throats.”

Officers quoted in The Eagle report dismissed the complaints as an expected thing. “No field tour would be complete without some kick as to food,” one said.

Nearly exactly four years later, on July 15, 1917, 24,000 members of the New York National Guard answered President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the Great War in Europe. Over 400,000 New Yorkers served in World War I, more than from any other state.

For the 1st Cavalry and other mounted units, the war was the end of the active-duty service, as new weapons, such as heavy artillery and tanks, and trench warfare rendered horses obsolete.

When staff and elected officials abandoned the old East Hampton Town Hall building on Pantigo Road in about 2011, they took what they needed and moved across the lawn to the new Robert A.M. Stern-designed complex. What they left behind for another day was much of the town’s paper records.

Now, these records, which have been exposed to moisture in the leaky building’s basement, are contaminated with mold and will have to be retrieved by a firm experienced in handling potentially hazardous material.

“There is no question there’s mold down there,” Ed Michels, the town’s senior harbormaster and top safety officer, told the town board at a meeting on Nov. 14. The town has hired a private company to wrap all the boxes of paperwork in plastic and move them to rented trailers parked near Town Hall. Mr. Michels said the process of encasing and moving the hundreds of boxes would take several days.

“It’s a long time coming. We’ve been talking about getting down there for years,” Mr. Michels said.

East Hampton Town Clerk Carole Brennan and her staff will check each box against a state document-retention list and determine which to save and which can be disposed.

“The boxes are very well organized. The building just rotted around them too quickly,” Ms. Brennan said.

According to East Hampton Town Councilman Fred Overton, himself a former town clerk, there are assessors’ records dating to the 1800s among the material to be removed from the basement. “There’s some really old stuff down there,” he said.

Some material has already been removed and secured elsewhere, Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said. Largely what are left, he said, are day-to-day records, many of which have no further value.

Radiac, the company hired to do the initial removal, will bill the town about $19,400. Cleaning the records that have to be saved will cost more, Mr. Michels said.

“The good news is that we are dealing with records that have been neglected for years,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “We get very cautious about it. We don’t like to take any chances with employee health.”  

The $1.5 million sale of an extremely rare copy of the Declaration of Independence was almost a footnote in an auction on Saturday morning in which a set of papers related to the history of East Hampton went for $290,000. Initial estimates for the Declaration were $500,000 to $1 million and between $25,000 and $50,000 for the papers.

Kip Blanchard of Blanchard's Auction Service in Postdam, N.Y. handled the sale.

Both the 1776 John Holt printing of the Declaration of Independence and the other material had been handed down in the Mulford family for generations. The Declaration originally belonged to Col. David Mulford, who led a Revolutionary War regiment. Mulford died in 1778.

The other material spanned the period from the 17th century to the War of 1812 and included prosaic household accounts, wills, and broadsides issued by the British calling for the surrender of colonial rebels. Among the intriguing documents was an accounting of expenses for the seach for an escaped slave who had been owned by a member of the Gardiner family of Gardiner's Island.

Bidding for the Declaration started at $1 million and rose quickly to the final $1.5 million. The lot containing the rest of the paper opened at $50,000 with several bidders on the phone competing with others in the hall. The price jumped first in $10,000 increments then by $5,000. An in-person bidder won at $290,000, to a burst of applause.

Dennis Fabisazak, the director of the East Hampton Library, had been on the phone hoping to acquire the papers for the library's Long Island Collection, however, he was quickly out-priced. He said that he was very disappointed.

A 20 percent buyer's premium will be added to the winning bids

A plan to tear down a house, build a new one, and replace a swimming pool on a small lot in the Lion Head Beach neighborhood in Springs has raised the question of to what extent the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals should try to bring projects into conformity with the wetlands provisions of the town code.

The proposal, which was before the board at a public hearing on Oct. 24, had raised enough interest in the Planning Department that two staff members took the unusual step of speaking at the hearing.

Alex Zedlovich owns a long rectangular parcel, which is slightly smaller than a half-acre at 143 Isle of Wight Road, where he wants to build a 4,281-square-foot house and put in a larger pool than is there now with a patio. He seeks a natural resources special permit to build near wetlands as well as variances for the new pool and a planned retaining wall.

Although Jonathan Tarbet of Tarbet & Lester told the board at a lengthy public hearing on Oct. 24 that the applicant was revising the site plan and would present an updated one at a later date, he went on to point out that the "character of the neighborhood was set up in the '70s," and "unfortunately, everybody has pools 20, 30 feet from the wetlands."

That was just what the planners were worried about. They would like the zoning board to consider lots vacant and subject to current regulation when old houses and pools are removed.

The proposed increase in the size of the pool, from 568 to 966 square feet, also troubled Lisa D'Andrea, the first town planner to speak. "The Lion Head subdivision dates from the 1960s. The federal government, state governments, local governments did not realize the importance of freshwater wetlands or wetlands in general," she said.

"When you remove non-conforming structures, you have, in essence, a vacant property," she said, implying that whatever was pre-existing no longer obtained. She also complained that the applicant had presented much of his plans, including how he would revegetate the property, that morning. "It is kind of like being blindsided," she said.

John Whelan, the chairman of the board, however, said the Planning Department would have time to react to whatever new information Mr. Tarbet brings in.

Mr. Tarbet said the proposal calls for a state-of-the-art septic system, which will help protect Lion Head Pond East, which is adjacent to the site. He noted that the septic system had been moved 50 feet to conform to the town code, and went on to say that the house itself did not need variances because it would be situated farther from the wetlands than the existing structure.

Roy Dalene, a member of the zoning board, was concerned that the proposed pool's location remained the same and that it was to increase in size. "The pool is in the same location," he said. Variances are sought for the pool and retaining wall because they are proposed to be 75 feet and 90.7 feet from the wetlands while the code requires 100 feet.

Brian Frank, who is the Planning Department's chief environmental analyst, also spoke to the board, calling the application a case of "we know what the standards are, but we don't think we have to meet them. We are pre-existing." He said that when property owners "have the opportunity to conform to the town setbacks, they should."

East Hampton Town Trustee Tyler Armstrong, who was at the hearing as well, said the trustees were concerned with Pond East.

But Mr. Tarbet said that neither Mr. Frank nor Ms. D'Andrea could say that what was being proposed was not better for the pond than what is now on the property. He then got into a dispute with Ms. D'Andrea about whether the pond was brackish, insisting it was freshwater. Ms. D'Andrea responded by reading from a report prepared by the town in 1992 regarding the deteriorating condition of the pond.

". . .Lion Head Pond East is a coastal pond and historical remnant of Hog Creek, its biology, particularly its fish fauna in many ways mirrors that of Hog Creek. The pond's most common fish species are mummichog, mosquito fish, four-spined stickle back, Atlantic silverside, tidewater silverside, American eel, and banded killifish," all of which tolerate brackish water."

Mr. Tarbet told the board that, if the application were denied, Mr. Zedlovich could just keep what he has on the property.

"That house is uninhabitable," Cate Rogers, a Z.B.A. member, responded.

A decision is expected within weeks.

Somewhere in the world, an Arthur Miller play is always being performed. Nearby, in Sag Harbor, it happens to be “Death of a Salesman” at Bay Street Theater, running now through Nov. 25.

As “Hamlet” is to Shakespeare, so is “Salesman” to Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece that became the blueprint for American stage tragedy and the canonical narrative of American capitalism. It has been so endlessly revived and oft-discussed that sometimes it feels as though Willy Loman, its central tragic Everyman character, has rarely stepped offstage since the play opened in 1949.

Under the direction of Joe Minutillo, this drama about a broken salesman, the mirage of the American Dream, conflicted familial love between husband and wife and between father and sons, is part of Bay Street’s Literature Live! series, which aims to bring insight and understanding of curriculum-based literature to students through professionally staged productions. For Mr. Minutillo, a retired educator, this is his fifth Literature Live! directorial credit. Public shows as well as free school-day performances for students and educators are offered.

Willy Loman is first glimpsed as a sagging bulk silhouetted in the doorway of his Brooklyn house, sample suitcases in hand — a salesman who after being on the road for more than 30 years has been garroted by the American Dream. He’s tired and hallucinatory; mysteriously, he keeps getting into minor car crashes. His devoted doormat of a wife, Linda (Carolyn Popp), observes his crumbling and exhorts their adult sons, Biff (a former high school football star who flunked math and never attended college) and Happy (a “philandering bum”), to cheer their ailing father by doing something worthwhile.

There have been five Willys to drag those sample cases across Broadway stages, another earlier this year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, countless others in regional theaters across the country, and scores more around the world. Dustin Hoffman even played him on the screen. I’ve seen four of them onstage, including Antony Sher’s explosive incarnation in London two years ago. That one and Mr. Hoffman’s film version were the two that instilled genuine sympathy for an otherwise deluded blowhard. 

The Bay Street production seems a little awestruck by Miller’s masterpiece, rather than taking it by the scruff of the neck and giving it a good shake. The result is that it’s a really decent staging, but not a distinctive one. 

Here, Willy Loman is played by David Manis, who comes with a long list of Broadway credits. He appears ghost-like from the beginning and only occasionally breaks through as a real flesh-and-blood character. The role demands a range of emotions, from spurts of puce-faced, Lear-like rage to sudden surges of childish, incurable optimism to quiet devastation. Mr. Manis delivers a certain sameness in the emotional temperature of far too many scenes, so that instead of starring in one of the greatest tragedies, he often appears to be in an overblown melodrama about a dysfunctional family of losers.

  By contrast, Rob DiSario’s Biff, the Lomans’ 34-year-old son, a fallen athletic idol who returns home after a self-im posed exile, is heartbreaking. In his deeply affecting performance, Mr. DiSario is seen grasping for answers, having never overcome a father’s betrayal. And yet Biff continues to search for his father’s approval, which he eventually realizes is only winnable by giving in to the old man’s fantasies. Mr. DiSario’s transition from a rough-hewn jock to a sensitive lost soul is nuanced and gut-wrenching.

Also remarkable is the multilevel, locale-shifting, time-bending set, aided by clever retro projections and sharp sound design. Credit goes to Mike Billings and Dalton Hamilton, as well as Melanie Clifton Harvey for the stellar period wardrobe. Together, their creative engineering presents a stage that often mirrors the nightmarish kaleidoscopic world inside Willy’s head where past and present exist side by side. (Miller’s original title for the play was “Inside His Head.”)

If we are still moved by “Salesman” after all these years, it is for a very basic reason: There’s a bit of Willy Loman in us all. We are all traveling peddlers of sorts, always selling, always looking to pad the commission, fueled by ambitions of prosperity.

Like Willy, what parent does not wish to be a hero in his or her children’s eyes, even if it means constructing an embellished truth for a child to hold on to? And what father or mother has not wobbled in the precarious balance of inspiring children to achieve more than they have without instilling a dread of being a failure? 

For school-age audiences, none of that is relevant. Instead, students might grasp Miller’s reminder, which still holds true, that it’s only lucky to live in America so long as you are lucky. 

Several characters who surround the Loman family do manage to turn the cutthroat system to their advantage: Charley, the shrewdly benevolent neighbor played here by Neal Mayer, Keith Cornelius as Ben, the entrepreneurial, successful brother, and an especially noteworthy Willy Cappuccio as the industrious Bernard, Charley’s nerdy son who grows up to become a Supreme Court lawyer.

In an era when America appears to have lost touch with its own sense of self-worth, “Death of a Salesman” is a piercing play to revisit. Miller was almost prophetic in his critique of the fraudulence of the American Dream and the harsh realities of every-man-for-himself economics. Sixty-eight years later, we exist inside a consumerist bubble full of false images of beauty and success, where we’ve lost touch with what’s actually important. 

And to that, folks, as Linda Loman famously says, “attention must be paid.”

Public performances will continue today through Saturday, and Thanksgiving weekend on Friday, Nov. 24, and Nov. 25, at 7 p.m. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Sunday and Nov. 26. Tickets range from $20 to $55.

One of my long-term hobbies is counting the vehicles that pass east and west in front of my house two or three times a day, but almost always at noon and 6 in the evening. The latter count is now in the dark, but the noon count is fully lighted and I can separate the vehicles into various categories: sedans, S.U.V.s, pickups, buses, government vehicles, and trucks of various kinds. It’s something I’ve been doing off and on since 1980. 

While I’m counting and writing down each time for eight minutes, I also keep track of each bit of nature as it crops up — crows, blue jays, butterflies, and the like. Since my front window faces not only busy Noyac Road, but also Noyac Bay, so many of my natural observations are those of gulls, mostly herring gulls and great black-backed gulls, but also occasionally ringbills. Whether it’s calm or windy, they flap or glide by, making circles, diving but seldom landing, and seemingly enjoying their rides.

Then, too, at least once a day I hear gulls flying over the house toward Noyac Bay uttering those gull notes that to most of us are as familiar as the caws of crows. I have this untested theory that they are signaling to other gulls that the tide is right for scavenging along the water’s edge.

When I walk along Long Beach during the daytime there are always 5 or 10 gulls sitting on the edge of the beach, mostly parallel to the wrack line, one eye watching the water, the other watching the parking lot where I am. Occasionally one will get up off the ground and alight at another spot, then assume the same parallel-to-shore pose.

In the summer, the gulls are fed by several beachgoers in the same way ducks are fed at Otter Pond or at the East Hampton Village Nature Trail. When exposed mollusks are in season, the Long Beach herring gulls pick them up and drop them on the pavement, then swoop down and devour the soft contents. Only the herring gulls, a most ubiquitous gull species, do this. The great black-backed gulls prefer crabs and fish to mollusks, but whenever they find a mussel, scallop, or clam, they open it by battering it with their bills.

Gulls have been protected from the guns of hunters for ages. They are almost sacred beings in the eyes of some. In the winter, the ring-billed gulls are found along the waters’ edges along with the other two species and occasionally a lesser black-backed gull, almost always by itself, or a glaucous gull makes up part of the gull groupings.

Each gull species abides others with the same lassitude. They are equally graceful at commingling or standing or flying by themselves. Whenever I go to a shopping center such as the Bridgehampton Commons there are a few gulls flying or standing around. When I go to the North Sea landfill or any other local dump, there are always a few hangers-on, even though there are almost no edible scraps around to feed on in these modern days. You are as apt to see a fish crow at the dump as you are a gull.

Gulls that no longer have access to an old style dump probably have a more nutritional diet. They are mostly dependent on seafood, and little else. Herring gulls and great black-backed gulls hang around all year the way common crows do. When seafood supplies are sparse, you often find them sitting in fields. They are not averse to feeding on insects if available.

At Montauk Point, where several rare-to-the United States gulls show up each winter, if you look out to sea during the late afternoon, you are liable to see a trawler or a squidder on its way back to port accompanied by a long line of gulls. On the other hand, fishing boats leaving the harbor on their way to the fishing grounds are rarely followed by gulls.

You wonder why other local gull species don’t drop clams and mussels on hard surfaces the way herring gulls do? Is it pride? Is it the fact that young herring gulls are taught to do it, while it is not part of the culture of ring-billed gulls or black-backed gulls?

Crows, starlings, and gulls are here all year round. They are great survivors. Only rarely do I find a road-killed gull or crow (and never a starling). They both will feed on road-killed squirrels and rabbits, but are careful when doing so to observe the traffic in both directions.

One often hears the expression “leading a dog’s life,” but never “leading a gull’s life.” Apparently a gull’s life is a pretty good one, and not a very difficult one. Should the reader choose to be reincarnated, why not come back as a gull? I might just be gulled into it.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

A small but important component of East Hampton Town’s transition to renewable energy will be detailed at Town Hall during a meeting of the town board’s energy sustainability advisory committee on Monday at 5 p.m. 

Bruce Humenik of Applied Energy Group, an energy industry consultancy that specializes in efficiency and renewables, will discuss the South Fork Peak Savers program, which aims to help businesses and residents reduce energy consumption. 

A.E.G., under contract with PSEG Long Island, is to provide 8.3 megawatts of load control and energy efficiency measures on the South Fork, where demand is growing at about twice the rate as the rest of Long Island. 

The program has two components, Mr. Humenik said. One is the promotion of energy efficiency in commercial establishments. “Meaning, we are out doing free energy assessments in small businesses, and offering free lighting, in most cases.” Replacing fluorescent and incandescent lighting with LED products saves 50 to 90 percent of lighting costs and energy consumption, he said. 

A.E.G. has performed more than 60 assessments of small business, mostly in Montauk, Mr. Humenik said, and this week began installation of energy-efficient lighting. 

On the residential side, A.E.G. will promote the replacement of single-stage swimming pool pumps with variable-speed models. “They save a lot of energy,” he said of the latter, “which saves customers a lot of money. Variable-speed uses only 10 percent of the energy a single-stage uses. The customer saves money, the utility saves energy.” 

Along with swimming pool pumps, central air-conditioning accounts for much of the South Fork’s peak electricity demand. A.E.G. aims to reduce peak demand through a direct load control initiative. Under the program, homeowners with “smart” thermostats, such as the Nest programmable and self-learning, WiFi-enabled model, voluntarily allow A.E.G. to control their thermostats during peak periods. Homeowners will be offered $250 to participate, Mr. Humenik said. That program, he said, should launch next month.

Once the program is underway, he said, A.E.G. would offer those who do not have a smart thermostat additional incentives to participate. “Ninety-five percent of people who buy one can install it themselves,” he said of smart thermostats. “But in cases where people cannot, we will install them.”

Mr. Humenik called the South Fork Peak Savers program “a good start,” one that will forestall the construction of more transmission and distribution infrastructure. 

It will also help to preclude construction of more fossil-fuel peak power plants on the South Fork, said Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island and a former member of the energy sustainability committee, and will contribute to the goal, set by the town board in 2014, to achieve 100 percent of the town’s electricity consumption from renewable sources. The South Fork Peak Savers program is “a much-needed and important initiative,” he said, “as it will help home and business owners save money on electric bills while reducing the extreme spikes of peak electric power demand during the summer.” 

“While electricity demand across the rest of Long Island has leveled off,” he said, “we are still seeing ever-increasing demand during the summer season out here.” Key to the program’s success, he said, “is that everyone participates.”

The program “ties in with the goals of the East Hampton and Southampton sustainability committees,” Mr. Humenik said, while LIPA’s customers “will see real savings from the kind of things we're doing immediately.”  

A.E.G. has established a hotline for those interested in participating, 833-346-2181. Information can also be requested via an email to [email protected]. A website will launch as early as next week, he said.

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Correction: An earlier version of this article had the incorrect phone number for the A.E.G. hotline. The correct number is 833-346-2181.