East Hampton Town appears poised to sell a two-acre plot of land off Stephen Hand’s Path in Northwest Woods in a puzzling deal that deserves scrutiny. The idea apparently sprang fully formed from the town board back office, and it is likely to be voted on soon. There is nothing on the face of it wrong with the plan, but that it was discussed and tentatively agreed to in private should not be allowed to become a template for the future.

    The parcel, which is buildable, was included on a list of town assets that could potentially be put up for sale from the Planning Department, which Supervisor Bill Wilkinson had asked for. The list included Montauk’s commercial docks, which set off a round of protest, and Fort Pond House, also in Montauk, which is the subject of a lawsuit seeking to block the sale.

    If the Stephen Hand’s Path deal goes through, the would-be owner, Claudia Carmozzi, who has property next door, would give up the right to build a house on the parcel in exchange for a number of agricultural structures — a chicken coop, a 20-by-10-foot greenhouse, and a 20-by-20-foot barn. She had asked about erecting a wind turbine to generate electricity, but that part of the plan was dropped.

    Nothing is wrong with Ms. Carmozzi’s vision, but rather the way in which the deal was advanced. Unlike when local governments decide to sell surplus (cars, furniture, or other things) and must follow open-bidding procedures, when it comes to land sales, the law says only that it must be financially responsible. The price Ms. Carmozzi has apparently agreed on, about $400,000, is less than the land would bring if it were sold without a restriction on building a house there.

    There is a good chance others might have liked a crack at the property, however, and are wondering why one person got an inside track. Had the idea been discussed in an open town board session before the deal was all but signed, others might have had a chance to submit bids. People who live nearby might have had a chance to be heard if they had any concerns. Hypothetically, too, environmentalists might have even suggested the land be allowed to revert to its natural state. And, from a different perspective, some taxpayers might have wanted the property listed with real estate brokers in an effort to bring in the most money. After all, the town’s intent in selling property is to help deal with its internal fund debts. But comment was neither required nor invited.

    The resolution accepting Ms. Carmozzi’s offer, should the board vote to approve it, is subject to permissive referendum, meaning that it could be challenged if a large enough number of residents sign a petition requesting a vote. The deal should not have reached this point without an opportunity for the public to be heard. For a board majority that prides itself on transparency, this was a misstep.

    Officially, tax day is not until Monday this year, but that will not stop those aligned with the Tea Party here from taking part in a demonstration tomorrow in front of East Hampton Town Hall. April 15 has been designated as the day for protests across the country for a couple of years to draw attention to what the movement’s proponents see as wrong with Washington. The beliefs that drive their agenda are that the federal government has overstepped constitutional bounds and is loading up on debt that will hurt future generations.

    The most unusual aspect of the Tea Party, perhaps, is that it has no governing structure or central command. Its Web site promises to attack politicians who do not adhere to its principles, regardless of party. Instead, it is a loosely connected web of activists and groups who share a range of ideas about what they think is wrong with the country’s direction. Any number of political figures have tried to jump up and claim leadership, but so far no one has managed to do so successfully.

    The “Contract From America,” which has been promulgated as the movement’s core text, is a hodgepodge of fiscal conservatism, blanket generalities, states’ rights ideas, and industry-friendly policies. Among the latter are opposition to greenhouse gas regulation and support for oil drilling and nuclear power. This is hardly the kind of thing that usually gets ordinary citizens out in the streets.

    Rain or shine, the Tea Party faithful will be out tomorrow, at Town Hall and across the country. Their willingness to speak out is to be respected, whether you agree with them or not.

Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren are my kind of candidates. They both gave long interviews on TV the other night, and I was glued to the set — convinced either could take the country back to having an intelligent and thoughtful president instead of the carnival barker who holds the office now. (Although, if we’re using circus terminology, it might be more appropriate to call him a clown. After all, it isn’t just Krusty the Clown in “The Simpsons” who is in disrepute these days: Today, everyone talks about being scared of clowns. But they have always been, it seems to me, as menacing as they are amusing. Children seated around me alternated between screams of laughter and just plain screams when a family friend introduced me to the Barnum & Bailey Circus as a child. But I digress. . . .)

We had first heard of Ms. Gillibrand decades ago, when she was a candidate for the House of Representatives. East Hampton’s Judith Hope, who was then among New York State’s political leaders, told us about her. And, after all, she not only was a Democrat, but — like my son David and his late father, as well as, in four years, fingers crossed, my eldest granddaughter — a Dartmouth graduate.

It was probably always obvious that I had Democratic leanings throughout my 20-year tenure as the editor of The Star, although then as now we hew to what might be considered the antiquated and very rigorous rules of journalism, and  I always eschewed formal party registration. The idea is that it is vital for a journalist to retain political independence. 

Many readers over the years would think this all was a ruse, that we were trying to trick them — people’s capacity to believe in elaborate tricks and conspiracies rather than the simpler truth has proven, over the last two years, quite astonishing — but to this day I am not a member of a political party. Perhaps that’s a good thing, given today’s internecine fighting among local Dem­ocrats, squabbling that has propelled one man and his friends to establish themselves as the Reform Democrats. Anyway, I am unable to take part in primary elections, which are often at least as significant as the main show; this seems to be the case this year, when the East Hampton Town Board is already 100 percent Democratic. 

Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren have similar ideas about what the country needs today. Ms. Gillibrand’s aura is feminine, even when her speeches are in high gear. Ms. Warren’s language is straightforward and hard-nosed, befitting her professorial background. She leaves no room for you to question her credentials.

Now that I am what might be called editor emeritus at The Star, the time may have come to speak for myself. The actual editor’s opinions are consistently expressed here on the editorial page of The Star, as are those of The Star’s most long-lived writer, Jack Graves, who tends to wax exoteric. Neither David nor Jack has committed himself to Ms. Gillibrand or Ms. Warren — yet. Frankly, I hope they do.

It is indeed a fat country in which we live, and, fittingly, our president, obesity’s poster child, showers more money on fellow fat cats through tax cuts and yawns whenever anyone reminds him of the ballooning trade and budget deficits.

We are told not to worry, and yet — especially given his most recent budget proposal, which would give the Pentagon even more than it has asked for (imagine that!) while eating away at education, environmental protection, scientific research, Social Security, and Medicare — we do.

I was reminded, in this connection, of the bumper sticker you used to see: “It will be a great day when schools will have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale.” Let’s bring it back, the fact of the matter being that the strength of a nation owes more to an educated and socially conscious citizenry than it does to the number of bombs it has. 

If Trump really wants a Nobel Peace Prize, why doesn’t he convene a worldwide summit of nuclear states to at least discuss the issue of worldwide incremental, verifiable nuclear disarmament? It is crazy to spend so much money on nuclear stockpiles, which if resorted to, however gingerly, would — talk about climate change! — end civilization. 

So, number one, let’s at least begin belt-tightening when it comes to nuclear weaponry. He could knock heads while claiming the moral high ground. What fun! And just think, if countries — ours in particular — reduced their death-dealing capacity, there’d be more money for such life-affirming things as education, health care, infrastructure repair, and scientific research that could if adequately funded yield untold benefits to humanity.

Instead, what do we see? No to education, no to social programs, no to scientific research, no to ameliorating climate change, no to immigrants willing to work, yearning to be free, no to just about anything worthwhile. But yes, a thousand times yes, to the Pentagon.

It may in the future — in the far distant future, of course — be said of us, as Oscar Wilde was said to have said, “I die, I perceive, as I have lived — beyond my means.”       

A funeral service last weekend, and the reception afterward, seemed the embodiment of community. The memorial gathering was held at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for the late Edwin Geus, with a gathering later around long tables, each decorated with spring daffodils, at the East Hampton Firehouse. Mr. Geus had served as a longstanding volunteer for both the East Hampton Fire Department and the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, and members attended in uniform; a well-polished fire truck and ambulance stood like an honor guard outside the church, behind Town Pond.

I am always curious and interested when personal connections bring me into a church — being Jewish, myself, and having been raised in a moderately religious household (kosher, at least in my early childhood). East Hampton, founded by Congregationalists, used to be almost exclusively a Christian community. Today, the majority might still identify themselves as Christian — Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist — even if they don’t spend much time at services.

Anyway, I disavowed what others call faith long ago, in childhood, when my parents tried without success to send me to the Sunday school of a Reform synagogue. 

In my twenties, I was working at the Columbia University School of Journalism, as secretary of one of the deans, when I met the East Hampton native I was to marry. One of my colleagues at “J school,” as we called it, warned me to watch out: Anti-Semitism in such a town, she said, would be wicked. It turned out that the community I joined was welcoming instead.

Jeannette Edwards Rattray, my mother-in-law, made me comfortable right off. Her daughter had already broken any lurking religious taboo by marrying a man who was defined as an artist, rather than by the fact that he happened to be Jewish (although artists weren’t so revered here yet and it wasn’t obvious that East Hampton was going to become a 20th-century artists’ haven).

During my first summer in East Hampton, I heard an anecdote about how Mrs. Rattray gave a not-too-distant relative the business while table-hopping at Chez Labbat, the only sophisticated restaurant here at the time. He had stopped to complain that Jews were taking over Lily Pond Lane. She herself had married a worldly man “from away,” Arnold Rattray, and while conservative in some ways was progressive about religious freedoms and bigotry, and she read her rude relative the riot act. 

The East End, it turned out, had been a fairly worldly place for a hundred years or more. There was the broadening influence of artists and actors, since the late 19th century. Sag Harbor had a large Jewish population, based around its watch-case and silver factories’ need for skilled workers. (The journalist Karl Grossman is known for scholarship about the early Jewish community in the Harbor, as his frequent lectures attest.) 

Today, I no longer think of myself as a liberal New Yorker, but as a liberal-minded member of the East Hampton community, which never was as homogenous as some might think. We are not free of anti-Semitism here, that is certainly true. But, still, if only the rest of the world could mix and mingle as peaceably as we.

Spring might have arrived, or so the calendar says, but I have yet to see an osprey. Nor have the peeper frogs in the swamp nearest to the house begun to chirp; it was cold this week, so, perhaps wisely, they remained in the mud. As for the fish hawks, they are around — if one knows where to look or has the time.

Bruce Collins phoned on Friday to say he had seen a pair on a pole nest alongside ScuttleholeRoad. Jane Bimson was able to get a photograph of one, a first-year adult, I think, on a tree limb at the edge of Fort Pond in Montauk. Tim Garneau went looking around Alewife Creek, and while he did not find any, the peepers were in full throat. 

From this limited sample, it seems the early birds go where the fish are. The still very cold bay has scarcely come to life yet, save for the shell-eaters, long-tail ducks, and other divers that can get by in the depths of  winter. Osprey looking around at freshwater places like Mill Pond in Water Mill and Fort Pond are more likely to scare up a meal.

Why fish hawks matter can be ascribed to a number of things, not the least of which is their size, soaring habit, and spectacular dives. But there is more, I believe. Arriving suddenly as they do here in mid-March, they are a harbinger of nicer days ahead. And at another level, their annual cycles tie us into something greater than ourselves, patterns that have endured over tens of thousands of years. We are reassured when they arrive once again that despite all the crises of life, the world spins on.

The other night, as we talked of Joe Biden’s predicament, it occurred to me that I, a diffident WASP not programmed to show much emotion, was at first bemused when men began hugging men in America — about 40 or so years ago, I think. 

“Did you say that you were ‘uncomfortable?’ ” asked Mary, who has wondered why the women now accusing Biden of unwanted attention in the past didn’t say so if they felt so at the time.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Anyway, perhaps because I’m a WASP, I’m uncomfortable using the word ‘uncomfortable.’ Nor was I reaching out in those days.”

“You reached out to me. . . .” 

“Indeed I did, and have been forever blessed for having done so.” 

The hugging custom must have made its way from abroad to the younger generation, for I don’t remember anybody with whom I grew up doing it. I don’t remember being hugged by my father, or by my stepfather. We shook hands — that was the manly thing, especially at an all-male boarding school where, I think it’s fair to say, we were not, most of us anyway, in touch with our feelings. 

I’ve since come around, and though I generally don’t initiate them, I’m touched when hugs come my way, whether from sons-in-law or grandchildren. They hug me, I hug them. I’ve become much more comfortable with the practice, much more at ease with openness, with intimacy. It’s a sign that, at least when it comes to human interaction, we’ve evolved. 

So, I think politicians, pressers of the flesh by profession, ought — especially nowadays when “personal space” has, and with reason, become such a touchy subject — to be given some benefit of the doubt when there is doubt, as is the case with Biden, who seems surprised (and chastened) that in some cases he, a layer-on of hands guy, has given offense. 

Karen Tumulty said the other night on the “PBS NewsHour” that she didn’t think what he’d been accused of doing was so grievous as to pre-empt redemption. Uncle Joe says he gets it, and for that he deserves a hug.

The word is out about a pair of eagles nesting near the water in Springs. Not much stays secret in this town, and thanks to social media, birdwatching sometimes seems like a game of one-upmanship in which the first person to get a photograph of a particularly charismatic species can claim bragging rights. Most times, getting close enough to wildlife to take a photograph with an ordinary camera or phone is too close.

Some friends told me of a person in a pickup truck who was parked in a saltmarsh the other day for about four hours, peering at eagles through binoculars. One friend, worried about the effect of visitors, has been putting up “no trespassing” signs, including one warning of dire consequences for setting foot on Gardiner’s Island, which he had found on the beach.

Bald eagles favor fish, which is probably why the East End of Long Island is attractive to them. Osprey, with whom eagles compete for food and nest platforms, have been extremely put out, screeching angrily as generally indifferent and far larger eagles go about their business.

Clamming at Three Mile Harbor on Sunday with a friend and my son, I noticed an eagle sitting on an oak limb 60 feet or more above the water on a bluff. Nearby, a fish hawk, as my father called osprey and I did in my youth, mobbed it the way blackbirds do a red-tailed hawk that enters their territory.

After bald eagles were all but wiped out by the early 1970s in New York due to the use of shell-weakening pesticides, state authorities began to release hand-reared nestlings, brought to the state mostly from Alaska. By 1989, there were 10 breeding pairs doing their thing upstate. Twenty years later, the number has grown to 173 pairs and continues to climb. 

New York’s bald eagles have now pushed south and east into our area. Pairs, which mate for life, also tend to return to the same nesting area each spring, meaning that their offspring have to move on in search of spaces of their own.

In Springs, friends have seen people in a kayak coming close to nesting eagles for a better look. Whether it was too close they were unable to say, but their story reminded my of those knuckleheads who get out of their vehicles in the national parks to taunt moose, bears, or bison, and then, if they are lucky, get away with just an antler up the patootie.

I suggested my friends put up a perimeter of floating line and found buoys. I’d even help, I said. They declined, but the offer still stands. 

As constant readers, those of a certain age at any rate, undoubtedly noticed, when I wrote two weeks ago that I was paying $65 a week to rent a one-room apartment in Alphabet City in 1965, I was wrong. 

The monthly rent was indeed, as I had originally written, $65 a month. But then, wondering if there ever were a time when landlords, even in the East Village, charged tenants a mere $16.25 a week — substantially less than what you’d pay for a bottle of Mud House, Frenzy, or Cairnbrae now — I panicked and called in to stop the presses. 

Of course, the nice thing now is that a reporter or columnist can plead to being not entirely guilty inasmuch as an error in Thursday’s print edition can be set right by Friday in the website one. 

Yes, $65 a month. I know because I read it in the first “Point of View” I ever wrote, dated Oct. 26, 1967, which I found in a folder in my desk’s upper-left-hand drawer, a folder that I had intended to be opened only in the case of my death, but which I might as well dip into now, shamelessness apparently being in vogue nowadays. . . .

“. . . My one-room apartment, whose walls I painted yellow, red, green, and candy-striped, was a real joy. When the cockroaches shyly hid on the arrival of guests, I worried.” (N.B., Mary.)

“My landlady, Mrs. Messina [I got that right], a Hogarthian character, told me to ‘bar your door — people are crazy these days.’ But what was there to steal? I felt this way despite the fact I probably lived in the high-rent district, since I paid $65 a month for my apartment, slightly more than I could have received from a weekly welfare check.”

I was just about ready to go on unemployment when The Times hired me as a copy boy — at around $65 a week, I imagine, for I do remember having adhered rather closely to the tenet that no more than a quarter of one’s income should go to housing. That advice is a stretch now. Those were the days.

At any rate, until summoned several months later to apprentice in Riverhead with Larry Penny’s late older brother, Art, a Long Island Press reporter and Times stringer on weekends, I was rather content living on society’s margins as I recall — sufficiently desperate, I suppose, not to feel so.

Sufficiently trusting too in my invincible surmise that in time all would work out. 

And, lo, that’s what happened. All — well, just about all — are working out these days.

At this time of the year, my yard is awash in yellow flowers. I’ve never known exactly what they are — or if someone once did identify them for me, I’ve forgotten — but they look a bit like hardy buttercups. They create a bright, sunny carpet that covers the entire lawn, on all sides of our old house in East Hampton Village. 

A friend who is a landscape designer once remarked that my lawn is less like a lawn and more like a meadow, dotted as it is with not just these yellow mystery flowers but with tiny wild violets. That’s true, and I love it that way. 

Still, by the end of April, I have to buckle to the reality of just exactly how untidy the grounds have become — with the fallen branches of winter tossed everywhere, and clumps of spiky crabgrass among the yellow petals — and I call in Martin Soto, who, with his crew of yard men at a company called Sottessey, has been my outdoor fixer for decades now.

Another friend mentioned recently that deer don’t like the color yellow, and that this is why the forsythia bushes are often the only blasts of color to be seen in some people’s yards. We do have forsythia, and they do seem relatively undestroyed by the troupe of deer who live behind the tall old fir trees near the barn, but I don’t know if this deer-hate-yellow thing is just a suburban legend or if there is science behind it.

The flower that I really love now, in early spring, is the daffodil. The deer never do seem to touch them. Our Nikko blue and Annabelle white hydrangeas have been decimated, as have our old roses of pink and white, but the several varieties of sunshine-colored daffodils return each spring like the swallows. 

It is the variety, indeed, that I love the most, and we must have half a dozen different sorts of daffodils, from the ruffly many-cupped old-fashioned ones tinged with green to the classic canary-yellow trumpet-shaped cup to white ones with an orange center.

I’ve had neighbors complain about the little yellow flowers that carpet our yard. Apparently they can pose a danger of invading a more carefully groomed lawn. So far, that hasn’t really turned out to be a problem, at least on my side of the fence. Did I mention that these little flowers open with the sun and close as the sun goes down? Who wouldn’t love a flower that does that?