The panel at Sunday’s fifth annual Black History Month program at Bay Street Theater on the history of slavery on the East End was illuminating. Its title, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” made the thrust of the story about enslaved people here from the 1650s into the late 18th and early 19th centuries evident. Who were they? Where were they buried? And, yes, what were their names? 

Only two gravestones, for Ned and Peggy, are known in East Hampton for people who were enslaved. A single boulder on Shelter Island commemorates the burial of some 200 enslaved people. It reads: “Burying Ground of the Colored People of Sylvester Manor since 1651.”

Georgette Grier-Key, executive director and chief curator of the Eastville Historical Society, Donnamarie Barnes, curator and archivist at the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, Aileen Novick, administrator of Hempstead Houses in New London, Conn., and The Star’s own David Rattray were the panelists. (He comments on the event this week in his column, “The Mast-Head.”)

Ms. Grier-Key, who acted as M.C., is well known. A writer, curator, and full-time professor at Nassau Community College, she is an outspoken advocate for what she calls the reconstruction of African-American and Native American history. Ms. Barnes, a longtime photo editor for magazines such as People and Essence, is a Sylvester Manor scholar, leading tours of the house and grounds and educating visitors and schoolchildren about its lengthy and complex history. Ms. Novick,

who has degrees from Northeastern University and Bates College, worked at the Indiana Historical Society and began teaching about the history of slavery at Historic Locust Grove in Louisville, Ky.

At one point in the program, the word, and concept of, reparations caused a phil­osophical flurry. Ms. Grier-Key seemed to say reparations for the sins of the past would be impossible because the need for them was so vast. A woman in the audience, the Rev. Leandra Lambert of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton, argued with her, saying that reparations were crucial because indeed they would have to be vast.

The audience on Sunday was thoroughly engaged, raising questions for the panelists and criticizing history itself. They expressed dismay when the event was called to a close and obviously could have gone on for a long time.

What the panelists had to say is not to be found in school textbooks, which continue to disrespect the lives of enslaved and indigenous residents by omission. What was evident, however, was that Bay Street Theater was filled with people of good will, who no longer are satisfied to allow the full history of this place to be “Hidden in Plain Sight.”   

At sea in the Mexico City airport the other day, following a nine-day idyll in Zihuatanejo, I was reminded of the Bonacker, who, in Penn Station, said that he certainly knew New York City was big but he hadn’t known it had a roof over it.

We’d still be there probably if it weren’t for Rodolfo and Diana Reta, whom we’d met on the flight up from Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, and who were our advocates for two hours after we’d arrived too late to make our connection to J.F.K.

The kindness of the Retas, who faced a two-hour drive home, buoyed Mary’s faith in the goodness and gentility that can be found in the world.  

“Es un santo,” I said to Diana, who smiled as her husband, an engineer by profession, energetically advocated on our behalf with an Aeromexico clerk whose overseer was finally to tell us that it was not the airline’s fault that the plane didn’t have enough fuel to circle about, but the airport’s, for being “full.” Then why schedule a flight at such a time knowing that that might be the case, Mary persisted. To no avail, of course. We were screwed, and that was that.

I had known something was up when the pilot addressed us at length, at first in Spanish, as we began our second loop. “I understood one word,” I said to Mary. “ ‘Disculpe.’ I think it means ‘Forgive me.’ ” Soon, in English, we learned that he was about to run out of fuel and that we would have to land “at another airport.”

Which turned out to be Querétaro, north of Mexico City, and not far away, Diana was to say later, from San Miguel de Allende, where Sheridan Sansegundo, my former co-worker, lives happily — and whose invitation to visit I presume still stands.

Somehow, Rodolfo found our luggage, having spirited Mary and her sister Kitty down an obscure hallway from which others similarly perplexed had been shooed away, and, once assured that we had boarding passes for an early-morning flight, Diana and he guided us to a palatial hotel, one of a number within the airport itself, where we said our goodbyes, mine in halting and fractured Spanish. 

I tried to say we’d always remember their extraordinary kindness. I hope that came across. “Estamos muy agradecidos” would have done it, Isabel was later to tell me. 

And my brother-in-law, having been thoroughly apprised of our return trip woes, said no wonder there were so many hotels in the airport, and that we must be desperate now to go on a vacation.

But our vacation had been blissful, and, it occurs to me, had we not undergone the rigors attending the first leg of our return, we never would have met the sainted Retas.

We were watching the red carpet effusions preceding the Oscars when “Roma,” which we liked very much, came up, Susan wondering what the fuss was about inasmuch as she had found the movie to be “boring.”

A lifetime lover of “boring” movies, I took issue. I’ve always been enthralled by quiet-spoken, reflective films concerning the sadness and joys we all have in common.

Action movies with fiery explosions, over-the-top comedies straining for laughs, maudlin love stories, movies with frills, in other words, don’t move me. Give me understatement and the sense of time passing every time. Give me truth, or, even better, truth and beauty, which the Urn in Keats’s ode equated. 

“Roma” was true and beautifully done, luminous in black and white. “Green Book” was enlightening and rang true. “If Beale Street Could Talk” was beautiful, and, shameful to say, even at this late date, true, and “BlackKkKlansman” was true and in its skewering of evil beautiful.

So, with this in mind, I went to BookHampton and asked Jesse to order a copy of Keats’s letters, which, in truth, he did. Beautiful. 

I guess Keats’s idea in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was to be all-inclusive, to look equably upon sorrow and ecstasy. Though while truth and beauty may have been conflated in the Urn’s eyes, that being all we needed to know, it’s pretty clear that all things which are true, such as war, pestilence, anguish, death — I probably could think of quite a few others — are not beautiful.

Still, what’s to keep us from plumping for beauty and righteousness, for inclusion rather than exclusion, such as the Oscars this year began to do, every step of the way. 

To our nephew, who was bemoaning polarization the other day, Mary said she’d combated it in the past election by knocking on doors, in our neighborhood and in others, even unto Montauk no less, to find, through simply listening, how much we share. She was brave, he said. I agreed. She is brave. I wasn’t a coward, I told him, until faced with danger. (Got that from Molière.)

While truth may not always be beauty, if we’re true to ourselves, to our better selves, we can, I think, make America beautiful, genuinely beautiful.

And that is all ye need to know. 

The shirt was a “deceitful product,” according to one Amazon reviewer, who complained that it “looks blah and cheap.” 

“Cheap” as in not worth the $9 price tag? 

The travel pillow? “I’d rather sleep without a pillow than this pillow, even if I was sleeping on a rock,” Yeahbuddy wrote. 

The accent table with three drawers looked nice for the price, and with Amazon Prime you can always return it if it’s not what you thought it would be. Or can you? “Once it is open, it is literally impossible to return, as it is so heavy,” according to Frida, who added, “I threw it away.”

Another review was titled “nightstand from the underworld.” 

“Last night I hit the nightstand with my pillow on accident,” the customer wrote, “and it totally fell apart.” 

“This is only a good nightstand if you sleep on the floor,” another reviewer chimed in.  

I always read the negative product reviews, often aloud to my husband while he watches cable news, and usually in fits of laughter. Sometimes I’m not even interested in the item, but when the bad reviews are good enough, I can’t help myself. 

There was something about the retro 3-in-1 family-size breakfast station. The fun turquoise, the fact that it could brew coffee, toast four slices of bread, and cook sausage and eggs on its nonstick griddle top all at once. Fifty-two percent of reviewers rated it five stars, but a few clicks told a different story. 

“I loved this and had it for a year and then the button for the coffee machine broke and fell off when I tried to put it back on it had a major spark and my hand was black all around the circle of where I was holding the button,” an anonymous Amazon customer wrote, her punctuation obviously affected by the surprise jolt from the breakfast station.

J & lu said, “The coffee maker button got stuck this morning and just electric shocked my husband.” 

Perhaps, then, a different toaster oven that fits six slices of bread or a 12-inch pizza? Timmy gives this one five stars and says, “it has good looking, and I like the size that is convenient to storage.” 

But, wait, Morguloff Properties rates it one star and notes that the “temperature is in Celsius” and the “timer does not work very well [and] I end up burning most of what I am cooking.” However, he adds, “With that said if you need a cheap toaster it works you just have to be vigilant.” Can “Timmy” be so wrong? 

Tom doesn’t think so, and also rates it five stars. Under the heading “haha very like,” he extols the toaster oven’s many virtues: “One is broil, which is very fast, usually grilled fish. . . . One is bake, slow-cooked, roast chicken, roast Turkey, baked sweet potato, baked pizza, baked bread. . . . So that’s sort of the general idea that this oven is really good and easy to clean haha.” 

Apparently, “seven people found this helpful.” 

Good reviews can be deceiving. What’s written between the lines?

When Airbnb guests describe an apartment as “a bit eclectic” or “bohemian,” that might be a red flag, but eclectic can also mean character. Unpack this: “If you prefer places that look a bit less inhabited, this might not be for you.” 

Well put, diplomatic reviewer. Translation: disheveled, cluttered, maybe a loaded air gun in the toy bin, but painted with a joyous abandon that comes off very cheerful in the pictures. I’ve stayed there, and the more straightforward “the cleanliness left something to be desired” from another reviewer was accurate, but did incur the wrath of the host and possibly resulted in the blacklisting of the guest forevermore. Best to stick with “original and funky,” also accurate, with a hint for the astute reader.

Buyer be “vigilant,” M. Properties might say. Even if something “has good looking” it could still burn your proverbial toast.

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.

“No way. Tell them to call you when the price drops below $1 million.”

This was my texted response to a friend’s inquiry about an eroding piece of waterfront on the bay with an asking price of more than three times as much. “There’s a reason that it’s been on the market for 10 years,” I wrote.

My friend was among the rare property hunters to actually inquire. In my experience most people do far more research when thinking about buying a dishwasher or four tires than real estate. Over the years, I have been queried only a handful of times by prospective buyers, and never, to my mind, has someone phoned this office with a request to look at our files or talk to a reporter with a question about one parcel or another. They might, however, take a look at online maps predicting future sea level rise. But in fact “room for a pool and tennis” are about the only words potential buyers take in from their real estate salesperson once that I-gotta-have-it feeling takes hold.

There seems to be a law of nature that the more expensive a purchase the less most people think about it. Certainly, speaking for myself, I tend to compare the chicken thighs at the Amagansett I.G.A. for price, fussing over a 40-cent difference far longer than I would a $32 free-range entree with Balsam Farms Yukon gold potatoes, roasted garlic, and rosemary at Nick and Toni’s.  

As far as waterfront real estate goes, caveat emptor might be better replaced by “interrogare emptor,” that is, buyer inquire.

I am to turn 79 on Monday, by which time I expect to be lying on a beach in Zihuatanejo reading a good book, or, given my tendency to interrupt, making Mary look up from hers. 

That, my tendency to interrupt, may be the sole sticking point in our otherwise blissful coupling. Why I do it, I don’t know, though it may have something to do with being an only child for most of my youth, untempered by siblings shouting, “Will you shut up, Jackie, will you just shut up for once?” And so, uninterrupted, I continued interrupting.

In catechism — this was at the East End Lutheran school in Pittsburgh — I was constantly waving my hand when it was sixth-grade Bible passage recitation time. I was a fountain of dogma. Never mind that I hadn’t thought much about what I was saying.

And spelling. I was a whiz at it, and was dismissive when told the ability to spell was not a measure of intelligence. Of course it was. My mother helped me prepare for the Western Pennsylvania Spelling Bee, put on, as I recall, by The Pittsburgh Press. She sat on the same chaise longue that is in our bedroom today, I at the foot of it, and drilled me. I had no idea what most of the words meant, but it made no difference, I could spell them.

And, in the Western Pennsylvania Spelling Bee itself, I spelt with such aplomb that the reporter said the next day that if there had been a prize for the most lackadaisical contestant, I, who stumbled on “insidious,” spelling it with a “c,” and thus finished fifth, would have won it. . . . Lackadaisical. A five-syllable word. I didn’t know what it meant, but I liked it. 

From Bible passages and spelling bees I moved on in high school to Shakespearean soliloquies, a natural progression for one still more in love with sound than with sense. And, of course, soliloquies were essentially great interruptions, if you will, no matter that you had but a vague idea of what you were saying.  

I still, some 65 or so years on, have no more than a vague idea of what I’m saying. That’s called inspiration, isn’t it? And because of an arthritic shoulder, I no longer wave my hand much. But still there is this urge to interrupt, to blurt out, “Hold on, can I tell you one thing?”

The itch to propound passes I’ve found if you just hold on and sit tight (not all that hard to do when you have a margarita at hand), which I intend to do in Zihuatanejo. 

A 160-yard-long black plastic pipe washed out of the ocean at Georgica last week. When I finally got around to looking for it on Sunday afternoon, I was disappointed that it had already been cut into shorter lengths and dragged away. 

We had been first alerted to it by my friend Tim Garneau, who sent a few smartphone photographs and was the source of the 160-yard estimate. Paul Vogel, another friend, who is the de facto early-morning mayor of Georgica Beach, emailed a report at about the same time.  From Tim’s photos, it was obvious that the pipe had come from a dredging operation, but how and from where remained unknown.

Georgica Beach is a good place to seek surprises cast up by the sea. The stone jetty there, which has produced a subtle rise in the onshore sand, traps floating objects on an easterly swell. Among the items I have picked up at Georgica are money, sunglasses, a gold-and-jade bracelet, and two insulin pumps, one of which was still beeping in the sea-grass wrack line. The beachcomber’s glory days are long since passed, however. My paltry finds are but trifles when matched against those that used to appear in the age of sail. 

Long Island shores, north and south, had for centuries taken their toll on ships. A miscalculation at night or during bad weather could put a vessel on the bar, where it might as soon break to pieces as be refloated. A ship’s pilot unlucky enough to steer onto the Montauk rocks would have no hope of rescue.

Places along the coast carry names memorializing such wrecks: Cullo den Point in honor of the British warship that sank there during the American Revolution, Amsterdam Beach for a British steamer by that name that went aground in 1867 carrying a load of fruit, raisins, lead, and wine to New York.

Perhaps the most intriguing East End wreck came in 1816 when a mysteriously empty ship struck the bar at Shinnecock. As the wreck master prepared it for auction, a bystander found a Spanish silver coin in a piece of rigging; visitors to the hulk discovered more coins here and there. Then, two young men, determined to do a thorough search, crept aboard with candles and a tin lantern. 

Making their way from fore to aft, they at last spotted the shiny edge of a coin in the cabin ceiling. Prying the boards apart, one of the men was showered with silver dollars, but his companion dropped the lantern and much of the trove rolled into the sea.

On subsequent trips, the men found other coins, but kept quiet until much later. When the ship broke up that winter, people began to find money in the sand. Farmers took ploughs to search; one came away with a princely haul worth $60. Now and then for years afterward, bits of Spanish silver could be found. It is hard not to believe that some of that loot might still be out there.

To get an idea about what team spirit means, all you have to do is go to the greater Boston area at Super Bowl time. I was there last week because my husband was a patient at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, and everyone seemed to be wearing New England Patriots T-shirts emblazoned with the number 12 all weekend long. It was patriotism in two senses of the word. 

Although I was a twirler (you know, it’s something like a drum majorette) in a maroon-and-white outfit when I was in high school in Bayonne, N.J., marching onto and doing routines on football fields, I never paid much attention to the game; basketball was my sport. 

At the hospital during the Super Bowl, however, it was impossible not to recognize the spirit. Even I knew why the aides and nurses were wearing the red, white, and blue, and that 12 was the superstar Tom Brady’s number.

When I was first married and had become an East Hamptoner, we often went to Dartmouth football games, with or without children but always with great tailgate picnics. An outlier nevertheless, I once distinguished myself, if you can call it that, by jumping up and cheering loudly when a player ran down the whole field to make a touchdown. The trouble was he was on the opposing team. As far as I was concerned it felt good to cheer for a maneuver that was swift, graceful, and wily regardless of whose team he was on, and even if no one else on my side of the bleachers did. For me, it was simple appreciation; I didn’t care which team scored.

Such an attitude made me out of sync with my compatriots, but I was comfortable as an outlier, as much then as now. These days, for example, when I am among my husband’s large and talented family, I tend to stand with his brother-in-law, a man who is very much admired but whose background, like mine, is far afield.

Considering myself an outlier at The Star also has made it possible over the years for me to wear an editor’s hat. We decided it would be inappropriate for me to be a member of local organizations, even one noted for good works like the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society. 

Suppose the society decided to do something outrageous, like, for example, tearing up the perimeter of Town Pond? I wanted to preserve the right to howl. Sure, L.V.I.S. members and the general public might well express opinions of disapproval, but at least no conflict of interest would be involved in what the editorial “we” had to say. I had a bully pulpit and think that was good enough.

We all know it’s been cold, and we all know how to procrastinate. What do I avoid doing? Paying bills, sorting through the junk drawer(s), going through old papers and magazines. You know the drill. 

But one has to do something when not doing the thing that needs to be done. 

Enter the time wasters. 

There are those little nuggets of time to be found while waiting for disks to burn, a return e-mail, or files to upload. Sitting at my computer with the big screen, while waiting for electronic things, I have been known to play a kind of scrabble against a computer. I tell myself that this is strengthening my brain and vocabulary, and, thus, I am actually not wasting time. Ah, but there are other things that engage me.

Much like the Jimmy Stewart character in “Rear Window” — both of us being photographers and both of us being indoors (he for a broken leg, me hiding out from the cold) — we have found entertainment in “the window.” He watched a murder; I am watching the peaceable kingdom. He watched his neighbors, I watch Africa from my computer window. 

Africam.com, is a website I found years ago when my family had just gotten back from a photo safari to East Africa and I could not get enough of anything Africa. The site features live feeds from remote cameras in the South African wild. I found myself staying late at the office to watch the watering holes in the African daytime. 

Enter the polar vortex and Africa once again seems a really great escape from the chill. I have abandoned the faux Scrabble game and begun to watch Africa, streaming live, in my house. 

The time difference messes up your creature watching big time. When it’s 2 p.m. here, it’s 9 p.m. in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The watering holes are lit up, but not a creature is stirring. Anyone who watches animals knows you never know what’s going to happen. At Tembe Elephant Park, as I watch, two impalas are illuminated on the screen. Turning up the volume I hear the sounds of the South African watering hole. The animals are doing what I am doing, a continent and an ocean away — we are just hanging out.

I notice that their eyes glow at night, when the transmission looks black-and-white, little spots of glowing impala eyes. The remote camera sometimes zooms in for a close-up, zooms out and then gives a wide angle, and then scans the viewing area. The crickets and other things buzz, and the impalas never seem to blink. They must have spectacular wide-angle eyesight. Their eyes glow when seen from the front, the side, and even when facing away. Like goats, they sit down front legs first. When they get up, they get up fast.

As a kid I looked at animal books all the time and visited the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History and saw all the Disney movies. I figured I knew my animals, but when you visit a game park on real safari or “window” safari, you realize there are animals you have never heard of: topi, for example, and nyala. Nyala, which visit this watering hole, and are yellow-legged antelope with a long-haired strip down their spines and they have stripes. Their babies are really cute. I learned this yesterday. Educational time waster. 

I can identify the Egyptian geese by their call, and I can tell a young nyala (vertically striped) from a young impala, and I bet you didn’t know a waterbuck has a bull’s-eye on his/her backside.

I can’t control when the camera moves and scans, and it’s a bit frustrating when you hear a splash and wonder what happened and you can’t see it. There are five cameras to check on the Africam site. My favorite location is Tembe Elephant Park in Maputaland, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (I found it on Google Earth). See, I’m also learning geography. This is not a time waster; this is interesting. 

In the past week I have seen a genet being startled by some elephants coming in for a drink. A bunch of impalas carefully avoided what appeared to be either a dead thing or a big bone by the edge of the watering hole. They each stopped, took a look, and gave it a wide swath as they passed by. I felt like I was watching an open casket funeral. Two days later they paid no attention to it at all. I watched a thunder and lightning storm and the animals didn’t care at all, but it was loud in my room and my cats did not enjoy it.

For the truly addicted, the site has an animal alert app for personal devices that lets you pick the animals you want to follow. And for the truly lazy, you can check in to see what was photographed and video-ed by the remote staff while you were otherwise engaged. One of the latest videos showed a small herd of elephants wallowing.

When does a time waster become a hobby? 

Last night I left the site on, with the sound low so the crickets and the crows and such wouldn’t bother me. This morning when I headed to check my email before getting ready for the day, there on my screen were two giraffes mock fighting! They swing their necks and kind of hip/shoulder bump each other — standing hip to shoulder, each facing a different direction — with the goal of moving the opponent sideways. This was going on right outside my “window.”

How cool is it that on my way to the shower I can observe animal behavior, learn a few things, and be totally transported before brushing my teeth. There is even a photo feature, so I can have my own “ safari” memories to share.

Some may say I’m wasting my time, but isn’t real life better than a video game?

While writing this, I have the site open to live feed for all of the watering holes. It’s now 4 our time, 11 in South Africa. The impala have yet to blink, as far as I can tell. There is a loud kind of splashing and I have been trying to reach the camera remote guy to scan the view at Tembe to see what’s making that wet noise, but to no avail. Maybe a goose landed and belly-flopped, but no. The sound gets louder. As I stop typing and go to full-screen mode, an elephant comes in from below the camera. First the head, then shoulders, then the rest of it showed up. The sound I was hearing was chewing and slurping. The impala got up, hind legs first, and got out of the way and the elephant went to a puddle, not the watering hole, and slurped like a kid with an ice cream soda. He slurped up the puddle with his trunk, swung it up and gave himself a drink — in perfect profile to the camera and to me. I took a picture.

I have not yet paid my bills but I did write this.

Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer to The Star.

Once upon a time I was the only person who brought a dog to work, here at the Star office, but now we arrive to a daily menagerie — from the itty-bitty black and tan dachshund puppy and scraggly little terrier belonging to Isabel Carmichael to the 21/2-year-old rescue (a charming fellow with a soft, brown nose, named Marty) who was recently acquired by Paul Friese, to Archie, Jane Bimson’s bright-eyed Jack Russell, and Jack Graves’s adorable, purebred O’en, with his soft blond coat. 

The dog belonging to me and my husband is a lazy, plump, foxlike creature with a red coat and a stubborn nature. We call her Sweet Pea. I don’t know what we were thinking when we gave her that name. Dozens of other monikers were offered up by the younger members of the family, to be considered and discarded. Sweet Pea came to us from the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, where she was known as Victoria, which we all felt was too grand and ladylike for a quizzical canine who had washed up in the aftermath of one of the 2017 hurricanes. Sweet Pea definitely seemed sweet when we met her, and, like a pea, she is, yes, small. Still, I still almost laugh when I call her name: The only other Sweet Pea I can think of is Olive Oyl and Popeye’s baby, which seems such an incongruous reference.

My daughter found Sweet Pea at the ARF adoption center in late 2017; by the time my husband and I arrived to inspect her, later that day, they had bonded. To this day, Sweet Pea will run to her as fast as she can when she spies her entering a room, and will positively knock over bystanders in her rush to climb into her lap. Sweet Pea has not forgotten.

ARF told us Sweet Pea had been among the animals brought to the States following Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in late September 2017; Sweet Pea was at ARF by mid-November. She was — and I have a hard time visualizing or believing this — a skinny little thing back then. Her paperwork says she was only 19.4 pounds when we met. Now she is nearly 26, and the veterinarian has instructed us to put her on a special diet. She may look like a fox when viewed from behind, but viewed from above, she is torpedo-shaped, a chunky little sausage.

That Sweet Pea was a warm-weather pet is evident by how much she detests snow, sleet, and rain. On a recent wicked, wet day, she ran to the car when we set out, but absolutely refused to climb back out again when the time came. For a small dog, she is mighty. I went into the house to fetch her a treat, as bribery, but even then she had to be seriously coaxed and dragged from the car, as I got soaked in the downpour. Forget trying to get her to walk in the snow.

At home, Sweet Pea likes to sleep and sleep and sleep — on the master bed. We don’t have the heart to kick her out of the bedroom or put her in a crate. In order for there to be room for us to sleep, we have to bribe her down to the foot of the bed with a goodie and put a heavy pillow as a sort of barrier behind her. We always start out the night with the hope that she will stay in place, but she inevitably finds a way to creep up during the night and ensconce herself between our shoulders and heads.

To be honest, even though she is a near-daily presence here at the office, she isn’t particularly welcome in certain circles of the building. She likes to sit guard at my desk, eyeing my colleagues with sleepy suspicion, and has been known to bare her teeth and snap at people for no discernible reason. She is probably 6 or 7 years old, and although she was possibly a street dog in Rincon, her daily lapdog habits lead me to believe she whiled away her days sitting on some doting person’s lap, watching people pass by the window and being fed bonbons. I like to think of her fault as being simply too devoted and loyal, but I’m not sure the rest of the staff would agree. As to whether she is genuinely sweet, well . . . the best thing I can honestly say about her behavior is that it is variable. Maybe we should have named her Crosspatch.