On the way to school on Tuesday morning, one of the kids announced that she and a classmate had a plan if a shooter ever turned up. They would stash some food and water in a tree in the woods behind the school, which they would grab as they fled for the power lines. From there, they would work their way toward East Hampton Airport, where, they figured, they would be safe.

It is obvious to remark here about the unfortunate things kids today have to think about. Gun violence continues at a tragic rate in the United States, with school shootings now commonplace. But it is also true that for people of my generation, there were fears as well. 

I remember clearly the nuclear attack drills we had when I was attending East Hampton Middle School in the 1970s. Teachers would lead us from our classrooms into the basement, where we were told to sit in rows with our backs against the hallway walls. At the end of the drills, the school would serve us ice cream from five-gallon pails, both as a reward and a way of dispelling any lingering fear.

It was the height of the Cold War at the time, and for us kids, the thought of dying in an atomic attack seemed real enough. As giggle-inducing as sheltering in a school hallway might have been, we could not escape the back-of-the-mind notion and would confess to each other that there was at least a small chance our town could be swept into a nuclear blast as the Russians took aim at the submarine base across Long Island Sound in Connecticut, There would be no running for safety in the scenarios we envisioned.

The Russians never came, of course. Not so, school shooters. For children today, horrors are frequent enough that they must appear much more of a possibility. What a tragedy to hear kids talking among themselves about what it would be like to have to leave slower friends behind as they sprinted for their lives into the woods.

“I dreamt I’d won a Peace prize. . . .” “No, no, that was my Peace prize,” corrected Mary, who recently had spent hours straightening out one of my bill-paying gaffes with State Farm, had painstakingly laid the groundwork for a tax grievance, and had raked leaves and edged until she was a physical wreck.

“Ah, mind and body,” I said. “Actually, you were the one who gave it to me, though you’re right, I should have been the one to give it to you. Dreamlife’s unfair. It was a photograph of my mother with me as an infant . . . blissful.”

“I would like to have a dream like that. . . .”

“And then I dreamt I was flying the night before. On my back, borne up by a breeze, dipping and soaring above everyone. The sun was shining. I’d been with a group of people. I began doing jumping jacks, and then I began to fly, out into the outdoors.”

“I love dreams of flying. . . . You were joyful.”

“Yes, joyful. . . . Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that there are things to write about now, now that it’s ostensibly spring. It’s a relief, I no longer have to dream things up as I did all winter, just hang on for the ride.”

“Or maybe it was about ducking out on hours of phone calls to State Farm to get the insurance snafu ironed out, or checking the internet for comps. . . .”

“Yes, it could have been about escape. . . . I mean, there are so many reasons now not to neaten up so much around the house. We want to win our tax grievance, don’t we? Shouldn’t we cultivate more of a down-in-the-mouth look? Where’s that old baby puke-green Ford Falcon when I need it? The night it died I pushed it back onto the front lawn, where it stood for years by the mailbox. . . .”

“When we had that town party everyone covered it with graffiti. Georgie and Johnna used to wait for the school bus in it. You began calling it ‘a home for wayward dolls.’ There were four or five of them propped up against the rear window.”

“Then a neighbor left that note: ‘Usually, after the viewing the dead are interred, Mr. Graves.’ The Reids towed it away. Geoff Gehman thinks I was inspired by the Beales’ Buick that I saw that wintry day in the bracken as I was biking down West End Road long ago. Perhaps I was, subconsciously. There’s not so much living down the Joneses anymore. The houses are obese, the lawns just so. Bonac yards — folk art really — are rarities now. I saw one the other day and was smitten. I thought of writing it up and photographing it, but then reined myself in. ‘In your dreams,’ I said. ‘It won’t fly.’ ”

What would you do if you unexpectedly found yourself with two hours to kill on a Sunday morning in Manhattan? It didn’t seem civilized to call a friend, before 9 on a Sunday, with my old “flip phone” to ask if I could drop in. Art galleries were not likely to be open yet, and it was too early to go to a movie.

Chris and I had gone to a party on Saturday night celebrating a book of poetry by his sister Thayer Cory, and a friend had put us up for the night. On Sunday morning, Chris, who is on a committee that chooses the recipients of social-justice journalism awards, bustled off to one of its meetings. It came to pass that I missed the 10:15 a.m. Hampton Jitney, by a minute or two, and the next bus wouldn’t take off for two hours. 

People often curse the Jitney in such situations, but I adore the Jitney. I remember when Jim Davidson got it going, and one of its very first drivers, Sisco Barnard, was a friend. In those days, I used to go “to town” more frequently than I do in recent years, and being able to get off along Third Avenue way back then seemed like a very welcome convenience, when compared with the only other option, which was navigating Penn Station on the West Side.

So there I was. The obvious way to eat up two hours was — you guessed it — Starbucks. The problem was that I had just finished reading the book on the Kindle I was carrying, and I didn’t have another book in hand, and I couldn’t find a newsstand in the vicinity to buy a New York Times. The kiosk on 40th and Third was closed. 

Remember when there was a newsstand on practically every corner in Midtown? That is an example of a way in which times have changed for the worse: hardly any newsstands, and fewer newspapers.

I am electronically challenged and didn’t have a clue about how to download another book to read on the Kindle. Although Starbucks has Wi-Fi, I didn’t think anyone there would enjoy being asked to help. Starbucks is an oasis — at least if you aren’t attempting to “sit in Starbucks while black,” as the two young men in Philadelphia were doing last week, before they were unjustly arrested — but it isn’t like a bar or pub, where once upon a time customers chit-chatted with one another whether they know one another or not. Starbucks  people are generally preoccupied with their own private thoughts and occupations and cellphones.

The book I had just finished on the Kindle was Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” one of his most well-known and popular novels, which was published in 2000 and won a Pulitzer Prize. I had found it thoroughly enjoyable, so, with nothing else to do, I reread the first chapter!

This probably sounds like I’m trying to tell a story about how much better the world was before the digital universe existed, when newspapers were a dime a dozen and strangers weren’t shy about saying “hello” — but that isn’t my point at all. The moral of this story is that for perhaps the first time it occurred to me that I might have had a more pleasant Sunday morning if I had been hooked up to the world via an iPhone. Yes, I’m finally going to get one. I might need to attend one of those remedial tech classes the libraries offer just to get comfortable with the on/off switch, but the grandkids will be happy.

Tuesday morning awoke with a snarl. Two raccoons had gotten into the chicken run and were squabbling over something or other, making an indescribable clamor, kind of a blend of exercised chatter, hisses, and a predator’s growl. That roused the dogs, which roused me, and together we ran out to see what was going on.

As it was not quite 5 a.m., and there was only a hint of glow in the sky to the east, I could not observe what happened. I heard Weasel, the biggest of our dogs, making attack sounds and a raccoon screeching its answer. Then nothing.

I grabbed a flashlight. In its beam, there were two sets of eyes, coming from inside the wire mesh of the chicken run. Getting closer, I watched as a raccoon, with the shape of a slightly deflated balloon, rushed back and forth on the chicken coop roof before finding a hole in the mesh and squeezing to freedom. Its compatriot, with whom it had been wrangling just moments earlier, clung to a post about six feet off ground, not eager to descend. 

Thinking I might dislodge it somehow and shoo it through an open gate, I went inside to poke at it with an old clam rake that had been hanging around nearby. Mr. Raccoon was having none of it. I poked him a few times with the handle end of the rake; it snapped and carried on and refused to get down. After a bit more of this, it climbed on the mesh, upside down, and found a spot on the coop roof from which to glare at me.

I made sure that the chickens were securely locked inside the coop and left, keeping the gate open in case the raccoon eventually wised up and lit out for the woods and its now-gone rival. By that point Weasel, the dog, had gone to our house and was eager, I could tell from the way she was scratching at the porch door, to get inside and forget the entire thing.

Raccoons have been on my mind lately. I wage a never-ending battle with them over possession of the household garbage. But ever since a report that dog or dog-related waste was to blame in periodic bacteria spikes at Georgica Pond, I have wondered if raccoons might be to blame. A friend who grows grapes outside his bedroom window swears that there are more raccoons than people here, at least around harvest time, when they lodge on his arbor to gorge.

At Georgica, suspicion has been directed hypothetically toward people walking their dogs in a roadside pull-off just east of Wainscott Stone Road. No one I have talked to has said they have ever seen dogs doing their business in there. The bacteria could come from the prodigious droppings of raccoons instead, but that would not explain why the bacteria are so much higher in the pond than in other locations sampled by Concerned Citizens of Montauk and the Surfrider Blue Water Task Force, given that raccoons are everywhere there is something to feed on.

The bright side of Tuesday morning’s excitement is that I now know where to close up the wire mesh. The bad news is that the raccoons will sooner or later find another way in. They always do.

I felt a bit self-righteous — well, a lot self-righteous — the other night when I heard a woman say on the “NewsHour” that Facebook was nothing more than “a surveillance machine.”

Mary’s been off Facebook for the past several years too, though, of course, it’s nice to see photos of the grandchildren. Something there is that doesn’t like the internet. It was supposed to bring us together, and yet it has driven us apart — meanspiritedness (often anonymous) and sleaze far outweighing sane social intercourse. 

The net result is that the internet’s been more of a curse than a blessing, as far as I’m concerned — even to the point where you wonder if the Russians didn’t win the election.

One doesn’t know what to think anymore, or, for that matter, if indeed one’s persona remains intact, there having been so many thefts of personal information on Facebook. Soon we’ll be saying, “I think (I’ve been compromised), therefore I am.” 

I’m beginning to feel left out. So, I’ll say that I’m a glib-eral politically, that I’m a Wondermentalist when it comes to religious affiliation, that as a consumer my wants are few, though I’m a sucker for tennis strings that can impart spin and am fond of tequila, and that Mary’s my best friend, even though she often beats me at backgammon and is biting at my heels in gin rummy. 

(Why is it, I wonder, that while my overall memory, both long and short term, is pretty good, I have none at all when it comes to cards. No matter, soon the basement will be warm enough for Ping-Pong, a game in which we’re evenly matched.)

Back to Facebook, it seems a little silly that I’ve been religiously tearing into shreds bank statements, credit card offers, and the like all these years before scattering them in the mixed-paper bin at the dump when, with the click of a button, information that 87 million Facebook users would rather have kept private is “harvested.”

O, brave new world that has such reapers in’t.

For four days last week I was immersed in beautiful music with the Choral Society of the Hamptons. At concerts held at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church and the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan, we were privileged to take part in a rare and rousing work — Rossini’s “Petite Messe Solennelle” — alongside virtuoso soloists, a visiting choral director, and gifted musicians at the piano and organ. It was an extraordinary experience.

The best part of being an amateur among professional musicians is the joy it brings. The worst part is that it empties the mind of all else . . . which, of course, isn’t much of a downside. It can be a wonderful thing to stop think, think, thinking and be overtaken by the present tense of music. This must be why monks chant as meditation. 

Although the two rehearsals and two concerts took up only several hours each day, between Friday and Monday, the experience was mentally and emotionally overwhelming. Professionals go on with the rest of their lives; with them, even the most beautiful musical effort can become a matter of fact. Amateurs, like me, sometimes have to struggle not to be totally knocked off our feet.

I’ve been in hundreds of concerts over the years, and tears don’t come easily to me. The assembled performers have to be at least close to perfect and the soloists have to be superb. But flow they did during “Petite Messe Solennelle.” John Daly Goodwin, the conductor on this occasion, helped all of us involved share the emotional, and perhaps moral, fiber of the music, conveying authority, emotion, and humor, as the music demanded, through facial expression, body language, and an occasional smile of pleasure. Although biased, I feel comfortable in reporting that the chorus followed his lead well.

It’s hard to compare a musical experience in which many perform as one with other artistic endeavors. The members of a successful theatrical cast or a ballet troupe must sometimes enjoy similar experiences, I suppose. There is something sublime in being part of a work of art that requires the best of many people, a blended community of singers and instrumentalists and conductor. Do those who take part in deep religious rituals feel similar bonds? I bet they do.

Last weekend we were uplifted by four stunning soloists from Mexico as well as the Choral Society’s own extraordinary professionals: Christine Cadarette at the piano and Thom Bohlert at the organ.

For me, worries disappeared and happiness reigned. If any of you out there think you might have an inclination to sing, I can promise you you won’t regret trying out for the Choral Society. It can be divine.

From a torn receipt that my son, Ellis, pieced together, whoever left two black plastic bags of garbage on the ground next to some trash bins near the ocean beach in downtown Montauk had paid for dinner the night before at Gurney’s Resort. The bill, for just over $200, was for a party of four that ordered cod, halibut, chicken, and tagliatelle, washing it down presumably with water, as there was only a single club soda on the tab. 

It had not been hard to gather up the thin strips that remained of the receipt, despite the fact that the garbage from the two bags had been strewn by sea gulls across the beach access. Light items, such as balled-up paper towels, two bearing girls names in blue pen, had been carried on the wind toward the ocean. Heavier things, including empty wine bottles and a large tub of uneaten salsa, had only been scattered around by the gulls by the time Ellis and I showed up late on Saturday afternoon. 

Last week’s Star had an editorial about the town’s responsibilities and how hard a time it has keeping up with the trash and upkeep at its many parks and beach properties. The torn receipt was, if anything, proof of that observation. The mess had been there for hours, I judged, and it was surprising that no one before us had taken a minute to deal with it.

I put on the pair of old cotton gloves that I keep in my truck and started picking it all up. Ellis helped by happily kicking the bottles, cereal boxes, and plastic items into a pile. Five, maybe 10, minutes of effort and we had cleaned it all. We even scoured under the brush on the side of the path, removing items that appeared to have been there for weeks, if not months.

Guessing, it seemed that the bags had been left by a group of people visiting Montauk for no more than a couple of days, perhaps renters of an Airbnb house. It’s hard to say, but that was the likeliest explanation. People from away don’t seem to know they can just lift the lids on the trash barrels to place large items inside, a failure much to the pleasure of gulls and such. I picked up a similar bag of household trash on the ground near a waste bin at Main Beach in East Hampton the following evening.

“It’s only April,” I thought. “Feh.”

Walk-off home runs, leadoff grand slams, great pitching, Elroy Face throwing out the first forkball of the season. . . . Is there to be no respite from excellence? 

The Steelers, the Penguins, and now, at long last, the Pirates too? Hold, hold my heart. 

Oh, and by the way, not to belabor the point, which I will, but did you notice recently that Jesse James’s nullified touchdown reception versus the Patriots would have counted had the N.F.L.’s recently revised catch rules been in place? He broke the plane, yet we were in pain.

Yeah, yeah, a fellow fan said, but what about the Jaguars? 

“Ah yes, the Jaguars. . . . What about them?” I said, not waiting for an answer.

Interesting how the mind works. Losses fade quickly into oblivion and even mediocre seasons in time take on a glow. Soon it all becomes one — one circumambient championship season.

It was not always that way. The Steelers in the ’50s were pedestrian, a .500 finish was the best they could hope for, the Pirates were bumblers and fumblers reminiscent of a minor league team, and the Hornets, the Penguins’ predecessors, were a minor league team, playing out of the Duquesne Gardens, a rink near the East End Lutheran school, where I, a sixth grader then, was peaking academically (especially when it came to the boorish recital of catechism passages), and was warned I risked perdition by holding myself in such high regard. This was said, I recall, after Mr. Koehler found me laughing at my distorted reflection in a Christmas tree bulb. I was chastened, momentarily, and then continued on my merry way.

But back to the Pirates of the ’50s. They were pretty awful, and yet I loved to go to the games, often by trolley on a Sunday, and sit in the bleachers watching doubleheaders for 50 cents. I’ve always liked to think they were major league baseball’s absolutely worst team, certainly if you take their combined record of 454-777 throughout my formative years. The Mets of ’62 barely edged them out, by two or so losses.

Win, lose . . . as long as it’s singular, distinctive, as it were, that’s all that matters. Strive for excellence, strive for klutziness, it’s all one as far as I’m concerned — as long as mediocrity is lowered to new heights. One wants to be distinctive, whether it be at the top or the bottom of the scale. 

One of our favorite quotes comes from Bernard Malamud’s “The Natural.” “We live two lives, I think, the one we learn with and the one after that. Suffering teaches us what to want.” We want a good game, in other words, not so much the winning, which can be cloying after a while — Super Bowl and Stanley Cup championships can tend to make one a bore — but valiant efforts. If you’re going to lose, lose with panache. If you’re going to suffer, suffer with aplomb. And thus reveal victory and defeat as the imposters they are. 

“You had many great shots,” an opponent of mine said the other day, “and many lousy ones.”

Ah, the human condition. We all had our moments, in fact — of triumph, of chagrin. Of “Damn, ain’t I great,” and of “How could I have missed?!”

“The average age of mortality is 76 now,” my partner said. “Though, of course, that’s if you were born this year. I just feel lucky every day I wake up, knowing I’m ahead of the game.”

Our losses increase and yet we’re winners! Winners all.

If it’s spring — and we know it doesn’t feel like spring, but it is — it must be time for spring cleaning. In my house that means, at lazy minimum, an examination of closets and drawers. Out goes the old and unworn, at least in theory. 

In days that seem long gone, people of certain means separated their winter and summer wardrobes. In the fall, summer whites (linens and cottons and organdies and so on) were nicely washed and pressed and put away for the winter. Down from storage came carefully tissue-wrapped furs and sweaters, all the wools and cashmere, smelling of mothballs or sachets of cedar or lavender. This still may be a ritual in some households, but most of us don’t make that dramatic a change in our clothes from season to season these days. 

Partly, this must be because we wear so many synthetic materials and blends. Partly, it is because fashion dictates and dictums were thrown out the window in the 1960s and never jumped back into fashion again. No more ironing of white gloves, no more stuffing straw hats with newspaper and packing them away for warmer days in hatboxes.

Even styles for separate seasons have given way. Women used to wait for good weather to wear sleeveless tops or dresses. If you watch TV these days, you know that has become (you’ll excuse me) old hat. And speaking of hats, some hipsters still, I suppose, switch their felt fedoras for Panama hats depending on the time of year, but most don’t. Baseball caps and what the kids call “trucker hats” are now seen on even the most distinguished heads year round. Even in July and August I’ve seen some heads covered with what we used to call a “watch cap” — the knit hat now universally called a “beanie,” although readers above 50 or so will know what a beanie really is (and sometimes it sported a propeller on the crown!).

This leads me to admit that during a recent spring foray into the very depths of my double-deep closet I realized I have a lot of clothes I haven’t worn in years and haven’t gotten around to giving away. I don’t even recognize everything I’ve tucked away in the darkest recesses, much less recall why I thought I needed them. For example, I must have eight or more long-sleeve crewneck T-shirts, including matching pairs in ice-blue and in dove-gray. They are identical. Why? Wouldn’t three or four be more than sufficient?

The other day, while digging in one of my T-shirt drawers, I found a flouncy nightgown that had been a present from the man I married in 1960, and an authentic sari in black silk with gold embellishments that was given to my late mother-in-law, Jeannette Edwards Rattray, by Evan Frankel (a once formidable East Hampton presence and landowner) at some point before 1974, when she died. 

Some of these things would probably be acceptable in the eyes of the ladies who sort donations at the Ladies Village Improvement Society Bargain Box, but some of them would probably be better off in one of the clothes-donation bins at the dump. And then comes the good part: Finding an excuse to buy something new from one of the 10,000 catalogs of spring clothes that have been stuffing our mailbox since the end of March.

I had had my doubts that the cheap Chinese remote-controlled boat that Ellis ordered from Amazon would work as advertised. But after it arrived on Monday and we charged its battery and took it to Town Pond and worlds collided, I changed my mind.

Unlike previous disappointing RC toys of one sort or another, the boat moved at a satisfying clip. Ellis, his sister Evvy, and the cousins took turns sending it skittering over the pond’s surface, cranking and screeching hairpin turns at a speed that I was certain would sink the thing.

A lone swan, who had hung around menacingly the day before when we had gone to the pond piloting a plodding plastic warship of an earlier vintage, lit out wisely for the far end. The muskrat that spends its days crossing from one side to the other took a break from its rounds.

Town Pond was not always a pond, and I have long been fascinated by this bit of historical trivia. When the English colonial settlement was plotted out in what would eventually become East Hampton, the first 34 allotments and the church and burying ground were on lots around the low, wet marsh that we know today as Town Pond. Parcels were from 8 to 12 acres each, some running all the way to Hook Pond.

Fresh water was critical for home uses and livestock, and it was clear early on that the marsh needed to be more accessible. The town fathers ordered the pond “diged at the Spring Eastward” in June 1653, just five years after the colonists arrived. Today, the Gardiner Home Lot on James Lane, purchased by the village three years ago with money from the community preservation fund, is the last remaining more-or-less complete example of one of these 17th-century allotments.

Town Pond has had a long tradition as a kind of catcher’s mitt for errant vehicles, though the row of trees now grown large along Main Street may have cut down on the frequency of these incidents. One notable plunge, reported in The Star in 1927, ascribed the cause to a New York City driver being handed a sandwich by someone in the back seat. It is pleasing to see that the tradition of amiable lunatics who write for The Star has early antecedents. According to its report, “The goldfish of Town Pond were indignant at this intrusion, and it is understood that they have prepared a petition to the Village Board demanding that the ‘No Bathing in Town Pond’ ordinance be enforced.”

One would not think of going for a swim in the pond today. Nor would anyone have done so even in the days when fertilizers that helped turn it an otherworldly green in hot weather were limited. In recent years, the village has tried with some success to trap pollutants coursing over the Village Green and into the pond, but bathing is not in the cards.

Today, Town Pond is mostly there for passing motorists to admire and to provide a fond “welcome home” for those who have been away. It also is there for skating when the winter is cold enough, and it is utterly perfectly suited for cheap Chinese boats.