What struck me most at the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C., was how eloquent all the speakers, who ranged in age from 11 to 18, were.

Was it their suffering that had made them so eloquent? That had concentrated their minds so that their aim was true? And it was true. For four hours we stood in one small green spot at the side of Pennsylvania Avenue, barely moving more than a few inches, four people (one of us an 11-year-old) among about a million, attentively listening. I’m glad I went. 

“Right/Left, It’s Life or Death” read one of the myriad signs, which pretty much summed it up. 

One gathered after the Stoneman Douglas students (and students from Los Angeles, Chicago, and D.C.) spoke, that things really might, after such a long period of depressing entropy, change — to wit, that people may no longer be able to amass caches of military weapons willy-nilly, invidiously citing “self-defense,” that there finally may be thorough rather than cursory background checks, that there even may be licensing and registration and mandated insurance, and that maybe no longer would manufacturers of arms remain immune from lawsuits.

“If you run over someone with a car, they don’t blame the car, but if someone is shot they immediately blame the guns,” a young counterprotester in Boston was quoted as saying in the next day’s Washington Post, an analogy that was not apt.

The chief purpose of cars is to get us from place to place safely. And, of course, their drivers must be licensed and the cars must be registered and insured. The purpose of guns, when not aimed at inanimate targets, is largely to kill or maim, or, at the least, threaten. 

Nobody was saying at the march, as far as I know, that firearms should be utterly banned — aside from the aforementioned military weapons like the AR-15, which, come to think of it, have no place in police departments, either — but that, at long last, their sales and ownership particulars be well-regulated.

Call it a revolution if you want, as Cameron Kasky, a Stoneman Douglas student, did, but gun control is not such a radical idea. The great majority of the country believes it’s past time that something, something effective, be done. 

Nor is it radical to propose that each school be adequately staffed with psychologists and social workers, that kids not be afraid to go to school each day, and that we citizens, at long last again, vote in healthy rather than in the customary apathetic numbers.

Pedestrians in Mumbai have no zebra crossings, no rights, and, by the law of averages, not a long life expectancy. There are barely any traffic lights to give a moment’s grace to those who have to get to the other side. Unencumbered by rules, training, or insurance, Indians drive with an ethereal airbag of reincarnation. They follow no laws of the road, only some eternal and unwritten commandments of existence. Stopping for pedestrians isn’t one of them.

I stood on one side of Hill Road in Mumbai’s swank suburb of Bandra, contemplating the moment to plunge myself into the maze of bumpers and wheels, the honking, heaving, never-ending flow of vehicles and hawkers, an occasional cow, and the clog of pollution. It’s a road I effortlessly crossed every day as a child, to and from Apostolic Carmel Convent School. Forty years later, I’m paralyzed.

There’s a beggar boy I’ve seen often during my two weeks here who seems to have staked out his patch on the traffic island outside St. Andrew’s Church. He whips his arm out of his sleeve, binds it across his back, and taps mournfully on the window of a sleek BMW stuck in the jam. The pane closes in response and the car nudges away. He shrugs and leaves his island, unfurls his arm, and walks away with carefree abandon. Perhaps he has already made enough to avoid a beating from his father. He walks ramrod straight, tall for a street urchin, a good-looking boy, even under his matted hair. Maybe he dreams of being a Bollywood star.

A nearby chai wallah stands behind his sun-faded stall. He’s been there for years, I’m told, and, although he never went to school, has taught himself English. If you stop and chat with him, he’ll tell you that Starbucks is killing his business as he pours his liquid caramel mix of tea, milk, sugar, cardamom, anise, and black pepper from one pan to another. He catches my eye that day on Hill Road and calls out to me, all the while continuing to pour between pots without losing a drop. 

“Madam, a cup of chai today?” he shouts, waggling his head.

I go over, as I have done a few times during the past week. He launches into his usual complaint but always with a lovely smile. 

“The Indians are only wanting cappuccino Frappuccinos nowadays, so I am relying upon the foreigners to still drink my chai.”

I pay him 20 rupees, about 25 cents, for the cup of tea, but don’t drink it, for he is right, I am a foreigner now in my own home city. With a very first-world stomach.

I go back to my spot to contemplate the crossing once more when suddenly there’s a cacophonous honking of horns, and men start jubilantly pointing up to the heavens. High above the six lanes of vehicular indigestion is an advertising billboard that two men have scaled onto from bamboo ladders, the rungs tied together with fraying rope. They are plastering a poster for the next Hindi film that promises the usual three hours of a sexy, spicy tale of forbidden love told in trilling song-and-dance routines as fountains spurt forth and guys in black jeans go from car chases to line dancing, up there on the silver screen.

The billboard men, or maybe boys, are squeegeeing one side of the poster with loving tenderness; their gloriously Technicolored heroine is now looking down on Bandra through her impossibly green eyes. As a mop caresses her mountainous curves beneath the token diaphanous layer of wet sari, it produces another round of orgasmic honking from the gridlocked traffic below. A group of skinny schoolboys next to me moan in echo, then lunge forward into the crush.

A heavily tressed, mobile-wielding housewife appears beside me. “Yah, yah, 100 percent confirmed. Dinner tonight at the gastro pub. Ciao, baby,” she says in a strange Mid-Atlantic twang that is now a requisite of Mumbai’s burgeoning middle class. But it is her hair that is her real cultural badge, a thick dark mane falling over one shoulder. Not a bead of sweat visible either, while I melt in the fermenting heat.

I decide to use her fleshy frame as a buffer to cross the street, and dart into the traffic next to her, mirroring her moves, the stops and starts, in perfect unison with the drivers who choose to brake or not. 

You often hear earnest foreigners talking about wanting to see the “real India.” They mean village India, those parts relatively untouched by modernity and the crass outside world. But it’s in the subcontinent’s great and growing cities where you’ll see the fulcrum of modern India’s culture. Cities that are undoubtedly some of the most gorgeously complex places on earth.

I finally leave Hill Road and walk into the frantic scurry of Bandra’s fish market. Shoppers haggle with squatting fisherwomen. The floor is slick and slimy. A scrawny cat makes off with a fish head. In the midst of this hullabaloo, a man bumps into me. I mention this only because it’s rare. Indians are dexterous in crowds. As our shoulders touch just lightly, he brings his fingers up to his heart, a silent apology and a prayer. 

No matter where we come from or what we look like, to Indians there’s a spark of God in all of us. He was saying sorry to one of his 33 million gods for bumping into mine, whoever my God might be.

Judy D’Mello is The Star’s education reporter.

Does a person really revert to childhood in old age? Clearly, that can be true in extremes, as when dementia sets in. But what about ordinary aging, the kind that I and many of my friends now testify to? Our bodies give evidence of our having grown older, sure, but have our minds inevitably followed suit? No way.

I have a longtime friend who is 10 years older than I and has always been a role model. If she can do XYZ — yoga, political activism, attendance on the boards of various organizations — I can, too. Of course, maybe I’m indulging myself in wishful thinking on that score: Although we share the good fortune of both our sets of parents having lived into their 90s, there are genetic differences between us. Her father was a wrestler; mine went bowling. My friend was always athletic; me, not so much.

Given that my friend and I have had more up-to-date health care than our parents did in the course of their lifetimes, we should probably live longer than our parents did, barring any unfortunate accident or lightning-strike malady.

I asked my friend the other day if she wanted to make it to 100. “No way,” she said. 

But as for me? A hundred? Oh, yes, I want to hang in there as long as I can.

My mother, who dabbled in real estate as a career late in life, was very active long after most of her friends had decided to throw in the kitchen towel and stay homebound. She was an absolute card shark, outwitting her grandchildren at bridge and canasta, when she was 93 and 94.

Given my optimism about my own longevity, I absolutely refuse to entertain the possibility that I could wind up bedridden, or disabled with Alzheimer’s disease, at some point in the future. Hanging around a nursing home? You have to be kidding me.

Nevertheless, my husband, whose mobility isn’t what it once was, and I have been watching time pass and begun talking about suitable future living arrangements, with an eye toward what might come. We took a look at a brochure the other day for Peconic Landing, the planned community in Greenport that welcomes people over 62. Peconic Landing offers living quarters that can be simple apartments or more elaborate cottages, with all services and conveniences (snowplowing, linens, cleaning, landscaping) handled by the management, as well as guaranteeing continuing health care for those who eventually come to need assistance. It also promises a relay of cultural activities, concerts, and lectures.

It doesn’t sound that bad, I suppose, if you can afford the high costs. But my main intention as I age is to stay as close as possible to my grandchildren here in East Hampton and Amagansett. Revert to childhood? Forget about it. Stay young by hanging around with children? That’s what I’m talking about.

A bald eagle was circling not far above the cupola on George Washington’s Mount Vernon when we visited this week. From the driveway at the end of the house tour, a sharp call could be heard, something like an osprey’s. It was a cold, early spring day, toward closing time, and most of the guests were ready to move on. A federal security guard standing by a wrought-iron stanchion did not look up. Nor did anyone else, as the national bird wheeled around several times and headed down river, still calling.

Tens of thousands of people go to see the Washington estate every year. On Saturday alone, the day of the March for Our Lives anti-gun violence rally in the capital, about 7,000 visitors came through, a staff member said.

It is tricky to tease out a lesson for the custodians of East Hampton’s historical sites. Yes, there may be an appetite here for interpretations of the past, but on the other hand, Mount Vernon is a pilgrimage, almost a must-see for Americans.

Because George Washington is as important an icon as an icon can be, the numbers at Mount Vernon should not be surprising, but the enthusiasm is worth noting. The line to get into the house itself was about 20 minutes long that afternoon. In a feat of remarkable logistics, groups of 20 or 30 people were led through by costumed guides, with time enough for us to stop and peer at the bed in which the man himself had died. To be sure, a no-photography rule helped move the line along; the line at the George and Martha Washington tomb down the hill was much slower.

Context is a la carte at Mount Vernon. There are a few pleasantly distracting signs around the grounds, and visitors can take or leave the good, small museum there as they like. Everyone pretty much knows the story already.

I would certainly like to see a bit more interest in our own historical offerings around East Hampton. It is hard to imagine a Thomas Moran impersonator, for example, at the painter’s restored Main Street house and studio, but it would find an audience. Besides, I’d like to take a turn at it. Could be fun.

The vernal equinox has come and gone, the Northern Hemisphere is tilting toward the sun, and we local sportswriters are not yet saved. Snow on the sodden fields, snow on the tennis courts, snow on the track. . . .

Bonac spring was ever thus, a raw, somewhat ameliorated version of winter during which parents wrapped in blankets huddle on metal bleacher seats, watching sons and daughters play baseball and softball into the waning light. Then, all of a sudden, the trees are leafed out and summer sweeps in, hauling everyone up in its seine, our tempers becoming sourer as the days become sweeter.

Given the looming frenzy, then, it helps, inasmuch as I’m concerned, if spring teams are fun to watch — my measure of success, rather than winning, as I’ve gotten older. (Dare I say, I am even fun to watch, my tennis strokes having become ever more graceful with age, like the maple leaves, whose colors peak before they drop off. “You have beautiful strokes,” a couple of guys I’ve played with have said recently, and, of course, I repeat this as I drive along: “I have beautiful strokes, I have beautiful strokes.” But enough about me.) If we are to freeze in nominal spring, shifting from foot to foot, as we look on at games in March and April and May, at least make it interesting. And, in so doing, raise our tolerance to a genial level by Memorial Day, so we can go gentlemanly into that black hole that we in Bonac know as summer.

Last spring was not so great sportswise. Baseball went winless, softball missed the playoffs — albeit by one game — we didn’t have enough of a turnout to field a boys lacrosse team, shipping the few who had come out to Southampton, girls lacrosse went 3-11. . . . How can you greet the invading hordes with equanimity given that kind of preparation? It was all I could do to be civil.

But this year, I think, will be different. I’ve seen the tennis and baseball teams play, and they look good. Softball sounds as if it will be strong. Girls lacrosse has good coaches. . . . In fact, the coaching staff is stellar across the board. If the kids listen, they will improve.

That, more than anything, is what one likes to see — improvement, in body, mind, and spirit, not to mention the weather.

And speaking of the vernal equinox, apparently you can balance an egg on end any day of the year.

If you haven’t seen Guild Hall’s “Romeo and Juliet” yet, let me recommend it. 

By the time the paper comes out this week, there will have been four morning performances for school groups, in addition to last weekend’s regularly scheduled shows, and it will be staged again on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Judy D’Mello has reviewed the play for this week’s paper, but I wanted to make a few points before the (ahem) lights go out. 

First, even though Shakespeare’s tale about the star-crossed young lovers is sad, this production is a lot of fun. And don’t be put off if you happen to hear the show is three and a half hours long. The length is because there is lots of imaginative stage play, and the action and high jinks will keep you engaged. 

If you are reading this, you surely know the story of “Romeo and Juliet” — so well, in fact, that if you got tired and had to leave at intermission, it would still be worth checking it out (after all, you know the ending). A totally unexpected element of this most familiar of plays, however, were the technical aspects of this production, which broke new ground. Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is illuminated with huge visual projections, and all corners of the theater, including doors and boxes as well as aisles, are transformed, almost becoming part of the proscenium.

The projections and lighting were the work of the theater’s assistant technical director, Joe Brondo, and his assistants. Instead of relying on an artificial tree onstage or the projection of trees on a scrim at the back of the stage, for example, the forest — as well as the walls at the Montagues’ and Capulets’ villas — surround the audience, which is brought right into the scene.  

Josh Gladstone, Guild Hall’s artistic director, directed the play and appears in it as Juliet’s irascible father. He put together a cast featuring a wide range of actors, young and not so young, veterans of the stages of New York City as well as several high school students. 

On the night I saw the production, the audience was relatively young. Many seemed to know the actors; one person filmed part of the action on an iPhone. And that, too, might be called groundbreaking. Audiences at cultural institutions here are often gray-haired, and although the museums and theaters try hard to attract younger audiences, it can be hard to get many 30-somethings and 20-somethings to show up. My guess is that Mr. Gladstone had this in in mind as he experimented with his dynamic casting and settings. I’d wager that the resulting embrace by young audiences might be even more enthusiastic than he anticipated. 

I’m thinking of taking my 10-year-old granddaughter this weekend. Her favorite babysitter, Frankie, an East Hampton High School junior, has a starring role, and I can imagine her waving from her seat and trying to get his attention. Word among some of her schoolmates, who came by bus to be treated to a morning performance last week, was that some of the kissing and carrying on was, in their 8 and 10-year-old eyes, rather too risqué. Of course, they say Shakespeare’s Juliet, as written, was probably only 13 or 14 years old herself. Some of what goes on onstage may be grown up for my granddaughter, but it sure beats the stuff she sees on YouTube.

Some years ago now, I took a call at The Star from Jared Kushner, then the dewy-fresh owner of The New York Observer. Mr. Kushner had the idea that during the summer he might somehow bundle his paper with ours as a way to reach Manhattanites whom he might convert come fall to regular Observer readers.

We declined, thinking that there did not seem to be much of an upside for us. I can’t recall what, if anything, Mr. Kushner offered, other than what he described as added value for The Star. My recollection is that he was basically looking to get something without giving anything in return.

Now, I am not saying that this was the best business decision on my part, but something about the vacuous-sounding Mr. Kushner irritated me. I did not think again about him until his father-in-law announced that he was going to run for president.

Since then, Mr. Kushner, an unpaid adviser to the president with a security clearance problem, has been in the news a great deal.  Recently, the press has paid attention to the way his family real estate company may have lied to officials about rent-controlled apartments in an attempt to keep city inspectors at bay. 

Getting less attention is a story about how a Kushner-owned property in Brooklyn had five suspiciously started hallway fires during a period while it was undergoing renovation. The account, posted on  Medium.com, came from Amanda Guinzburg, whom I met once at a party. She lived in the building, and her story was quite something.

According to Ms. Guinzburg, while fires were breaking out and construction dust was choking residents and building staff, the property management company increased rents, did loud work on Saturdays, and cut off the water supply to the point that about two-thirds of the tenants just gave up and moved out. Meanwhile, a man who lived there who had spoken about suing was evicted and his apartment quickly demolished.

The Associated Press broke another story on Sunday, reporting that the Kushner company had duped city regulators by claiming it had zero rent-control tenants in its dozens of buildings, when there actually were hundreds. As in Ms. Guinzburg’s building, tenants had to deal with extensive construction, banging, drilling, dust, and leaks they believed were targeted harassment to clear the way for higher-paying tenants.

Now, I can’t say how much of this is true. Ms. Guinzburg seemed trustworthy enough when I met her, and the A.P. knows how to report a story accurately. All I can say is that I spoke to Mr. Kushner once, and I decided he was not someone I wanted to do business with.

Ulf Nilsson, the Swedish Paralympics’ sled hockey team’s 53-year-old goalie, said, when questioned by a Times sportswriter, Ben Shpigel, that “the best would be to combine the speed I had when I was young and the knowledge I have now . . . that’s the problem with everything.”

Indeed. “I’m hitting the ball better than I ever have and I can’t move,” I said to a tennis-playing peer the other day. He laughed. As did I.

So, it is true, what’s been said: Form is content, and I should be content with that, no longer being at odds with myself, discordant and cranky, regretting I don’t move as I used to. To hit the ball well is enough, more than enough. 

My late mother-in-law, who hit the ball well too, was once credited with having the greatest gift, the ability to make a beautiful day. And my wife has also been credited with having a great gift — the ability to make people feel good about themselves, to feel, in a word, beautiful. And that’s the truth.

General Loewenhielm in “Babette’s Feast” speaks of infinite grace. My father did too, inspired by the smile of Sister Marie Joseph, as he lay in a hospital bed in France — a smile of infinite grace instantly redeeming.

Mary had that feeling too the other morning, a feeling of bliss, a moment when everything was all right. I told her those moments were momentary, but why did I? She, who invariably makes people feel good about themselves, ought, above all, to feel good about herself, embraced as she is in infinite grace, for more than a moment.

A moment of grace, then, and the discordant doubts and fears and enmities and the ambient cacophony reassert themselves. 

No wonder nations can’t get along, her father once said: We can’t even get along with ourselves.

We should be happy, I suppose, for even a momentary sensation of reconciliation, when the racket and ball kiss each other, when, as the general said, “grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty.”

My son had already begun sketching out his Pinewood Derby car when word came that the Shelter Island Cub Scouts had invited the Girl Scouts — his older sister among them — to take part this year. 

Jasper was not pleased, but Jade was thrilled. We had a genuine battle of the sexes under our very own roof. He immediately claimed it was “not fair” and that she would copy his design. Just as likely, he was worried her car might be better and faster than his. At the same time, he had enjoyed the special attention he got as he talked out his plans with his dad. Jade had plans of her own, however, and they looked nothing like his. She decided right away that hers would be a unicorn car, in spirit if not in appearance. 

To help out, my husband took the lead researching the technical details, and I turned to Pinterest to pull up a vast catalog of potential designs. I tried to give the kids the space to plot out their cars without much interference, because I know my self too well: Once I got the bug, it would be hard to hold back my own strong opinions about how they should form and decorate their cars. I mean, who wouldn’t want to help cut the pine block just so and sand it to the perfect smoothness, paint it with a steadier hand, and carefully attach the wheels for maximum speed? I had so many great ideas!

Scout parents out there, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Go to any Pinewood Derby in the country and you’ll see those cars that look too refined to be made by the hands of a 7 or 9 or 12-year-old. 

It was hard, but I resisted the urge to butt in and take over, offering support only (or mostly only) when asked. 

The Pinterest Pinewood Derby boards were astounding. Judging by the array of finely crafted vehicles with professional flourishes and aerodynamic lines, the Pinewood Derby seed, once planted, continues to grow and flourish long after young scouts graduate into adulthood. Many a budding automotive engineer must have gotten his or her start with a simple block of pine. 

In the end, no matter how beautiful the creations, the derby winners are determined by speed. Which of those little cars, weighted just right and propelled only by gravity, will cross the track’s finish line first? 

Looks may not count, but it sure is fun to check out what everyone comes up with. 

It’s tempting to say that this moment of reckoning in America, which has women across industries demanding that their voices be heard on matters far more serious than the Pinewood Derby, had something to do with girls being invited to this year’s contest. In this case, I think it was sheer numbers — or the lack of them — that spurred the inclusion of girls in this generally boys-only arena. There were just eight boys set to take part. Seven girls took up the challenge. Double the fun. 

Boys and girls raced in separate timed heats. The top three boys and the top three girls won trophies. So close in speed were the eight boys’ cars that a mere three-tenths of a second separated the winner from the eighth-place finisher. 

And the girls? The fastest of their cars was even faster than the boys’ first-place winner. 

Next up, an adult Pinewood Derby, something I hear the Shelter Island Fire Department is considering as a fund-raiser this fall. Sign me up!  

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor. 

Midafternoon on Tuesday, as the snow seemed to be tapering off in East Hampton, I headed out from the Star office to have a look around. Though the roads were clear, few drivers were about. A couple of cars were parked at Main Beach but only one at Georgica when I stopped to watch the surf.

Main Street was empty, too, as was Newtown Lane. All the boutiques were closed. So, it appeared, was the hardware store. The food market across the street was open, but that was it; Mary’s, Villa, the lumberyard, Hampton Country Market, the new beverage place, the electric supply store, the library, Guild Hall, and everything else was dark.

Two village plow drivers pushed snow around at the beach; another cleared the Chase bank parking lot. It was quiet. I passed very few other trucks. Ice broke free of the branches above and hit my windshield with a loud thwack.

It’s hard to know if my memory is right, but I recall that a snowstorm like the one we had this week would not have shut down East Hampton quite so much. If you could get around, you would work. Now we hear about bombogenesis in the North Atlantic. Ordinary winter storms get cutesy, post-millennial sounding names that bring to mind contestants on “The Bachelor” or something. We stock up, hunker down, and catch up on shows we missed.

The kids, though, know better when the ground is white and there is no school. Ellis and his cousin and a friend got together around lunchtime at my sister’s place on Accabonac Road and made what I gather were record-size snowballs and rolled boulders although the heavy snow was too sticky for sledding. They shrieked and ran around until they were too wet and out of breath to go on.

Maybe we had it wrong those decades ago when we showed up almost no matter what. If we nestle down on the couch in a soft blanket with a book while the dog sleeps nearby, the world will nevertheless spin on. The work can wait for another day.