A week ago Sunday at Accabonac Harbor for a picnic, I announced to a friend that I was going to set off to search the shoreline for Native American stone tools. I had gotten excited about the prospect looking at images from the Montauk Indian Museum of arrowheads and other things picked up on the beach here and there. “I’ll be back shortly,” I said.

Seven minutes later, by my friend’s estimation, I was back, a white-quartz triangular tool about the size of a half-dollar in hand. I was pleased, but puzzled. It was an astonishingly beautiful thing, but was it legal for me to have picked it up?

New York law prohibits the collection of archaeological artifacts from state land without a permit. Where I was, inside Accabonac Harbor with my feet in the water, is East Hampton Town Trustee property, but as far as I can tell from a cursory look, trustee regulations and town law have nothing to say on the matter. If the trustees want to claim the stone point for their collection or want me to put it back where I found it, I will comply.

Meanwhile, I have the tool in my office, where I pick it up from time to time and wonder about its intended use. Two of its three corners are gone, though I can see from the fine and symmetrical edges that it was crafted with exceptional care. Holding it, I think about the person who made it and who might have used it and then discarded or lost it while hunting along the shore.

For thousands of years, native people lived and thrived and dreamed and died here, leaving behind indelible, if often overlooked, signs of their presence like the probable spear point now on my desk. To think that someone I will never know chipped this perfect thing out of a featureless stone and held it in hand so long ago simply fills me with awe.

Because Helen Harrison is an expert on 20th-century Ame­rican art and has written about it, her latest book should not have come as a surprise. On the other hand, what would your reaction have been upon first encountering her first work of fiction, a paperback novel called “An Exquisite Corpse,” with a cover drawing of a figure wearing a dark mask with a chicken foot on one leg, a boot on one hand, and an umbrella in the other? Surprise! 

 Ms. Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, where Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, lived and worked, has just published an engaging and hilarious whodunit peopled with characterizations of well-known Surrealists and familiar members of the art world, their lovers, and a good number of cops and robbers.

“An Exquisite Corpse” is based on a parlor game that the Surrealists are said to have played. The game involves passing a piece of paper on which you write some words or do a drawing and then fold so what you have done cannot be seen by the next person to get it. Ms. Harrison provided her exquisite corpse with just such an inexplicable outfit (and must have had fun doing so).

Andre Breton, a Surrealist who wrote its “manifesto,” has said the game, like the artwork itself, was “designed to provide the most paradoxical confrontation possible” between elements. It is he who sets the story in motion, finding a fellow artist, the Cuban Wilfredo Lam, sprawled dead wearing a bizarre costume that might have been drawn in such a game.

The book is self-published, which has limited the critical attention it has received, and that’s too bad, especially among those interested in the Surrealists and Greenwich Village of the 1920s, who recognize such artists’ hangouts as the Cedar Tavern, and who are familiar with art world figures such as, for example, Roberto Matta, Peggy Guggenheim, Max Ernst, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, Marcel Duchamp, and Harold Rosenberg. They all play a part. 

Ms. Harrison’s characters speak and behave personally in ways that seem thoroughly appropriate, given what is known of their real lives. She also manages to give them secretive, fictionalized roles in a smuggling operation, on which the story spins. Anne Matta, one of the artist’s real-life wives, is the key to the mystery. In the fiction, she absolves the artists of murder, while at the same time keeping their involvement in drug smuggling undiscovered. She even undoes the misimpression that a murder was committed.

Even though I spent a good part of the 20th century here and knew some of the figures in this book, I didn’t remember the work of Wilfredo Lam, although he was a prominent Surrealist whose idiosyncratic Afro-Cuban images were highly praised. The real Lam, whose background explains the mask that the fictional Lam was wearing when found dead, was a good target for fiction, although he did not die until 1982. 

Ms. Harrison, whose best known book until now is “Hamptons Bohemia,” reads a lot of mysteries and uses credible police lingo. She told me she often found what happens in the books she reads implausible, so she decided to write one herself. She’s working now on a sequel, although this time it’s a love story. 

I hope you are intrigued. “An Exquisite Corpse” is available at Amazon and BookHampton.

The Ethiopian-American population of the United States is 2 million, with Ethiopians second only to Nigerians among people of African origin. The number is significant even given Ethiopia’s current population of an incredible 104,396,011, as estimated by the United Nations.

One of the world’s oldest civilizations, Ethiopia is also one of the world’s poorest countries, with per capita annual income estimated to be $590. Primarily agricultural, it has experienced hunger and poverty for most of its long history and malnutrition in children remains prevalent. That is probably the most common public face of Ethiopia, but those who know the country think of its grand history, of castles and the Queen of Sheba, when the subject comes up. Ethiopia became Ethiopia (Abyssynia) a thousand years before Christ was born, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity began when Europeans were still pagans. 

Parents brought their kids to the ninth annual Ethiopian Heritage and Culture Camp in Virginia last weekend so the kids could get to know others who share their heritage, and so the whole family could learn more about the culture of their roots. Mekdes Bekele, an Ethiopian-American who had herself struggled to raise a bicultural child, founded the camp and has met its complicated challenges remarkably well.

I was privileged to be one of six grandparents among the 215 adults and 160 children there last weekend, and I was constantly surprised by the range of programs available for children, who ranged from toddlers through high school. Most of the children were adopted from Ethiopia. Several older teenagers were returnees who had become counselors-in-training. There were plenty of games (not just soccer), lessons in traditional dancing, music-making, pottery, fishing, swimming, cooking, hair and skin care sessions, storytelling, and lessons in Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language.

While the kids were busy, adults could enjoy Ethiopian coffee, made with ceremony while sitting on the ground, or attend discussions on such topics as raising first-generation Americans, traveling in Ethiopia, and mindful parenting. They also could try some Ethiopian dancing, pottery-making, and cooking of their own. An adult program that mimicked one for the kids was an introduction to spoken Amharic, and I have to admit to being phonetically challenged, or, to put it mildly, a slow learner. I did learn that many words are differentiated by gender, as well as to say the words for “hi,” “peace,” “okay,” and “it is.” Other adults went on to speak in simple sentences.

Because I had gone with my daughter to Ethiopia when she adopted her second child, I was familiar with the grain called teff, which is cooked into the traditional Ethiopian flatbread called injera, with which one scoops up food from the plate with fingers. As it turned out, I enjoyed the two Ethiopian meals we were served much more than the American fare.

The program for adults that I found most moving was presented by four women in their 20s, who shared, often tearfully, personal stories about how they had been treated by other children as well as adults while growing up in this country, and the overwhelming challenges of trying to figure out what their identity was in America.

An emanation of human warmth had been evident from the moment we arrived at the camp. It was symbolized for me by a sweet 41/2-year-old Ethiopian child who spent a lot of time playing with my granddaughter. This little girl didn’t have much English, but she heard my grandchildren saying hello to me and quickly figured out what my name had to be. Thank you, Amara, for calling out “Grandma” whenever we met.

The big annual shoe sale is on. A huge room filled with tables of countless pairs of shoes is either your idea of hell or your idea of heaven. If you want to stop reading now, you are in the first category. If you are in the second, I really don’t need to preach to your choir, but if you are new to the area, here goes. 

Every summer at the end of August, Shoe Inn has a warehouse sale. (Closing day this year is Sunday.) Shoes are piled three deep in boxes under tables, and by that I mean three boxes deep by three boxes deep. The tabletops are solid shoeboxes, again three deep by another three deep by another three deep. You cannot see the floor under the tables and you cannot see the tabletops. (Heaven or hell, you decide.)

As for the very tidy aisles, well, they are full of people trying on shoes. The corners of the room are full of people sitting on the floor, surrounded by their finds (gigantic IKEA bags are made available for your shopping pleasure). These bags are large enough to hold a child or a dog or both. They encourage shopping by their very vastness.

And no, it is not chaotic. The shoeboxes are open and they are organized by size. The prices are clearly available on posters on the wall. Maybe your heart is racing with the thrill of the hunt.

Take a breath. 

Imagine you are in New York, waiting for the Jitney. Bored, you wander into a shoe store to kill time and decide to try on a pair of shoes. Any shoes, mostly because you get to sit down. This is a process that takes a while . . . sizes and then they have to go get the desired try-on, one pair at a time. Sigh. There is not much fun in that process. 

Consider instead a rainy day in the East Hampton area. Not a beach day. You and a friend want to go shopping. At this warehouse shoe sale, you are your own salesperson. In other words you can try on everything without bothering anyone. Note to shoppers: Wear old shoes that slip off easily, and prepare to sit or kneel on the floor (there are no chairs). 

Wonder what that gold leather gladiator sandal (with fringe) with the six-inch heel would look like on your foot? Go ahead, try it on. 

This is kind of like Loehmann’s in the old days (but you don’t have to get down to your skivvies).

You might have a fun conversation with a nearby tryer-onner. “How does this look?” you might ask, and she might wonder if the studded flats are “Brooklyn” enough. You use cellphones to take pictures and show each other how your feet look (there are no mirrors). 

You both might conclude that the gold sandals will not be good for walking on grass (or walking at all) and move on to another table. There are hundreds of shoes in your size. Now you might hate them and you might not fit into them, but playing dress-up is an activity many women embrace like a extra piece of pie.

That there is no one rushing you, that you can try on everything (and put it back in the box, neatly, please, in the right size area) without a hassle is just a delight. There are helpers who pretty much know if they have seen that plaid flat with the tassel in a buried box, and they will happily look for you, but otherwise you are on your own. 

For total newbies: Upon entering you are gobstruck. It feels like an acre of shoeboxes, all open, ready to be played with. When you regain your wits (and if you have not fled) you are offered the Ikea shopping bag. At first you demur. How could I buy that many shoes? Oh, wait, that bag makes it easier, doesn’t it? Ah, yes, it fits over my shoulder. And you are off to find your size. Or sizes, because everyone knows that not every size 9 fits the same way, and sometimes an 11 (!) in that shoe is a better fit. That 91/2 you normally wear might be a 10 or even a 9 depending on the shoe (try them both, silly girl). 

By the way, if you feel like trying on Ivanka’s made-in-China shoes, they are there, and if you want to feel like you are besties with the Kardashians, their shoes are there, too. 

And from your spot in front of the first table of size 10s you might hear, as I did, some pretty funny conversations. 

Gentleman of a certain age shopping with a lady-of-a-certain-age (LOACA): “Honey, you have tried on every shoe in your size. . . . Do you want to start over?”

A pair of millennials: “Those look great. Try these and these and these. . . . I already got those yesterday; this is my third visit.”

And echoing from every shoe-size section the repeating chorus of: “I love those.” “They look like hooker shoes” ( clearly a mother speaking). “I am getting them in every color.” “I love these.” “They will go with everything.” “I need something glitzy.” “I wanted them in red; well, maybe they’ll have them tomorrow.” (Note: They restock daily.) 

And: “Wow, I can walk in these.” “I cannot walk in these.” “ Too high.” “Perfect, I love them, thanks for finding them for me.” “My boyfriend would love these on me.” “Try and find it in a bigger (smaller) size, please, mom.” “I have to have these.” “You have to get those.” 

And finally, overheard from behind me while I waited to buy my (exact number deleted from text) shoes: “I will be buried in these shoes.”

Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer for The Star and is also known as The Star’s Hunter-Gatherer in her frequent “Gimme” shopping columns. 

I awoke Tuesday to the cries of fledgling ospreys soaring overhead. Every year about this time, the young occupants of nearby nests launch into the air for their first flights at the beach and, exuberant, at least to my ears, screech in evident delight as they earn their wings.

I did not know this sound as a child living near the same beach. As recounted in The Star’s most recent East magazine, which came out last week, osprey were once all but extinct. Among their few last refuges was Gardiner’s Island, where, although in a single 1905 count a local naturalist had found a nesting colony with as many as 600 breeding adult osprey, they had dwindled to a point in about 1966 at which only three or four fledglings survived.

Scientists knew what was going on: DDT, a common mosquito control pesticide, was weakening the birds’ eggs to the point that they would crumble in the nests before the year’s young could hatch. Once DDT was banned nationwide in 1972, the osprey came back.

The path to the ban, however, was not smooth, as Glyn Vincent described in the recent East. Dennis Puleston, an amateur ornithologist, and Charles Wurster, a biologist at Stony Brook University, took the osprey’s protection to the laboratory first and then to court, suing the county mosquito commission to stop the use of DDT. Publicity surrounding the case eventually led to a state ban.

From New York, the anti-DDT movement spread widely. Soon, the Environmental Defense Fund, which grew out of the Long Island effort and was headed by Mr. Puleston, scored a victory in federal court, which ordered the then newly created Environmental Protection Agency to take DDT off its approved list. Slowly, the ospreys returned.

Osprey are relatively plentiful these days, to the point that they almost are just part of the avian background, like seagulls or starlings. Though, as the young ones just out of the nest make their first madly joyous flights at the beach, I cannot help but pause to marvel.

Gustavo Morastitla said in answer to a question I’d posed following Jordan’s Run at the end of last month that the summer, after all, was only half over.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a chill. That, I suppose, is the difference between 17 and 77. 

Soon, very soon, summer will be over, I’m telling you. You can already see dead leaves, signs of change, but as Al Franken in a former incarnation used to say, “And that’s okay.”

I know I don’t look it, crepey skin and all, but I feel pretty good — even now, near the end of the actuarial line. Just about everyone’s 70 in the tennis club where I play, as I was reminded the other day, and on the courts we battle as hard as we can. Surely it’s comical, creaky as we are, but while the flesh is weak, the spirit is sprightly. And like Gustavo we’re bent on improving — the only difference being that because we’re bent we don’t improve, or, if so, not by much. But that’s okay.

Ever in search of an edge, I’ve begun to swing kettlebells too, a discipline that done correctly ought to help me to straighten up and fly right, to strengthen my core in short, in shorts too. 

I’ve always been attracted to the lightweight T-shirts they have at Truth Training, though the words on the back, such as “This Is Muscle” (in my case it should be “This Is Muscle?”) and “Earn Your Beer” make rather grandiose claims. 

“Oooh . . . Truth Training,” I hear some at the club whisper. As I say, whatever will provide an edge.

I entered the 70s singles tournament in a rather fraternal frame of mind, I would do it to give a fellow septuagenarian a game — no thought of winning, mind. And now, having barely scraped by in the first and second rounds, saved in the first by the fact that after almost two hours of mano-a-mano, my opponent had to excuse himself to pee, thus providing me with a restorative respite in the shade (Note: You must go in for a terminal alliteration treatment as soon as the summer’s over), I’m foaming at the mouth, uttering oaths, defying the gods, and not serving as a very good role model for my grandsons, which is probably not okay.

That I’m averse to change can readily be seen if you step into my car, a 2002 Solara. When, after the second-round agon, my daughter Emily did, she said she was doing so at risk of anaphylactic shock. It would, she said, as she wrote “Emily Was Here” in the dust and pollen-covered dashboard, be a perfect place for an allergen immersion treatment. When she and the kids alit at Indian Wells, I gathered some of the dog hairs into a white mustache before saying goodbye.

Justly shamed, after they’d left for Connecticut, I washed it and vacuumed it, and was especially proud of how neat the trunk, untouched in the past half-dozen years, looked. I knew because our late Lab Henry’s blanket was still there, under the leaves and sand and detritus. I teared up as I held it. Summer was half-over and I felt a chill in the air, though there was a match yet to play.

As host of the third panel on timely, serious issues under the umbrella of Guild Hall’s Hamptons Institute on Monday, Alec Baldwin wore a number of his many hats comfortably. The topic, “The New Normal in News: Ideology vs. Fact,” was explored by Mr. Baldwin and a prestigious panel: Nicholas Lehmann, former dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism and a frequent essayist for The New Yorker, Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!,” the long­time muckraking radio program, and Bob Garfield, the author of five books and a podcast on journalism and advertising and a co-host of the radio and online program “On the Media.”

Mr. Baldwin said he has been a news junky since he was 10, something we know here at The Star from the letters to the editor he has submitted over the years. As president of Guild Hall’s board of trustees, he helped plan the panels and took this one to heart, asking tough questions and eliciting generally jaundiced views of the corporate media and TV pundits from the panelists. He even found an occasion to bring down the house with his comical and by now familiar Donald Trump impersonation.

Acknowledging that the panelists could all be considered liberals, he said Guild Hall had tried but failed to get an avowed conservatives like Tucker Carlson to take part. And he drew out an apparent lofty consensus: Despite apocalyptic change in how and where people get news, and the many questionable sources, intellectual honesty continues to be the reporter’s credo.

As someone who has dedicated more than the last 50 years to newspapering, it was an evening well spent. The conversation was informative, sometimes provocative, and helped put “fake news” in perspective. Besides, Nicholas Lehmann had quite a few things to say about today’s Columbia School of Journalism, where the late Everett Rattray, who edited this paper from 1958 to 1980, and I met and sealed our fates.

The panelists bemoaned the lack of press coverage of local and state government across the country, saying it resulted in the loss of an informed citizenry, and Mr. Baldwin cited the Los Angeles Times as a major newspaper that managed to do it all. I couldn’t help think he could have applauded The East Hampton Star for being a community forum, where issues are brought to light and opinions of all stripes are published week after week in our expansive (and sometimes exhaustive) letters pages. Turn this page and take a look. There are 40 letters this week.

“You’re good to go,” my dentist, Perry Silver, said after cleaning my teeth.

“That’s what I said yesterday to Mary after we had the cesspool pumped,” I said. 

I don’t know, there’s something about the way you feel after you’ve had your cesspool pumped — cleansed, ready to begin anew. 

I’ve been reading Jung lately, about the unconscious and its repressed contents that we ought to face if we really want to know ourselves, and there before me, once the cover had been pried off and we were peering down, was the unconscious metaphorically speaking. 

“Not bad,” the pumper said. I gloried in his words. “Not bad, that’s good,” I said. 

My daughter was coming, that was one thing that prompted me — an avoider as well as a voider — to take action. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened just prior to a festive dinner out there in Ohio, a root-caused massive cloacal contraction that cast us to the winds — Emily, Anderson, and the kids going to his parents’ house for the night, and Mary and I to his brother’s down the street, which was unoccupied that weekend.

Mary loved it that Todd’s house was so neat, so uncluttered. “Is he an architect? An engineer?” I asked. At any rate, its sleekness was the polar opposite of ours, whose dark living room with its raggedy books, sideboard, knife boxes (so the servants couldn’t steal the knives), velvet love seat, and dining room table that can be folded up against the wall when you’re having guests over for champagne, gavottes, and quadrilles is more 18th century than 21st.

Emily wants us to open and brighten it up, to consciously face our collective mess by ridding ourselves of the ratty oriental rug, by painting the classic burgundy window trim white (maybe Anderson will get to that when he visits next week), by replacing the three-cushion Jennifer convertible couches with one or ones more conducive to conversation, and by putting the plasma TV up over the fireplace, which we won’t do because that’s where Billy Hofmann’s beautiful painting “Louse Point,” with its moody allusion to the collective unconscious, is. We never tire of it. I’m glad I told him so once at One-Stop.

A founder of the Maidstoners softball team, the other being Dan Christensen, Billy, who could also pivot neatly in turning a double play, used to say he presumed Thoreau was my guide, and that if he wasn’t, he should be. This morning, in a review of a new biography of him by Laura Dassow Walls, I read that he once said, “Surely joy is the condition of life!”

He’s batting 1.000 in my book then.

But back to the unconscious, I dreamed the other night that my late stepfather was maniacally at the wheel of a car in which I and my mother were captive passengers. He was careening down the street toward a bank — we couldn’t stop him — and, as we feared, smashed the car right into it. A shot rang out.

I’ll admit it was puzzling, until I remembered that my basketball-playing grandchildren were on their way here and that they had great bank shots. Voila. Don’t talk to me about the unexamined life. 

To the dismay of many, Labor Day weekend has arrived, and for Hamptoners it officially marks the end of summer. White, beachy apparel, nautical stripes, and floral bohemian dresses will be stored away for next-summer use, or likely for the holiday season when St. Barth’s, the Bahamas, and Palm Beach seem better suited for weekend tans and holiday getaways than the windy, white winters on the East End. 

For locals, on the other hand, Labor Day weekend marks the finale of a long-awaited three months of pop-up shops, celebrity sightings, summer concerts at the Surf Lodge, hours of traffic, and the inability to get a reservation at just about any and every restaurant.  

While locals will revel in the tranquillity, and travelers will anxiously wait for next year’s Memorial Day weekend to mark a new beginning to summer, ambivalence is undeniable when you’re in not one, but both of these groups. 

Having left home at 15 years old for boarding school, I grew up yearning for summers in the Hamptons, and so did all of the friends I made. Maybe they’d heard about it from their parents, listened to librettos from a multitude of music artists, watched “White Chicks,” or wanted to experience a real-life “Gossip Girl” episode (all of these have ways of infiltrating conversation when you say you’re from Southampton).

Though I suppose the South Fork can be all of those things, the reality of hectic summer months — no beach parking spots, bustling Main Streets, lack of dining availability, and heavy traffic — while far from the glamour “the Hamptons” exudes, had an air of excitement . . . maybe because I, to a degree, was a vacationer . . . a faux local. 

Memorial Day marked my arrival and Labor Day my sendoff to Sheffield, Mass., and eventually Winston-Salem, N.C., but now my days in academia are over. This year I will outlive the expiration date on my summer beach parking sticker and end the seven-year streak of spending September elsewhere, and while it’s a bit unsettling, I’m equally thrilled. The weather (insert emoji with heart eyes)!

For the record, all those episodes and songs . . . they’re misleading. Sure, summer is great, but oh, the fall. . . . The air is crisp, the fields are voluminous, the ocean is warm, the leaves transform into every shade from fiery red to canary yellow, the roads are open, light beams glisten and bounce off everything in their direct line, and the sunsets. . . . Civility takes the wheel and ruckus patiently sits in the passenger seat for a ride through the fall, winter, and spring seasons. 

Maybe it’s the frenzied summers that make falls on the East End so glorious. Maybe it’s just as beautiful, only now we have time to digest it. 

Jackie Pape is a reporter for The Star, and about to spend her first fall on the South Fork.

A hurricane passed well east of us this week. The storm was born as a low-pressure area in the Atlantic off the Turks and Caicos. Sometime around Sunday, it pulled itself together, and the National Hurricane Center gave it the eighth name on its current list.

Gert was, for us, the first tropical storm of the season. On land, one scarcely would have known of it, except for a rumble of suddenly high surf. At the beach, it was different. As the day ended Tuesday, the sea began to stir, and lifeguards at the village beaches talked about whether to drag their stands to higher ground for the night. 

At the popular surfing spots, the summer’s small-wave torpor seemed shaken off. Young men in pickup trucks sped into the parking lots, loudly checking with friends before pulling on their wetsuits and running down to the beach.

Hurricanes and big tropical storms offshore change everything in the water. Surfers from who knows where show up, tangling the lineup of locals used to one another’s ways. There is a subtle etiquette among the waves that may be unfamiliar to people from away or perhaps just not universally shared. What are unspoken rules here may not apply at breaks up west.

Here, there is sort of a rotation. If you catch a wave from a certain place, I have an expectation that I will be next for a shot. If I miss my chance, the next person in this rough line gets his or her chance. Surfers maintain a polite distance from one another, don’t sit in front of each other, and don’t paddle aggressively past someone to get quick priority. It’s all a bit like waiting at a takeout counter; in the absence of a line, hungry folks get grumpy fast.

There is a point where the order breaks down, even among locals. When too many people gather at a restaurant or a surf break, the cues become harder to read. We glare, look for familiar, commiserating faces, and roll our eyes. Then we catch a wave or get our dinner and all is well again.