Our friend Mary, who spent the weekend visiting for the first time in more than a year, immediately felt something was amiss. “You don’t have a dog,” she said, looking around. 

What Mary didn’t know is that I had been visiting the Animal Rescue Fund’s kennels throughout the winter, hoping to find a new canine companion. A year has passed since the little black rescue from Puerto Rico we adopted from ARF was killed by a car. Before Sookie arrived, we had built what we thought was an escape-proof fence around the back garden; we had just begun getting to know her when she bolted out of a gate that was unfortunately left open by a yard worker. Since then, the gate latch has been replaced, and a gap in the fencing corrected. We are ready. We have no other pets in the house, we have no small children, and we have a lot of attention to give: My dogs have always come to work with me, and almost never are left alone.

Even though I self-identify as a dog person, before the Sookie tragedy, I actually hadn’t owned one in a long time — not during the long life of a querulous cat called White Boots, whom we took in after one of our granddaughters fell in love with her at ARF and became inconsolable when she couldn’t adopt it because a family member was allergic to felines. White Boots, who would not tolerate dogs, and barely tolerated people, went to meet his maker a couple of years ago.

I like cats, too, but dogs have had a big place in my life since I was a child. You know those security questions you get when setting up online accounts of various sorts? I used to always answer “Gypsy” when asked for the name of my first pet. (Yes, concerned readers, I have since changed that security key.) Gypsy was a small, longhaired mutt whose tail was so full it seemed to be the same size as her head. Then there was Mamie, an old black Lab who had been in the Rattray family for years when I got married. The first dog of married life was a marvelous, loving Newfoundland we called Meg. The kids used to tell strangers on the beach that Meg was actually a bear; she was that big. And, then, there came Wickus, and Napeague, and Mookie, and Tanya, and Goodie. . . .  I could tell my life story in dogs.

Getting a dog is more complicated now because the entire family believes it has the right to chime in on the selection. We all agree that if we do get one, my husband and I should adopt a rescue. I have gone to ARF probably a dozen times with my daughter and her two children, and each of us has strong opinions on those we meet. My daughter goes for scruffy-coated dogs, big or small. My grandson likes small, lively ones — especially those with amber-colored coats — who are able to jump over a log when we take them for a walk in the woods behind the kennels. My granddaughter is generally dubious and quickly decides it is more fun to visit the cats and kittens.

Nowadays, of course, not only are we not ready, willing, or able to bring up a puppy (though ARF has had lots of adorable ones), but we are not as agile as we once were. Whatever dog we choose, it will have to be grown-up, calm, and good on a leash. I prefer big dogs, but I concede that our future one probably shouldn’t be large enough to pull us over, either. 

 The last time we visited ARF, we all fell for a big, scruffy, yellow-colored dog who was curious, friendly, and of a perfect age — which is to say, on the elderly side. Unfortunately, we were told, this charming fellow was not on the adoptable list because he had “severe separation anxiety” and, in his last home, had not only destroyed furniture but crashed through a window in an attempt to catch up with his owners when they left the house. He will live out his days in the safety of ARF. 

Now it is spring, and I think our dog is out there somewhere. Perhaps the power of the press will take hold of this situation. If anyone reading this knows of a suitable dog, please let me know.

When I said I might write a column about the participation-com­petition debate as it concerns youth sports, Mary said I should stop beating a dead horse.

But it’s not a dead horse — it’s alive and kicking. I’m afraid I’m beyond saving in this regard, admittedly beguiled by winning teams, though I’m aware at the same time that constant blows to the ego can turn one off a sport.

People my age, I think, tend not to champion the present day’s feel-good, trophy-for-everyone philosophy. As Sharon said in our tennis clinic this morning, her 11 or 12-year-old grandson, on receiving one for having, basically, shown up, was not fooled. You’ve got to know how to win and how to lose, she said. If everyone’s a winner, you’ll never know how to lose. You’ll be living, consequently, in a dream world. 

Being able to treat winning and losing as the imposters they are is, I think, the key — to learn how to remain centered and calm in a frenzied, spinning world.

Preening can lead to a fall, and defeatism simply makes things worse. So what is fun, which we all want? Playing as best you can in the moment, uniting as best as you can the mind with the body so that you can be as even-tempered in victory as in defeat. And then, of course, practice, practice, practice, whether a lopsided winner or a lopsided loser on a given day.

Giving a trophy to everyone is a form of patronizing too. One should work for trophies.

As for the matter at hand, youth basketball, perhaps some constraint ought to be imposed, such as requiring each player on a squad to play a certain number of minutes (though leveling rules can smack of patronizing too).

“I’d rather be pummeled than patronized,” I said to Phil Kouffmann following a 6-0 doubles loss the other day, recalling the times pros have toyed with me rather than give me their best shots, as Phil had done. I’ll get him next time.

Meanwhile, buck up, kids. And, by all means, have fun . . . and practice, practice.

Up before dawn, I heard a spade-foot toad calling from the small swamp just west of my house. Spring mornings can be loud down here alongside Gardiner’s Bay, but on Wednesday, after a thunderstorm that came through during the night, the toad and a few birds whose songs I did not recognize were the only voices I heard.

Standing outside for a minute or two with the dogs, I tried to listen closely. The sound of a slow rush of waves pushed by the northwest wind came over the dune. Something in the brush to my right made a repeated sharp chirp. A gull called. There was the distant rumble of the surf on the ocean. A car drove by, its tires hissing over the wet asphalt. The sky was lighter now; the toad had become quiet.

Birds and other creatures can predict the weather to some degree, my father told me when I was small. You can tell when a hurricane is approaching by their silence, he said. Indeed, I remember that before a hurricane in 1976, as we prepared to evacuate to a friend’s house in the village, the world seemed unnaturally still. My father, never the mystic, attributed this to animals’ ability to sense rapid drops in air pressure, and that explanation has been good enough for me.

But the stillness the morning after thunder puzzles me. Could it be that the birds and spring peepers are left exhausted by the rain, confused by the bright flashes that interrupted their nighttime reveries? Certainly the human realm seems slower on mornings like these. Conversations are shorter. The phone doesn’t ring. Drivers seem to have a little less urgency. We reach for a second cup of coffee before getting on with the day.

Before getting up from the table where I am writing to wake the kids and get them ready for school, I open a kitchen window just a bit so I can hear what the birds are doing. Over the sound of the furnace I listen to just one whose name I do not know.

An inveterate but rank amateur birder, I nevertheless enjoy seeing birds at the feeder or suet cake through the sun porch windows so much that it is often a high point of my day.

Most of what I know about birds I learned as a camp counselor in northwestern New Jersey, where endless stretches of woodland were filled with many bird species, among them some that are not often seen here, like the scarlet tanager, and others, like the slate-colored junco, that do show up on the East End more regularly.

I got to thinking about bird-watching this week when an Audubon magazine arrived that had a story about Richard Koeppel, who had been one of the world’s top birders. Mr. Koeppel, who once lived in Springs, had a world bird list numbering more than 7,000. Inspired, I dug out a list I started perhaps 25 years ago about birds seen in East Hampton, and counted 21. 

Sigh. Well, maybe the list would be longer if I had kept it up-to-date. I can remember when the sight of an osprey, endangered for decades, would have thrilled us to the core; now, of course, the ospreys — which do seem to fly into town on the first day of spring (a.k.a. fish-hawk day, as the old-timers called it) — have returned with a vengeance. Similarly, a great blue heron used to stir up some excitement around here, but one is now a neighborhood habitué of Town Pond, barely meriting a raised eyebrow. On the other hand, the whippoorwill, sadly, no longer can be heard singing in the gloaming, as it did every night in the 1960s and 1970s, when we lived in Promised Land.

  In Audubon, Dan Koeppel, whose 2005 book, “To See Every Bird on Earth,” is about his relationship with his father, tells a touching story about his father’s failure to see a mountain quail before his death in 2012.

I am sorry that I haven’t kept more than random notes on the birds I’ve seen on vacation in faraway places. But on a fairly recent trip to Costa Rica I filled a notebook with observations, in particular about the birds. Taking a small boat around the edges of a pond near our hotel when we first arrived and later, when we joined others touring a river, I recorded many bird sightings, including a small green kingfisher, which I unsurprisingly noted was beautiful, and others with exotic names, like Montezuma oropendula. The most exciting bird-watching, though, occurred on our last day in Costa Rica, when we parked our car at the edge of a cove at Potrero Beach and saw a flock of brown pelicans perform a riveting aerial dance as they dove for fish.

While musing on birds this morning, I couldn’t help thinking about a rare bird and a rare moment of national bird interest. The year was 1948, and Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a State Department official, of being a Communist. In testimony by both men and a series of convoluted hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Chambers told the committee many details about Hiss’s personal life, trying to convince the committee of their friendship. Much of what Chambers said was false, but one statement was true: Hiss had seen a prothonotary warbler. 

When Hiss innocently testified that, yes, he had seen the bird, the committee decided Chambers was telling the truth about more important matters, too. Hiss was convicted of perjury two years later, and the warbler took its place in American history.

Can you imagine one of today’s congressional hearings pivoting on a prothonotary warbler? I can’t. Public figures who know the esoteric names of birds — or who are willing to demonstrate any sort of intellectual or academic acheivement — have all but vanished from the political scene, it seems to me, in these anti-intellectual times. Maybe, like the osprey (but not, I hope, like un-Americanism trials), they will make an unforeseen comeback.

A few weeks back, I stopped at the Village Cheese Shop after a doctor’s appointment in Southampton. As I walked in, I noticed an older woman with silver hair and a flattering red suit sitting at a table with a group of other women her age, maybe a little younger. She was the kind of woman you knew instantly had style and great taste. She must have been quite stunning in her youth. I decided she was in her 80s now. She was still quite beautiful. 

It was busy for a Thursday. I waited in a long line for a sandwich, impatiently looking at my iPhone and thinking about all the work piling up in my inbox, how I needed more pills for our dog’s stiff joints, and about how my doctor’s visit did not go so well. Another long line at the cashier, and then I bounded out the door for my car, parked in front of the shop. 

That lovely older woman, a walker steadying her, was making her way toward a car waiting for her out on Main Street. As I got behind her as she slowly made her way near my driver’s-side door, I realized her driver, a middle-aged woman, took notice of the situation, as did the lady with the walker, and both began to apologize. 

Their concern for me made me disappointed in myself that even for a sliver of a second I had been frustrated by such an inconsequential delay. I placed my food in the car and walked over to the pair and offered a hand. The driver took the walker and I took the lady by the arm. 

As I went to open the passenger door, I noticed a little dog, and I asked her if he would like to jump out — so many can be escape artists. She assured me her dog would never do that. She had rescued it, and they developed such a strong attachment that the pup would not dare leave her side. 

The dog, named Peanut, or something similar, I can’t recall, sat down on the center console, wagging its little tail and ready to jump onto a lap. I told the woman I, too, had a rescue dog and how wonderful they are. She agreed.

As she settled into her seat and I helped swing her legs into position, she looked up at me, very matter-of-factly, and said, “What beautiful hair you have.” This surprised me because I had worn my hair in its untamed, natural state — a combination of curls and waves. I had not had time to carefully blow-dry and straighten it. She must have sensed my confusion, and told me again. 

I wondered if with age you really do tend to appreciate everything just a little bit more. Perhaps I should not worry about such things as straightening my hair, covering the strands of gray, the inbox getting full, and waiting. Perhaps I should enjoy the process. 

I remember my mother saying that her father used to caution, “Where I am now, you too shall be.” I would add — if we are lucky. I hope to grow to that lovely lady’s age, and be as graceful and kind as she seemed, all while rocking a head of beautiful gray hair and a stylin’ outfit, and that there’s a cuddly dog happy to see me. 

I pray, too, some young woman in a rush doesn’t sigh when I get in front of her with my walker. 

By the way, I’ve been wearing my hair curly a lot more lately.

Remember the gas crisis of the mid-1970s and the long lines at filling stations? If you aren’t old enough to have been there, you aren’t likely to recall the nationwide energy-conservation effort that followed. 

The United States was already largely reliant on foreign oil, and in particular Saudi Arabia’s. Our own oil production was relatively high, but oil reserves were low. What caused the crisis was that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries slipped us, and a number of other countries, a Mickey Finn in 1974 by embargoing the sale of oil in retaliation for support of Israel in its 1973 war with Arab countries (the Yom Kippur war).

The result was not only unhappy drivers in aggravating queues at gas stations, but inflation, unemployment, and a nationwide 55-mile-an-hour speed limit on the highways. The embargo also had a global impact, with European countries and Japan needing U.S. assistance to secure energy sources.

But this crisis had a positive side, too, sparking a broad energy-conservation movement in the United States. Fuel scarcity prompted the first federal fuel-economy standards for vehicles. Americans were encouraged to conserve energy in every way possible — unplugging electronic devices when not in use, and thinking small when it came to cars. 

As we all know, that long-ago movement didn’t last long. Instead, we went wild in the following decades with no-holds-barred energy wasting. Appliances got bigger, the electronic devices we considered essential to our households grew in type, number, and sophistication, and air-conditioning became near-universal. The S.U.V. became our defining American vehicle, replacing the cute little “economy cars” of the 1970s.

The general public was not concerned about what fossil fuels were doing to the environment, and only a few voices in the wilderness were heard raising the alarm when domestic oil production soared and conservation foundered. Shale oil and natural gas boomed as sources of energy, and we as a culture were satisfied: We could have it all. 

It wasn’t until 1992 that a nationwide program to cut back on the household use of electricity, Energy Star, was adopted, and that was largely promoted as a way for consumers to save money rather than as good for the planet.

Because I thought it the right thing to do, and because, I guess, I haven’t forgotten the first energy-conservation movement, I was for the longest time scrupulous about unplugging my computer and various other devices. I bought cars with good mileage per gallon. My husband went around turning off the house lights (he still does) if no one was in the room. 

But, in general, and like most Americans, I think, we have become complacent. I am writing this in bed at night right now, lights blazing from the TV, two computers, a printer, a clock, and various other household devices whose use has become so routine I can’t think of what they even are.

Something is wrong with this picture.

We now live with an overarching imperative to curb the use of all fossil fuels: Global warming is a five-alarm emergency. But we do almost nothing. We do even less than we did back in the gas crisis of the 1970s, when an individual’s average energy consumption was considerably less than it is today.

Although our reliance on foreign oil has lessened, Saudi Arabia still provides 40 percent of the world’s oil. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the good news is that in five years, 80 percent of our oil is expected to come from North and South America, and we may be able to loosen the bonds that tie us to a country known for horrendous human rights abuses. On a more local note, we have wind farms in our near future.

What the developed nations will do to preserve their land and protect their people from the effects of climate change, however, remains a giant question mark. In this country, we have a seesaw with global-warming deniers in the Trump administration on one end and private, public, and corporate efforts to fight global warming on the other. My question is: Why are we not, as individuals, in the cocoons of our own homes — in the ember glow of our ever-buzzing electronics — yet panicking? Nobody even seems to talk about gas-guzzlers anymore.

Though the weather’s wretched today, I know better days are coming — sportswise too, if the close scores this week are indicative.

All one wants is a good game, whether as a player or as a spectator. This winter was rather dreary in that respect, forcing one to look for silver linings, which, being a booster rather than a ripper, I’m generally inclined to do. If losses can be said to be learning experiences, there was much that could have been learned last season. It largely comes down to what I said last week, “Practice, practice . . . practice.” 

And if it doesn’t make you perfect, at least the chances are you’ll improve, and knowing you’re improving is one of the best feelings this side of a divine apotheosis.

My grandson in Ohio, who was on the B team, has now, through persistence, made the A team. Hard work beats talent that doesn’t work hard, perhaps not every time, but enough so that we ought not to be discouraged from trying, from forever trying.

Twenty-five years ago, Gordon Carberry, a former East Hampton Town recreation director who became a triathlete in his mid-50s, told Rusty Drumm that when he was growing up, 50 or 60-year-olds were physical nonentities. They are, thanks to the popularity of physical fitness regimes for all ages, entities now, as are those who are older still. It’s as if to say, “We’re still here! We’re still in the game!”

Which, of course, brings me back to the subject of my new tennis strings, the Signum Pro Tornado ones that enable the ball to rocket from my racket even as I’m wracked by advancing years. I told Lisa during a stroke-of-the-week clinic the other day that I was awaiting the Signum Pro Tornadoes with the same fervor I had in awaiting the arrival, at age 8, of my Captain Midnight Ovaltine mug. 

Come to think of it, age 8 was a very good year, a year in which I was given autographed photos of the entire Brooklyn Dodgers team and saw Jackie Robinson steal home, a year in which my father sprang me from school to go to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and a year in which on some sunny Saturday mornings I’d walk up Claremont Avenue, knapsack on my back, in search of the tufted towhee. I think it was also the first time I swung a racket, thanks to our boarder, a Columbia graduate student who took me over to Barnard’s courts across the street. “The racket swung him more than he swung the racket,” he told my mother. 

Now, in the clinics, they say, “Hit it, hit it hard,” and I do. Well, the Signum Pro Tornadoes do, the balls zinging to the left and right. Patrick McEnroe deserves some of the credit. When, some years ago, he was talking up team tennis at the Sportime club here, and I was about to undergo knee surgery and feeling — for perhaps 10 minutes — a bit morose, thinking the game had passed me by, he spoke glowingly of the new technology and of how the new rackets were brightening the prospects of those who had been thinking in a similar varicose vein.

And now, Bjorn again, when they say hit it hard I do.

In the weeks since a dead tree outside my office window was taken down I have become aware of how many near-misses there are on Main Street on any given day. 

Until Kevin Savastano came with his saws and bucket truck one cold Friday, the beech, with its silvery bark like an old elephant’s hide, had blocked nearly completely the sight line to where Buell and Dunemere Lanes come face to face. Now, if I glance away from my computer, within moments, it seems, some driver has dashed across another’s path. 

Staring out the window from my second-floor perch late last week, I watched a truck hauling a double-deck trailer that had just delivered golf carts to the Maidstone Club nearly collide with a big diesel from Mickey’s Carting hauling a roll-off container filled with what looked like half a torn-down house. Somehow, they managed to miss each other, the Mickey’s driver braking hard, the golf cart guy sailing through at full speed.

On Tuesday evening as I wrote this, an older man in a Prius avoided an oncoming sedan only by inches as he made a hasty left from Buell Lane.

During the summer, the village cops block off the approach to Main Street from Dunemere with a row of orange cones. For some time, there has been talk that the state (Main Street is a state road) might put in a roundabout there or stop left turns from Buell Lane altogether. If drivers continue to take chances, that may soon come to pass.

In truth, my perspective had been limited to the sounds of actual contact, so I had no idea how bad it was out there. The tree had given me one sense of things; its absence gave me another. 

Kevin Savastano said it was a good thing that we had taken it down, as it was in bad shape and going to fall one way or the other.

Woodchips alone mark the spot in the Star driveway where the beech stood. I miss it and am, if anything, more aware of it now that it is gone. I thought it was just a tree, not a shade pulled over what turned out to be a whole other view.

Can it be true that this column has appeared in The Star more than 2,000 times?

Apparently, that is the case, at least approximately. And if the number is really thereabouts, how have I come up with something different to say every week? 

Well, to be frank, I haven’t. 

I would be the first to admit that I have touched on my favorite subjects more than once over the decades — from inherited antique kitchen implements (a prehistoric popcorn-maker has made more than one cameo appearance here in print) to family pets (my various searches for succeeding generations of canine companions) to gardening glories and mishaps (the deer, oh dear, have become a near-obsession).

This morning, as the deadline looms, the best subject I can come up with is to boast retroactively about how I took to computerized word-processing way back when my colleagues were still using the proverbial blue pencils. I probably have bragged about this in print before, and I offer my apologies to any oldtime readers who might remember that. . . . But what interests me about it now is that I have come to realize that my own private limit for new-technology adaptation has been met. 

Once I was at the forefront of it all, getting the staff at the Star office onboard with an early program called XyWrite, but these days I have taken an aversion to new electronic devices and the fuss and bother of learning to use them.

I realize this kind of talk makes me sound ike a curmudgeon, but take my cellphone, for example. It is definitely antiquated. It’s not exactly a flip-phone — it doesn’t have a cover that flips, 2001-style — but I don’t know what to call it other than an un-smart wireless device. I bought it in 2011 (!)  but have never bothered to explore all the apps on it; I didn’t recognize the term “apps” in 2011. Nor did I pay attention to the fact that you could use it to browse the web. Although I did take a few photos with it, at first, I quickly decided they weren’t good enough to bother about. Give me my old point-and-shoot any day.

Having an old phone is a lifestyle choice for me. I’m something of a Luddite, I suppose.

From time to time, I have considered buying an iPhone and asking one of the grandchildren to tutor me in its mysteries, but I haven’t succumbed. I even rejected my husband’s offer to give me his old iPhone when he upgraded to the latest (gigantic) version a short while ago. (He’s not a Luddite.) Instead, I continue to look around more with dismay than amazement when I encounter hordes of people with their heads down and their fingers at work on those little rectangles. Am I just an old fogey, unwilling to try anything new — or am I taking a stand for life in the real world?

Passover, the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, has just passed. The story told at traditional seders ends with the song “Dayenu.” The Hebrew word means “it would have been sufficient.” God is said to have bestowed many things upon the people. The most telling perhaps is if He had led the people out of Egypt but not given them the Ten Commandments, it would have been sufficient. 

The food, family, and fun of Passover seders were highlights of my childhood, and I seem to have embedded what was a religious concept into my everyday secular life. If I have a wireless phone that connects me to whomever or whatever I need to reach, it is sufficient.

And if I have said this same thing here before, I hope you have forgotten it — as I obviously have.

When I was a kid I played with dolls. I was an only child and (maybe consequently) I had a lot of dolls. These were not mushy baby dolls; they were “fashion dolls.” This was the 1950s, folks, pre-Barbie. 

My favorite dolls were Madame Alexander dolls (they came in two sizes: 12-inch and 8-inch) and what were called Ginny dolls, which were only eight inches tall. That’s what I asked for at F.A.O. Schwarz at Christmas and birthdays, by size and hair color. I think I had about 10 by the time I outgrew them in sixth grade or so.

My mother could never understand why my dolls didn’t have names. She encouraged me to name them but I never did. I referred to the dolls as the 12-inch dolls and the 8-inch dolls when requesting a present of a new doll or clothing for the dolls I already had. Happily for me, my grandmother was a superior sewer, and she would come up with fabulous outfits for them (and me). Her creations featured lace, tiny buttons and dimity prints, old-fashioned puffed sleeves, and pantaloons. Occasionally something satin would show up, or sometimes a bit of fur. My grandmother went to the theater a lot, and she was very sophisticated.

My dolls were clotheshorses. Their job was to put on clothes. My job was to decide what they would put on. I was a fashion editor in training.

An activity that kept me busy for hours was to put all of my custom-made and store-bought dolls clothes in a pile on the floor. Then each 12-inch doll and each 8-inch doll could “pick” one dress. After each one picked a dress she would wear it and then each got to pick another until all the clothes were sorted evenly. I can’t remember what happened after that. Maybe I would have lunch. 

I never messed with their hair the way some kids did. I treated them like princesses. They were models and they got to be admired.

One of my friends, with whom I spent many rainy girly afternoons, would not play this doll clothes sorting game with me. I would let her pick a doll from my lineup and let her doll pick out clothes but she declared that her doll was poor and lived in a tenement and could only have one dress. I just could not understand this. It frustrated the hell out of me. Why wouldn’t her doll want to play dress-up?! Her doll would sit on an upside-down chair (read: tenement) and watch my doll. It was never fun to have it so inequitable, and eventually we would play checkers or draw. Having a doll who was poor was just not a concept I could grasp. Years later my mother mentioned that her parents were both social workers and I suppose that explained some of it. (Or maybe she just didn’t want to play that game.) I do not know what happened to her, but I grew up to be a clotheshorse. 

According to Google, “clotheshorse” is considered a derogatory term. I do not have a problem with the title. For me, it’s clothes-play, not so much the buying of an outfit as the assembling of a look. That’s the fun part. Shopping my own closet, I really play dress-up every day.

And when the seasons change I re-acquaint myself with clothes I haven’t seen for months by trying everything on. Warm weather to cold and back. Two times a year I go through that ritual. In between I do things with other people’s clothes: I volunteer at the Ladies Village Improvement Society thrift shop in East Hampton. 

One of the things we clothes-loving volunteers do is sort and categorize all the clothes that are donated week to week and season to season. Does this sound like all my doll clothes in a pile with the dolls picking? Yes indeedy. We are grown-ups and we have fun like little girls. 

We ask aloud: “What was she thinking? How could she give this up? Did she retire and not need office clothes anymore?” Hence the Armani suits and stiletto heels, the mink coat, or the Oscar de la Renta ball gown. We also wonder why people donate gym clothes straight from their gym bags, but that’s another matter entirely.

When we have finished sorting — summer, winter, designer, and specialty collections like bathing suits and leopard-printed things — the clothes that are season-appropriate hit the floor, priced to sell.

And then my real fun begins. I dress the thrift shop mannequins every Monday. While the shop is closed for weekly restocking you will find me with three mannequins, bald and naked (them, not me), and a rolling rack of curated outfits for my “girls.” I want them to look great when the doors open each Tuesday.

Some might think you just put clothes on the bodies, but I am here to tell you that it’s more complicated and intimate than that. The mannequins have faces and their faces have real character and their postures give them attitude. Like real people, some clothes actually look better on one than on another. I often change their outfits even after I have gotten them all dressed. I take into consideration that the athletic looking one should not be wearing something ruffly; I have tried and that stuff just looks wrong on her. I know that sounds silly, but in truth it’s merchandising. How can you make someone want to buy something if it looks crappy on the model?

There is a fourth model, and while I refer to her as one of “the girls” she is really just a torso (no face, arms, or legs). I don’t feel I need to cater to her attitude as far as outfits go. She does wear jewelry well, however, and often gets something with a deep V neckline.

The other dames I dress have removable arms and hands. To get them into clothing means that the floor gets littered with random hands and arms and wigs. 

Interestingly, the L.V.I.S. gets many donations of wigs. Some of the wigs are very beautiful and were no doubt very expensive. We can’t really sell them. Consequently I have a bin of wigs I sort through each week for the girls. One wig might look good with one outfit and wrong with another. One wig will suit one mannequin, while the same wig will make another look slutty. There is a wig I call Meg Ryan hair, which looks good on all three of the girls. There is a gray wig with bangs that I am partial to, but it does not look good with every outfit. Sometimes the girls are all blondes, sometimes brunettes. I love doing this.

To some of you readers this may sound like the dumbest waste of imagination, but for others of you this is a dream job. Admit it.

Each week I pick a fashion theme. For Easter the girls were in bright pastel colors. The week before everyone was wearing flowered dresses for spring. Sometimes they are in black-and-white stripes, and they have been known to all wear denim jackets. Once they all wore gingham shirts, but accessorized to give them entirely different looks. My aim is to educate and inspire, much like the editorial pages of a fashion magazine. Yes, you can wear this with that, and have you considered a yellow pashmina with that red shift?

Well, you could say (loudly) that I do get carried away choosing the right scarf or bag or earrings for each dame, but for me it is fun. I want the outfits to get sold: The aim is to have the girls look so good that people want to buy what they are wearing. Some outfits only last a day or two and are replaced quickly by the sales staff. Come in Tuesday mornings to see the girls in their fullest fashion glory.

The mannequins are really my own very big fashion dolls. Unlike my childhood dolls, these dames will soon have names! In May, there will be an opportunity for everyone in town to name each mannequin. After the hunt for names is over, the dames will be called by their names forever. (I know what I call one of them behind her back, but I am not sharing that yet.)

Here’s how it will work: There will be ballots at the cashier that people can fill in and place in a jar for the whole month. There will be space for four names in the order of how they are standing in display. The ballots can be filled again and again. Kids are encouraged to participate.

The ballots will be put into a container and behind closed doors each mannequin will magically pick her own name.

So unlike my childhood dolls who remained nameless, soon I will be dressing Clara or Monique or Jemima, Carmen, Prunella, or Daisy, Murgatroyd, Melania, Ivanka, Sophia, Emma, Gabriela, Isabella, Zoe, Clementine, or Betty. Stay tuned.

Durell Godfrey is a contributing photographer for The Star.