I know every word to just about every song written in the early 1960s. That's not to say I'm not familiar with what came after, but I have a special place in my heart for bubblegum pop. What that special place is is still unclear, as I find myself hardly able to stand some of the annoying, grating sounds.

The words are mostly nonsensical gibberish phrases that eat up time on songs that rarely make it to the three-minute mark, which is also a plus, compared to those six-minute ballads the '80s made so popular. But when the sounds actually form sentences and complete thoughts, I am enamored.

The countless CDs of the songs I have made over the years have hardened them in my memory, prompting a sing-along whenever I turn on the tinny sounds of WLNG or walk into a grocery store where I fill in the words to their lyricless Muzak.

The lyrics, barely able to hold a candle to the sounds of today, according to some, act more as a historical recount and a social mouthpiece of the times.

Although girl bands were at the height of their popularity, something the genre would not see again until the advent of the Spice Girls in the 1990s, women were still largely objectified by men. Even the girls singing about the boys were saying it.

In a line in the song called "Party Girl," the singer tells a young woman, "I'll make you turn your dancing shoes in for apron strings and things." This is after the singer tells her she will marry him. At that point, her dancing and partying will end. After listening to so much of the music, I find it hard to believe that the party girl would object.

That's not to say that being a wife and mother is a bad thing. It's the absolute authority and unwavering determination with which he says it that is stunning.

Singing about very young girls is also typical in these songs. Some could argue it was because much of the music was being written and sung by boys, some only 16, and coincidentally the age of choice in many songs. But I'm not completely satisfied with that. How then, do you explain songs like "Young Girl," wherein a man complains to the young woman that she has fooled him into thinking she was older, and now she should go back to her mother who "must be wondering where you are." He then instructs her to "get out of here before I have the time to change my mind."

Groups like Tommy James and the Shondells, who sang "I Think We're Alone Now," popularized again in the 1980s when Tiffany brought it to the malls of America and The Turtles' "Happy Together," a song also brought back in the 1980s, but in a breakfast cereal commercial that noted the close bond of honey to graham crackers, may have come the closest to realizing the necessity of a man and a woman's interaction during a relationship. It doesn't seem that hard. General Mills figured it out.

But women were as much to blame, singing about how much they love a man who does not love them back. In The Supremes' song "Band of Gold," Diana Ross sings about her wedding night, where "we stayed in separate rooms." She waits at night for him to come home and "love me, like you did before." Sounds like a typical song of lament for lost love, but I suspect it was doomed from the start.

Although that is a particularly painful song, there are others much more upbeat, but with themes that I imagine set those other women up for the same defeat. Girls who wear bikinis and get suntans so the boys on the beach notice them, women who wait for a man to be through with another woman before offering themselves up as the next and women who are on the receiving end of a letter from their husband's secretary.

"Take a letter Maria, a message to my wife, tell her I won't be coming back, gonna start a new life." All the while, a selection of brass instruments are laughing in the background.

Somehow, I don't think things have changed much. Women still sing about the same things, they just appear to be self-riotous.

Somewhere in me, I long for the days in music when Sippie Wallace, the singer of songs such as "Murder Will Be My Crime," "Lazy Man Blues," and "Dead Drunk Blues," would make her husband kidney stew and give him a good whack in the head. Now that's good music.

Leigh Goodstein is a reporter at The Star.

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.

I did not get around to gathering a few surf clams to freeze for bait when thousands of them washed up along the ocean last week. Those who did could have put away enough to last the entire porgy season.

High surf from a passing storm had pounded the near-shore bottom hard over a couple of high and low tides. Clams, plowed from the sand by the waves, ended up on the beach in long rills. Seagulls feasted until they could feast no more. 

Surf clam shells have always been a presence in our house, put to utilitarian purpose as soap dishes. I am quite certain they were there even when I was a child. My own kids pick up the soap, wash their hands, and place it back on the shells without thinking a bit about it. 

As a free source of bait, storm-blown clams make me very happy, when I can get them. Take the meat out of one or two and pack it down in a food takeout container, with or without a handful of salt, stuff it all down under the chicken nuggets and ice cream in the bottom of the freezer, and I am ready. Only I didn’t this year.

Porgy season opens in New York on May 1, but the month or so between now and then is not likely to be stormy enough to drag another round of clams up on the beach. Those from the last storm are but empty shells now.

Years ago, what my father called skimmer clams were abundant in the bay in front of our house. It was easy at low tide to wade out waist deep and feel around for them with our toes, relatively quickly digging out enough to take fishing. Now there are none. Only a few hard chowder clams can be produced in an hour’s scratching with a proper rake. 

What happened to the skimmers is a mystery. Perhaps their abundance in the 1960s and 1970s was an aberration. Perhaps rich effluent from the Smith Meal fish processing plant to the east sweetened the waters for them, and when it closed in about 1968 conditions in the bay changed. Perhaps the building boom that followed once the processing plant’s foul smell was no more had something to do with it; groundwater flows quickly through the sandy soil here, and every toilet flush ends up in the bay sooner than it might elsewhere. 

Cycles on the bay are long and have no obvious explanation. Herman Mel­ville remarked that listless youth could see in the water’s dark shapes the embodiment of elusive thoughts from the soul by continually flitting through it. Okay, so it might be a bit of a stretch to pin an existential reverie on the comings and goings of clams, but you get my point, I hope. Life by the beach has its rewards even if you don’t manage to put a container of bait in the freezer every time.

O’en’s become a boon companion, largely a creature of habit like me, and our evening walks, when it’s just us on the darkened streets of our neighborhood, has become one. 

He is less anxious then, as am I, though every now and then he’ll stop, look, and listen. I, who am awaiting with bated breath the arrival of new hearing aids, am kept guessing. Nevertheless, I tell him not to worry and we walk on.

I — Mary too — have been protective of him, helicopter parents, I suppose, in that regard, for we don’t want repeated the mauling his forebear, Henry, suffered at the hands, as it were, of three Rhodesian Ridgebacks who’d piled out of a van all of a sudden one day, and, in pinning him down, had left him forever wary when it came to getting along with other dogs. 

O’en, a preternatural democratic socializer, a friend to all, be they four or two-legged, has been spared that trauma thus far, and I hope he forever will be. By and large, in his nine months on earth, he’s been having fun and feeling fine — more or less the words that have largely served as my guide.

Hovering, I know, is not considered good parenting, and yet we do, content that he remain innocent insofar as possible of this dog-eat-dog world. As we watched, fascinated, while he humped his bed the other night, I suggested we get him a rubber Pomeranian. 

No, no, I know that is going too far. 

“They are predators,” Matty Posnick, ARF’s training guru, has said, “not fuzzy people!”

And yet, and yet. . . . “Well, it’s only natural,” I said as the humping went on. “We’re all human beings here.”

“I’m glad we got him,” Mary said the other day. And I, who’d been wary at first, wondering if we were up to it, said I was too. 

For one, he’s exceedingly handsome, noble looking even, a fact that perhaps will serve to elicit from me better, less petty, behavior. In short, I think he might be becoming my role model.

O’en, a man for all seasons, a fuzzy man for all seasons.

First off, I confess that I had no idea “Mad Men,” the popular cable-television series about the Madison Avenue advertising world of the 1960s, had arrived 10 years ago and continued for seven seasons. I was certainly slow on the uptake even though I had a vague interest in the show’s time and place. 

Minor surgery two weeks ago changed the situation. I was advised to avoid walking except when necessary, at least at first, and it turned out to be very easy to go to bed, put up my leg, and turn on the TV.

Anyone who knows me knows I like to work, and it would be correct to think I did so from bed. But suddenly there was time for pastimes. Number one on my list were books. I finally finished a great classic I had avoided for 50 years. Then I turned to Colson Whitehead’s stirring “The Underground Railroad.” There also were copies of The New Yorker around, recent and not so recent, with long stories of particular interest. And then my husband and I found time to revive the enjoyable practice we have taken up over the years: reading aloud. In this case it was Dickens’s “Little Dorrit,” which we had started but abandoned more than a year ago. Now, as I lay about with my foot on a pillow, we had a perfect reason to get back to it. 

However, I also had something else staring right at me. The younger generation had bought us a smart TV for Christmas because they thought it was past time that we availed ourselves of all the entertainments available with subscriptions to Amazon’s streaming service, Netflix, and so on. Which brings me to “Mad Men.” 

I started watching for “a-ha” moments that would evoke a past I once knew, and there they were. I never worked in an ad agency, per se, but I spent a short time as a trainee in the advertising department of Newsweek magazine in roughly the same era as the first season of “Mad Men.” I had chosen a job in the advertising department rather than one as an editorial assistant because it paid more — $35 a week. I was amused when I heard Peggy, one of the drama’s important female characters, who starts out as a secretary, say she made $35 in one of the episodes.

For those who somehow haven’t yet seen the show, Peggy is not only different from the other secretaries in appearance and style, but she turns out to have copywriting talent. I was no Peggy, but I was the only woman given a prestigious cubicle to work in while all the other women in the department were secretaries who shared an open room. I wore dresses with tight waistlines, not unlike some seen on “Mad Men,” and I recognized the banter. 

Unfortunately, as it turned out, it seemed that I was given the advertising position to make a point that Newsweek didn’t discriminate against women. Having my own cubicle didn’t make me any female friends, and the men in charge gave me almost no work to do. The blow that shortened my time at Newsweek, however, was being told it was a mistake to be seen carrying a copy of The Nation. I had bought the magazine because a college friend had a poem in it, but the reason didn’t matter. McCarthyism was still in the air.

I didn’t stay at Newsweek long enough to know if the men in the ad department were lechers, like those on “Mad Men,” or to learn who was at the top of the pecking order, or if everyone drank as much as they do in the show, or if the secretaries at Newsweek accepted their roles as sex objects like the secretaries on “Mad Men” do.

My leg is healing, and I am told by my doctor that I no longer need to keep it elevated. There are several more seasons of “Mad Men” that I could indulge in, but I am beginning to lose interest in Don Draper, the brilliant but empty protagonist, and the stream of women he beds. Maybe this is because his sort of character is not just fiction to me, but a kind of guy I once met all the time. Okay, maybe they weren’t quite as handsome or quite as quick to write clever slogans in real life, but they could be just as sexist. Perhaps the next time I want to binge on TV I should look into something like “Madame Secretary.”

March storms are hard on the ocean beach. The month was also hard on ships in the long age of sail, many of which ran aground on the shore here on their way to and from the Port of New York.

The Mars was among them. Part of its heavy timber frame was exposed to view this week at Georgica if you happened to look during low tide. Dark ribs like jagged tea-stained teeth showed as the waves receded, then disappeared as they surged again.

In all my years walking this beach I have only seen the Mars a handful of times. The most recent until this week, if I recall, was five years ago almost to the day, when enough of the ship was laid bare to make out the rough shape of its hull. That it has survived hurricanes and sea worms for nearly 200 years is something of a miracle.

In her book “Ship Ashore,” my grandmother Jeannette Edwards Rattray recounted that the Mars had run aground at night in 1828, been declared a total loss, and sold to two men, a Sherrill and an Osborn, who set about removing all its furnishings, trim, spars, and copper sheathing.

Midway through their work, a storm blew up and covered the ship with sand. The Mars was not reported to have been seen again until 1931, after another March storm. It was front-page news in The Star on March 13, 1931. A brief account noted that the seas and tide that had ripped under the summer houses of Ring Lardner and Grantland Rice had dislodged thousands of yards of sand so that the vessel stood out clearly. The Mars was seen again in 1956, 1958, 1961, and 1965, The Star reported.

I had not thought about the Mars recently until I noticed a familiar bit of wood in a photograph that a friend posted on Instagram. 

Shipwrecks have always interested East Hampton people, and I am no exception. In the old days, a shipwreck might represent a sudden windfall, as in the case of the Sherrill and Osborn men. Today, such remains are objects of wonder and reverie. Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center is said to be working on an operatic staging of the Circassian disaster of 1876 at Mecox.

Why the Mars met its end off East Hampton was something of a mystery. In a contemporary account by Henry Parsons Hedges, the suggestion was made that its captain, a man named Ring, might not have taken depth readings frequently enough. The captain responded testily to a question from locals on the beach the morning after the grounding, according to Hedges, who recounted that Capt. Jonathan Osborn of Wainscott led the questioning, inquiring about the wind and weather and if Captain Ring had taken soundings and how often. 

“Old fellow, what do you know about a ship? If I should tell you, do you think you would know any more than you do now?” Captain Ring is reported to have said.

Let it never be said that Wainscott folks were a retiring lot. Captain Osborn looked Captain Ring in the eye and replied, “I have commanded a ship, larger than your brig, and never ran her ashore, either.”

If the tides are low and you have a moment in the next week or so, I suggest you go have a look at the Mars and think for a moment about times gone by.

I can’t wait to try out my new Signum Pro Tornado strings in a stroke-of-the-week clinic tomorrow. The website says you will “wreak havoc” with them. 

The prospect of wreaking havoc, nay, of wreaking anything — aside, of course, from simply reeking — at my age is beguiling. I may not be very intelligent, but I know what kicking butt is. The secret, of course, lies in the way you do it, as in “it’s not so much what you say, but the way you say it.”

In this regard, I could take a cue from Confucius, of whom I wrote last week, who said nations decay when their manners do. I have been, I confess, churlish in victory and surly in defeat on the tennis court, raging, raging against the loss of a set — not a good role model for our polity at all. I must reform, I can’t reform. No matter, fail better at reforming. After all, it is time, now that I have nine — count ’em, nine — grandchildren, to grow up.

“You are a horrible human being,” Mary concluded the other night, with a certain frightening finality, as I argued (with her having already been backgammoned) that since one of the double 6s I’d rolled was only slightly canted, I shouldn’t have to roll again. “We talked about this yesterday. When a die doesn’t lie flat, the roller has to roll again.” 

She’s hawkeyed when it comes to my moves, constantly double-checking me.

“It’s honest cheating,” I said in my defense during a telephone conversation the other night with our daughter Johnna, and, bless her, she understood. And laughed too. She knows I’m a horrible human being, but that that’s . . . okay.

No, it’s not okay, and I do mean to do something about it. Yes, I will wreak havoc with my Signum Pro Tornado strings, but with grace, modesty, and fellow feeling. You’re going to love it.

The train was like the Hogwarts Express, but only for women. An insider’s knowledge was needed to locate its whereabouts. Even the stationmaster, who sat under a twirling fan in his office of cockeyed grandeur, could only waggle his head and say, “No idea,” when I asked what time the next Ladies Special train would leave Bandra — a neighborhood of Mumbai — for Borivali, at the northwestern end of the city.

Riding a commuter train during rush hour in Bombay (sorry, only CNN weather reporters call it Mumbai; no one in Bombay does) is not for the timid. I hadn’t been on one since I was 12 and lived in Bandra. Today, despite Bombay’s eye-popping new wealth, commuter trains remain as bloated as ever, with an average of nine train-related deaths every day. 

My childhood friend, Rita, has been commuting to work by train for more than 25 years. She used to have to fight her way on board twice a day amid lots of jostling. And pinching, and often groping. Or, as it’s euphemistically called here, “Eve-teasing.” The problems of harassment on trains were so persistent that in 1992 the government decided to simply remove men altogether, and Bombay introduced the world’s first women-only train. Today, Ladies Specials run eight times a day during peak hours in Bombay.

At 6 p.m. on International Women’s Day, I stand at Bandra station trying to figure out where to catch the Ladies Special to meet Rita, as agreed, at the end of her workday.

Railway stations in India are special places. Once, they were monumental tokens of British supremacy, and one of the benefits the empire brought to its subjects. They remain to this day a marvelous memorial of the Raj. The engines rumble now, rather than hiss — no streaming smoke plumes trail — but still, beneath the echoing vaults of Bandra station, the timeless thousands swarm, the hawkers cry, the whistles sound, and the stationmaster reigns imperious.

I spot a group of brightly clothed women and ask about the Ladies Special. “Yes, here. This platform,” one answers.

There’s no indication of a platform number anywhere. Perhaps this is Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. 

With an announcement over the P.A. system wishing women “a special and happy day,” the Ladies Special arrives. It is pink (where were the pink trains to Washington, D.C., in January?) and, like all commuter trains, doorless. 

Women stream aboard like ribbons of color, happily chatting and smiling with their friends. Men stand back and sigh. They have to wait even longer in the stifling heat for the Testosterone Express.

Inside the train women continue to enjoy themselves, speaking an intoxicating mix of English and Hindi. I join a cluster of women in their 20s. One shows off her shopping, another tears opens a packet of crispy bits and passes it around. Another woman shares a Facebook post on her iPhone and they all giggle into their hands. The absence of men appears to be quite liberating for the young women.

A conductor in a flowing blue sari walks through our compartment, inspecting tickets. “Happy Women’s Day,” she wishes me and smiles.

I know my feminist friends in the West will be furious about the need for female-only spaces. Oh, the pitfalls of a gender-segregated world, they will say; women should feel safe wherever they go. There are larger societal issues, they will caution, that no pink carriage can fix.

Unarguable stuff. 

But what they don’t see — can’t see from a first-world vantage — is something I glimpse that day as the train glides into Borivali station, where I am to meet Rita. 

Male commuters line the platform, a forlorn bunch. They have been cast out, and their faces register resignation with a touch of defeat, like remorseful schoolboys. They look wistfully into the superior and joyful Ladies Special as if to say, “Maybe if we can learn to behave ourselves and not be brutes toward women, we might be allowed to ride this nice train home.” For now, the men are patient, even respectful. Not one tries to jump on.

Besides, they know that if anyone does, he’ll be instantly turned into a eunuch.

Judy D’Mello is a reporter at The Star. 

It is a cliché for travelers to return from abroad marveling about rail transportation in another country. But, having just gotten back from Japan, where the trains, as they say, run on time, I must indulge. 

Adelia, my 15-year-old, and I, just the two of us, took a trip with an itinerary that included Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. I had known before we left about the Shinkansen, Japan’s high-speed trains linking the major cities. What I did not get was how good every aspect of rail travel there was, from subways in the capital city to an impeccably clean cable car in a mountain resort town.

We scarcely needed to consult timetables; there were departures to wherever we wanted to go almost anytime we showed up at a station. Watching the time was not necessary; the trains left their stops and arrived at their destinations exactly when they were supposed to. The service was fast, the seats plush and comfortable. 

It was one thing for the celebrated Shinkansen Nozomi to Kyoto to cruise at 170 miles per hour, almost expected. But it was a surprise that routine commuter trains we were on hit 100 miles per hour, according to an app on Adelia’s iPhone. 

Back home, there is a slight degree of justification for talking about trains. Various local politicians have resurrected an idea for more rail service on eastern Long Island, envisioning enough service that moving among the villages and hamlets by train might someday soon be a realistic option.

I don’t know why passenger trains in the United States pale in comparison to those in Japan. The Long Island Rail Road gets you there, but on an infrequent schedule and in remarkably ugly and often odiferous conditions. Amtrak stations are smelly and rusting and have peeling paint. Maps and notifications to passengers are nearly impossible for visitors to decipher, unlike in Japan, where helpful, clear announcements are made in both Japanese and English.

This was made all the more obvious on Sunday as Adelia and I were on our way home. Kennedy Airport has an elevated electric train that connects the terminals, long-term parking, and the city subway system. But even for native English speakers, the posted information is difficult to understand. Looking at the signs, you had to know that Lefferts Boulevard was where you left your car, that Howard Beach was where you got the subway, and that Jamaica Station was the right place for the Long Island Rail Road. Why they make it a guessing game I don’t know. And why we can’t have trains like they do in Japan I don’t know either.

Now what shall I write about this week. . . ? Silly question. Of course it’s John 3:16!

You know, you’re always referred to it on those signs you see in the ballparks. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Well that’s all well and good, though why we should want everlasting life I’m not sure (didn’t the Buddha say life was suffering?). Anyhow, let’s read on:

John 3:18 (which you don’t see referred to in the ballparks, but which you may soon) says, “He that believeth in him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Has there always been an immigration ban in heaven too? 

My father, who was very well read, used to say that while he appreciated the Eastern views as to religion, he was, in the end, a Westerner. I suppose I am, too, though, at least in my waning years, I find myself more inclined toward the God-within view than the God-without one that comes with confessions, atonement, self-flagellation, and self-righteous thoughts as they relate to nonbelievers. 

A Westerner? And yet pretty much all the major religions arose from what Joseph Campbell calls “the nuclear Near East.” Perhaps it’s more apt to say that many of us in the West are Near-Easterners, then, when it comes to religion. 

And look at the Near East now, the cradle of civilization, largely in rubble, in ruins. It’s a cruel irony that this was where all those high-minded ideas came from — that — if faithfully observed — would enable us to live as one.

We are one, in fact, as Campbell in his four-volume work on the world’s mythologies points out. It’s all related. There were lots of virgin births, lots of self-introspective retreats and inspiring returns, lots of sacrificial stand-ins, and lots of resurrections. . . . 

We are all brothers and sisters — nobody has the inside track, the upper hand. 

Life’s a terrible beauty, as Mary (and Yeats, of course) says. Though I think it could be even more beautiful and less terrible if we acted as if we were at home here rather than so estranged. 

Heaven can wait.