Laura Ingraham, the right-wing radio and television personality, is on a shortlist of people being considered as Donald Trump’s press secretary, at least that is what the news media said Monday. 

Ms. Ingraham and I were undergraduates at Dartmouth College at the same time, and, thinking back to those days, I believe a straight line can be drawn from the birth of the modern reactionary right in the 1980s to the ascendancy of similar thinking today. Ms. Ingraham, an early editor of The Dartmouth Review, a deliberately provocative campus newspaper, helped establish the movement.

I now wish I had saved copies of The Review, if only to see if my recollections verify the idea that Mr. Trump and his backers’ willingness to say anything to further their cause really has its roots in those times.

Perhaps the worst political change stemming from the period was a sense among the fringe right that simply having conservative views was not enough. Those around The Dartmouth Review in those days acted as if mean-spiritedness and ridicule were essential tools of a revolution. 

In my memory, this was exemplified most when a Review writer secretly tape-recorded a meeting among student members of a gay group and then published some of what was said. Ms. Ingraham was editor of the paper at the time. 

This followed other attacks in The Review’s pages on gay students and Jews, and a particularly racist take on affirmative action. This was groundbreaking stuff in the 1980s, but what with contemporary talk radio and the emergence of Stephen Bannon’s Breitbart News in the halls of power, it is no longer shocking.

Many of us can admit to having done stupid things in college. I was disciplined for my role in a student takeover of the Baker Library tower, which was a response to the sledgehammer smashing by right-wing students of an anti-apartheid shantytown on the campus green. I grew up, and think I moved past such things. Ms. Ingraham apparently did not, and it now appears that she was the smart one.

What was so baffling at Dartmouth then was that the leaders of the new right did not simply argue for their political and social views but wrapped them with so much ridicule of others.

Those of us who did not think abusing those with whom we disagreed was decent behavior mostly shook our heads, puzzled. But their divisive talk got them attention, which was the point, after all. Now, with Mr. Trump’s victory, these tactics have proven a winning strategy. It is only fitting that Ms. Ingraham, one of the hate-right’s earliest leaders, should be rewarded.

As we awoke to Donald J. Trump as president-elect of the United States yesterday morning, my best hope was that we would be able to count on his penchant for changing his mind. He is nothing if not fickle.

I find it hard to believe that so many Americans voted for him because they actually want, or actually expect, him to follow through on his endless incantation of wanton threats. The list is appalling: to see Hillary Clinton indicted and imprisoned, Muslims banned from immigrating here, “deportation forces” in our streets, punishments for women who have abortions, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a withdrawal from the Paris Accord, the defunding of public schools, health insurance denied to 16.4 million people, nuclear weapons spread around to more countries. . . . If these things are really what half of America supports, we may be forced to recognize that our belief in ourselves as compassionate, idealistic people has been a giant mistake. 

What is clear is that the electorate no longer holds the leaders of this nation to standards of exemplary behavior, that it doesn’t care that the next president of the United States doesn’t pay income taxes, stiffs creditors, laughs at bankrupting small businesses, mocks the obese and the disabled, and dupes would-be university students. 

Many of us woke up yesterday feeling like outsiders. Call me a bleeding-heart liberal if you like, but “where have all the flowers gone?” 

It has been said that Americans no longer pay attention to both sides of national debates, but instead “curate” the news by choosing only those sources with which they agree, that they no longer bother to educate themselves about the facts and science behind issues, much less about what dissenting voices might have to say. After all, a demogogue has no need of a government-controlled media — a Pravda — when we the people are only too happy to censor our own news intake, when we no longer seem capable of distinguishing between reported news and mere opinion.

Here at home, I am proud that through its letters pages The East Hampton Star continues to be a vibrant public forum.

I am someone who waivers between optimism and denial when faced with adversity. This is probably the greatest adversity we have faced. Given the Republican sweep of both Houses of Congress, I fear for what lies ahead.

The heat went out at home on Sunday night, though I did not mention it before bedtime. Instead, I put a space heater in the coldest bedroom of the house and hoped the rest of the rooms would not get too cold before a repairman arrived in the morning.

Adelia, back from boarding school for the Thanksgiving break, texted from her room in the morning wondering what was up. But by that time, I had called McCoy Fuels and built a fire in the kitchen fireplace to have a little heat to drink my coffee by. 

Leo the pig, sharply affronted by the temperature in the house, let his feelings be known by knocking over my favorite wooden chair and then standing close to the hearth. Sitting at the table as the sun brightened the sky, I drank two cups of coffee before going into the basement to make room for the oil burner guy. (It is always overloaded.)

It was a relatively easy fix, as it turned out. A transformer needed replacement, and the heat was back by 9:30.

A couple of years ago, a plumber looked at the house’s heating system and said it was past time for a new one. With all the money saved on oil, it would pay for itself right away, he said. 

I either forgot about getting prices on a new boiler or put it on a low-priority mental list of things to deal with, and then forgot, the same way I notice then forget the reminders from the fuel company to get the annual cleaning done on the oil burner. 

The way it is with things around the house, there is always something else to think about. Not infrequently I declare to anyone who will listen that I am going to chuck it all and go live in a yurt. But yurts are probably a pain in the neck, too. Plus, now that the oil burner is working again, at least there is heat.

I am not sure how that would work in a yurt. And I am sure the pig would be none too pleased. Well, that and I should probably go solar anyway.

According to Kathleen Wall of the museum at Plymouth, Mass., the colonists and their Wampanoag guests in 1621 ate shellfish and wildfowl, perhaps with herbs and berries, but their meat was accompanied by no potatoes. Neither white nor sweet potatoes had arrived in Europe or Britain yet, and the colonists were unfamiliar with the dubious tubers; it would be another 50 years before a letter home to England spoke of cranberries being boiled with sugar to make a sauce. Ms. Wall believes that the 150 people who celebrated that three-day feast drank . . . water. 

We’re not quite that traditional in our family, but I like to think we take a leaf from the first Thanksgiving by keeping everything — as we have done since long, long before “locavore” became a word — local and homemade. It will be a Ludlow farm turkey from Mecox; for the broiled oysters, a topping made with sorrel (which I no longer seem able to grow) from the Halseys of the Green Thumb in Water Mill; cranberry relish made with berries hand-picked on Napeague by grandkids and their dads, and clams from good old Bonac. 

We are celebrating Thanksgiving at home with lots of relatives this year, and I have been energized by the planning. That The Star is published early this week, a day before the holiday, means that I and most of the staff will have rare free time on Wednesday. I have been happily bustling about, gathering the ingredients, taking out the best silverware, china, and linens, and enlisting everyone to tie on their aprons and chop, slice, mince, and bake. I am grateful for it all.

But, this year, I would also hope that as we gather to remember all we have to be thankful for, we also recognize the dark side of what might be called the American personality — and consider what might be done about it.

In the last few weeks, hateful words and incidents have proliferated, with swastikas defacing playgrounds in Brooklyn and KKK fliers found on the train at the station in Amagansett. I am especially grateful that I live in a humanistic environment, among strangers as well as friends and family who believe in the Golden Rule and try to act accordingly: “Do unto others as you would have others to do unto you,” Matthew: 7:12. “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself,” Leviticus 19:18.

I’m an agnostic, but the season inspired me to look into what the various religious traditions say about kindness to others. They all agree. Muhammad, I recently discovered, is reported in the books of Islam to have offered this version of the Golden Rule: “None of you has faith until he loves for his brother or his neighbor what he loves of himself.” Hinduism offers similar advice, and Confucius may actually have been the one to put it like this: “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”

I am grateful for tranquility at Thanksgiving on the East End, but am afraid that too many citizens both near and far have forgotten the Golden Rule, deeply concerned that too many of our neighbors are not feeling as safe and secure this week as they should — indeed, as they have a Constitutional right to — feel.

From New York City’s Rikers Island to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan, the evidence of outright disregard for human life continues to haunt the conscience of Americans — or, at least, it should.

A friend recently forwarded to me a paragraph from Representative John Lewis’s 1998 book, “Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.” We would all do well to follow his lead:

“When I care about something, when I commit to it, I am prepared to take the long, hard road, knowing it may not happen today or tomorrow, but ultimately, eventually, it will happen. . . . People who are like fireworks, popping off right and left with lots of sound and sizzle, can capture a crowd, capture a lot of attention for a time, but I always have to ask, where will they be at the end? Some battles are long and hard, and you have to have staying power. Firecrackers go off in a flash, then leave nothing but ashes. I prefer a pilot light — the flame is nothing flashy, but once it is lit, it doesn’t go out. It burns steadily, and it burns forever.” Amen

Going to the internet to read what commentators have been saying about what the Trump administration might mean for the press, I was stunned by these words on the back of a black T-shirt worn by a man at a Trump rally: “Rope.Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required.”

The president-elect has never used these hateful words, himself, and if he ever hinted that journalists should be lynched, he would have been speaking metaphorically, of course. He has, however, made it clear that he considers reporters to be sneaks, cheats, conspirators, and villains. (Sneaks, cheats, conspirators, and villains motivated by sheer dastardliness, apparently: Heaven knows reporters don’t do it for the money or the love.) Mr. Trump has called the news media “dishonest,” “lying,” “dis­gusting,” “corrupt,” and “scum,” and he has vowed to make it easier to sue newspapers for libel.

One of his favorite supporters, Fox’s Sean Hannity, has gone so far as to say Mr. Trump should refuse to allow The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, to have White House credentials.

Barring potential critics and ushering in those “journalists” who fall in line? Has the president-elect heard about the First Amendment? Does he care about the principles of freedom it enshrines? Has he read the Bill of Rights at all?

In an interview on CNN (a news station Mr. Trump has railed against, naturally), Floyd Abrams, a highly respected lawyer dedicated to First Amendment cases, noted that there are no federal libel laws; they differ from state to state. I hope that Mr. Trump has become aware of this fact by now — though, as I write this, I’m not sure he would care, even if he is aware of it. 

Mr. Abrams expressed the concern that Mr. Trump’s denigration of the media “could lead the public to be so anti-press” that even if it didn’t destroy the it, it could “lead the public to limit its constitutionally protected role.” 

Mr. Trump may have gone to Wharton for an undergraduate program, but his education, clearly, was lacking when it came time for classes on the rule of law.

From where I sit, it seems that our current national crisis was in at least some measure made possible by the crisis in professional journalism. Newspapers, unable to compete with no-cost pseudo-news spread via social media, have had to shut down across the country. Will Americans see the value of paying for reliable news  — from professionals dedicated to best ethical practices —  only too late?

 Whatever Mr. Trump throws at journalists in this country, however, pales in comparison with the violence journalists encounter elsewhere. A recent report from the Committee to Protect Journalists said 450 journalists around the world had been forced into exile since 2010; Syria had expelled 101, Ethiopia 57, and Iran 52. Being kicked out of the White House, if it comes to that, wouldn’t seem like such a big deal . . . if it didn’t signal the coming administration’s possible first step toward an unconstitutional and unAmerican silencing of the healthy questioning and criticism that is so necessary to good government.

Now, mind you, I am definitely not one who believes that nasty things emblazoned on T-shirts should be censored. On occasion, when The Star has been hotly criticized for publishing bigoted or hate-filled letters against individuals or groups, I have tried to remind readers that the First Amendment is intended to guarantee the expression of language and opinions that are unpopular or even offensive. That is the very crux of free speech: The majority’s accepted opinions need no protection. 

And that is precisely what the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, grasped so clearly so long ago: When, God forbid, the majority of Americans embraced ideologies or actions that were dangerously wrong and a danger to democracy, it would be the duty of dissenters to speak out in protest. Their right to do that, under the First Amendment, and the right of the press to report on 0ould stand between us and tyranny.

Does merely passing through someplace on a bus count as actually visiting that place?

Not really, I have been told. Maybe it’s a superficial way to see what a small piece of a place looks like, but there is limited opportunity for a meaningful cultural exchange.

Consider my experiences on Shelter Island. I am a fairly recent arrival on the East End, having lived here for about a year and nine months, but I had never really spent time on Shelter Island.

My significant other, Jason, himself a recent arrival in my life, was a bit incredulous when I told him this. He’s a big fan of Shelter Island and resolved to take me there for a date. My only experience there was a bus ride I took as a reporter in the spring of 2015 with a group of John M. Marshall Elementary School fifth graders who were on their way to a field trip on Plum Island. The ride was fun and interesting, but mostly because fifth graders are pretty hilarious. However, I wouldn’t have described that trip as a meaningful cultural exchange.

That changed on the afternoon of Nov. 20, when Jason and I loaded our car onto the South Ferry with a plan to drive around the town, visit Black Cat Books, break in my new digital camera with some candid photography, and meet friends for dinner at Commander Cody’s.

The start of the trip was far from auspicious. It was raining and the wind had seriously picked up. Our car was first in line on the ferry, so it was a bit like riding in the first car of a roller coaster, which I normally like to do. This was different, though, and as water splashed horizontally across the windshield and the ferry rocked hard on the waves, the song playing on the radio was “Cold Water” by Major Lazer and Justin Bieber.

Stop judging my taste in music. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of listening to the lyrics, the chorus begins like this: “And if you feel you’re sinking, I will jump right over into cold, cold water for you.”

Jason turned the radio off and held my hand.

I sighed in relief when we finally got off the ferry. I had been holding my breath. 

However gloomy the weather, Shelter Island welcomed me with the charming feel of a New England seaside village. The architecture intrigued me everywhere we went. I imagined myself living in a house there someday (then promptly imagined an almost daily round trip by ferry to work, at which point the anxiety returned). Why hadn’t I noticed the beautiful houses the last time I was here? Oh, right — that bus full of excited fifth graders was pretty distracting.

We drove to Ram’s Island, where Jason explained that the land bridge we were driving on is called a tombolo and told me all about the Shelter Island Conference of 1947. I later did a Google search to learn more about how the field of quantum physics was essentially born at the Ram’s Head Inn following World War II — fascinating. Sometimes you just never know what you don’t know.

At Black Cat Books, the floor-to-ceiling shelves of used and rare books were pretty exciting. After much exploration, my reading list grew by one — a second-hand copy of “Gone Girl” that Jason bought for me — and I found a Christmas gift for a family member: a hardcover book of reproductions of sketches by a famous Japanese artist. 

The sun finished setting while we were inside Black Cat. Not long after we emerged and began driving again, some illuminated stained-glass windows in a building on a side road caught my eye. The rows of vertical windows with stunning colors are embedded in my mind, but I can’t figure out what building it was. It was so dark out, and I cannot recall what street we were on. Was it a church? Historical society center? Privately owned building? If anyone knows, please call me here at the Star office.

When our friends arrived, we headed to Commander Cody’s, which Jason had been talking up for weeks. The fried calamari was tender, clearly made fresh rather than from a frozen source. I burned my tongue on a spectacular cup of Manhattan clam chowder, then Jason and I shared a pound of killer baby back ribs and a plate of fish and chips. I can see why it’s his favorite restaurant.

We headed home after that. Because top-40 hits are all radio stations seem to play these days, we heard “Cold Water” again on the ferry ride back. That got turned off, too.

With regard to the to-do list we’d set out with, we accomplished almost everything. I took exactly one photo with my new camera the entire time we were there, and it’s pretty terrible. But I have a strong feeling I’ll be back for more.

Christine Sampson is a reporter at The Star.

The distance between my house and the Star office building is less than a hundred yards, and some of the nicest moments of otherwise ordinary days are spent walking between the two. It’s a quick moment of stolen solitude, to listen to the wind in the high trees and, quite often, the roar of the ocean, about a mile away. I am supposed to walk a lot, at least according to the medical profession. But hurriedness often intervenes, preventing me from scheduling longer, proper hikes, and this gives my many short back-and-forth trips between house and office more significance than they might otherwise merit.

Among the last people to leave the office after dark about two weeks ago, I was headed toward home when a vehicle followed me slowly with its headlights on, lighting my path up the dark lane. I had walked past the lamppost that marks the boundary between The Star’s driveway and the East Hampton Library parking lot next door and continued my slow perambulation toward my house without looking back to find out who was lighting my way.

The truth is, I cherish these walks despite the fact that a doctor told me not so long ago that my feet were “kaput.” Time was, way back when, that I spent several summers as a counselor at a phenomenal summer camp for inner-city children on a 1,000-acre tract of untouched woodland in the northwest corner of New Jersey, where it meets New York and Pennsylvania. Everything we did there was intended to be in harmony with nature, and I still try to reconnect with that feeling. Simple campsites were spread out through the woods, and it was a point of pride if you were a counselor moving alone at night not to use a flashlight; a flashlight would be almost a sin, out there between the trees and under the canopy of a star-dusted sky. Now, all these years later, as silly as it sounds —and despite my night vision no longer being the best — I still balk at carrying a flashlight, especially on familiar ground.

To be certain, I’m not exactly the surefooted person I once was, even on sidewalks. So even though I didn’t like the idea that someone in a vehicle following me home the other night apparently thought I needed help finding my way, I accepted it as a kind gesture. 

The vehicle and its headlights kept up with me and eventually turned around the circular driveway adjacent to my house as I was about to reach the front door. Seeing the vehicle for the first time — I hadn’t looked back to see who was following me because I wanted to prove I didn’t need any help — I saw a white pickup truck. Assuming my son, who owns one, was at the wheel, I offered a somewhat perfunctory wave of thanks. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned he had nothing to do with it. Who was at the wheel? I still don’t know.

There are many perks that come with growing older: Children who are now adults, if you are lucky enough to have some, will remind you of certain realities you ought not ignore. (For example, in my case, I am frequently instructed not to drive at night. And at Thanksgiving, one of my kids not only shared the preparations but just about took them over, and I was greatly relieved.) But, still, I naturally cringe when I watch or hear others tell their parents what to do and when to do it. They ought not to forget that it’s empowering to be left to your own devices for as long as possible. So, whoever the mysterious Good Samaritan was, with the headlights behind me: Thank you so much . . . but no thanks.

If, when you get behind the wheel of a car, your thoughts turn toward auto accidents, or if, when you board a plane, you worry that it will crash, you are apt to face your digital life with trepidation, too. 

When you learned that Russian rogue operators (or were they put up to it by the Politbureau?) had hacked into the computers of members of the Democratic National Committee, for example, did you say to yourself, “Yikes! I better watch out”? Or did you feel perfectly secure in being a small potato, like I did?

This week my antennas went up, however, when I received two suspicious emails in a row that weren’t connected with anything I recognized. The first came from “support” — with a lower case “s” — and no further identifiers. It asked me to reset my password. My password for what? That wasn’t indicated. I read the email but did not follow its directions. That was not a hard decision, but then the second came, from someone purporting to be Howard Yang of No. 200, Changjiang West Road, Hefei, China. 

His message was that Tankp Capital Limited had applied to register easthamptonstar as “their brand name” and that I should let him know if that company was authorized by my company “as soon as possible in order that we can deal with this problem timely.” 

I’m a pretty curious person, and I am a pretty good proofreader. The grammar was a little off. I am also someone who tries to be polite when I call a “help desk” about a problem with some device or system and reach someone whose English is heavily accented; just because the email might not come from someone with impeccable English didn’t mean it was a scam. In the case of Howard Yang, however, curiosity got the better of me.

Going to Google, I searched to find out if Mr. Yang’s address could be a legitimate one. Was there such a street and such a street number? Someone did seem to be running a trading company — selling groceries and dry goods — from that address. On Tripadvisor, I learned that accommodations were available at the 7 Days Inn or the Jinjiang Inn High Tech Zone in Hefei, China, otherwise known as Anhui. I then decided to see if Tankp Capital Limited could be found at any address. After a bit of a diversion during which the algorithms thought I might be trying to buy Chinese tank tops, I wasted a bit of time looking at a corporation named NKP, rather than Tankp, based in Dubai. After a while of perusing the mission of NKP, I looked at hotels in Dubai, too, trying to remember the one I stayed in once while en route to Ethiopia in 2011. Finally, looking for gentlemen by the name of Howard Yang in the city of Heifei, I at last came across a website called domainnamescam. wordpress.com — and, hey, presto! There he was. Good old Howard.

Concerns about how much time adults as well as children spend in front of screens have been in the news recently. American children from 5 to 16 apparently spend more than six hours a day starring at screens, while, according to the Nielsen Company, adults devote about 10 hours and 39 minutes each day to consuming media, including tablets, smartphones, personal computers, video games, radios, DVDs, DVRs, and TVs. Perhaps that’s the reason Donald Trump won the election.

A week or two ago, with nothing much in the refrigerator, I decided to go down to the beach in front of the house to catch something for dinner. After the girls had been fed the requisite chicken nuggets, I took a look in my tackle box and had a rude surprise.

Like a lot of other things that go by the wayside for the parents of young children, my fishing supplies were in a sorry state. The hooks on the only popping plugs likely to get a rise out of a September bluefish in the bay were rusty and dull. Other lures were tangled madly in nylon leader or missing barbs that I had intended to replace but never got to. The box was a metaphor for my life.

Not that I am complaining. No, I wiggled a small bucktail free from the hell at the bottom of the box and went down to the beach. I did not catch much, only a small, tapered tan fish that reminded me vaguely of a snake. I had put another one of these, caught in a minnow seine, into our saltwater aquarium, where it hid for a few days in the sand, then took a suicide mission over the glass. I found it on the floor.

If you can imagine a meaner, toothy-looking blenny, then you have a picture of what this fish looked like. Neither my treasured "Fishes of the Gulf of Maine" nor an Internet search produced any suspects, so for now, the species will go unknown by me.

I suppose I am ambivalent about fishing anyway. Just where are all the porgies and blowfish of my youth, I wonder, the ones we used to catch from a dinghy just offshore? Now, even using ground-bunker chum, nothing comes to my line except spider crabs, and there are plenty of those. Maybe I am just lazy, but I get bored after a few casts if nothing is coming up.

There are fish around still, I am told. The bay is filled with porgies, although fluke are apparently in decline, and there were so few winter flounder around that a contest or two has been canceled.

Nature, particularly under the sea, does follow its own, nearly unfathomable patterns. A friend told me of one harbor here that was loaded with fat bunker. He said he even saw a commercial purse seiner chasing them in Gardiner's Bay, something that hadn't been seen around here for more than 30 years. It's hard to say what to make of it all.

I’ve been reading in comparative mythology recently, about ritual regicide, virgin births, thefts of fire, trees of life and of death, resurrections . . . that kind of thing, and apparently, at least according to Joseph Campbell, it’s all one — more or less the same stories and symbols from Day One aimed at reconciling earth with the heavens. 

“Ad astrum per aspera,” I said to O’en this morning as we headed, with hope, for The Star. And no sooner had I sat down than the phone rang. A call from the West Coast, from my erstwhile doubles partner, Gary Bowen, with whom I’ve won East Hampton Indoor tournaments in successive summers. 

He hesitated at first when I answered. “Do I sound like Mary?” I asked.

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he said, I did. 

“We’re becoming one!” I said. “Like the myths — the earth goddess entwined double helix-like with the slayer of aging doubles teams.”

We talked about meeting up around February (when our ninth grandchild is to be born out there) and were commiserating about the winter and the election and about how we yearned to scrap the rurally biased Electoral College when he had to sign off to go do battle.

I shall gird my loins tomorrow, at high noon, and it is in this wise that we agile-for-our-age septuagenarians, not unmindful of our blessings, aim for the stars — engraved plaques at least. 

The Independent today quoted Einstein to the effect that to some nothing in life is miraculous and to some everything is. I would definitely put O’en, our 5-month-old white golden, in the latter camp. 

“We think nothing of walking around the block, but can you imagine what it’s like to walk around the block for him?!” I asked Mary. A garden of delights — the effluvia ever new all the time. Transcendence in the temporal. Beset by fear and desire we cling — that’s our “leash.” He is not so constrained — he just is.

We agreed that we should follow his lead. And in fact that is, when we are out on our walks, what we usually do