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.

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

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.

It was Tuesday night when it occurred to me that I hadn’t — because I was flying back from having spent the weekend in Pittsburgh — seen the first half of the Steelers’ delightful 24-14 win that Sunday over the Giants.

Mary had recorded it, and so it was with a light heart that I headed down the hall, with her behind me, toward the larger TV where I presumed she’d show me — yet again, for I have never kept pace with change — how to summon it up.

“Was it the football game you were interested in?” she asked when we got there.

“Well, just the first half — I saw the second half, you’ll remember, when I got home. The Steelers were leading 14-0 at the half, so I thought it would be fun to watch.”

“Uh-oh,” she said. “I thought you’d watched the whole game — I deleted it.”

“You . . . deleted it. . . ?”

“Yes, forgive me, forgive me,” she said, pitiably. “Maybe I can retrieve it. . . .”

“That’s a venal . . . no, no, that’s a mortal sin, you know. Now, I’ll have to read about Emily Dickinson!”

Well, it serves me right for persisting in ignorance. I will have to learn how to record things myself. And anyway, she didn’t do it with full knowledge of the sin, the one, you know, having to do with the erasure of vitally important shows. 

“You’re forgiven — you’re not guilty!” I called out reassuringly toward the living room, where she was watching a Sam Shepard play, knowing that that would resonate particularly with her, who’s never forgotten the sign on the Pittsburgh bridge, the one painted 20 or so years ago, in big white letters, that said, “She’s Guilty.”

Why is it that women, the chief reason that there’s any joy in life, or any life for that matter, have received such short shrift by and large down the centuries, except for the few societies, like Crete, that were matriarchies?

She’s guilty? The church, and often society, would seem to have it so. 

Why that is I haven’t the remotest idea. 

And let it so be recorded.

When Rob Balnis asked if I were coming to work out Saturday morning, I immediately said yes, inasmuch as the football game would be Friday night, at Mercy.

“We’re 0-6,” I said, “and so are they.”

“Really? I thought we’d won a couple.”

“That’s probably because of the way I’ve been writing things up. Losses become wins in my vernacular. You always want to look on the bright side,” I said, by way of explanation, before humming a few bars from the Monty Python song. 

Then he stuck the knife in. “What happened to the Steelers?!”

“A friend of mine is a Dolphins fan and he asked me over to watch the game,” I said. “I was so sure they’d win I told him I’d take a Xanax before I came — I didn’t want to annoy the hell out of him. Ultimately I didn’t go — a blessing in retrospect — and went to puppy kindergarten instead, which, in contrast to the game, was pure joy.”

Frankly, as a pick-me-up I know of nothing, nothing really, that can beat puppy kindergarten. They’re all so happy to see each other, having apparently absented themselves from felicity for a week. Unleash them and the party’s on — at play in ARF’s backyard.

I would recommend attendance to anyone, especially to anyone beset at times by depression. You will come away saying, like Florentino in “Love in the Time of Cholera,” keep on sailing.

Henry, I’d thought, would be our last dog, but, as my brother-in-law reminds from time to time, if you have love to give, give it.

“I’m the one being trained,” I said in the newsroom the other day when asked how O’en’s training was going. 

Trained to give my heart to someone else, which, for me, at least, isn’t easy. 

So I’m determined to do my best when it comes to that. It will be, I’m quite sure, my last chance.

News that the Maidstone Club, having just gotten a new irrigation system in place for its golf course, now wants to build a new bridge over an upper reach of Hook Pond reminded me of my childhood in East Hampton Village. In those days, the mid-1970s, we could roam a lot more freely than kids can today. 

From about seventh grade on, my friends and I spent a lot of time poking around Hook Pond and the Nature Trail dreen. From my family’s house behind the library, we could walk with our fishing poles and a bucket of worms across to Jeffery’s Lane, past the club tennis house, and onto the course’s longer bridge.

Other times we could push a little farther, crossing the bottom of a field that was still farmed to get to a shorter, falling down span known as Joiner’s Bridge. That bridge, which also reaches the golf course, was recently rebuilt by the new property owner on the private side of the pond. It still appears as if it is decaying into the pond, but this time on purpose.

In retrospect, I suppose we were trespassing when we cast for bass and perch from the pond’s bridges, but no one ever objected. In fact, golfers often would stop to ask how the fishing was going. Nowadays, the feeling is different; I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone fishing from either of these bridges, let alone the Dunemere Lane vehicle bridge, and there are signs reminding would-be visitors that the course itself is private property. May­­be there are fewer fish. 

My son, Ellis, and I got it into our minds to see what was what from the Main Beach side of the pond the other day. And, while we saw signs of fish splashing on the surface, we could get nothing to rise to our hooks.

For my dollar, I would prefer not to see another bridge over the pond, which belongs to the town trustees, but if the club insists that it has to have one, perhaps it might be willing sweeten the pot by allowing the public to fish from its crossings again.

We were going head to head the other day, in a wide-ranging discussion with some other longtime summer people turned almost-year-round, about never-ending construction on our streets and whose lost real estate opportunities and dumb decisions, over the years, were dumbest and lostest.

We’d all bought our houses in the ’60s or ’70s, years before the South Fork became the Hamptons, when you’d walk along Main Street pushing a stroller and shopkeepers, seeing an unfamiliar face, would come smiling out to introduce themselves. We agreed that compared to almost anything else, we could hardly have made a better investment.

But everyone had a story also about the land that got away, the vacant acre that could have been acquired years ago but was not — sold, last year or last month, for some preposterous figure, cleared of tall trees and underbrush where small furry creatures roamed, and built up to within an inch of the lot lines with monster houses lacking nothing but moats.

Big is nothing new here. The 19th-century “cottages” in East Hampton Village were built with eight or 10 bedrooms plus three for staff — only it’s now happening on parcels too small to contain it. I hear the East Hampton Town Board is thinking of imposing new standards that would limit a house’s size relative to the size of its lot; good luck with that. The town is far from alone, of course; the “too-much-money syndrome,” as Paul Goldberger calls it, is spreading nationwide, changing the look and character of beleaguered neighborhoods everywhere. Last week a resigned North Shore village official told Newsday that “this is the way people want to live these days” and suggested that his village’s code might be “behind the times.”

One of the first things I remember about the South Fork is big, ugly billboards, spaced out along the Napeague stretch almost as far as Hither Hills, advertising everything from motels to cigarettes and car dealerships. That was in 1966, when Sidney and I ventured out from the city to rent something for the summer in Amagansett, which, we’d heard, had broad, beautiful beaches that made up for its being more than four hours away from civilization.

Almost nobody we knew had ever heard of the place. A year later, when my proud father told someone that “my kids have bought a house in Amagansett,” the man looked at him quizzically.

“Why?” he asked.

“ ‘Why’? What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Why are you against it?”

(Say “in Amagansett‚ in Amagansett” fast. Get it?)

The billboards were gone when we returned as new mortgagees the following spring, the town board having won a prolonged legal battle to enforce the anti-billboard provisions of the zoning ordinance it had enacted 10 years before. Gone, too, was the vacant acre next door, which had been offered to us for $5,000 soon after we bought the house. Five thousand dollars? No way!

Most everyone in the room that night had a similar story, some with happy endings (nice new neighbors), some not. (One woman asked the architect of the castle rising almost in her backyard whether they would be planting trees for screening. “Of course,” he answered. “They don’t want to see the dinky pool out there.”)

If the evening devolved into a contest of sorts — who’d lost the most money by sitting tight when they could’ve jumped — we won. Here’s why. Right before we were to sign the contract of sale, a friend called my husband with a tip on the stock market. Buy shares of something called Berkshire Hathaway, he advised. One share of the brand-new venture was a little over $19. 

No matter. We were about to spend $35,000 on a house, and that was pushing it. We passed.

By buying the house, which we love and still live in, instead of the stock, we gained 50 years of contentment, and lost, according to Berkshire’s current price, about $34.8 million.

Irene Silverman is The Star’s editor at large.

Summer ended late this year — a whole month late, this week’s high temperatures notwithstanding. It wasn’t until October 21 that the summer sun delivered its last, loving rays as we unloaded a good few thousand lobsters and crabs from the Kim & Jake. 

The phone had chimed its text-message chime a few minutes before 7 a.m.: The Kim & Jake would tie up at 8. With a meeting in East Hampton at 11, I could work two hours at most, but there was enough time to stop for coffee on the way, and that was reason enough to head east, into the rising sun. 

I gulped the last, sugary gulp on the dock a few minutes before 8, and it was on with the boots, the apron, the gloves. The sun resplendent, I glanced north-northeast and wondered if that was Watch Hill across the gentle Sound, the breeze light and soothing — sensual like Blossom Dearie hitting the highest notes in a bouncy ragtime workout. “And you, you come from Rhode Island, and little old Rhode Island is famous for you.” 

Sometimes I am on the dock, a long steel hook in hand, and as the crew fill plastic crates with their catch and heave them from the boat, I drag them inside, one after another, where they are hoisted onto the culling table. Other times I am inside, where the lobsters, sorted by weight into larger crates, are carried to a scale and then to one of many tanks where they await the end. Here’s hoping for an auspicious rebirth, I think, as crate after tightly packed crate is dropped into the cold, cold water. 

The last couple of times, I’ve taken a turn on the boat’s deck and, once, climbed into the hold, crouching and surrounded by innumerable sullen and forlorn Jonah crabs, many hundreds of dagger eyes on me as I toss them into a tall bucket that, when filled, is lifted to the deck and poured into a crate. 

If there is one thing I know almost nothing about, it is fishing. But a few minutes of this and I do know one thing: I am not cut out for this work. Shouldn’t I be lying on an ocean beach, blissfully absorbing the last rays of summer? Yes, but no: The winter is long and I must earn what I can while the summer lasts. 

My short unhappy career concluded, I return to the deck and the captain takes a turn below as the crew work another hold. I raise the bucket, dump it into the crate, and turn the crabs upright. A claw closed on a finger will make a man cry, I’m told. For now, I must take their word for it. Fortunately, the beasts move slowly. 

Back on the dock, I gaze eastward toward Shagwong Point, site of so much, so-long-ago sunshine and merriment, and beyond. Summer. Endless Summer. The Endless Summer, like that old surf movie, or that Beach Boys compilation, multipart harmonies pouring forth like the midmorning sun on the last day of summer. 

The love of my life

She left me one day

I cried when she said

I don’t feel the same way

Still I have the warmth of the sun

Summer ended in the afternoon. Famished and unable to wait for a promised clam pie, I sipped lukewarm soup in the car, the rain starting quickly and then pouring down, the cover haphazardly thrown across the broken, leaking convertible top, me inside, drenched and in near darkness as an old man shouted angrily on the radio. Time to kill and nowhere to go. 

Go east, not-so-young man, go east, a voice whispered. Toward the rising sun. 

Or south, maybe. To the endless summer. 

But just go. 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

The whole social-media dance has gone on for a long time now but, given its growth and its impact on the world in which we live, it seems well past time for me to get with the program. I use a Mac for work and read and write emails all day, every day, but beyond that I really have not participated in the revolution in how people communicate with each other.

When my eldest granddaughter, who at that time already had an iPhone, started using Instagram at the age of about 12 or 13, I wondered what the world was coming to: Wasn’t she too young? When some years later my youngest granddaughter, barely 9 years old this summer, tried to set me up on Instagram, I smiled benignly but ignored the whole thing. By then, my daughter-in-law had started posting stories from The East Hampton Star on Facebook, and although I clicked occasionally to find out which stories were attracting notice, I didn’t pay much attention.

I do have a Facebook account, but I rarely look at it and have no idea how many Facebook “friends” I may have. I do know, however, that my husband has many more. He has always been gregarious, and seems to have “friended” all of my friends online, as well as his own. Without trying to, he has become my social-media social secretary. When I forget someone’s birthday, his Facebook alert, promptly relayed, allows me to remain in good stead. 

I can remember when the activists at Tiananmen Square got news from the outside world via fax. More recently, the Arab Spring, another kind of revolution, was sparked by activism on social media. ISIS uses Facebook and other platforms (hey, at least I know some of the lingo) to spread hatred and recruit young men and women from the West. You can’t pick up a copy of The New York Times without finding articles about hacking and cyber war that often go right over my head and, I assume, many people of my generation. 

And then, of course, we have Donald Trump, with his addled talk of “the cyber.” I have read that, incredibly, he is even more behind the times than I am when it comes to computer literacy. Reportedly, he didn’t own a computer until about 2007, and his real estate business still uses a Windows operating system from 2003. But isn’t it fitting that he has embraced Twitter as his own favorite means of mass-communication, given his accusation that traditional media are part of a giant, secret conspiracy against him? (A news-media conspiracy that, by the way, the Illuminati or the “international bankers” or whoever else it is who is supposed to be running it have completely forgotten to tell me about.)

Not wanting to get left behind by history, I spent some time this morning trying to get up to speed on some relatively more up-to-date forms of social media. I came away with a list of the 12 most popular platforms in this country: In order, according to one source, they are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Tumblr, Vine, WhatsApp, Reddit, Flicker, and Pinterest. 

That’s too many for me to digest. Maybe one of our schools or libraries will take up the social media challenge by offering adult-ed courses for people like me. I would be the first to sign up.

In the meantime, I noticed an interesting headline on Google News this afternoon, from The Independent: “We Probably Just Heard a Message From Aliens, Scientists Say.” Apparently, extremely odd and inexplicable noises and modulations are emanating from a set of stars in deep space. 

I wonder if anyone will be offering a course in interplanetary communications one day soon? We’ve seen a lot of wonders in our lifetimes. If it all comes to pass, and our civilizations do make contact, I really have my fingers crossed that the first human being the aliens speak with at that intergalactic-introductions ceremony isn’t President Trump.