In the last few weeks, the old house we live in has been crawling with roofers and repairmen. I guess it’s a case of extreme spring housekeeping, but we are finally facing some of the overdue renovations we’ve ignored for too long: The place needs re-shingling, at least on the south side, as well as new roofing over the flat ceiling of the master bedroom; some of the window trim and soffits have gone soft, and we need to add insulation where the foam that was blown in years ago has gone. 

And that's just the exterior. I can hardly remember the last time the interior was painted. I guess I should thank heavens that we chose pleasing, non-trendy, Williamsburg-ish colors back in the 1970s and 1990s. I think I can say with confidence that they remain in good taste!

In this day and age, homeowners around town seem quite overeager to clutch at any excuse to get rid of the old to clear the way for something bigger and better. I’m glad the younger generation venerates this house as I do, because in other hands, these necessary maintenance issues would be more than enough license for a tear-down.

Sitting on the sun porch, looking into the yard, I remember the friend who long ago advised us to build a circular brick patio in the L-shaped outdoor space between the kitchen and bedroom. That turned out to be a grand idea. I also recall waking up one fall morning, long ago, to see a friend who was much older than I digging in a garden patch by one of the backdoors: He had ordered too many daffodils for his Northwest Woods house lot and came by without ado to plant bulbs. They are blooming right now.

This old house has lots of tales to tell.  

Originally, some 150 or 200 years ago (or more? I've frankly forgotten), our living room was a silversmith shop that stood near Main Street and was later moved up the lane to become a family house. If you gaze up at some of the old beams in the basement, you can still see where the forge had been. 

Sitting on the sun porch, I also think of E.J. Edwards, my late first husband’s grandfather, a member of the venerable Edwards fishing and whaling clan, who ran bunker (or menhaden) boats out of Promised Land. It was E.J. who planted the holly tree that still grows in the front yard, on the occasion of his granddaughter Mary Huntting Rattray’s birth. E.J. also put down the green boat paint, containing bunker oil, that can still be seen on the floor of the sunroom. The boat paint has chipped away to bare wood in some spots, over the last, oh, 80 or 90 years or so, but I do really like that green. E.J. thought it would last forever, and it just about has.

I have lately been thinking that it might be a good idea for the Village of East Hampton to embark on an education scheme, explaining to realtors and home-buyers — in our historic districts and beyond — why preservation is usually a nobler (not to mention more attractive) route than tearing down and rebuilding. Maybe the Ladies Village Improvement Society might be involved in creating a brochure on the merits of old houses, and what the rules are regarding preservation? It’s just a thought.

There are people selling ghosts on eBay, I have heard. Well, actually, I checked, and, yes, this week you can bid on a "ghost in a bottle" from a seller in New Jersey. But that's not the only thing I was surprised about recently on the Web site - you can buy raw coffee beans there and original photographic prints from the heyday of The Village Voice.

Every week or so, I cross the great divide to Sag Harbor to get a pound of coffee from my friends the Bedinis who run Java Nation. Consider this a shameless plug, if you want to, but I think they have the best coffee, bar none, on the East End. I have tried just about every bean they sell. When I am feeling particularly flush, I'll spring for the $20-a-pound Kona or Galapagos.

This time, I noticed a handwritten sign for some Bolivian organic fair trade beans that seemed to me to be reasonably priced at $15. I can get about seven days' worth of brewed coffee for two people out of a pound of beans. Try that at Starbucks, I dare you. Talking to Andrew Bedini about the beans later, he confided that he had gotten them from a seller in Boston.

About a month ago I happened across something else on eBay that really caught my interest. Fred McDarrah of East Hampton, who was a Village Voice photographer back when the newspaper meant something, was selling prints and bits of other memorabilia from his collection.

Fred's great images included photos of people from Fred Friendly to Allen Ginsberg. Most of them have been sold now, but a few remain available. A print showing Leo Castelli, Ethel Scull, and Jasper Johns at a 1960 art opening drew 15 bids and went for $260 to a buyer calling himself thomas-b. A friend of mine from San Francisco walked away with a great shot of Divine for $31. A great picture of Oliver Stone from 1992 is still available. Bidding starts at $9.

Perhaps the best feature on eBay is one in which you can set up "favorite searches," keywords for the things you are interested in. I did this for old copies of The East Hampton Star, and the first hit I got was for the very issue from 1907 that I had been looking for. Between that and the coffee, I am still buzzing about it.

“You’ve met everyone!” Durell Godfrey exclaimed last Thursday, just after the editorial meeting and moments before the bombshell tossed by TMZ, the celebrity-gossip website, landed in the office: Prince was dead. 

Durell was referring to the actor Peter Dinklage, whom I have not actually met, and three of the four Beatles. 

I must plead guilty to serial name-dropping, though. John and Paul and Ringo, Elton John, Mary J. Blige. It’s all in my first book, “Into the Twilight,” a collection of these “Relay”s that is available at Amazon, BookBaby, and elsewhere in cyberspace (call me for a print copy).

But it’s true, I have been fortunate to meet a lot of people I admire, and some other noteworthy people, too. Keith Richards, B.B. King, Donovan, Ziggy Marley, D.J. Fontana, Graham Nash, Ron Wood, Warren Haynes, Norah Jones, Percy Heath, Suzanne Vega, Ace Frehley, Don Was, Billy Joel, John Mayer, Bootsy Collins, Ray Manzarek, and Glenn Tilbrook come to mind. Telephone conversations with Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson, Bill Wyman, Quincy Jones, Mickey Hart, Billy Bob Thornton, Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, Robert Cray, Steve Earle, Lou Reed, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Vaughan, Zakk Wylde. 

I haven’t had a television for four years now, and I don’t miss it at all. Today’s “smart” TVs surpass my understanding, and anyway, all things audio and video have converged in my iMac. Programming like the cable news channels, “The Daily Show,” and, sometimes, baseball games are there, along with multiple lifetimes’ worth of musical video content on YouTube. What’s more, the tyranny of cable TV is fading as devices like Apple TV allow a la carte selection from a growing body of content. 

Cooler still, HBO NOW allows anyone with an Internet connection to access its programming on a computer or mobile device. I signed up specifically to watch “Vinyl,” a series focusing on the music business, in all its sleazy glory, circa 1973. 

As colleagues who were in the business at the time attest, those were the days. My years at Billboard and another trade magazine in New York City weren’t quite so wild as that depicted in “Vinyl,” but there are some parallels. I’ll neither confirm nor deny participation in backstage high jinks at a few Black Crowes concerts. Ditto for an impromptu encounter with Levon Helm and Hubert Sumlin at the Beacon Theatre. It’s all in my rock ’n’ roll memoir, available wherever unpublished books are sold. (Note to agents and publishers: Call me.) 

During that semi-freewheeling time, I used to haul the laundry down from my sixth-floor walkup in Williamsburg to a Laundromat on Bedford Avenue. It was a mind-numbing chore, but one incident, a dozen or so years ago, stands out. Somewhere between pulling the clothes out of washing machines, throwing them into dryers, and inserting another thousand quarters, a silly contretemps played out before me when a young woman began accusing another patron of removing her still-damp clothes from the dryers and stuffing them into one of the rolling baskets you find at such places. 

The accused, a dwarf, denied all charges, but the woman would have none of it. Of his guilt she was certain, and she yammered on about just how inconsiderate he was and terribly inconvenienced she was. Her life, in fact, was irrevocably ruined, if the incessant yap-yap was any indication. 

I felt terrible for the poor man. His life was already hard enough, I was sure. To now suffer the indignity of being yelled at, in public, by this entitled, impudent youngster? It was wrong, but I said nothing. 

A year or two later, I saw a preview for a film. I don’t remember its title or subject, but to my amazement, there he was, the dwarf from the Laundromat. He probably wasn’t dragging his laundry down Bedford Avenue anymore. His accuser? Toiling in obscurity to this day, I’d wager. 

Yes, I have HBO NOW, now, but have not seen even one of the 51 episodes of “Game of Thrones,” starring Mr. Dinklage. I’m afraid to start for fear I won’t be able to stop, and thus will not accomplish anything ever again.

I never did meet Prince, nor see him perform. But he did sit directly in front me at a Sheryl Crow concert at the Beacon in, I think, 1999. (Yes, I have met Sheryl Crow a couple of times, once in the defunct Hit Factory studios, where she recorded a duet with Tony Bennett [yes, I have met Tony Bennett] but was too shy to say more than hello.) 

Like Mr. Dinklage — well, not really like him — Prince was slight in stature, but the hoop earrings he wore were enormous and offset his otherwise understated attire. As Ms. Crow concluded the last song of her set, but before the encore, Prince and his companion(s) — one or two women, if memory serves — discreetly left the building. 

Maybe I should have said hello. 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

All of a sudden, in synchrony with the weather, the sports scene here has brightened, just when I thought it would be yet another silent spring.

Joe Gonzalez, whom I often see on his midday constitutionals, told me this afternoon that the girls lacrosse team had won two in a row, and I told him that our softball team had the day before finally won one, shellacking Amityville 15-0. Even the coach, Kathy Amicucci, was seen pirouetting.

There’s nothing like a win to put a spring in your step, not that it’s the only thing — a good game is ideally what you want — but sometimes a win is just what you need. It lightens the spirit, just as temperatures in the 60s do. 

Baseball too has been competitive, as has been the case with boys and girls track — not to mention the as-of-this-writing-undefeated boys tennis team and — not least — the warmer weather, so I can’t complain.

I should add to that reason-to-be-cheery list a puppy. Mary has been wanting one for a while now, even to the extent of having put some money down with a breeder of cream-colored golden retrievers in the Blue Ridge mountains of western Virginia. She’s used, though, to males, and there were none in February’s litter. It’s almost as if you’re expecting. People I know who know Mary’s been looking say, “Well . . . well. . . ?”

“Not yet,” I say. “But soon, maybe this summer.”

Anyway, I agree that a puppy will lighten our spirits and perhaps extend our lives, as will also, I think, a Ping-Pong table. She beats me in swimming and backgammon, I beat her in tennis, and, judging from a recent stay in Mexico, we’re equal in Ping-Pong. 

The all-weather table is to go in the basement, which recently we had waterproofed and brightly painted.

It’s pretty fair to say that this could well be our last dog and Ping-Pong table, and that, therefore, we want to be as frisky as can be. To that end we go regularly to East End Physical Therapy on off-hours and pull weights down, and in, and out as, on TV, Ina Garten mixes dishes that almost bring on cardiac arrest just by looking at them. She seems happy, though.

Well, who wouldn’t be? It’s spring.

Each morning at the hotel we stayed at in Mexico, a question appears on the daily calendar screen, and, serendipitously, the question the first morning was, “How old is the earth?”

Well, I happened to have the answer right there in the book in my hand, Richard Fortey’s, “Life, an Unauthorised Biography: A Natural History of the First 4,000,000,000 Years of Life on Earth.”

“Cuatro billion anos!” I said, after having run up to the concierge, Maritza Garcia, when she took her place at the desk as the clock struck 9 a.m. For which I received a green “Club Angelitos” baseball cap. They used to give you a bottle of tequila if you were the first to answer “la pregunta” correctly, but, alas, times have changed, it’s caps and T-shirts now.

And speaking of tequila, I found out on this visit that my (well, not really “my,” but Alex Silva’s) margaritas hold up quite well in comparison to the hotel’s, further testimony that I really am evolving. 

It’s only natural, I suppose, that I think that way having read Richard Fortey’s book and “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,” by Elizabeth Kolbert, though Fortey cautions that one ought not to thump one’s chest: It’s really pretty much of a crapshoot (see all those extinctions). 

It’s the survival of the luckiest, really, not the fittest. Where there are mountains and deserts there once were oceans, where there is ice there once were trees, where there was one continent there now are many, where there were bottles of tequila there now are baseball caps. . . .

All is change. So much presumably at our hotel that the name of the person, Isaias Ochoa Hernandez, a lifeguard, who in 1987 first proposed the preservation of the sea turtles born on its beach was, I found, missing from a bilingual history of the laudable project affixed to a stone wall near where the palapas are.

Isaias, I was told, is living in Cancun now, though I wanted him to be remembered, and I think Maritza agrees. 

It was his “gift to the world,” his “regalo par el mundo,” he, “el papa de las tortugas,” told me some years ago, amid what might become the Anthropocene epoch extinction, the sixth such apparently, if we let it happen, in the earth’s four billion years.

The conversation quickly turned to cats at the East Hampton Library as the winter came to a close.

Spring begins its ascent throughout the neighborhood. The month of March: The sky is fair, the outdoor temperature cool. Inside the library is warmish, as cold people always win! Somebody at the library set the thermostat to the high 60s. Funny: Instead of putting on a giant sweater or running around the block, people who claim to be cold turn up the heat in the Village of East Hampton. Houses, offices, across the board — somebody cold cranks up the heat, baking the people they cohabitate with. 

Rumor has it this has been the case since natural gas was brought in to modernize the semirural village many decades ago. Since then, generally cold, less active people turn up the heat, close all the windows, and spend much of the day explaining that they are cold. 

Cold people could do jumping jacks, stand on their heads to reverse blood flow, or work while riding stationary bikes. Instead cold people turn up the thermostat; the warm people then get stuffy heads from the dry heat and complain about their sinuses. Everybody starts complaining, “I am hot!” or “I am cold!”

Coming to the Village of East Hampton soon is a company called Temperature Control Inc. For $75, Temp Control will make you a custom body-liner that controls the temperature of your body. Of course it will be constructed of recycled organic materials available in 50 colors.

Then people who reside in the Village of East Hampton will keep the thermostat around 62 degrees. Cold people will have warmer liners; hot people will have cooler liners. It is all very simple. No more broiled lobster people and no more cold fish people.

That aside, the conversation at the library turned to cats. The nice lady library employee working the first checkout station at the main entrance of the library was talking to the lady who was checking out books. They spoke about their cats. A man at the second checkout station was talking about his cats to a second nice librarian lady checking out DVD movies for him. The second librarian responded to the man — by discussing her two cats. 

At this point the discussions taking place among the four people encompassed at least six or seven cats. The conversations taking place among library employees and library patrons at the main checkout stations became rather catty — cat-filled!

The second library lady who was checking out materials to the guy told him every detail about her cats. Her cats are all black with definite white markings. Her two cats are almost impossible to tell apart, except that the two cats have different personalities. 

The guy checking out DVDs told the nice lady all about his cats, which are easier to tell apart and have extensive character personality differences. The man told the lady checking out his DVDs what great luck it is when a black cat crosses your path. Apparently that had happened to the guy earlier in the day. Somewhere in the lengthy history of the Village of East Hampton it became as good as shamrocks to have a black cat cross your path in clear sight out in front of you. 

The librarian told the guy who was talking about his cats and the black cat who had crossed his path earlier in the day a funny saying about how “not all the witches and their cats are in the library.” It was a very amusing rhyme that did not really make sense, yet it was fun! 

All said and done, the guy checking out DVDs, the lady checking out books, librarians — all cat owners — concluded their cat conversations. It was 4 p.m. on March 10, a Thursday. The conversation lasted two to three minutes. 

The lengthier version of “Cats at the Library” will be available in September of 2016. The 20-page story will include most of the cats’ names, with far more detailed cat personality facts concerning all cats involved. 

The Village of East Hampton, N.Y., ZIP code 11937, really is an exciting fast-lane “cat place” to be, to live! A “Saturday Day Night Fever,” go-to, see and be seen, disco ball and glitter everywhere kinda place! Cats in the trees, cats in the houses, cats on the roofs, cats in the gardens — a village of cats.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

Through no real fault of my own, I recently found myself needing to find a new place to live on the South Fork. It only took me about five weeks to find a rental, which might as well have been the equivalent of five minutes in Hamptons housing time. It was pretty terrifying out there, but I made it. 

In the interest of helping my fellow house hunters, allow me to present a guide to finding a place to live in the Hamptons. Basically, here’s what worked for me.

Step 1: You’ll need a housing résumé. I’m not kidding. Your housing résumé should first consist of an excellent credit report, which you’ll need to document in a printout from Credit Karma or some other such online service. You’ll also need flawless references, at least three of them, to vouch for you as a prospective tenant. Write down their phone numbers and/or email addresses. Additionally, list your qualifications just like you’d list your professional skills on an employment résumé. Nonsmoker? No pets? Have full-time local employment? It should all be true, of course, and it should all be included. Give this résumé to each prospective landlord you meet. It will make you appear serious and responsible.

Step 2: Adjust your expectations accordingly and leave yourself plenty of time to search. You wouldn’t expect to find your dream job two weeks after you finish your undergraduate degree, would you? You’re probably not going to find a one-bedroom apartment here for $1,000 per month. You may find a single room in a house with a nice homeowner for that much. Be willing to share a place with housemates. You’ll probably have to make sacrifices financially to be able to afford the kind of rent that seems to be the going rate these days. Keep an open mind and don’t give up, even if most of what you find is really scary. Oh, and put most of your stuff in a storage unit. I learned quickly that most landlords out here don’t want you lugging around a ton of belongings.

Step 3: Acquire a silver chalice and a purple candle. Wait for a full moon and light the candle. Pour your favorite red wine into the chalice and say the Hail Mary five times. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and visualize yourself in a new, wonderful home. Then, drink the red wine. Pour another into the chalice, sneak outside, and dump it along your current landlord’s privet. Just make sure he or she doesn’t see you, or else there goes a good reference.

Step 4: Expand your search. Don’t depend solely on social media groups or Craigslist to get you through this situation. Check the listings in The Star. Place a newspaper ad if you have to. I got several promising responses when I placed an ad in this newspaper in which I offered to pay for a landlord’s East Hampton Town rental registry fee if he or she chose me as a tenant. Most important, network the hell out of it. Tell everyone in your social circle that you are looking for a new place to live. Tell your co-workers. It was ultimately this last method that helped me find a new place to live.

To everyone still searching, don’t give up hope. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for you.

Christine Sampson is The Star’s education reporter.

The animal dynamics in the Rattray household got weird this week when our in-laws’ Chihuahua-mix dogs arrived for a several-day stay. Actually, the lives of our varied house pets are weird enough on any given day, but the addition of these two little darlings put things over the top.

Charlie and Delilah have it pretty good most of the time. Other than being taken out for a walk a couple of times a day, their feet rarely touch the ground. Instead, they loll around charmingly in my in-laws’ bed or make their way over to one of the sofas for a change of scene. When the pair first appeared on the scene about a year ago, they were destined for our house. I told my family in no uncertain terms that if they were taken in I was moving to the potting shed. Fine, they said.

For reasons dating, we believe, to a puppyhood traumatic experience, neither of the beige siblings like Luna, our black pug, at all. It’s war when the three are in the same room. But for the scale of the combatants, you could be forgiven for thinking you were at an ancient Roman fighting pit. For the safety of all concerned, Luna gets banished to an upstairs room when the Chihuahuas (or whatever they are) come to visit.

The ripple effects are there, however, and the canine tension level rises, even among those not directly involved. Yesterday, for example, Lulu, another small dog of dubious extraction in our menagerie, took after Leo the pig for reasons unknown, nipping his rear ham hock. Leo, who is profoundly peaceful by nature, was extremely put out and ran for safety under the kitchentable, but Lulu followed. After I was able to peel her away from her snarling attack, Lulu spent the rest of the breakfast hour in a time-out in her crate. Leo relaxed after a while and went out to snooze in the sun. And on it goes. 

Weasel, our black-tongued Lab mix, doesn’t like the dry food we picked up recently. Luna got into his leftover portion yesterday and overdid it; the mess this morning when our middle child got out of bed set off a new round of howls.

Ellis, who is 6, announced the other day that he wants us to get a finger monkey, whatever that is. If that is considered even for so much as a moment, I’m up and moving into the potting shed for good.

If you happen to come across a key chain with a medallion from East Hampton’s sesquarcentennial — that is, 350th — anniversary hanging alongside an ordinary brass door key and a Honda Civic ignition key, give me a call. For some reason, among all the items in my little old Coach shoulder bag when it went missing, the key chain’s loss is the most regrettable. It was a symbol of belonging, I guess. (And it’s not like you celebrate sesquarcentennials every day.)

The bag itself isn’t valuable. It is about 30 years old, judging from similar models on eBay, and it had long since been amortized, so to speak. I never much liked the wallet in the bag, which I bought recently from a catalog, so its disappearance wasn’t troubling, except, as might be expected, for all it contained: four credit cards, a debit card, medical insurance and prescription cards, a free Regency movie ticket, and my driver’s license. And then there was my hand mirror, a lipstick or two, a comb, at least three of the favorite lead pencils I use for marking music, and . . . what else? Only the person who took my bag knows the answer.

I’ve lived here for 56 years and never worried about thievery, but there seems to be no other explanation. It beggars belief that someone in a relatively small audience at an afternoon program in the quiet John Drew Theater at Guild Hall would make off with someone else’s purse — even if they did find it lying, unattended, on the floor or in an empty seat, as seems likely — but, unfortunately, after repeated searches by me and by helpful Guild Hall staffers, I can come upwith no other explanation.

One of the problems with unexpected losses and minor mishaps when you get to be a certain age is that some folks will “Uh, huh!” you — that is, assume you are in some way culpable for whatever has gone awry or amiss. But I really don’t think this was what they call a “senior moment.”

Okay, here is how the caper went down, for the sleuths among you: I had parked the car between the East Hampton Library and the Star office, gotten out, put the car keys in the bag, put the bag on my shoulder, and walked across Main Street to Guild Hall. I’m quite sure all this happened, because as I put it on my shoulder I noticed a smear of milk chocolate (my grandchildren’s sticky handiwork with leftover Easter candy) on the bag, and stood beside the car for a moment to clean it off. Once across Main Street, I walked straight into the theater and took a seat in a back row that was otherwise empty. When my husband caught up with me, we walked together down the aisle to sit in a row close to the stage. 

Did I put down the bag on the first seat? Probably. Or did I carry it with me from one row to the other? Probably not. I didn’t notice it was no longer with me until after the show had ended and we got up to leave. (I didn’t pass Go, if you know what I mean.)

By Tuesday, the theater had been searched four or five times. A friendly village police officer had visited my house so that the required form could be completed without my having to go to headquarters (thank you, officer). All of the credit cards had been put on hold. I had ordered a new car key and was ready to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Riverhead for a new license. Instead I sat down to write this column.

Now here’s where perhaps I am showing my age: When the police officer asked if there had been money in the wallet and, if so, how much, I didn’t have a clue.

A recent visitor to this office remarked on my books. “There’s everything you should read,” he said as I preened.

Actually, it’s everything I should have read long ago, in my bright college years, but forwent in favor of playing sports each season — soccer, squash, ice hockey, lacrosse — and serving up greasy hamburgers at my snack bar, known as “Gravy’s,” in the basement of Saybrook College.

In one of my ads, posted outside the college’s paneled dining room, I drew myself as Jesus feeding the 5,000, and urged the masses to “Go Gravy’s.”

I was a callow and feckless youth, and, as I saw yesterday in thumbing through an old photo album upstairs, which we are to have painted this week, an unsmiling infant with an odd, uncomprehending look. In all the photos of babies I see these days — my grandchildren among them — all are smiling, smiling broadly. My mother said I ran at 9 months, and that fact, the fact that I was often on the go, may have had something to do with it. Once, she said, she found me at the bottom of the hill atop which our house sat, sitting in the middle of Bennington’s Main Street. Presumably there wasn’t much traffic, it being wartime.

These photos, taken with a Brownie, I suppose, are fading now, and in some cases vanishing. There we are at McGuffy’s nursery school, the pugnacious Georgie Turner eyeing me sideways as I’m looking placidly straight ahead. My father assured me I’d put an end to his bullying about which I complained if once, just once, I’d hit him in the nose with all the force I could muster. 

“Papa! Papa! I did what you said: I hit Georgie Turner as hard as I could in the nose and he’s not bothering me anymore!” I wonder, Georgie, if you’re still alive, and, if so, how life has treated you. . . .

There we are in front of 25 Claremont Avenue in New York City bundled up in the blizzard of ’47. I’m holding Peter Puppy across my chest. He’s snow-covered and sighing, but putting up with it. There’s Puddy, Willie Dobbie, Ingrid. . . . I’ve begun to smile. . . . 

My cousin Margot is sitting regally in a chair, age 3 or so. Her mother, my aunt Mary, used to call her “Madam Queen,” and you can see why. She never had a problem smiling, and she, a breeder of black Labs on the Eastern Shore, and a motorcyclist and sailor as well, is still smiling. And laughing. And very loudly too. 

Which is the best, the absolutely best thing you can do.