Oh man, that was fun. Though it went by in a flash, as I’ve been telling people since Sunday, it was well worth it. Well worth the 57-mile after-work drive to and from the rehearsal studio in Bohemia. Well worth the hours holed up in the tiny and cluttered studio/writing room at home, learning new songs. And well worth all of Saturday’s downtime as the hours ticked away and the butterflies took flight. 

It had been exactly one year since anything resembling a formal performance — a short-lived band that gave exactly one performance before falling apart, as these ventures usually do — and in the ensuing months I’d wavered between a mild enthusiasm to soldier on and, more often, fervent cynicism and negativity. When time allowed, I’d hole up in that tiny room in what seems a futile effort to attain even passable dexterity on the piano. The guitars weren’t played at all, silently gathering dust as they hung from the walls. 

Is anyone even listening? Does anyone care? In my observation, live music is received as background noise. Don’t the kids prefer a D.J. these days?

Maybe, but the audience that packed Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday, at least, showed a pronounced preference for the real thing. The crowd definitely skewed older, shall we say, and when queried at the top of the show, many testified to personal experience with the Fillmore East, a downtown Manhattan rock ’n’ roll venue that closed when I was 4 and to which this event paid tribute. 

A few months ago, Randolph Hudson III, a guitarist and wonderful guy, asked if I owned a 12-string guitar. As it happened, I had bought one, on a whim, just a few months earlier when an offer I thought insultingly low was unexpectedly accepted. Randy kindly referred me to Joe Lauro, of the HooDoo Loungers and the Historic Films archive, who has helped to conceive and organize many similar musical events at Bay Street in the last few years. 

Joe and I had a short conversation, and I was invited to play with a group that would perform music of Jefferson Airplane, a group I’d always liked yet wasn’t especially familiar with beyond a spellbinding scene in “Gimme Shelter,” the Maysles brothers’ document of a 1969 festival at which a young man was stabbed and kicked to death by members of the Hells Angels as the Rolling Stones played on. 

Paul Kantner, who died in January, played the 12-string, an integral component of the psychedelic band’s sound. The “Airplane” would play between groups performing music of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two other icons of rock ’n’ roll’s long-ago golden age. 

In Bohemia — what a suitable name for these hippie revivalists’ rehearsal site — it was immediately apparent that Joe had assembled a fantastic crew, perhaps none more than the vocalists, George Feaster and Carolyn Droscoski, who would be our Marty Balin and Grace Slick. George, I later learned, is also an accomplished actor; as a frontman he is one of the best I’ve ever seen. When Carolyn belts out “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” it is, as Joe said, as though Ms. Slick is standing before you. 

Time and logistics allowed for just two group rehearsals before the big day, and by Saturday we just about knew what we were doing. When it was time, we proceeded to the stage in darkness, the last minutes of the original “King Kong” playing on the screen overhead, as Jefferson Airplane had done at a Fillmore East concert. 

“Well, Denham,” the police lieutenant said, “the airplanes got him.”

“Oh no,” Denham replied, the orchestral score swelling to its climax. “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” 

And then we were off, “3/5 Mile in 10 Seconds” and “The Other Side of This Life” and “White Rabbit” and more, ending with our own climactic “Volunteers” (“Got a revolution, got to revolution!”). It went by in a flash. 

I hope those veterans of the Fillmore East were able to relive a moment in their lives, and I wish I could relive the moment I hope they relived, if that makes any sense. Can we all do that again? 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

East Hampton has 1,000 tons of compost it can’t get rid of.   A couple of weeks back, officials sent out a notice announcing the town had a large amount unscreened compost to unload. The stuff had accumulated at the recycling center, the end product of all the lawn clippings, leaves, and brush that flow into the place, which are run through a giant grinder and left to mulch. Visitors to the so-called dump can see it for themselves — a long, tall mound of steaming dark-brown, almost black soil. 

Homeowners and landscapers know all about the town’s compost. Though it is thought not to be all that good for growing edible crops, it is terrific for sweetening up portions of a tired lawn or ornamental plantings. For a modest fee, workers at the recycling center will put a load in the back of a pickup truck for commercial landscapers or gardeners; permit-holders with a few bins to fill can do so at no charge, as I understand it.

However, when the supply reaches the hundreds or thousands of tons, the town has a problem. No one responded to its request for bids to buy the stuff, and earlier this month the Purchasing Department had the matter tabled during a town board meeting.

Compost is not the town’s only recycling headache. Because market prices for the products it collects have gone up and down over the years, it sometimes costs more for the town to deal with the material than it can receive from buyers.

That said, it is better in dollar terms for the town to hold down the volume of solid waste of any sort that it collects and has to haul away. Yard waste and tree trimmings ground into compost represent that much less that has to be sent to a distant landfill or incinerator.

Even if difficult to get rid of when the supply piles up, the composting program is a net benefit for taxpayers. And while we might not be able to take care of that 1,000 tons all on our own, a bucket-load here and there that any of us can take and use at home helps out.

Maybe it’s a good thing that interest in the presidential election has been revved up by one candidate who denigrates so many people — targeting them by place of origin, religion, and sex — while another foments revolution (albeit a peaceful one). Everyone I know keeps talking about the primaries.

I cannot believe disrespect and name-calling are good for democracy, but if more of the electorate turns out in November as a result, we might be able to say that this cloud of national humiliation has had a silver lining.

A report on voter turnout in national elections between 2000 and 2012, from an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center, showed it “dipped from 62.3 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 57.5 in 2012. That figure was also below the 60.4 level of the 2004 election but higher than the 54.2 percent turnout in the 2000 election.” So it seems that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of voters were the decision-makers in those years. 

Of course, a simple majority hasn’t always assured national election. In 2000, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, lost in the Electoral College after Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush in a 5-to-4 Su­preme Court decision. That then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted with the majority was considered the deciding factor. Mr. Gore had won the popular vote, although by only a very small percentage; Ralph Nader had won almost 3 percent of the vote and was probably the spoiler rather than Justice O’Connor. In addition to talking about the primaries, friends and relatives who admit to being surprised by the size of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s support have found it amusing to take something called the Bubble Quiz. According to their score on 25 questions, they were able to find out if they lived “cloistered together . . . with little to no exposure to American culture at large.” 

The quiz was devised by Charles Murray, a well-known political scientist and author who describes himself as a libertarian. He was recently interviewed about it by Paul Solman on the PBS NewsHour.

The Bubble Quiz questions range from “Have you ever walked on a factory floor?” and “Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?” to whether you have seen certain popular movies or eaten in certain chain restaurants. If you are interested in finding out where you score, it’s easy to find on the NewsHour website.

I myself took the quiz earlier today, but didn’t find it particularly enlightening. I guess I’m already aware that I live in a bubble of privilege. Also, I am not entirely sure that Mr. Murray is an oracle on what constitutes “American culture at large.” Still, if those who took the quiz were a fair sample of the voting public, and if their answers were carefully analyzed, perhaps it might serve as a barometer of the next election.

What we all know for sure is that the electorate is deeply divided, and that the societal culture gap is real. Trump and Sanders are only making that division so obvious we cannot ignore it any longer.

It would be going too far to say that my husband and I are cutthroat when it comes to the online challenge called Trivia Today. Intense would be more like it. 

Okay, maybe just a little . . . bloodthirsty.

Every morning and afternoon we check our computers for the day’s two questions. Before the sun goes down, one of us is sure to ask the other — always off-handedly, though a smirk or a scowl is riding on the answer — “So, how’d you do on Trivia Today?”

We’ve been competing in this maddening game — which is sort of like “Jeopardy,” only you get four possible answers to choose from — for about two years now. The enigmatic scoring chart, with 100 tops, has had us since January at 62 and 65, which is better than it sounds; the average score out there in virtual gameland is 49. Sidney had a long string of right answers recently, but it takes forever to gain a point and his number never budged, which has not improved dinnertime. “I don’t understand it,” he grouses. “Why aren’t I moving up?”

Most of the relationships of the long-married couples I know, and we are talking golden anniversary-plus here, seem to me to tilt almost soppily solicitous or — not so much. I met one woman in Florida this winter who was playing this same trivia game with her husband and confided that she was deliberately giving the wrong dumb answers to make him happy, and another who cuts the Times crossword puzzle out of the paper every morning and makes a copy of it for her husband before he wakes up. Then they have a battle over coffee to see who finishes first. They’ve been keeping score forever.

“Who’s ahead?” I asked her.

“Oh, I am. And you can tell him I told you.”

The best thing about Trivia Today is that you learn a lot of stuff that seems useless at the moment but that might come in handy sometime. The first job I ever had, as assistant humor editor of a long-defunct magazine called Coronet, was like that. Coronet was the Avis of the day to the Reader’s Digest’s Hertz. We ran a column like the Digest’s “Life in These United States” where people would write in with funny things that had really happened, only we paid $25 and they paid $100.

Nine out of 10 submissions were handwritten, often in pencil. My job was mainly to decipher the chicken scratches, but also to pick out candidates for publication, and then the humor editor (a beyond-crabby woman who never cracked a smile) would decide who’d win.

Within a few months of starting work, it occurred to me that I didn’t need to plow through the whole letter, just skip to the punchline at the end. “No, 40 children are enough.” Yup, we’ve run that one already. It was as if there were only a finite number of comical things happening in America. By 11 a.m. the day’s work was done. 

Pretty soon I had hundreds of funny stories by heart, and oh boy, what that job did for me. “That reminds me of a joke,” I’d say. All of a sudden I was the life of the party.

But I digress. You know what I’ve really learned from playing Trivia Today? That a lot of us never listened to anything we were told in school. 

How else could you miss a question like the one we had on March 15: “Who was famously killed on the Ides of March?” 

Remember, you get four choices. Seventy percent of respondents got Julius Caesar. Four percent guessed John F. Kennedy. Thirteen percent picked Joan of Arc. 

Trumpists.

Irene Silverman is The Star’s editor at large.

One of the real puzzles as our children get older and our tastes in reading change is what to do about all the books we have outgrown.

There are classics, of course, like my own copy of “Charlotte’s Web,” which was inscribed to me when I was small by a family friend. But then there are seemingly endless school book-fair purchases of dubious lasting value and duplicate paperback versions of such children’s series as “Little House on the Prairie.” 

As for novels, Lisa only recently began reading on a Kindle in earnest, but her previous years’ pile of contemporary fiction is considerable, as is my accumulation of biography, history, and duplicate bird books.

There is only so much room on our shelves. I tend to want to keep the true classics, as well as the nature guides, and what had been my father’s extensive collection of whaling and seafaring books — most of which I have read at this point. The rest deserve a new home. Besides, we need space for our new acquisitions. 

In addition to the personal books, this is a host of old review copies on the second floor of the Star building that no one looks at any more. Some of these unneeded volumes might go to the Ladies Village Improvement Society Bargain Books shop. However, as more than a few are dog-eared or missing part of a dust jacket, I hardly expect the L.V.I.S. to accept the lot. My mother and stepfather admit that from time to time they have left their unwanted books among others just inside the East Hampton Library’s back door. But I don’t think our voluminous volumes would be welcome there.

As an alternative or supplement, some of the books on The Star’s second floor might simply be brought down to be pawed through in the front office. I am toying with the idea of declaring Free Book Fridays at The Star, perhaps on the first or last Friday of each month. Readers and our friends on social media might be invited to stop in and help themselves. Those interested should watch this space for an announcement, though other ideas would be welcomed, too.

One of the traditional, and rather old-fashioned, features in The Star, “The Way It Was,” is a look back at what people here were saying and doing 25, 50, 75, 100, and, yes, 125 years ago — or at least what the editors in those times took note of, because they expected readers to be interested. I never miss it. Take a look, for example, at these random tidbits from 1891:

January 17, 1891 

Saturday last, there were several parties eeling in Georgica Pond, and about three barrels of wigglers were captured for Sunday’s breakfast.

January 30, 1891

Mrs. Kate Gregory-Fox-Nugent-Petty-Next — now in Riverhead jail — has four husbands and she is only 21 years old. We think she is entitled to a belt.

February 6, 1891

There is one young man in town who will probably be “qui vive” when he goes to Wainscott to call upon his young lady again, as he has learned by experience that Wainscott’s sons do not like to see outsiders coming after her daughters. The young man in question drove to that village on Sunday night to see his best girl, and when about to return found that his buggy was gone, while his horse remained hitched to the post. It was a humiliating thing to do, to wake up one of the residents so early in the morning to borrow a vehicle, but it had to be done.

February 27, 1891 

Several parties were in our village last week looking for houses in which to locate next summer. We understand a large portion of the furnished cottages have already been taken.

March 13, 1891

There has been much talk for several years over a suggestion that a railroad would, some day, run through East Hampton to Montauk Point. Every time the subject has been brought up there have been scores of people who were ready to wager all they possessed that no present inhabitant would live to see it. . . . There is no question but that, with the immense fish factories just starting up at Promised Land, and the great amount of travel there is to our town every summer, the extension of the main line through our village would prove a good investment for the railroad.

Skipping over 75 years, I also found 1966 particularly good reading:

January 13, 1966

Emotion on the subject of the aged — as all of us get a little bit older every day — ran away with an East Hampton Village Board hearing Monday on a proposition to give the Village Zoning Board of Appeals power to allow and control rest or nursing homes in any village zoning district. Comments ranged from an angry, “This whole Village will go to pot and real estate values with it if you allow this,” to a sad, “If this community can’t tolerate places for older people, I might as well just move out now.”

January 30, 1966

The Long Island Bridge Study Commission recommended a 10-mile long bridge, which would cost $206 million, from Rocky Point, East Marion, to Old Saybrook, Conn. And an Atlantic Expressway from the Nassau-Queens border to East Marion.

February 10, 1966

No sooner had Springs residents learned that they would have to decide Feb. 17 whether or not to build an $88,000 firehouse and buy a $24,400 fire truck than it was announced that a proposal to spend $335,000 to enlarge the Springs School would be voted on on Feb. 25.

February 24, 1966 

Erosion along the beachfront in East Hampton Village, which some observers suspect may have something to do with the two 650-foot jetties designed by the Army Engineers and placed east of Georgica Gut, has produced a narrower beach between the foot of Lily Pond Lane, at the old Coast Guard Station, and the Main Beach.

And then I found this more recent bit on the subject of erosion. Sound familiar?

January 24, 1991

A national debate among scientists and developers over regulation of oceanfront property could, depending on the outcome, result in less building on East Hampton beaches, and one skirmish in the larger battle is being fought on local stationery. Two East Hampton Village residents, both leaders with a stake in seashore management, have exchanged a series of erudite yet increasingly acrimonious letters about sand — specifically whether there is more or less than there used to be.

I am addicted to “The Way It Was.” 

If you aren’t in the habit of reading it, give it a try. It’s entertaining and sometimes enlightening. On one hand, this place has changed a lot; on the other, it hasn’t changed much at all. And if anyone can tell me what the word “belt” means in that item from Jan. 30, 1891, I’d appreciate it.

One of the myths I’ve entertained over the years is that athletes are somehow immune when it comes to what can drag you down. 

Wasn’t it I who once said, “While my athletic days are pretty much over, I take comfort in the company of athletes, men and women, boys and girls, and like taking photos of them, deriving joy from the at times sublime headiness of sport, a headiness I’ve known running and playing, of being in the moment, when all within the realm of consciousness seemed, however briefly, perfect.”

And yet . . . and yet the list of athletes I’ve known or have known of, who’ve died before their time — by no means all because of depression, but a few of them — is steadily lengthening. John Villaplana, Brandon Hayes, Kendall Madison, Chris Schiaffino, Chris Cosich, Annette MacNiven, Andrew MacNiven, Steve Tarpinian, and now Mike Semkus come immediately to mind. So I am finally disabused of thinking that all athletes are forever blessed.

Jean Mellano, who lived more than 30 years with one of these outwardly buoyant souls assailed within by demons, has in a memoir of Steve Tarpinian called “Slipped Away” celebrated his successes (he was among triathlon’s founders on Long Island, in the early 1980s) and his kind spirit, while at the same time drawing attention to a painful disease, clinical depression, that if it is ever discussed is done so in lowered tones.

Knowing someone who is clinically depressed myself, I told her it was extraordinary, and a great testimony to his strength, that Steve, who took his life a year ago, at the age of 54, had in spite of his suffering accomplished so much. 

Having made a vocation of his avocation — something his friend Chuck Sperazza, a top amateur triathlete who’s won many times out here, said he envied — Steve Tarpinian joyously competed, in Hawaii, Lake Placid, and on Long Island, with his peers (just about always, as I recall, coming out of the water first, or very close to it), and vigorously promoted the multidisciplinary sport under the Event Power and Team Total Training banners, setting numerous students, many of whom at first didn’t think they had it in them, on their way to triathletic careers. He himself had 18 Ironmans (in Hawaii and Lake Placid) and 17 Xterra championships to his credit. 

“Slipped Away” abounds in testimonials from peers, Dave Scott, John Howard, and Scott Tinley among them, and from students.

“Steve encouraged, motivated, and helped people to realize their own dreams,” Jen Gatz said in thanking him “for passing on your enthusiasm and positivity. I can’t help but notice that those touched by you continue to spread that message.”

“He left a legacy and set a standard for us all to live up to, of giving, sharing, smiling, hoping, believing, and then giving again,” said Al Lyman.

“I always wanted to do my best for him,” said Nancy Burpee, a U.S. Paralympics pool racer. “Everyone did. He brought that out of you.”

“You’ve inspired me, intimidated me, encouraged me, drafted me, beaten me, congratulated me, and handed me trophies — all the time making me feel better about me,” said Ric Stott on learning of Steve Tarpinian’s death. “After lifting so many spirits, it’s so confusing to hear that you struggled with yours.”

The memoir is available through SlippedAway.org. Most of the profits, Ms. Mellano has said, are to go to a Long Island veterans organization, Project Nine Line, perhaps toward the development of a program that helps returning veterans overcome post-traumatic stress disorder, or to help an individual know that he or she is not alone in confronting depression and suicidal thoughts.

It is time — long past time — that the subject come out of hiding and into the open.

“Estoy feliz que Mexico no ha construido un muro contra noso­tros!” I said to the taxi driver as we arrived at the Las Brisas hotel outside Zihuatenejo.

He laughed, as had been my intention in saying I was glad Mexico had not built a wall to keep us tourists out. On that note, we began a week’s stay at the closest thing we’ve come to paradise on this earth, there being nothing to do there but read and swim and speak bad Spanish to the unfailingly pleasant staff, a wonderfully captive audience. 

And yet, even though I felt more at ease than ever with the language, to the extent that I was able to frequently get orange juice mixed in with my margaritas, and to make some headway in proposing that the name of Isaias Ochoa Hernandez, a former Las Brisas lifeguard who began protecting baby sea turtles there years ago, be added to the hotel’s history of the project, a history proudly affixed to a stone wall near the beach, it’s Mary who always received the compliments — heeding apparently the advice of my father that all one needed to say in French was thank you and goodbye, “merci” and “au revoir.”

In her case it’s “gracias” and “lo siento,” to which she adds, apologetically, “Mi espanol es muy mal,” invariably prompting her interlocutor to declaim, “No, no, senora, you speak very well! You speak very well!”

“I’m better than her in tennis, she’s better than me in swimming, and we’re tied in Ping-Pong,” I said to a waiter who had noted we were sporty. I forgot to add that she killed me in backgammon — thankful that I wasn’t that fluent.

For exercise, though, you needn’t do anything more than climb up and down Las Brisas’s steep stone stairs that lead through jungly growth to the pools, the tennis courts, the beach, and, if you’re of a mind, to the lobby, about as high up on the cliff into which the hotel is built as a sacrificial Aztec or Mayan altar. 

“It was like Syphilis,” I said, panting, to Mary following one of my steep ascents. “Sisyphus, rather. . . . You know, Robert Graves [no relation] says he was known as the worst knave on earth for promoting only Corinthian commerce and navigation.”

That reminded me of a certain knave on the earth now, though I held my tongue, not wanting our bliss to go amiss.

On a recent getaway to Newport, R.I., my husband and I enjoyed a cozy hotel room with a fire, perfect for the cold and windy winter’s night. But, alas, there was also a television above the mantel, and on it went to check the following day’s weather. My husband flipped through the channels, stopping at first to catch the score, but as he scrolled through, he stopped for a moment on what looked like a public access channel with a judge hearing a case. He kept pushing the button, but I was curious. Go back, I prodded. And like any good husband, he did. 

From the bench, the older judge questioned a middle-aged woman about whether she had actually run that stop sign at the corner of such and such a street. Through a translator, she claimed to have been in a hurry. Not a good enough excuse, the judge said. He ruled that she owed an $85 fine. Next case. 

“Caught in Providence,” as I learned, is something of a local phenomenon, the brainchild of Frank Caprio, the chief udge of the city’s municipal court. Cameras have full access to court proceedings, mainly for traffic, parking, and low-level criminal offenses. The unscripted reality show airs on the local ABC affiliate, though it began sometime around 2000 as just a local cable show. A search on YouTube is worth it.

During the show I caught, a member of the military, originally from the Dominican Republic, faced the judge on a disorderly conduct charge he received after an altercation with the police outside a nightclub. He respectfully argued his case, and the judge read aloud the officer’s version of events. Ultimately, the judge decided the truth was probably somewhere in between, though he told the member of the armed services he likely had his “alcohol muscles” out that night and perhaps didn’t quite remember things the way he had explained them. Still, he gave him a break: Stay out of trouble for three months and the case would be dismissed. Fair, I thought. 

The camera cut to those sitting in the courtroom, waiting their turn in front of the judge. One young man, whose hair was a bit unkempt and who was wearing a sweatshirt, smirked and whispered in his girlfriend’s ear. I imagined he was saying he didn’t expect the same kind of treatment. This is why you never judge a book by its cover. Later in the program, I found it was the girlfriend who was in trouble, not him. 

The show has gained a cult following, as I read online. The end of it features voicemails the judge receives about the show, a mix of both positive and negative feedback. One man said the judge, who is of Italian descent, could never be expected to understand the plight of minorities. Another caller told the judge to keep up the good work holding the defendants before him accountable. I had a fleeting thought to call him myself about the late-night entertainment.

All of it — the back and forth, the outlandish excuses, the ways people decide to dress for court — got me thinking about my days as a police reporter. There were many moments, particularly in county court, where I was left thinking, Did that really just happen? I remember covering proceedings back when justice court was held in the meeting room of the old Town Hall. There was this one man in Justice Catherine Cahill’s courtroom one day, shackled thanks to a minor offense, really, who was desperately trying to get out of jail and just needed $200 to pay a fine. He was sitting a stone’s throw away from his girlfriends who, unfortunately for him, showed up on the same day to get him out. Back to the Riverside jail he went. 

Let’s face it, “Caught in Providence” could easily be filmed in almost any courtroom, though Judge Caprio’s good-natured humor and the low-level offenses he’s hearing help keep it as mainly lighthearted entertainment for the viewers at home. If the police blotter on the pages of The Shelter Island Reporter are any indication, justice court on the Rock may be the perfect setting, if there’s some producer out there interested. East Hampton Town Justice Steve Tekulsky’s wit from the bench also makes him a candidate, from what I’ve seen and heard. 

All jokes aside, the Rhode Island show is a reminder of the sad state many find themselves in, the justice system often just bringing it to light. I often wonder how long it took for that young man on Justice Cahill’s docket to get out. We’ve all seen the jailhouse reality show, no laughing matter there. Just check out “Lockup on Long Island: Extended Stay,” filmed at the Suffolk County jail. 

If you’re thinking I need a break from reality television, you’re right.

Taylor K. Vecsey is The Star’s digital media editor.

From where I sit, the world is getting narrower. It’s a given that the longer you live the longer your list becomes of colleagues, friends, and relatives who are gone. My sister-in-law is at the top of that list this week, having died on Monday.

Memorials and mementos are not salves, but they are nice and often meaningful. I want to remember what was said and written by or about someone who has died and to be able to look at their photographs. I’m proud of the way The Star has handled and written obituaries over the years, have edited hundreds, and written many. I’ve learned that the closer you were the harder the task.

Will the words and pictures we’ve always saved be lost to the digital revolution? Or will they remain somewhere in the ether forever? Will the next generation reject what we still hold onto physically as they wander in cyberspace?

My brother died more than five years ago, and his children — my niece and nephew — have posted many pictures of him and members of their extended family (including a young me) on Facebook; they have also unearthed what my nephew described as reel-to-reel audiotapes, which in the ’60s and ’70s the family used to mail back and forth between the East and West Coasts. My tech-savvy nephew must have had them digitized, because last week he sent a number of us a batch of these exchanges: conversations, poems, songs, stories. 

They arrived through Dropbox, an Internet file-sharing service, and even a somewhat computer-phobic person like me was able to figure out how to access one of the files. Imagine what a surprise it was to hear my niece, as a child in the early 1960s, saying she had just lost a tooth! She’s a grown woman now — and a grandmother. 

My brother and his wife were in the habit of storing lots of things, so it wasn’t surprising that the tapes were there to be found when their house was emptied after its sale. We are lucky to have them.

Which brings me back home to the myriad cartons and cabinets my husband and I have stowed away in the Rattray family house, but, thank goodness, not in the oldest part of the barn, which the East Hampton Historical Society is going to move to the Mulford Farm and restore. The historians call it the Hedges barn because a Hedges had it built in the mid-18th century, and it was later moved by my late mother-in-law’s father to its present site.

I’ve watched as friends have aged and begun to divest themselves of possessions (from souvenirs gathered on travels to furnishings and treasured mementos, not to mention real estate). Listening to my niece on that audiotape this week makes me realize that maybe, just maybe, the technology of the 21st century is making it possible to retain those words and mementos in a way that better values the past than putting them away in a box in some dark corner.