Almost every time I go out these days, someone I run into wants to talk about our pet pig, Leo, who has been the subject of a disturbing number of columns in these pages. Leo, the height of indifference except at mealtime, could care less, but he has become a bit of a subject of interest, from appearances.

To refresh: The pig came to us, as most bad things do these days, via the Internet. My wife, Lisa, and eldest child had (quote-unquote) researched the subject for months, settling on a breeder in Texas who specialized in (again, quote-unquote) tea-cup pigs that would not grow tusks or exceed 10 pounds. I said it was bunk.

Four years later and hitting the 100-pound mark on the bathroom scale easily, and with sharp curving tusks poking from his mouth, Leo is a living, grunting reminder that Daddy is always right. Or at least that’s what I wish the takeaway was.

Leo doesn’t do much. This is one reason why I think it is amusing that my columns about him get the most attention. His days begin at 5 a.m., with shuffling around the kitchen, hoping to be fed. This wakes the dogs, the largest of which comes down from his bed on the second-floor landing, which in turn vexes the pig, who whines and wails to great effect. By effect I mean that I get up, and before doing anything else give him a bowl of feed on the porch.

Lisa says I baby him and that when I am out of town Leo sleeps in. Truth is, I think, she throws a sneaker at him when he tries to rally her at 5 and tells him to get back to bed. Yeah, I don’t mess with Lisa at that hour either.

After that, Leo might go outside for his morning constitutional or, if he is feeling lazy, go back to his bed and sleep till noon. For the amount of water he drinks, I think he must be part camel. 

Then, around 5 p.m., it’s feeding time again. Then bed. When the weather’s warm, Leo varies the plan by doing his daytime sleeping in a sunny spot in the yard. Other than that, his is the model of contented life, all but oblivious to the varied dramas that surround him. 

It is perhaps this lack of activity that makes him fascinating. Maybe readers — and I — are just a little bit jealous.

For the past week or so, I’ve been hard at work taping and spackling my entryway, which was taken down to the studs way back in June when we had a new front door installed. It’s a 6-by-3-foot room, but it took me six months of stolen minutes and late-night hours just to hang the drywall. 

A pro would have had the room rebuilt and ready for painting in three days, tops, but, as is typical, we blew our budget for outside experts before we got to this phase. This time, though, I wasn’t going to leave the job only half done, no matter how long it takes me. 

By day I’m an editor, by evening a parent, by night a drywaller’s apprentice. I must have watched 50 YouTube videos on hanging and finishing drywall before I got started, and still more after I’d begun. Seejanedrill, askmediy, and TheCactus71 offered great tutorials on mudding inside corners and taping butt joints. My progress is slow, but there’s nothing quite so satisfying as learning a new home-improvement skill. 

While I may not want to drywall, tape, spackle, and paint an entire house single-handedly, I like knowing how it’s done; it makes paying someone else to do it all the sweeter. 

I imagine a day 3 or 5 or 10 years from now when I’ll look around my house and most of the projects I’ve dreamed of will be done. People might say, “Wow, I love your house,” and I’ll say, “You should have seen it when I first bought it.” 

Last summer I would sometimes stay outside until 10 piecing together the puzzle of our new stone walkway and low garden wall. These projects are my children’s biggest competition. 

One day last week, Jasper pushed his way between me and the Spackle bucket. “Let’s watch ‘Fixer Upper,’ Mama.” 

“We could be our own ‘Fixer Up­per,’ ” I suggested. He wandered off to play with his Legos, a builder like his mama. 

We watch a lot of HGTV, so when I queued up another seejanedrill how-to last Sunday, the kids gathered round to watch, too. They’d rather watch “Fixer Upper,” a family favorite for over a year now. We like the good-humored hosts, Chip and Joanna Gaines, and their can-do approach to what are often full gut renovations, even if their style isn’t always what we might choose for our own house. We do get a little tired of their usual tropes — “Oh, no, not French country again!” my daughter will groan. Over all, though, their transformations are the most fun to watch. It’s amazing how far some vision and a little money will take you in Waco, Tex. 

I love “Tiny House Hunters” and “Tiny House, Big Living,” too. The kids like “Flip or Flop”; the hosts’ seemingly constant success with their flips bothers me.

“Love It or List It” can be fun when we’re in the right mood, but come on, how can a professional designer so often be surprised by the roadblocks to achieving what her clients really want in their original houses? 

My favorite is “Rehab Addict.” If the host, Nicole Curtis, lived here in East Hampton, I’d want to be her best friend. Her shtick is rehabbing historic houses in Detroit and Minneapolis, many of them condemned. It’s amazing what you can get for $1 in Detroit. 

Here in East Hampton, I’ll keep putting my dollars toward my own home rehab, one small project at a time. 

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor. 

At a gathering at Ashawagh Hall that followed a service in Green River Cemetery for Ralph Carpentier, who I always remember said the tranquillity of the terrain here informed our psyches, Elena Prohaska exclaimed that she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Then you don’t go to the dump,” I said.

But she did go to the dump, she said. How our paths haven’t crossed, then, I am at a loss to say, for that’s where I, a democratic socializer (a more viable label in these times, you may agree, than a democratic socialist), see people, given the facts that I don’t belong to a church, a fire department, or a service organization — albeit I think they all do wonderful things. 

When I set forth from my landlady’s some 33 years ago, she said, “Now I’ll never see you again.”

That hasn’t exactly been true, though East Hampton’s a strange — but beautiful — place. If only she went to the dump. 

I have actually seen her from time to time over the years, as it’s turned out — once, I’m happy to say, at a party where I was able to testify to her salvific generosity to me during a trying period in our lives, and most recently at East End Physical Therapy, where, under Rob Balnis’s care, we are trying to preserve what’s left. 

But even more than self-preservation we are reminded by Ralph Carpentier’s tranquil paintings of the sky and the land and the water of the need to preserve this beautiful place — a sentiment rendered all the more urgent even as our spirits have been diminished, eroded, if you will, by the recent deaths of those like him who felt called to preserve it.   

The war on leaves throughout the Town of East Hampton, New York, has been won. Victory has also been declared in the Village of East Hampton, a village within the township’s boundaries. East Hampton is a small community by United States standards, located along the Northeast coastline. Somewhere in its lengthy history dating to the 17th century tree leaves got a very bad name. 

Tree leaves, you know them: oak, cherry, apple, maple — they became the unwanted guests on lawns, in gardens, fairway, byway, or throughway, destined for a fate worse than banishment. Loud gasoline-powered air blowers with hideous three-foot plastic tubes and backpacks mounted on people’s backs accelerate their demise: The leaves are blown into enormous piles and taken to their fate.

Warlike items, these gas and electric blowers! Stalinesque men wearing protective earmuffs and protective glasses move through Village of East Hampton and town properties alike, blowing leaves into piles. Hell of a racket these leaf blowers make. The U.S. Army is inquiring with East Hampton Town officials if the noise and disarray these blowers create could be used as a counterintelligence deception. Send 20 men armed with leaf blowers to cause a distraction in a military zone or to disperse hostile persons. American police are considering the leaf blowers for riot control. Trump is considering the measure.

After the tree leaves are blown into piles, they are put into trucks and carted off to their resting place. Sometimes a large box truck with a giant tube arrives to suck up the enormous piles of leaves. The truck, with a 10-inch-in-diameter, 20-yard tube attached, makes a ground-shuddering noise when sucking up the leaves. Often the big box truck with tube scatters a fine dust of leaf particles in all directions for 40 yards, coating cars and house windows alike. After being sucked up, the leaves are taken to the East Hampton Town dump, then ground up by huge machines into piles of mush. Poor leaves — what a destiny!

Dads, moms, sisters, brothers, uncles, nieces, nephews used to rake the leaves at their homes, making five-foot piles. Children would take 10-yard running starts and leap maniacally into the piles and disappear. It was rather the spectacle! A 5-year-old vanishes in leaf pile, emerges as leaf child shortly thereafter. It is sad — no more leaf children. 

In modern 2016 East Hampton — tick paranoia, the Howard Hughes germ complex, call it what you may — you see few children jumping in leaf piles. Years ago and through the 1960s and 1970s, laissez-faire homeowners, after raking the leaves into piles and jumping into them, burned them in old steel garbage cans. The pleasant smell of burning leaves pervaded most neighborhoods in East Hampton as late fall turned to Thanksgiving. 

No one really knows what happened. Burning leaves was banned. Industry took over. There is money in beating and pulverizing those poor desperate leaves.

Leaf destruction is big business in East Hampton. Fanatical homeowners hire professional landscapers and pay them lots of money to blow every leaf off their lawns. The sight of a man with a leaf blower blowing 20 small leaves into a tiny pile taking 15 minutes accompanied by atrocious noise is common. 

So it goes: No more moms and dads raking leaves into giant piles. No more nutty kids running across lawns, leaping, arms outstretched, feet airborne, vanishing into leaf piles. No more burning leaves and the pleasant burning-leaf smell wafting through East Hampton neighborhoods.

Onward, to the war on snow. Not more than 10 years ago, before a few hundred Range Rovers and an equal number of Mercedes-Benz S.U.V.s, and more recently Porsche S.U.V.s, invaded town, snow fell in large amounts during January and any rational person stayed home. 

Fifteen years ago, adventurous types took the oldest truck or car in the driveway out for a spin as a storm descended. The proverbial spin down Further Lane, Hither, Middle, Indian Wells! Doughnut spins in an empty beach parking lot seemed normal. Not a snowplow or policeman in sight. After all, it was late January with 10 inches of snow predicted. 

The Village of East Hampton and Town of East Hampton used to let it snow for a few hours and then plow as best as they could. Who in their right mind would be driving? Maybe a longtime resident in an old Ford truck with a broken heater and holes in the floorboard, or a couple comfy and coated inside a Chevy truck. Who else would be driving around in a blizzard?

New politics: mash, plow, and scrape every bit of snowfall to make way for brand-new Jeeps, Range Rovers, and expensive S.U.V.s of every description. The United States government’s assistance to the auto industry has been effective. Just look at all these fabulous vehicles roaring through the small Village of East Hampton. Of course half of these vehicles’ owners own no property here. Yet, East Hampton taxes pay to keep the roads spiffy for these out-of-town motorheads during whiteout blizzards. Impassable snow-covered roads are now salted, sanded; hourly updates are given via social media, via local governments, as to the progress in keeping the roads traversable. 

The question is, who are the roads open for? Schoolchildren dream of snow days; parents do too. Seriously, who drives in New England during blizzards?

East Hampton, New York, February 2016: Men decked out in scarves and expensive coats drive deluxe Range Rover S.U.V.s to shop at Citarella, buying lots of food, some of which goes to waste. Beautifully adorned women ride in the shotgun seats of the S.U.V.s to watch the flurry of the Northeast weather maelstrom descend as hubby shops. Of course some business owners don’t mind. The dedicated employees who show up during blizzards are getting paid $15 an hour. Great Scott, what a deal!

Clear the roads. Keep everyone at work throughout snowstorms, hurricanes, and major weather events. It is good for the 1 percent. They can amuse themselves shopping during major storms. 

Mash and smash those poor leaves, demolish that snow! More snowplows, more leaf blowers — please! 

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

You can bicycle in the snow, you know. It depends, of course, on the type of bike, and the tires. Me, I have a Giant-make mountain bike with broad tires with a deep tread. Bought it about 20 years ago from Chris Pfund’s bike shop in Montauk. Still going strong.

Of course most people would ask, why? Why would you want to? 

First, necessity. Car has been off the road all winter. Leaking coolant system, leaking this, leaking that. I am back riding the 10C.

In the dead of winter, the passengers on the 10C bus are almost all Jamaican, headed to work, or, on days off, headed to Bridgehampton to do some shopping.

I feel at home on the 10C. It has a good vibe.

This week I made a happy discovery. Seniors pay only 75 cents per trip, as opposed to the exorbitant $2.25 charged for everyone else. What I learned Friday is that Suffolk County Transit defines a senior as anybody 60 or older. I hit that magic number last month. Who says good things don’t come with getting older? 

But back to bicycles in the snow. If necessity is the mother of invention, it is also, occasionally, the mother of fun. And, if motherhood is not always intended, its consequences are always to be embraced.

This winter had been mild until it began snowing the morning of Jan. 23. I got on the 7:05 morning bus out of Montauk, headed to work. My beat is primarily cops, town zoning, town planning. Much of this, happily, can be found in the town’s complex on Pantigo Road. 

First, there is the Justice Court, which gives you a brief, unfettered look into what the cops are up to today. From there, I walk over to the office complex just to the east. In that drab building, you will find code enforcement, the zoning board office, the town’s Planning and Building Departments, etc., etc. If you need a quote from a politico, go southwest of the courthouse, to Town Hall.

Then off to the East Hampton Star office on Main Street. Finally, it is up to the train station, where I pick up either the 10C or the L.I.R.R., headed back to Montauk.

By the time I got to Goldberg’s that morning of the blizzard, the town government had already been shut down for the day. Snow emergency.

At that point, I just wanted to make sure I was on the first train or bus back to Montauk. That would be either the 10:27 train or the 10:35 bus, both leaving from the East Hampton train station. I like the newspaper office, but it is not a place I would want to be stranded at.

I had plenty of work to do. I set my laptop on a back table. In 2016, your office is where you are. There is never an excuse for not writing, unless you don’t want to.

At about 10, I suited up my winter gear, accepting the conventional wisdom: You can’t bicycle in the snow.

When I got out to the sidewalk on Pantigo Road, the snow was already two to three inches deep, and blowing. It would be a long walk to the station.

“What the hell,” I thought, and got on the bike. “Might as well see what happens.”

What happened was that I glided through the snow, effortlessly. What started off as trepidation turned to joy. I made it to Railroad Avenue in plenty of time.

I took the train to Montauk and biked down Edgemere Street, headed for town. It was a lot slushier than in East Hampton. Again, no problem with traction, no problem with balance.

Since then, I have biked through all conditions. I have learned the rules of the snow road. Fresh snow, no problem. Ice, no problem, as long as you know what is beneath it. Piles of slush, no problem, until it freezes. 

Frozen piles of slush covered in a fresh coat of snow are to be avoided.

Fortunately, East Hampton Village does a great job of clearing its sidewalks of snow and ice, making the trip between the Town Hall complex and Main Street easy. 

When I have to go east, toward Amagansett, it’s a little trickier. There will be small areas of sidewalk the town hasn’t gotten to.

I avoid the main road as much as possible. You can bike through the snow, but not everybody can drive through it.

Yes, you can bicycle in the snow.

T.E. McMorrow is a reporter at The Star.

Throughout the drawn out 2016 election season I found myself puzzled about why candidates asked potential supporters for small contributions — $3 for various senatorial candidates, $1 for Hillary Clinton. Then it became evident. As Bernie Sanders has proved, it adds up.

As Super Tuesday approached this week, with 11 state primaries and caucuses taking place, Senator Sanders had achieved what he called an unbelievable amount of money in small contributions. He raised $33.6 million in the last three months of 2015, another $20 million in January, and, by Tuesday, his campaign reported having taken in $42 million in February alone, with a goal of $45 million.

By then, the Sanders campaign had announced that the average contribution had been $27, and with what almost seemed to be tongue in cheek changed it to $2.70. It would take some sort of political philosopher to explain why these $27 and $2.70 figures dovetail with the $2,700 federal limit on the amount individuals can contribute. At any rate, I have become something of an Internet junkie, searching for facts and figures.

Federal Election Commission results as of the end of January showed Hillary Clinton ahead of everyone else in both Democratic and Republican fund-raising, with $188 million taken in. Ted Cruz followed with $104.2 million, while the Sanders campaign closed at $96.3 million. (Donald Trump’s fund-raising isn’t evident on these comparisons because so much of his war chest comes from himself or his companies.)

I find myself getting lost in these figures on the Internet, even though I am not much of a numbers person. For example, looking back to 2008, I learned that in the first 21 months of  the Barack Obama campaign for the presidency, he had raised more than $750 million — more than the total amount raised by all the presidential candidates combined in 2004. Wikipedia reports Mr. Obama raised $778,642,962 by Election Day, while John McCain had raised only about half that amount, or $383,913,834. Did the dollar amounts make the results inevitable?

Senator Sanders calls his campaign a political revolution, which is fair enough, but his ability to raise most of his money in small contributions is part of a broader change in fund-raising made possible by the Internet. You might not find the word “crowdfunding” in your old dictionary, but it is a phenomenon, taking off from grassroots fund-raising for charitable causes, which has been in the lexicon for years.  It’s a brave new world and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention GoFundMe and Kickstarter, the top crowdfunding websites.

A GoFundMe account is under way to help Doug Kuntz, a photographer who has contributed to The East Hampton Star for many years, pay for his numerous flights to and from Europe, starting with Greece, to chronicle the refugee crisis and do everything he can do personally.

(“Defying All Odds a Cat Returns to its Refugee Family in Norway,”  a story in which Doug was a major player, can be found here.) Take a look.

On my way through Saga­ponack on an errand Monday afternoon, I noticed that the plastic coyote that had been placed in the middle of a field south of the highway was gone. Thus ended what had been one of the area’s all-too-few solid public pranks.

The plastic (or whatever it was) coyote sure had fooled me. Driving that way earlier this winter, I spotted its gray figure a couple of hundred yards out in the rye cover crop and pulled over quickly. 

It was too tall to be a fox, I thought. It had to be the Sagaponack coyote that had caused a stir about a year ago! 

That it did not move a muscle hardly mattered to me; when I got back to the office, I excitedly described what I had seen. Problem was that it was in the same place in the same posture the next day, and the next, and the Monday after that.

The roster of great South Fork pranks is too few, in my opinion. Why our public spaces are so lacking in humor, I don’t know. Nor do I know why some people, myself among them, enjoy the occasional gag. I suspect that the attraction is that they are often a visual trick, a pun, or a joke in real time, to break up the relative monotony of day-to-day life.

My favorite prank here has to have been the now-gone Route 114 submarine, which appeared, floating, in a road drainage sump the Town of East Hampton had dug, improperly and probably illegally, on preserved farmland. That it was allowed to remain there for about two years, I thought, spoke well for the sense of humor of local officials.

Then there is the Napeague giraffe, or perhaps giraffes (I think this one might be an updated version), hidden in black pines in the state park. The effort to walk a life-sized fiberglass giraffe that far off the road and into a narrow gully boggles the mind.

There have been a few others, but perhaps the biggest center-stage prank for me occurred around 1975 when the movie version of “Jaws” was released. One morning my young teenage buddies and I were hugely impressed to see a large, black shark fin bobbing in Town Pond. 

Thing is, not content to enjoy it for the simple and amusing sight it was, we resolved to catch it. It was raining that day, if I remember, and though we had a rope long enough that we could walk in two teams to snag the thing, one on either side of the pond with the rope between us, we got plenty wet. 

Streaking, another kind of prank, was a thing that summer, and, once we had captured the fin, we discussed giving that a try. None of us will either confirm or deny guesses about what happened after that.

The graceful rituals of a Greek Orthodox wedding took us UpIsland last weekend, when one my husband’s sons and the woman of his dreams were married on Saturday at the exquisite St. Demetrios Church in Jamaica, Queens.

Amid chanting by a cantor, the traditional, and quite moving, rites included some that were entirely new to us and, apparently, unique to the denomination. The priest plac­ed simple white crowns, connected by a ribbon, on the heads of the bride and bridegroom, symbolizing their unity. The couple drank from a common cup, which is meant to express the belief that their joys will henceforth be doubled and their sorrows halved, and they took their first steps as a married couple circling a table holding the books and artifacts of belief.

The ceremony was solemn and tranquil, but the party that followed in a popular wedding catering hall was anything but. The guests, on both the bride and groom’s sides, worked their way through a jaw-droppingly vast appetizer buffet (honestly, a spread of food more extensive than any this side of Las Vegas, I’d bet) before making their way to a fairy-tale dining room — decorated in white, with soft lighting and towering bouquets of white hydrangea, peonies, and roses — for a four-course dinner. Families from both sides of the aisle danced under colored lights that beamed down as if by magic from the ceiling (impressing the heck out of the youngest members of the party). 

There were top-40 tunes, a bit of 1970s funk, and also Greek circle dances that brought just about everyone onto the floor. The highlight, however, for me and I am sure the couple, were the toasts made by immediate family members. It isn’t often that wedding toasts are sincere enough to bring the entire room to tears.

The wedding had another plus for the my husband’s family: Many of the Corys were able to gather at a Hilton hotel, where breakfast and other spare moments became rare together times. Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and in-laws — or outlaws as a few of us call ourselves — caught up with what the others were up to, sharing news of the recent past and plans for the future. 

Our weekend wound down with lunch at a large neon-signed diner, the Majestic, which was full of people celebrating Valentine’s Day and birthdays. By then our group had dwindled to only six, but we were still in enough of a party mood to join the waiters in singing “Happy Birthday” to strangers — twice.

The Hilton we stayed at is in Westbury, in Nassau County, which encompasses the North Shore (of F. Scott Fitzgerald fame) and Brookville, the town that the Bloomberg organization has ranked as number-one for wealth in the entire country. What we saw definitely wasn’t Gatsby country, though. We did get a good eyeful of congested highways and endless shopping malls, not usually the sort of places I would choose for a winter vacation. Nevertheless, we all had a smashing good time. 

My very-much-impressed youngest granddaughter, who must have danced for two hours solid, said it was the best party she’d ever been to in her life. “When I get married,” she said, “I want to have the reception in Queens.”

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.

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.