Understanding that men and women may have different sexual orientations and that gender identification is not always known at birth are tenets of the revolutionary changes taking place in American culture. Lesbians and gays are long since out of the closet, and same-sex marriage is now accepted by a majority of Americans.

My generation didn’t think much about those who didn’t fit into heterosexual roles when I was growing up, and the word “transgender” didn’t come into use until I was middle-aged. Now, the Pew Research Center reports, some 70 percent of the generation known as millennials approved of same-sex marriage in a 2015 study.

East Hampton may have once been a backwater, but it proved to be a welcoming, nonjudgmental community as the 20th century moved along. People are surprised when I tell them that The Star was ahead of The New York Times in allowing women to use the honorific Ms. Others might be surprised to learn that The Star was at the forefront where same-sex marriage is concerned, too, having published a story about the marriage of two women at the Wainscott Chapel almost 20 years ago.  

The portrayal of love between women on TV and in film may still raise eyebrows, but it has moved into the mainstream. Two recent articles in The New Yorker brought me up to date and, at the same time, described the trailblazing influence of two women I know and admire.  

Marijane Meaker of Springs, who was the longtime revered leader of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop until retiring recently, is one of them. The other is the poet Eileen Myles, a frequent visitor, who has relatives here and was a longtime friend of my late brother-in-law, David G. Rattray. 

Ms. Meaker is a prolific and award-winning writer who has published under numerous pseudonyms depending on genre: Vin Packer for lesbian pulp and crime novels, M.E. Kerr for young adult novels — 30 of them — among others. She used the pen name Ann Aldrich in writing a best-selling book on lesbian life, “We Walk Alone.”

The Nov. 30 issue of The New Yorker carried an article in which she is featured. It was prompted by the film “Carol,” which is now opening in this country after having been seen at film festivals around the world, including our own. “Carol” is based on the novel “The Price of Salt” by the late Patricia Highsmith, and Ms. Meaker is the author of a memoir about their love affair, “Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s.”

Ms. Myles, who in the last year or so has emerged as a national literary celebrity, has published some 20 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She may be best known for “Chelsea Girls,” a collection of short stories that has been called a cult classic and was reissued this year. Her work also includes plays, performance pieces, essays, and art and book reviews. She is mentioned repeatedly in the film “Grandma,” starring Lily Tomlin, whose character is said to be based on the perennially cool Ms. Myles.

The Dec. 14 article in The New Yorker is about Jill Soloway, who won a best director Emmy for the television series “Transparent.” According to the writer, Ariel Levy, the series is a “radical exploration of gender and sexuality, unlike anything that preceded it on television.” It was intriguing to learn that a character in the program’s second season was modeled on Ms. Myles, too. (And, because I don’t keep up with television, I was intrigued by Mr. Levy’s saying, “it marries the marginalized idea of gender transition to the familiar American concept of reinvention.”)

People toss around the term “role model” quite freely, but these two pioneers deserve our recognition for bravely blazing new paths and for providing younger generations with life lessons in living according to both your conscience and your heart.

It was Lisa’s idea on a day that the kids were able to go to school late that I get them up at the usual time and take them out to breakfast someplace. That was fine with me, since feeding them in the morning almost simultaneously with reminding them to put on their shoes and brush their hair and teeth is often a challenge. Thing is, I had no idea how much it would cost.

Ever since Bucket’s Deli closed, it has been hard for me to go out for a workweek sandwich. Instead, I stock up on groceries to keep in the office fridge, marking my stash with my first initial to keep the, well, mayonnaise sneaks at bay. 

Since I might spend $20 a week on supplies compared to $10 that a lunch out might run, I come out ahead. Over time, the money saved might, at least mentally, be earmarked for a new surfboard or a plane ticket somewhere warm. Maybe it’s the Yankee thrift in me, but I like to be able to justify these things.

As a salad-eating co-worker said this week, once you have slipped the habit of stepping out for lunch, you find that you have healthier meals and gain back the time you would have spent walking or driving and standing on line while someone slaps cold cuts onto bread.

Breakfast went well. The kids were behaved and finished most of what they ordered, which was a good thing since it lightened my wallet by about $50 with tip. Hamptons prices, I guess, but hey, it was December.

The place was all but empty the whole time we were there, and I wondered if the $9 oatmeal and $12 pancakes had something to do withthat. Then again, I know next to nothing about the restaurant business, so I should not be the one to give advice. But I’m not taking the kids back there, either. They can eat what I make for them, and we can put the cash into the Christmas present fund.

As I said last week, I immediately dialed up the Round­about Theatre’s box office when I read a rave review of “The Humans” in The Times — a moment or so before Mary said she’d been wanting to see “Hamilton.”

I felt both decisive and tentative, knowing that my previous Wednesday bus trip pick, a film at the old Waverly in which absolutely nothing happened, had been a strike against me arts-wise. “At least we both got some sleep,” I said.

Of course, the reviewer’s words were there for all to see at the Roundabout’s entrance the other day: “Quite possibly the best play of the season,” or something to that effect.

“ ‘Possibly the best,’ ” she said, emphasizing the possibly.

“ ‘Quite possibly,’ ” I countered, hoping that this wouldn’t be strike two. 

There was no sleeping this time, not even a catnap. We were engaged from the first moment by Stephen Karam’s Blakes, a middle-class family of six living on the edge, trying its level best to celebrate Thanksgiving, when, really, there was not a whole lot to celebrate.

“This is beginning to hit home,” I said early on — to a blank stare from a woman seated to my left — after Brigid, the young daughter, reminded her father that given her student loan debt a ground floor apartment in a flood zone was the best she and her fiancé could do. I wanted to get up and join the conversation.

But humor abounded, the dialogue was crisp, and for most of the play wit pushed back the weight of suffering whose reach became increasingly evident. Consequently, the audience laughed far more than it cried, which is about the way it is in our family, though admittedly we have been luckier than the Blakes so far.

“The Humans” was neither maudlin nor sentimental, but rang true — a perfect play for a day in which we, in a way, replighted our troth, first at the New York Public Library, then at Times Square, the Roundabout, and the cellar bar at the Bryant Park Hotel. At one with ourselves, engaged, happy.

This past September I went to see Madonna in concert at Madison Square Garden with my concert buddies, Yuka, Maxine, and Tom. 

Yuka and I drove to the city. When we arrived we were both tired, since we had worked all day, especially Yuka, who is a talented costume designer and was on call for a film set at 6 that morning. We joined Maxine and her husband, Tom, who were already at the concert — Tom, who once told us Madonna was his baby sitter. She would bring her boyfriend over while baby-sitting, he said, and told him not to tell his parents because she really loves to baby-sit. Sounds like Madonna. 

Before the concert started, we all appeared calm; I was falling asleep, since it was way past my bedtime. At 10 she came out dancing and singing with her entourage, and we had a surge of adrenaline. Later I was emotional as I sang along with her classic hits like “Vogue,” “True Blue,” and “Burning Up,” to name just a few. At some point during the concert Madonna said she was feeling nostalgic and that she had played at Madison Square Garden 30 years ago. She was lost in sentiment, and so was I. Her music was what I enjoyed listening to in my younger years. She was my idol and still is! Not only was I in the same place as she was, but we were also both in the same nostalgic mood. I was in total bliss.

Part of the lyrics to her new song “Rebel Heart” touched me the most. The part when she sang, “Hearing my father say: ‘Told you so, told you so. Why can’t you be like the other girls?’ I said: ‘Oh no, that’s not me and I don’t think that it’ll ever be.’ ”

It reminded me of my oldest daughter, Kelsey, who just became a teenager and started to show some signs of rebellion. Over the summer, she wanted to dye her hair blue. I said, “No, it would ruin your beautiful long hair. Why can’t you be like your best friend, Emma? She didn’t dye her hair and see how healthy her hair looks.” 

“But, Mommy, please, it’s my hair.”

“Yes, it’s your hair,” I replied, but I get to look at it and wish you didn’t have blue hair.” Eventually, after numerous pleas, I gave in. I said, “If you only dye the ends of your hair.”  

“Okay, Mommy,” she said in her sweetest tone. She dyed her hair at my parents’ house with my sister’s help.

The blue hair was not blue, but a seaweed green color, which was perfect because that weekend at a beach party we were going to she could blend in with the seaweed while swimming in the ocean. But she ended up dying half of it, rather than just the ends. 

I was mad and I couldn’t help but try to find comfort from my colleague the next day. Kathy said, “Don’t worry; this is nothing. Let her make her own decisions and her own mistakes.” 

I thought about it and I guess she’s right. But I’ll still be there to help and guide her with good decisions, whether she likes it or not.

Last week, she wanted to trim off all the dye, because that part of her hair looked all dry and unhealthy. Excerpts from that song came to my mind, “Told you so, told you so.”

Now she has the cutest hairstyle for the holidays. She didn’t look bad with the blue-green hair. But I like her new hairstyle better! 

Just wondering what my young rebel heart will do next. 

Yupay Vong works in The Star’s production department.

Five or six years ago I took the time to enter every single name, address, and phone number from my Rolodex into an A-to-Z computer program. (For anyone who doesn’t remember, a Rolodex was a spinning card file, and the more famous and powerful the names in yours, the more important you were supposed to be.) For quite some time, as new friends and contacts developed, I added their information to my computer file, but eventually I stopped keeping on top of it, and the whole thing tapered off.

Who needed a Rolodex in the era of auto-file? Electronics had taken over. It became more practical to keep phone numbers on my cellphone, and the email addresses I wanted usually popped right up when I started to input them, even when I upgraded to a new computer. Prudence might have suggested that I back up all this information, but the risk-taker in me prevailed. It didn’t make much difference that people’s contact information was scattered in different electronic storage places. Access was easy.

From time to time, the trusty old Rolodex still comes in handy. It is occasionally easier to find information I need there rather than to search for it any other way; it’s similar to the way leafing through the Yellow Pages remains easier on paper than in its virtual version. Reaching for the Rolodex, however, comes with a different set of problems, which I never anticipated. More and more, the Rolodex cards not only trigger nostalgia but consternation: Once too often, riffling through, I have come upon a card that lists someone I can’t remember at all, or businesses and organizations that have ceased to exist in my memory. 

How funny that a pre-digital, pen-and-paper device should store outdated information more effectively — or simply longer — than our constantly updated digital files do. The paper memory is still more indelible. 

Will these forgotten Rolodex contacts be of use someday? 

Should I hold on to data about people I cannot ever expect to contact again . . . or let it all go? 

What about the attorney who represented my parents after they moved to Florida, for example, some two decades before they died (and they died more than 20 years ago)?

I am sure I’m not the only member of my generation to hang on to old Rolodex entries for people we really cared about who are no longer alive, people we don’t have the courage to delete. A friend reminded me recently that one of our mutual friends, now long gone, had kept what he called a Dead Book. That sounds morbid, but, knowing him, I think he just wanted to chronicle their passing and to make sure he wouldn’t forget them.

After my mother-in-law, Jeannette Edwards Rattray, died in 1974, I inherited a small red address book that had been hers. I’ve saved it on the theory that her grandchildren might like to take a look at it some day; her life was long and fascinating. Will any of my heirs pay any attention to the A to Z on my computer? That’s highly doubtful. 

It’s more likely that I will go back over it myself some day. There may just be a memoir in there.

Back when my reprobate buddies and I were in high school and had our first cars we would nervously drive past a place we called the Mafia House down near Two Mile Hollow Beach. Because there was a heavy metal gate across the twisting driveway we concluded that the residents had something to hide. It was the 1970s, and tales of the Cosa Nostra were in the air, you know. 

As strange as it may seem now, time was when there was just one gate across a driveway in the Village of East Hampton, and probably in the whole town, too. Now they are ubiquitous and at least one property owner, Ronald Perelman, doubles down by posting guards in idling sport utility vehicles near his driveway. Mr. Perelman’s gate not that long ago drew the attention of officials, who said it was too tall.

Some might blame deer as the reason why gates have become an all but essential aspect of the South Fork roadscape. I’m not so sure; perhaps deer are to blame in some cases, perhaps not. 

It’s not as if gates present all that much of a security deterrent or that there are hordes of curious interlopers creeping in for a look at the average, run-of-the-mill Hamptons homeowner’s house. No, it’s more than that.

Personally, I don’t like them, but then I don’t like a lot of what passes for contemporary taste. For example, don’t get me started on Belgian block driveway aprons, eyebrow windows, or outdoor lighting pointed up into the trees.

Had we had a gate at our house, my own one real brush with crime would not have been prevented. This was an incident in which I surprised a young man from out of town whom I caught rifling through my truck one dark night. Fast and wiry, he could have easily scaled anything we had put up to bar the driveway.

I know that there is no way East Hampton is going back to the days when gates were the exception rather then the rule, when picket fences with trailing pink roses were prevalent. Still, we could do with a little less of what they represent.

As soon as I read the Times’s review, which said “The Humans” might turn out to be the best Broadway play of the season, I reserved two seats for a Wednesday matinee performance a month in advance of a Rogers Memorial Library bus trip we’d signed on to. 

It was only then that Mary told me she had wanted to see the hip-hop version of Alexander Hamilton. 

“Well, if ‘The Humans’ is depressing, we’ll go have a drink afterward, and if it’s not, we’ll have a drink anyway . . . to celebrate,” I said, mindful that not infrequently my enthusiasms can lead me astray when it comes to the arts.

“So, what’s it about?”

“A family’s Thanksgiving dinner,” I said, looking up from a thumbnail New Yorker review. “It says that the acting’s first-rate — the grandmother has Alzheimer’s . . . but that the play doesn’t lead anywhere. I don’t find that a problem, do you? I mean, about life not leading anywhere. . . ?”

“It sounds depressing. . . . Remember that movie you took me to on that other bus trip to the city, ‘Memphis.’ . . .”

“Say no more,” I said. “At least the theater seats were comfortable and we got some sleep.”

“This wasn’t the same reviewer? The one who raved about ‘The Humans’ wasn’t the same one who raved about ‘Memphis’ was he? Remember when you called the box office the night before and asked if there’d be any trouble getting seats the next day and the guy said he didn’t think so. Didn’t you say it sounded like he might have been suppressing an urge to laugh?”

“Well, I couldn’t tell for sure. . . .” 

“That should have been the tip-off.”

“But I was so fixated by then, fixated on treating you to a real work of art, one that held a mirror up to life. . . . Boring movies, depressing plays . . . I’m doing my best, I’m doing my level best!”

What am I feeling thankful for this week?  

I am thankful that, like most Americans, I live a life insulated from the various calamities and wars going on elsewhere in the world.

I am thankful that I, like most of us in East Hampton, am safe and secure enough to be able to pursue personal well-being and the well-being of those I am close to.

I am not thankful for the fact that this country is often defined by the accumulation of material goods‚ though there appears to have been a silver lining of sorts on Black Friday 2015: Despite the popular circulation in social media of grotesque videos of shopping as blood sport, this year there were reportedly fewer riots than in other recent years. I guess that’s something?

Although I think assigning nicknames to certain days is silly, I am thankful that Cyber Monday was followed by Giving Tuesday. In case you haven’t heard, Giving Tuesday is when charitable organizations drum up donations; in my case, I got appeals from a slew, including cultural institutions close to home and groups fighting hunger abroad. 

I was especially thankful this week for those from the East End who turned away from their own Thanksgiving-feast opportunities to step out and help others. A Star associate editor, Joanne Pilgrim, was among those who traveled to Greece last week to offer what help she could to the refugees landing on the island of Lesbos in search of peace and a bit of the security we tend to take for granted.

Doug Kuntz, a contributing Star photographer, has gone back and forth to Lesbos in the last two months not only to chronicle the hardships of those attempting to find safe havens but to help direct funds to where they are most needed. East End Cares, an organization based in Montauk — founded to help Long Islanders after Superstorm Sandy — not only sent clothing and needed goods but also was able to send medical supplies and equipment to Lesbos at the same time it organized volunteers to fly over. I am grateful to them all. 

This week is also an appropriate time to commend those protesters around this country who are raising the veil behind which we as a people have hidden the truths about racial inequity and injustice in the criminal justice system. 

On the other end of the gratefulness spectrum, however, I am definitely not singing any hosannas for the slate of hopefuls seeking the Republican nomination to run for president. These are not great days for the Grand Old Party. I would call the spectacle tragicomic, but, really, for those of us who take pride in American democracy, it is just plain sad.

Donald Trump represents the worst in human nature: greed, self-interest, xenophobia, cruelty, belligerence, pride, vanity, and an absolute lack of mercy or respect for those weaker, meeker, or poorer than himself. He scares me. During Thanksgiving week, he took pains to denigrate not just the undocumented immigrants living among us, but refugees, as well. When debating political questions, many of us bandy about the term “fascist” much too casually, but I believe that a Donald Trump presidency would be fascist by all real definitions.

The choices Fox News and CNN made about who would be on the main stages for the Republican debates — and consequently who took the mantle of principal contenders — has been a bit disturbing, too, because those choices were based on polling. An analysis of polling and public opinion surveys by Jill Lepore in the Nov. 16 New Yorker magazine, “Politics and the New Machine,” casts doubt not only on polls’ and surveys’ validity but on the assumption that they are, in the end, democratic. 

Good journalism, like hers, is also something to be thankful for.

I was driving though Bridgehampton the other day and passed the place on Montauk Highway where a vehicle struck Anna Pump as she tried to cross the road. Ms. Pump, who died of her injuries at Southampton Hospital later that day, had been in a crosswalk.

Crosswalks can be dangerous, particularly at night and at this time of the year when night comes before the close of the business day. This is why the Town of Southampton is creating an illuminated, flashing crossing near the Hampton Library like those already in place in East Hampton Village. But even those are not without risks. 

At about dusk on Sunday, as I was driving westward in the left of two lanes on Main Street in my pickup truck, I slowed for two people approaching in the crosswalk from the other side of the street. I could not tell if they were together or not, as one was a step or two behind the other. What was obvious though was that it was, for them, a risky moment; they had not pushed the button to trigger the crosswalk’s blinking lights, and they were both wearing dark clothes.

I looked to my right side-view mirror; a sport utility vehicle was coming up fast, apparently oblivious to the fact that there was a crosswalk ahead. Not knowing what else to do, I lightly beeped the horn several times in rapid succession and then shifted my truck back and forth into the right lane.

The pedestrians made it across the street okay. I was unable to tell if the S.U.V. driver had understood what was going on or thought I was just another nut on the road. Bridgehampton’s new lighted crosswalk will turn on when someone steps into the road rather than relying on a button. This might help, but the trend is not good for people on foot. 

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the rate of pedestrian deaths as a total of all fatalities in the United States has been increasing over the last decade at a time when the annual rate of road deaths over all has been falling sharply. 

The agency also issues pointers about crossing streets. They include this basic advice: Never assume that a driver has seen you.

I liked what the woman in one of our papers the other day said she was thankful for: the moon (I would say especially the moon the way it has been the past few nights), the stars, the sun, of course, and air, water, fire, and a roof over your head.

Keep it simple is what I gather she’s saying. Love your neighbor as yourself and cultivate your garden. Speaking of which, Mary asked me what we should do with ours now that the calendar says winter’s approaching. “Put a blanket on it and when you take it off there will be growth in the spring, Ben,” I said. (We had seen “Being There” on TV the night before.)

She, who is keenly sensitive to the news, and who suffers because of it, has begun a file for me of stories attesting to the resilience of the human spirit.

One was of a bookseller in Islamabad who has, I think, the largest bookstore in the world, or one of the largest. Chomsky sells there, so do books on atheism and the Qur’an. In other words, he has, in a part of the world that we’ve come to think of as extremely close-minded, a catholic audience. 

Another best seller there is “Fallen Leaves,” by Will Durant, whose histories I’ve faithfully read, making me potentially knowledgeable up to the Napoleonic period, when the Durants left off.

Ahmad Saeed, the owner, told of elderly men coming in, offering to pay for books they’d stolen when they were children. “His late father, Saeed Jan Qureshi, would have been amused: He had always regarded book theft by children as an investment in a future where people still read, and thus become his customers.”  

“Fallen Leaves” struck a chord with me, of course, because I’ve been raking them, though there are fewer than there used to be because we’ve been culling the trees. My sister-in-law, who’d come for Thanksgiving, saw me raking and wondered why I didn’t get a blower. No, simpler (and quieter) is best, though I must admit I sigh when I see the village leaf-suckers plying their way along the streets of Sag Harbor (and when I look across the street at the house that now sits on what had been our leaf repository for years and years). A fellow carts them away now after I rake them, for a reasonable fee.

Another of the stories Mary clipped had to do with the owner of the Hummus Bar, Kobi Tzafrir, in Kfar Vitkin, a small village near the Mediterranean Sea, who wants Arabs and Israelis to reconnect over his hummus plates, which he’s offering at a 50-percent discount if they will sit together. “Give Chickpeas  a Chance” was the headline in The Daily Mail’s story.

There were also a number of stories here this week that had to do with cultivating the garden of hope and with loving your neighbor — not only in Sag Harbor, where people raised money for the family of a young athlete, Nick Kruel, who’d undergone open heart surgery, but in Lesbos, where Doug Kuntz and a group inspired by his photographs (which deserve to be in a national publication such as National Geographic) are now helping Syrian refugees, and in Malawi, as well, where a local teacher, Kryn Olson, wants to build five school libraries to hold books donated and collected here.

Mary’s file is growing.