If a parking ticket in Southampton Town isn’t a first-world problem, then I don’t know what is.

It all started when I decided I was too lazy to drive UpIsland for a party two Saturdays ago, and opted for the Long Island Rail Road instead of what Google Maps was showing to be an hour-and-36-minute drive. The party was to have a “Back to the Future” theme, and its outcome had me wishing I could travel back in time a couple of hours and tell my lazy self to suck it up and drive. UpIsland, I partied like it was 1985. When I returned about 24 hours later, there it was on the windshield: Written overnight, clear as day, was a $100 ticket for illegally parking in a lot that required a permit.

I started to panic. A hundred bucks is a lot of money for a single, 30-something Long Island girl living east of the Shinnecock Canal. I began listing the things I’d have to sacrifice in order to pay the fine. Ten months of Netflix? Twenty or so trips to Starbucks? Cancel my Ipsy cosmetics subscription? The horror. Maybe I’ll sign up for media access to this week’s gallery openings and theater events. If I can eat a few meals in the press room, at least I’ll save at the grocery store. (Note to my editor: I’m just kidding.)

My next instinct was to get defensive. The Long Island Rail Road website does not list any parking restrictions for the Bridgehampton station parking lot, and anyway, many UpIsland towns and villages allow permit-free parking in train station lots on the weekend. Such an agreement is said to encourage tourism to New York City on Saturdays and Sundays, so I thought it was a safe assumption that Southampton Town, too, accommodates westbound travelers in this way. I was incorrect, but my indignation survived long enough to temporarily inspire thoughts of fighting the parking ticket.

Then I started to get angry at myself. I might have a lazy streak, but mostly I’m an overachiever and a perfectionist to a degree of sickness, so to have this black mark on my record felt really frustrating. Okay, maybe it’s not as much a black mark as it is a little gray smudge, because there won’t be any points recorded against my driver’s license. Still frustrating, though, because this totally could have been avoided.

If I were to tweet this, I’d surely hashtag it “firstworldproblems.” It’s bad enough that Starbucks in East Hampton is closed for renovation right now. What’s next — how to avoid pairing navy blue with black in my O.O.T.D.? Too many costumes to choose from on Halloween? Zumba, yoga, or kickboxing for my Saturday morning workout? To quote from another overused hashtag, the struggle is real.

When perspective finally started to set in, I realized this whole parking ticket situation wasn’t so bad after all. The fine could have been higher, or the car could have been towed. Or worse: There could be no fat to trim in my budget whatsoever, and I’d really have something to worry about. So I opened my checkbook, made out a check, and stuck it in an envelope with the ticket.

Damn, I’m out of stamps, and I’ve got to mail this by today to get it in on time. First-world problems indeed.

Christine Sampson is a reporter for The Star.

I ’ve been all a-twitter as the dismantling of the early-19th-century Hedges barn on our property — soon to be moved and reconstructed across Main Street, on the Mulford Farm — draws near. I’ve also been deeply appreciative of E.J. Edwards, my children’s great-grandfather, who saved the barn and moved it up Edwards Lane. Today, his descendants all agree that it is right and proper that the East Hampton Historical Society has acquired it for public use.

As we work on emptying the barn of two centuries of stuff, I’ve had a remarkable feeling of stepping back in time each time I enter it. Livestock hasn’t lived in the stalls for at least 70 years; it’s been even longer since grain was sent down the chute. But walking in the other day I could just about smell cows, horses, and hay.

 As habitual readers of this column might remember, I spent most of my childhood summers on my grandparents’ farm in the Catskills, where there was a three-story barn, a relic of its past as a dairy farm — although we kept only one cow in these roomy accommodations, and only briefly. You might find it amusing that my olfactory nostalgia centers on the smell of manure, but my memory of that smell is complex and entirely pleasant.

Four generations of family and friends have stored hand-me-down furniture, sports gear, toys, and household doodads in our Edwards Lane barn, not to mention bikes, fence posts, parade floats, air-conditioners, basinets, printing-press parts, grinding stones, antique post office boxes, sailboards, 80-year-old Flexible Fliers, girlie magazines dating to the 1940s, scythes, ice boats, storm windows, porcelain sinks, and, at one point, my late mother-in-law’s sporty hardtop. Trying to figure out what it all was and who it belonged to, or who might want to make use of it now, was no small task.

Recently, as the emptying enters its final phase, we’ve brought out a wonderful, ancient horse-drawn sleigh, some big old wooden barrels, and what a knowledgeable woodworker told me was a “chair vise.” Sure enough, checking out chair vises on Google, I learned they also are known as shaping horses and were common devices for making chairs and other furniture by hand. Any idea that the vise we found was a valuable antique, however, was dispelled when I told my son David about this 19th-century treasure we had unearthed. . . . And he replied, “Sure it’s a chair vise. I made it.” (I should have known. When he was a college freshman, he made chairs, and we have a few nice ones to prove it.)

The most challenging object still in the barn, though, is Jeannette Edwards Rattray’s huge kitchen stove. What to do with it? It turns out that the stove was made by the Kalamazoo Company in Kalamazoo, Mich., and was marketed as “A Kalamazoo Direct to You.” That’s right, the company, in the first half of the 20th century, shipped its steel-andiron cooking stoves directly to customers and offered a 30-day guarantee.

Ours, which probably dates to the 1920s, is covered in cream and ochre porcelain enamel, with a firebox on one side for coal and wood, and the slogan “direct to you” right there on the thermometer built into the oven door. My late mother-in-law — true to form in our family, reluctant to give up old ways and old things — cooked on this coal-andwood stove until her death in 1974. We removed it and stored it in the barn when we inherited the house and updated to a six-burner propane stove (which, by now a family relic itself, is still in use in the kitchen). The Kalamazoo behemoth has been kept under cover, with all its parts intact, I believe — including stovepipe — but the notion that someone in the family would want to actually use it someday seems a fantasy.

It’s available now at a wonderful discount. Would any of you like it?

I mean, it’s not like we can belatedly take the Kalamazoo Company up on its return guarantee: It went out of business in 1952.

It had been some time since we last thought about the Montauk Monster around the office. But on Tuesday, our memories were refreshed by a query from a National Geographic television program producer looking for images for an upcoming program.

To be clear, The Star does not own the rights to the infamous photograph taken by one of our former interns, the daughter of our Montauk correspondent. It was Jenna Hewitt who snapped the shot of an odd, mostly hairless animal carcass found while she was walking on the beach in July 2008. I passed the message from National Geographic on to her via her mom, Janis.

A funny thing about the whole Montauk Monster business is that The Star did not break the story. The what-is-it! coverage began with The Independent and took off from there. By the time we wrote about it, it had become a full-blown Internet sensation. TV crews arrived and interviewed Ms. Hewitt and other discoverers of the sad beast, Courtney Fruin and Rachel Goldberg. Ms. Hewitt told The Star that by a certain point the whole thing had given her a headache.

“We’ve had invites. It’s fun, but it’s August, and we work in restaurants,” Ms. Hewitt said. Classic Montauk.

By then, we were on the story, though trying to frame it for our readers more as a media frenzy phenomena than a mystery. The Star’s nature columnist, Larry Penny, had taken a look at the photograph and conclusively dismissed the carcass as a dead raccoon a bit worse for wear for having been in the surf awhile.

Things took an interesting turn, though, when the thing went missing. Two men had taken the bloated and stinking thing away and left it in a wooded backyard to decay, apparently intending to salvage its bones to encase in resin and sell as art. As best as I can remember, the remains were never seen after that, as fitting an end to the story as could have been hoped, I suppose.

Of course, on the Internet, nothing really ever ends, and the Montauk Monster will live on in the vast, vast universe of cyber-speculation. Why, it’s even got its own Wikipedia page, and that’s more than I can say.

A woman overtaking me as I  walked up — or is it down? — Main Street the other day said in passing that it was a wonderful day.

Indeed it was, I said, “but I hear it’s supposed to get colder next week.”

Later, walking along the shady streets in Springs with Mary, she remarked on what a wonderful day it was. “Yes, but the hours are darkening,” I said.

“Will you stop. Do you have to be such a Gloomy Gus?”

“I’ve been in mourning ever since the Pirates lost that wild card game. Bases loaded, one out in the sixth, Marte at bat. . . . It could have turned around then, it could have turned around completely. . . . Ah well . . . it is a beautiful day. And if tomorrow is not, it’s a joy to be with you. You’re a thing of beauty forever, as Brett Rader said when Johnna posted a photo of us with the baby on Facebook. 

Still, there’s no denying the leaves are falling, that the outdoor shower will soon be a ruined choir, and that the birds will be left to stipulate in the snow, as we, if the past is prologue, fall and crack our heads upon the ice.

Well, bring it on. As Joey McKee told his charges recently, football is life — you get knocked down, you brush off the tire shavings and get back up. Ah, resilience. Give me the seasons. Who wants to live in a place where the weather is unvaryingly fine?

(Thousands do, if Temecula, Calif., where we recently spent two weeks, is an example.)

“It’s like Naples with mountains,” I said as Mary and I drove down the main mall-flanked drag.

I was yearning for the cold and damp then, and now that I have them (another week and the spiders would have taken over) I’m yearning for . . . what? Spring? But we have no spring here. Summer then? Never. Today is rather nice. The late afternoon light is golden and the air is fresh. That ought to be enough, Gloomy Gus.

Putter, a male cat who may not have made it, and Summer, Putter’s sister, a shy, small, not-much-of-a-cat’s cat, have both blossomed into Disney movie-like caricatures — possibly, someday, attaining cat-legend status in the Cats Hall of Fame, East Hampton, N.Y.

Putter, a scatterbrained, uncoordinated scaredy-cat, a loose cannon, at times emotionally deranged, a falling-from-beam, running-into-wall type cat, a cat destined for cat heaven at a young age. An indoor cat, a cat who would go into deep hiding at the hint of any housecleaning; later, at cleaning’s end, Putter would wobble out of some back hidden section of a remote closet, his demeanor not unlike the human type you see coming out of Rowdy Hall during German Beer Fest Week, after having imbibed too many pints of beer at 11 on Friday night.

Putter was not a good cat! He was not a very friendly cat! He was not a smart cat! Destiny’s bad door was closing in on poor Putter the cat.

Upon being stuck outside his home, Putter would raise a shrill whine that could wake a demon. Then, a door or window was left open: Behold . . . a cannon-shot cat flying through door or open window at breakneck speed, headed for a lengthy hideout somewhere deep in a back closet, or places unknown.

Putter despised the outdoors, cared for nothing beyond the confines of his small home. Putter was beyond a homebody cat: He was slightly psycho.

Summer the female cat: much the same. Not much of a cat. Not interesting, not friendly, not exciting, did not meow much. The cat did not purr often, eat a lot, run around a lot, did not go outside. This was a classic case of a boring East Hampton cat! Not as crazy as her brother, Summer seemed destined to live a long, unadventurous life indoors, away from farm mice, mole, or rabbit.

What happened to Putter and Summer the cats?

Their cat food was changed some years ago to Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’ Favorites from a more expensive dry cat food with a fancy name and claims to health and vitality. The transformation began slowly, with antics that may go down in East Hampton cat history. After a year on the Surfin’ & Turfin’ diet, events as such took place: Summer spent days following a giant tired bumblebee that had flown inside. As the bumblebee wearied, Summer attacked, pinning it to a wooden floor and eating it in small bites, each bite showing a cat face of “Wow, triple-X hot sauce.”

Her coat darkened and lightened, her nose became prettier and a square shamrock shape. Summer became a friendlier cat! Summer became a super-clean cat, cleaning herself all day sometimes. Summer is now a nice cat, with cat expressions saying, “Like, get lost, pal, I’ve got bugs and bees to hunt. Where’s my brother, Putter . . . he’s gonna help.”

Putter, after his diet change to Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’, turned to wild adventure. A beautiful female human guest on the lawn enjoying a glass of Bordeaux wine was asked, “Have you seen Putter?” as early winter night fell. A minute later a giant rabbit ran by, 12 paces away, heading for deep cover in the close-by field. Moments later a streak of a cat resembling Putter ran by, sort of in that direction. Shortly after, an unidentified cat with primarily darkish black markings zoomed by. Putter was having fun with a rabbit and a stray neighborhood cat at the same time. An hour later Putter strolled into the house as if saying, “No big deal, just another Friday cat night.”

Putter’s antics with his 5-year-old male human cousin are quickly becoming household legend. The summertime question arises, “Where’s Santiago?” The fear of Putter badly scratching Santiago: ever present. Yet, miracles happen! Little cousin Santiago Morgan has tamed the beast and is walking around with the cat in a full bear hug, cat legs dangling and all.

Putter seems calm, collected, a super-cool cat ready for anything 5-year-old Santi can dish out. Other encounters with Santi include cat-tail pulling, crawling under bed to harass cat, Santiago using a yellow marker to paint a stripe on Putter’s back — Santiago’s bad little boy behavior gets no reaction at all from Putter the cat.

Of course, little pieces of leftover Iacono chicken are added to Putter’s and Summer’s Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’ Favorites dry cat food. Striped bass is also added to the mix when family friend Garry is fishing and has extra to give away. Occasionally the two cats get a bit of milk. They dip their respective paws in and lick their feet for hours. Both cats drink a lot of tap water from a bowl.

Don’t think for a minute these are sissy cats. Beware these cats’ claws! Morgan Jr. is neglectful of his claw-trimming duties. After all, he is the owner of the cats. They look like fun cats. They are nice-looking, wonderfully marked cats who run up and down floorboards and furniture. However, a reminder to those who encounter Putter and Summer: They were born feral cats under an East Hampton house. Until their claws are cut and they have aged a bit more in cat years, best to give them room to be cats.

You can try as you might to take the wild, adventuresome cat out of an East Hampton cat! Occasionally that just does not work.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

Trying to explain why I like the film festival so much, I came up with a backstory: The Star was among the first public voices to welcome its arrival in East Hampton in 1993. Many year-round residents were wary that first year, fearing the festival would bring traffic snarls and unwelcome crowds of gawkers, possibly even harming local businesses.

Like others, Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., the village mayor then as now, was cautious about the introduction of an annual event that might push summer’s hassles into the relative peace of October. Mr. Rickenbach didn’t want East Hampton to turn into Hollywood East. “How much can the village of East Hampton saturate itself with?” we quoted him asking. When it was all over, he said he was more optimistic but was reserving judgment and wanted to “hear a post-festival critique on what exactly was the economic impact in the village.”

The Star praised Joyce Robinson, Naomi Lazard, and a few other forward-thinking individuals who inaugurated the festival. In an editorial titled “Break a Leg” — before the festivities began, lo those 23 festivals ago — we wrote there was “every reason to expect the festival will be a humdinger.”

In the end, it didn’t end up blocking traffic or annoying townspeople, and it stirred up only two political brouhahas: One was about the Town of East Hampton’s giving it $10,000 (Supervisor Tony Bullock defended the gift); and the other about sculptures of a giant fly and smiling duck that were rolled “up and down Main Street to promote the screening of a long-forgotten flick called ‘It’ll Have Blinking Eyes and a Moving Mouth.’ ” The mayor said the sculptures “were not indicative of what East Hampton is all about,” and the village administrator, Larry Cantwell, who is East Hampton Town supervisor today, found them to be a violation of the village sign ordinance and ordered them banished. He would probably laugh today reading that he said the village’s strict regulations “are what keep East Hampton from looking like 42nd Street.”

From the organizers’ and filmgoers’ point of view, the first festival was a “smash.” At least that’s what a Star headline said. The only reported gripe among audiences themselves was over a sneak preview of a movie that wasn’t revealed until the curtain went up; people were expecting something like “Shindler’s List” but got “Body Snatchers,” Abel Ferrara’s zombie thriller, instead.

The festival certainly scored big when Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese spoke at a packed Guild Hall seminar. “You take the audience through life and death, and bang! They come out on the other side,” Mr. Scorsese said.

Toni Ross, at the time president of the festival’s board of directors, was credited with its being an “inclusive event, not an exclusive one.” Four feature films and six shorts, all with local filmmakers, actors, and producers, were shown on the first day, and admission was free.

I chuckled with recognition when I noticed that The Star’s earliest news clippings about the festival were written by none other than Sarah Koenig, a reporter here that year, who more recently made us all proud as a member of Time magazine’s 100 most influential persons of 2015, as the co-creator and host of “Serial,” the wildly popular podcast in which she explored the guilt or innocence of a young man convicted of killing his girlfriend. (Sarah started here, and she has made journalistic history. Can someone get that plot green-lighted?)

A lot of things have changed in the 23 years since the film festival got going. Single film tickets have gone up about 100 percent, from $7 to $15 for adults, and the all-inclusive “Founders Pass” has gone up 50 percent, from $1,000 to $1,500. Prize money has grown, too.

Some 41 features and 30 shorts were screened at the first festival, compared with more than 140 films from 41 different countries this year. Filmgoers gathered in front of the East Hampton cinema before it opened on the first day in 1993, and banged on the door. Today, there are several ticket offices and tickets can be purchased online, but the line on the first day tickets were sold ran down the block.

As for movie stars, the festival is host to many, although you really wouldn’t know it from the lack of fuss and bother on Main Street.

Lisa said it would get worse  before it got better and she was right. There is a rule of etiquette that says that it is impolite to talk about one’s health, but if describing the cold that has been working its way through our household will convince one person to go scrub their hands, it will have been worth it.

My wife is hardly the type of person to get sick. Colds usually set her back for half a day. Then she bounces up and goes back at it. This is good, because as a high school teacher she is exposed to all sorts of things, from great gossip to nasty viruses. Mix in our kids as vectors, and if there is something going around, we’re going to be right in its gunsights.

Back when our first child was little, the Country School in Wainscott she attended for prenursery had a rule (and probably still does) that each student had to wash his or her hands upon arrival in the morning. For us, it was a fun ritual; she would put her hands under the running water, and I would work her wrists as if she were a puppet. At this point, I can’t remember if we had fewer colds, but the hand-washing was a good lesson.

The current cold goes through the usual running nose, aches, and sneezing. Then, when you think it has run its course and you feel a little better, it takes you down again. And so it goes, in my case now, for more than a week. I blame the inflammation; Advil is about my only relief.

Science tells us that there is a link between rest and catching a cold. A study I heard about on the radio found a 20-percent reduction in symptoms among test subjects who got ample sleep. Unfortunately, circumstances have had me awake well before dawn too often lately, which does not bode well for recovery.

Keep those hands clean, people. Get enough rest. But keep the Ibuprofen ready just in case.

Well,  I’m finished with the Pirates — for awhile anyway. I had called on Zeus to strike down Jake Arrieta with a thunderbolt, but the best he could do was hit him in the butt with a pitch by Tony Watson in the seventh inning.

And that produced a benches-clearing set-to that was fun to watch, but otherwise it was agony, pure agony. And that’s the way it’s been for Pittsburgh fans in recent weeks, pure, unadulterated agony. I went on to the GoPetition website the day after the Steelers had lost 23-20 on a Thursday night to the Ravens, wondering how many had signed the petition to reinstate Lou Reale as East Hampton High School’s softball coach (the count stood then at 236), when the first thing I saw was a petition demanding that Josh Scobee, the Steelers’ oft-errant kicker, be released forthwith.

Sure enough, he was gone by the weekend. In the N.F.L., as opposed to the East Hampton School District, petitions get results.

I had been feeling rather mellow that day, at least through the first half, by which time the Steelers led, as I recall, 20-7, but at the end I was in full panic mode, excusing myself repeatedly from the dinner table to “check on the baby.”

(Note: One good reason to live in California, and I can only think of perhaps one other, its bountiful organic food, is that televised games from the East are usually over and done with by early or late afternoon, or by 8 p.m. at the latest.)

Thanks to her parents’ oversight — and, for the two weeks we were with them in Temecula, Calif., to Mary — the baby, who was only seven days old when we arrived, is progressing wonderfully. And this I found interesting: In a recent column, written before we, or they, knew what was to be her name, the first word, which I’d lifted from Rilke’s epitaph, was “rose.”

“So, what did they name the baby, Mary?” I said after I’d handed the column in for editing.

“Mary Rose,” she said. Well I’ll be.

I’d forgotten that babies require constant attention, which left precious little for me. As time wore on, I wondered, idly, looking up from my reading (Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”), if I hadn’t contracted diabetes, or, at the very least, gout. My big toe was aching something awful.

“You don’t have diabetes,” Mary scoffed. “Peter said you passed your physical with flying colors. It’s all in your head.”

“No, it’s lower,” I said. And just at that moment, I swear to God (talk about coincidences) a big foot crisscrossed with stabbing red nerve endings appeared on TV. “See, see. What did I tell you, oh ye of little feet!”

Unimpressed, Mary and Johnna went back to their maternal duties.

Though it wasn’t just duty with them; it was pure, unadulterated love — the kind I can only marvel at.

When it came time to go, I said to Johnna and to Wally, her husband, “You’re doing such a good job with the baby.”

“Check her out in 17 years,” he said.

“A two-handed backhand and a semiWestern forehand,” I said, “and all will be well.”

The closing of Waldbaum’s was a long time coming. The company had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for a while, and the growing neglect that comes with that may account for why so many of us out here were left wondering why Waldbaum’s hated us so much.

We have high hopes for Stop and Shop, which is taking over the East Hampton Waldbaum’s and several others on Long Island. With its East Hampton opening slated for tomorrow, I hope it’s not too late to offer some advice about what I hope can be done better.

Waldbaum’s had a lot of problems. The parking lot hadn’t been repaved in what seemed like decades, unless you count the black paint job it got a year or so ago, so it made sense that the carts felt like they’d all been run over by a truck. Did corporate ship all the bad ones east or were they just beat to death by that parking lot? Only a handful had four wheels that touched the ground. If I’m going to spend $200 a week in a grocery store, I appreciate a cart that drives straight. It was when wrestling my cart around a turn that I felt most hated.

Most of the aisles, already too narrow for two carts to pass in opposite directions, were made even narrower by a variety of displays, making cart navigation even harder. There was hardly any room to line up or bag groceries at the checkout aisles, resulting in a maddening scrum of carts on even a moderately busy day. The roof leaked, the freezers and refrigerators broke down often, the store seemed stuck in the 1990s at best, but still I shopped there, and as much as the hate was sort of mutual, I felt a little sad when it finally closed.

I’ll miss some of the employees, most of whom I knew by face but not name, and some of the distributors, who were so accommodating about bringing out a favorite product that had disappeared from the shelves. It wasn’t their fault. I’ll miss the store-brand dryroasted unsalted jumbo cashews and the Greenway organic yellow corn chips. But there is a lot I won’t miss and I’m hoping Stop and Shop will try a little harder. I know we can’t expect everything in a week. This is a longterm project.

Dear Stop and Shop:

I hope you have destroyed all the shelves at the former East Hampton Waldbaum’s because they were too deep. We need wider aisles. Two carts should be able to pass each other in an aisle without knocking down a toilet paper display.

I hope you have sent all the carts to the junkyard and will reopen with new ones, not damaged castoffs from the Hampton Bays or Riverhead stores. If we don’t have to think about how hard it will be to push a full cart, we might buy more groceries.

Please repave the parking lot, if not immediately, then very soon. A wellpaved parking lot makes an excellent first impression. Plus, the new carts will last longer. Also, please tell your employees not to fill the parking lot with their own cars. It’s hard enough to get a space in the lot.

You’ll also need to repair the roof. It leaks. And maybe put in a new bathroom so mothers with children who just can’t wait won’t have to warn them not to touch anything.

Please, please, please provide more space to line up for checkout and for bagging.

Please clean the deli department.

Please consider a natural and organic foods section, and possibly a self-checkout area that functions more smoothly.

Good luck. We’re rooting for you!

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.

Whenever the season changes, I think of a woman who worked at The Star some years back who arrived every day more than impeccably dressed. To be sure, she was fashionable, but every outfit also seemed brand new. She would tell us she had a relative who worked in retail and could pass along nice things, but that didn’t seem to account for it. I couldn’t help wonder if she sent every garment to a thrift shop after wearing it once.

As for me, I hold on to my clothes for a long, long time. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes not. One now-vintage dress I still own and wear occasionally in summer is a sleeveless, full-length Marimekko number in a purple and, yes, turquoise print that I bought way back when Marimekko had a shop in East Hampton, where Domaine Wines and Spirits is today, or thereabouts. It had to have been in the 1970s. It’s gratifying to find a past purchase still holds up in taste and quality. There’s definitely nothing wrong with an old but simple cashmere turtleneck, either. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the quality of cashmere turtlenecks has dropped precipitously in recent decades, and in this case older is actually better.

Of course, most of us are apt to save clothing worn on ceremonial occasions. For men, that might be an army or navy uniform, or a varsity jacket; for women, the dresses they were married in. I’ve got two of them, although I never wore either a second time and don’t expect I ever will. One — an electric-blue satin shift that you could imagine being worn onstage by a member of the Supremes — is hidden in a closet tucked away in the back of our upstairs storage room; I think the last person to wear it was my daughter, at about the age of 12, when she tried it on and accidentally ripped one of the seams. She kept this youthful accident a secret for 20 years at least — which shows you how often I’ve seen the first wedding dress over the decades. My other wedding dress is kept in the back of my everyday closet, in my bedroom, and when I get a peek at it now and again it does rekindle joy.

Unfortunately, there are many more things crammed in these closets that once looked good, and once fit perfectly, but don’t anymore. Do I really need my high school drum-majorette outfit? How about that ’80s shearling coat with the prizefighter shoulders?

I’ve just had another birthday, and my husband and daughter gave me new clothes as presents. I particularly like a funnel-neck pullover from J. Jill in lavender-gray. It looks modern to my eye. I am aware that my family gave me clothes because, despite the crammed confines of my bulging closet, I am known to frequently bemoan the fact that I have “nothing to wear.” The seasons are changing. It’s time for me to purge my closet. I haven’t done it in years.

If you peruse the racks at the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s Bargain Box, it is clear than many stylish women make it a habit to deposit their not-veryold outfits and accessories as a donation. I imagine this habitual kind of closetfreshening being penciled into datebook calendars, Martha Stewart style, twice-yearly. While I’m not certain if my own discards could be classified as desirably vintage (and I know for certain they don’t fall into the “nearly new” category), I am steeling my courage and letting it all go.

The start of fall, however, was not simply a signal to get our belongings in order. It took a sad turn.

We had expected the small, shaggyhaired black terrier we adopted at the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons at the beginning of summer to be with us for a long, long time. She was young, and we named her Sookie. She was adorable, cheerful, sweet, amusing, even captivating. Outdoors, she had boundless energy. Indoors, she loved to climb up onto laps. We all agreed she would make an outstanding circus dog: She could rise up on her hind legs and dance around in circles to greet newcomers. She charmed everyone.

The only thing we didn’t love about Sookie was the fact that she was so determined to hunt. She loved the chase. She tried really hard to catch a chipmunk under the backdoor steps, and managed to dislodge with her snout a shingle on the outside wall of the sun porch, when attempting to bring a creature to bay.

Before bringing Sookie home, we had made all possible preparations, installing a fence around a large part of the garden, making sure the gates had latches. On the first day she lived with us, Sookie ran into her yard and raced around with a kind of obsessive glee. We all said the yard and house were dog heaven.

She disappeared the night of the eclipse, the so-called blood moon. One minute she was in the kitchen saying hello, the next minute she had trotted outside to do her accustomed rounds. When she didn’t come running back into the house when called, I searched the yard with a flashlight. It took a few minutes to realize that someone had left the gate ajar. She had bolted, chasing a squirrel or chasing moonbeams.

She was found two mornings later in the driveway of a nearby house.

Dark dog, dark night, dark road.

We don’t know what life on the streets of Rincon, Puerto Rico, where she was found before being shipped up to ARF, was like for her, but she had a happy time in East Hampton while summe lasted.