The film festival opens here tonight with a screening and party. Lenny Gail, an old college friend, and his family will arrive tomorrow to take in an impressive number of films with a little lunch and dinner squeezed in somehow.

Lenny is the organized type. His list of what the family is seeing and when is something to admire. I’m more the type who waits for recommendations then tries to find the time.

Last year, I was asked to be on the documentary jury, which meant watching something on the order of 20 short and longer films. Armed with an all-access pass, I saw the ones I was supposed to, and darted in and out of another half-dozen as well. What with a houseful of kids and work and everything else, I am not much of a moviegoer, so the festival allowed me to get in a year’s worth in the space of a few days.

A couple of friends and people we know casually here have films they were involved with in the festival this year. This adds to the complications, obviously, as Lenny and company have their own itinerary. Then there is my own preference for serious foreign-language films, which is a little at odds with my wife’s, Lisa’s, taste.

Some advice: With so many films to choose from, not all seats at all screenings will have filled up. The Star of Sept. 24 included a printed festival program, which can be picked up in shops around town and in Southampton or downloaded from our website. The box office is on Main Street, more or less across from the movie theater, and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

A “rush” line forms 45 minutes before screenings, and remaining seats will be sold, one per customer, as they are available.

Hope to see you there.

Most of us who live and work out here often find ourselves in close proximity to celebrities. They dine in our restaurants, shop in our stores, and even run lemonade stands with their children.

Over the summer we had Jimmy Fallon, Bono, Julianne Moore, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Schumer, multiple newscasters, Liev Schreiber, Chelsea Clinton, Chris Martin of Coldplay surfing at Ditch, and Scarlett Johansson. I know this because my three college-educated children work in local restaurants.

Seeing them off the glossy pages of magazines and the big screen makes you realize that they really are just like us, only a bit more uncomfortable in public. I often wonder if making the big bucks is worth it. Scarlett Johansson was so uncomfortable walking into a restaurant that she held her head down and kept trying to cover her face with her hair, which is really too short these days to accomplish that.

I’m not much of a celebrity worshipper but I would like to meet Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, who play Noah and Alison in “The Affair” on Showtime, which is supposedly set in Montauk. I gave it my best try as we were working on a piece about it, but their public relations people ignored my requests for a picture. And when they filmed out here earlier this summer, the security around the set was so tight that you would have thought the president was in town.

Before the series began its first season last fall, television critics from several publications wrote that Montauk was the real star of the series. Problem with that is that most of it wasn’t even filmed in Montauk. It made me realize that editing is an amazing thing. In the series, the Montauk Lighthouse would show up in the weirdest of places, and the house that Alison lived in, which she said was just over the dune at Ditch Plain, was actually in Amagansett.

I’m not being politically biased here, but my favorite brush with celebrity was when I met Hillary Clinton. She was in Montauk to meet with fishermen and discuss federal regulations that they felt were unfair. She visited the Montauk Lighthouse and the Coast Guard Station on Star Island, and everywhere she went crowds formed.

Later that day I was dining at Gosman’s with my family, including my 89year-old mother, who enjoyed a good martini before dinner. Mrs. Clinton was also eating there with the fishermen, all of whom I knew. An owner of Gosman’s asked her if I could take a picture for the paper, and she agreed. But it was her departure that caused a stir among other diners, who surrounded her to shake her hand and ask to take photos with her, which she graciously agreed to.

Our table was nearby, so when I said goodbye to her I asked if she wouldn’t mind just saying hello to my mom, who was too old to walk over to her. Her aides and Secret Service people went into a tizzy, but she ignored them and followed me to our table. She held both my mother’s hands in hers, said how nice it was too meet her, and then posed for a picture.

My mother was nice to everyone we introduced her to, so she smiled and exchanged a few words with her before Hillary’s people shuffled her away. After they left the restaurant, the rest of us were saying how cool it was that she did that. Sensing something exciting had just happened, my mother, already on her second martini, lipstick a bit smeared, her ever-present wiglet slightly askew, turned to me and said, “Who was that, Jan?”

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The East Hampton Star.

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.

“Jack, you’ve got to see this,” Mary called out from her perch on the porch.

“Yo vengo, yo vengo,” I said, moving sluggishly from the couch.

And there, on the chimney, by the side of the little porch, it was.

“It’s a slug,” she said.

“No, two of them,” I said, noticing the one moving up toward the one above. “I think. . . . I think . . . they’re doing it.”

She, ever curious, remained, keeping watch, as I, squeamish when it comes to some slimy things, oysters and clams excepted, retreated to the dry, crisp pages of my book.

A few minutes later, she related in somewhat transported fashion what had transpired, the nibbling on the tail and the subsequent slow curling round and round, positing that the one above had been the female.

I got up and went out and saw only one still on the chimney, and the other, I thought, below, in the pachysandra. “He must have dropped off, exhausted,” I said. “It makes sense.”

But, as I learned the next day, from a David Attenborough video that had come up after I’d Googled “the love lives of slugs,” we were wrong. Slugs are hermaphroditic — each possesses male and female organs — and their lovemaking is far more fascinating than I had imagined.

“It’s f—kin’ amazing!” I said later to Mary. “You have to see this!”

Together, then, we watched, with bated breath, the “balletic” (Attenborough’s apt descriptive word) probing and ever more encircling movements of the creatures’ bodies as they dangled from an overhang on a cord of slime, movements that were then repeated, ever so slowly, with their male organs, which had sprouted, if I heard him correctly, from behind their heads, and created in the process a flowering blue sphere in which sperm was exchanged.

“Now that’s lovemaking!” I said.

“The masters of sex!” she said.

And so we stopped, and looked, and learned.

There are no political controversies that stir as much personal anguish than those that involve Israel, or perhaps to be more precise, those that are the result of that nation’s policies and actions. My generation of American Jews, who are old enough to have been alive during the Holocaust, were brought up hearing the not-so-ludicrous question about matters of national and international consequence: “But is it good for the Jews?”

It follows therefore that although I was excited about the prospects for Middle East peace as a result of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran achieved by the Obama administration and a host of other nations, I became alarmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to convince the world — and the United States Congress — that the agreement was a colossal mistake that would lead to war.

It was in that context that “Off the Radar,” a memoir by Cyrus M. Copeland published in the spring, drew my attention. Mr. Copeland is a former advertising executive, born in this country to an Iranian mother and American father, whose formative years were spent in Shiraz. His family was living in Tehran in 1979, when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah and changed the course of history. As Mr. Copeland puts it, his father then came to represent the Great Satan and his mother, the Axis of Evil.

The story Mr. Copeland tells gives the lie to such black-versus-white simplifications. The daughter of a prominent family loyal to the monarchy, Shahin Maleki Copeland was able to attend and graduatefrom Georgetown University. In Washington, she not only met Max Copeland, whom she married, but Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, an Iranian student with whom she had a brief flirtation and who, years later, as the minister of justice under Ayatollah Khomeini, saved her husband’s life.

The thread Cyrus Copeland weaves in “Off the Radar” is a quest to learn whether his father was, as charged, guilty of espionage as an operative of a Central Intelligence Agency, but the book is much more than a spy novel.  Set amid the hostage crisis, and including a critique of the Oscar-winning film “Argo,” the book is a deeply personal account of the author’s coming of age as well as his parents’ lives. It is also a portrayal of an extraordinary woman whose passion, intelligence, and belief in the principles of the Quran allowed her to represent her husband in a revolutionary court, the first woman ever to do so.

In an author’s note, Mr. Copeland describes the research necessary to write what he calls an admittedly idiosyncratic book, and admits that he was reliant on his mother, an “exquisite storyteller.” He acknowledges that “dialogue and details have been reconstructed” to help create a strong narrative, and that “names and identifying details” were changed for protection.

“Off the Radar” is a powerful book because it also provides an intimate look at the minds and hearts of the Iranian people. What could be more timely? To the extent that a wide readership of it might help sway American opinion in favor of the accord with Iran — and damp down the prospect of military escalation — I would also allege that it is “good for the Jews.”

About year ago, I am still embarrassed to admit, I missed a letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The thing is, I am not all that great about dealing with personal mail. Bills needing to be paid go in one pile; everything else kind of gathers dust. It was only thanks to my wife, Lisa, that the unopened note from Mrs. Clinton did not end up in the recycling bin. In my defense, there was nothing to indicate from the outside that the nearly square envelope held anything noteworthy inside, so I put it aside with all the other mail, and forgot about it.

It was only after a couple of weeks had gone by and Lisa was tidying up the kitchen that she popped it open. Mrs. Clinton sent the note to comment on a column I had written in The Star about matters of local importance that, to me at least, had broader implications.

I read it quickly. At the bottom above her signature, Mrs. Clinton and her husband sent their best wishes. Lisa looked at me like I was an idiot.

In the year that has passed since, I have not miraculously gotten better about opening the mail. And the issues I listed at the time — economic hope for the America’s lower and middle classes, climate change, and educating our increasingly diverse K-through-12 student population — remain.

As it turns out, Bill and Hillary have again rented a place across the bay from our house, more or less in the direction of the sunset from our upper deck. It is interesting to think about these two leaders looking out onto the same waters, and I wonder what they think about as they take in the view.

I’ll wave when I go by in the boat this weekend. And then keep a better eye on the incoming mail.

On the eve of my father’s birthday my son arrived with two daughters exceedingly lively and between Pepperoni’s and Sam’s we sported free at the edge of the sea.

Their energy is gale-force a shock to the system and if your pulse tends to run slower you will be shaken up. No time for commas.

“That was ‘Ode to Joy’ you just played Zora . . . ? No? ‘Ode to a Rather Pleasant Feeling’ then?”

We sip tea as instructed from cups they’ve somehow brought down without incident from a dresser twice their height and Maya plays Etude in B minor — a major achievement I think. It’s great to know that the Lighthouse is to give her a grand piano.

Then hip-hop. Zora leading the way one hand shading her mouth the other flung out then elbows and legs alternately flying.

On to the General Store and Ping-Pong and then to the sea — Cebra Maya Zora and me.

Where I read that Maia was Atlas’s daughter and of Tithonus whose mother in asking for immortality from Zeus forgot to ask at the same time for perpetual youth as in Endymion’s case thus rendering him daily older grayer more shrunken and shrill till he became a cicada.

It would be fun to live long enough to see my granddaughters metamorphose.

Then they were gone — by way of a conga line that Zora led to the car from Sam’s — and then the commas, yes, the commas, began asking if they could not come back in.

I’ve heard it be said that the secret of life is the passage of time. What you do with that time is where the secrets are kept and it’s up to us to find them. For those of us who live here year round, our time will soon be ours again.

And what better time to celebrate that than autumn; the word alone fills me with joy. I don’t like to call it fall because fall or falling indicates something bad. Autumn is that sweet time of the year when our place of home becomes quieter, cooler, and cozier. “A good thing,” to quote Martha.

It’s time for us to regroup, clean up our own houses, our town, and start making plans for next year, which I think should include a big gate near Town Pond in East Hampton that will be staffed by us old fuddy-duds to keep the riffraff out. Oh my God, I don’t sound like my mother; I sound like my father!

It’s been a rough summer for those of us who live out here in Montauk. If the people who visited us this summer are anyindication of what our world is turning into, we’re in trouble — big trouble! Twenty-somethings acted like 4-year-old children on alcohol. Now picture that: drunken 4-year-olds. It might seem funny to some, but it’s not; it’s downright ugly.

Some, the younger people in our community, loved the action. You know, more hookups, easy access. “I don’t know why people are complaining so much. I love it,” said a 23-year-old I know, which is my point exactly. Consider the source.

They were running wild in the street, urinating on our lawns, pulling flowers from pots that had been carefully tended, and had no qualms about tossing garbage out their car windows, and peeing in our pond. The effects on the pond of diluted beer are not yet known, but we’ll soon know and that will help make the case for the gate.

When we open the gate in spring, we will have to be very careful whom we allow to enter our glass house. Those with no shirts and shoes will be kept out, as will those with coolers. Camping equipment should be suspect. I learned that several weeks ago when three young men parked on the grass near my driveway and exited their vehicle with backpacks, something that looked like a tent but could have been covering shotguns, and other bulky items.

They may have just been planning a night under the stars near the Montauk Lighthouse, which is a mile through the woods from our home, but strangers don’t and can’t park on my block. It’s too small with only three houses on each side and just enough open space for us and our neighbors to park our own vehicles. So when three guys have the audacity to park there and get out with equipment that is similar to what has been used by terrorists to house bombs, it raises a red flag.

It was a Sunday evening and my husband and I had just sat down in the living room after eating dinner. He saw them first and turned all vigilante on me. When he flung open our front door to chase them, I yelled for him to mind his business. He started spouting words about it being private property and all that, as if this was something I didn’t know already. But he did sit back down. I usually wear the pants in this family, and rightly so, as I’m more level-headed and not prone to a wine-soaked dinner.

But after he went to bed I started thinking: Maybe they were up to no good. My dilemma then became whether or not to call the authorities. After imagining my beloved Lighthouse blown to pieces, I made the necessary call. I had to. I saw something and if I hadn’t said something it would have haunted me for the rest of my life.

Nothing ever came of it, but it gave me one more reason to be glad summer’s over. The kids have returned to school and the Montauk Chamber is already planning a Tumbleweed Tuesday party, so we can dance in the streets. The time is now for us to share our secrets.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

September brings with it clear skies, open roads, a sense of calm, and peak hurricane season. This year’s official forecast is for a moderately active Atlantic during the period, but records going back to 1851 show that for Long Island, as well as the rest of the coastal United States, from Texas to Maine, now is the time to keep a weather eye out, so to speak.

All in all, history tells a mixed tale for Long Island. Of the 96 major hurricanes that struck during the 159 years between 1851 and 2010, which the National Hurricane Center studied, just 5 hit here directly. However, when adjusted for inflation and other factors, the hurricane center found that some of the costliest ones did pass over. These included the unnamed 1938 Hurricane, which ranked sixth on the most-expensive list, and Carol in 1954, at number 19.

Number one was a 1926 storm that struck South Florida and Alabama and did an estimated $164 billion in damage in 2010 dollars. Number two was Katrina in 2005, with an adjusted cost of $113 billion. Sandy, which brought Long Island to a standstill for at least a week in 2012 but was only a tropical storm with a whole lot of surge associated with it, ran up a relatively modest $65 billion tab.

One of the points the hurricane center made in its report (which a friend pointed out the other day) was that because of never-ending building and expansion of existing structures along the shore, even minor hurricanes will rack up huge bills. The authors pointed out that all three of the 2008 hurricanes that made landfall ended up on the top-30 list for cost despite none of them ranking as major events bymeteorological standards.

“Large property losses are inevitable in the absence of a significant change of attitude, policy, or laws governing building practices [codes and location] near the ocean,” the report says. And that’s setting aside the increased risk presented by sea level rise. The South Fork may get a pass this year, and maybe next year, but we can expect one one of these days. Don’t say the National Hurricane Center didn’t tell you so.

Whenever I call my mom at our home in Portland, Ore., she always gives me the latest news happening on our block, which for the last several years has included a controversy after a permanent unisex bathroom (the cleverly designed “Portland Loo”) was installed in the neighboring public square. The metal stall has drawn drug addicts and campers at night. The Loo advocates argued that the city needed to install a public restroom because so many visitors come to the park — which is really just a city block filled with a grassy patch and a chlorinated fountain that attracts a crowd of toddler-size bathers on hot summer days. To try and appease the anti-Loo residents, a lock system was put in place for after-dark hours. This didn’t stop the irate neighbors though from complaining and trying to get the bathroom dismantled. The Loo is still there.

Much of my love for Portland lies in these hyper-local gripes, issues that only people living in the surrounding area would even notice. I hardly think the parents and children who frequent the fountain realize a whole uproar has been caused by the bathroom they, probably thankfully, stand in line to use throughout the summer months.

Before coming to East Hampton as a seasonal reporter, I had not spent time on the East End other than a few weekends with my parents in Montauk, which included enjoying the beach, shopping, and eating in other hamlets. I picked up The Star before Memorial Day this year and read through the Letters to the Editor section. It is my favorite part of the newspaper because the letters often entail the kind of tales, objections, and applause that only come from attentive residents in a small town.

One I remember in particular rehashed a conversation the writer had with a woman standing in a designated nonsmoking area by the train station. She asked the woman why she was smoking, and she replied, “Because I want to.” The letter writer then wrote, “Sums up the summer attitude neatly, no?” I found it a precise illustration of the difference between locals and out-of-towners.

After only two months here, it is obvious how much the locals care about the East End. I’ve seen uproars around overwhelming partying in Montauk and the withdrawal of Uber, among other smaller, more personal issues that my sources have been just as passionate to expound upon. These are the types of stories that make news many places, including metropolises like New York City. But I feel there’s a greater sense of importance here somehow, a need to protect something precious that is in danger of destruction or change by outsiders, which is also a perceived threat in Portland as more people find out about its attractions and flock there.

One reason I became a journalist was to understand from the inside communities and the people who inhabit them. Each day, I see more through the eyes of locals than when I first arrived. I’ve started to understand problems, like share houses, that I probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. My time here has turned me into a local, however brief my stay, and whenever I return next I will see the East End for the people who live here and the place they’re constantly striving to make better.

Now when I call my mom, I’m the one telling her about the neighborhood gripes. I talk about the people who disagree with what I write, and how I’ve learned that they usually have a point. I talk about the people who stop by the office grumbling about or praising an article. And much of my love for the East End has blossomed from these experiences. Affection for a city or town, like Portland and the South Fork, is revealed through the people who persevere to put pressure on officials or show up at board meetings to voice their concerns.

Had I not called this place home for the past two months, I probably would have never realized the kind of pains and efforts locals go through to defend their home. I would have been like those people obliviously standing in line for the Loo in Portland, unaware that the luxury they enjoy is a result from many hard-fought compromises by the community.

Britta Lokting, a seasonal reporter at The Star, will be moving on to report on a different community after Labor Day.