“May you live in interesting times,” a familiar and ironic way of wishing bad news to descend on others, is not the ancient Chinese curse it has been purported to be, but more likely a 20th-century construction, whose popularity has sometimes been attributed to Robert Kennedy.

 Well, the 21st century is standing the curse on its head. We do live in interesting times and instead of disaster they are bringing positive change, at least to Americans. Our culture is spinning, and we’ve not even reached the first quarter of the century.

The slogans of our time are indications of profound recalculation of our collective mores. Black lives matter. Gay marriage. Gender identity. The 1 percent. Income inequality.

A group of friends at an annual barbecue last weekend, some two dozen of us, were all beginning to show our age. There may have been only one honestly brown, rather than gray, head among us. “Who’d have thought . . .” was the topic of the afternoon.

Between the ribs and the watermelon, we agreed that none of us expected majority opinion on the social issues we cared about to change as quickly as it has — if we had thought there was a chance of its changing at all. None of us imagined the Supreme Court would find unconstitutional the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman and was adopted by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. That EdithWindsor, the octogenarian widow who won the case against DOMA, lived in Southampton brought the decision close to home. And who expected the court to find marriage between persons of the same sex constitutional two years later even if Ireland had already done so by popular vote?

Conversations at the barbecue, at least those I heard, did not dwell on negatives. The national controversy about the Confederate flag, for example, was not on the table. Nor was there much lamenting about political polarization. No one mentioned the Iran nuclear agreement, although had it been broached; my guess is that the tone would have become tense, with some hailing the agreement as an extraordinary achievement toward Middle East peace and others avidly supporting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position that the agreement is a “historic mistake.”

On another occasion, after dark perhaps or if Congress proved irrevocably divided on this issue, the discussion may have veered into difficult territory. But because the food was delicious and the weather beautiful, no debate became heated. Actually, though, I think it’s more likely that the party remained upbeat because we really were friends, and friends of friends, who respected and admired each other — and we were ready to bask in the good news of the interesting times in which we live.

“The fields are alive with the sound of athletes,” I sang, in my best Julie Andrews imitation, to Mary, who was happy the other day to hear it.

Girls and boys were playing soccer, and the football team was doing agility drills on the turf, and on the varsity baseball diamond it was East Hampton versus East Hampton — Vinnie Alversa’s gray team against Brian Turza and Mike Rodriguez’s maroons.

Alversa said that perhaps it’s been a dozen years since East Hampton had Senior (13-to-15-year-old) League teams. I don’t think I recall East Hampton High’s fields being so intensely used in the summertime. And that’s not to mention that three softball teams of seventh-through-12th graders, got together by Jason Biondo and Rich Swanson, are playing each other at East Hampton’s Herrick Park Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Or that cross-country runners meet at the track every Tuesday evening with John Conner, a former age-group recordholder in the mile.

When at a recent school board meeting Jim Nicoletti said he feared that the Bonac athletic program was, for various reasons, in a bad way, I worried that I might not have much to attract my attention hereafter. Nicoletti, to underline his case, had pointed out, for one, that three varsity coaches had been ousted as the result of parent-spearheaded drives that had outflanked the athletic director in the past 18 months, and that, consequently, at least some young teachers were reluctant to give coaching a try until tenure were accorded them.

He added, moreover, that the administration had in some cases he knew of passed over Bonac-born-and-bred applicants who had returned here to teach, and that given the fact most teachers now live up the Island, it stood to reason they would want to leave at 3 p.m. rather than coach a team.

And yet there is this seeming renaissance of sorts that greeted my eyes the other day. . . .

Obviously, inasmuch as it constitutes a great part of my life, I hope the ship of sport here will be righted. I’ve not had much of a spring in my step the past three springs. It hasn’t just been softball, but baseball and lacrosse as well.

It’s not so much the winning (though that is nice) I yearn for — it’s a competitive spirit. The Pierson girls basketball players had it, though they weren’t world-beaters. They — at least in the game I saw in Bridgehampton’s gym — were fiery and scrappy. What most spectators want to see is a good game. What most players want is a good game.

May we field teams again who, win or lose, give their opponents good games.

I like Jay Schneiderman. We go way back. I first met him when he was chairman of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals and I was assigned to the beat. We have kids roughly the same age. I figure his heart is in the right place. But if there is any other local politician now who slings as much jive, I don’t know who that is.

Case in point: About three weeks ago, I was asked to do a cameo appearance at a forum at the Parrish Art Museum called “Can This Town Be Saved?” At the outset, the moderator, Maziar Behrooz, warned that it wasn’t going to be saved that night. The audience, about 80 people, laughed. Jay, a Suffolk legislator now, was one of the panelists, with Filipe Correa, who is an accomplished urban planner, architect, and Harvard assistant professor. I was brought in to provide some population numbers, which led to a bunch of work that will eventually become a story for The Star.

During a question-and-answer period, a member of the audience asked about climate change and sea level rise and if East End governments were paying attention. Jay, a former Montauker who is running somewhat implausibly for Southampton Town supervisor, leaned in toward the microphone. Then he said something to the effect that the County Legislature was talking about it every day. He went on in this vein for a while.

Standing off to the side at a lectern, I resisted the urge to laugh and searched my recollection. Could there have been some initiative I missed? Jay mentioned having a hand in the money to elevate Dune Road in Southampton; I think that was about it.

Fact is, no one is doing much of anything, from East Hampton to New York City Hall. Albany wonks have produced a couple of highly detailed studies filled with recommendations, but they have not been taken up by any of the communities The Star covers. There is a whole lot of talk, but next to no action. Building goes on in danger zones near the bays and oceans. Questionable infrastructure investments continue to be made despite clear indications that the water is coming. And East Hampton’s supposedly binding waterfront plan designed almost 20 years ago to control coastal development is largely ignored.

In East Hampton, Mr. Schneiderman had his chance as a two-term supervisor to get something meaningful going. He did not. In fact, the only town official of our memory to even suggest that major shifts had to come soon was Bill McGintee, and you know what happened to him.

The other day, Hillary Clinton released a climate change plan calling for substantial increases in renewable energy with the goal of reducing global warming, and by extension, sea level rise. It’s a starting point, but local governments shouldn’t just wait around for help from Washington. And officials, even those running for office, shouldn’t be tolerated when they paper over the fact that so far, nothing has really been done.

Richard Barons was leading a historical tour group late in the afternoon on a recent day. I was inside The Star reading in The New Yorker about Joe Gould, whose oral history really did exist, waiting for some interviewees who were not to show, and invited them in, unlocking and drawing back the weighty door.

“The paper’s been here — well not exactly here where we’re standing — but it’s been in existence since 1885,” I said. And, after waiting a beat: “And so have I.”

“The funny thing,” I said to Mary afterward, “is that nobody laughed.”

They’ve been talking about us getting Twitter accounts here lately — Titter would be a better word — and I confess I’m resistant. I just want to know enough technologically to get by.

“Nobody takes notes anymore,” our daughter who’s in the newspaper business said the other evening as I handed her a margarita.

“Well, I do,” I said. “Not that I can read them.”

I still remember fondly the time a Newsday reporter, who later took offense that I’d described him as “tweedy,” got into it with an East Hampton Town Board member who said the reporter had misquoted him when it came to his views on the (late lamented) Bypass.

I looked on, fascinated, as the reporter, his notebook having been flourished, said he happened to have the notes of that conversation at hand, and proceeded to thumb through the pages until he found what he was looking for. . . . “Ah! Here it is. . . . ‘When asked for his opinion on the Bypass, Councilman White . . . umm, uhh. . . . Councilman White said . . .’ ”

I resolved to throw away all mynotes after that, mindful of what an editor once told an interviewee who complained, to wit, “It may not have been what you said, but you should have.”

Equally delightful is the speaker at a public hearing who later says (and I’ve actually heard this) “that may have been what I said, but it wasn’t what I meant.”

One strives to be creative within journalism’s four-W-one-H straitjacket, and so it is that I find myself at 4 a.m. thinking of new voice messages. Then I try them out on Mary, who insists that they not only be witty but brief, knowing my tendency to go on.

The latest is this: “This is Jack Graves, the sports editor. I’m either stepping up to the plate, looking for a sign, or catching in the rye. Please leave a message.”

As Oscar Wilde said, “Life’s too serious to be taken seriously.”

At least I think he did.

Seriously.

A treasure as July slips into August is that the shorebirds arrive as suddenly as the calendar’s turn. Shorebirds, for those unfamiliar with the term, are the thin-legged birds that make their living along the water’s edge or on flats at low tide, at least around here. There are inland species as well, those that favor farm fields and grasslands, but we know those that find their feast by the sea.

The late Peter Matthiessen called them collectively wind birds, whose wistful calls, he thought, made them the most affecting of wild creatures. I recommend the beautifully illustrated “The Shorebirds of North America,” for which he wrote the text, to anyone interested in diving deep into their world.

On a weekday evening this week, I took a more portable bird guide and my father’s old but still clear Navy binoculars down to the Gardiner’s Bay beach. Setting up a beach chair, I put the book in my lap and scanned the low-tide edge. For about an hour, I sat there and looked. There were some birds whose names I knew; others were unfamiliar. And in that, at least for me, lies the charm of watching birds, not knowing and slowing down the day long enough to look for the tiniest clues.

It is still early in terms of the massive shorebird migrations to come, and the vanguard I saw seemed to go about their work on the sand without urgency. A whimbrel, buff-colored with slight mottling and a moderately long downturned beak, was picking at sand crabs in the company of a lesser yellowlegs. A ruddy turnstone, stouter than the other two, and with its characteristicpatches of bronze and black, wandered among the exposed rockweed as black-backed gulls tore into spider crabs they had just caught. Farther off, several semipalmated plovers, smaller than the others, dashed back and forth.

There were other shorebirds in the distance, too far away to see. That I might be able on another day to figure out what they were is something to look forward to.

Sky watchers say this week’s Perseid meteor shower will be a good one. This is the annual show of sparkling streaks that last year was obscured by the light of a full moon.

Looking at the forecast for tonight and tomorrow, it appears that local conditions are going to be ideal, with clear skies and light to calm wind after dark. Early in the night, the meteors will be lower on the horizon, gradually appearing higher in the sky and increasing after midnight.

In our part of the world, the trails of flaming comet debris will be most frequent to the northeast, so open spaces with little light pollution and a view to the north will be ideal for watching. We are lucky that the South Fork has a lot of options that meet that description. I think of the bayfront, such as Long Beach in Noyac, Maidstone Park in East Hampton, the Alberts in Amagansett, and Navy Beach in Montauk as among the better choices.

For those eager for a little education with their sky show a free program will be offered by the Montauk Observatory at the Ross School Tennis Center on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton this evening at 8. Following a talk about what is known by science about the Perseids, everyone will be invited outside to sit back and watch or take a tour of celestial bodies using telescopes the organizers will supply.

One of the repeated points on a number of websites advising how to see the Perseids is that you should get out of town, away from artificial light. It is sad that even here, where we still like to think we live in the country, this is true. Residential, municipal, and to the greatest degree, exterior commercial illumination has cast an unwelcome amber glow over many parts of the East End. Even where I live, down near Promised Land in Amagansett, we can see an orange haze from Connecticut.

For me, the Perseids are a reminder that a dark night sky matters, that creeping urbanization comes at the cost of getting in the way of our even contemplating space, our modest place in the universe, and the infinite sublime. That, and just enjoying a really, really good show.

My parents met in New York City while working for the same accounting firm. I always thought theirs was a boring story: meeting at one of the most notoriously dull jobs, getting married six years later, having three kids, and living happily ever after.

All of the fairy tales and rom-coms told a different story: Boy sees girl from afar, falls in love instantly, overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles (usually in adverse weather conditions), and rides off into the sunset with his true love.

Where was the excitement in real life? Where were the passion-filled, standing-in-the-pouring-rain, tear-jerking moments?

Well, I thought I got my answer when I was 17. Boy saw me from afar, claimed to fall in love instantly, valiantly faced my disapproving family and friends, and promised happily ever after.

To make a long story short, let’s just say this one wasn’t Prince Charming after all, or even a toad.

Numerous blocked numbers, a few changed passwords, a couple of about-to-call-the-cops moments, and three years later, I actually got my answer. That excitement and those dramatic moments are exactly where they belong, in the movies. Maybe that was obvious to everyone else, but it certainly took a lot for me to realize.

So I reconsidered my parents’ story.

They’ve been together for 29 years, “Twenty-nine long, hard years,” as they always joke. Together, they went from two broke kids just out of college to homeowners, parents, and life partners. They did what they had to do, which included taking those accounting jobs, to pay off their student loans and pursue the things they wanted. They’ve had their share of obstacles to overcome — watching me quite literally waste away when I was 17, for one.

Clearly, things weren’t always perfect; to be honest, I don’t know if things are ever perfect for anyone. But neither of them expected perfection, or even asked for it.

I don’t pretend to know if two people are “meant to be together” or if “true love” exists, and frankly, I’m not interested. All I know is that every day that they’re not together, even days filled with anger, disappointment, or heartache, Dad always calls Mom, and she always picks up.

If I had understood their story when I was 17, maybe I could have avoided some things. The excitement might not have been there, but if I looked closely, I might have seen that something else was.

Kelly M. Stefanick is a summer intern at The Star.

It was with utter dismay that I was again made aware this week that the country to which I have pledged allegiance since childhood continues to engage in force-feeding, which is — quite rightly — considered torture by many in the medical profession. Some of us expected the election of Barack Obama to put a stop to this sort of thing, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

 To be sure, the Obama administration ended the practice of waterboarding, and it was recently reported that the American Psychological Association had faulted those members who, after Sept. 11, helped the Pentagon justify such extreme interrogation techniques. But force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay continues.

A story about it appeared on page three of Saturday’s New York Times. The headline read: “Guantanamo Hunger Striker’s Petition Divides Officials.” My first thought was that it would be a ho-hum story: Disagreement among officials of any sort is par for the course. But then I read it.

A prisoner (or a detainee, which is more politically correct) named Tariq Ba Odah “has been on a hunger strike since February 2007 and now weighs less than 75 pounds,” the story read. It reported that a lawyer had asked a judge for Mr. Ba Odah’s release because of his “severe physical and psychological deterioration,” and because he seemed “to have developed an underlying medical problem that is preventing his body from properly absorbing nutrition no matter how much he is force-fed.”

According to The Times, the detainee is “about 37 and has been held for more than 13 years.” He was arrested in Pakistan and accused of being at its Afghanistan border seeking to join the Taliban and of having “received some weapons training.” As is common at Guantanamo, there has been no trial.

In 2009, The Times said, a “six agency task force recommended” that he be transferred out of custody, but that did not occur because his country of origin was Yemen, which was in chaos then as it is now.

There was national focus on force-feeding about three years ago when more than 100 men went on hunger strikes at Guantanamo. The military argued then, as it apparently still does, that force-feeding is necessary in order to maintain the health and safety of those who undertake hunger strikes. Who is kidding whom? 

The international community, including the Red Cross and the United Nations, have recognized the right of prisoners of sound mind to go on hunger strikes, making force-feeding a violation of international law for that reason as well as because it is widely thought to be cruel, inhumane, and degrading.

Descriptions of the pain that accompanies force-feeding, of the medical complications that can arise, and of the possible dreadful effects of an anti-nausea drug sometimes administered are easily found on Internet search engines. They are horror stories.

It is intolerable that under such circumstances the force-feeding of Mr. Ba Odah continues and that Justice Department and State and Defense Department officials allow themselves the privilege of debating what the government should do about him.

In whose name? In yours?

It’s different now. Everybody says so. High season in East Hampton is nothing like it was even five years ago. There are too many people, too many cars on the roads, too few places to park, too many lines, and not enough peace and quiet.

I blame Airbnb.

Time was that the barrier was relatively high to spending any part of the summer in the Hamptons: You had to own property, be related to someone who did, or at least be able to afford a monthly rental, which came at a considerable price.

Now anyone who can scrape together $500 can enjoy a piece of this place for a weekend, and all those extra people add up.

Others have said that even if there are not all that many extra visitors around, the short-visit folks have to pack more into each day to get their money’s worth. This means they drive around more, eat out every meal, and just do more. It’s great if your restaurant or whatever caters to the tourist trade, but it’s not so hot if all you want to do is live here in peace.

If this sounds like an elitist view, so be it. This narrow end of an island can only support so many people, and the new online sharing economy is blowing it up, skewing the math, as it were, and elected officials, emergency services, and our limited infrastructure can’t cope.

“It’s only June,” you hear people say. “What are July and August going to be like?”

Meanwhile, a modest attempt to bring a measure of control in the form of a rental-property registry was answered by mewling protests. People either were not eager to see the party end or feared that they might have to start reporting their earnings on their tax returns.

Airbnb, Homeaway, and Vacation Rental by Owner are extraordinary new-economy powerhouses. Airbnb alone is valued at about $20 billion. Its business model is connecting the owners of houses and apartments around the world with customers looking for short-term stays, but it is also selling little pieces of you and me and the place so many of us love and have worked so hard to protect.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a young trio on bikes who stopped to pick a spray of protected lady slipper flowers from the roadside. Thinking about their dismissive response when we confronted them, I have to think, more than merely clueless, they were short-timers who gave less than a hoot about this wonderful place and were never coming back again anyway.

Disruptive is a word generally tossed about to describe the effect of the new online juggernauts. For sure, they are disruptive, but they also have real and already obvious consequences. Yeah, I blame Airbnb and its $20 billion, but I also blame us for putting up with it.

A husband and wife were run down on Sag Harbor’s Division Street at about 7 p.m. on Saturday, June 20.

I saw it happen, though it may have gone unmentioned on the police log inasmuch as they were only ducks.

Returning from the Shelter Island 10K, which, despite the rain, was as pleasant as always, I had made a right turn onto Division near the village’s nexus, and saw the mallards sallying into the road in front of a small car that was up ahead. I thought of course that he would stop. He certainly had time to. It wasn’t as if a squirrel had had second thoughts and had reversed course, darting back the way he’d come.

But no, he ran them both over — killing the wife, spilling her guts on the pavement, and leaving the husband mangled, in agony.

And the driver drove on. I couldn’t believe it.

I pulled over — the traffic was fairly heavy, as always — and, putting the flashers on, walked up to where they were and picked them up and took them to the side of the road and put them down, and said, when a passer-by asked if animal rescue shouldn’t be called, that I’d go up to the police station, which was nearby, and tell them.

A young man who was behind me and had gotten out when I’d stopped, cried out when he saw. He couldn’t believe what had happened either.

It wasn’t the crime of the century — they were only ducks.

Actually it was a crime — one which, it’s safe to say, we all commit: the crime of heedlessness.

And heedlessness is never more evident here than in the summer, which if it teaches us nothing else reminds us — time and again, unfortunately — that howevermuch we are attracted by distractions we should pay heed. To others, to all others.