My son said recently he thought I’d live to 100, submitting an article that found a link between longevity and vigorous exercise, though if there’s a danger point beyond which you shouldn’t go they haven’t ascertained it yet, nor have I.

I’ve always had 80, the age at which my father died, in mind, though his younger brother, who, as far as I know, was not particularly athletic — and who my mother said was the biggest hypochondriac she’d ever met — lived, with all his wits about him, until 103. He lived a quiet life, as I am, and as my father did finally; had he kept on the way he’d been going, he told me, everyone said he’d be dead by 40.

“Your father would go off and misbehave and then come back to Bennington and bury his head in a book,” an old friend of his told me once. Eventually he lit out for the territory — France in his case — and the company of a lively, lighthearted woman who took things as they came and who refused to admit any puritanical impediments.

“Don’t worry — I’ve got a pretty good thing going,” were his last words to me, as I lingered on the eve of our departure at his bedroom door.

Mere athleticism is not the panacea that my son may think it is; the recent suicides at relatively young ages of two outstanding athletes I’ve known come immediately to mind.

Lightheartedness seems to me more to the point. And that may be achieved less through moving (however purposefully) to and fro than by simply sitting, with awareness, which is what I think my uncle who lived to 103 did, certainly in his later years, most of the time.

I feel like I spent most of the month of April in Tom Field’s basement.

This may sound like an odd statement, I realize, but if you have any connection to the network of emergency medical providers on the South Fork, you get it.

Tom’s basement, for decades, has been the epicenter for those learning the lifesaving skill of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Believe it or not, it’s the home of the East Hampton Town police training center, complete with training equipment, multiple exits, and male and female bathrooms — all very professional. I’m told it ended up there when the police didn’t have room way back when. He’s not just some guy teaching CPR in a dungeon.

A longtime volunteer with the Amagansett Fire Department’s ambulance company, Tom has been teaching CPR for even longer. When prodded by a certain reporter who likes to collect such details, he fessed up that he’s taught over 1,000 courses in 35 years. He estimated that he’d taught the skill to 5,000 to 6,000 people. “I figured it out a few years ago. I forgot what I did with it,” he said.

Did I mention he doesn’t take a dime to teach the courses?

Several years back, at a luncheon honoring him and Al Phillips, another well-known South Fork E.M.T. instructor (that’s what Tom spends the rest of his time doing), the question was posed: “How many of you have been in Tom Field’s basement?” Practically every hand in the room went up.

Cops, firefighters, E.M.T.s, lifeguards, coaches, and those with no medical background at all have found themselves in Tom’s basement to learn CPR It may seem like an unlikely place to go to learn a lifesaving skill, but it’s the place to be to do it — if you’re going to do it right.

My fiancé and I, both emergency medical technicians, took Tom’s American Heart Association CPR instructor course so we could help our Fire Department out in getting all the volunteer firefighters recertified as needed. As with everything else in the volunteer emergency services system, there aren’t enough people to meet the demand.

What we got in Tom’s class was more than just instruction on how to lead a class and pop in an A.H.A. video. We got a crash course in public speaking and how to be a good teacher. I doubt there are many other CPR instructors who hand out Dr. Robert Ovryn’s “Principles of Learning.”

Then there was the critique of our CPR skills. It was part lecture, part hands-on. He never wanted us sitting for too long during the three-hour classes, so when it was time to get down on the floor with Anne, the mannequin, he’d yell out his signature “Chop, chop. Mushy, mushy.”

A friend of mine thought it was strange when I said I was taking the class partially because I wanted to make sure I was really good at CPR. It’s not exactly something people aspire to be good at, but it’s one of those skills that, as an E.M.T., I’m constantly seeking to improve. Even when done perfectly, with all the stars aligning, it may not bring a patient back to life, sadly. But it’s a comforting feeling to know you did all you could.

We still have our internship — we have to teach a class in front of him — to complete before he’ll turn us lose with students of our very own. He wants to make sure his students’ CPR is perfection so they can teach their students to do it right and with confidence.

When we reached the final night, though, I was most struck when he thanked us for taking the class. “The biggest honor for me is watching you train people.”

His is going to be a tough act to follow.

Taylor K. Vecsey is The Star’s digital media editor.

It was difficult last week for me not to go down into a historical rat hole while working on a story about how the East Hampton Library had recently completed the digitization and cataloging of a long-sought collection of papers from Montauk’s early days.

I encourage anyone interested in such things to take a look at the library’s website, under the Long Island History-Digital Long Island tab. From there, one can find a link to the Proprietors of Montauk Collection (Arthur W. Benson Papers) and on to thumbnail images of the remarkable holdings.

In an account that appeared on The Star’s front page last week, I outlined some of the papers’ history: how Arthur Benson spirited them away in about 1885 and how his granddaughters eventually deposited them with what would become the Brooklyn Historical Society. Then, how East Hampton Town officials and, later, representatives of the library, had for decades sought their return.

This is a provocative tale in which one can find plenty of similarities among Benson and any number of today’s urban sophisticates who are bent on bending the locals to their will. Just consider the seemingly unending string of out-of-town investors and developers whose designs on Montauk and desire to influence the outcome of regulatory decisions by whatever means possible have continued to the present day.

Contemporary speculators have nothing on those who came before them, whose record of deliberate dispossession of the native Montaukett people is deeply unsettling. The oldest item among the papers now on view via the library is a 1702 agreement in which Ungomont put his mark on a document relinquishing any claim to his ancestral land, saving for himself the right to continue planting crops. Almost 200 years later, promises that the Montauketts could continue to grow food and pasture livestock there were among assurances that Benson and his subordinates aggressively sought to eliminate.

While working on the story last week, I took down a copy of my grandmother’s “East Hampton History and Genealogies” on the chance that there might be something in it about George Fowler, a Montaukett whose story figures prominently in the Benson papers. To my chagrin, though I was not surprised, there was no lineage provided for the Fowlers, nor for the Pharaohs, another Montaukett family. This seems an oversight clearly in need of correction.   

In the predawn hours before the boys basketball state final last week, I began thinking of possible headlines, assuming, of course, that the eight-time-champion Killer Bees would win a ninth title. Which they did, in fine fashion.

“Bees on Cloud Nine”

“Bees Swarm to the Task”

“Beeline Made to Title”

“Bees Awake and Sting”

“How the Once Mighty Are Pollen”

“Apidi, Apidae . . . How the Rout Goes On”

“Fab Hive Comes Alive”

“Bee-fense! Bee-fense!”

“Back in the Honey”

“Fans Go Apian”

“Mills Shut Down”

“Uticans Can’t”

“Bees Alight, Put Mills to Flight”

“Bridgies Take Care of Beesness”

“Bees Knees as Usual”

“Hymenopterrific!”

“Bees on Warp Path, Mills Beweft”

Well, you get the idea. I’m not exaggerating all that much. I’m told I have terminal alliteration, though I don’t worry — it’s a dilatory disease.

Last weekend was the eighth time I’ve seen a Bridgehampton High School boys basketball team play in a state Final Four — the first time, in 1980, was in Rochester, and the rest have been in Glens Falls — and, though I do, it never gets old.

Glens Falls is a rather depressing place, though the Killer Bees always light it up, which reminds me, I hope the sign at the entrance to Bridgehampton, the handsome one saying “Home of the Killer Bees” and listing all the years in which they’ve won state titles, will be put back up. Or if it cannot be found, that a new one will be made and installed with proper pomp and ceremony.

Since my children are grown and moved out of the house, the Easter Bunny will not be visiting this year. But that’s okay because my dog, Brodie, is as soft and cuddly as any bunny rabbit. When he stands on his hind legs, as he tends to do when he’s feeling nosey, and looks out our front window to see what’s going on in the neighborhood, he’s as tall as the real Easter Bunny that visited the Montauk Firehouse on Sunday.

I’ve had many dogs and have loved them all dearly. But Brodie is an outstanding dog, as close to being human as any animal I’ve come across. Sometimes when he looks at me it appears as if he has something to say. I tell him, don’t you dare start talking to me because I’d have a heart attack, and there would be one less person for him to love, and he needs love, constantly, every day, all day long. It’s exhausting sometimes. If he were to talk, he would probably ask if we could go outside and play ball, his favorite pastime.

After my other dog, Jack the Whack, died I was offered a free puppy from a large litter of puppies that were being sold for over $1,000 each. I didn’t plan to get a dog so soon after Jack died because he was such a handful, hence the name Jack the Whack, which a neighbor came up with. I thought, stupidly in hindsight, that I’d just take a look.

When I entered the room the puppies were in, this little guy pushed past the others and ran to me with a smile on his face. When I picked him up he immediately snuggled into my neck, making him irresistible. Of course I chose him and haven’t for one minute regretted my decision.

Brodie is a goldendoodle, more golden than doodle. He’s got big, expressive brown eyes and long blond hair that falls off in clumps all over my house — his only fault. People often mistake him for a girl and say, “She’s so pretty.” He doesn’t care; as long as he’s the center of attention you can call him anything you want.

He was 12 weeks old when we brought him home. His brilliance amazed us. He immediately knew his place in the pecking order and that I was the queen of the castle, really a small ranch-style home. But my husband became his best buddy. He knows when it’s Peter’s day off from work and stays by his side all day, giving me a break from the constant need for attention, like a toddler.

And when Peter has to go somewhere on a day off and cannot take Brodie, pretty boy sits with his nose to the door waiting for his return. I can tell when my husband’s almost home from work because Brodie picks up the sound of his van well before it turns onto our block, and he gets all excited.

Whenever he can, he takes Brodie with him in the van. Brodie and I are both blond so people often think it’s me sitting in the passenger seat. Until, that is, they realize that my nose couldn’t have grown that much since the last time they saw me.

His understanding of the human vocabulary is impressive. After a long day of writing and cleaning up the house, I try to take an hour’s break and ice my bad knee before the dinner routine begins. I tell Brodie it’s quiet time and he goes right to his bed. When I say it’s dinnertime, he goes to the kitchen. “No bed,” he gets off my bed.

A few weeks ago I was sick with a respiratory infection and had a reaction to the cough syrup the doctor prescribed. It really scared me, but what scared me more was that Brodie knew something wasn’t right and sat close to me, all noble-like, looking straight ahead but giving me constant side-eye to make sure I was okay. He looked ready to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

He’s a gentle giant, my boy. Neighbors have a little pug and they’ve told us how gentle Brodie is when they meet outside and play. Since he’s a male and the pug’s a female, I think he’s just contemplating how he could play with her doggie-style, if you get my drift.

My husband thinks Brodie needs a playmate, and I mean that in every sense of the word. I always wanted to breed dogs, and if there’s ever been a dog whose genes should be shared it’s this guy. Please don’t write letters saying I’m irresponsible to breed a dog when there are so many shelter dogs available, and they are wonderful dogs, but some people, especially those with children, want a specific breed and golden retrievers often rank high on the lists of best family dogs.

So once I recover from knee surgery, scheduled in two weeks, Brodie might be getting a playmate bunny, and I might be getting a heavier workload. But if it takes some of his constant need for attention off me, it’ll be well worth it. He’ll make a wonderful, loving father and receive the undying love he requires from his offspring.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

It takes courage and tremendous power of persuasion to convince the electorate, and the powers-that-be, that the general consensus on a matter of public policy is wrong. Kevin McAllister and Mike Bottini showed that courage when they filed a lawsuit last week to try to stop the construction by the Army Corps of Engineers of a 3,100-foot-long and 50-foot-wide revetment along the ocean beach at Montauk. I’m not so sure about their powers of persuasion.

Defend H20, which Mr. McAllister founded not long ago, and Mr. Bottini, who happens to be chairman of the Eastern Long Island chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, brought suit against every entity involved — the Army Corps, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, East Hampton Town, and Suffolk County.

Shoreline experts say the structure will inevitably devour what beach is left in Montauk’s downtown area. The evidence also is clear that without massive erosion-control measures, and ongoing maintenance, some of Montauk’s prime resorts will eventually be destroyed in storms. It’s an inherent conflict, and except for the plaintiffs in the suit, local officials and other environmental organizations have opted to take the side of the private property owners. It seems as simple as that.

East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the members of the town board allowed nominally higher government agencies to take over. They may have thought the right of property owners to protect their considerable investments was more compelling than protecting the public beach, or they may have feared, given Montauk opinion, that opposing the Army Corps plan would tear the town apart.

But well-meaning local environmental organizations also stood down. They are, of course, run by boards of directors who, regardless of acumen or dedication to the natural world, tend to be people of certain wealth who value property rights highly; the more valuable properties are, such as Montauk’s oceanfront motels, the more powerful their influence.

The Group for the East End and the Peconic Baykeeper, which might have been expected to warn that the project would have a negative effect on the beach, have not been heard from, while Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which raised pertinent questions about metho­dology, apparently is ready to accept its construction. Nor have the town trus­tees said anything, although it is unlikely their opinion would matter.

Tremendous power of persuasion would have been needed to convince the town and its taxpayers that the current Army Corps project and the long-term costs of maintaining or rebuilding the structure would be more costly than finding a way to do the right thing, by which I mean saving the beach. Proactively moving some of the endangered motels away from the oceanfront and arranging for others to be reconstructed elsewhere after heavy damage in the future would have been required.

What is about to happen may do no more than delay the inevitable, and with money to be made until then, it is no surprise.   

I visited the Wainscott School last Monday, and just like its 19 students do there every day, I learned something new.

The concept of a modern one or two-room schoolhouse was completely foreign to me. To be frank, I simply didn’t know they existed on Long Island anymore, let alone in two neighboring communities on the South Fork. But now I am aware, and as I stood in Wainscott’s tightly arranged, cheerfully decorated classroom, I watched as the teachers, Kelleann Yusko and Dorry Silvey, handled two blended grades each: kindergarten and first grade in Ms. Yusko’s half of the room, and second and third grades in Ms. Silvey’s half.

Because I am so new to this particular community — I’ve been a Wainscott resident all of three weeks so far — the school’s superintendent, Stuart Rachlin, graciously invited me for a tour and one-on-one conversation about the unique character and challenges of the school district.

“I think that because New York State law allows towns to provide for their own education, as opposed to having regional or county schools as occurs elsewhere, those schools have become a focal point and a source of pride for the community,” Mr. Rachlin said a few days after my visit. Wainscott “absolutely is a treasure,” he said. “For all of the years that Wainscott has been in existence, the school has been a constant.”

I’d never seen anything like it, and I’ve been to a lot of public schools.

I’ll look back on my first visit to Wainscott School as a pivotal moment in my own education about the diverse climate of education on Long Island. My first learning experience along these lines came during my senior year at Island Trees High School in the fall of 1998.

I’d signed up for a class in public policy, and our teacher had planned an exchange program of sorts. About four years prior to New York State’s takeover of the then-troubled Roosevelt School District in 2002, my classmates and I headed to Roosevelt High School to shadow students in a similar class there. Those students also visited our school, where the extreme differences — the textbooks and computers, the physical facilities, even the students’ and teachers’ attitudes — were so disparate they brought tears to some students’ eyes. I’ll never forget it.

Some years later, I got a job as a reporter covering high school sports for a New York City daily newspaper. Sports programs ranged from ragged to robust — kids with uniforms that were faded and outdated played against kids with much cooler ones, with equipment that varied along those same lines, in gymnasiums that reflected the same divide. All funded with public dollars.

Working for Three Village Patch a few years ago, I got to cover a system considered one of the Island’s best for regularly producing Intel Science Competition semifinalists as well as regionally or nationally ranked athletic teams. Working for Hauppauge Patch, I attended a school board meeting during which exasperated school officials tried for four hours to ease parents’ concerns about the placement of children from a new homeless shelter into classrooms already considered overcrowded.

Wainscott itself may very well be on the verge of its own metamorphosis, as an affordable rental housing project is currently being explored in the community.

My visit to Wainscott School, and my subsequent recollections of experiences in school districts across the region, led me to the conclusion that every school system here has its own challenges. But in my opinion, whether children are learning in a single classroom, an enormous school, or even in a home school setting, districts have one mission in common: to prepare their children for success in life.

Christine Sampson, who is covering education for The Star, is a Long Island native who was most recently living and reporting in Virginia.

Although we all know that language is constantly changing, that the English we use today is quite different from what it was in Shakespeare’s time, I can’t help wondering where certain words and phrases come from and how they become ubiquitous. Like others who write or edit, I keep my eyes and ears open, and I am not always happy about what I read or hear.

I blamed President Bill Clinton for starting a stampede in the use of the word “grow” in connection with the economy. Metaphors can be swell, even enlightening, but where I came from you could only grow a living thing. Grow soon became common with regard to inanimate objects or processes; the English-speaking world at large didn’t mind, even if I did.  

More recently I have to admit to being bothered by the thousands of times I hear that something is “gaining traction” or has “transparency.” Traditionally, both words refer to things that are physical, even scientific. “The car’s tires failed to gain traction,” for example. The first people to use that phrase in connection with an idea or activity were imaginative, using language well, but  “traction” has become repetitive and thoughtless, almost a verbal tic.    

As for “transparency,” the word has moved decisively into the metaphorical sphere. Defined as the transmission of light through physical matter, the word now is used all the time in referring to whether information or policies, particularly those of government agencies, are available to the public and to what degree. 

I am not an expert, but I pay attention. I have come across what seems to be an increasingly topsy-turvy use of the words “a” and “the.” As far as I know, referring to something that is not known to the listener or reader it is correct to use the word “a.” When the audience has prior knowledge of what is being referred to, the word “the” is in order. Simple enough, one would think.

But whether something is known and familiar is often a matter of judgment. If you believe the readers of The Star, for example, are aware of the plan to build a seawall in Montauk, you might write or say, “The Army Corps of Engineers plan to build a seawall was challenged in court.” If, however, you do not think our readers can be counted upon to know about the plan, the sentence would be, “An Army Corps of Engineers plan to build . . .

That decisions about grammar and punctuation are often subjective was explored in an article in the Feb. 23 and March 2 edition of The New Yorker by Mary Norris, a copy editor there. She takes on the correct use of “that” and “which” and stands up for The New Yorker’s using the serial comma. (The Star uses the serial comma, too, veering away from New York Times style, which we otherwise follow.) The serial comma is the one before the word “and” unless the last items in the series go together, like bread and butter.

Falling into a trap I have set for myself, I have to say Ms. Norris is “spot on” (cliché alert!) as well as funny. The heart of the piece is an explication of The New Yorker’s use of commas. If you can’t imagine how discussing the use of commas can be funny, you won’t want to bother with what she has to say. If you can, however, I recommend the article and hope Ms. Norris offers an encore soon. I want to know what she thinks about “a” and “the.”

Yes, to school. Our son, Ellis, and his prekindergarten classmates have been studying animals, with the usual parade of bunnies, a service dog, a lizard, and a small fuzzy creature of a sort Ellis could not quite identify. Leo would fit right in, his teachers said, and I could not refuse.

Getting Leo ready for his big outing was no small task. First there was the matter of finding a harness that would fit his un-canine-like proportions. Then there was the issue of making him presentable.

As I found out, regular dog harnesses don’t really work for pigs. Though only about 75 pounds — small as far as adult porkers go — Leo’s neck measured in at 31 inches around, and his girth at 33. The three pet shops I managed to drive to did not have anything that large, so, regrettably for local commerce perhaps, I turned to the Internet. Amazon had something that looked right and for a fee would have it to me the following afternoon.

Once the harness was in hand, I modified it by cutting out a strap that hung between Leo’s front legs, tripping him up, and tried to get him used to the feeling of being constrained. My initial attempts took place while he was eating, and they went more or less without incident.

Washing his face proved another thing altogether. A warm towel sent him into a howling fit, as he backed away on his pointy trotters. If you thought that pigs only oink, let me tell you, when they are vexed, they let off a whole symphony of imprecations. Eventually, he and I settled on a hand-wash of sorts, in which I could rub his dusty, crusty nose with my damp fingers, then wipe them on a towel and continue.

When Leo was a piglet, his feet barely touched the ground. My wife, Lisa, and eldest daughter, Adelia, would carry him around as if he were a tiny, bizarre-looking human baby. Not anymore. Bundling him into the minivan was a feat. Then once he was inside, he hid between the seats and was almost impossible to get out.

By comparison, his classroom visit was uneventful. Leo wandered around munching contentedly on offered carrots. The children asked lots of good questions, then they spontaneously began making crayon portraits of him, and gave them to me to take home.

Leo was happy enough to be done with all the attention, however, and interested more, it seemed, in grazing on the school lawn. I managed to get him back into the car without trouble, although I somehow pulled a muscle in my right arm. Once back home, Leo slept the rest of the day.

“You’re quite the tennis player,” my younger opponent said the other night.

Well, I would like to think so, but there’s much to do. Several times recently I’ve felt I was on the brink of mastering my serve, only to be disabused. Tim Ross says he has that got-it-nailed feeling with his golf swing at times only to have it vanish the next time out.

“I think I’m just about there,” I said to him the other night after the younger player and I had finished a good match. “I’ve just got to remember to crook my elbow and wait a bit before letting it reach up for the ball.”

Lisa Jones, my teacher, says she has a book in mind about tennis that she would like to call “The Gathering.” I gather it has to do with properly preparing to stroke the ball that’s headed your way. Sadaharu Oh, the great Japanese home run hitter, said something to that effect in his autobiography, I believe, to wit, that the pitcher and batter were, while in opposition, also in unison, when the pitcher, who has gathered himself, delivers the ball to the plate while the batter — cranelike, on one foot, in Oh’s case — gathers himself to hit it.

And that’s something I could work on, having mistakenly characterized my opponents, when I began to play singles again last fall, as the enemy, rather than view them as potential partners in the creation of a good match, which is to say a balanced one.

Fueled by an obsessive pursuit of winning in the fall, I won a lot. I win some and lose some now, and am having more fun, which, as Abby Okin reminded me not long ago, is what playing tennis ought to be about.

In having more fun though, I’m no less intent on improving — is that a disease? — and have thus asked Rob Balnis, who’s strengthened my shoulders and core greatly in the course of the past year, to help me become increasingly nimble afoot, and to help give me “wrists of steel — like Lisa’s.”

“Wait . . . wait . . . reach up!”