Nearing the end of a hard winter with little in the budget for luxuries, my husband and I decided to take the family on a day-and-a-half side trip to Disney World while visiting my grandmother in Florida.

I was leery of it and practically begged my husband to put it out of his mind until another time, and then I caved. Ever budget-conscious, I figured we’d just have to bite the bullet, get out the plastic, and nurse the spending hangover later.

Our 30-hour whirlwind tour was a splurge, to be sure. I hadn’t been to Disney since I was in my 20s, but I had read a lot in advance this time around to get the lay of the land and make the most of our brief time there. Swimming? Forget about it. We could swim another day. Sleep in? No way. We would do all the free things like ride the monorail and the boats shuttling visitors to and from the hotels in the Magic Kingdom on day one, then arrive at the gates of the Magic Kingdom by 9 a.m. sharp on day two so as not to waste a minute of our precious day in the park.

I expected everything to be expensive and for every ride to dump us straight into a gift shop, where we would watch the dollars fly from our wallets like Tinkerbell on a flight through Neverland. Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. An ice cream cone in New Fantasyland costs less than one on Newtown Lane. Same goes for a toy in Adventureland. In fact, two hours at the beloved Sag Harbor carnival cost me more per hour last summer than 30 at Disney World, not that I’m about to forgo that August ritual.

I guess when you already live in Fantasyland, it’s hard to be shocked by the price of cotton candy. It was an interesting reality check in a land of make-believe.

Disney World offers a glimpse of the future that is both very pleasant and a tad unsettling. A Magic Band lets you wear all your details on your wrist, kind of like microchipping, but less invasive. The pluses: no need to carry a wallet, a room key, a park pass; and if your kids get lost, I imagine a Disney “cast member” could just scan their Magic Bands to find Mom or Dad’s cellphone number and have you come and collect them by the entrance to the Country Bear Jamboree. I found myself wishing we had something similar when we were in Manhattan with the kids two weeks ago. Maybe we should just have them microchipped like a dog or cat. . . . Not.

The minuses: shades of Big Brother, but isn’t that the world we live in today anyway? Orwell might have been surprised to find that we have largely rushed willingly into the age of constant surveillance, happy for its conveniences and mostly uninterested in its repercussions. Or maybe he wouldn’t.

Sometimes you just want easy. Is that so wrong?

On that front, Disney’s FastPass+ is a stroke of genius, too. Instead of waiting on a line for like 280 minutes, it allows visitors to the park to reserve most rides and attractions, if available, in hourlong windows and avoid the worst of the lines. Everything should have a FastPass.

I’ve gotten softer as I’ve aged. Once upon a time, I would get on a plane with a vague itinerary, a ton of advance reading, and a reservation for only my first night of lodging. The rest would fall into place, or it wouldn’t, though it almost always did, even in the days before the Internet.

I was younger and more resilient. Nothing felt better than having nowhere to be and all day to get there, and I would explore from near sunup to sundown to the point of exhaustion and the consternation of my travel companions. I could recover from an eight-hour camel ride and cold night on the desert ground more quickly, if only because I liked the sound of it so much.

A walk through Cinderella’s Castle doesn’t compare to visiting a Mayan pyramid in Guatemala or arriving in an ancient Rajasthani fortress as the sun rises. Those are pleasures I’ll share with my kids when they’re older. For now, I’m okay with Frontierland and the Animal Kingdom Lodge, with pixie dust and kid-size sinks so I don’t have to lift my little ones up to wash their hands. Easy is nice. And so are rides.

Carissa Katz, The Star’s managing editor, has continued to find her way around Disney World from afar.

What I remember most about going to see Frank Sinatra perform in New York City is the smell of lily of the valley perfume. I must have been at least 14 because if I had been younger my parents would not have let me go, joining a batch of girls who took a bus from Bayonne to Jersey City’s Journal Square and then the Hudson Tubes to the city.

But perhaps I was indeed younger — and someone’s older sister was along to chaperone? — because, according to Wikipedia, his first string of performances before screaming bobby-soxers at the Paramount Theater were long over by the time I was 14. I just looked at a YouTube video titled “Frank Sinatra Causes Riot at NYC Paramount,” and the young women in the audience, wearing their saddle shoes and knee-length coats, look considerably older. Maybe I remember one of his later stands? Or maybe the concert we saw was someplace other than the Paramount? He was a boy singer with Tommy Dorsey at nightclubs in New Jersey before Benny Goodman invited him to the Paramount and all the hysteria started.

The Hudson Tubes (Hudson and Manhattan Railroad) are now the PATH operated by the Port Authority. If memory serves, their most northerly terminus in the city was underground at 33rd Street and adjacent to the basement of Gimbels department store. It was at Gimbels that we dipped our hands into a small fountain set up on a counter that cascaded with lily of the valley. I can almost smell it now.

The Tubes also connected Newark and Hoboken with Manhattan, and since Frank Sinatra came from Hoboken he was almost a hometown boy, although I don’t think any of us thought much about the geography. Exactly why and how a skinny kid from Hoboken emanated such glamour is beyond me, but he did. I suppose it was that he sang so well about the kind of love his young fans dreamed of.

I have to admit there was a time when as a young adult I divided my friends and relatives into those who loved the Voice and those who didn’t get it. I lost interest in him — and the complicated, ring-a-ding-ding life he led as an adult — long before his star set, but have never forgotten the sentiments and sounds of those songs. The melodies and words are imprinted.

It turns out that my husband — counted with his composer sister among those who appreciated the Voice — and I own nine Sinatra CDs (I just counted), although the 78s are long gone. We made a point of watching the two-night, biographical Sinatra special on HBO this week. The four hours of the film are well worth your time (catch it “on demand,” perhaps), even if you didn’t grow up with Old Blue Eyes.

His appeal, and the songs he sang, must seem antediluvian to, well, 14-year-olds today. But I don’t think they should scoff at his story of unlikely stardom and sheer determination. Some people say the Sinatra craze was the birth of modern teenage culture. There is certainly something eternal about the way he rose, caught fire, fell victim to his own foolish and juvenile behavior, and rose, rose, rose again like a Las Vegas phoenix.

Justin Bieber, are you listening?

Columbia Journalism Review’s lengthy analysis of “A Rape on Campus,” a 2014 Rolling Stone article that was largely based on allegations that could not be verified, is an education for everyone who works in the news business as well as for readers.

To recap briefly, the article in Rolling Stone recounted a story provided by a woman whose name it withheld about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house. Quickly, though, the account was called into question, with writers for The Washington Post and Slate, among others, expressing serious doubts within about two weeks of the story’s publication.

Key to the original criticism of the piece, by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is that the news media almost always obtain comment from individuals accused of criminal acts or from their representatives, and that Rolling Stone had been unable to do that. Ms. Erdely tried, but was unable to independently verify that the unnamed men accused of rape actually existed. Basic standards of journalism dictate that the story should have been killed right there.

To a significant extent, Rolling Stone’s easy willingness to use anonymous sources is a problem that could affect any number of publications. “Jackie,” the pseudonym given to the U.V.A. accuser, could say whatever she liked with minimal risk of consequences. And, without a police report indicating that a crime had been committed, there was no indication, other than Jackie’s word, that one had taken place. This lack of accountability did not deter Rolling Stone, or Ms. Erdely, who continued to say after questions were raised that she found Jackie’s story credible.

Had Rolling Stone’s editors balked at hanging such a serious piece on an anonymous source, with the identity of alleged perpetrators obscured, a marred account could have been avoided.

At The Star, our rule on unnamed voices is to avoid them in almost all cases. Anonymity is only justified when the information is essential to a story (which is almost never) and the speaker’s identity and credibility is known to an editor.

Ms. Erdely could have written a powerful story about sexual violence against women on campus without Jackie’s allegations. There is no story so compelling that it should not be checked out.   

It seemed reading the paper the other morning that all was chaos, and yet . . . and yet the baseball season had begun!

And, somehow — for that moment at any rate — everything seemed all right, everything seemed natural, and fitting, and harmonious — just as it should be.

And, what’s this, the Mets won!

And what’s this, the Yankees lost!

On opening day. The lowly raised up and the mighty fallen — just as it should be.

How will it work out? Who cares  — the season’s begun. Just play ball. Watch it onto your bat, watch its flight in the air, watch it come to rest in your glove. The pastime that hangs on moments has come around again.

The setting is tranquil, the fans raucous, life blooms.

Yet blooms amid gore, our fanatical gore that’s unnatural, unhinged.

How will it work out? It must work out, or what’s life for?

Herewith the scores:

Red Sox 8, Phillies 0.

Mets 3, Nationals 1.

Tigers 4, Twins 2.

Blue Jays 6, Yankees 1.

Orioles 6, Rays 2.

Royals 10, White Sox 1.

Mariners 4, Angels 1.

Dodgers 6, Padres 3.

Rockies 10, Brewers 0.

Reds 5, Pirates 2.

Braves 2, Marlins 1.

A new season has begun.

Envoi

Someone not long ago suggested the Parrish Art Museum might want to upgrade its menu as befitting an upscale art museum.

So here are my recommendations for the Op and Pop boutique restaurant:

Cubist Carrot Sticks, assemble and reassemble as you wish to achieve greater context.

Minimalist Munchies, pared down to the essentials.

The Pointillist Panini, an artful combination of ham and cheese designed to please any palette.

Hard-Edge Cuke Sandwich (with crunchy crusts).

Fauvist Frank, with sauerkraut, of course.

Constructivist Triple Decker (deconstructivist ones for weight-watchers).

Bauhaus Burger, the classic kind, simplify, simplify.

Surreal Suchi (with vision-guaranteed wasabi).

Rococo Coconut Water (in neoplastic containers).

Ashcan Po’boy, the people’s choice.

Dada Ensalada, absolutely unreal seasonal mix.

Pop Tarts (for swingers).

Art Deco Creme Brulée, get down and Erte.

Expressionist Espresso, an emotional experience, you’ll scream!

Robert Frost would, I think, find it ironic that the most often repeated line from his poem “Mending Wall” is his neighbor’s insistence that “good fences make good neighbors.” The poet, you see, doesn’t really seem to agree. He says:

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder    

If I could put a notion in his head: 

Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows.

Reading over the familiar poem recently — while wrangling with a question of neighbors and fences myself — I was surprised to find myself quite touched. As a child, I, too, knew farm fields and stone walls. I was even asked to recite another one of Frost’s most popular poems, “The Road Not Taken,” at my eighth-grade graduation ceremony. (A few years later, when I left home as a supposedly sophisticated college student, I — like my similarly sophisticated friends—dismissed Robert Frost as square, and didn’t think of him again for decades.)

I wasn’t waxing poetic several years ago when, with no notice, the owners of a new house across the lane I live on suddenly constructed a long stretch of high, ugly stockade fence where a pretty hedgerow had long stood. I hated that stockade. Still do, in fact. It looks out of place, unneighborly, an affront, even. Behind the stockade, what remains of some handsome privet is now hidden from view. 

I couldn’t understand what those property owners—who, by the way, sold the house and moved away not so long after putting up their stockade eyesore — had been thinking. If they were trying to keep out deer, they could have chosen a high wire fence like the one installed by some neighbors on the other side of our house; six-foot wire fences, at least, are relatively unobtrusive and more neighborly. For a long time I had daydreams about inviting the stockade people over for a coffee so I could explain to them that East Hampton has always been all about picket fences, especially those with climbing roses on them, but I never did. Frankly, I was too annoyed and didn’t imagine pulling off the conversation in quite the charming manner the situation called for.

This week, I am back to musing about fences because the old and not-so-old picket fences around my own backyard are falling down. Someone, and I don’t know who, has even tacked up a 4-by-4 on a particularly wobbly section. No one in the family will own up to it. Maybe this is a neighbor’s tactful gesture. 

One course of action I have been considering is to advertise (in the Star classifieds, of course) for used picket fencing. People these days seem to always be discarding them. Weathered picket fences, I reason, would fit in better around here than new or freshly painted pickets. 

My husband, meanwhile, has suggested post-and-rail fencing as perhaps more practical, but I have rejected it. My knee-jerk reaction is to argue—as if I were some sort of fence historian, which, admittedly, I am not — that post-and-rail fencing wasn’t traditional here except on pastures. That argument shows its weakness, however, when I am reminded that, of course, the perfectly attractive fencing that divides the Star office and the East Hampton Library driveways, which I stroll past several times a day, is post-and-rail. 

And here is where Frost comes in. 

In “Mending Wall,” the poet gently chides his neighbor for persisting in repairing a stone wall that divides their properties even though that stone wall is no longer necessary, all livestock having long since departed. The poet, in other words, teases this neighbor for sticking obstinately to a traditional family practice that has no current utility.

My apple trees will never get across 

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 

If I’m to be honest, my insistence on pickets could be considered akin to the attitude of the Frost neighbor. Do I really need to mend my pickets with pickets just because it’s tradition? I haven’t answered that question yet, and perhaps I’d better take a poll of other family members (who tend to be even more obstinately traditional than I am when it comes to these aesthetic decisions). But I will try to take a Frostian wall-breaker view and at least get prices on alternatives. Who says poetry isn’t useful?

To be fair, Leo the pig did not actually try to burn down the house. I was not there at the time, but the evidence suggests that it was an unintentional act born of utter need.

The way I heard it, the kids were home with Rita Barnard, who looks after them when their mom and I are at work, and their cousins, Nettie and Teddy. Somebody went to the kitchen for a snack and noticed a sharp smell coming from the downstairs bedroom. Rita and our middle child, Evvy, opened the door to find the room filled with smoke. The nearest detector, the one that goes off even when we so much as cook a pancake, was silent.

Rushing to the far side of the room, Rita saw a lamp cord sizzling and sparking under a dresser, where it had been plugged into an extension cord. Leo, somehow been trapped in the room earlier, had apparently retreated to a far corner and let fly. A pool of urine gathered on the floor causing a short between the lamp cord prongs.

By coincidence, a village safety inspector had been around the Star office a couple of weeks before and pointed out that several extension cords we had in daily use were prohibited for more than occasional use by the state building code. Eager to comply, I removed them that day, though at the time I was not sure why exactly they were of concern.

Arriving home to a house smelling of pig pee, smoke, and melted plastic, I began to understand.

One of the two brass prongs on the cord had melted clean off. The wire insulation was blackened and misshapen by the heat. I realized that we had had, in effect, an open electrical connection — where the lamp plug met the extension cord — exposed on the floor. Other issues with extension cords, as I understand them, include excessive loads and wear that can lead to fires.

Leo, to his porcine credit, pointed out a risk we had ignored, and that we had a smoke detector in need of replacement with a more sensitive model. That — and he needs to be let out more often.

The last time I looked, I was getting 100 miles to the gallon. This is not entirely fair to the purely internal combustion vehicles on the road, though, since we are talking about my Chevy Volt. As the name implies, it runs mostly on electricity from massive batteries, turning to its small gas generator when the stockpiled power drains down. Since it is just about Earth Day as I write this, I figured it was time to check the stats.

As I had been told at the dealership, Volt drivers tend to get a little nuts about their cars. Indeed, there are times I find myself reluctant to go on an errand if I know I’ll have to draw fuel from the car’s tiny tank to cover a particular route.

It has been a little bit more challenging than I had expected to maintain my enthusiasm about the Volt, however, given that gas prices were nearly cut in half since I got it in the fall. Still, the joy of almost never having to stop at a filling station is sweet; it’s astonishing to think about how many hours I have wasted over the decades while pumping gas into one vehicle or another.

But in terms of its impact or lack thereof on the environment, there is much to be proud of. In the latest report (somehow passed from the car to my email inbox), my driving a Volt instead of a traditionally powered vehicle kept more than 700 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Data from the Environmental Protection Agency appears to back this up, estimating that the Volt, taking upstream electrical generation into account, produces about half the emissions of an average new car. Thing is, my daily drive before the Volt was with a lumbering Toyota Tundra, so we can assume that the level was a whole lot more than that. The old beast is up on blocks at the dealership now, waiting for a full frame replacement, thanks to a recall for rust.

Meanwhile, I tool around in the Volt, which, as I discovered on Sunday, is big enough to fit a seven-foot surfboard inside. I don’t know if I am saving the planet exactly, but by the numbers, I’m doing at least a small part.

Ah, I see it’s that time again. I had suggested to Mary the other day that maybe we ought to become Jehovah’s Witnesses to free us from the bondage of mandatory holiday cheer. This country missed the boat when it came to banning Christians.

I’m not against bonhomie per se, just when it’s enjoined. One wants to lie low at this time of year, hunker down, and let the storm pass.

Anyway, the weather’s all wrong for engendering the Christmas spirit. There are no rosy cheeks, mittens, or hot toddies. It’s warmer here than in Mexico City, for goodness sake — at least it was a week ago.

And it’s also interesting to me that as we buy and buy for the consumers of tomorrow, we are trying our best to jettison most of our possessions — excepting, of course, our holey, and much-loved, sweaters, hers and mine . . . and my three-foot pile of fetid sneakers.

But “bah, humbug” won’t work with Mary, for she knows that it’s my way of trying to duck responsibility. Thus next year I’m to be gifted with the gift-giving.

“But Amazon always sends the presents to me . . . and unwrapped too,” I protest meekly. “And besides, I’m not good at following simple instructions . . . maybe it’s because I’m left-handed. . . .”

“I know what you do,” she said, before I could cite any examples of my affliction. “Remember the night Cebra was to make spaghetti with meat sauce, the first meal he was ever to make — I had suggested it because it was so rudimentary — and how, in the end, I made it. He learned that from you.”

“It’s as Tammy said about the young ticket-taker at the movie theater. She said his thoughts were so rarified that he was incapable of performing mundane tasks — you know, the kind that normal, average, everyday people do.”

I stopped there, however, because I knew that were I to continue with this merriment I’d soon be wondering where Mary went. And, frankly, her presence is the best present I can imagine.

Water temperature, 37 to 40 degrees, variable; air temperature, 33 to 41 degrees, variable; snow, two to three inches expected during daylight hours. Gray rain bands, long as the imagination, are in clear view off the coastline of Montauk, New York. The land is an iceberg of sorts — so cold. Snowy ravines along a coastline anointed by lengthy patches of snow beneath and above the coastal dune line.

A few hardy surfers cruise the Montauk area, surfboards racked atop their cars, in back of their trucks. Snow, ice, and occasional freezing rain pelt Montauk. A surfer floating about 150 yards offshore catches a nice five-foot wave, rides it smoothly. The surfer disappears inside the barrel of the wave before it closes out. Guess you call that a cold wipeout!

A surfer riding a Jet Ski lands at the I.G.A. beach. The young man had done some surf reconnaissance of the second sandbar off the village. Raw cylindrical waves continue peeling into all quadrants off Montauk’s coastline.

Sometime during this winter past, quizzical surfers considered a long-asked question: If the saltwater in the Atlantic Ocean is close to freezing temperature, technically partially frozen, can one still surf? Some surfers envisioned possibilities of their surfboards sinking due to physics — or stopping or slowing down. Delusional thoughts for humans are common during surf sessions when air and sea temperatures combined do not add up to 70 degrees, or thereabouts, give or take . . . sometimes take more or take less.

Stormy Saturday passes, Palm Sunday arrives. Many throughout East Hampton Town have already visited the Stations of the Cross at various churches — or thought about it. Church bells ring. The air is brisk in the way it can be only along the North Atlantic Seaboard. Surfers arrive at Montauk listening to rock music . . . sing it, Mick. The Memory Motel slips by, as it always does.

“I would have done anything for you . . . there was a time.” Guns N’ Roses music blares like a windstorm into the air at super-loud decibels from a surfer’s car perched above a surf spot in a small parking lot before the village of Montauk. A yuppie arrives at the parking lot: max-manicured clothes with stubby beard and new boots. Thirty-something rich Ivy League type, perhaps. Or a well-to-do hipster? The visitor thinks, “These guys have gone mad . . . they’re surfing?”

Dressed like a model, a young lady steps from the yuppie’s luxurious S.U.V., wondering why surf guys are dressing with no abandon into and out of their wetsuits. If she doesn’t want to see the winter-pallor skin of local guys suiting up for the Sunday surf — do not look.

Somewhere in the mix a robust, fit young lady suits up to surf. She disrobes, puts on her wetsuit. She couldn’t give a hoot if someone sees her in her birthday suit.

In the west parking lot of Ditch Plain, an attractive Montauk mom asks her husband, “Where are the kids?” The husband responds, “Ten feet high and 30 yards behind your right shoulder.”

The children have amassed on one of the many snow-ice plateaus that have grown to tennis-court size in the parking lots — snow removal from roads. Snow piled 10 feet high and 20 yards by 40 yards, frozen to a slick flat. A snowballer’s dream! Nine children atop this platform toss snowballs and mimic Michael Jackson dance moves, “Dancing With the Stars” competitors, or who knows?

The mother looks over her shoulder gleefully at the boys and girls, thinking, “What a beautiful sight.” Early spring sun cascades, projecting a billion watts of light.

A grandfather pulls up in his truck with a big surfboard accompanied by an attractive lady. Excitedly, the man mentions his grandchild is coming to watch him surf! He goes directly into the sparkling sea at Ditch Plain, mentioning the flood tide. A surfer standing close by wearing a black hat, still in wetsuit from his last surf session, ponders, “That grandfather knows the Stations of the Cross.” That grandfather also knows about the flood tide. He owns a successful 80-foot commercial fishing vessel.

It is Palm Sunday in Montauk.

A hitchhiker carrying a backpack is picked up by a surfer driving west on the Napeague stretch. The tall hitchhiker shines at the ride. He is in his 60s, in dark sunglasses. The man delivers a short sermon on things as they are. He is retired from sanitation. His son, 17 years old, is a black belt in tae kwon do, a whiz at trigonometry.

The driver describes his son: age 14 years, 6 feet, 215 pounds, smart as a galaxy. Both men conclude: It certainly is a new generation, maybe a better generation!

The hitchhiker is driven to the East Hampton train station. Goodbye, traveler, be well!

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

While I pay our bills every month, I tend not to follow through with the controversial kind, leaving those annoying back-and-forth agons to Mary, who the other day held my feet to the fire when a hefty one from Southampton Hospital came in.

Over all, I think it came to $34,000 or so — for a few hours in the emergency room and an overnight stay. The insurance company paid some of it, but that left about $6,000 as the insured’s responsibility.

I called the insurance company and learned that that indeed was the sum we owed given our plan’s deductible. Trixie A. said, when I asked, that she would send me the details as to how they came to settle upon the $6,000.

If true, it was yet another example, Mary said, of insurers passing on to patients more and more of the costs of health care. (We have on one of our bookshelves an entire issue of Time magazine tracing this shift, which in the end recommends Medicare for all.)

To continue, I swallowed hard, and phoned the hospital. The woman with whom I spoke was very cordial — and sympathetic when I said I thought she’d agree that its bill was a big nut for a middle-class couple. (We had, by the way, no quarrel with the care provided.)

As Mary had recommended, I asked for an itemized bill, and soon after was mailed one.

“The elephant in the room,” I said afterward to the hospital’s representative, “are these three $9,500-an-hour observation room charges. One more hour and you’d about equal my net pay for the year. . . .”

She would, she said, look further into the matter and would get back to me. With a sigh — and not very hopeful that anything would come of this review — I went back to work.

Just a few minutes later, the phone rang.

There had, she said, been “an error.” There should have been only one $9,500 observation room charge instead of three, and, besides, she had found other charges that had been duplicated. I was to do nothing then until it all got sorted out again with the insurer, a recalculation that would probably take a month or so.

Naturally, I was greatly relieved — and proud that my queries would presumably result in about $20,000 being excised from our metastatic bill.

I write this, not so much as a criticism of the hospital, which, as I say, provided good care and was responsive, but as a caveat to others who, rather than make that call and ask for an itemized bill, might, with a big sigh, send off a check in the full amount.