I’ve been reading about Zen Buddhism lately, and was reminded of the Yogi Berra koans I’d seen at the Artists-Writers Game last August.

    Here are some:

    “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

    “It gets late early out here.”

    “We made too many wrong mistakes.”

    “Baseball is 90 percent mental — the other half is physical.”

    “A nickel isn’t worth a dime anymore.”

    “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”

    “I didn’t really say everything I said.”

    “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

                                    * * *

The Zen masters used to rap inquiring students over the head if they didn’t catch the drift of their puzzling koans, and the concussive force of the blow often led to Enlightenment.

I almost achieved it myself the other night during the Super Bowl, giving my forehead an awful whack with the back of my hand when the Seahawks tried that second-and-goal slant pass at the Patriots’ 1-yard line with 20-some seconds left in the game.

In somewhat unenlightened fashion I’ve been hoping to see the Patriots defeated for the longest time, it seems. Once the Steelers went down and I could no longer root for, rooting against — as in our national elections — became my goal. It’s not that I hate my country — I just can’t stand teams arrogating to themselves exceptional, bright, shiny status, even if they are exceptional. I’ve chafed at that self-satisfied our-city-stands-upon-a-hill kind of thing for a long time, ever since “America’s team” was flattened by the one in black and gold that brandished the United Steel Workers’ banner — in the Bicentennial year no less.

So the Patriot fans remain smug, and I’m going back to “Anne of Green Gables,” whose third disc I almost watched instead on Super Bowl night. Actually, I did remain unglued for just about all of the first half, calling out to Mary as I went down the hall to inquire as to the halftime score that I trusted my quest for spiritual peace would not be derailed by a little violence.

“We must look at the big picture,” I said.

“You are — you’re looking at the big TV screen down the hall,” Mary said.

“Well, yes, but I mean by the big picture that we must embrace life in all its mystery and contradictions and through serenity somehow transcend the duality that leads to our problems. That’s the only way to world peace. . . . It’s all one.”

“At least until the hockey playoffs begin.”

This has been a rough winter for my husband and me, even though we’re 1,100 miles south of the snow, and it’s been made no easier by reports from Amagansett of big changes in store for the quiet street we’ve lived on for — whoa — one year short of 50. (Like Jack Graves, I may soon be reading my own words in the “Years Ago” column.)

With Sidney pretty much incapacitated since late December by a serious accident, we’ve had to confine our usual comings and goings to staying put, and while spending most of your waking hours within circumscribed limits is infinitely more bearable here in Florida, where the sun sets an hour later and the only ice is in your glass, than it would be up north, it’s not at all what you anticipate when you pack your flip-flops.

So we are looking forward even more than usual to April, when, with his usual determination plus intensive therapy, he should be, if not what you’d call nimble, at least able to negotiate the trip home.

What we will find upon arrival, though, is iffy. I had a call from a real estate broker last week who’d been studying the tax maps and wondered if we’d care to sell a buildable piece of land that Sidney presciently split off long ago from the rest of our flag lot. It turns out that the people whose yard backs onto that vacant parcel, and who have been our good neighbors from the beginning, are moving to where their kids live and selling their house.

Meanwhile on the other side of us, I’m told that a house only 10 or so years old was recently demolished (“I had heard that when the house was sold she specified that it not be torn down,” a friend lamented in an email), and the one next to it, an immediate neighbor’s, is almost certainly about to be.

Oh, dear. Bulldozers to the west of us, bulldozers to the east, volleying and thundering, and who knows how many mini-estates coming to the south, where we have been blessed all these years by a full-on view of someone else’s vast empty meadow.

Our three children grew up spending summers in Amagansett and they love to visit, but they all live so far away that expecting them to keep the old house going after we’re gone is folly. It will be a teardown. There, I’ve said it.

As I said, the winter has been hard. I wonder whether, were it not for the accident, with its intimations of mortality, I would be fretting so much. We’re not selling that vacant parcel just yet, though.

Irene Silverman is The Star’s editor at large. She is at large at the moment in Key Biscayne, Fla.

Madge did not disappoint. No one thought she would show up for an impromptu photo-op on one of the picturesque lanes in the Village of East Hampton last summer.

The rumor circulated among a few of the camera-toting East Hampton inhabitants. Something fun: Hawaiian beach wrap by the seaside — Madge sporting a modest swimsuit. How about a discreet Wiborg Beach visit? Or her posing with the Georgica Beach lifeguards?

No doubt: It could help sell newspapers or get a payment for a lucky freelance photographer of a few hundred dollars from People magazine. It was not envisioned as a racy or naughty photo-op. With wonderful songs to her credit — “Swim,” “Ray of Light,” “Sky Fits Heaven,” “Little Star” — East Hampton types could enjoy their early morning coffee viewing a locally composed image of the star.

Of course, many might not know the star. People living in East Hampton are primarily concerned with other things: children, surviving parents, homes, cars, trucks, tools, roofs on their houses, jobs, themselves, and their pets. Hey, it might be good to listen to her music and examine her varied creative pursuits. Why not let the photo-op happen . . . very quietly.

Movie stars have always visited East Hampton. Often prime-time TV personalities or movie stars announce this supposed fact. Fleeting summer glimpses in newspapers and magazines indicate the presence of movie stars living the dream in East Hampton. Occasionally, TV and movie moguls and stars grace the Hamptons’ summer-season benefit party scene.

The term Hollywood Hamptons popped up not so long ago. Hollywood East is another contemporary saying, whispered with crescendo. Hollywood, Calif., could not be farther astern Long Island! Global location: East Hampton protrudes into the Atlantic Ocean, ending with the Island’s northerly gem, a lighthouse commissioned by George Washington.

Hollywood is in the state of California. East Hampton is in the state of New York. Yet, despite obvious differences, Hollywood loves East Hampton. And there are days when East Hampton rises to the glow of directors shouting, “Action!” Hollywood types are like those uncles so loved by East Hampton families. You know that uncle, the one who vanished to Paris for a year. He only wrote one letter home. He reappears with cases of French wine for the grandparents and teaches the young ’uns things about the world across the pond.

Or maybe Hollywood stars are like your favorite niece, who one day threw all caution to the wind and spent a year on a coconut plantation on Kauai and then showed up as the fit-as-a-fiddle, bikini-clad paid poster child for Coconut Water Inc.

Ever heard of the Hamptons in Hollywood? One day, Hollywood, Calif., may have a Hamptons in Hollywood. The neighborhood would look like this: green Ford F-250s, children, boogie boards, fishing poles, tennis rackets, lots of well-worn toys, clam rakes, Weber grills, grandparents with bottles of red wine, teenagers with firecrackers, bathing suits everywhere, old toboggans (to look gentrified), plastic sleds, toasters in the kitchens, gardening tools, a frazzled mommy or daddy looking for the car keys.

A Hollywood mansion would be set up for East Hampton parties. Those lacking money for party tickets would be given tickets: Think of East Hampton residents partying in the Hamptons in Hollywood! Reciprocal dating also would be inclusive, just like here! Hollywood stars would give East Hampton residents a great neighborhood . . . the sun would shine; hot dogs, fish, and corn would get cooked. All kinds of big box trucks could drive the Hamptons crowd to California. Yeah.

Alec will accompany the East Hampton people on the neighborhood exchange. He has been a favorite out east since he referred to his attractive child as a farm animal. Typical of an Amagansett guy! Everything is referenced in such farm terms throughout Amagansett: “fence over there,” “seen a nice morning,” “I’d love to own a goat someday.” It is a mental condition called Possession by Colonial Farm-ism.

Steven could provide still and moving cameras. Video and photography is a fabulous New England pastime. Photography has a vast regional history!

Star power is essential for the success of the Hamptons in Hollywood. We will need these people to participate: Scarlett and family, the Hiltons, Bill Murray, a Clinton, Harvey W., a Lester, Garry B., Kyra, Michele M., Frankie McGuire, Russell S., Linda Shapiro, Jennifer Lopez, Mick, Kim, and Cameron.

Paul requires longboards and transportation to surf the coast. He can FedEx fish. Charley Jr. said maybe; Charley Sr. said no. Shane said yes! Brondo and Sophie are bringing their new play for entertainment. Morgan Jr. is bringing a large computer; Barbara Joe says yes. Stacey, Kristin, and Becky are checking their appointment books.

The Golden Pear donates apple crumb muffins. Colin’s Seafood Shop brings fish chowder. The former East Hampton town clerk is making his own clam chowder for everyone! Larry is an environmentalist; Stella or James may participate. J. Mitchell says she’s a legal assistant; Jill B., Jean, and Cathy Jones signed up. Howard’s not sure; Kelley said yeah! The owner of the Montauket is sending cooks.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed something a little out of the ordinary on one of The Star’s recent obituary pages. Down in the lower right corner was a correction — nothing strange about that, of course. But what was unusual was that the notice concerned Phoebe Scott, an East Hampton woman who died in 1938.

That the matter came up at all speaks to the ubiquity of the Internet, on which old copies of The Star (and many other newspapers) can be found. No longer is “erroneous info,” as one of Mrs. Scott’s descendants, Jim Huling of Sumter, S.C., put it, confined to a musty old newspaper clipping. A quick Google search now can turn up all manner of information, including something like this written 76 years ago.

By any standard, the May 12, 1938, account of Mrs. Scott’s death was pretty well mangled. It identified her step-mother as her mother, did not name her mother at all, and gave the wrong first name for her first husband, Mr. Huling said in an email.

Feeling a bit like a smart-aleck when Mr. Huling’s message arrived, I wrote back asking what his sources were. My own grandmother’s “East Hampton History and Genealogies,” was the reply. That’ll teach me.

So we ran the correction in the Jan. 22 issue. What we did not get into were some of the remarkable details of Mrs. Scott’s life that The Star apparently got right in the original telling. These included the fact that she had 12 children in her 84 years who survived her, and an astonishing 64 grandchildren and 75 great-grandchildren.

Also intriguing was something Mr. Huling related about her first husband, Edward Payne: He disappeared in about 1885 after leaving for a school for sailors in New York City. Either he was lost at sea during a subsequent whaling voyage, or he moved to Smithtown but was presumed dead because he was gone so long.

This early mystery seemed not to bear down too heavily on Mrs. Scott. The 1938 account concluded, “Her jolly manner and wit made her a popular member of the community.” A fine eulogy if I ever saw one.

I’ve got to get beyond the birth-and-death thing, as my Zen book advises, though the good news is that my birthday is tomorrow and Mary is going to take me out to dinner.

When recently the subject of first loves came up, I told her that mine had tossed me over in the end because I had “no ambition.”

“That was what Mom and I always admired about you, that you had no ambition,” she said, “that you chose to go your own way.”

“Well, I do have ambition,” I said. “It’s just not the usual kind. For instance, I’m very ambitious to know what the chemical word for beet juice is. It’s a question in today’s crossword puzzle.”

Later, in the supermarket, happening to pick up a strawberry smoothie jar, I saw that one of its ingredients was pantothenic acid. “Pantothenic acid!” I said. “I think I’ve solved the crossword!”

“See, you do have ambition — you’re positively driven.”

“By you, most of the time, and now I’m burning with the ambition that you drive me home so I can see if it fits.”

Well, “pantothenic” was too long, nor was it right, though I learned it had something to do with a growth vitamin in the B group, as is found in yeast and molasses — reminders that one should lighten one’s spirits and go with the flow. I’d made an excellent error, then: You can’t always get what you waaant, but sometimes you find just what you knead. . . .

So, what have I learned by 75? Nothing, really, other than what I knew at 8 when, in sending postcards home from Camp Abnaki on the island of North Hero in Lake Champlain (a most beautiful camp, by the way), I habitually signed off with “Hope you’re feeling fine and having fun.” I hope you’re feeling fine and having fun. All of you.

Is that too much to hope for? Even so, it is a worthy ambition, it is mine; it is my goal, if you will.

All that you seek is within you, not outside you, my Zen books seem to say. Look no further. It’s always been there.

As I’ve said, I may never quite get it, it may always remain a puzzle, but there is serenity there, and the secret to world peace.

I’m sure many of you have heard the newest catchphrase, “No worries,” which is said by many people these days in what I believe is a totally inappropriate use of the phrase. I’ve had a lot of people say it to me lately, and I think they’re just bragging, because I have plenty of worries, especially now in winter, when it’s so cold out our daily lives are limited by snow and ice and our finances are at an all-time low.

I mentioned to a friend that our stripped-down Christmas tree is still snuggled under the privet hedges in our sideyard, and she said, “No worries.” But when your Christmas tree is still hanging around your yard almost two months after the holiday, I find that cause to worry. What’s next, I think. An old car, a rusted refrigerator, a broken washing machine, a boat trailer — oh, wait, there’s one of those already parked right next to the damn tree that brought us such joy two months ago but now is bothering the hell out of me.

I tell a friend that I’m afraid to walk my dog because of the snow and ice. “No worries; just let him run,” she says. Oh, okay, I’ll let him run, and worry the whole time he’s out there in this frozen tundra that he’ll be hit by a car or snatched by a dognapper to be used as a science project.

I’m coming up on another knee surgery, and the last thing I need is to fall, so I worry that if I do attempt to walk the dog and I fall, I’ll break a leg and my bone will protrude and children will make fun of me and laugh as I drag my twisted bone dangling from my leg back into the house. Worry? You bet I do.

Talking to a friend recently I commiserate that my pants are getting tighter. “No worries,” she says, “you’ll lose it in the spring.” But will I? I worry that it won’t be that easy, especially right after a knee surgery that will limit my ability to exercise.

I recently asked a woman in a doctor’s office parking lot if a particular space was legal to park in. “No worries,” she said. And I thought, oh, not another one. I wondered if she’d hang around and tell the cop who pulls out his ticket pad that she told me it was okay to park there. “But officer,” I’d say, “that lady said not to worry, so I just assumed it was a proper parking spot.” I imagine he’d say, “No worries,” as he proceeded to write out the ticket.

I have to use the restroom, I tell a friend while out on a road trip. “No worries,” she says. No worries for you, maybe, but it’s been hours since I last went, so it’s certainly worrying me, and I need to find a restroom soon or my worry will be all over your car seat.

I first heard the expression “no worries” when my daughter (who is now, much to my dismay, a Hawaii resident) brought home her very agreeable boyfriend for the first time several years ago. No matter what task I asked him to help me with, he would say, “No worries,” and get on with it. Although not Hawaiian, he grew up there, and like most Hawaiians I’ve met, he’s unencumbered by all the baggage we New Yorkers carry around with us. I liked his easy manner, but when I started hearing “No worries” from others, regarding everything from my being slightly late for an appointment to my car being frozen shut, it really started to piss me off. I am worried about many things that I won’t bore you with, but please don’t assume everyone has no worries.

When I mentioned to my husband last week that I’d really like the sideyard cleaned up, he said, “No problem.” Meaning he’ll get to it in a couple of months. When our yard begins to look like one of those backwoods houses off I-95 down south, I see that as a problem. And that really worries me.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

Guess what song has been going through my head for more than two weeks since two feet of snow fell and the temperature started to go down. Sorry, but I can’t help setting things to music. What I keep hearing, a la Louis Armstrong, is:

“Oh, the weather outside is frightful/ But the fire is so delightful/ And since we’ve no place to go/ Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”

The words suit the mood. The truth is that with heat and electricity, I’ve been happily housebound and been lucky that there have been only two minor problems to cope with even though the house is old and poorly insulated.

The good news is that one of the problems, a frozen cold water pipe in the sink in one of the bathrooms, miraculously corrected itself, and we’ve been able to keep it thawed by letting it drip. That’s actually even better than good news, because that part of the house is on a concrete foundation and the pipes in that bathroom go through it.

The bad news is that we can’t use the washing machine because water won’t drain out of it. I tried, foolishly pouring in hot water, and caused a flood. I’ve been washing a few thises and thats in the bathtub instead, which isn’t much fun, but, because the weather is frightful, it’s easier for me than going to a friend’s or relative’s house, or the Laundromat in Amagansett or Sag Harbor.

Then, too, we made being housebound very easy for ourselves by buying enough groceries to last before the big storm hit, and then ordering a week’s worth online. And that introduced us to a remarkable man.

It was after 8 p.m. on Monday night when the delivery arrived. Yes, the weather was frightful, frightfully cold at least. Nevertheless, saying he was well-layered, the delivery man stopped in the vestibule to take off his boots and said he wanted to treat every house as he would treat his own. Smiling as he brought in the bags, he admired the cat. Setting one down on a counter, he reached in and took out a bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap. “It shouldn’t have been packed next to the kale,” he said matter-of-factly.

Impressed by his thoughtfulness and good nature, I asked if he was headed home. “No,” he said. He explained that he lived in downtown Brooklyn and had one more delivery to make — in Mattituck.

Struck by the differences between this man’s circumstances and my own, I said, “It’s not easy to make a living.” It was a coals-to-Newcastle comment if ever there was one, and I was a little abashed as I handed him a tip. He turned to leave, nodded, and said, “You made my day.”

“You’re one of the youngest old people I know,” my dentist said to me the other day as he excavated around a post in the hopes a filling would prevent the need for a crown. Before I could remonstrate with him — “One of the youngest? Please” — he was drilling away.

Still, that was music to my years, though lest I get cocky, he said, quoting from his grandmother, that I could not expect to get any respect in Florida, where we’re going this week, until I reached my 90s. Well, I thought, that would be something to strive for.

I think the youthful spirit he senses beneath the eroding gums has to do with the fact that I’ve covered local sports all these years and still like what I’m doing.

“I’ve never worked a day in my life,” an interviewee, who does work hard, said to me the other day. I knew what he meant — when you’re doing what you like to do it isn’t work, it’s fun.

The big downside so far lies in the realm of short-term memory. “They’re going to have to open a Lost and Found just for you,” Mary said the other day in holding up boots left behind at East Hampton Indoor Tennis. “But those aren’t mine,” I said, “mine had laces . . . I think.” We help each other: She can hear, I can smell . . . often we can pick up the threads of each other’s trains of thought, and we can at times be found lost in each other’s arms. It’s almost as if we’ve become one, though in case you’re having trouble making us out as we make out, I’m the bald one with the pointy nose.

I do hope I can keep my legs under me as I near the finish line. Then it can truly be written, as in the old days, “Death overtook him in his __-ieth year. . . .”

The answer, as the late Andy Neid­nig, who was finally outleaned, as it were, at the tape, said, is to keep moving. Still, I doubt that we’ll be moving to Florida. Kathy says it’s “Centereach with palm trees,” and that corruption (corruption of the flesh perhaps above all) is rife to such a degree that “it makes New York look like ‘Romper Room.’ ” Could it have something to do with latitude? The less corruption the farther north you get? But that leaves out Wall Street. Maybe it has to do with longitude then. At any rate, “Nunca falta un pelo en la sopa.” There’s always a worm in the apple.

While I wish I’d been somewhat older when young, being thought of as somewhat younger when old will do. John Wyche was actually rendered speechless for a moment when I told him the other day that I’d turned 75. “I know — it’s the haircut,” I said.

I’ve been in the presence of Phil Spector twice, so I can say with a measure of confidence that I am very lucky to be alive.

A long time ago — 1991 — I was in a restaurant in New York, where the legendary (and legendarily volatile) record producer was seated with the late Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records, and two female companions. One foolish and at least a little tipsy member of my group mistook him for the late actor Dudley Moore, and as the music industry giants passed our table on their way out, he made a spectacularly ill-advised comment about the movie “Arthur.” Mr. Spector, who is serving a 19-years-to-life sentence for the 2003 murder of the actress Lana Clarkson, did not shoot us.

I remembered this chance encounter last Thursday morning when the Phil Spector-produced version of “The Long and Winding Road” played on the radio. That memory spurred another, of a second encounter with the man, on June 25, 2002, at the Russian Tea Room, where ABKCO Records was holding a launch party for “The Rolling Stones Remastered” series of CDs. Well into the evening, a skeletal Mr. Spector, sporting sunglasses and a wig befitting a heavy-metal musician, stopped all conversation with his wordless entrance, again accompanied by two female companions. All eyes were on the reclusive genius, who uttered not a word but did make the sound of one hand clapping — against his thigh — upon hearing an example of the Stones’ remastered catalog. Once again, I had unknowingly cheated death.

But I thought a lot more, upon hearing “The Long and Winding Road” and — on the same radio station, later that day — “Thirteen” by the band Big Star, about Timothy White.

Tim was a wonderful guy. I had the honor of working for him at Billboard for just under two years, until his sudden passing, at 50, less than 48 hours after we’d chatted at that party at the Russian Tea Room.

I’m almost as old as he was now, and my interest in what passes for rock ’n’ roll today has faded almost to oblivion. But, like most people seem to, I still dig the stuff I grew up with and probably always will, and I still like to write about it, or try to.

Tim was a master of that realm. The author of definitive biographies of Bob Marley, the Beach Boys, and James Taylor; of many cover stories and interviews in Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy, and of a consistently brilliant Billboard column called “Music to My Ears,” he was unfailingly insightful, witty, and, notably, courageous. In one such column, he delivered a harsh rebuke to the insufferable rapper Eminem, and by extension his record label — a major advertiser — in bluntly stating that the “main themes” of his latest album “include drugging, raping, and murdering women.” (The “artist” responded in a subsequent recording called “Bitch Please II,” but I won’t waste more ink with his rhymed retort.)

I didn’t often go to the office on Fridays, but did stop in briefly on the morning of June 27, 2002, before heading uptown to a lunch at Sony Music. I saw Tim from the corner of my eye, but we didn’t speak. At Sony, I met with a group that included Jody Stephens, the drummer of Big Star.

Back at home in the afternoon, I cursed the distant ringing telephone as I changed in the bedroom. It was a publicist from Sony, who had been at the lunch.

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Is what true?”

“Timothy White is dead?”

“What? Of course not. I just saw him a few hours ago.”

I called the office. “Is everything okay?” I asked. No, everything was not okay.

As I said, rock ’n’ roll doesn’t excite me as it used to, nor should it. It’s a young man’s game, for those with too much energy and too little experience. But that song “Thirteen” really gets me. For all the tentative awkwardness of its teenage narrator, it is perhaps the most achingly articulate telling of a first crush and its attendant vulnerability. “Won’t you let me walk you home from school?/Won’t you let me meet you at the pool?/Maybe Friday I can/Get tickets for the dance/And I’ll take you.”

Tim probably liked that one, too, and I’m sure he would have written beautifully about it. He was one of the good guys.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

This winter has been hell on man and beast alike, and it has been hard on houses as well, with frozen pipes, ice dams leaking under soffets, and over-taxed furnaces. Our house has taken a blow or two, including a never-before freeze-up on a kitchen drain, and, one morning this week, a door that came apart in my hands.

I think it was Monday morning, after a rainy Sunday and a cold dawn. The wooden front door, already looking a little ragged from the pet pig’s depredations, had swelled then frozen stuck. Annoyed by the swirling mass of dogs (we have three) and swine at my feet, I shoved and shoved again, and suddenly it all gave way. Part of the door remained on its hinges and swung wide, but the portion along the side with the entry lever remained in my hand.

Whether the animals went outside at that moment or not, I can’t remember. My guess is that they scattered amid the thunderous outbreak of profanity that ensured.

The sun had not yet emerged over the scrub oaks when I found myself stapling up some metal-coated insulating plastic sheeting over the screen doors to keep the wind off the porch. After getting the kids off to school, I was able to find a similarly sized door leaning up against the family barn in East Hampton and get it installed before lunch. It was a heck of a way to start the week.

To be honest, my wife, Lisa, and I had long been thinking about getting new doors. The one that came apart was drafty and, as it turned out, beyond repair due to rot behind a veneer of paint. The animals, for all their annoying early morning impatience, probably did us a favor.