If real estate outfits were likely to make new year’s resolutions, I would want them to try to hew more closely to the traditional, if fuzzy, lines of delineation among place names. It is a pipe dream, of course, but it would be nice.

Around The Star, we spend countless hours trying to figure out where things are. Questions like which side of Abraham’s Path is East Hampton and which is Amagansett, or whether Maidstone Park is in Springs rather than East Hampton, occupy more minutes than I can estimate. When does Bridgehampton turn into Water Mill, we ask. And does Sag Harbor extend all the way to the Morton Wildlife Refuge? No, but you get the point.

Fault lies with the United States Postal Service, which handed out ZIP codes, and with real estate people, for whom payoffs can depend on perceived locations. Thrown into the mix are school districts, which have their own, sometimes baffling borders, and fire districts, which appear to have been drawn based on who knows what.

Wainscott is perhaps foremost among those places that just get bigger and bigger. Time was, the hamlet was a stretch of farmhouses and fields south of the Montauk Highway and west of Georgica Pond. Today, it has absorbed the East Hampton Airport, pushed all the way east to the Sag Harbor Road and northwest to gobble up the Ross School as it toodles all the way to the Sag Harbor Village line. That Forbes had Wainscott among its top 50 most expensive ZIP codes last year is not missed by those who write descriptions for real estate listings.

Lost in all this are many of the old place names, some going back to the 18th century or earlier, in which can be heard the echoes and stories of long-ago times. Hayground, Hardscrabble, Cedar Bush, Freetown, Pots and Kettles, Miller’s Ground, and Indian Field are among the names of places here that are all but forgotten.

Regular readers might recall that I have been on a mission to correct online maps concerning Gardiner’s Bay. From what I can tell, victory is near; the U.S. Board on Geographic Names is waiting for a final word on where to put the dividing line between Gardiner’s and encroaching Napeague Bay, relegating it to the east of Lazy Point and Hicks Island, where it belongs.

Just the other day I was looking at Google Maps online and noticed that it has the Peconic River, which by all rights terminates at Riverhead, coursing east past Sag Harbor and out toward the Cedar Point Lighthouse. Expect to see that in the real estate vernacular soon.

Well, you can’t go to heaven again, as I found out these past two weeks in Southern California. While, I’m glad to say, we did as good a job as we’ve ever done in escaping Christmas, we couldn’t escape the human condition.

I tried my damndest, but even I, who washed my hands almost continuously, and who cradled babies only under duress, could not duck the bullet.

To have been the only one to have done so would not have been commendable. I’m glad to say, then, that I too got sick, like everyone else.

And there was more good news: Not once did I worry about what was going on back at the ranch, as it were. I do confess to having read Baylis Greene’s wonderful, free-wheeling account of the East Hampton-Amityville boys basketball game shortly after our arrival in Encinitas, on our hosts’ computer, and emailed him my praise, but otherwise remained blissfully oblivious the entire time inasmuch as The Star was concerned — a “first,” I think, for me, in 47 years.

Knowing that Baylis and Craig Macnaughton, whose photos are a wonder of their own, had my back while I was away further contributed to my peace of mind.

So, at long last, I know, really know, that I am dispensable. Do you know what a freeing feeling that is? To know that you’re a wisp, on the wing to being swept away. Here a moment and then gone as others pick up the thread, not a beat missed.

I wrote recently about having won my wife’s blessing. Couple this with the fact that Baylis and Craig have my blessing, and you’ve got to agree it’s been a good year — actually, a great one.   

An old religious statue goes missing from a Village of East Hampton bird sanctuary. A piece of a medieval suit of armor located in an East Hampton mansion walks off with an uninvited winter visitor. A 70-pound steel propeller vanishes from the corner of a village property.

These events all happened in East Hampton: One might guess the soil itself is the culprit, or maybe a salty sea wind from the south. A person might conjecture amusing mysteries are part and parcel of the place.

Religious Statue

An old beloved family dog kicks the bucket at a home somewhere in East Hampton. The owner buries the faithful family dog by the tree next to her house. The dog had many friends, mostly neighborhood children who visited it to play on their way home from school. As the children walked by the neighbor’s home, one child would say to another, “Let’s go play with Fido.” This went on for years andyears. The children caught wind of Fido’s demise!

The children schemed a proper tombstone to place at the dog’s burial spot. A religious statue remembered by few, in a bird sanctuary, was acquired on a quiet day when no one was looking. The 21/2-foot Christian statue made its way to the dog’s burial site by stealth of night.

The statue simply seemed to appear out of thin air atop the dog’s gravesite. Nobody said anything. The kids were smart! A man mowing the owner’s lawn identified the relic a few years ago. The man said, “I seen that” . . . the colloquialism for a positive identification.

Some had seen this statue from the 1960s until the year 2000 at the quaint sanctuary for birds. The statue the children moved to the neighborhood dog’s gravesite five miles away was replaced with a replica by the village, or village representatives, years ago.

Suit of Armor

“I have Mrs. Regan on the phone. She claims a piece of armor has gone missing . . . suit of armor, from a suit of medieval armor . . . not sure which piece . . . not the sword or mallet with hanging ball . . . we’ll stop by tomorrow.”

Brief laughter erupts in the Village of East Hampton’s Newtown Lane police station among the three police officers stationed there on that brisk day in 1967. Missing armor is a new one at village headquarters.

The Vietnam War is raging. East Hampton has been sparse of population this winter of 1967. The weather has not been fit for man, woman, or animal. The terrain seems scorched an amber crystal, glowing as if waiting for birds and spring to bring winter’s end.

At some point during the winter, a youthful soul entered a large empty home through a door or window and took a souvenir. The souvenir was a piece taken off a complete suit of medieval armor. The suit of armor had been shipped from Ireland to the States in the early 1940s.

Maybe the young Gallade had wandered the perimeter of the old home, swinging his newly acquired item at the sea clouds or fantasy of mind. Maybe young Sir Gallade had a lady accomplice? Maybe they wandered off through East Hampton dune and sand to find a nice, secure place to cuddle and relish their newly acquired piece of a suit of armor. Maybe they took a small dagger or possibly the small spiked ball hanging on a chain. Maybe they had a bottle of rum or whiskey to celebrate like pirates and say a prayer to winter’s end.

Lost Propeller

A ship propeller goes missing in the Village of East Hampton. The propeller had been lying in the corner of a village property since 1984. Walked away sometime between 2005 and 2011. Somebody took it, unless it buried itself — rumors are heard of stranger things than that, ’round this neighborhood.

The propeller was one of the two original propellers on a Montauk-based long-liner. Captain Mike had replaced the boat’s original propellers after they were damaged hitting something. The old bent propellers were put in the back of the captain’s crewmember’s 1978 Ford truck. Extra weight in small trucks is nice for driving in snow. The propellers were removed from the truck and placed in the corner of the property in May of 1984 after winter’s end. The remaining matching propeller still sits in the corner of the property.

If anyone comes upon one approximately three-foot-in-diameter standard ship propeller that weighs 70 pounds, painted worn maroon and gray, please drop it off near Guild Hall. Act as if you know what you are doing when dropping the propeller off! Prop the propeller up somewhere on Guild Hall’s property. Tell anyone who asks that it is part of a de Kooning collaborative. The propeller has no value except for sentimental.

These paragraphs are excerpts from a lengthier script, “Modern Mysteries of East Hampton,” by Morgan McGivern, The Star’s staff photographer.

Everyone loses things. Right? So why was I in such a tizzy when my purse, containing a wallet and the usual appurtenances, disappeared last week? My husband said I was probably reading too much into it, taking it as a sign of aging. But no, I insisted, the whole episode was getting to me for some other reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on at first.

It was Wednesday, deadline day at The Star, and I had been editing right up to the last minute, when I left my laptop and junk where they were and ran out to buy children’s Tylenol, yogurt, and ice cream for one of my grandchildren. She had had a baby tooth pulled that afternoon, and my daughter wasn’t about to leave her alone. I was rushed, squeezing the errand into a short half-hour between finishing work and getting ready to pick my husband up from the Hampton Jitney.

I knew I hadn’t left the bag when I delivered the things for my granddaughter, because I was absolutely, 100-percent sure that I had picked it up from a counter in my daughter’s kitchen. I made short work of going back to the office to gather my things, but at some point between parking my car in the Star driveway — leaving it unlocked as I have always done, a small-town habit that I quite consciously refuse to give up — and then racing inside to scoop up my laptop and papers, and then driving home (a trip of about 30 seconds, quite literally), the purse vanished from the face of the Earth.

Back home, I carried in two heavy shopping bags and went about my business until it came time to meet the Jitney. At that point, I realized I didn’t have my purse. Hurrying around the house, I was totally unable to locate it, and drove off to meet the bus with fingers crossed that I would not be caught driving without my license in my possession.

The next morning we searched the house, high and low, and we searched The Star. I searched on the ground around where I had been parked. My daughter searched her house, too, for good measure. The mystery deepened. I began to doubt my recall and phoned White’s and Waldbaum’s on the chance I it had been left there while collecting the Tylenol and ice cream. No, not there, either.

Having to cancel my credit cards didn’t seem like such a burden, although I was concerned about what hassle would be involved in obtaining a new copy of my license. I didn’t dare drive myself to police headquarters to make a report, so I enlisted my husband to take me there. The police officer couldn’t have been nicer, but by this time I was an anxious mess: Having exhausted what seemed like all the possibilities for this having been simply a case of innocent, absentminded, misplacing of a handbag, I had begun to consider the more unpleasant “what if?” scenarios. 

What if it had fallen on the ground outside my own front door and someone passing by had made off with it? What if I had left it on the passenger seat when the car was parked outside the office and someone had reached in and plucked it out? These are the questions people who lock their car doors in their own driveways ask themselves routinely, but I refuse to live like that, assuming crime is to be expected. 

Imagine my relief when I returned from police headquarters to learn that a Star employee had popped into the office with the purse a few minutes before. He had spotted it on the ground near a Dumpster that was wedged in the driveway to collect the debris from some building repairs. Whodunnit? I did. How had I — and the rest of the Star staff — managed to drive and walk repeatedly past the Dumpster without seeing it? Who cares? Everything was safe inside it, including my cards and money. 

Despite my feeling a certain embarrassment, this was definitely a case of all’s well that ends well. And I had an insight: What had had me so upset wasn’t the thought that only old people lose their handbags —  clearly, that’s not the case (and I should know, as I’ve been losing them all my life!) — but the thought that perhaps it had been stolen so close to home. No, I thought, East Hampton hasn’t changed that much.

East Hampton has seemed especially crowded for this time of year. With Christmas on a Thursday, many in the summer house and weekend crowd must have decided to head east and stay here through the New Year’s holiday.

Not that their being here is something to complain about, but there’s a difference. Drivers on Main Street, for example, have had that certain, uh, tentative quality since Dec. 24. Those of us here on weekdays during the depths of winter will know exactly what I am talking about.

Outside the movie theater on Sunday night, I had to hit the brakes as someone driving a sleek, low Porsche who had stopped half in the roadway to let out passengers suddenly moved back into traffic, causing the car in front of mine to swerve to avoid contact. Then, the Porsche driver swooped to the right onto Fithian Lane, without signaling, at the last minute. You don’t see that on a February Tuesday.

The part-time folks also have a certain cut to their jibs. The people walking past our office are a little more turned out. The outerwear on the children being taken in hand to the library next door seems just a smidge more fashionable.

At Georgica Beach on Sunday afternoon several groups of dark-jacketed people stood near the jetty watching equally dark-clad surfers riding chest-high waves. The onlookers’ furry hats and cellphone cameras pointing this way and that gave them away. Or so I supposed; there is really no way to know these days.

However, the quiet places are still quiet, some surprisingly so. The other night, my eldest child and I decided at the last minute to go to Montauk for Chinese food. On the ride from Amagansett we saw only two or three other cars. There was Wok ’n’ Roll, and when they, a young couple, left, it was just us and the waiter.

We didn’t see another vehicle all the way home.   

We will have returned from Palm Springs by now. When last we were there, at this time two years ago, I described it as heavenly inasmuch as we’d been able “to take delight in each other and to remember why we were magnetized from the start.”

“. . . It’s been a week in which everything’s been more than all right. No appointments to keep, no need to strip the bed because the cleaning women are coming, no urgencies, no duties of any kind. Ah, I’m telling you, to do nothing is to progress wonderfully.”

I suppose you can’t go to heaven again, but I would like to think, this being written 10 days before our departure, that you can. We’ll see. . . .

My late stepmother said she always had to have a reason to go somewhere, she didn’t just go somewhere to go somewhere. We do have a reason — there’s family out there. There’s a daughter and son-in-law, a first cousin and his wife, with a newborn, and, and . . . tennis courts! All kinds of tennis courts, grass, clay, Har-Tru, and hard, at one of the Courtyard Marriots in Palm Desert, about a half-hour distant.

The only thing is everybody out there plays golf, a game I’ve never cottoned to because it requires that you be calm and mature, not so anxious, as I am, about making mistakes, which, when you obsess over them, makes everything even worse. A sports psychologist told me that once. Maybe when I’m 80.

The universe seems closer there. Here the trees get in the way. So, if I can’t find anyone to play with, I’ll wander back to the Jacuzzi and continue to wonder, as “Concierto de Aranjuez” plays, what it’s all about.

Christa and I made a quick trip to New York recently. As we turned east on 34th Street after emerging from the Midtown Tunnel, we saw at least 50 Santas heading west toward Herald Square to take part in SantaCon. I noticed that every costume was the same, down to the cheap black plastic belt, the white faux-fur trim, and the ludicrous beard. And I recalled my own experiences, many years ago, as a St. Nick imposter.

In 1989, when I was working at Guild Hall, the staff was planning to march in the East Hampton Santa parade. None of us owned tractors or trucks, nor did we have the wherewithal to build a float. Somebody had the idea that one of us should dress as Santa Claus. Except for the security and maintenance people, who had to work on Saturday, I was the only male on the staff.

So as we paraded down Newtown Lane, I tossed candy canes left and right, blissfully unaware that at the end of the parade was the “real” Santa Claus. I wonder how many kids asked their parents why there were two Santas. And how many parents cursed the sham St. Nick for subverting their children’s fantasies.

(Then again, I can only imagine the confusion of city children watching on television as hundreds of Santas rampaged through New York in various stages of inebriation and disorderliness.)

Starting when my daughter, Kate, was 3 years old, and my son, Devin, was 1, every Christmas their playgroup -— kids and parents -— would celebrate with a party. Since I had the Santa costume in my closet, I volunteered to make a surprise visit as Father Christmas.

I tromped down the stairs carrying a pillowcase full of toys, ho-ho-ho-ing as authentically as I could, and solicited the kids’ Christmas wishes while they took turns on my lap. I was astonished that none of the kids, including my own, recognized me. This charade continued for at least four more years. I remember playing Kris Kringle in Devin’s kindergarten class at the Springs School without his realizing who I was.

Finally, when Kate was 7, she noticed that Santa had a Band-Aid on the same finger as her father. The jig was up. A different challenge posed itself. Since they knew Santa wasn’t coming down the chimney, what could we do to retain some holiday magic?

I had always awoken at 4 a.m. to stuff the presents beneath the tree. One year the big present was an outdoor, 15-foot-diameter trampoline. The only way to make it a surprise was to assemble it in the backyard before the kids woke up Christmas morning, directions and parts illuminated by a single floodlight. It’s a Festivus miracle it didn’t collapse when they started bouncing.

Another year they opened envelopes Christmas morning that held tickets to London, where we flew the following day. With the exception of a bomb scare at the Tate Modern, being locked inside Kensington Gardens, and a trip to Legoland, where Devin insisted I accompany him on a water ride in 30-degree weather, it was a splendid trip.

The surprises peaked when Devin was in seventh grade. Several of his friends had dirt bikes -— motorcycles, not bicycles -— that they rode on the trails in Springs. I don’t know if he has ever wanted anything more than he wanted a dirt bike, but I told him it was out of the question. Nonetheless, I visited the showroom in Southampton out of curiosity, blanched when I heard what the machines cost, then fell, not for the first time, for the offer of an extended payment plan.

The salesman delivered the bike the day before Christmas while the kids were in school, and I rolled it into our storage shed. Even today, the memory of Devin’s face when I opened the door to the shed brings tears to my eyes. As did the sight of my son taking off on the bike, shifting gears, and disappearing from sight. (I never mastered the machine. I stopped trying after I popped a wheelie and almost drove into Charlie Marder’s back porch.)

The bikes weren’t street-legal, but the kids chose trails and side streets over main roads. However, about six months later the police busted Devin and a couple of his friends as they emerged from a trail onto one of the streets off Gardiner Avenue in Springs. After I bailed out the bike and managed to get it home in the back of my minivan, it wound up where it started: in the shed.

Sometimes when I think about Christmas, I’m ashamed at how each year, despite my resolutions to the contrary, I have capitulated to the idea that more is more, not for me but for my kids. And I still do. Except now it’s not toys but clothing, kitchenware, and other things they can’t afford while working for nonprofits and paying Brooklyn rents. So my conscience is relatively clear, and I tell myself I’m doing my bit for the supposed economic recovery.

Mark Segal is a writer at The Star.

The clamor among some Democrats, those who used to be known as liberal but now prefer to be called progressive, for Elizabeth Warren to run for president makes for fascinating politics. Like Barack Obama when he took on his first successful presidential campaign, she is a freshman senator. 

It might be said that the trajectory of candidates for our highest political office has, like everything else in our developed world, speeded up. Before 2008, few of us would have thought a first-term senator could resign before even that first term was over to run for president (much less win). 

According to credible exit polls, Mr. Obama’s first victory depended in large part on those younger than 30 who gave him 66 percent of their vote. It’s fair to say that in the most recent election this mass of youthful supporters stayed home, no doubt because many had become disillusioned. 

No longer do the words on the most famous of the Obama posters, “hope,” “change,” and “progress,” seem to hold much political potency. Even ardent Obama fans have had a hard time keeping the fires of hope stoked during the virulent factionalism battles in Washington over the last six years. Cynics have been made of many naïve or idealistic voters, and the pendulum has been given a hard swing to the right.

Depending on your point of view, it’s easy either to love or to hate Elizabeth Warren. Her intensity in speaking out about the corrupting influence of big banks and her courage in doing so are remarkable. Even so, it’s hard to imagine that she, or anyone else, could wear the kind of national-savior mantle that supporters draped over Mr. Obama. (There were many, to be sure, who always thought he was the emperor with no clothes.) 

Hillary Clinton is supported by 53 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, according to a recent Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll. That’s roughly five times more than those who support Ms. Warren. 

Some political theorists say the organizations urging Ms. Warren to come forward as a presidential candidate — MoveOn, Democracy for America, Emily’s List — have an unstated agenda, which is to press Mrs. Clinton, the only viable candidate in the field so far, to prove her own willingness to take on Wall Street and to adopt at least some of what they describe positively as Ms. Warren’s economic populism.

Ms. Warren has said she is not seeking the nomination; if that holds true, it may turn out to be good for the Democratic Party. Who knows what the future holds for her? My guess is that she has already taken heed of what Charles Krauthammer, the ultraconservative columnist, has said about her: “I’d love to see her run,” Mr. Krauthammer said. “It would be a festival if you’re a conservative or a Republican. We put up anybody sentient on the other side it’ll be a good night on election night.”

So what has happened with that good old-fashioned word “it”? You would think that so useful a word would not go out of style or be forgotten. But, if listening to such well-regarded sources as National Public Radio news is any illustration, it has been almost fully supplanted by “they.”

I blame the Supreme Court, in part. In its (notice that?) Citizens United decision, the justices all but handed full personhood to corporations back in 2010. The trickle-down has been significant and to some ears, mine included, extremely annoying. Everything from multinational manufacturers to federal agencies are referred to as “they” when they, by all rights, should always be “it.”

In its proper usage, they is the third person plural pronoun “used to represent persons or things last mentioned or implied” or “unspecified persons or people in general,” in a lovely old American Heritage dictionary that I keep in my office.

It seems to me to be crossing a line for organizations like NPR’s news programs, for example, to subtly side with the court in helping to support the concept that corporations and giant bureaucracies are people, too.

Webster’s dictionary takes a decent crack at the they/it collective noun conundrum: “It is treated as singular when the collective is thought of as a whole and as plural when the individual members are thought of as acting separately.” So, following that rule, most of the time singular entities like the Ford Motor Company or the Food and Drug Administration should be referred to as “it” for short. Human beings acting in some fashion within each organization would be referred to as they.

Here is one recent example from “All Things Considered” that I remembered from a drive-time listening session and looked up once I got back to the office: “Analysts had been expecting the Fed to signal it would hike rates around the middle of next year by removing from their statement language suggesting they would hold rates near zero. . . .” The reporter for the story, John Ydstie, managed to get it both right and wrong all in the same sentence.

Language changes, of course, and this is one curmudgeons like me cannot hope to win — especially when the highest court in the land disagrees and Facebook constantly reminds us that a friend has a birthday: “Wish them a happy birthday today.”

I’ve read that the greatest Christmas gift is the knowledge that one is blessed, and I know that that is not a frequent occurrence.

It happened to me the other day, though, a few weeks before Christmas, when I finally persuaded my wife to come see me play tennis — singles, not doubles, which I’ve played pretty much exclusively for the past eight years, having come to the conclusion at the age of 66 that singles had passed me by. And, besides, I, being a crazy lefty with a spin serve and quick hands at the net, have always been a better doubles player.

And that’s still true, though this fall, having nothing left to lose, I decided to get back into the game, enrolling in East Hampton Indoor’s least demanding singles league. And, at the same time, to work out once a week with Rob Balnis at East End Physical Therapy so that I could strengthen my left shoulder, and to religiously attend the once-a-week stroke-of-the-week clinics at E.H.I.T. that Lisa Jones gives.

And, surprise, with practice I’ve begun to improve! Who would have thought it pushing 75.

Interestingly, I won matches from the start (fueled by desperation more than anything), but it wasn’t until I lost two straight for the first time in the eighth week, to a younger and better player, that I had fun, my wins notwithstanding. He had beat me, but it had been a good match, which, when my better angel has my ear, is what I say we all want.

Actually, what I came to want was my wife’s blessing. She has tended to demur when at times I’ve asked her to come see me play, not being all that eager, I suppose, to watch an old coot alternately preen, pout, and shout.

But, as I say, the other night she did come, and, aside from a few glances her way, I concentrated on the task at hand and kept quiet. Again, it was a good match, one that could have gone either way, and I did win, but it was the knowledge that I was beginning to develop a somewhat effective style of play — one that I hope will finally lead to the putting away of childish things — and that she was there to see I was (thanks to Lisa and Robbie) improving that was buoying. We smiled at each other as I came off the court, and I knew I had her blessing, which was all that I wanted for Christmas.