’Twas a week before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even the dog. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a vision of Jesus sketched into my morning peanut butter toast.

He wore not a red suit but a ragged white robe, and wore not a silly hat but a crown full of thorns. His belly was slim, not jiggling with jelly, and He didn’t look jolly but solemn and troubled.

He left me a message each day for a week and said he’s dismayed at the havoc we’ve wreaked.

I dared not eat eggs for the mess He might make, but He said it’s a mess that we’ve made on our own. He said we were fighting in wars that should end, and that the Kardashians should be set out to sea in a storm. He’ll greet them with glee and rid them of vanity and teach humility. Celebrity nonsense is one He not likes and He said we’re all one and must share all alike.

The rich are too rich and the poor are too poor, so it’s time we all group as one like before. If good deeds are performed, then happiness follows. It’s in our best interest to all get along.

Warriors, He said, should lay down their weapons to find peace without sorrow at least for a day. The wars being fought are all wrong, He did say, for no matter what He’s called, He is one for us all.

The scripture He wrote each day was fine; you could tell He had plenty of stuff on His mind. And what did He write on my toast you may ask, oh plenty of stuff; He took us to task.

Our fingers were not made to tap on a screen, but for tilling the soil to nurture ourselves. He never looked down, his eyes glued on mine, and channeled a message that He wanted to spread. Our clothing is silly and costs far too much, a waste of good money that will soon turn to dust. Our smiles to each other, not perfect and pure, but a gesture that should not be ignored.

The greed all around us should end right away, or a flood just like Noah’s will soon fill the land. The earth it is warming and not just a hoax, for what He created is not going as planned. Soon He’ll determine what happens next, but another chance He’ll give us to fix what is wrong.

At Christmas it’s time to reach out to each other and share all good things, no matter how precious. And finally He wrote on my toast yesterday, “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good day.”

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

The death of a friend is dreadful. A gathering of friends who come together to show how much they cared about the one who is gone and to support a family in their grief is, on the other hand, a lesson in living. 

So it was this week when a large crowd of people whose lives had been touched by Ed Hannibal visited the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, and so it was at the funeral Mass the next day at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton, where the liturgy and a moving eulogy reminded all there of what a fine man he had been.

Ed was 78 when he died on Dec. 6. He had five children and seven grandchildren and friends and associates from many different walks of life. It was not surprising that the assembled were numerous and ranged in age from 4 to the mid-80s. So many wanted to express their sorrow and speak with members of the family. One woman told me later she had stood in line for almost two hours. 

I was one of Ed’s generation and I know that others, like me, could not help but feel the absences of those who had died before. Other fathers and husbands, other mothers and wives. Nor could we help but recognize how much we all had aged, especially if we hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

We reminisced. We spoke about, or tried to remember, how we first met. We brought up riotous occasions that we had shared in the good old days, when this was more of a small town, and said we were sorry to have missed so much of each other’s families in the intervening years after some had moved away, and after the South Fork had boomed into something else.  

We made light of the fact that some of us were not as tall as we used to be. I admitted to having lost two inches, while a friend said he had refused to believe it when his doctor told him he was four inches shorter than before. That is, he refused to believe it until he realized for the first time that his wife was taller than he was.

What remained unsaid was that there is no choice but to accept the fact that, having been lucky enough to survive for so many decades, we, too, are moving on, that some of us will live to mourn the others. 

One of the lessons that came clear is that friendship and expressions of affection matter, that kindness shown makes our own lives worth living. Ed had shown an awful lot. And that — the rare goodness of the life just ended — left us with more than memories. It was a promise to be the best we can.  

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.

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.

The weekend had been beautiful, Saturday morning typically lazy. Slow to arise, the leisurely making of fresh juice before stepping into the light and crisp November air and into the village, where steaming coffee would be poured at Mary’s and carried to the Square, where a park bench and laughter and fond reminiscence awaited.

Everything was different on Sunday — or it wasn’t, until it was. Suspicion, accusation and recrimination, the dull ache in the gut as another glass of wine was drained.

Outside the dark and lifeless house, the raindrops fell on the car’s roof like ten thousand million bits of shattered glass. Inside, the odd burst of sharp words would slice open the dreadful silence, and their hearts would race, and he would feel a little less alive, like before.

You need to learn to forgive, she used to tell him. You have to let go of the past. If you don’t, you will carry that anger into every relationship. You cannot have a happy, loving relationship if you hold on to resentment. Learn to forgive — it’s easy.

He was dismissive, even scornful. You’re not a damn therapist, he would say, shutting down the conversation until she was afraid to mention it anymore. But over time, and then trauma, he came to understand that she was so perfectly right.

Coincidentally, or not, they had listened to Edith Piaf on the gray and rainy Sunday afternoon. Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien, ni le bien qu’on m’a fait, ni le mal, tout ça m’est bien egal. No nothing, no I do not regret anything, neither the good that was done to me, neither the bad, I have no care for it.

As the days grew shorter and the nights long, the relationship deteriorated as he, blissfully oblivious, went about his own days and nights. And then she was gone.

Until she was back, a goddess in the doorway at 5 a.m. on All Saints’ Day. They were together again, until they were not, and then they were, and then they were not, and it was like sailing through a hurricane, and he felt sick and could not sleep or eat or concentrate and did not feel alive very much at all.

But then he understood, and their fates aligned again and everything fell into place, as in a miracle. I forgive easily, she said. Balayer pour toujour, je repars à zero. Swept away forever, I restart from zero.

Every day is a new day, she told him. I didn’t think it was possible, but you are now everything, and so much more, and I have never felt so grateful. Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien, car ma vie, car mes joies, aujourd’hui, ça commence avec toi. No nothing, no I don’t regret anything, because my life, because my joys, today, it starts with you.

He noticed that the rain had stopped falling. And in this newfound softness he wrote to her.

Pour mon seul et unique amour

Je veux me donner entierement a toi

Quand nous sommes éveillé ensemble

A la fin de la journée,

Quand notre amour est fait

C’est seulement le début

Du reve que nous revons ensemble

Dans la nuit

Quand le reve est proche.

Pour mon seul et unique amour

Mon coeur se réveille

Et je t’envoie ma lumiere

Et notre chambre sombre est lumineuse

Comme nos ames seront bientot unit

En chanson je professe mon amour

Toujours, l’amour éternel

Merci Catherine

Pour me montrer le chemin.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

What sort of person willingly goes into harm’s way to help others? What makes a doctor or nurse fly to West Africa to do what they can in the Ebola crisis? What drives a journalist like the late James Foley, who was beheaded, into the heart of darkness to unveil things the world should know? How does a female reporter in the Middle East find the courage of her convictions? What balance of ideals and personal interest makes some folks willing to tempt fate for what they would call the greater good?

If there were simple answers to these questions, it might help the rest of us mere mortals better understand and appreciate them. But I don’t think there are any simple answers. 

Some people, like the staff of Doctors Without Borders or other humanitarian organizations, spend their adult lives — perhaps even the best years of their lives — in noble pursuits. Veterans Day this week was the occasion for media accounts of the untold number of men and women who sacrificed for others in the name of country, duty, or honor.

Those of us who count our blessings from the safety of our own livingroom hearthside chalk up our own good fortune to — what? Luck? Chance? Fate? The will of God?

I certainly consider myself one of the lucky: I have never known war, and what I know about the Holocaust did not come from personal experience. I haven’t faced serious illness, mercifully, and have no immediate friends or family in the armed forces. But the average American’s good fortune has come to feel like more than luck.

We accept as the natural order of things that we should be exempt from plagues like Ebola or the horrific behaviors that mankind is capable of. We expect to live in peace and plenty, expect to find enough food on the table. Although it may be irrational, we don’t expect a natural disaster (flood, famine, hurricane) to come our way.

The elementary school I graduated from in Bayonne, N.J., was named for Horace Mann, the writer, political leader, and educational philosopher whose impact on American schools remains so strong that it is hard to believe he was born in 1796 and died in 1859. 

In a speech as president of Antioch College in the last year of his life, Mr. Mann said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” There are those among us whom Horace Mann would count as having met that challenge. Would you call them the righteous? On our own doorstep, the volunteers in the ambulance and fire services deserve admiration. And by contrast, naturally, I’ve often thought, What about me?

We weren’t all born to be heroes. But in the annual mad-consumerism stretch between Veterans Day and the December holidays, I have a suggestion for those readers, like me, who would at least like to do a drop of armchair good: Google something called GivingTuesday.org, where you will be encouraged to give the actual heroes, either abroad or at home, a bit of humble support.

Middletown High School, where the state boys soccer Final Four games were played recently, is the Taj Mahal of high schools, the size, I thought, of at least two airports.

An eight-lane track wraps around a large turf field overlooked by a Jumbotron — yes, a Jumbotron — and at the other end is a large grandstand over which a commodious press box stretches. I tend to stay away from press boxes, though, preferring a ground-level view, as close to the action as possible.

We, my photographer friend, Craig Macnaughton, and I (when it comes to picture-taking, I am John the Baptist to his Jesus Christ) arrived Sunday morning at least two hours in advance of the East Hampton-Greece Athena final. He went off to check the lighting and to soak up the atmosphere while I took a bag of balls and my racket to the tennis courts, hidden from view around the school’s backside. He told me, by the way, that the stadium’s lighting was of Super Bowl quality.

The patched tennis courts with lonely piles of leaves in the corners clearly hadn’t been beneficiaries, as I was told the turf stadium had been, of a New York State “excel grant.” And there was goose shit all over the lacrosse fields above the courts. There’s always a worm in the apple.

Of course what sticks in my craw the most is the fact that our star player, Nick West, because his left foot had been stepped on and broken by an opposing player in the semifinal, never got a chance to play in what would have been the biggest game of his high school career.

With him I’m quite sure we would have won. Defensively, he would have given Greece Athena’s 6-foot-6-inch center midfielder a run for his money, and he would have sparked our offense as well, as he had in the first half against Jamesville-DeWitt the previous day, before he had to be sidelined for the rest of the game because of his injury.

In the final, it was one bad break after another as key players, either because of injuries or cardings, were withdrawn, one after another, from the field of play, the last, after a Greece Athena player had flopped in front of him, being East Hampton’s stout-hearted defender, Bryan Oreamuno, whose late grandfather, Enrique Leon, was one of the first to come here, in the late 1960s, from Costa Rica.

Oreamuno, who had been called earlier for a foul as he contested a 50-50 ball at the top of East Hampton’s penalty box (a referee’s gift that resulted in a 2-1 Greece Athena lead), was in tears, and five and a half minutes later most everyone was in tears or choked up — the players, who had been dreaming of a state title since they began kicking a ball around together at the ages of 5 or 6, the coaches, who had made of these talented ball-handlers a great team, and the some 300 fans who’d made the trip upstate.

Rich King, East Hampton’s coach, was right when he said afterward in reply to a sportswriter’s question that he didn’t think Greece Athena was the better team, though it had been, he said, on that day.

Later, once we were back, Craig emailed me that he’d gone with his wife to drown his sorrows at Townline BBQ, and that while they were there, the team and its coaches had come in, all seemingly in good spirits.

I, who had spent a while recounting to my wife on my return all of the day’s bad breaks and injustices, my eyes welling up again as I did so, was glad to hear it, that they knew they were a great team.

The best one I’ve ever seen, Greece Athena included.

As we pulled out of the massive parking lot, I thought of what Mike Burns had said after our softball team had lost a state final in Binghamton about 10 years ago, to wit, that the other team had to return to Glens Falls, while we got to go back to Bonac.

I am thankful that Facebook wasn’t around when I was a teenager. I can’t even imagine the trouble I’d have gotten into if it was. As it is, I’m a grown woman and get in trouble from my children for some of my posts, which I think are quite harmless and often humorous. They don’t agree, so obviously they didn’t get their sense of humor from their mother.

I’ve been told by them mid-post to get off Facebook. Can you imagine? As Rodney Dangerfield used to say, I get no respect. We were all at a wedding last summer and someone posted a picture of my family — my husband, two daughters, and my son-in-law. I just happened to mention that my upper body looked damn good, especially my girls, both of which were standing tall and perky.

In my post I wrote, “Wow, look at those babies, damn they look good!” Well, you would have thought I had declared a war on women the world over. All three of my kids, one as far away as Hawaii, commented under the post, “Mom, get off Facebook. Now.”

But that’s when my real girls, my girlfriends, began the battle and told my children to get off Facebook and to leave their mother, whose girls aren’t always so perky, alone. I don’t know how these celebrity mothers get away with all their nudity and foul language. I was fully clothed in the picture but just happened to be wearing a really good brassiere, and still I got hell for it.

I was late to join Facebook, and only did so at a colleague’s suggestion that I might be missing some juicy news tidbits. At first I just scrolled through other people’s posts and actually found it boring. Half of the people posting pictures of their little darlings I didn’t know and the other half were crying a river that I cared nothing about. I had enough problems of my own to bother with someone else’s ratty landlord or boss. Don’t they realize their bosses might read their posts? I doubt my boss, David, reads my Facebook posts, but if he did he would know that I’ve said he’s the most wonderful boss in the world. I hope he reads this because I’ll be hitting him up for a raise soon.

But then Facebook pissed me off. They started culling pictures from other areas of my life that I would never have posted, ones in which the girls did not look good and neither did my hair, a frizzy mess. In one picture, standing between my two daughters, I had my arms raised and wrapped around their shoulders and had a camel toe. If you don’t know what a camel toe means ask a 20-something. Let’s just say it’s an unflattering crotch shot.

And who the hell is Facebook to ask where I went to college or what types of music I like and then assume to know what movies I might like and post them on my Facebook page?

When a good friend of mine died I asked for prayers on his behalf. How innocent is that? But the family was furious with me, and Facebook made me cry. I should have waited for them to announce the death, but thought our friendship allowed me some rights. We’ve since made up, of course, but I learned a valuable lesson. Mind your own business when a friend dies, at least until the family announces it.

If Facebook was around when we were kids, I can’t imagine the fights it could have started. And remember I’m a Bronx girl, so fights can turn very dangerous. We would probably have commented on Suzy’s frizzy hair, Jimmy’s black socks with shorts, Nancy’s dirty ankles, or Sister Mary whatever’s yellow, broken teeth that we had to look at all day while stifling giggles or risk being beaten with a yardstick.

Let’s make a Thanksgiving pact. No nasty posts for this one wonderful day, the one holiday that doesn’t involve gifts, the stress of buying those gifts, but lots of good food. We can do it. I know we can because Christmas is right around the corner and, boy, that is sure to give us plenty to write about on Facebook. And remember, if you give a crappy gift, many of which I have received over the years, you will be written about for all to see. So shop carefully, my friends! With Facebook on the scene there’s no hiding behind re-gifting, so don’t even try it.

I’m planning on getting perky again on Thanksgiving. I just hope the girls don’t get in the way of the platters I’ll be serving food on. And if things go well, I might just get perky again for Christmas and have myself a very perky Christmas. At least my husband will enjoy it.

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

Bargain-hunting is a hallowed American pastime. Despite the recession and widespread joblessness, most Americans are generally well-enough off to be able to plunge into the fray to buy whatever it is they’re coveting, especially when there’s a hefty discount.

With Black Friday — the ballyhooed beginning of the winter shopping season — upon us, I’ve been pondering why it is that I not only ignore our annual American spree but consider it somehow out of bounds, a breach of tradition. A whole month of holiday shopping? At least the British have the good taste to leave the bargain-hunting to Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.

Of course, I like bargains, too. I’m really not much of a shopper, but have been known to take pleasure in showing off a few items of clothing I bought for $6 or so at the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society Bargain Box. Everybody likes a deal, even the rich — or perhaps I should say especially the rich. I bet some scholar could prove that the richest among us at least partly accumulated their wealth by making purchases, from pots and pans to properties and private planes, at a discount. (Or that their forebears did the bargain-hunting for them.)

It’s possible that I am averse to Black Friday because I have an almost perverse suspicion of whatever the crowd is doing. Perhaps I am simply afraid of being caught doing something everyone else is doing.

Readers of The New York Times undoubtedly are familiar with its approach to feature stories, which is to hook readers with specific, personal details about individuals who epitomize the crux of the trend or cultural moment that is about to be revealed. So it was with fascination that I spied a piece in Saturday’s Business Day section about a super-shopper named Derek De Armond, who began camping in a tent outside a Best Buy in Florida more than two weeks before the doors were to swing open for the Black Friday pandemonium.

Did I think he was nuts? I did. I read the report with the kind of avid, creeping horror others might feel when reading a tale of true-crime gore. 

The Times reported that Mr. De Armond was having a grand old time and thinking — with sportsmanlike bonhomie — of others, too, not just himself. Because he stood to lose his place in line if the tent weren’t occupied 24 hours a day, he had rounded up his sons and a passel of “teammates” to rotate through the campsite. “It’s like a tailgate party at a football game,” he told the paper. “We barbecue every night. We invite people in; we’ve made new friends.”

Mr. De Armond said he planned to spend $399 on an iPad Air 2 that ordinarily costs $499, and that he also had his eye on a 50-inch LED TV that he was going to nab for $199, well below the list price of $799.99. The kicker? To quote from The Times: “He plans to donate the television to a local children’s hospital for a fund-raising raffle.” 

The example of good Mr. De Armond certainly flies in the face of my anti-shopping radicalism, but, still, I seriously doubt that most Black Friday warriors are out there to do charitable works. 

I don’t plan to succumb. Instead, I have pledged to hit the L.V.I.S. Bargain Box before Christmas. It has three pluses going for it: shopping at home, finding a bargain, and doing some real good all at the same time.

Just after sunrise on Sunday, with a first cup of coffee down the hatch and another getting ready on the stove, I went down to the beach for a walk with the dogs. It was a cold morning; a strong northwest wind had blown itself out overnight, but the chill lingered. The sand underfoot was hard, as if getting ready for the freeze to come.

Gardiner’s Bay at this time of the year is devoid of most of spring and summer’s life. The clear, cold water provides little in the way of baitfish for gulls, and the terns have long since left on their southward migration. Long-tail ducks and scoters are there, though, diving to take shellfish from the rocks. Shorebirds in their gray winter plumage pick at the water’s edge.

A short way to the west of where I began walking, I came on a small sea turtle on its back at the high tide line. At this time of year, as the water rapidly cools, turtles like that one sometimes fall into a sort of torpor before they can move to warmer waters. Groups like the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research  and Preservation call the phenomena cold-stunning, and they run workshops and volunteer networks to scour the beaches in the hope of rescuing them.

Those walking the beaches have been asked to phone the group’s hotline if they encounter turtles or other stranded marine life. A technician is rapidly sent to retrieve the animal, which sometimes can be brought back to normal in a controlled setting. Under no circumstances should they be put back into the water or heated even slightly by well-meaning finders.

My turtle, the first known stranding in New York State this season, did not make it. Kim Durham of the Riverhead Foundation said that it could not be revived, likely because it had spent at least three hours on the sand before the dogs and I arrived. I found out later it was an Atlantic green turtle, listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

I was late getting out of the house with the kids on the following mornings, so I did not have a chance to return to the beach to look for more turtles, which has nagged at me. I hope to get out there as soon as I can now that the weather has turned even colder.

The Riverhead Foundation stranding line can be phoned at 369-9829.