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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Driving, as I often do, toward the Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, crossing the place where Lumber Lane and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike conjoin and a driveway for a large parking lot to the west butts in, I can’t help feeling a sense of satisfaction when I see the imposing 19th-century buildings that mark two corners of the intersection. Not too long ago they were in need of various degrees of rehabilitation and faced uncertain futures.

Today, one, on the northeast corner, is the high-style Topping Rose House, with a celebrated restaurant and hotel accommodations, while the other, on the southeast corner and still undergoing renovation, was preserved with the help of South­ampton Town and Suffolk County and will become a Bridgehampton Historical Society museum.

Both buildings were built in Greek Revival style in the mid-19th century by a prominent Bridgehampton man, Abraham Topping Rose, who settled his family first in what is now known at the Nathaniel Rogers House. He built the Topping Rose House later, apparently wanting to live in something bigger.

I can’t but feel good about historic buildings that have been saved and put to good use, and I admire those who make it happen, even if they are not in my immediate neighborhood. (I once thought about restoring a three-story building in Flanders, which was dark green, derelict, and totally out of place, but it was only a fantasy.)

We East Hamptoners tend to be full of pride of place; we puff up like peacocks when we have an opportunity to tell visitors the history of the 17th-century Mulford Farmhouse or the early-20th-century Thomas Moran studio, among other historic buildings in the village. We almost claim ownership of the Montauk Light, which is as iconic a structure as can be and certainlydoesn’t belong to us.

On the other hand, Sag Harbor, which is full of old houses that residents, summer and year-round, have restored, didn’t seem to make much noise when the former Bulova watchcase factory was sold to developers who are turning it into a citified and exceedingly high-priced complex of condominium apartments. It’s too bad that a use wasn’t possible that was more or less in keeping with the New England factories that have been reimagined as public gathering places.

As for my own house, a part of it dates to the 18th century although additions and renovations were done in the 20th. And it certainly is not going to be a teardown in the 21st.

Back in Bridgehampton, it is reassuring that residents literally took to the streets (well, just Main Street) to argue against the construction of a 9,030-square-foot commercial building for a CVS Pharmacy on a vacant tract across the road from the Topping Rose House. They have argued that the community’s war monument is in the middle of the intersection there, that traffic is already bad, and that the property would make an appropriate commons. They have even formed an organization called Save Main Street.

As things like this sometimes go, the protesters seem to have history on their side and not much else. Excavation has already begun, apparently on the strength of one permit, although another is needed, and the Southampton Town Planning Board has been sued by the property’s owner and CVS for requiring that a full environmental study in keeping with state law be done. Well, at least the protesters can take consolation in the restoration of the houses that Abraham Rose built.   

After interviewing Cory Lillie and Kyle Solomon about the soon-to-be East End Sharks, a nascent high school ice hockey team that ought to be fun to write about this winter and in winters to come, I went onto the last court open to play that remained, the hard court, to practice my serve, which had been tweaked the day before at an adult clinic at the East Hampton Indoor Club.

I recommend these Wednesday morning clinics given by Lisa Jones: You can always learn something. Every week it’s a different stroke, and by the time they go around again you’ll probably be in need of reminding.

Having reached an age when things can go south pretty quick, I try to pace myself, though the high-strung teenager (interestingly, I string my rackets loosely now, preferring power to control, as I suppose an out-of-control teenager might) remains within. I was called to account the other night by a player on a neighboring court who had had it with my acting-out and told me in no uncertain terms to quit it. I stared. He glared. And so the confrontation ended.

I had been justly admonished. I who had recently written, in good faith, a column about how keeping your head when all about you were losing theirs (not literally, of course, at least in our immediate environs) was the key to winning tennis.

Shame, shame. Go and sin no more.

I emerged from a full immersion in the subsequent serving clinic reborn, competitively rearmed and, dare I say it, morally so as well. Well, maybe I oughtn’t dare to say that, though my renewed intention is to speak softly and carry a big racket, to let my racket make the racket in other words.

I’m hoping my serve will be salvific in this regard. What is the Ross School’s motto? Ah, “Know thyself in order to serve.” A good one, wouldn’t you say, for a school to which a tennis academy’s attached? With me it may be the other way round.

The rest is silence . . . or license. It’s all how you look at it. We’ll see.

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.

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.