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.

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.

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.

Returning from an ever so brief visit to D.C., where we — Mary, I should say — baby-sat two grandchildren, and I tended largely to the basic needs of a pug who had a heavily bandaged foot (the result of a torn, bleeding toenail), we listened with fascination to NPR’s “TED Radio Hour” as scientists traced (ever so briefly) what’s been going on for the past 13.8 billion years.

I would say I prefer mind travel to the normal kind. In fact, as we were about to depart last Thursday from the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton, where Mary works two days a week, I told her hard-working boss, Penny Wright, that, at 743/4 it was all I could do to summon up the will to drive to Southampton.

Still, once at our daughter and son-in-law’s house in Kensington, Md., the next day, I drew out from the hall-length bookshelf Life magazine’s “Heaven on Earth” book with its colorful photos of 100 places one must see while on the planet. I didn’t see the Super 8 in Pennsville, N.J., in there, though I’d rank that very high.

We were in a relaxed mood, and my mind was untethered, at the Super 8. It was there that Mary told the clerk that some people had been stressed out to hear earlier that day that registration for the library’s yoga class was closed.

“Whaddya mean, it’s closed?” I chimed in, taking on the role of a stressed yoga registrant for the clerk’s amusement. “How’m I gonna relax for Chris’ sake?!”

That and Mary’s invariable sunny nature whenever dealing with other human beings, especially with other hard-working people, led to an upgrade to a suite, at a bargain-basement price.

The next morning, at the Cracker Barrel nearby, we learned there were no newspapers to be had. “That’s why they’re so happy here,” I said.

She spoke over country bacon and farm-fresh Grade A eggs and homemade country biscuits of an interesting novel she was reading about Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, who, in fictional form, was among the characters in “The Sun Also Rises.”

“I didn’t like that one at all,” I said. “They were all drunks and didn’t give a shit about anything.”

“Well, what were you like when you were 20?” said Mary.

“I was a drunk and didn’t give a shit about anything.”

The scientific lecturers I mentioned above — David Christian, Louise Leakey, and Spencer Wells — are of a contrary mind of course, to wit, that we should give a shit.

“ ‘Can we hold it together?’ ” Ms. Leakey asked at one point, after noting that her father had “so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.”

I would say that species-wise our grandchildren, based on our time with them this past weekend, are wonderfully evolved.

“I’ve had fun,” Jack, the 8-year-old, said, when Mary leaned over as we were watching the World Series and asked him what he thought of life so far.

“So have I,” I said to him, “and I hope you can say the same thing when you’re 743/4.”

“Barcelona . . . I’ve always wanted to go there,” Mary said as we looked at Life’s “Heaven on Earth” book. I duly reminded myself we’d have to go there some day.

But when on Monday morning we parted, she for a dental appointment, I for work, I found myself saying, “Remember, we’ll always have the Super 8.”

Two houses, huge ones, are going up just south of the Ross Lower School on Butter Lane in Bridgehampton, but even pondering the fact that they are on what was supposed to be protected farmland did not dispel my happy mood as I drove away from the school’s field house after a yoga class. 

Sunday morning was bright and beautiful, with the temperature heading into the 60s. The roads were empty, the wind hadn’t kicked up yet, and I was propelled back to simpler times. 

Decades ago, my children went to the original Hampton Day School among the Butter Lane potato fields. There was no field house at the time, and the Day School is no more, but I thought of how lucky my kids were to go to school there, and I thought about other Sundays when the weather was autumnally spectacular. 

In days long gone, my husband led a small caravan of family and friends on mornings like this into the back woods or onto the beaches to commune with nature and each other. Even in fall, when it was apt to be windy, the mantra was, “Ev knows where to find a lee.” The picnics, cookouts, and assorted hijinks were fun. We set aside politics and war and whatever other bad news was brewing and let a sense of serenity reign. That’s what I was feeling on Sunday.

I was among the last to leave the field house and found myself driving very slowly. I was a bit bemused to think that I was not headed for an afternoon of camaraderie in the great outdoors, but for King Kullen. To soften the blow, I stopped first for a visit and a latte at Java Nation. 

Once upon a time, many of us considered a morning like this perfect sailing weather. If the wind became too strong, we knew how to reef and make the most of it. It was joyous to be at the tiller. There were October mornings on Napeague when the cranberries begged to be noticed. I liked to sit right down in the marshy spots to gather handfuls.

Of course, the news of the world was terrible on Sunday morning. It could not make anyone feel good. But I had a sense of calm and was aware of my own good luck in being where I was. 

The lyrics of the final song in Leonard Bernstein’s version of “Candide” have resonated since the Choral Society’s summer concert, in which I sang. On Sunday morning, I couldn’t get Voltaire’s words, or Bernstein’s music, out of my head. 

“. . . . Let us try,

Before we die,

To make some sense of life.

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We’ll do the best we know.

We’ll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow . . . 

And make our garden grow.”

The Devil House was not haunted. At least my friends and I did not think it was. Still, that did not keep us from being so terrified of it that we teenagers were scared to walk past it on a dark night, and even going by it during the day might bring a shiver down the spine.

I had not thought about the place for years, decades probably, until someone I had just met mentioned it at lunch the other day. The question was whether there were any East Hampton ghost stories, and Lilly Hartley, with whom I was serving as a juror for the Hamptons International Film Festival, spoke up. I had forgotten all about it, but as Lilly reminisced the Devil House came back to me.

She had grown up in a house near the Star office and, like my friends and me when we were coming of age, she spent idle nights wandering around the village. The Devil House, on a quiet street near the Nature Trail, had a powerful attraction. Hidden by a thick wall of trees and shrubs, its mock-Tudor mien was brooding.

A path led from the lawn down toward the swampy end of the property. At its end, there was an opening in the woods, and under a dome-like clearing what seemed to us the very head of the Devil roosted among the cleft branches. Illuminated perhaps by no more than a cigarette lighter, it was terrifying in the extreme, and none of us could stand there for more than a moment before sprinting for the safety of the streetlights.

Many years later, my wife and I would celebrate our wedding with a reception in the Devil House’s great hall. By then the head, a gargoyle, I think, was long gone. Those of us at the reception who had crept onto the grounds on those dark, dark nights in our misspent youth could only glance over at the brushy path and smile at one another.

On Tuesday morning while we were on our way to school, Adelia announced that she would have picked Lee Zeldin for Congress had she been old enough to vote. Adelia is in the eighth grade and not yet 14. “Mmm-hmm,” I said, “Why’s that?”

“Tim Bishop is being investigated,” she replied.

“Oh. Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

“YouTube,” she said. “And Hulu.”

Like so many of her peers, Adelia seems to live online these days, watching who knows what on her phone. Sometimes she has a television series going. Other times she is deeply focused on what are now known as Youtubers, apparently charming young people speaking directly to the camera about all manner of inanities and self-centered observations. And, for the last month and a half, just about everything she has looked at has been prefaced by a political advertisement attacking one side or the other.

The New York Times led a recent article about the digital pursuit of potential voters with a disturbing anecdote. One morning a couple of weeks ago, apparently, riders on the Montauk branch of the Long Island Rail Road were suddenly and all at once interrupted by the same ad blasting Representative Tim Bishop on their mobile devices. Just who paid for the message is not clear; it is likely to have been one of the dark-money committees now used by both sides. As much as $10 million may have been spent on the Bishop-Zeldin race by the time the counting is done.

At my desk computer, it took me two clicks on YouTube later that day, on “Funny Cats Compilation #1 -2014,” to hit my first attack ad, something about Mr. Bishop and casino chips; I’m not sure what since I had the volume down. Still, one of the reporters happened to stop by at that moment and caught a glimpse just as the first cats began to roll around on the screen.

As we drove along Montauk Highway Tuesday morning, I told Adelia that the F.B.I. had looked into the Bishop allegations and found nothing. It didn’t matter, she said, she was supporting Mr. Zeldin anyway.

“Why?” I asked.

“He’s better looking,” she said.

Welcome to politics circa 2014.

Mary has a most marvelous moth-eaten gray sweater that she loves. I’ve felt it and I know why, the tatters be damned.

The paint stains speak to me of the universe, the tear, resembling a hara-kiri cut, of the vagaries of life — in short of wonder, joy, and woe.

I told her recently as she sat reading on the deck that I envied her that sweater. Mine by contrast are not nearly as fine. I have one that is in the running, a dark blue cashmere one with a collar that is worn through at the elbows. It’s my favorite.

Why is it, we wonder, that we prefer the down-at-the-heels look when we know perfectly well that we can afford to buy brand-new athletic socks, warm-up pants, and sweatshirts. Our parents, children of the Depression all, were frugal. That may be part of it. We go around in rags to honor them. Nothing too much, that kind of thing.

Mary, of course, is beautiful whether she’s wearing her ratty gray sweatshirt or pearls. And indeed she does dress up when she goes to work — it’s the law. No jeans. I always look like Mr. Burns, the nuclear power plant owner in “The Simpsons,” no matter what I wear, so why try?

Ah, that’s it. Why try? Why try to keep up appearances when all — well, most everything — is vanity. And if it’s not vanity, it’s inanity, or, as seems to be ever more painfully evident these days, insanity.

That’s humanity: vanity, inanity, insanity. Pretty much sums it up. You might as well dress comfortably then. Unless you’re going to a wedding or a funeral, and even then I reserve the right to wear New Balance 991s. In appropriate black and gray of course.

The Star, as far as I know, doesn’t have a dress code, and so I’ve never felt sartorially constrained in any way. As a way of giving thanks perhaps my prose has always been neater than I am, though with distinctive quirks, I hope, like a comfortable ratty sweatshirt or holey cashmere sweater that you’ll never throw out, but will keep on wearing until the end of time.

If you’ve ever wondered who sits in the big bay window on the second floor of The Star’s office building, that would be me. It is a great perch to witness the life of the village throughout the seasons. Up in the treetops there are leaves budding, blooming, changing, and falling, sparrows peeping in, and the occasional cardinal.

While the natural world is closest at hand, the byproducts of the four-lane highway that is Main Street can be the most conspicuous. With windows open to catch the cross breeze on a warm day, the noise of the traffic alone, without the attendant beeping horns, occasional brake squeals, and muffled or shouted curses, can make phone interviews a major challenge. There are days when the wails of sirens are endless, whether they come from ambulances, fire trucks, or cop cars.

Sitting above a number of clumsy intersections also forces me to witness accidents. Fortunately, in my experience, all have been fender benders, but that blunt sound of metal-on-metal impact is never pleasant, and there is dread in looking. There are also egregious and creative violations of the posted traffic signs: left turns across three lanes, bikes on the wrong side of the street, ignorance of yield and stop signs, and — my favorite — the periodic, but regular, wrong-way ride down the one-way lane in front of Guild Hall’s entrance, a path that will someday lead to disaster.

Yet, there are the happier events to take in as well. The Memorial Day parade, the Bonac on Board to Wellness 5K. The installation and unveiling of the current season’s outdoor sculpture at Guild Hall is a process that can sometimes take days, using trucks, cranes, pulleys, and sheer brute force. This is followed by packing it up sometime between Labor Day and Columbus Day weekends.

Summer Fridays always provide an entertaining streetscape of tennis, equestrian, running, and paddleboard (fill in any other athletic pursuit here) togged individuals just off the court, horse, bay, Babette’s seat, et cetera. I see also the city folk fresh off the Jitney with their fedoras, wheelie bags, and four-inch heels mincing down the sidewalk, the Lilly-clad prepsters popping out of their Audi convertibles and ambling into the office in their espadrilles to pick up a paper. 

The drop-off days for Guild Hall’s Artist Members Show and the Clothesline Art Sale always provide highlights. The events attract a steady stream of creative types, who like attention and know how to attract it, while they “catch up” in line mere hours before they see each other again at some opening, and again the next night. Yes, we are watching you.

Still, this year’s clothesline sale came with a piece of performance art that had the entire office mesmerized. A woman holding a parking space by the entrance for her friend began a series of balletic contortions and tai chi movements to signal to those eager for the spot that they were to have none of it. Most heeded her pantomimes, but some gave her an audible piece of their mind. Around this point she took to her cellphone and we provided the dialogue, the “Where are you? How much farther? I can’t keep up with this much longer. Can you believe these people?”

It is at times like these that one wants desperately to return to the calendar, article, essay, or review at hand, eager to have a clean slate or lessened load for the weekend. But, it was hard to let go of this one. My co-workers witnessing it from above waited until finally the friend’s car was in view and the parking genie gesticulated her relief, guiding the car in to the slot ground-crew style until a grateful reunion ensued. Then, they went back to their desks. I, however, kept a periodic vigil, alert to any other curiosity, one eye on the computer screen and one on the street below.

Jennifer Landes is The Star’s arts editor.

“What is God?” my daughter asked me a few months ago. Not, “Does God exist?” Not, “Do you believe in God?” More like, “What is this God that people speak of?” Since then, the questions have tumbled in like waves breaking on the shore.

“What is heaven?” “What happens when you die?” “What does God look like?” “How can Santa know if every kid in the world is good or bad?” All the basics and then some. It’s hard to answer some questions when you’re not sure yourself. The phrase “Some people believe . . .” has helped me begin to explain the religious and spiritual realms to her, but it’s going to take a lot more study and thought to get the words right. This is a journey we’re on together; saying “It’s complicated” would be too much of a cop­out.

My mother was brought up Catholic; my father is a Jew who loves Christmas. We had High Holy Days and Passover with his family, celebrated Easter with the Easter Bunny and Christmas with Santa Claus, and I never set foot in a church with worshippers until I was much older. I dropped out of Bible camp and Hebrew school. My husband was, as he says, politely asked to leave Catholic school.

I never adopted an organized religion, though it might have been easier if I had. Still, I value faith, am moved by religious observance, and have a deep respect — awe even — for those who live through their faith to make their communities and their world a better place.

I believe in science, and to me, the wonders of science are so miraculous I can’t help but believe in God — that spring comes, that my two children grew inside of me, that my husband was cured of Hodgkin’s disease so that he, we, could live to make those children. Thank you, Chemistry and Biology. Thank you, Modern Medicine. Thank you, God.

My regular places of worship are all outside — the Stony Hill Woods, the Montauk bluffs, the Walking Dunes, Quail Hill Farm. I see God through my children; I worship the way their minds awaken to grasp the small elements of our world at work. My daughter’s question is one she answers for me every day.

These are my blessings: the sticks and pebbles my son saves for me each day from the playground at school, a bouquet of fall leaves collected especially for me, the notes from my daughter as she learns to shape letters into words, a picture of the two of us playing together, the sound of her reading aloud. Let’s start with that.

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.