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.

As the driver of an electric car, it was exciting to learn this week that the Town of East Hampton had installed its first charging station. An open house of sorts is planned for tomorrow morning at 9 to introduce it to the public. Buzz Chew Chevrolet and Tesla Motors are expected to send vehicles over and representatives ready to answer questions.

Not that I have the time, but I’d be happy to head over there to gab about my vehicle, a Chevrolet Volt leased as more of an experiment than anything. At the dealership when I was checking out the models, a salesman said Volt drivers were like a cult. He was right. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about my new car, and I have to admit that I find myself jabbering about the thing at the slightest provocation.

Having driven it for going on two months now, I have begun to get a feel for it. With a relatively fast outdoor power supply installed at the Star office, I can recharge the batteries to full between the time I get to work and my break for lunch. This is enough for about 40 miles before the small on-board gas generator kicks in.

On a recent weekend trip to Massachusetts of about 500 miles, between the battery power and gas, I averaged 39.8 miles per gallon. Had I had the time to plug in at stations like the one now behind Town Hall, the mileage would have been significantly more impressive.

There is a lot to learn, that’s for sure.

ChargePoint, the system into which the town’s new plug-in is tied, lists stations on its website, as do a number of apps. Some of the hookups charge a fee; others are free. It remains to be seen what the town board decides to do about that. Here at The Star, as soon as we work out some access issues, I hope to invite other electric vehicle drivers to top up, perhaps for subscribers only or by donation to Meals on Wheels or another local charity.

I suspect that the town’s station is only the first of what will be a trend among public entities, including schools and libraries, to get aboard the electric train, so to speak. The more all of us can do to cut back on fossil fuel use and tailpipe emissions, the better off we will all be.

Election night for us was the night of the living dread, and on the morrow (even our night sweats have achieved a certain simultaneity) we awoke to baleful reality in a bed next to which a George McGovern poster hangs.

Frankly, and naively, I had thought ideas were pivotal when it came to electoral politics, but, as we’ve seen, it mainly comes down to money and the sound bites money — no matter the party — buys.

Still, I couldn’t imagine how Republicans, who opposed everything and proposed nothing in recent years, and who were the ones largely responsible for the much-maligned Congressional gridlock, and who put forward no alternative ideas as far as I could tell, would be elected. And yet they have been, in great numbers.

Obamacare has been largely a success, immigrants have, as always, contributed to the economy, which last I looked was doing better than it has been, the president has been as effective as one could be in dealing with the insane Middle East, and though tardy in dealing with immigration reform has by and large been temperate and reasoned in his governance. Yet he is reviled amid calls for change.

The change I’d want would include reviving the middle class, putting joy back into learning, welcoming, rather than deporting, immigrants who want to make a better life for themselves here, leading in such a way as to increasingly enlist allies in solving military challenges and social problems, checking in concert greed wherever it rears its ugly head, checking in concert environmental voraciousness, and extending Medicare to all.

The wish list, you’ll note, posits an activist central government, and I gather that the majority of those who voted last week dream of a limited one even as they collect Social Security checks.

The good news, though, is that hereafter some bills that have languished in committees will finally see the light of day, be voted upon, and will wind up on the desk of the president, either to be signed or vetoed, in which latter case a supermajority would be required to override. In other words, lawmakers will have to stand up and be counted — a radical thought.

So, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised — that under the new regime our nation, under God, will indeed in the coming years become indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Or will divisibility proceed apace, with license and justice for some?

“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.

The New York Times had an eyesore of a typo in a front-page headline recently, and — while it’s not very nice to take pleasure in someone else’s mistakes — I couldn’t help but feel a certain secret satisfaction. If the old reliable Times, with its large and talented staff, can put out an edition with such a glaring mistake (“Panic Were Ebola Risk Is Tiny,” it read, “Stoicism Where It’s Real”), then we at the humble East Hampton Star can ease up a bit. 

The blooper made by The Times, obviously, was to use the word “were,” which made no sense, instead of the intended word, “where.” But at least they got the apostrophe right. 

Like many people who have worked as proofreaders or copy editors, I’ve got an unshakeable habit of reading newspapers and magazines as if I were actually engaged in making corrections with a blue pencil.

Lately, I’ve been on the particular lookout for missing apostrophes. Spell check might work wonders on our spelling, but the English language is just too convoluted for these digitized prose-check nannies — so far, anyway — to be much help with more subtle corrections and suggestions. Spell check can’t always help you decide between “let’s” and “lets,” for example; sometimes, it just doesn’t know if you are trying to say “let us” or if you mean something like “He lets the orange tabby cat eat too much Whiskas.” 

Unfortunately, where apostrophes are concerned, I am also guilty: I leave them out when I am hurrying to send texts on my cellphone. My excuse is that I haven’t found an apostrophe on the little keyboard, but I admit it must surely be there somewhere. In any case, I have plenty of company in getting more lax about apostrophes. We’ve almost come to expect it. I don’t think any diner gets confused when a restaurant menu offers the “chefs choice.”

Is texting making us all more lazy? Or would our language evolve like this, regardless? (The end result, is seems to me, is that the writer seems to increasingly rely on readers to figure out for themselves what is intended, even when what has been printed is wrong.)

Now, let’s consider words that combine the letters “I,” “T,” and “S.” Reading with a critical eye, you will inevitably find “its” and “it’s” mixed up all over the place these days. Everyone with an elementary school education in this country should know that “it’s” is a contraction meaning “it is,” while “its” is a possessive . . . but, judging by the reigning confusion, apparently, most Americans were napping during that class. 

Does all this matter? It does to me.

Obviously, our language is now and has always been in flux, but for me, things today are changing too quickly. I  blame the digital age. Everything is speeding up: News travels from New York to Beijing, documents zing from computer to computer, trades are made on Wall Street in a thousandth of the blink of an eye. Children, even, seem to be putative teenagers before they hit 13. 

Maybe, when it comes to language, I’m succumbing to the conservatism that — in the popular quote attributed, no doubt apocryphally, to Winston Churchill — comes with age. But even so, I still think we should attend carefully to changes in things we hold dear, and the proper use of language is certainly one of those to me.

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.

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.”