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.”

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.

“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.

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?

Fall weather is perfect for a yard sale. People aren’t hot or cranky and really seem to enjoy the smell of leaves dying and the crunch they make under one’s feet. I’m joining a few other women this weekend to have a yard sale in Montauk and am not sure if I should be looking forward to it or dreading it. Obviously, I have done this before.

One might wonder what I could possibly be thinking, as those who have held yard sales know that the insults to your personal stuff fly freely. I just hope to wake in a good mood on Saturday morning.

It’s time to clear out my house and some personal belongings. I have finally accepted that the beautiful high heels worn only once for a wedding will never get worn again. I’ve also concluded that I should get rid of a few favorite pocketbooks — oops, I mean handbags, as they’re now called. I see no reason to hang on to the leather bags that clutter my bedroom and that my two daughters have no interest in.

The best part of a yard sale is never knowing what treasures you might find. I scored a Dolce & Gabbana black leather shoulder bag from the bottom of a box at the Montauk Library’s yard sale section at its book fair this summer for $5. Brand new, it sells for over $1,000! That, I’m holding on to. And if someone reading this says, “Oh no, Mom donated my Italian leather bag with gold chain clasp,” don’t even think about asking for it back. I paid my $5 and it’s now mine, all mine, heh heh heh.

Jewelry will also be sold. Until a few necklaces appeared to be choking me recently, I never realized that my neck would thicken over the years as much as my waistline. A necklace is my favorite type of jewelry and I have too many. This is a clearance sale; I need to clear out my house.

I will be selling the lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that my husband buys each year for me on Christmas. It never fits me, but if in his mind I’m still that slender slip of a girl, so be it. Who am I to burst his bubble? As I get older, I just keep dimming the bedroom lights more and more. And if I can make a few bucks on the items, then maybe I’d buy some slinky thing that actually fits me.

Pricing items for a yard sale is tough. I’m selling stuff that I would probably keep, except that there’s no more room in my house for clutter. But when I’m offered $2 for something I think is a bargain at $5, that’s when I might have to slug the offender. People read in newspapers and magazines how to haggle with a seller and think it’s their job to do so. Yard sale customers will always offer you less, much less in some cases.

My sister is selling a beautiful wood kitchen island that has had some nips previously on Bonac Yard Sale on Facebook. But the wannabe buyers keep trying to haggle her down on the already cheap listing price. One woman who visited my sister’s home to look at it would not leave her driveway for almost a half-hour last week because she couldn’t wrap her head around the price my sister was asking for it. And though the woman really wanted it, she wouldn’t give in to the extra few bucks.

I’m usually an easy target; I give in. Hell, tell me a sob story and I’ll give you the item for free! But on Saturday I’m going to try to stand firm, keep my pride, and just say no, I will not take $1 for that brand-new L.L. Bean shirt that is still in its wrapper. I will not take $2 for the handbag I spent over $300 on at Bloomingdale’s several years ago. And I will not listen to your sob story. If you see something, say something, just don’t let it be, “How about a buck for that?”

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer and the Montauk correspondent for The Star.

With the film festival in town last week and into this, an unusual number of people walked back and forth in front of our office. I counted myself among them, as a late addition to the festival’s documentary jury, which meant, among other things, that I spent quite a considerable bit of time on foot between the office and town, as we call it, and then hustling back south to Guild Hall, and back again.

One thing was clear from this: I don’t walk enough. Credit is due to Jack Graves, The Star’s eminence grise and sportswriter, who makes his way into town rather regularly. My father, who ran this paper until his death in 1980, was a walker, too, as was his brother, David.

David Rattray the elder, with whom I share a name, was not quite the equal of the legendary Stephen Talkhouse as a walker, but remarkable nonetheless. He, like my father, is gone now, but before his illness, he would take epic hikes, perhaps from Amagansett to East Hampton along the beach in the depths of winter.

He was foremost a poet, among his many other talents, including the ability to read and translate a host of languages and play concert-level piano. I read from one of his poems at a New York City tribute to him a couple of years ago. “West From Napeague” speaks of three figures afoot in the distance on the beach: himself, my father, and my aunt, Mary Rattray, who lives in Springs and in her time was as much of a walker as her brothers, I think.

Someone, Kierkegaard, perhaps, wrote that he walked himself into his best ideas. I have always liked that notion and tended to agree. Some walks are better than others, of course. On Main Street, East Hampton, I am as likely now to be buttonholed by a reader about something or other or just distracted by a loud truck going by.

And yet, we get a feel for a place while on foot that is like none other. A California writer whom I met recently has said that in walking we take measure of the earth. I plan to do a lot more measuring, then, now that fall has come.

Bunky was a real writer’s cat. When I would sit down at my laptop, he would jump onto the desk and circle around my workspace. He was of the belief that the keyboard was the perfect resting place. I would gently dissuade him from lying on the keys. He would eventually give in, moving to the side or the back of my laptop, and lie down. Sometimes he would watch me, and sometimes he would sleep.

He was scrappy. Having spent his kitten months in a small apartment full of aggressive children, he was wary of being handled. In particular, you could never touch his tail.

When Carole and I first got him, he wasn’t quite fully grown. I announced that there would be no need to castrate him. His moniker was, after all, my cousin’s nickname. A few weeks later, Bunky began having howling spells. He also decided that clawing his way up the window shades was a good thing to do. Still, I was adamant. No castration.

One day, I came home from work. In the corner of the apartment was my beloved black leather jacket, in a heap on the floor. On top of it was a yellow pool. A quick trip to the vet, and Bunky was a castrato.

We decided to move him out to Montauk when I found that I was doing most of my work out there. We had a rental in Ditch Plain (yes, there once were year-round rentals in Ditch, and year-round residents, as well).

In our garden, we had an area fenced with chicken wire where, supposedly, we were going to grow vegetables. We used it to acclimate Bunky to the outdoors. After a while, he began going in and out of the house on his own.

He was a big tom. He would get into occasional fights, but he always could handle himself. The yard, and the immediate woods east of the house, were his domain.

Opening the door for him when he wanted out, every morning and every evening, was fun. Each time, he would shoot down the porch steps, and break into a full sprint. Sometimes, he would head right, toward the big tree in the corner of the yard, climbing halfway up the trunk in a couple of seconds. Other times he would turn left, sprinting up the hill toward the woods.

Any direction he took, he would freeze after about 20 yards. Up the hill or on the tree, motionless, he would survey his world.

The tree was his scratching post, of course, and his jungle gym. He rarely went all the way up.

Of course, as with all cats, one time he went too far, finding himself the proverbial cat stuck out on a limb. He began crying, unsure how to get down. I got the ladder out, went up and got him, getting a couple of claw marks as a thank-you.

He was, for most of his life, a great mouser and quite proud of himself. He would catch mice in the woods, almost daily, and bring them back to us, a nice little gift, although Carole, in particular, did not share his enthusiasm.

Sometimes, instead of bringing his catch of the day up the steps, he would eat it in the backyard. Then, one day, he became violently ill. He hid under a bed for several days. When he emerged, his mouse diet was over, though he continued to bring his trophies back to us.

Tiger-striped, orange and white, he was impossible to see when he was in the shade.

It had been a warm winter when the end came. In the fall, he had gotten into a howling fight with a neighboring black-and-white, and he lost his enthusiasm for extended forays outside. He was becoming visibly weaker. Suddenly, he could barely walk. We took him to Dr. Turetsky’s office. He was seen by Dr. Katz. She told us what we already knew, that Bunky was, at roughly 20 years of age, old. He had several issues, the treatment of which would be very invasive, without any real recovery.

If he was dying, which I believed he was, I planned on burying him in the yard he loved so much. There was a winter storm on the way. It was supposed to dive down from the 50s to the lower teens. I took a shovel and dug a hole I wished I would never have to fill.

We brought him home and gave him his drugs, but he was weak and listless.

The next day, as the temperature dropped, an amazing thing happened. It was as if Bunky was reborn. He had energy, and while he was clearly an old cat, he was a happy one.

That burst of life was short-lived. The following morning, he was barely able to move. He grew weaker through the day, picking himself up only to collapse to the floor.

I wrapped him in a towel the following morning. He was practically lifeless. It began to snow as we made the long drive from Ditch to Goodfriend Drive. I held Bunky while Dr. Katz inserted the needle.

I buried him in the yard as the snow fell, under the now frozen dirt.

Years have passed, and life moves on. But, every once in a while, I turn a corner in my mind, and there is Bunky.

T.E. McMorrow is a reporter for The Star and a self-described “cat man.”

The dark comes so early now. I shudder to think of the end of daylight saving time, barely a week away. But Tuesday was so mild and biking up Further Lane after work has become something of a mild exercise habit as I try to hold onto these great outdoors until the frost comes. So it was already getting dark as I pedaled east, then south, then west.

From long driveways, a few landscapers straggled toward home. A lot more deer, stock still, stared quizzically as I pedaled past, laboring on the cheap folding bike. This was Further Lane in the dying of the light in late October.

I stopped several times, to stare back and have a word with the deer, or take a snap of the horizon, pink and dusky gray-blue over blue-gray. Heading toward Old Beach Lane.

The outdated iPhone’s camera never gets it right. It doesn’t come close. The digital snapshot is dull and dark and small. It cannot capture it. But neither can I.

On the sand, a man practiced tai chi and another stood motionless and reverent at water’s edge and an elegant woman gazed at the sea and sky as her cavalier and happy spaniel ran freely. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” she exclaimed.

I thought a long moment and said yes, I think I have. “But it’s still magnificent.”

“It’s magnificent,” she said.

I wish I could speak in glorious Technicolor. But no, just black-and-white. “It’s hard to put into words,” I said, and corrected myself. “I can’t put it into words.”

“You can’t put it into words,” she said.

The night before, I’d learned that a young man I knew, just 20 years old, had died unexpectedly. His mother and I are friends, and the shock and sorrow for those who have lost him has made concentration difficult in the hours since. The awful news has also jarred a dark memory of a month and six years ago when my then-wife’s brother had also, at 27, passed away without warning. How is it that I had made it that far, and then so much farther, there on Further Lane?

I thought back to India, its colorful, fanciful gods and the Bhagavad Gita and Sri Krishna’s tender reprimand. “You are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead.”

“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.”

The southern sky steeped in deep blues above, a long and delicate brush of powdery pink between, the relentless roll of the ocean below, and we four or five souls, helpless and bewildered on the sand before the terrible beauty at the end of Old Beach Lane. The elegant woman, barefoot, walked east, the galloping little dog charging into the twilight until I couldn’t see them anymore.

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The East Hampton Star.