We pulled the car into the driveway the other night, Lisa, two of the children, and I, coming back from picking up a takeout dinner in Montauk. It was a dark night, no moon, no haze to catch the reflected light from the ground. Lisa hustled the youngest one inside to get him ready for bed. But, looking up, I told the other child to stop. “There’s the Milky Way,” I said.

“Where? Oh, yeah,” she said.

A clear band of dusty white hung from above the horizon to the south, all the way to straight overhead.

“Is that our universe?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “That’s just our galaxy. There are millions of galaxies, each one of them with millions of stars. It’s so big out there, you can hardly imagine.”

We talked for a while longer, about stars, aliens, and distant civilizations. I told her about something I had heard on the radio, that some scientists are looking for signs of atmospheric pollution from intelligent life on remote planets.

Her take was that it was obvious we are not alone in the vastness. “Anybody who thinks there are no aliens is wrong,” she said with conviction. Looking up at the sparkling stars, we considered what aliens might look like, and agreed they might not be made of the same stuff as we. She seemed all right with that idea.

We are lucky that there are still night skies here, like where we live, left unspoiled by light pouring from ill-designed fixtures. But these days, the dark places are the exception, and with a touch of haze in the air, an unnatural creeping orange spreads from the commercial centers.

East Hampton Town has reasonable rules about light pollution, although they may be less ambitious than they should be and, for the most part, unenforced. An on-again, off-again debate about giving the regulations more teeth has been under way for at least a decade. I hope it succeeds.

“I like talking about space with you,” my daughter said as we got ready to go indoors. Without a silky black sky to project our thoughts onto, I wonder if she and I would even have had the conversation.

Summer does not so much make a light escape here as a noisy one, so that we, the birds who stay, and who indeed will shiver, rejoice.

Thus the seasons are for us rearranged, and the waning of summer, what for many is a signal of decline, brings promise here.

A photographer friend, who has been shuffling all summer to the numbing rhythms of real estate interests, has been saying for the past three months that he can’t wait for summer to end and for fall to begin, so that he can be freed, somewhat, from exigency, and participate again in the dance of life. That’s why I made note of the high school teams’ first scrimmages and games at the end of this week in my calendar, which ordinarily I would stop at Wednesday.

Soon we will be caught up in so much activity — but of a much more joyful kind than we’ve known of late — that we’ll be able to delight, if not forever, at least for some months to come, in the present.

A Terrible Duty

His world was narrowing, Mary said, and ours was too. He was almost there when he went, at our hands — a terrible duty that this terrible beauty exacts.

The last time at Louse Point, in the golden light, he tugged gently at the leash at the water’s edge, and I wouldn’t let him go, not wanting to be possibly inconvenienced, though I said to myself and others, who could see that he was old, that it was for his own good.

I should have let him, I should have let him go. Forgive me, Henry.

Everything’s so clean and neat now.

And silent.

And empty.

The kitchen floor is bare.

Your eyes were so beautiful, though I hadn’t realized eternity was in them until the day we let you go.

It is a foregone conclusion that East Hampton went to the dogs long ago. Now it is the cats! East Hampton began its meandering path to going to the cats mostly in the modern historical sense of time.

Our family cats began, when I was a little boy, with Black Nose. He was a family pet, yet the only significant memory I have of this cat was wrapping him in a blanket and putting him in the bathroom sink to rest. The cat was not well. Black Nose spent his last days resting in the bathroom sink comfy and dry, wrapped in his small blanket.

The next in line was a black Persian cat born at a neighbor’s house across the street. In the days when East Hampton’s empty fields grew tall with wheat and lawns were left semitended, cats crossed roads and cars stopped, especially if it was a black cat.

Needless to say, the cat picked our home, refusing to be taken back across the street to its birthplace. The neighbor gave up after multiple cat returns. The cat grew stately, with many reigning achievements of local lore at his new home. Once, the cat jumped out of the family car in Bridgehampton and spent a week roaming free until a family friend found it near where it had taken flight.

Not many local cats have caught and released a large live bat into their home. How my dad laughed as my older brother chased this evil-looking bat around the kitchen with a broom. Eventually, the bat exited the back door very much alive, mouth a-snapping, wings a-flap. For morning dramatics circa 1973, my dad would recite Shakespeare in small sonnets to the cat over coffee at 7 a.m. And who could forget the huge bloody jackrabbit the cat brought in alive to run around the ground floor?

Next in the lineage, but not least in any sense, was Marlin the cat. Marlin was born on a smallish, crumpled derelict sailboat that sat aground not far from what is known now as the East Hampton Point restaurant. Marlin, who was named after the Marlin fishing vessels docked at the Montauk docks, without question lived a charmed life.

Marlin’s charm could lead to the demise of any animal smaller than he by way of his terrifying claws. Known as the U.S. Marines of local cats, Marlin assaulted birds, rabbits, mice — oh, those poor mice. That cat was a terror! Having climbed the evergreen tree to eye level out the back kitchen window, Marlin put on a brazen show. As my little sister, Tara, looked on and cried in disbelief, Marlin’s evil little face peered in as he swatted a tiny baby birdie out of its nest. It was awful: My little sister screamed. What a terrible cat!

Dogs were scared of that cat. Those mice, those poor mice, how Marlin would catch them, run around with them in his mouth, toss them up in the air over and over again. The devil himself, that cat was.

On to the present: Putter and Summer, born from underneath a local house, cats as feral as the winter night is long — young, obstinate, and hardly sociable. Putter was uncoordinated, scattered, not predictable. Putter bashed and broke drinking glasses in his mad scramble to avoid nothing. Tripping over his paws, falling from the highest location that a beam could provide, crashing into whatever made itself available.

Any sign of housecleaning drove Putter deep into whatever closet depths, darkest drawer, or smallest space that Houdini himself couldn’t fit into. Putter, an indoor cat, nigh never braved the outdoors. Once having slipped out, Putter’s moans, like shrieks, were a fright. A window and door were left open. Putter came flying through a ground-floor window like something shot from a small cannon. The cat hid for days. The outside world of East Hampton was not worth the venture for Putter the cat.

Putter’s sister Summer: a small, shy female cat, introspective, not friendly. Summer was never much for being handled, had little sense of humor, and did not care much for anyone’s company except my son’s. Summer, when young, didn’t have much of a personality. She was a boring cat.

What happened to Putter and Summer? Today they bound around like circus cats doing all kinds of the silliest things, including cat tricks for children. What possible explanation is there for this butterfly-like transition into super cats?

Summer’s feline personality is developing. It never occurred to anyone that Summer would ride around on people’s shoulders, perched bright, claws drawn in. She drinks milk from a little glass, eats striped bass like a pro, fluke and sardine too. These days Summer goes outside, a few feet away from the house. Her coat is super clean, eyes brightly steady, temperament stealthy. An attractive cat who likes to sleep in the corners.

Putter has clearly outdone himself. Maybe falling and crashing for years teaches a cat a certain mentality of the nine lives. After all, maybe cats are meant to be upside down and airborne for part of their lives. Putter’s coat looks lion-like, shading to other nuances gaining depth — extraordinarily clean, that cat. Rather a comedian of cats, as if he is saying, No one is funnier than I.

From being an unfriendly, mean, uncoordinated cat to allowing my brother’s young son to carry him around in a bear hug for short periods of time, a fine cat if ever there was one. How did it happen? Any rational person might have envisioned doom for that Putter cat upon seeing him years ago.

It has also been discovered recently that both Putter and Summer like the Rolling Stones. Your guess is as good as anyone’s.

Morgan McGivern is The Star’s staff photographer.

A friend sent an email to me and a slew of others this week, using Gmail, that warned against opening any email that might arrive from her Hotmail account, which had been hacked. I don’t know what can happen if you open a hacked email, and I don’t plan to find out, but I do know something about my friend that she hadn’t intended: the email addresses — and many of the names — of her friends, acquaintances, and business connections, some 350 of them. 

I’d been thinking about the information that is sometimes divulged unintentionally by email since June, when other friends invited me to their anniversary party. They didn’t realize, I am sure, that the names and addresses of everyone they were including arrived along with the invitation. There they were, on the “CC” line of the Apple Mail program.

Most of the guests were people I was delighted to see, and I already had some of their addresses. I thought about saving those I didn’t have, as potentially useful future contacts, but then reconsidered. What would Miss Manners say about taking advantage of someone else’s privacy goof? Of course, all these contacts are probably still floating around in my computer somewhere (and I just don’t know enough about technology to tap into them).

I do know enough about technology to have grasped the use of the “BCC” line, but just how you would BCC some 350 names and addresses boggles my mind a bit. I guess if someone held a gun to my head I’d be able to create a “group” in my Gmail address book, and use that, but so far I haven’t had the occasion.

Sometimes at The Star, I’ve received electronic press releases showing the name and address of every person or news outlet to which it was sent — quite a bonanza, when celebrities, moguls, and editors across the country were on the list. My journalistic curiosity is piqued, and I find myself examining these lists like Miss Marple. I admit I once forwarded a long media list received that way to the person responsible for sending out releases for the Choral Society of the Hamptons, of which I am a member. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. 

Then there was the party to which the hosts intentionally sent out five separate email invitations. Actually, the first and second were identical, one having been pasted into an email and the other sent through Paperless Post. But the third through fifth were unique, containing updates and tips, telling us what games were going to be played (golf), what to wear, that there were going to be two D.J.s, and adding a link to a hangover cure (Sprite) and others to taxi transportation. Each used assorted sizes and styles of type in coordinated shades of blue and turquoise. Talk about email virtuosity! 

To be frank, Chris and I were only on that guest list because the bash was going to be a noisy affair and, well, our property backs up on theirs. We laughed at the obvious fact that we had raised the median age of the invitees, but we went nevertheless and had a swell time. Naturally, these young party-throwers were computer whizzes, and the names and addresses of everyone else invited were nowhere to be seen.

An erupting fight over the former East Deck Motel property in Montauk has pitted a wealthy new property owner against scores of residents and visitors who would like to see Ditch Plain Beach remain the way it was for so long. More than 2,000 people have signed an online petition opposing J. Darius Bikoff’s plan to convert the iconic motel into a private surf club, of sorts.

The scale and “screw you” message of the proposal brings to mind the epic battle here in the 1980s and early ’90s over Barcelona Neck, some 341 acres then owned by Ben Heller, which eventually was bought by the State of New York for $40 million in 1992. It also seems an echo of the plans for a luxury development on 99 oceanfront acres in Montauk known as Shadmoor, which the town, county, and state bought for $17.3 million in 1999 from Robert Bear and Peter Schub.

Every few years, another bete noire emerges to energize preservationists. Mr. Bikoff would seem to be bidding to try on this ignominious mantle if he persists in seeking approval for the East Deck makeover — effectively privatizing a shoreline considered in short supply.

The town alone or in concert with other levels of government could make a bid to buy the site from him and his unnamed partners in the limited liability corporation called ED40 that bought the place. In hindsight, the $15 million they paid to the Houseknecht family while making flimsy promises about respecting the integrity of the place looks like a bargain — and perhaps the biggest single missed opportunity on the land-buying front of the previous town administration.

Mr. Bikoff has touched off what will surely be a long and bitter confrontation. It would be a terrific turn of events if he would work with local officials on a public deal to preserve the site. The price would be steep, I suspect, but as with Shadmoor and Barcelona before it, time has proven that those involved did the right thing.

What with the Jewish High Holy Days coming up, I’ve been thinking a lot about God. But the Days of Awe, that 10-day period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the time for introspection and repentance, have given me pause. Prayers will be offered, pleas and propositions will go up to the heavens. To God. The Almighty, the Munificent, all-knowing yet unknowable God.

Personally, I’m fine with the concept of a higher power. Someone or something to believe in when our computers crash, to give comfort during those endless hours on the phone with tech support. (Finally, I’m online again. There is a God!) The thing of it is, in this day and age, in our open-minded, all-inclusive, multicultural, same-sex-marriage century, why is God still personified as a he/him rather than a she/her?

Since the ancient scribes put their pens to parchment, that’s the way it’s been. No surprise there. Men wrote the Book and they gave the best part to him, but has he never heard of term limits?

And it’s not as if you can chat up his nibs over a double latte at Starbucks and bat this around. If you could, you’d probably get something vague and noncommittal like I AM THAT I AM. If he didn’t tell Moses who or what he was, do you for one minute think he’s going to give it up to you?

The fine arts are no better than the Bible. Think of the Sistine Chapel: the godly finger pointing to Adam in the altogether. I have no beef with that, but I have a good mind to get out my palette and pigments and rig a scaffold of my own. Transsexual is in now! If Chaz Bono can do it, why not God? Can you see the Pope strolling into the chapel? He glances up at the ceiling. “What the . . . ?”

Movies don’t help promote an open-minded, godly image either. Okay, fair is fair . . . the Hollywood hotshots stepped up and put their money where their box office mouth wasn’t and made Morgan Freeman God in “Bruce Almighty.” Morgan, I love your smooth, resonant voice, your talent to inspire confidence, but you can drive Miss Daisy to the moon and back and you still don’t cut it for me as God. Hollywood, you want color? You want a voice dripping honey on the silver screen? You want presence, something regal yet earthy? Try Oprah. Now there’s a girlfriend I could look up to.

Imagining God, trying to put a human face on a premise, is nothing new. Back in the first centuries of the Common Era, a Jewish mystic not only imagined God’s face, he used an ancient Persian measuring system called the parasang to measure God’s physical dimensions. As each parasang equals three miles, the mystic devised a system that calculated God’s size in units of 30 million miles, a size that, like the heavens themselves, was beyond human comprehension. And yet the mystic figured the measurements of God’s forehead, his nose, eyes, and mouth, each and every body part down to his beard. This mystic was so sure that God had a beard, he even gave the length and width of it.

It makes me wonder, then . . . could the mystic’s God have love handles? Six-pack abs? Did he ever pass the heavenly mirror, take a peek, and say to himself, “Lookin’ good, Adonai, lookin’ good”?

I’m no sage, and I couldn’t tell a parasang from a parachute, but I’m going to counter the mystic with a girly God, and I’m giving her persona some serious thought.

Should she be an introspective Dr. Joy Browne type? A big-on-psychology, call-in, shrink-wrapped God? Or more a Meryl Streep as Anna Wintour type of gal, bringing a little Prada and some high style to the heavens? On the other hand, do we want her traipsing around the cosmos in five-inch Manolo Blahniks, throwing her back out, just for the sake of a look?

The thing is, we need to get her down here with the folks. Give her a brand, some new press. Frankly, she could use some positive spin, what with fanatics out there trying to pin our latest hurricanes and volcanic eruptions on her. (I thought she quit smoking.)

What do you say to putting her on “Dancing With the Stars”? Think of the free promo, the ratings when they announce the lineup for the season: “Ricki Lake, Rob Kardashian, Chynna Phillips . . . and God!” Don’t tell me you wouldn’t watch. It’s win-win all around. She’d broaden her fan base. People would relate.

Look what “Dancing” did for Kirstie Alley. Her career was down the cathode ray tube. She does the waltz and she’s in the game again, on the cover of People. Got her own TV show. Okay, so she had to shed a hundred pounds to get there — I think she packed some of it back on. But you go, girl!

In any case, we’d better get cracking and spruce up the high-rise for when she gets back there. For starters, let’s tackle the throne; after all these years it could use a redo. I’m thinking chintz, a nice floral — it’s light, it’s fresh, some toss pillows here, a few pictures there . . . accessories make all the difference. While we’re at it, let’s spring for new window treatments — what we could do with those tall ceilings!

Which brings us to the sky — and don’t tell me blue again. It’s been blue forever. And where is it written that the sky has to be a solid color? Borrr-ring. I’m thinking an eye-catching print, say a paisley or a Burberry plaid. Overkill? I’m flexible. Excuse me a minute; there goes my cell.

“Hello? Hi! Sure. Love it! I’ll bring the bagels.”

That was her! Wants to break the Yom Kippur fast with me. The most holy of holy days on the Jewish calendar and she wants to spend it with moi. Right after She decides who will live and who will die in the coming year. She puts it in her book. She’s got it on her Kindle. I knew she’d be more accessible than he was.

I wonder what she’ll wear for the occasion? That schmate from the Year of the Flood? Snazzed up with a nice pin or a scarf, it could work. She’s happy, I’m happy.

    Rita Plush is the author of the novel "Lily Steps Out" and the short-story collection "Alterations." She lives part time in East Hampton.

A passel of college kids conjured the back-to-school spirit last weekend when they came to Bridgehampton to sing. Shere Khan, an a cappella ensemble of 12 Princeton students, performed for a group of friends at a private party, while the 45-member Howard University Gospel Choir, accompanied by electric bass, keyboard, and drums, raised the rafters of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. 

Shere Khan, the tiger in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” is an appropriate riff on Princeton’s mascot. Linda Frankenbach and Rik Kranenburg had invited the co-ed group to spend the weekend here, rehearsing and enjoying the beach before heading back to school. Their son is the president of Shere Khan, and a senior. The Howard Gospel Choir was offering its sixth annual concert as a benefit for the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center.

A cappella singing requires a very good ear, which these collegians obviously have — as well as the talent to put across the messages in the contemporary songs they sing. I wasn’t alone among the audience in not quite being up-to-date on the music young people listen to these days, but Shere Khan rocked, and we all got it. The Beatles and Paul Simon were mixed in with Beyonce, Pharell Williams, Sheryl Crow, and Amy Winehouse, and at least half of the ensemble took terrific solos.

But I was stricken with admiration for the group’s music director, a Princeton junior named Liti Chiang, who not only set the beat but provided — vocally — amazing percussion. (The only note I questioned were the colors of Shere Khan’s T-shirts on its website: blue and red rather than Tiger orange and black.)

The camaraderie and good will of the audience for the Howard Gospel Choir was evident in its response upon learning that the concert, which had been called for 4:30 p.m., would start late because of a bus problem. The passion and gusto of this group is legendary, and they showed their mettle even though, we learned later, they hadn’t even taken time for lunch.

I’ve sung in innumerable concerts at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and attended some wonderful performances there during the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, but nothing can compare with the Howard Gospel Choir for energizing an audience, encouraging them to clap and sing along to familiar songs like “Oh Happy Day.” This group, too, rotates solos among its members, and its music director, Reginald A. Golden, who circled the aisles in one number, “Keep A-Inchin’ Along,” has a stirring tenor voice. 

The good works — and fund-raising needs — of the Bridgehampton Child Care Center are formidable. A brochure passed out with the Howard Gospel Choir concert program mentioned just a few of the expenses that will need to be covered in the coming year, including $10,000 for meals it regularly serves and $5,000 for an equipment shed. I promised Bonnie Michelle Cannon, the executive director, that I would mention a benefit golf tournament that will be held at the Atlantic Golf Club on Monday, Sept. 22. I don’t play golf, but I can spread the word. Hallelujah!

You hear from time to time how tight East Hampton Town is when it comes to handing out construction permits. “You can’t get anything approved around here,” the complaint goes. Well, that is not really the case. Although the paperwork may mound up and the review process be painfully slow, you can generally get what you want.

During a late-August getaway, I visited a California community that was really restrictive and puts East Hampton’s supposedly hard-nosed preservationism into sharp perspective.

Bolinas, a town of about 1,500 residents on the Pacific Coast in Marin County, decided about 40 years ago to simply stop time. No, they said, to the California suburban sprawl creeping over Mount Tam from Interstate Highway 101. And it worked. There are no chain-type convenience stores, no obvious mansions belonging to the new San Francisco tech elite, and nothing to tell you that it’s not, say, 1971, other than the Honda Priuses parked along the road to the beach.

Chief among the tools that Bolinas pushed to limit growth was an absolute cap on the number of water meters. It is today, as it was when Johnson was in the White House, a hippie-surfer paradise, and it is likely to stay that way.

That the place could have remained unchanged is all the more astounding when you consider that it is but a one-hour drive from the new-money capital of the United States. Like Montauk, for example, Bolinas is flanked by preserved land and the sea. It, too, was once envisioned as the home of a massive resort project, including, in its case, a four-lane highway and marina for luxury yachts.

Beginning in the 1960s, however, activists began to build a metaphorical wall between themselves and the ravages of the time.

Visitors will find no sign on the main road indicating the Bolinas turnoff. Residents supposedly stole it so many times the authorities just decided to forget about another replacement. Montauk, on the other hand, and the rest of the Hamptons — well, we know all too well what has happened here.

Several times during my weekend there with an old friend, we passed a person dancing in the street in full shaman regalia — a cape, staff, beads, and, dangling from his decorated hat, a talisman that reached between his eyes to the end of his nose.

Okay, so Bolinas is definitely not East Hampton Village, where a shaman might be urged to go along. But it is interesting to consider what we might have looked like had we really held back East Coast excess and powerful real estate interests to make sure our policies lived up to their perception.

In East Hampton, officials and most residents just shrug, believing there is nothing they can do in the face of all that New York money. But it is illustrative to see just how far one community managed to go to keep its identity, and it is sad to realize the extent to which we’ve blown it here

As I walked to The Star’s kitchen the other day with Henry’s empty dish, not needing it anymore, I saw a piece of plywood barring the editor’s door, about baby gate-high, and looked in, and there was a puppy nibbling at his shoelaces. I wasn’t overly sad, for that’s the way it is: Life goes on.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been paying more attention lately: to a small gold leaf that twirled downward as I was taking a shower outdoors yesterday morning, to a bug barely the size of a comma, walking briskly over his kingdom, words that I have been trying with some difficulty to understand, to two fawns who’ve been welcomed at the corner, feeding on our neighbors’ lawn at dusk, to our brightly painted wooden fish — which reminds we two should be at peace — that fell from its perch over our sink just as a catbird stumbled in through the open slider door, its heart beating hard as it pressed up against the large windowpane.

“Un parajo a dentro,” I said, with some excitement, as the cleaning women entered, and went to get garden gloves to take hold of it. As it hunkered down in the sink, not knowing what was coming next, I grabbed and squeezed a bit, though not too tightly, and as it protested I let it go, almost in one motion, delighted as it flew off — to where I don’t know, happy that it wasn’t sick.

“Everything is holy,” Blake said, and while I still can’t quite say I believe it, I am finding it is truer than I thought. He would say, I suppose, that I hadn’t thought it through enough, that we were all one at one point, in the Eternity that preceded the Creation/Fall, before unity gave way to division — division so painfully evident on this day of all days, division which, because of its great enormities, may lead us to treasure unity and life all the more.

I am still angry, from 3,000 miles away, at an old man whom I do not know and will never meet, but who unnerved my daughter Julia to the point where she went on Facebook to tell the story to her friends and ask for their take. This happened in Portland, Ore., but it could have been anywhere.

Here is what she wrote, along with some of the many comments. I know the comments helped her get over it, and I’m betting that rehashing it in this way will do the same for me.

Elly, by the way, is 5 years old. Jeff is my son-in-law.

Julia: Debating whether to post this, because I’m not sure I really want to know the answer, but curiosity has gotten the better of me. So, we took the twins to a Portland Festival Symphony concert in Grant Park on Saturday. It was a lovely event and a beautiful night, and a very festive atmosphere — hot dogs for sale, tons of kids, free face-painting and amazing music, selections from Bizet and Mozartand Liszt. Elly was pretty transported by the music and was dancing for much of the time — we were up near the front, so she was twirling and leaping and sometimes moving in the little open semicircle in front of the musicians. Other kids were there too but she may have been the most consistent about it.

During the intermission, when kids are invited up to “pet” the instruments and try playing then, an older man approached Jeff and said “Oh, your daughter is so cute, with her dancing. We came here just to watch her dance. No, wait a minute, we didn’t — we came here to hear and see the musicians, and she is being distracting and disrespectful.”

Jeff was furious, and I was very hurt, maybe not least because I wonder whether there was some truth to what he said. Of course, had we been at a symphony concert at the Schnitz or another concert hall, we would have kept her in her seat (and have done this, in fact), but we figured, at an outdoor, child-friendly event in the summertime, it was okay. I don’t know if I have any FB friends who have played in an orchestra, but I am particularly interested in their perspectives on this (gently, though, I hope — I already feel like a bit of a lousy parent over this). Thoughts?

Kim: He’s a jerk. If he wants a conventional, quiet symphony experience, he should pay the money and go see them at the theater. You guys did nothing wrong.

Donna: As someone who has played in an orchestra I am pretty sure seeing a kid dancing to our music would have been the absolute highlight of my music career. Seriously! Orchestra concert audiences are so boring. We notice when you’re sleeping. We notice when you get all dressed up just for a concert in the park. And we also notice when you seem to be really enjoying the music. And outdoor venues are very, very casual, so people should not expect a concert-hall experience. I’m surprised none of the musicians approached you to ask if Elly was taking music lessons.

Jason: In the small hours of the night, that man sobs into his pillow for hours about how lonely and hated he is.

 Ursula: Symphony in the park is all about bringing music that was historically accessible to a privileged few (at least in our country) to the general public. If this grumpy dude was really a music lover he would have relished your daughter’s delight. Shame on him.

Emily: If she was dancing directly on him, sure, but as long as she was dancing in the appropriate spot and not screaming he should be able to close his eyes and get his symphony Zen on.

Jack: Here’s a newsflash for that guy: Buy tickets to the indoor symphony, cheap-ass! I would have been livid. I wish Jeff would have decked him.

Peter: This one is easy: You guys should have told that guy to make his own musical instrument by sticking his thumb where the sun doesn’t shine.

Meg: I bet the musicians were so pleased. I am so sorry your critic didn’t see it that way and that is sad for him.

Julia: I feel moved and reassured by this reaction. The thing is, I want her to hold onto that joyfulness for as long as possible. I also want them to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them (as my mother used to say to me, back in the day). It seems like a fine line.

Kelly: I must say that he must have had a hefty set of balls to say something like that OR complete rocks for brains. An outdoor free show brings all kinds, even, dare I say, DANCERS! I am curious what Jeff said, if anything, to the toad.

Julia: Kelly, to answer your question, I turned around and saw Jeff basically vibrating with anger while talking to the guy — I sprinted over, because from my vantage point, it just looked like Jeff was being nasty to a harmless looking old man, and I couldn’t imagine why he was being so rude. Before I got there, Jeff apparently told the guy that he was very likely the only person in the crowd who felt that way, and that he was being very passive aggressive. The guy then repeated his objections to me, and I was so flustered, all I could say was “thanks for your feedback. You’re really upsetting me and I’d like you to leave us alone now.”

Cathy: The guy is a big poopy head. Elly, on the other hand, is a wood sprite. Rock on, little sister Elly! (I’m also insulted that he didn’t notice and complain about my kids climbing the tree.)

—

Irene Silverman, The Star’s editor-at-large, feels better already.