Ever since I joined the staff of The Star decades ago, I have adhered to the old-fashioned journalists’ prohibition against public expressions of support for one political position or another: I do not sign petitions, attend meetings to either advocate for or oppose matters of controversy, and I do not usually participate in polls. This week, however, I broke with the last of these standards.

    As we know, polls have had an increasingly powerful effect on legislative decisions; this is especially true at the federal level, but more and more often at the local level, too. The media treat poll results as news. We have gotten so used to this adjunct of the democratic process that there seems little debate about how seriously the results of polls should be taken.

    In a recent essay for the Neiman Journalism Lab, an affiliate of Harvard, Herbert J. Gans, a sociologist, expressed doubt about how well polls truly reflect the will of the people. He pointed out that news reports on polls almost never describe the specific questions that had been asked and do not generally include figures to account for respondents who didn’t have opinions on the matter or were unsure of their answer. For that reason, Mr. Gans said, poll results are often not an adequate measure of majority opinion.

    Obviously, the answer we give to a pollster is very much affected by the way a question has been framed. The wording, as I have learned, is often anything but neutral, but instead engineered to garner one result or another.

     The telephone rang this week on Edwards Lane, and the person on the other end indicated that she was seeking opinions on a proposed zoning law in the Town of East Hampton (a law that will, as a matter of fact, be subject to public hearing tonight and happens to be the subject of an editorial today). All the caller would say when I asked her to describe the proposed law was that it would become clear as we went along.

    At first, the questions were as wholesome and straightforward as motherhood and apple pie. Did I approve of maintaining East Hampton’s rural or semi-rural character, protecting hamlets, neighborhoods, landscapes, scenic vistas, and historic buildings? Of course I did.

    As the questioning progressed, however, the queries became astoundingly biased. They were rigged in such a way that if those who answered wanted to be counted as in favor of the proposed new zoning law, they would find themselves approving something that was going to have dire, damaging effects on the community.

    I was told that if the law were approved it would become extremely inconvenient for residents to buy necessities such as milk — and was I in favor of its passage? Then I was told that if the law were passed it would cause the community to suffer economic loss, because there would be fewer jobs — and did I support that?

    (I wish I had been sitting at my computer at the time of the call so I could have taken more precise notes, but you get the gist.)

    At the hearing tonight, some will no doubt argue that local government has no right to restrict commerce. Others may say that although the goals of the law are reasonable, its restrictions go too far.

    It’s likely, someone will come waving the results of the poll in his or her hand, as “proof” of the public’s wishes. Frankly, I would be delighted if they do, because perhaps then we will learn which individual, organization, or corporation paid for this sham.

    The house we live in, built for my parents more than 50 years ago, is a little tight for a family of five that includes a 4-year-old with an ample supply of Legos and dinosaur toys, as well as two dogs and a pet pig. We need more closet space. The upstairs wood floors are due to be redone. The kitchen cabinets haven’t been painted in 20 years.

    It’s not like we haven’t tried. A plumber we met with about getting better heat in a chilly bedroom has gone missing. The painting contractor we used most recently appeared to have an eyesight-challenged crew, if the sloppy job they did on the interior trim is any indication. And I’ve tried to institute a no-new-objects rule for everyone in the family to minimize clutter, to little avail.

    The problem with any house-renewal effort, as many of you will agree, is mission creep. When we had a problem deciding on paint colors for the kitchen, our attention became focused on the outdated red tile on the floor. We are now investigating options, including laying a high-tech “floating” surface on top of it, but this may involve a visit to the manufacturer’s Manhattan office.

    Selecting tile for the kids’ shower became a conflict when one of our daughters announced she simply had to have a pricey, bubble-like style we saw in a Wainscott showroom. The debate about whether to put the new television over the fireplace or next to it nearly brought the family to blows. Both these conflicts were resolved (we agreed on a more sensible tile; the TV is next to the fireplace), but it wasn’t easy.

    Warm weather, when we will open the doors and windows and spend more time outdoors, can’t come soon enough. That will take the pressure off calling in a bulldozer for this old house. At least until the fall when we all move back inside once again.  

    A flush bank account inspired me the other day to buy two new pairs of athletic socks, a spending spree that I hid from my wife until I thought the timing was right.

    She chose that moment to confess that she, too, had been prodigal, having taken to the cleaners a wool sweater that needed mending.

    We have the examples of Depression-era parents to thank for these periodic urges to live large. But the poet William Blake, about whom I’ve begun reading lately, might not have agreed, arguing that by restricting ourselves so, we shrink our imaginations, and thus attenuate our connection to divine creativity. At least, I think he might argue that way, though I haven’t read far and only with momentary comprehension. Anything that restricts — from within, from without — I gather was anathema to him.

    This heavenly day — at last, the first, I think, of spring — has contrariwise nurtured heady thoughts. “Damn,” I just heard myself say, “I’m gonna buy me another pair of athletic socks!”

    Neruda once wrote of shoes imprisoning the feet, so at the least I’d like mine to be comfortable in their confinement. I think they may be up for parole in a few weeks. I worry a bit that they may have begun to curl in — I think that’s what happens as you age. Soles  — and souls — must stretch, and warmer weather helps in that regard.

    All of a sudden — embracing our alter egos, emboldened by the lighter air — Mary and I come and go talking of the Ponte Vecchio. Or the north end of the south island or the south end of the north island.

    When? she asks. Who knows? Maybe September, I say.

    Meanwhile, things are going well here, everything’s rolling on wheels. We’re raking and currying and dragging and furrowing and clipping and snipping and edging and fledging, pursuing the dictates of the season as we make way for the imagina­tion, now that it’s spring.

    Easter has always seemed to me to be a mystical holiday. We have the darkness of Good Friday, the quiet of Holy Saturday, and then the glorious brightness of Easter. Growing up, my whole family would attend the 9 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s, Star of the Sea, in City Island. Even my father, who normally went to 6:30 a.m. Mass by himself on Sunday mornings, or so we thought.

    I found it odd that on Easter, when Dad joined us at Mass, no one seemed to know him. The other fathers didn’t greet him as they did each other, and he was never asked to be an usher. As we got older we learned that dear old Dad had never gone to that early-morning Mass, but instead sat in the Orchard Beach parking lot with a sweet roll and coffee and the Sunday Daily News.

    My siblings and I found out later in life that my father had a lot of secrets, and not going to church was the least of them. The subway secret was the classic, though, and involved another woman.

    My parents’ marriage was a struggle for both of them and ended in divorce. But there was a time when we would all sit together and watch the nightly news on television. Once, when we were watching during a crippling New York City subway strike, my mother jumped up and changed the channel. Not fast enough. We saw our father standing on a subway platform with another woman, someone we had never seen before. That was interesting.

    Other childhood secrets that have nothing to do with my father continue to haunt me at Easter. I grew up in a mostly Catholic neighborhood, and the parish was a very active part of our lives. One year at Easter, a friend told us that she had to go to church on the Saturday afternoon before Easter Sunday and walk around the church, by herself, three times, and stand on the cement steps for a few seconds each time. She confided in us, her gullible girlfriends, that she had to do this. We could come if we stayed inside, but we couldn’t ask any questions and we weren’t allowed to tell anybody she was doing this.

    We were very young, I’m thinking maybe 10 to 12 years old, and this great mystery fueled our imaginations, especially because we were all reading the old Nancy Drew, girl detective, books. I called her on it and accused her of making up this ritual, but she insisted it was something her parents made her do.

    I don’t know that she did this every year, because we dumped her from our circle of friends soon afterward. She was just too strange. She wasn’t a particularly pretty girl, so I think she tried to wrap herself in a cloak of intrigue to seem more alluring to the local boys, most of whom were buck-toothed and dirty, as in not washed every day. It didn’t work, because we never told them about her — mainly because we forgot about it as soon as we went home to color eggs.

    I’m reminded of this episode every year at about this time. I wonder what happened to her. If she’s not in the loony bin she might still be walking in and out of churches searching for the light. Or, she could have become a nun and the whole thing was a type of ritual that we knew nothing about.

    It no longer matters. But to me, it’s still one of the great mysteries of Easter.

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

    The East Hampton Star has offered, and helped pay for, its employees’ health insurance for as long as anyone can remember. As premiums have soared, what it has cost to do so has increased every year, as has the amount employees pay toward their coverage. Nevertheless, I am proud that, as a small company in an industry undergoing its own changes, The Star’s contributions to employees’ health insurance have stayed at the same level since 2007.

    This year, with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act in effect, we have turned to Susan Morrissey of the eponymous insurance agency in Sag Harbor to help us tread the waters. She has recommended chang­ing our insurer, and, to our surprise, the policies, which go into effect May 1, will provide more coverage at lower cost. What’s not to like about that? To understand why this is possible, you have to consider the expansion of services in the act’s basic provisions.

    Most of us know that insurance companies can no longer use pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny coverage or cancel coverage if you get sick. They cannot charge women more than men for the same plan, and annual or lifetime limits are no longer allowed. Young adults have been able to stay on their parents’ plans until they are 26 for some time, and they are now able to obtain health insurance as individuals through their parents’ employers until they are 29 under certain circumstances.

    What are really new are the many preventive services, categorized as wellness care, which now must be provided without cost, along with immunizations and H.I.V. screening. The Affordable Care Act also requires policies to cover mental health services for the first time, as well as annual pediatric visits to dentists and eye doctors and a pair of eyeglasses. Unfortunately the Obama administration, which has been besieged by criticism, didn’t do much of a job in broadcasting these improvements.

    The goal is to see that all Americans have basic coverage, which is long overdue. In New York State alone until this year, 1.1 million people were reported to have gone without insurance. It is not yet known what that number will be now that 7.1 million people throughout the country have signed up. Nor is it certain that everyone who has done so will pay up when premiums come due. But the Obama administration has every reason to be gratified by participation in the so-called exchanges, or marketplaces, so far, after such a terribly flawed start.

    The most troublesome thing about the health insurance provided to individuals through the New York State exchanges is that, unlike the policies obtained through companies like The Star from such private insurers as Oxford or Aetna,  the network of doctors and hospitals to which patients can go  is extremely limited. Even Stony Brook University Hospital, where many East End residents are treated when they are seriously ill, is off-limits.

    Something is very wrong with this, and who knows how long it will take  to correct, if ever. Premiums for those buying reasonably good individual policies used to average $1,100 or $1,200 a month, but lowered premiums through the state will backfire if patients are unable to continue treatment where they have had it without exorbitant bills.

    Those on The Star’s policies who remain relatively healthy, and who see their doctors or buy prescription drugs routinely, are indeed going to benefit from lower premiums and modest co-insurance payments in the year ahead. But there is more to the story: Those who require more expensive care or hospital stays will for the first time have deductibles to meet. This is also the case for those who qualify for premium subsidies through the exchanges.

    It’s all so complicated that a whole line of work seems to be growing up: so-called health insurance “navigators” online, who are supposed to help people understand what is and isn’t possible for them, and what it will cost. We are lucky at The Star to be able to rely on a professional like Ms. Morrissey.

    A friend sent me a text message Tuesday night that the spring peepers had begun to sing near her house. Down here by the beach, the diminutive frogs had started their chorus exactly a week earlier. They were late, according to a rough record I keep penciled on our basement wall; last year, their ringing love calls began before the middle of March.

    Reminders are now all around us that the time has come to get ready for the warmer, more active months. Peepers, returning songbirds, a trio of soaring vultures, crocuses on the lawn, swelling buds on the trees signal nature’s inexorable clock.

    Over the weekend, our 4-year-old, Ellis, and I started work in our garden beds, snapping off last year’s seed pods and scraping the soil of the weeds that had already begun to renew themselves. Several low heads of kale and two carrots that we had planted in the fall had survived the winter. Ellis dug out his carrots, a purple-and-white variety of some sort, the longest no more than four inches, and brought them inside to show his mother. Later, after we had washed them, he nibbled them, unpeeled, down nearly to the modest leaves, and pronounced them good.

    Sometime seed-starters like myself are belatedly motivated by April’s warmer days. Ellis and I have laid out peat-pot flats of collards, variegated chard, and peas in recycled, plastic salad containers in the kitchen. On Saturday or Sunday we might get some tomatoes and flat-leaf parsley going and sow a bit of spinach if we can get the soil turned, the compost laid, and the irrigation hose rolled out and in place.

    Working in the garden is easy now, before the weeds have had a chance to get their roots down. Come the Fourth of July, the beds will be a dense tangle of desired growth, mysterious volunteers from unknown seed, and familiar weeds. We are gardeners of a less-than-fastidious stripe.

    The garden is itself a metaphor for the seasons, the way it is simple in winter, overflowing and impossible to get my arms around in summer. In August, as Ellis and I are pulling weeds and trying to keep it watered, if you ask, I will admit that I secretly long for the fallow time.

    Mary, unlike me, who because I’m a journalist knows better, immerses herself in the depressing news that Henry dutifully brings to our door every morning.

    Immediately, I reach for the sports, which are to be found within the business section, whose contradictory reports on the economy often can be found on facing pages: The economy, according to the latest jobs report, looks as if it’s on the upswing . . . Yellen Mutters, Market Tanks. . . . That kind of thing. So you buy and hold . . . on for dear life.

    The same old, same old hatreds wear on one after a while, but what Mary read to me from this Sunday’s Sunday Review really had me agonizing: “Is the Lime an Endangered Species?” was the headline, and, friends (those of you anyway who are partial to margaritas, a recipe for which I’ve perfected), this bit of news was dire indeed.

    “A sudden and unprecedented shortage of limes has sent nationwide wholesale prices soaring from around $25 for a 40-pound carton in early February to more than $100 today. . . .”

    Squeezing the Mexican lime market, it said, were severe rains in November and December that knocked blossoms off the trees, a spreading bacterial disease, and even drug cartels cashing in on the spiking prices.

    That last presents me with an ethical problem. Are the margaritas I make (not to mention the guacamole) lining the laundered pockets of the Knights Templar? Long ago, I vowed not to touch marijuana because of the link between this indulgence and the severing of heads, though it was a rather easy decision given the fact that my addictions have long lain elsewhere.

    But now it’s not so black and white. Morality can be a slippery slope. Do I, whose blood orange margaritas have been widely praised, want blood on my hands? Of course, I could say, I suppose, that the old virtues no longer hold, that it is quaint in today’s ruthless and unprincipled world even to presume to entertain high-minded thoughts.

    Has “Breaking Bad” led me to this pass? Okay, where’s the blender?   

    When my cat Nelson went missing the other night I was beside myself. I knew in my bones that he was gone for good. Why else would he disappear for hours on end?

    I got Nelson a year ago, when he was a teenager, I suppose, about 9 months old. He had been found as a kitten by a friend in an abandoned gopher hole in her yard in Hoboken, N.J. After fostering him for a while it became clear her cat was never going to accept him, so to East Hampton Village he came, where he happily became an indoor-outdoor critter, coming and going at will through cat doors.

    In January we moved into a house in Springs, and I didn’t let either cat out for two months. It’s not that I was being overprotective, it’s just that it was so cold and snowy. Well, maybe I was being a tad vigilant. Once I had them all to myself, I was loath to let them out, especially into unknown territory.

    A couple of weeks ago I started letting them out a few minutes, then an hour, then a couple of hours at a time. Last Wednesday night around 9 Nelson began to meow to get out the front door. When I opened it something must have spooked him because he dallied inside. Around 9:30 I let both cats out. An hour or so later I let Savannah in. She sashayed around the kitchen, raising her tail and wiggling her backside in a proprietary way. She’s half Bengal and, though female, marks territory like a male.

    Lately Nelson had prolonged his nocturnal meanderings a bit. A frisky young male, he needed to sow his wild oats. For the next several hours I went to the door and called him in my signature way: “Nelllsonnn! Nelsie. Sweet boy.” Blah, blah, blah — all the embarrassing ways by which women can talk to their felines. But I was met only with dark silence.

    About midnight I started to worry, feeling that familiar tug of panic weighting down my insides. Savannah followed me, apparently under the impression we were on a great adventure, as I went deep into the neighborhood, shining my flashlight under bushes and up in trees. I was amazed at how she scoured fences into neighbors’ yards.

    But no Nelson. I put on the late shows, which I rarely watch, to keep me alert to a possible scratch at the door. The mugging-for-the-camera antics of Craig Ferguson, whom I’d found endearing in the past, was particularly annoying when gripped by fear and grief. As I write this now, I see that I was overreacting. My sister reminded me the other day that, as our mother died when we were young, we tend to think the worst first. I woke up repeatedly throughout the night to call him.

    The next day each bird peep and distant child’s cry I was sure was Nelson, who can be a talkative bloke. I hung out on the back deck talking loudly on the phone so he’d hear my voice, and worked on my laptop in the glaring sun so as not to miss the sound of paws on dried leaves. I called and called. I put out food in a loud way, opening the can as if it were the main act of a Vegas show, shaking a bag of treats as if it were a pinata.

    I called a friend who lives upstate and has a male cat I knew had disappeared before. “He’s taken off for up to a day and a half,” she comforted me. I was already up to 16 hours at that point and though my mind wanted to be at ease, my stomach still felt like a battery had leaked in it.

    I remembered that I had bought an herbal mood relaxer called 5-HTP a while back. I took one. It softened the edges of my anxiety remarkably. I looked at the label. Only two a day. Within another hour of his not reappearing I wanted another. Hell, I wanted a vodka, a Valium, anything to take this feeling of dread away.

    There were things I should do. Eat, was one of them. But that was something my digestive tract was unprepared for. I had made some squash soup the day before. Nothing seemed less appealing. I remembered that I’d bought some cheddar-coated popcorn for a party I’d never had. Where had I stashed it? Only junk food would do at a time like this. I devoured some healthy candy bars, not really an oxymoron, raw chocolate and peanut butter cups that supposedly contained as many antioxidants as a pound of kale. They filled the hole in my gut, sort of.

    Overcome by the deep exhaustion of worry and lack of sleep, I could barely lift the kettle to make some chamomile tea. I knew I needed to make posters and scout the neighborhood again. I was supposed to meet friends for dinner but felt I couldn’t leave. What if Nelson came back when I was out? A friend advised me to take a nap then go out. Savannah climbed under the covers. She didn’t seem to notice that Nelson was missing. I found it hard to fathom that she didn’t miss her pal, with whom she frolicked day and night, but didn’t fault her.

    I went to dinner and managed to have a good time and mostly put Nelson out of my mind. But as I drove home, I returned to our old village address to see if perchance he’d returned there. He hadn’t. Then I sailed the car at five miles an hour the last half-mile home calling his name. As I turned the car into my driveway, I was crushed, despondent. It had been 24 hours. And then there he was! Making his little squeaking sound and waiting for me on the front porch.

    On Saturday I found myself reassuring a friend whose male cat had been missing a few days. “Don’t worry, he’ll come home.” And I’m sure he will.

    Debra Scott is a real estate columnist at The Star.

    A single batch of daffodils, in a tight cluster near the sun porch in my backyard, is almost in bloom. They seem to be saying “thank goodness” for this week’s sun and warmth. Before long, I will see which other plants survived the long, cold winter (and survived the ravages of the famished deer).

    The daffodils were planted by my friend Victor one fall day many years ago. He had ordered too many bulbs and, without so much as a how-de-do, came over to put the extras in the ground as a gift. I looked out the window one morning to see him digging away.

    The daffodils spread good cheer this week, as I help get The Star’s annual gardening supplement ready for publication (it will be out in two weeks). Many of us seem to be making an especially big fuss of these first flowers of spring. Everyone is talking about the snowdrops and crocuses and narcissus. I suspect we all feared they would never come.

    This year, the gardening supplement will have what might be said to be an environmentally correct cast. Rather than one of her popular and expert pieces on the finest, and sometimes the newest, varieties of flowers, bushes, and trees, The Star’s own garden writer, Abby Jane Brody, is waxing a bit philosophical with an essay on gardens that are personal rather than trendy. Susan Seidman, one of the mainstays of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, has written an elegy for a sourwood tree that graced her front lawn. And Christopher Chapin has contributed an homage to the late Jim Jeffreys and the startling camellias in his small village garden.

    Most of us know that honeybees are in decline (suffering what is known as colony-collapse disorder) and one of the South Fork’s busiest beekeepers, Mary Woltz, wants us to do something about it. The title of the piece she has written is “Cherish the Dandelions.” Evan Harris, who often freelances for The Star, describes the double wood fences her husband has built to keep the deer out of his backyard garden. (No eight-foot high wire mesh for them.)

    The supplement also introduces readers to Edwina Von Gal’s Perfect Earth Project. Ms. Von Gal has rededicated herself after years of high-end landscape design here and in Panama to what she calls the cultural landscape — lawns and landscapes free of toxins, safe for children and pets as well as the rest of us.

    And of course no Star supplement would be complete without Durell Godfrey’s photographs throughout, including some from the simple to the extreme, that she has so cleverly scouted in local shops.

    Lord knows, the South Fork is full of amazing gardens created by some of the most well-known landscape designers. House and garden tours are incredibly popular during the season, as homeowners open their gates for good causes and let the rest of us in for a few peeks at what talent and hard work, not to mention money, can achieve. Perhaps next year we will venture into a few of these exalted bowers. This time, however, the Garden Book is staying down to earth.

    In the coming weeks I hope to finally correct what I and a number of other local people see as the misidentification of a portion of Gardiner’s Bay, something I have been pursuing for nearly six years.

    It is not coincidence that I am interested in this; the house I grew up in and where I now live is on its southern shore, and as my father, who was descended from one of the town’s first colonists, always said, it was Gardiner’s Bay. Napeague Bay, as online maps and other Johnny-come-lately sources erroneously have it, was never even heard of when I was a child.

    Early in 2008, I wrote to the United States Committee on Geographic Names stating my case. Since then I have taken an on-again, off-again approach, spurred along by questions and documents from Steve Boerner, an archivist at the East Hampton Library, who was asked by the federal committee to look into the matter. In the process, I have learned a lot about my small corner of the world, and the way in which things change.

    The error appears on maps after about 1956, when a United States Geographical Survey field investigator crossed out Gardiner’s Bay on a work sheet and wrote in Napeague Bay on the advice of an unnamed local postmaster. Of course, no one told the surveyors this, and Gardiner’s Bay continued in use until at least the mid-1980s.

    Working our way backward, old maps nearly without fail either do not name the bowl-shaped water body between Hicks Island and Goff Point on the east and Cartwright Island on the west as anything at all or have it correctly as Gardiner’s Bay. Napeague Bay, when the name appears at all, is the crescent east of Goff Point, bounded more or less on the east by the Rocky Point bluffs and Fort Pond Bay. Truth is, though, as a boy out sailing with my father, I understood that Gardiner’s Bay ran into Block Island Sound at both its northern and southern reaches.

    Deeds support my view. One notable conveyance dates from 1795, when Nathaniel Dominy bought 1,200 acres of beach at Napeague “bounded on north by Gardiner’s Bay.” I am sure there are plenty more, if Steve or I can find them.

    As we circle toward resolution, the issue remains of pinpointing the boundary between the two bays. For a time, I thought that it should be at Cherry Point, just to the north of Promised Land, but this would have excluded Hicks Island, which trustee records place on Gardiner’s Bay. Maps can be deceiving, though, and with that in mind I took a ride in my truck out to Goff Point a few weeks ago for a look.

    Rounding the bend near where Napeague Harbor’s eastern inlet once was, the scene simply seemed to open up at Goff Point. Waterfence, as the beach there is called, fell away to the east, toward the high ground at Hither Hills. If it were up to me, I’d place the marker there, the point where one bay ended and another began.