A story in The New York Times on March 3 brought into more vivid focus all the news these days about the Affordable Care Act. At least for me, it reverberated more strongly than all the statistics about those who remain uninsured.

    Tara Parker-Pope, in a “Well” column, reported on a significant racial gap in breast-cancer mortality rates that has been revealed by the compilation and analysis of deaths caused by the disease in 41 American cities from 1990 through 2009. The data showed that, beginning in 1990, the risk of mortality for white women fell dramatically in many of these cities — as might have been expected given the advances in treatment since then — but that the number of deaths dropped very little among black women.

    Disparaging the notion that the gap might be the result of genetics, the article was unequivocal about the reasons for this grim disparity: Black women were more likely to die of breast cancer, it said, because of “lower-quality screening, less access to treatment, and lower-quality treatment.” On average, Ms. Parker-Pope reported, 40 percent more blacks than whites were likely to die of the disease in the years studied.

    Boston, Chicago, and Dallas were among those cities with the largest disparities. So was Los Angeles, where about 70 percent more black women than white women died of the disease during the research period. Isn’t that a shocking figure?

    New York City, I was somehow pleased to learn, had a comparatively small racial gap. This, apparently, has been attributed to the city’s public-hospital system as well as readily available public transportation (eye-opening, I thought, as we don’t usually think of subway and bus service as a health advantage).

    Steve Whitman, director of the Sinai Urban Health Institute, one of two agencies that conducted the research, called the results “startling and very dismal because there is hardly any health measure in the United States that hasn’t improved in the last 20 years.”  

    Dr. Whitman called the disparity “systemic racism.”

    We should not be surprised. “The system is arranged in such a way that it’s allowing white women access to the important gains we’ve made since 1990 in terms of breast health, and black women have not been able to gain access to these advances,” he said.

    The study has hardly set off media shockwaves. The Times ran the story on an inside page, on a Monday.

    I am one of myriad women who have had a malignancy removed from a breast surgically, but I was among those fortunate enough to have had a kind of cancer (ductal in situ) that is non-invasive and highly treatable. Unlike the women cited in the column in The Times, I also was lucky because I am white and had a primary-care physician at the time who was one of New York City’s finest.    It can often be hard for many of us in the Caucasian majority to grasp the concept of  white privilege, but I think anyone who reads these numbers will get it.

    So by now we all know about the soccer mom. Allow me to introduce the ballet dad.

    Ballet dads, of which I am one, are hardly a demographic that politicians are going to be chasing in the next national election, and of course there are as many ballet moms as fathers. Allow me to tell you what it’s like.

    Forget about work for a minute; my real job, it seems, is driving. The oldest of our three children attends evening dance classes three times a week in Bridgehampton, one night a week in Water Mill, and often on Saturdays too. Because of my wife’s work schedule, I play taxi and find myself with hours to kill. I am not alone in this.

    At the King Kullen supermarket, I see them, other dance moms and dads moving slowly along the aisles. A certain less than urgent step gives us away. Want to linger over the packages of chow mein noodles? Well, that’s okay!

    For a while, I found the freedom exciting and hit a different restaurant every night, but I’ve grown bored of that. There’s something uncomfortable about being the only person at the bar on a howling January night, making small talk with the staff when you would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else.

    Eventually, I simply started to sit in my truck listening to the radio, starting the engine every now and then so I did not freeze. Around Christmas, friends gave me a key to their nearby shop so I could use the couch in the back room to just nap.

    Tuesdays, I have two and a half hours to fill. Since I drive a gas-guzzling truck, I am hesitant to head back to the office, plus it is taco night at one place more or less around the corner from the dance studio. Sometimes I invite friends; other times, at the end of a full day at the office, I want to sit and stare at my phone or at the bottles lining the back wall.

    They know me by name there now, and do not hurry me along. I’ve become a regular, a ballet dad with nowhere else to go.

    I’ve become the absentminded reporter these days. And with St. Patty’s Day being celebrated in Montauk this weekend — the unofficial harbinger of the season out here — I’m not counting on Mother Nature to allow me to get my bearings.

    A few weeks ago I found myself thumbing through the dictionary while looking up a telephone number. Two weeks ago I had all my gear ready to go and take pictures of the annual St. Baldrick’s Day that is celebrated at St. Therese of Lisieux. I cover it each year to see the brave men and women who shave their heads in allegiance with children with cancer. I wish I could say I was one of the noble, but as much as I hate battling my hair into submission each day, I am not ready to part with it.

    So I got to the church, and of course found a spot right outside, when I realized my camera was not with me. I tore the Jeep apart because I knew I had it with my stuff, but then remembered I had changed my scarf near the front door, a good five miles from the church, and must have put it down. My parking spot was filled.

    I sped home and, sure enough, found it on the little table near the front door that collects gloves, phone chargers, etc. And since I live very close to the Montauk Lighthouse it wasn’t a short trek. I am one of the last houses on Long Island. Does that make me special or weird? Weird is good; I came from a family of weirdos and married into a family of weirdos. I’m just thankful that my husband and I didn’t have little weirdo babies. But our poor children, they had reason to roll their eyes at us over the years.

    I always thought what my parents did for a living (they were both in the entertainment business) was kind of cool and I learned that kids like weirdo parents. I was even classified by some of my children’s friends as the “cool” Mom; I’ve always wondered if that was a cool thing or a bad thing. When I hear someone’s the cool parent, I automatically question his or her judgment. Not to worry, no drinking or smoking by children was ever allowed at our house. The parents, however, were another story. And that’s another column.

    At home, in City Island in the Bronx, we often had late afternoons that turned into music sessions. If a musical instrument wasn’t available, the kitchen pots and pans would do. And they did; if you have rhythm you can play on anything.

    My father played saxophone and drums, and two brothers played guitar and sang. The meeting of the Hewitts and the Fosters was a perfect storm. The Fosters were musical buffs that performed all over in clubs and at other events, and the Hewitts owned the venue — and a float.

    So on my first St. Patrick’s Day in Montauk as a year-rounder (I would never say local; 41 years later I still don’t consider myself local. A warning to those who spend one winter out here: You, too, might not want to toss that word around too casually) I honestly didn’t know what to expect from my family. Would they be playing pots and pans, using spoons as drumsticks, and cupping their hands to magnify their voices, or would they make me proud of them?

    They came through. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of them. The snow was falling and the Montauk wind was doing its thing, but the family brought out the good stuff, the guitars, a drum set, and somehow even managed an amplifier. When they turned onto Main Street that year, the cheers for them were deafening. They rocked that crowd, which, remember, was half or even less than what it is these years.

    I hope my little bit of nostalgia hasn’t bored you, and if it did just drive out to Montauk this weekend. I promise you it will not be boring.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

    Because the winter past was particularly dreary, any sign of respite has been welcome; a little sun is all I ask, that and the crack of a bat and a head-first slide into second, or a deft pass for a one-touch score from the corner of the crease.

    The inevitability of spring is enough to brighten one’s mood, but, for me, who must cover them, interesting teams further lighten the step. Last spring was dreary that way, though I sense this April and May will be different, that there will be more things to enthuse about than to commiserate over.

    It’s not all about winning, which, while nice from a sportswriter’s point of view, takes a back seat to enthusiastic engagement.

    This, then, is my pep talk, kids: No crowing, nor hanging of heads, please. Treat victory and defeat as the impostors Kipling said they were, and smile, don’t forget to smile. (After removing your mouth guards.) It’s fun, you should be happy just to play.

    And remember to forget yourself. Don’t think when you’re playing, it should be a time for reaction rather than reflection. You can reflect all you want when the game is over, thinking on those things you ought to have done and of those things you ought not to have done, resolving, of course, to do better next time.

    Life’s a marathon, they say — at least for most, so, for most, there will be plenty of time for reflection, for an examined life. But that shouldn’t lead you to be complacent. Marathoners sprint too, they do interval work at times.

     Somebody on the radio the other day said he sang every song as if he were living his last moments on the planet. Good advice for all of us, though especially for athletes when fully engaged, joyful, free of anticipation and regret.

    The softball team is very young. Lou Reale, the coach, said that at one point during a scrimmage this week he counted six freshmen and two eighth graders on the field. They’re beguiling in their eagerness and attentiveness, but they think too much, he said, and thus their moves, because they’re reflecting more than acting, haven’t acquired the fluidity yet that’s required for such a bang-bang game.

    But he knows this in-the-moment state, this joy, will come. He sees the improvement every day, he says. And, consequently, this crusty old coach’s mood is bright.

    That said, he hopes to grow the economy from day one. At the end of the day, it’s gaining traction and — going forward — some people will be pleased. Others? Not so much.

    The paragraph above contains seven of the many jargon-y turns of phrase that get my dander up. I’m proud of being a stick-in-the-mud where American English is concerned. I’m not entirely sure what my problem is, but I simply loathe trendy, overused words and phrases.

    Who is responsible for the fact that the trendspeak verb “to gift” has been replacing “to give,” in relation to gifts and free loot? As in: “The Academy gifted nominees with expensive bags of swag” (another annoyingly overused word, pronounced, also annoyingly, as  “shwag” for reasons I cannot understand).

    I remember being surprised and slightly irritated back in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton used the phrase  “grow the economy.” Couldn’t he have just said  “improve the economy” or “help the economy grow”?

    Perhaps not coincidentally, I think Hillary Clinton was the first person I heard talk about the amazing things she would do on “day one” of her hoped-for presidency. That’s a lot more succinct than saying “on the first day in office,”  granted, but I don’t like it anyway.

    Who is responsible for spreading these words and phrases among us? I have to blame television for interjecting them into spoken, and then written, language. First we heard them among news-hour pundits, then among reality-television contestants, and now we hear and read them every day.

    Now, I have to admit, it is clear that I myself am perfectly willing to use phrases that are honest-to-goodness clichés . . . as long as they’ve been around a long time.

    According to a Yahoo site called Voices, the first reference to “get your dander up” (see above) can be found in an April 1853 edition of The Wisconsin Tribune: “ ‘Well, gosh-all Jerusalem, what of it now?’ yelled the downeaster, getting his dandruff up.” It is also reported that Samuel Goldwyn, of Hollywood studio fame, has sometimes been credited with inaugurating the phrase, but he wasn’t born until 1897.

    The origins of the noun stick-in-the-mud are a little obscure, in part because the phrase has two meanings. Way back in the early 18th century, I’m told, a stick-in-the-mud was someone who wouldn’t or couldn’t get out of an abject condition. More recently, it means a person who avoids new activities, ideas, or attitudes — an old fogy.

    Well. While I don’t mind thinking of myself as a curmudgeon, I draw the line at “fogy.” I declare here that I positively enjoy new, trendy words and phrases when they serve to make the language more specific or more colorful (instead of duller and more generic).

    Did you read that the 2013 Oxford English Dictionary word of the year — a category that has included 2011’s  “truthiness,” 2009’s “app,” and 2003’s  “metrosexual” — was the humble “because,” when used to introduce a single noun or adjective?

    Why do I hate homogenizing trendspeak so? Because reasons.

    This week the South Fork experienced an abrupt return to bitter weather of the sort that characterized the winter just ended. A sharp downturn in the thermometer was often accompanied by snow and wind, followed by a brief warm-up, then cold again.

    What was odd about the frigid weeks was that our household did few or none of the normal winter things children enjoy. We went sledding but once, pond skating not at all. The kids’ schedules certainly had something to do with this, but then, too, it often was just too brutal outside to interest them in much more than bundling up in blankets on weekends to watch TV.

    As for myself, I don’t mind winter, but I, too, did not find it possible to take advantage of it. The single solitary time I managed to get the ice boat out of the barn and set it up at Mecox, the wind did not cooperate, and I spent the day standing around answering sightseers’ questions. I didn’t dig at my usual cold-month clam flat, and I put away my surfboard and wetsuits in November and did not think about them again until just this week.

    When there wasn’t a hard freeze, I managed to get a jump on a couple of spring chores, edging the brick path in the yard and trimming overhanging limbs in the driveway. Not eager to have to rebuild the stairs leading to the beach yet again after winter’s storms, I removed the lower steps to allow the bay to race underneath unimpeded. They will have to go back shortly, but that is a minor matter.

    I wonder, too, about the outdoor creatures. Will there be fewer ticks, thanks to the cold? And what about all the birds that have already returned from the South and seem ready to breed. How do they manage when it suddenly falls below freezing?

    Over on Deerfield Road in Water Mill I saw my first osprey about a week ago on a utility pole’s crossbars. It had evidently been flying back and forth for some time, carrying sticks with which it hoped to build a nest. Late afternoon traffic repeatedly disturbed it, and each time it flew away, the wind swept the most recent stick or twig onto the ground.

    When I checked back later, at around dusk, the osprey was still at it, forgetting about winter and getting ready for spring.

    On the same course as last week, I’d like to think that not thinking is the goal when it comes to doing something athletic, tennis in my case, which is why I thought a couple of months ago that it would be good to attend East Hampton Indoor’s weekly “stroke of the week” clinics, so I could think about what I was doing wrong and could take heedless satisfaction in what I was doing right.

    In tennis there are many mnemonics; if it were not so, I would have told you. Think of sliding your racket along the seat of a chair when striking a backhand volley, for instance. It’s A-C-E when serving, which is to stay toss the ball away from the body, keep the chin up, and extend through the ball, snapping the wrist downward with authority.

    Just as it’s head up when serving, it’s head down when hitting groundstrokes. Turn the shoulder, bend the knees, bring the hips around if it’s a forehand, following through up and over the opposite shoulder.

    If yours is a one-hand backhand, follow through high, flipping the lead wrist at the end to impart topspin. Chin up when hitting overheads. Step in to the volleys. And, rather than “bounce-hit,” say “one” when the opponent strikes the ball, “two” as you take up a position arm and racket’s length away from the ball, and “three” as you make contact. . . .

    Much to reflect on, you’ll agree, but when these truths of tennis are transformed into pure reaction, into beauty, as it were, then thought and sensation are transmuted into transcendence.

    Timing is beauty, beauty timing. And that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

    Of course, if you jerk your head up when it should be down, or jerk it down when it should be up, or forget to bend the knees or turn the shoulder, or get too close to the ball, or swing late, and thus mess up, there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth and things will go south.

    But that, too, is part of the game, part of the hacker’s game, whose best moments bid fair to be even more golden than those of the elite given the base metals from which they come.

    All by way of saying I’ve thought enough for now. It’s time to play. And, oh yes, keep your eye on the ball.

    It almost always feels like spring will never come, that the daffodils or forsythia are late, that the osprey have missed their return date, that the robins surely should have started their nest-building and infernal crack-of-dawn window-striking already.

    Despite the chill in the air, the ice crystals on the ground, or the occasional snow stubbornly remaining in the forecast, my unscientific study of spring’s arrival tells me this: It’s the length of the day more than its temperature that forces the season to shift. I could Google that, but I don’t want to.

    The tulips tend to open the same week of the year that they always do, regardless of the cold. Ditto the forsythia. The buds grow fat on the maple right on schedule and around mid-April the magnolia on the corner of Methodist Lane that I pass every day on my way to work will be blooming. It hardly seems possible now because I want it so badly. That’s how it is with this season.

    Among the hats I wear here at The Star is that of photo editor, and often by the end of March/early April I can see the photographers’ weariness with the season in the sameness of their photos. How much can you do with browns, blues, and white? Enter the cat, the yawning cat, dog on bed, dog at beach. Lovely silhouette of leafless trees? Did it in December. Snow? Please no.

    There are fewer photographs because there is less to be inspired by, and sometimes while I’m looking for a photo pairing for our letters pages or a shot for our editorial page I find myself looking in desperation into the photos folders from previous years. If I need, say, a picture of skunk cabbage for Larry Penny’s “Nature Notes” column, I might search nine years of Marches to find one.

    I notice through the pictures that almost every first week of April, give or take a few days, the same varieties of bulbs are pushing their way toward the sunlight. Forsythia? I find it in full flower on April 20 one year, April 27 another. Magnolias appear as early as April 13, cherry blossoms one April 19, lilacs on April 26.

    I warn myself that it’s been known to snow as late as April 15. I remember covering the groundbreaking on the Accabonac Apartments in my early years at The Star as snow piled up around the base of already blooming daffodils. And there were odd warm years, like 2007, when January was balmy enough to force the buds on a row of cherry trees on Pantigo Road, or 2012, when I could pick broccoli at Quail Hill all winter long.

    Spring is a fickle tease. It plays hard to get so we love it even more when we’ve finally got it. One day it’s 60 and sunny and you smell earth in the rain, the next it’s 32 and the sky looks like snow.

    I’ve seen the robins massing in the yard. There’s that one again, the one I curse at all spring, eyeing the spot above my bedroom window for his nest. Soon he will start battling his reflection for control of the turf. No matter what I hang in the window to let him know it’s a window, he’ll wake me up every morning when the sun is barely up, just to let me know that, yes, spring has finally arrived.

    Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.

    Everything I said last summer that I would get done in winter has not yet gotten done. When the roses were still in bloom, I had plans to strip down and then paint a corner cupboard for my dining room, clean out the big closet in the living room, and organize my shoe closet. There are just been too many distractions, one of which is watching reality television at night.

    It’s odd how you can fall in love with people who you don’t know, and even stranger when you feel sorry for someone you’ve never talked to. I happen to love the Robertson family, that grizzly bunch from “Duck Dynasty.” It took awhile, and I never expected it to happen to me, a person who hates reality shows and prefers reading to watching television, a person who loves animals and hates to see them hurt, much less killed. I often have to look away from some scenes.

    My love affair with the Robertsons started out of jealousy. While cleaning up after dinner I would hear my husband and son laughing, hysterically at times, while watching the show. I’d roll my eyes and settle in with a good book or magazine. But their laughter became intrusive, and I had no choice but to turn my attention to this wacky bunch of duck hunters who remind me of the Waltons, the redneck version. I wanted to laugh too.

    They pray before every meal and are vigilant about eating what they kill. When Phil Robertson, the family patriarch, got into trouble a few weeks back for some racist and homophobic statements he made during a magazine interview, I actually felt sorry for him. And though I’ve fallen for this family, I don’t think I’d ever eat a meal with them.

    Their menus include fried frog legs and squirrel brains, which Miss Kay, the family matriarch, proclaims to have loved since she was a little girl. “I don’t know why, but I’ve just always loved those little squirrel brains,” she says in her Southern twang while wiggling between her fingers a de-furred squirrel, readying it for the batter and hot oil sizzling in a pan.

    For Phil Robertson to knock anyone else is like someone with nicotine stains still on their fingers saying, “Oh my God! You still smoke?” three days after they’ve quit. When his remarks got him in trouble, the network decided to put Phil on hiatus, which I imagine he got a good chuckle over. He couldn’t care less about being on television. He’s all about hunting and fishing, and they often have to go hunting for him when he’s scheduled for an appearance.

    This family has made their millions, and he would rather be wrestling with the alligator that’s sunning itself on the river bank that runs near their home — a mobile home that has all the coziness of an all-American home, complete with white lights strung through the trees and frequent visits from the grandchildren — or trying to get rid of a beaver that’s causing damage on his property, deep in the woods of Louisiana.

    Except for the addition of another doublewide trailer attached to it, it’s the same house that the “Dynasty” boys grew up in, the same house where Papa Phil used to beat their behinds with a belt when they acted up during childhood. They used to pad their backsides when they knew a “whupping” was coming. Yes, Mr. Robertson was a mean alcoholic and at one time threw Miss Kay and the little boys out to fend for themselves. That man has demons rattling in his brain.

    But Miss Kay wasn’t much better back when the boys were young, and one of the brothers, the youngest of four, blames his balding head on her for all the hair-pulling she did to him.

    I don’t think there could be any crime worse than beating a child. The closest I ever came to corporal punishment was when one of my children was given a smack on the side of the head, really a swift pat, for driving in cars with boys that the child was forbidden to drive with. The child, I should add, had quite a full head of hair, so it was really more a matter of messing up the child’s hair. The child smacked me back! That’s how things go in this house.

    I learned about the family’s early years from the book Phil (supposedly) wrote called “Duck Commander,” which I picked up from the library hoping to learn how I, too, could make a million dollars. My thought was if this group of hooligans could do it, I should be able to do it. But the only thing I learned was that Mr. Robertson was a mean young father — and good looking, actually, before he let all that facial hair get in the way.

    It turns out that they made their money by creating a distinctive duck call. How does one who lives in a fishing community emulate that? Do fish even respond to the noises made by other fish? Could you imagine the havoc we could create if we developed a fish call that makes fish rise to the water’s surface?

    It’s something I’ll have to keep working on. But while I remain focused on becoming a millionaire, I will keep watching this family. And before winter fades you might want to catch an episode. Even if you can’t laugh with them, you will laugh at them. That is, if you can get past the grizzle.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

    Today . . .     Mostly sunny, though clouded conditions resulting from a high-pleasure system that moved through the region late may take a while to clear. By noon, however, one ought to be able to face the day, even though temperatures will continue to be unseasonably cold. By midafternoon undifferentiated thoughts of escape can be expected to arrive from the south-southwest, though the disturbance may be of short duration given that everything’s booked anywhere warm.

    Tonight . . . Dreary with snow late, following a broad depression caused by newly mailed episodes of “Breaking Bad,” a mood only slightly elevated by a half pitcher of margaritas and our wishes that Walter White had been our chemistry teacher in high school, for then we might have a better handle on things by now. 

    This new storm system, moving from the Midwest to the Northeast, will bring plenty of recriminations, coarse language, and gnashing of teeth, causing even more trips to the dentist, provided the roads have been plowed and the potholes filled in. Snowfall could accumulate a total of 1 to 3 inches, or, in some areas along the South Shore, as much as 10. The prospect will likely bring with it fitful dreams of impotence and of polyurethane fumes seeping down the hall from the recently redone room, though by midmorning the snow is expected to change to drizzle. (Happy Days!)

    Tomorrow . . . A bit of . . . what? Yes, yet another disturbance moving across the region in the early hours, which promises to bring with it a strong urge, as the skies slowly lighten, to remain under the covers forever.

    Thursday, Friday . . .  A chance for a bit of a blizzard Thursday, though don’t get hot under the collar, you can always play Gin Rummy. Friday may be a much milder day for struggling against entropy, though if Johnna calls from San Diego, don’t pick up the phone.