Leo the pig has hit what appears to be his adolescence — constantly leaving a mess on the floor and trying to carve out a little space of his own just to be left alone.

    For those of you unfamiliar with the story of our pet house-pig, let me explain that he joined our family over my most strident objections. My wife, Lisa, and elder daughter, Adelia, had fallen for what appeared to be an online con, a Texas breeder who claimed that it would weigh no more than 10 pounds as an adult. Don’t ask how much he cost us or to ship by air.

    More than once I said if we got a pig, I would move out to the shed.

    “Fine,” Lisa and Adelia said.

    Oh, he was cute when he arrived, all pink and tiny and seeking warmth under our chins. I said they were crazy and warned that he would ultimately be about the size of our Lab mix dog, albeit with stubbier legs. Now, at about 2 years old, he weighs more than 30 pounds — all muscle and determination — and he still wants to cuddle up under our chins.

    As such things often go, Leo has become more or less my pet, or to be more precise, my problem. Lisa wanted to send him back for a refund; Adelia is entirely indifferent. I find him interesting and amusing.

    Since I get up well before the rest of the household, it is I who puts him out in the morning, and it is I who makes his breakfast while fending off his aggressive nuzzling of my ankles. If I am not fast enough, he makes his displeasure known by knocking over the antique kitchen chairs; already one has been taken away for repair. He is not much put off by shots from a spray-bottle, which we keep handy. Often my first words of the day are, “Leo, cut it.” Well, perhaps with a bit more profanity.

    Just this week, the beast took to tearing up The Sunday Times with his hooves, then pushing the shreds into his dog bed by the radiator and nestling down amid it all. Midday on Monday, my wife sent a phone photo; Leo had curled up for a nap inside his recently cleaned litter box.

    Shortly thereafter, Lisa was headed for Bridgehampton. I said she should get him a room of his own, or at least swing by Agway to look for a nicer bed.

    I was working at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971 when the film department there presented a one-week program of the films of Shirley Clarke. Clarke was a well-known independent filmmaker during the 1950s and 1960s, when few women worked in the field. Her first feature, an adaptation of Jack Gelber’s play “The Connection” (1961), won praise for its graphic depiction of drug use, but entangled Clarke in a two-year censorship battle, which she ultimately won.

    Her next film, “The Cool World” (1964), was a film about Harlem teenagers, on which she collaborated with Carl Lee, the African-American star of “The Connection” and Clarke’s long-time partner. Clarke’s “Portrait of Jason” (1967) was a documentary created from a single, 12-hour-long interview with Jason Holliday, a gay African-American hustler and aspiring nightclub performer.

    According to Manohla Dargis, a film critic for The New York Times, “Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema.” Clarke was an integral part of the independent film scene then — John Cassavetes borrowed her equipment to shoot “Shadows” and Frederick Wiseman produced “The Cool World” — but while she helped launch the movement in the United States, she has been almost forgotten.

    I met Shirley Clarke because she needed an assistant. Shirley had begun experimenting with video and wanted somebody from the museum to help her set up a live video event for the opening night of the film series. I was acquainted with the work of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Joan Jonas, who were using video. I had even rented a video recorder and was spellbound by the sight of myself, live, on a television screen — albeit performing mundane household tasks. All of which is to say, I didn’t know much about the medium, but I knew more than anybody else at the museum at that time.

    Shirley was living at the Chelsea Hotel, in a high-ceilinged, triangular aerie that became known among artists as the Tee Pee. I began to visit her there to discuss her performance and how to realize it, and she would often telephone me at home and talk for hours. I remember few specifics except that I mostly listened and she mostly talked. But she was charismatic, accomplished, outspoken, and sexy, sporting a derby hat, suede miniskirt, and tights on a petite frame. I had been drawn into the orbit of somebody famous — and attractive.

    I was only 24 at the time, and she was 51. It never occurred to me this older, much more sophisticated woman would have any interest in me other than as a helper and, as far as I know, she never did. But she kept calling and inviting me over, and my wife at that time wasn’t happy about it.

    Earlier that year, Shirley had been arrested with Viva, one of Andy Warhol’s superstars, for filming an apartment building with a collapsed wall. She used what was a profound innovation at the time, the Sony Portapak, a half-inch reel-to-reel video recorder that could be slung over the shoulder.

    Shirley asked me if I would document her and Viva’s trip to court to contest the trespassing charge. I was very naïve at the time. I sensed it was a great opportunity, and I had a vague ambition to make films myself. Would the next step be an invitation to Warhol’s Factory, perhaps to shoot a video with Edie Sedgwick, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling?

    I met Shirley and Viva at the Chelsea. I put the deck over my shoulder, hoisted the video camera, and began taping outside the hotel, where a limousine was waiting. I climbed in after them and shot the trip from Chelsea to Foley Square, which was uneventful, except for the constant chatter between Viva and Shirley.

    As we were entering the courthouse, a security guard asked me to turn off the recorder. That was when I discovered I had never turned it on! Shirley and Viva disappeared into the building, I left the video equipment with the limo driver and slunk home. My dreams of superstardom were shattered, my days of socializing with celebrities finished. Shirley stopped calling. I did assist at the performance, but after that I never saw her again.

    Milestone Films has established a website, projectshirley.com, that aims to rescue Shirley Clarke from history’s wayside. She deserves rediscovery.

    Mark Segal is a writer at The East Hampton Star.

    Sharp-eyed readers of a nautical sort may notice a small but significant change in this week’s newspaper. For what I think may be a first, the tide table, which usully appears in the sports section, no longer gives the times of the daily highs and lows at Promised Land. Instead, it lists the ups and downs for the Three Mile Harbor entrance.

    Our decision to do this reflects two things. The first is that government tide tables are easily available for Three Mile Harbor, and the second is that no one much knows where Promised Land is anymore.

    Time was, Promised Land, facing northwest on the shore of Gardiner’s Bay, was a port of some importance. The Smith Meal company ran a menhaden processing plant there, and the Edwards Brothers brought fish to their dock. A railroad spur off the L.I.R.R. main line once crossed what is now part of Napeague State Park to reach the area.

    Seasonal workers, most from the South, traveled there each year to work on the menhaden boats — bunker steamers in the local vernacular — or in the steaming, hulking factory. When the plant was in full operation, it was hard to miss. The overwhelming smell of thousands of pounds of menhaden being steamed down for their oil and fish byproducts was something one might never forget. Employment there meant money, good money, the story goes, making it a “promised land.”

    Our house, about a half-mile to the west along the Gardiner’s Bay shore, was the nearest to the fish factory, as we called it, until well after it closed in 1968. It was the last of a number of smaller fish-rendering plants that had operated in the area; remnants can be found along the eastern, interior shore of Napeague Harbor and on Hick’s Island.

    According to “The South Fork,” my father’s, Everett Rattray’s, book, the owners of the Hick’s Island factory ran a two-mile-long water pipe from a pump house at Fresh Pond, Montauk. Fresh water was essential to the steam-run operations. When I was out at Napeague recently I noticed what I suspected was a piece of the old pipe now exposed by the shifting sands.

    With the fish factories all but gone, so too is the sense of what was once promising about Promised Land. Boaters do not end up there very much now, except for occasional drifts for fluke or if blown over from the Devon Yacht Club. People who work or play on the waters here are far more likely to be familiar with Three Mile Harbor, and so the change to our tide chart.

    Promised Land remains a place name, however, at least for us locals, and if you really want to know what the tide will be doing there, you can just subtract about a half hour for an approximate time.

    As it neared 8:30 p.m. on a recent Sunday night, Mary and I, as is our wont these days, talked of the time that remains to us, and she wondered, in that connection, what places I might really like to see and what things I might really want to do.

    “What do I really want to do now? Or in the future?” I said.

    “Both,” she said, “but let’s begin with now.”

    “As for now, rather than look at the big picture, I’d really like to watch the Steelers game!” I said.

    I don’t think it was quite the answer she’d expected, but, without a moment’s hesitation, she said — cheerily, I might add — “Let’s watch the Steelers game then.”

    And so we did — she intermittently, I transfixedly — and it was wonderful. Before the first quarter was over, the Steelers led 21-0, if memory serves, the most points the Bengals had given up in a quarter since Ought 5, or something like that.

    Really, if it weren’t for a couple of plays gone awry this season, the Steelers would be in contention for the Super Bowl again, though perhaps it’s good not to get fat and happy fan-wise, immune to the vagaries of life, whether of the sporting or of the real variety.

    One should remain on one’s toes, on the edge of one’s seat, as a poet said recently on these pages. Pretty soon it’ll be over and you won’t have seen Paree. Not to mention Mastic.

    “Well, I would like to go to Florence and stay in the inn they’ve made of Guido Cavalcanti’s home up on the hill, the Tower of the Beautiful View,” I said.

    “And Mom always said I should see Venice,” said Mary.

    Mention of Venice got me to thinking of the  root canal I’d just undergone. And of life’s exigencies. And so I assured her we’d go to Venice soon, but added that for now the only place I really wanted to go — since it was halftime and I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer —  was to bed.

    Air travel is a conundrum, at once wonderful and terrible. It is wonderful to travel so far so quickly, but terrible to have to leap over all the hurdles it throws in your way.

    (By the way, if our family friend Maria Matthiessen is reading this, I warn her that she should stop right here: I’m about to engage in a binge of what she calls “route talk.” And if you don’t get that reference, I refer you to a recent episode of the public radio program “This American Life,” about the five topics that without fail make conversations boring.)

    After Christmas in Nova Scotia, my husband and I hopped, skipped, and jumped down to Massachusetts for New Year’s. Although we encountered no ice storms, no canceled flights, and no geese on the runway, we almost missed our connection in Toronto. I don’t think we would have made it to Boston at all if my husband hadn’t used a wheelchair when we transferred planes.

    The modern airport can be like an obstacle course you’d see in a movie about military training, can’t it? It really isn’t a user-friendly space. Not everyone is able-bodied enough to hike the long distances between gates and security checkpoints; and not all airports have people-mover conveyer belts or carts to take the tired, the lame, or the aged from one holding pen or line to another. Airport navigation is about the only circumstance I can think of that can make a person feel grateful for being reliant on a wheelchair (though I guess athletes who participate in wheelchair races probably consider that sport to be another upside).

    As is so often the case, our flight was a half hour late arriving from Halifax into Toronto, and after we landed — “deplaned,” to use the lingo — we had to move like Ethiopian middle-distance runners to catch the connecting leg to Boston. Three different airline assistants moved us to the front of lines when we went through security (for the second time that day) and then United States customs.

    We arrived at the departure gate with frazzled smiles on our faces, just as boarding was announced for “those traveling with children or needing assistance.” Since there were only a few daily scheduled flights that would have gotten us down to New England on Canada Air, I felt certain the wheelchair had spared us a night in Toronto.

    Some time ago, a woman of a certain age whom I barely know confessed that she was in the habit of requesting a wheelchair in airports even though she didn’t really need one. Perhaps guilt loosened her tongue, but who knows? Maybe she was bragging about her wiles. I myself shoot dark looks at those drivers I sometimes see parking in places reserved for the handicapped, ever watchful because my husband has, and needs, a handicapped tag. I don’t believe in taking advantage of it when I am alone in the car.

    Our trip from Nova Scotia to Boston took 14 and a half hours, a little longer than a nonstop to Beijing or Dubai. Looking at a map, I think we might have rowed the 300 or so miles across the Gulf of Maine in better time.

    Come back, Stephen Talkhouse, all is forgiven!

    This strange sequence of words was like a whisper in my ear as I trudged along the partially plowed sidewalk on Main Street ’round about midnight on Saturday, still blissfully unaware of the incoming polar vortex and its ruthlessly frigid Arctic air. A whisper, or perhaps the wind. Come back, Stephen Talkhouse.

    The Talkhouse — the establishment, not the man — where I spent an awful lot of hours (and a couple awful hours) over the last 12 months — for professional reasons, of course, mostly — is closed until March. As some of its principals and crew headed to Florida for a Soldier Ride benefit, the nearest watering hole/concert hall/community house to my little apartment was suddenly inoperative. The long holiday season is over, the wind whispered, and the deep freeze is on. Get out while you can.

    I still remember the feeling when Labor Day came to Montauk, and the lines at Gosman’s Clam Bar, where I worked many a summer, grew shorter with the daylight. I remember the subtly shifting hues of the September sky and sea. I can still recall the yearning in a local man’s voice as he noted, almost 30 years ago, the mass exodus from the South Fork at summer’s end. “Back to the city,” he said wistfully. “And you wish you could go with them.”

    After childhood as a year-round resident of Montauk, I used to do just that, clearing out well ahead of Columbus Day. Then I lived in the city year round, and as time passed spent less and less time here. From the outset, the summers in New York were horrible, intolerable, and eventually I couldn’t bear the thought of another, and here I am again.

    Into a second winter in Amagansett, I’ve experienced two summers of the Fabulous Hamptons like I’d never known them before. We all know of the crowds, the traffic. Surely we can all recount all-too-true tales of rude and ostentatious behavior, inconceivable self-regard. Noise, litter, and nowhere to park. Much like New York. . . .

    Yeah, it’s a lot nicer here without all that. The Reutershan parking lot is more accommodating without the Ferrari positioned, by design, to occupy two parking spaces. But these are the desolate days, and April seems a long way from here.

    At the Talkhouse, there was live music. There was recorded music. There were familiar faces, friends, and fun. And now there isn’t.

    So I had to stop in on Saturday. I had to get one more impression, one that would have to last a while.

    It had been a good year at the Talkhouse. I’d seen and heard plenty of great artists, and met and interviewed quite a few of them too. I was recruited to work the merchandise table for a couple acts and made a few extra dollars in the process. I’d performed there a few times with my band, the Hot Pockets, and introduced the indescribably perfect tribute band Lez Zeppelin at their second show of the summer.

    And on Aug. 15, ’–round about midnight, ragged from multiple jobs and just back from an East-Hampton-to-Queens-to-East-Hampton sprint in The Star’s embattled van, I’d had a brief but exhilarating chat with Sir Paul McCartney, as Jimmy Buffett and Angelica Huston stood nearby. How often does that happen?

    Come back, Stephen Talkhouse, wherever you are.

    Christopher Walsh is a reporter for The Star.

    Forget about turkey, this is the time of the year that our thoughts turn to shellfish. That is, if you are inclined, as I am, toward such things and did not get quite enough of the fall striper run.

    Shellfish news from local waters has been mixed. Most disturbing was a report this week that the East Hampton Town Trustees’ scallop sanctuary in Napeague Harbor was illegally dredged and sustained considerable damage to its eelgrass beds. One of the trustees filed a police report; there is no word on suspects.

    Separately, just over a week back, the state expanded its seasonal ban on shellfishing in the northernmost part of Accabonac Creek, citing fecal coliform trends. The trustees bridled at this, concerned that the state was doing too little testing to be sure one way or the other about the safety of the creek.

    Such seasonal closures have a silver lining: I can’t see the sense in clamming during the warm months anyway, when waterfront houses here are full — and an unknown number are leaching household waste into the water. Then too, I can go dig at my semi-secret spots in late fall and winter without worrying that high-season weekend warriors will catch on and clam them out.

    Clams had a brief flurry of international attention last week when scientists reported that a quahog relative dug off Iceland was 507 years old, making it the most-aged animal known. Ming, as they named it, had first been pegged at just over 400, but another counting of its annual rings revised the estimate upward.

    Our local clams can run old, but not that old — up to 100, I read somewhere. One clamshell, which I keep on my office windowsill, measures about four inches at its widest and appears to have roughly 30 annual rings — not quite so old to preclude its contribution to a pot of chowder.

    I am reassured that the winning clams in the town trustees’ annual contest, each as big as a man’s fists held together, are thrown back to survive another day. Heaven knows just how old those beasts really are.

     There are Hamptoners who only use their houses here one week a year. I know this because two years ago I worked as a sous chef for such a family. Headed by one of the biggest Wall Street whales, they only inhabit their Water Mill House during Thanksgiving week, the rest of the year being spent in the city, Florida, England, France, and probably more places to which I’m not privy.

       With its team of gardeners planting all sorts of autumnal foliage around the vast bay-touched property, its cozy fireplace-lit rooms, and its barn with indoor squash court and bowling alley, the compound is an idyllic spot in which to celebrate bounty. They have much to be thankful for.

       I received a call a few days before Thanksgiving from the estate manager. I had known her when she was the private chef of now-divorced friends, a Wall Street pasha and his wife who had a house on the ocean near the Maidstone Club. She knew that I cheffed on occasion. Could I start Monday? There were three days of prep work before the extended family of roughly 30 would gather on Thursday.

       I had never been a sous chef. I had worked the line at a restaurant once, had been a cook at two top Los Angeles caterers, had a couple of catering companies of my own, and had been a “private chef” for several clients from L.A. to Connecticut.

       I would be working under the clients’ French chef, who followed them to their various residences.

       “How’s your knife work?” she asked. Not great, was the truth. Knife work? This had never been important to me. Then again, I never worked for clients who cared if a carrot was properly julienned or a leaf chiffonaded. It’s not that I don’t know how to properly slice and dice, it’s just — like penmanship — I’d never mastered it. I’m a very fast cook, preferring to rely on the various blades of the food processor. But that, I knew, would not please a classically trained French chef. 

       I consider myself a creative chef. My formal training is limited. In my 20s my neighbor in the city, Peter Kump, founder of the James Beard House, inveigled me to attend the first class of his cooking school. Today it is the widely respected Institute of Culinary Education. I already knew what I was doing, having fooled around in the kitchen since I was 15. My first meal: Chicken Kiev from “The New York Times Cookbook.” Yes, the melted butter spurted. I was hooked.

       I loved Peter’s school, learned a lot, but found I preferred my usual method of immersing myself in cookbooks (always piled high on my nightstand), then using recipes as veering off points from which to experiment with my own versions. Like covering songs. A few years later, while living in London, I took a few classes at the Cordon Bleu, but found its methods dated. In one of the classes a dour woman demonstrated how to prepare a marrow squash, basically a large tasteless zucchini. I reverted to the books of Elizabeth David and Madhur Jaffrey, going through a stage where I cooked only Indian food, seduced by the exotic aroma of toasting spices. 

       As I was buzzed through the security gate, I was anxious about what the chef would think of my skills. Never mind my years of cooking untold dinner parties for friends, not to mention cooking three meals a day for myself. (For today’s lunch, just a regular weekday meal, I stuffed a poussin with dried fruits and threw some vegetables into the roasting pan. It took me the same time as making a sandwich, not including cooking time.) The first day went well. We mostly made menus and lists of ingredients, which we gave to another kitchen helper whose only job was to shop.

       That night the estate manager suggested we go out for dinner, an opportunity to bond. She chose Bobby Van’s. Since we were on Long Island, I suggested fluke. When the chef took a bite I could see it was not up to his standards. Then I tried it. Strangely cardboardish. I sent mine back. He didn’t, but he didn’t eat his either. I later found out this had scored against me. But I’d be damned if I’d pay $35 for an inedible fish.

       The next day the prep work began. Two housekeepers and the Water Mill and New York butlers bustled about on the perimeter. The chef eyed me suspiciously, but didn’t find much to complain about. I kept my eye on three kitchen maids who grabbed my chopping block to clean whenever I wasn’t looking. We endlessly peeled and chopped and, as there was not enough room in the three kitchen refrigerators, it was my job to find space in the pool house refrigerators, and its outside closet that stored cushions, but was cold enough to keep vegetables safely. For the next few days I made the trek between the pool house and kitchen dozens of times, carrying boxes of produce through where dozens of clumps of helenium were being planted, and wondered what it would be like to be so rich. I felt like I’d landed on Planet Billionaire: 10 or so acres of privilege and excess.

       On Wednesday, a team of seven tabletop designers spent 12 hours arranging foliage and owl and turkey candles and sculptures spilling a cornucopia of fruit and nuts, as anticipation built. When the head butler, a Brit who spent a lot of time making himself tea and eating jelly sandwiches, rushed through the house calling “Wheels up!” all hell broke loose. Everyone scurried about to ensure all was in order before our lords and masters descended upon the household. If I were rich, I wondered, would I have servants unscrew my Perrier cap as did the lady of the house?

       We made lunch for six. As we lined up platters of sea bass, lobster, and salads (lentil, Caesar, arugula — each one fiddled with by the chef with the precision of a diamond cutter), the missus sent word through her New York butler, Anthony, for us to prepare sandwiches. Back to the pool house with the uneaten food, no one daring to tell the boss that there’d been a communication breakdown. The bill from the Clamman alone was $700. When the chef saw the sandwiches I’d prepared he had a minor freakout. I had to start again and cut the crusts off the bread just so.

       On Thursday a half-dozen freelance butlers arrived (one told me he was paid $1,000). Glorified waiters, it was their job to set the tables and serve the food, but mostly to stand around and look servile. It upset me that we went through miles of plastic wrap and aluminum foil, but there was nothing I could do. It was clear the chef had no respect for Americans’ traditional holiday fare, boiling to death huge pots of vegetables and Frenchifying them with lots of butter and cream. Didn’t that go out in the ’70s with Cuisine Minceur?

       Service went smoothly. The chef had me put beads of Sevruga from a large tin on boring white crackers. Only two were eaten. I didn’t amputate any fingers, didn’t elicit much ire from the chef. But since he never had the opportunity to taste any of my food, I knew he didn’t respect me. I learned many lessons, most notably: Cooking is something I love, so I now I reserve it as a gift for the people I love.

—

       Debra Scott is a real estate columnist at The Star.

“At a certain point you’re going to plan that gathering which you won’t be able to attend. You’re going to make your final arrangements.”  — from the blog The Screaming Pope

       Q. Dear Pope, as you know, I’ve been thinking about this for some time, and recently settled on Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, which I’ve been hoping to show you one day soon. Should I select a plot on higher land, so that drainage is good?

       “Everyone is opting for higher land these days, but remember Venice and Amsterdam have survived below sea level for centuries. Not to be overly phobic, but higher land also puts your plot in danger of terrorists and drones.”

       Q. Should I buy four plots instead of two, to give my wife and me more space?

       “I would opt for four plots so you can offer your mourners some amenities. With your extra two plots, you can build a little workout area equipped with, say, a treadmill and elliptical for those who want to get aerobic while they’re paying their respects. I personally can’t remember anyone unless my heart rate has reached a certain level. A normal heart rate is like death to me.”

       Q. Should I put a little mini wall around the plots to show that we are important and make it easier for those coming to pay their respects to find us? Should I put a nice little bench nearby to encourage people to give a little more time to sitting and remembering all that was good about me?

       “Again, affirmative . . . my rule of thumb is bigger than a gravestone, but less than a full-blown mausoleum. Oh, one little point: Your bench should a have a plaque. People have short memories and by the time they get to the bench, they may not be able to remember who you are.”

       Q. I struggle between the cheaper and environmentally preferable option of cremation versus full-body burial. But in the end, does cremation seem too final?

       “I like cremation since it’s sexier. I always wanted my ashes scattered in the women’s locker room at Equinox so that I would be surrounded by naked women for all eternity.”

       Q. Should I write my obit and the farewell remarks that will be made at my send-off? Or should I just trust that whoever writes them is going to know what they are doing?

       “Remember Ashford and Simpson? I think the obit can be written by you and your eulogist with one of those little EMI doodads next to the credit, in case the eulogy itself makes it to the Top 40.”

       Q. Should I engrave on the tombstone a link to a website that will have a robust offering of my history, speeches, awards, achievements, etc.?

       “A no-brainer.”

       Q. What should my epitaph emphasize — my good-heartedness, my veteran’s status, my love of family, my Honorable Mention All-City Football Team recognition in Omaha, the love of my cat, Reed?

       “I wouldn’t go into any of these items. Everyone knows those things. I will share with you what I think to be an extraordinary aspect of your character. It may seem like a small thing, but the way you comb your hair says so much. First of all, you are the only guy I know who still puts a comb through his hair and certainly one of the only ones in our age group who still has something left to put a comb through. But I’m sure even if you were bald you would still pull the old comb out in polite company. It’s a spiritual act, by Jove, and the world needs to know this. Combing and praying are virtually the same thing for you. So your epitaph could read: ‘He combed with the hand of God,’ or ‘At home with the comb of God,’ or ‘God, where did he get that comb?’ We can work on the details. I don’t think we have it quite yet.”

    Paul Critchlow is writing a memoir tentatively titled “Outrunning the Peter Principle: Tips From an Inveterate Corporate Survivor.” He lives part time on North Haven.

    Francis Levy, a Wainscott resident, is the author of the comic novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com and on The Huffington Post.

    Thank goodness President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Congress to set Thanksgiving permanently on the fourth Thursday in November so that we can follow an annual routine. If Thanksgiving were allowed to fall pell-mell on any random day of the week — like Christmas does — I am not sure how we would get ourselves organized.

    I get so wrapped up in the winter holidays that everything else goes by the boards. Television, newspapers, Facebook? I have no idea what’s going on in the world, beyond the rounds of the Thanksgiving marathon.

    I’ve already spent hours and hours food shopping, not only doing a number at the supermarkets but going to the Green Thumb farm stand in Water Mill and Citarella in Bridgehampton. I’ve ordered the turkey from the Mecox Dairy Farm and the oysters and clams from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, and there are still more shopping trips to come, including Goldberg’s for rye bread, which I want to try in the stuffing for a change, and Breadzilla for sweet treats.

    Things are especially festive around here this year, with two of my grandchildren and their parents visiting from Canada. We don’t  usually pay very much attention to Hanukkah in this household, but it’s also rather nice that it falls on Thanksgiving this time so we don’t have to be confused about when to celebrate it.

    We’ve been eating for a week. The refrigerator and pantry are brimming: aged goat cheeses, pump­kin bread pudding, chicken pot pie, gravlax, whitefish salad, bacon scones, Craig Claiborne’s Chinese green-bean salad, Edward Giobbi’s pork chops in piquant sauce. . . . 

    My husband has become fixated on the new  Jerusalem  cookbook, and he treated us the other night to a delicious chicken-and-bulgar dish with a yogurt and cucumber sauce; he also took advantage of some wonderful extra-late-season local tomatoes, slow-roasting them for an unusually tasty pasta dish. We have had paté mousse as an appetizer and wine with dinner, too — and I won’t mention the mammoth box of fancy cookies my daughter brought home  for the kids.  I will know for sure if all this eating has been bad for my health when I gather my strength and step up on the bathroom scale (perhaps I’ll leave that till next month), but I’ve been enjoying myself immensely.   

    And swiftly, of course, Christmas is approaching. How dare it fall on Wednesday this year? What will we working folks do? Will we shake things up at The Star and publish on Friday so that everyone can go home early on Christmas Eve, then come back the day after Christmas to finish the job? I’m pleased to say this is a conundrum the editor, not I, will  have to solve.