Nostalgia, Platonic love, and a church-like experience would hardly be on the average man’s mind when contemplating a routine excursion to the East Hampton Town dump. Now the dump is referred to as the East Hampton Town recycling center. But Sunday arrived, time presented itself, the dump beckoned.

    Cardboard boxes, a damaged plastic storage container, a toy lightsaber, a carved wooden handle, a child’s club with a note of the aboriginal: These artifacts would make their final departure to the unknown.

    The way Henry, Lane, and Morgan Jr. had swung those extendable plastic “Star Wars” swords on the lawn, it was unlikely this one still glowed the way it once had.

    And that old black jacket never did bring me much luck. Some of that Kmart clothing can be like that.

    Other things would be loaded into the Ford truck: a small amount of unruly sweepings from the driveway, some remnants of the annual winter wood-splitting massacre, a half-baked lampshade, a book concerning Donald Trump, two empty wine bottles, a destroyed pair of L.L. Bean tropical-weight shorts. Can’t be seen in shorts like those around this place anymore.

    All would make it via the 2004 Ford Ranger two-wheel-drive truck to their final resting place at the town dump.

    How many great memories can one location hold for a person? Seems like yesterday when I refused to allow my father to ride along with me on the weekly dump excursion. The air temperature was hovering around 92 degrees and heading upward; August heat had set in like a wildcat’s claw.

    I told my dad that he was not coming to the dump with me, and that was final. I told him, “What do you want, to drop dead of the heat at the East Hampton Town dump?” He was dressed in his usual bona fide safari jacket, nylon pants circa 1965, thin Christmas socks, and clean sneakers. Dad was closer to 90 years of age on that day than he was to 80.

    He was very mad about the whole thing. I explained to the man, “Your obituary headline will be ‘Judge Dies at Dump.’ ” Some sharp newspaper person might point out what a total idiot the son was, taking his aging father to the dump when the temperature there could have been 100 degrees.

    The matter blew over later that day. After much deliberation, Dad decided that if he had a stroke from the heat at the dump, it might not look so good for me. People from this part of the world talk about stuff like that.

    Late May 1987: What glory it was, in the era when men were mice and women were . . . now let me think. Oh well, my 1966 Ford Twin I Beam made it to the top of the hill. The top of the hill was where you used to dump lots of stuff prior to full-scale recycling. The hill was steep enough, and the gears were so low on that old truck, and what was left of the motor was not so get-up-and-go — a man was left wondering if the truck would make it to the top of the hill.

    As anyone who has delivered stuff to the top of the hill at the old dump in an antique truck knows, the view was quite good, and a scent of times gone by was pungent. It was the late 1980s, and the dump was destined to become what it is today, a recycling center. No more top of the hill nowadays, in a 1966 Ford in a state of dilapidation. How sad it really is; it was so fun.

    Boldly on to the present! The dump scene this recent Sunday had a touch of intellectuality to it. A man wearing a well-worn yet diplomatic East Hampton High School football jacket pondered a few books left on a stone sidewall next to the nonrecyclable bin. One of them was “The Art of Zen, the Art of Zen Drawing.” He had a hardcover cradled in his left arm, the black-lettered title broadly displayed: “Microwaving.” Me, I never really learned how to use a microwave oven.

    After many walks back and forth to the variety of recycling bins — glass, cardboard, plastic, and tin — I exited the dump in my truck, only to return. How does one go to the dump with small amounts of household leaves or brush and head to the regular recycling area without driving into the dump two times? As with microwave ovens, I never have figured out how to do that. It is a ponderous situation. Someday I will ask one of the people on duty at this fine East Hampton Town recycling station, “How do I recycle my household garbage and drop off some brush without having to leave and re-enter the main entrance?”

    My Sunday at the dump required one extra excursion from my family’s home, carting two large rhododendron branches in the back of my truck. Everybody in East Hampton knows unsightly piles of brush are not acceptable anymore. The in style is the Bridgehampton “new larger house look”: nothing on the lawn, new S.U.V. in the driveway. No forlorn yet beautiful daughter splayed out on the lawn in partial tears. The derelict uncle on a minor bender, blurry-eyed, thinking about his future, seated in some old outdoor chair.

    No, no, this will not do. No thoughts of future adventure on one of the many global seas for that young uncle. It is off to Target, Polo, or J. Crew for a set of new clothes. No piles of brush are allowed to be seen, and definitely no older trucks. Everything must be thrown away, neat and tidied up, especially the people.

    My son refused to ride shotgun with me to the dump. Can’t blame him. Morgan Jr. did hoist the heavy garbage cans into the truck bed and loaded some other garbage and whatnot. With arms like a truck driver’s and a head like a water buffalo’s, Morgan Jr. is the perfect Loader of Truck for Dump Run.

    He does a much better job of it than my dad used to. On the other hand, my dad used to meet the most interesting people at the dump. Like the guy in the old white van who was in the witness-protection program, who had either been run over by a car or had run somebody else over — never got that story straight.

   Morgan McGivern is a staff photographer at The Star.

   I played on grass on Sunday. On the surface, of course. And it was wonderful. Not only because it’s so easy on the feet, but also because we — me and Al — won!

    Playing on a grass tennis court is my idea of heaven, so it was appropriate, I suppose, that it was Sunday.

    “Some keep the Sabbath — going

    to church —

    I — keep it — staying at Home —

    With a Bobolink — for a

    Chorister —

    And an Orchard for a Dome. . . .”

    That, of course, was Emily Dickinson, whose Trinity was the Bee, the Butterfly, and the Breeze.

    I felt that way too last weekend, driving through Springs, which was in full flower. We even had a peony in our garden, which largely has been abandoned to the deer, and it smelled wonderful. With a storm brewing later, I made sure to stake it. Something so beautiful should stand erect, not hunch.

    Aside from the grass courts at Buckskill, I also worship in our outdoor shower, a bower whose fading, white-painted frame on Sunday was nearly overgrown by honeysuckle and rhododendron blossoms. Over it all were the trees and a sky so blue.

    “. . . Instead of getting to Heaven,

    at last —

    I’m going, all along.”

    Perhaps it’s this feeling that makes it so hard, especially at this time of year, to concentrate on what we call the news — largely the enormities, outrages, freakishness, and universal griefs that would vie with fecund nature for our attention, clawing at us when we should be out with Larry Penny listening for the whippoorwill’s call, which, after driving miles and miles he heard one recent night in Hither Hills.

    Jane Schacher played it for me on her iPad. And the chuck-will’s-widow’s song too, and, once I’d remembered its name, the nightingale’s, “pouring forth [its] soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!”

    It don’t get no better than this.

   Given the tantalizing headline, I couldn’t wait until Thursday to read “Here Comes the Sun,” Carrie Ann Salvi’s “Relay” in the May 16 edition of The Star, so I snuck back to the production department on Tuesday afternoon. (Tuesday afternoon is never ending, as Paul McCartney sang in “Lady Madonna,” so I had time to spare.)

    Carrie Ann dispensed some fine advice about getting outdoors and basking in the sights and sounds in intrigue of nature’s beauty, to borrow a few words from Van Morrison (“Come Here My Love”). The piece reminded me of a letter I wrote to The Star a few summers ago, as I sat sweating in the literally 100-degree heat of my Brooklyn apartment, having just sliced my palm open in the act of installing an air-conditioner. The Great Recession had reduced me to a lowly freelance writer, a divorce was imminent, and the nearest beach was at Coney Island (don’t bother). In hindsight, it was the midpoint of a years-long descent.

    The letter was given the heading “Chill Out, Give Thanks” and, probably composed in a dreamlike state brought on by heat exhaustion and the drowning of much sorrow, pleaded with certain of The Star’s warring letter-writers to stop bickering and appreciate the paradise in which they live. I suggested they go to the ocean together and jump in for an exhilarating swim, and promised to make the 100-mile trip to join them if they did. (No one got back to me, but the offer stands.)

    I love how songs can stir memories of people, events, and times in one’s life. For me, the Beatles’ “Revolver” album always takes me back to long-ago summers and will, one hopes, provide the soundtrack for more to come.

    One of my earliest memories is of being in a car with my father, driving from our house in Hither Hills to the house of friends in Culloden Shores, where we picked them up and drove them to our house for dinner. It had to be July or August, and in my recollection, “Good Day Sunshine” played on the car’s radio as we made our way up and over the high hill on Flamingo Road.

    What joy emanated from the old Buick’s cheap speakers! A jaunty, bouncy number recalling the English dancehall music that in no small measure informed their staggeringly brilliant oeuvre, “Good Day Sunshine” still delivers a smile and the promise, through the long, frigid nights of winter or the cool rain of last Thursday, that, as Mr. McCartney sang years later, “It’s never too long before the summer comes again / It always comes again.”

    And so it has. If you’re reading this, Sir Paul, please get in touch. We should definitely take our guitars and bike down to the ocean this summer.

    Christopher Walsh is a reporter for The Star, and if Sir Paul should care to know, he can be reached at cwalsh@ ehstar.com.

    I was not myself this past weekend, nor was Mary herself. You may well ask, who were we then?

    “It’s not you,” she said at one point.

    “Of course not,” I said, “because I’m not myself.”

    Still, I felt like atoning for having freighted one night in the city with such a fervent hope we’d be able to get beyond ourselves that we came close to self-destructing.

    It was too much “relax and hurry up,” and for that I was sorry.

    By the time we got home — in record time — we had begun to find ourselves again. While I mowed lawns, she took arthritic Henry to Louse Point (our Lourdes), and, after a long nap I was able to report cheerily that “I’m beginning to feel more like myself.”

    Soon, I was beside myself with joy running within myself at the high school’s turf field.

    I am the designated joyous one, though sometimes I forget that joy is where you find it. It can’t be imposed, or manufactured, and it can’t erase pain, though it can go hand in hand with it, and, in fact, must, as lovers who’ve lived a while on this earth know.

    This week, I read that the fellow who wrote “Milord,” a song my father and I used to sing with gusto, had said that only joy should reign, that pain was a sacrilege.

    But how would you know joy if it weren’t for pain? Not that I’m plumping for it, but that’s the way it is.

    And so, at long last, we’ve begun to grow into ourselves, said Mary, knowing, as we do, that joy and pain go together, hand in hand.

   “Whose Garden Was This,”  an evocative song by Tom Paxton, who lived in East Hampton for many years, came into my head this week after I drove through the railroad underpass on Narrow Lane in Bridgehampton and was suddenly startled, not by an approaching vehicle (although that is a real concern), but by a stand of some two dozen wild lupines. I had forgotten how stunning their blue-purple flag-like flowers are.

    Like Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Tom’s song  was an anthem for the fight against environmental degradation. At the time, though, the lyrics spoke to places far away, at least as far as I was concerned; I never thought the day would come when they struck home here on eastern Long Island. 

    Lupine, which used to follow the bird’s-foot violet in flowering along local roadsides, are just about gone now. They had held on for quite a while despite inappropriate public mowing in the name of road safety. Some years ago an effort was made — in East Hampton, at least — to convince the  Town Highway Department to schedule its mowing in keeping with botanical seasons, but it didn’t take. Changes in accepted government procedures require public insistence, and the voices for the protection of roadside flowers were too muted.

    Lupine wasn’t the only flower that used to grace the roads. Later in the summer, grass was punctuated by orange butterfly weed. Like the lupine, butterfly weed was pretty much taken for granted until it was too late.

    Of course, there are still flowering plants and bushes in out-of-the-way places here. A hidden forest of mountain laurel is breathtaking in June. Rosa rugosa, from which you can make rose-hip jelly, continues to thrive near the beaches, and goldenrod and asters pop up in August. Beach plum bushes put on a pretty show in good years.

    There also are members of the orchid family on Napeague’s wild lands. If you know when and where to look, you can see lady’s slippers and orchis, although they are much rarer than they used to be. These Napeague plants have been subject to neither mowing nor overdevelopment, but some of them are pollinated by bees, and bees are in serious decline.

    The disappearance of native flora is to some extent an aesthetic matter, I suppose. (That is, if you don’t consider the protection of biodiversity to be important as a general principle.) But such is not the case where shellfish are concerned. I remember the 1960s and ’70s, when people from away, unfamiliar with the South Fork, would ask whether it was safe to eat local clams. Of course! we told them, with exclamation marks in our voices. It never occurred to me in those days that in 30 or 40 years our waterways would write a different story.

    Today, shellfishing is banned either temporarily or after rainstorms in some of our harbors, and a few prohibitions may turn out to be permanent. If roadside mowing was death for many wildflowers, an overabundance of nitrogen and of chemical pollutants is the obvious cause of contaminated shellfish.

    The good news is that if you love lupine and butterfly weed you can buy seeds and plant them in your garden. Meanwhile, scientists seem to agree that it is not too late to reverse the downward trend in our harbors and bays. We will just have to make our public outcry louder and more persistent this time.

   Ah, Memorial Day, how did you come upon us so quickly? I don’t know about my fellow locals, but I’m just not ready for you.

    I’m already missing winter’s empty stores, quiet checkout lines, and roads that were not yet filled with pedestrians and bike riders who don’t seem to get that there are vehicles in their midst, people rushing to their jobs, people in a hurry. The bumper sticker that says, “We’re not all on vacation,” says it all.

    I’ll miss my Sunday afternoon drives with my husband, which will now end as he starts fishing every free chance he gets, leaving me alone to fight the crowds on beaches, in parking lots, the supermarket, and just about everywhere else.

    On our winter drives we often see other long-married couples taking their afternoon drives, which makes me feel old and almost makes me want to stop taking them. But we won’t because there’s nothing else to do at that time of year, and that’s how we like it. Sacred Sunday, we call it. In a perfect world no one would have to work on Sundays.

    When we drive through the quiet streets of Montauk we see the new houses under construction, many of them much bigger and grander than my own year-round residence. How do these people get to come to my town and build a bigger house than me? I, too, want a gazebo attached to my house or an oceanfront view. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem fair that those of us who live here year round often live in small houses, well smaller, anyway.

    But I’m also jealous of those who are finding Montauk and the Hamptons for the first time. I’m jealous of the ones who have yet to find the secret beach that is littered with conch shells and driftwood that I take home for my collection, or the horse ranch high on a hill where Montauk horses graze and gladly take handfuls of carrots. I’m jealous of the first time they see Oink, our resident pig who roams as freely as a dog and has become something of a tourist attraction.

    I’m jealous of the adventure they are about to embark upon and the friends they will meet. When I first came to Montauk as a young recent graduate of a business high school, which allowed me to receive a diploma as long as I promised not to type for a living, I, too, found many adventures, some not too cool. Ironically, I now type for living and am actually not too bad at it.

    There was the first time my friends and I decided to walk from the downtown area to the Montauk Lighthouse, not realizing it was about five miles of tough road. We ended up turning back when we thought it must have fallen into the brink. “It really couldn’t be this far, can it?” we asked ourselves. Ironically, I now live near the Lighthouse.

    So we hitched a ride, thinking that there was safety in numbers. Of course, a weirdo picked us up, the same weirdo that I see nowadays and know as a local. As we sat in the back of his car, we held hands and prayed for our safe return to the motel we lived in. Ironically, that guy is now a friend of mine.

    Then there was the time a newly-met friend and I decided to embark on a bike ride after she took some Ex-Lax. She had asked my unprofessional opinion of how many she should take to get her bowels moving again and I told her about two or three. Hey, they were chocolate flavored, that’s all I knew. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pedal so fast and furious to the nearest restroom. There is no irony here; I still love chocolate.

    On our first summer out here, my close girlfriend, who grew up next door to me on City Island, was hit by a car in front of the Montauk movie theater. She was fine, took a ride in the ambulance to the hospital, but became agitated when a reporter from this newspaper got in touch with her for more information. “I don’t want this in the paper,” she told the reporter. “My parents will make me come home if it gets out.”

    I do look forward to the warm days of summer and lazing on a beach all day. I look forward to eating steamers, lobsters, homemade chowder, and fresh corn on the cob. I look forward to outdoor dining and family boat rides. I look forward to having a whole afternoon by myself while my husband fishes. I look forward to people-watching and watching summer blockbuster movies at the Montauk Movie. But what I really look forward to is September.

   Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   Yes, spring may be here, but, besides the dazzling gold­finches and cardinals, there is the oaken semen dripping on one’s windshield, pollen-suffused air, allergies, tick bites, the wretched antibiotics required to treat them, and, sports-wise, it’s been a bit of a slog — the great majority of our high school’s teams not being playoff-bound.

    Still, lushness is to be preferred to slushiness.

    Presumably, there will be growth next spring, but then I wonder will I, a weekly sportswriter perhaps overly dependent on the winning drug, be here to enjoy it?

    “. . . Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day / To-morrow will be a-dying.”

    Of course, Robert Herrick was addressing virgins of the 17th century, not herniated geezers with total knee replacements of the 21st, but I hear what he was a-saying.

    Long before Herrick, of course, there was Horace: “Dum loquimir, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” Carpe diem. Pluck the day. Though not so roughly as to forget the future, which, while it is not ours to know, we can try our best to shape. Which is why am I going to p.t. every week trying to strengthen, after 70-some years of slouching, my shoulders so I can stand erect.

    It was my late mother-in-law’s express wish that I not hunch. Thus I’ve made it my mission to straighten up and fly right.

    “Yet, it’s the process,” my inner voice reminds. “Don’t get so hung up on Ws, give the kids a break, treat victory and defeat as the imposters they are and have some fun while you’re at it. In short, be plucky, and pay attention.”

    I had to admit I was right: Keep moving, keep improving, that’s the ticket. Did the kids learn, did they have fun? Those are the main questions.

    In the end, though, why not simply settle for fun, for the movement that embodies life, and let self-improvement take its course.

    The other evening at my brother-in-law’s Derby party, watching the kids — there must have been at least two dozen of them — playing dodgeball in the backyard as the sun went down was enough, more than enough.

   Let us now praise all things good about Memorial Day weekend. It goes without saying that those who live here year round usually stagger away from the first onslaught of the season complaining: “Oh my God,” or, “Help us! It’s begun,” or, yes, “It’s never, ever been worse!”

    So what good things, you ask?

    Let’s start with the State Department of Public Works having filled most of the potholes and smoothed out the main artery into and out of town. Huzzah! The gods of traffic, I observe, have favored East Hampton over Southampton, where delays for road work continued into the week.

    And how about the rain . . . which didn’t cease until the weekend was almost over? Okay, rain may have put a hex on outdoor barbecues, but, on the other hand, it probably kept day-trippers, and the traffic they create, to a minimum, right?

    I’m not entirely certain restaurateurs or hoteliers would consider a steady downpour a good thing, but various shopkeepers have told me over the years that when it pours, people hide inside the stores. So that cloud had a silver lining, right?

    The rain also pushed the trees and bushes, finally, into full leaf. Home gardens are now overflowing with all the plants that survived the winter and the voracity of the deer. Bambi and company have just about destroyed the few rose bushes left in my backyard, but, on the other hand — I’m trying to stay on the bright side — I don’t remember the lilacs and narcissus and the irises ever being as lush.

    Memorial Day is also a traditional time for old-home get-togethers. My husband and I swam against the tide this time, traveling away to spend time with family elsewhere. Getting out of town is nice, too.

    As far as I am concerned, though, the absolutely best thing about Memorial Day weekend, rain or shine, is the reopening of farm stands and stands and farmers markets. Goodness, this is a land of plenty. Produce grown right here is suddenly abundant. Beautiful rhubarb, tall asparagus, big, bouncy lettuces . . . it’s almost impossible to resist any of it.

    Some years, when spring has been warmer, local strawberries were ripe by Memorial Day. They weren’t ripe yet this year, true. But isn’t it pleasant to reflect that we don’t have to settle for hard, tasteless red orbs from — far, far — away? (Caveat emptor: If you notice your local gourmet grocer selling strawberries labeled as local later than mid-July, ask to see the crate they came in; false strawberry advertising has become a bit of a scourge.)

    Another good thing about Memorial Day is that people who rent houses are past their annual rush, and can breathe for just a moment or two —at least long enough for a glass of wine on the porch. And the tradesmen who have been up to their eyeballs in stress trying to finish up plumbing jobs, pre-season landscaping chores, and the like, might possibly have a few hours free to work for their year-round customers again. I like that.

    Another thing nice about the end of May is the fact that the days are just about as long as they will get. The summer solstice is only three weeks away. And it’s all downhill after that.

Dear significant-others of the comb over guys,

    I know you are suffering, and I am here to help. Trim this part off and leave the rest of this article around the house for the gents to see in the sanctity of the room where they do the comb-over.

The Comb-Over

    Do the gentlemen with seven hairs 11 inches long that stretch from left ear to right ear really think that that looks like a healthy head of hair? Really?

    Do they think the viewing public doesn’t notice the high sheen between the wispy strands and instead think: “Wow, that’s a handsome head of hair on that man!”

    No, gentlemen, we are not fooled. No one but the comb-over (C.O.) is fooled by the comb-over.

    On the street a comb-over, if noticed, and they often are (and for the wrong reason, especially in a high wind) is thought of thusly:

1. That guy is in major denial.

    2. That guy with the “C.O.” is not a C.E.O.

    3. That guy is vain for the wrong reasons.

    4. He is delusional.

    5. He is going to the wrong barber.

    6. He embarrasses his family on a windy day or coming out of the pool.

    7. This is a guy who thinks the Donald’s hair looks healthy.

    8. This guy is insecure about his looks. (And who wants to wed an insecure fella?)

    Consider the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. Plenty of 9/11 pictures show him with an egregious comb-over. He’s a rugged fella and that vanity distracted from his cool.

    Years later he remarried and the comb-over was gone. He is all the better for it, a good-looking man with a perfectly fine head of head.

    If the hairline the higher power gave you is . . . er . . . unfortunate, consider a full Kojak, a full Bruce Willis, a full Yul Brynner, Vin Diesel, or Ben Kingsley. Lack of locks never hurt these guys! Remember that a full Kojak is not painful. (Ask your dame friends about a bikini wax, and you will be strutting your stuff plenty quick.)

    Still a little worried? Try a moustache or a European stubble, a hipster under-lip thingy, a Panama hat or a boater. Try some fab new glasses. People might notice a change but they just might think you look less like grandpa and more youthful — maybe you lost weight? A great big confident smile is always a good accessory, and it doesn’t get in trouble in a wind! A big smile and the last thing anyone remembers is the hair, or lack of it.

    A comb-over telegraphs “insecure” which is high up on my personal list of aesthetic deal-breakers. (Along with hillbilly teeth.)

    And please no more comb-overs pretending to be a ponytail.

    Wake up, thinning guys. It is summer. Jon Hamm is famous for going commando in one way (and you may already be “going commando” like Jon Hamm); consider going full-commando, from top to bottom. (Remember the movie “Commandos Strike at Dawn”?)

    Okay, let’s be reasonable. Gentlemen, if your head is a terrible shape or if your career requires it, then get yourself a great toupee. If you go in that direction, please get a better set of toupees than that famous actor-Scientologist. Realism is key.

    Really.

   Durell Godfrey is a photographer for The East Hampton Star and keen observer of comb-overs (and many other things).

   It was rather exhilarating to see some 600 fifth through eighth graders dash across Main Street one morning last week on their irrepressible way toward the Main Beach pavilion some three miles away.

    “It must be the funnest day of the year for them,” I thought, as the kids, from Montauk, Springs, Amagansett, and East Hampton, cavorted at the edge of the cool ocean, remembering how I had always looked forward to the Collegiate School’s field day in the spring. (It just occurred to me that I’m wearing Collegiate’s colors today, orange and blue.)

    There were very few couch potatoes to be seen in the high-energy Bonac on Board to Wellness horde. To the contrary, many of the times were impressive; and some, in the high school’s boys varsity track coach Chris Reich’s view, were even “phenomenal.” He is eyeing in particular three seventh-grade middle school boys who ran the 5K that day in the 19s, “what I did when I was a freshman.”

    Lea Bryant, the middle school’s health teacher, who, with Barbara Tracey, the school’s nurse, oversees the wellness curriculum there, said that during the course of the school year the students were encouraged to make “healthy choices having to do with fitness and nutrition, and to set personal goals. We feel camaraderie is important as well. We try to encourage them to feel high naturally.”

    “It’s such a spectacular day on so many levels,” she said. “The time of year is wonderful, and it’s great that they all get to do the same thing, and that they’re all striving to do their best. . . .”

    My late stepbrother, who lived most of his life in France, said on returning from a brief visit to the Springs School once years ago that he didn’t know if the students were learning much, but they were having fun — a Descartean critique that he probably would have extended to American education in general.

    I’ll bet, though, that if they were having fun they were, indeed, learning something. Fun may not be the sole prerequisite, but it can play a big role — as was abundantly evident to me at Main Beach the other day — in awakening the imagination and in encouraging the mind to examine just how one comes to live a good life.