Whatever happened to the laughter boat? Which was to visit countries around the world and laugh, the idea being presumably that laughter would be catching.

    Sometimes I think our only hope lies, rather than in buggering priests or in cardinals with shadowy pasts, with the world’s comedians, those who have keen intellects and can hold a mirror up to the horrors and hatreds that individuals and groups somehow rationalize.

    We are supposed to be an open-minded country, with more comedians per capita than any other, and yet when sensible gun control measures are proposed, we rush to buy more; the applications — and the potential for more and more violence — mount and mount even as we propose that there be a respite from it. Long live death! And our precious freedom to deal it out.

    But when the highest clerical authority in the Western world is said to have collaborated with a death-dealing junta, it’s little wonder that the times seem out of joint.

    Comedians go right to the quick, to the heart of the matter, at least the good ones do. No b-s. We need more and more of them, satirists who can shame as well as needle and poke fun. Include everyone, for everyone is benighted at times; individually, collectively.

    Otherwise, sneakiness, in high, middling, and low places, which already has gone far, will utterly take over, and drones manipulated by faceless authority will roam the skies at will. Damn! I’m going out and get a gun so I can shoot them down. No, no, just kidding.

    Social media may at times be a pain; it is cacophonous and shoots from the hip, but it and the comedians could save us — from ceding power to the wrong people, from blithe unconcern, from cant, from secretiveness and self-deception.

    When people and governments can laugh at themselves, we will be on our way. It will mean then that we’ve begun to get serious.

   “Have you seen a white skateboard?” the woman asked me, a hint of desperation in her voice.

    I had noticed her a short time earlier at the Abraham’s Path kids park run by the town in Amagansett. We were on the basketball court, and she and a young girl were taking shots, talking in Spanish and English interchangeably, while my son, Ellis, and I passed a ball back and forth.

     Across the park, two boys, the woman’s sons, I assumed, took turns on a skateboard on the ramps, while several other girls who were under her charge rode bikes.

    On that late Saturday afternoon, it was chilly as the sun went below the Town Lane oak trees. Someone not far away was cutting something with a chain saw. A couple of older boys and one or two other adults taking care of children were the only other people in the park.

    Before it had gone missing, I had noticed the skateboard, a Penny Board, of the sort that my 11-year-old daughter had idly asked me to buy her a couple of weeks earlier as we walked in East Hampton Village. I said no, or more like, “No way. You already have a skateboard.” She probably responded, “You’re mean,” or some variant on that particular kind of guilt trip.

    For all the world, the boards, with molded plastic decks and wide, flared wheels, remind me of the first, junky skateboards we had as kids in the 1970s, before we graduated to laminated wooden decks and better wheels. But, as a middle-aged dad, there is much I don’t know about what’s cool and what’s not, or so I am reminded daily. Penny Boards, at about $100 a pop, are cool.

    Protocol at the youth park is casual as far as personal possessions are concerned. Things are left here and there as kids move from one activity to another. Those of us who are there frequently more or less know which gear belongs to the park’s free rag-tag collection of bikes and helmets and so on and which does not.

    There was an all-corners search for the white board; nearly each of the family in turn asked if I had seen it. Either a parent unsure about who owned what innocently packed it into a car, or, the other possibility (more likely in my opinion) was that one of the older kids, noticing an easy grab of desirable gear, spirited it away.

    I helped look for a while as Ellis and I made a few final rounds of the track, he on his three-wheel scooter, me jogging alongside. It was pretty clear that it was not going to be found.

    By the time we left, the woman seemed resigned that the skateboard was gone for good. Her kids asked me one last time if I had seen it. “It glows in the dark!” one said. “No, sorry,” I said, really meaning it.

   My 5-year-old granddaughter, Nettie, is good at wishful thinking. I doubt that an adult gave her the idea that if you told the Easter Bunny, like Santa, what you wanted, you probably would get it. I am sure the bunny left her and her 3-year-old brother, Teddy, baskets with appropriate goodies on Easter morning, but leaving the bunny a note about what she wanted for (ahem) Easter must have been her own idea. And it was a two-sided note at that.

    Because she is still learning to read and write, and because I know her parents wouldn’t have indulged her in this, my guess is that she had encouragement and help from a baby sitter. (I had helped her write two stories, about a dog and cat who defeated a dragon and about a mermaid who wanted a pet dolphin, on a recent visit.)

    On one side of Nettie’s note it said: “Plase can I have a black kitten that never grows pu.” The spelling of please and the reversed u and p were testimony to a child’s hand. On the other side of the note, she wrote: “Dear Easter Bunny please can I have an iPod my mom and dad said yes.” Her parents had said no such thing.

    An e-mail about Nettie’s notes capped a weekend in Bunny Land. East Hampton certainly goes all out for kids on Easter these days. There were at least three community egg hunts and there had been at least two a weekend earlier, in East Hampton and Amagansett alone. When my own children were little, we relied on family and friends for egg hunts. For many years, we gathered at Mary Ella and Jim Reutershan’s place at Stony Hill, in Amagansett. An expanse in front of their house sloped downward from a low brick wall at the edge of a patio and the grassy area was surrounded by bushes and trees. It was full of perfect hiding places for kids of a range of ages. It was a great party, and it was the 1970s: Those were raucous events for the grownups, bloody Marys and all.

    One year, my daughter, the same person who didn’t approve of an iPod for her daughter, decided she was too old for egg hunts. Instead, she went to the party in a bunny outfit she made herself, starting with a pink leotard and tights, and hopped around giving the littler kids foil-wrapped eggs.

    Times change. Private rituals become commercially sponsored events. The Easter Bunny at the community egg hunt at Amagansett Square on Saturday was more than six feet tall, and he/she was a friendly sort, squatting to hold babies while parents took photos of them in the bunny’s arms and squatting to shake hands or give high fives to little people. The event, staged by the Meeting House restaurant at the Square, was fun, and it was jammed, as I hear the other hunts were that day. Kids dashed about to find eggs, and were then invited to decorate eggs or cookies and to have their faces painted.

    The family Easter egg hunt migrated from my house to my son and daughter-in-law’s this year. They served bagels and lox, cream cheese and tofu, cake pops, and fruit — but there wasn’t a Bloody Mary in sight.

   When Hillary Clinton, in an intense primary battle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, said she was ready to lead the country from day one, she started an avalanche of everyday people using day one. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the use of these words to indicate the start or the beginning of something dates back to 1971, but, in my opinion, it wasn’t really common in the popular vernacular until an estimated 2.5 million people watched the candidates debate in 2008.

     I have no big objection to day one. It’s catchy and emphatic enough. By contrast, I never could stand hearing Hillary’s husband, President Bill Clinton, saying how he thought we could grow the economy back in the 1990s. Before the era of Bill, the verb to grow meant to raise something, specifically something organic. Now, it has acquired a second meaning: to improve or increase.

    This is unfortunate, and it makes my brain hurt, but, clearly, there is no going back.

    I wish I had studied linguistics. Scholars, I am sure, can pinpoint the origins of such changes in English, and revel in tracing those changes, rather than just wincing and moaning about them. I am afraid, however, that at heart I am a dyed-in-the-wool conservative where language is concerned. Call me a word curmudgeon.

    Would you like to know another emerging usage that raises my hackles? It is when people say to gift when they really mean simply to give. As in: The sponsors of the V.I.P. suite gifted all the Oscar nominees with swag bags of goodies.

    How about the words “going forward”? I certainly would not use them to mean in the future and would ban this phrase from The Star if anyone would pay attention to me. The TV pundits say going forward all the time, these days, so I have to assume that those who use it in everyday speech are addicted to television news programs. (It’s almost as bad as at this point in time, another morsel of television-ese that makes my hair stand on end.)

    Then there are the overused words “transparent” and “transparency.” They are frequently heard lately in a political context, meaning the actions of a government entity are available for public perusal or the reasons for a decision are clear — or not. But Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary hasn’t caught on to this definition yet. It still gives the first definition of transparent as “the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that bodies lying beyond are seen clearly,” although its second definition, “free from pretense or deceit,” gets closer. This is one case in which I think the new usage is actually useful: It gets to the heart of a previously somewhat complex idea, in short order.

    Right here is where I should end this column with the maladroit “that said” (or, perhaps, even the ear-torturing that having been said). But, well . . . do I need to say more?

   One of my assignments last month was to take pictures at an East Hampton Village Board meeting on the issue of solidifying a more modern approach to the vastly important international issue of Dogs on the Beach.

    One man spoke at length concerning forming a 2,000-strong organization directed toward “education” and “behavior” of both dogs and dog owners on the beach. He seemed to view it as a social activity, socializing with other dog owners at the beach, like in Central Park, but the beaches of this far-flung village are not Central Park.

    As I see it, the main problem with dogs on the beach is that 8 a.m., every day of the week, is not an appropriate time to bring your dog to Wiborg’s Beach to go to the bathroom. Simple solution: Have your dog go to the bathroom in your own yard or in proximity, then bring it to the beach.

    It is so funny, these intrepid four-legged creatures running amok with tennis balls in their mouths, sticks too, rolling around like nuts on the occasional dead seagull. Perfect time to go lick one of the terrified tourists who thinks dogs should be leashed, trained by expensive trainers, and act like well-bred cats.

    Some people want the police to get more involved and want uniformed officers to go to the beach and ticket errant dog owners. I think a policeman in uniform chasing a dog owner around the beach is ridiculous, unless someone has been attacked or injured. East Hampton Town has an entire division known as animal control.

    Another woman at the meeting suggested a fine of $500 for failing to clean up after your dog. The fine should be $20, and warnings should be the standard protocol.

    Why doesn’t everyone just take a week off from taking their dogs to the beach? Problem solved. We will call it Dogs Off the Beach Week. One week a month, all your Facebook friends and Twitter and Instagram followers could be invited to Dogs Off the Beach Week. There could be a benefit to raise money for the Dogs Off the Beach Campaign.

    East Hampton Village has a long history with dogs. There has always been a big unruly yet beloved dog roaming the village, always. In 1969 there was Sheba, owned by the Barnes family. Sheba was so big she took up half of the sidewalk, and once she mistakenly knocked down two elderly ladies on Main Street. It was a village scandal, and we children went wild for the whole event. Thank God no one was injured.

    Sheba was always accompanied by Brandy, her faithful male cohort, also a dog, and never leashed, but after becoming senile and snapping at little kids, Brandy eventually was leashed.

    The mayor’s concept of leashing dogs upon entering the beach is not a bad idea, but why not make it voluntary? Why not have all the restrictions be voluntary? The people cannot be trusted? At the same time we should also not have to spend our days engaging individuals not in favor of dogs on the beach. When we bring our dogs to the beach, we seek solitude from the incessant battle of managing a family house and trying to keep pace with the fast-talking Range Rover crowd.

    I did meet a young woman sitting at Georgica Beach last summer with a rather well-mannered dog. I mentioned that the scooter person was going to show up and ask her to remove the dog from the beach. It was a wonderful day in July. She explained to me that the dog was a trained emotional support animal and that she had definitive proof allowing her to keep the dog on the beach with her. I was impressed with her explanation. The modern world had apparently taken its toll.

    In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Violent revolutions are taking place around the globe. Perhaps our American sense of entitlement here has stepped beyond the boundaries of reality when we follow our neighbors around reporting them to the police when they have a dog on the beach after 9 a.m. in the summer months.

    People who walk around the local beaches following people walking on the beaches with their dogs should be ticketed. I am not certain who would give the ticket. We the people could always find someone for that. We could call that person People Dog Ticket Follower Executive for Eastern Long Island Towns, and the position could be advertised in the employment section of The East Hampton Star.

   Morgan McGivern is a staff photographer at The Star. He owns a tri-colored corgi named Flint.

   I was surprised when, on arising this morning, I was cheery. There was no reason to be, but perhaps I am programmed to be so, particularly when things aren’t going well.

    There is spring, of course. Where it is I don’t know, but everyone’s saying they can sense it; there seems to be general agreement as to its inevitability. And then, of course, summer, which I inveighed against recently, perhaps unfairly, but it had it coming. “Ou sont les etes d’autant?”

    I do these “25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports” columns each month, and it is interesting, as Pat Hope once said, to meet myself coming around the corner. Things go whooosh! Just like that. It’s gotten so that yesterday seems like today. Indeed, it may be “all one fuckin’ day, man,” as Janis Joplin said.

    Except some days do seem different — more cheery, less cheery — but if you always look at the big picture, which is impossible, I guess that it’s all one fuckin’ day. During which there is a time for this, a time for that, as Ecclesiastes says. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, nothing new under the sun . . . a chasing after wind.

    Therefore, we are to enjoy ourselves, he says, inasmuch as our days here are few and we’re all dead in the end.

    “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might,” saith Ecclesiastes. Something to get the blood flowing.

    Amen to that. In fact, I understand the editor of The Onion recently advised such a course of action, and everybody’s marveling on Facebook that a funny man is such a sage. It’s good advice, though, for Americans, many of whose hands endlessly do with their might the bidding of monolithic corporations.

    It is this facelessness, this growth of unanswerable power that is scary. We need flesh-and-blood contact, not machines telling you if you know your party’s extension you can dial it at any time. While you wait — because you never know your party’s extension — you could be finding something to do with your might.

    Let’s not get put on interminable hold. Our days here are few.

    And with that I’m off to Cayo Levantado.

   In the early East Hampton Town records accounts are frequent about the initial apportionment of land by the trustees, who were the only governing body. Though it is not stated in an obvious fashion, it appears that the grants of acreage were conditional in that recipients were obligated to abide by certain obligations, some spelled out, others apparently assumed.

    Requirements described in some of the records are for keeping a road passable, as in 1667 when Thomas Chatfield and John Miller were told, “Ye highway being still to remaine as they are already layed out.” Elsewhere in the old town books are orders that landowners had to keep their lands properly fenced.

    Property owners in those days seemed to be able to sell their land, however, more or less the way it is done today, with a private transaction signed in the presence of witnesses and officially recorded. In a 1678 contract signed with an X, John Edwards sold 10 acres “near a place called Indian well” for the sum of 20 pounds. And so it went. In 1693 Samuell S. Brookes sold his eight acres at Hog Creek to Jacob Schellinger for 45 pounds. Another transaction involved about six acres “lying neer the walnuts . . . in accabonick Neck,” among other plots.

    Little is said in the early town records about what a property owner could do on his land. (They were mostly men, of course.) Far more time and ink seemed to be spent listing the earmarks distinguishing cattle and who would be responsible for watching the herds sent each spring to Montauk to graze.

    It is a far cry from today’s Town Hall, where even the color of a shop’s new business sign can be the subject of several weeks’ debate. Want to build a house near a wetland? It will take up to a year to secure the necessary approval.

    Yet in some aspects property ownership 350 years ago is strikingly familiar. Then as now, land meant making money, if at a somewhat smaller scale.

   April showers bring May flowers, but March showers bring peepers. These tiny frogs are rarely seen but heard every evening from now until late summer. They begin as a thin chorus, gradually growing into a stunningly loud, high-pitched din by the peak of breeding season.

    In past years, when the peepers reached their orgiastic crescendo I would phone my friend Todd Osborn in Seattle and, saying nothing, not even hello, just let the frogs do their thing while he listened. Todd died last year from cancer, so this season’s frog-song carries for me a mournful note amid all the hope and amphibian lustfulness and biological imperative it signifies. I will be thinking of him as the frogs rave on.

    Tuesday’s downpour and warmer daytime temperatures were enough to draw the peepers from their winter hibernation, and a knot of them could be heard calling just after dark from the marsh near the driveway. It was too wet to stand outside and give their song a good listen, but comforting that the sound signaled the end of winter as I walked in from the driveway after work.

    As I do each year, I wrote the date of the peepers’ arrival on a basement wall in pencil. Ten and 12 years ago, the peepers would not be heard until the week of March 20 or later. This may be too short a time sample to mean anything, though the trend toward earlier appearances is clear from my basement record.

    From the day the frogs first sing there is no turning back. Osprey will soon appear overhead, joining the red-winged­ blackbirds, house wrens, and other early arrivals on the South Fork. Striped bass season opens tomorrow. It’s difficult to believe: Just a week ago, we were shoveling out and groaning under yet another dump of snow.

   It was on a stormy Christmas Day, 1811, that field hands and members of the Gardiner family on the island that bore their name made their way to the shore where a French sailing vessel was founding in heavy seas.

    Some 100 vessels were said to have been driven ashore on Long Island in the fierce northeaster that stretched from Dec. 24 to 25 that year. The blizzard slammed New England, then crossed the Atlantic, adding to winter turmoil that had troubled the Royal Navy greatly. Foundering just off the island, the Maria Louisa, a schooner of 230 tons, struck on an intensely cold day, Sarah Diodati Gardiner wrote in her “Early Memories of Gardiner’s Island.” An unnumbered portion of the crew died, to be later buried on the island, presumably, and the survivors were taken to the manor house.

    Her grandmother, then but a girl, was eager to see the sailors and crept to the door of the lower kitchen for a look. There they lay, stretched on bedding on the floor, where they “excited the compassion of the household,” Miss Gardiner wrote.

    Another survivor, a Maltese cat, became a member of the family. Miss Gardiner’s great-grandfather, as she told it, noticed the cat clinging to a piece of wreckage and asked that it be brought to him. The men were able to grab the cat, and presented it to him wrapped in a large silk handkerchief. Restored to health, the cat’s offspring were numerous, Miss Gardiner wrote.

    A generation later, when Miss Gardiner was a girl, an old friend of the family who owned one of the Maltese’s descendents offered to send it to her. A few days later, Miss Gardiner’s family, then living on Staten Island, received a package with the cat inside, which they christened Maria Louisa after the ship from which her forebear had been rescued.

    The cat’s bloodline is surely lost to time, but one does wonder if some of the local felines hereabouts carry a little of that long-ago Maltese’s spirit.

   “I want your life,” said my Aunt Pat from California upon seeing me at my nephew’s wedding on Friday night. “I joined Facebook just to look at your pictures,” she said.

    “No, you don’t,” I assured her. I don’t post an update when I struggle to make the rent, I explained. I don’t share a picture of that. But yes, I live on an amazing island and I am blessed with a breathtakingly beautiful commute to East Hampton, by land and sea, and I enjoy capturing it when I can and sharing.

    I’m sure Aunt Pat is not the only one who thinks I live the life of Riley, whoever that is. “In her color portrait world, she’s got it all,” sang Rob Thomas in his song “3 a.m.”

    I did post one picture of myself being pulled over, I thought. I just had to, the contrast of the Mardi Gras beads on the rearview mirror and the red flashing lights offering an opportunity not to be passed up. But the next four times I got pulled over, for an expired inspection, were not so colorful, and the last one brought me to tears, when I really just needed a quick drive to the ocean for a breath on deadline day at the paper. I have been trying to remedy the inspection issue with estimates and regular visits to mechanics on my days off, with no success.

    The next time I saw Aunt Pat I was crying in the glamorous ladies’ room of the Fox Hollow Inn after it hit me that my father was never going to take my mother onto the dance floor again. My therapist told me I have all five of the top causes of stress, and people think I have the perfect life. In some ways, I do. Aunt Pat hugged me and cried with me at the loss of such a huge presence in our incredibly close, large family.

    My cousin Lisa was also impressed with my life as determined from my Facebook posts. “I see that you’re a journalist for a newspaper!” she said. That is so exciting and fun; you are so lucky, she said.

    I agreed, but I wondered if my gorgeous cousin had any clue how much my hairstyle suffers progressively from Monday through Wednesday as deadline approaches, along with the decline in the number of breaths taken, my level of patience, and my ability to socialize. (Many know not to talk to me on a Tuesday; some find out the hard way.)

    We Star writers pour our hearts into our weekly stories, before editors fine-tune the words to flow smoothly for the reader, and we wait, wondering what might be sliced and diced. Lately our stories have often had to be cut or held, what with the decrease in advertising leading to a much smaller paper at this time of year.

    This week I saw a lot of negative posts about the media, but I wonder if those people are supporting print newspapers and public radio or simply the drama-filled, sensational television news. I wonder how many have a subscription to The Star. I wonder how many even read any full articles at all, or rely on the scrolling words at the bottom of a television screen or their Twitter and Facebook “news” feeds, or, worse yet, extremist radio personalities.

    Our paper is well done. So much energy and detail go into its content and photographs, in addition to checking facts and fairness. It is an amazing group effort, and some of us who rely on the income from the work struggle greatly to make ends meet in positions not known for high pay. But we think it important that messages get out, and are drawn to furthering that purpose.

    We are a cool bunch. Through our own stress and trauma and those of people we write about, we support one another with empathetic glances and cupcakes. We share a kitchen in a lovely historic office, with uncomfortable chairs and vintage equipment that frustrates us but sustains a pleasant simplicity.

    Sometimes there are the delightful sounds of children gracing the building, and there is almost always a dog or two, and even the occasional visit by a miniature pig, but not lately, due to circumstances too funny to mention. (Ask David Rattray if you must know, and definitely before you go out and get yourself a miniature pig.)

    A pig is just one of the things David must deal with while managing all of the sections of the paper, the angry complaints, the letters to the editor, keeping employees happy and paid, preventing lawsuits, and creating an online presence to keep up with high-tech readers. All while picking up children from school and taking them to their various lessons.

    It is not easy. But it is worth it. Sharing the truth and the good news is exciting, and it is important to warn residents of the bad news. Perhaps if it wasn’t for our stories and editorials, the situation here would not improve.

    News needs to be read. I hope that those who understand its value will support newspapers and share the content whenever possible. Meanwhile, we will continue doing our jobs in hopes of a day we can make a living from such a career, or at least the appearance of brownies on our kitchen “share” table.

   Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter at The Star.