In the end, the catbird won the battle of the blueberries.

   For whatever unknown-to-me confluence of meteorological circumstances, 2012 has shaped up to be a great year for the native high-bush blueberry bushes that grow at the edge of the swamps near our house. I noticed the pale-green young ber­ries late last month, and watched closely as they neared ripeness.

    So too did a catbird or two, which I could hear unseen in the brush issuing warning cries when I lingered near the patch. The calls seemed to say, “Be gone. These are mine.”

    Time being what it is in the busy season at The Star, and with three children at home, there was little chance I would get to the berries. Yet one morning before the day got too hot, I put on long sleeves and boots and picked about half a pint’s worth. I put my precious haul on the kitchen counter, a mistake, because I had to shoo off Lisa as she reached for a handful.

    Regular readers may remember that it is about this time of the year that I begin to write about making jams, jellies, or preserves. Long ago, as I have said before, I gave up on making large batches of any one variety. Instead, I try to put up a jar or three of what comes into season as it comes into season.

    So far, the shelf reserved for such things has a couple of jars of strawberry jam on it and a couple of sweet-pickled summer squash. Later will come beach plum jelly, wild grape jelly, black raspberry preserves, and, later still, canned tomatoes.

    The blueberries, though I managed to cook them into jam on Saturday morning before shuttling off our eldest child to camp, will not take their place on the shelf. The few ounces of goodness they produced when boiled up with an equal weight of sugar are destined for immediate consumption.There will be none to follow.

    By the time I made it back to the patch to pick anew, the catbird had stripped the branches bare.

   From time to time, you get to meet extraordinary people, people whose lives have made others better. Such was the case last weekend when Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian women’s rights and peace activist, came to East Hampton to participate at Guild Hall in what is called the Hampton Institute, a two-day series of talks and panels on topics of national concern.

    Ms. Gbowee won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, a rights activist and journalist. The prize was deserved.

    Ms. Gbowee led the women’s movement that helped bring down Charles Taylor, the brutal Liberian president. You may recall television images of women in white tops and head scarves marching toward the presidential palace in Monrovia and refusing to go away until Mr. Taylor agreed to hear what they had to say. By that time, Liberia had suffered 12 years of civil war and at least 200,000 deaths.

    The prize has brought Ms. Gbowee to international attention and spurred her work for the safety and education of women and girls and for reconciliation and peace. She has founded two organizations, the Women’s Peace and Security Network and the Gbowee Peace Foundation.

    What is stunning when you meet her is not only what she has done and is continuing to do but her ability to cut through the cant, to explain what she is fighting for in simple, often anecdotal, language. Although only 40 years old, she has witnessed war, known child soldiers, been a refugee, and come out as a wise woman.

    Others who took part last weekend were pretty impressive, too. Kati Marton, for example, is the author of some seven books, with a new one about to be published about her life with her late husband, Richard Holbrooke. Dina Powell heads a Goldman Sachs initiative to empower women entrepreneurs. Kirsten Gillibrand is a lively and articulate New York senator. Joe Nocera is a New York Times columnist. Paul Goldberger, who now writes for The New Yorker magazine, is an expert on the man-made environment.

    And there were more, all accomplished and successful in their fields. But the inspiring spark of courage in Ms. Gbowee is impossible to miss.

    The program at Guild Hall was the third sponsored by the Roosevelt Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to “carrying forward the legacy and values” of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Its mission is to “reanimate progressive politics and build a sustainable society.” At Guild Hall, the institute follows a series of somewhat more home-grown panel discussions that were called Hot Topics.

    Ms. Gbowee, who has four children of her own and is mother to two others, recently added the African Women Leaders Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning to the groups she works for. But she acknowledges that finding peace through reconciliation in Liberia may be even more daunting than reproductive rights.

    “We have a whole generation of young people whose only means of settling disputes is through violence. And then we have a whole generation who have no idea of why we fought, but because of where they find themselves . . . their ethnicity, the social group, their religious group, they have to take sides.”

    Leymah Gbowee’s story is told in a 2008 documentary called “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” She has also been assisted in writing a memoir, “Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War.” I hope some of you will feel compelled to learn more about her.

   The full impact of where I was standing during the Great Bonac Fireworks show on Saturday night did not really hit me until I saw a photo taken by someone on the tugboat floating right behind us, looking toward the barge loaded with fireworks where, with hard hat and goggles on, earplugs stuffed into my ears, I tipped my head back at virtually a right angle to see the shells exploding right overhead.

    Through the keyhole-like openings in the walls of the plywood shelter protecting the electronics panels firing the show — and us — was the orange glow of flames through gray smoke as the lift charges catapulted the aerial shells out of their mortars. The vibrations set off by the boom of the biggest started deep in my body, rolling outward through me even as the next rumbles rose through my feet from the steel deck of the barge.

    I heard snatches of the musical choreography — a bit of Van Morrison, a few bars of Adele — as I watched a fellow pyrotechnician holding his metal wand over each numbered spot on the board, moving from one to another to make the electrical connections as he listened through headphones to the cues: “Fire one, fire two . . .”

    I’m sure I had a goofy grin on my face. I was silent — mostly, except for a hoot or two — but every bone in my body, every cell and nerve end, was thrumming. Not only because I was in the bay, on a barge, only feet from a maelstrom, but because in those moments, all 22 minutes of them that stretched forever but went like a snap, I was totally, fully, joyfully alive. And it wasn’t just a rush. It was beauty, and life, and art. And destruction, explosion, mind-blowing power. All at once and manifesting itself in pretty, glowing special effects above my head.

    There was no fear involved. Fireworks by Grucci, the top-notch company that put on the show as it has for 32 years, has honed its procedures, testing worst-case scenarios and devising safety protocols to safeguard against them, over years.

    As an apprentice pyrotechnician, having taken the Gruccis’ training class last spring, I was surrounded by a skilled and experienced crew, except for one other newbie like me. They worked for the better part of three days to put together and break down the much-anticipated display. As the tug pulled our loaded barge through the flotilla of boats moored in Three Mile Harbor for a great summer evening, people on many of them applauded — a hand the crew well deserved.

    I’m honored to have been able to practice my wiring with Matt, a veteran pyrotechnician who patiently allowed me to work alongside him all day and showed me the trick of flipping a sweatshirt hood up over my hard hat to keep the sparks from going down my back, and all the rest, including Tom, my classmate, who gave me a high five to celebrate the accomplishment of our first big show.

    They, along with Steve, the chief pyrotechnician on the show, to whom I owe my gratitude for the whole experience, had my trust.

    Yes, of course there is a risk. But life is a risk. And not that I want at all to tempt fate, but I’ve been floored by things far bigger than an eight-inch mortar, emotionally at least. 

    Being in all likelihood past the midpoint of my life, in the midst of all of the slogging and striving we do to survive, and even the sweetness of ordinary days, I want all the kaboom I can get, as many moments of thinking, “So this is it,” and feeling heart-stoppingly alive, as I can find.

    I’d spent the day lending a hand to the crew as they placed each shell in its tube, unraveling the wires, connecting one shell to another, and attaching them to the electrical panels that would in turn be connected to the master boards. It’s painstaking work, hot and back-aching, but, a couple of us agreed at one point, somewhat relaxing, meditative. And then of course, later there’s that gratifying display.

    Everyone’s been saying what a spectacular show it was, and, with the Grucci artistry, I’m sure that’s true. My experience of it was so different from any other show I’ve seen, I can’t compare. Sure, it was beautiful, but it was just being there that blew the cobwebs out of my brain.

    The guys that have done years of shows, I noticed, are no longer awed by the visuals. Instead, they’re looking to see if every shell fires, to make sure the show is going off without a hitch. And if there is one — like a radio crackling out, muting the cues, or shells that go off prematurely, or fail to rise — they want to know just what went wrong.

    Nonetheless, when the last firework trailed away and the harbor filled with congratulatory boat horns and whoops, there was shared exhilaration, hugs all around, and comments like “Great show.”

    And now, I’m totally ruined. The thrill of fireworks will be, well, not so much of a thrill unless I am a part of them. And what the heck can I do to equal that thrill? I asked the crew. Just keep doing it, they said. Like they do.

    That photograph? Snapped by Anthony, a longtime pyrotechnician who kept the day lively with a dance step here and there, it was virtually all smoke and fire, white lightning framed by the squared edges of the wood shelter and the barge where I stood, having the time of my life.

    Joanne Pilgrim is an associate editor at The Star and recently completed training as an assistant pyrotechnician for Fireworks by Grucci.

   When I solicited Sinead FitzGibbon’s advice as to a lower abdominal strain that’s annoyed me for a while and has kept me off the tennis courts, she, a long-distance athlete for all seasons, said, “Take up golf.”

    Taken aback, I said, with as much finality as a diffident sportswriter could muster, “Never.” Which reminded her of her 82-year-old father, who had said when she made the same suggestion to him, ‘I’ll play golf when I get old.’ ”

    Now that’s the spirit! It’s not that I dislike golf . . . well yes I do. It is intriguing, yes, and, yes, it is fiendishly difficult, and thus a beguiling challenge, but I think the benefits, in the form of those well-publicized euphoric moments when the ball takes flight and lands where you want it to, far outweigh the costs in terms of the suffering one must endure.

    Besides, in golf you’re supposed to suffer in silence, take the slings and arrows in gentlemanly stride rather than rail at Fate and sling your irons arrowlike into the woods. One must, contrariwise, behave honorably, be courteous, and play by the rules. To do so builds character. What was it Falstaff said about honor? “Who hath it died a Wednesday”? Of course he was treating of risking one’s life on the battlefield, rather than self-destructing on a golf course, but I think there’s a connection. Who hath character shot 30-over on a Wednesday.

    And don’t pretend such woeful imperfection, such egregious falling short of the mark over the course of a four-hour round — for which you’ve laid out good money — doesn’t gnaw at the vitals. Okay, perhaps you have derived some pleasure, you’ve hit some shots of the sort they say keep you coming back. In the end, though, it’s a will-o’-the-wisp, a game for masochists in loud clothing.

    Now tennis on the other hand. Ah, tennis. A game that offers the joy of kicking butt (read reveling in the suffering of others), the antipathy that attends the invariable arguments as to whether the ball was in or out, and (for nine months a year) the ecstasy derived from bouncing undeleted expletives off resonant walls. Sort of like CERN in that respect.

    Tennis is a game for vicious people wearing white. I yearn to get back to it. In the meantime I must content myself with cheating at backgammon.

I should apologize at the outset to the man my kids and I call Wrong-Way Guy, but we’re kind of obsessed.

Maybe you’ve seen him — a white-haired man dressed all in black, who rapidly walks along Main Street in East Hampton with his sneakers treading on the white line at the side of the road? Leaning forward with his arms held just so, he looks as if he is ready for a fight or about to swat an oncoming car right out of the way. Weekday mornings, as we drive to school, keeping an eye out for Wrong-Way Guy is a way to pass the time. 

For a while we had a more ordinary game involving work and municipal vehicles. Electric trucks, tree trucks, and school buses, for example, were 5 points. A cesspool truck earned whoever spotted it 20 points. The wildcard was Ken Sacks, the father of one of the kids’ schoolmates behind the wheel of his old car. He was worth 50 points, but we only saw him once. Interest in the game waned, and watching for local characters took its place.

When I was young we would keep an eye out for Snow, an older man who walked the streets around Bridgehampton. I remember listening to WLNG one night during a blizzard. A caller phoned the radio station to say that it “looked like Snow!” was on the street. Not understanding, the host went along: “Yes, it sure does look like snow.”

“No, I mean, Snow! The man!” she said.

I never knew Snow’s real name. I think he might have been a Bridgehampton migrant worker who came for the potato crop and stayed. Someone knows, I’m sure, and I am going to make the effort to find out about him one day.

Captain Shipwreck was Amagansett’s answer to Snow, and of him I know somewhat more. His name was Richard Halliday, and until about 1980 he could be seen walking on Montauk Highway between his house on Oak Lane and Vinnie’s Barbershop wearing a striped engineer’s cap and, most days, hip boots. “Cappy Dick!” my teenaged friends and I would yell as we passed by in our cars.

Halliday was known as Captain Shipwreck after a series of misadventures at sea, including a swordfish trip that ended on the rocks at Montauk and the day a trawler sank from under him off Block Island. 

One winter, he spent more than a week anchored on the east side of Gardiner’s Island after his dragger’s engine wouldn’t start. He stayed there until his food and coal for heating the cabin ran out. Then he pulled anchor and began to drift. His boat was eventually spotted, and he was taken to shore. He died in 1981, and Amagansett seemed a lot duller.

An architect friend who lives in Sag Harbor shares my admiration for local figures. More than once, he has told me of his hope that someday he could join their ranks and wander into the village in his bathrobe to buy the morning paper. I tell him it’s a fine thing to aspire to.

   Having spent seven days on a 41-foot ketch this summer after a long hiatus doesn’t qualify me to judge the way boats of this kind now use electronic devices, but I know what I like when it comes to sailing: the taut feel at a tiller or wheel when a boat is in perfect balance as you tack to windward on a beautiful day in a breeze that is almost stiff. It’s that simple.

    Off for a week in the Massachusetts waters of Buzzards Bay, our manifest included two parents, two kids, and two grandparents: family. The weather held, with lots of sun and a healthy downpour one day that gave us a chance to have lunch ashore in an old inn. For the most part, though, we cooked aboard, being well-provisioned and finding a well-equipped galley.

    The kids, 8 and 11, had gone sailing on their parents’ small boat since they were toddlers and had been deemed ready for something more exciting. One of their parents is a licensed captain, the other a mate. They plotted our courses and knew how to handle the sails when late afternoon winds started gusting to 20 knots. They also had plotted a list of nautical things for the kids to learn, from terminology like “coming about” to simple knots, like a half-hitch. On the last day of the trip, the kids earned homemade “able seaman” certificates and an onshore stop for ice cream.

    No boat of any size goes into Buzzards Bay without a global positioning device anymore. A GPS tells you where you are and shows you how to find where you are going. Mechanical, electrical wind indicators are common, too. Not only was there an indicator atop the main mast, but we had a dial at the helm that showed where on the compass the wind was coming from, as well as the boat’s trajectory.

    If the direction of the wind waswasn’t changing much, you could steer the boat merely by watching the compass. The kids did so easily and let the grown-ups decide when to tack or change course. Oh, yes. I almost forgot to mention the autopilot, which does the steering for you if you want it to. An autopilot is all very practical if you don’t have to change course much or if you need to go below for some reason or other.

    Now, I know I’m going to take heat for repeating what a woman I know — who has done a lot of sailing — had to say when I described how those at the helm relied on these electronic devices more often than not. “For the kids,” she said, “it’s like a video game.”

    Okay, she conceded, a video game with the wind in their hair.

    At an anchorage in a pleasant little harbor at Quisset, however, we got a good look one morning before setting off across the bay at kids learning to sail in Optimist prams. Their boats had to be bailed, the sails had to be hauled up, and then it was up to each of them to keep the boat upright, although camp counselors in separate boats were nearby. I am sure the difference between what our kids did aboard the ketch and the kind of small-boat sailing we watched must have sunk in.

    Did the kids have fun? Of course. Did I? Of course. But I was glad I brought along a book.

   I am often complimented on my ability to find the good in situations, and have even been told that my positive thoughts can be borderline annoying.

    I have been challenged lately to stay in a place of gratitude, but thankfully, I have been able to do so while feeling like I’m dodging bullets at times. As an example, while enjoying the lush green vegetation on my daily commute, out from it leaps a tiny, tan, freckled baby deer. After slamming on the brakes and taking a moment to remember to breathe, I felt grateful that it had passed safely just a few feet in front of my car and I returned to my scenic drive.

    Being ungrateful or unappreciative of the good that surrounds me is not an option, it’s a matter of survival. Balance is necessary more than ever before, but finding balance has been a challenge, too, especially Monday through Wednesday in the newspaper business. Luckily, I was blessed last week with an early-ending Harbor Committee meeting that allowed me a two-hour dinner break during which I did not eat, but instead danced to samba and African drumming on the beach.

    The following morning, my boss assigned me the task of covering a ladybug catch-and-release program at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, where I took pictures of adorable children and organic vegetation while strolling on land that has been protected by the Peconic Land Trust. I was so grateful for the opportunity to experience the grounds and to chat with Scott Chaskey, the farm’s director.  I thanked him for what he has created for the community and for ensuring a source of local, organic, non-genetically-engineered food and simultaneously helping to protect our land and water.

    Last Thursday, The Star’s arts editor asked me to attend an Inda Eaton concert and interview the local musician, who has quickly become one of my favorites. As Inda was joined onstage by several other amazing musicians, I looked at my pad, pen, and camera on the banister of the Talkhouse dance floor and felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. . . . “I am working right now,” I thought, and probably even said aloud, as I do talk to myself regularly.

    I listened to Ms. Eaton’s new CD, “Go West” the next day, on one of my recent and frequent three-hour trips to the hospital to visit my father and felt comfort in her lyrics. “Rest your head,” “better days,” and “in the arms of my hometown for a while.”

    Music has become an even bigger part of my well-being lately, and I am hoping it will also help my father, who has been hospitalized for weeks and is now on a ventilator, unresponsive. I played Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, two of his favorites, in the hospital room on Friday, hoping it would help to wake him.

    Some of my family members said that my father’s legs moved the most when the song “In the Mood” was played, a song that usually results in a solo swing-dance performance by my parents at family gatherings. I hope that once again my parents’ amazing dance steps will bring them — and those who watch them — joy, as they have since their Copa Cabana dating days. I have inherited their love of music and dancing. Mine has taken place mostly to percussion on the beach. During those moments, dancing in the daylight hours, through the always amazing Sagg Main sunset, and into the night, my pain is relieved.

    The drummers I have met on Monday nights, and all types of musicians that I have come to know, have been a great gift to me. Their concerts, their hugs and chitchatting, and even offers to play live for my father have increased my awe of the East End music community.

    Music is the most effective way to shift my mood and thoughts when they are heading in the wrong direction. The car radio “spiritual D.J.” has been on task too, with uplifting choices and sometimes just a sign that all is as it should be.

    With the trauma of my father’s illness, a newfound level of gratitude has also emerged from everyday occurrences — my cat purring next to me and the feeling of each his four little paws touching me. Hugs from friends have been a gift, as has each comment and “like” on my Facebook postings and prayer requests. Along with my incredible family throughout the country, who come together and support each other in such a beautiful way, the music and social media communities have become another type of family that I can count on for soul repair when I feel wounded.

    Shelter Island has also been a blessing to me, from the beauty of the island itself to the smiling faces of ferry workers who welcome me on and off the boat each day. My new cabin on the island brings the music of birds, frogs, and insects. I can retreat from a day’s hospital visit filled with bacteria, tubes, wires, monitors, beeping noises, and visuals that include my deeply saddened and worried mother kissing my unresponsive father on the head. I return to a paradise of sorts, with blue water, greenery, vegetables from an organic farm, and a new restaurant that now brings many of my favorite musicians to play just a mile or two from home. How can I not be grateful?

    Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter at The Star whose beats include the local music scene.

   “Hoy es El Dia de la Independencia en Los Estados Uni­dos,” I said to a woman, who, while an engineer in her native country, does what she can here. “Y yo lo celebré con una ducha afuera!”

    She laughed on hearing I had celebrated Independence Day by showering outdoors.

    There was no need, other than the fact that I like to try, for me to speak Spanish; her English is as good as mine, but she, whom I have enlisted as a sometime teacher (thus she will be building bridges of a different kind) is willing to humor me.

    She said, “You can make $500 a month in Ecuador and $500 a week here.” With the season’s end she’ll return there, where she owns a small house free and clear and where her two children remain.

    It occurred to me that in a more perfect world she would not be constrained to work well outside of her profession and that I would not be so fortunate as to receive a more-or-less living wage for watching balls go back and forth.

    In sum, it’s the luck of the draw, as Warren Buffett, presumably the paradigm of the American Dream, says, mindful as he is that that dream has for most been receding. I guess I ought not to wonder then how it is — as a recent New York Magazine article citing various studies has shown — that concern for others transmutes to indifference as wealth increases.

    (One of the cited studies, which perhaps could be undertaken here too, showed that drivers of high-priced cars were by and large more aggressive than those who drove less expensive ones, which was probably why I, in contrarian fashion, cut off the guy in the shiny new blue car who tried to outmaneuver me onto Dayton Lane the other day as we decided to forsake car-clogged Main Street!)

    This is a strange country — bountiful and generous (nowhere more evident, by the way, than at Saturday’s Swim Across America here) yet grasping and small-minded at the same time.

    The money is good, yes, in comparison to most of the rest of the world, and we are free, more or less, as are many others in the rest of the world.

    But if, in fact, wealth largely fosters fear, smugness, and alienation rather than the liberality which freedom ought to foster, maybe we should add to our calendars an Indifference Day (‘El Dia de la Indiferencia’), a day for cold showers only.

   Downtown East Hampton Village looked nice enough Tuesday afternoon when I walked through to get some salad and something to drink. The shop windows were full of expensive men’s and women’s clothes: colorful prints for her, blue-and-white checks for him.

    Three Public Works Department employees in bright-orange T-shirts were removing tiny wisps of weeds and grass from between the bricks near London Jewelers. One singed the offending plants with a handheld propane torch; the others swept up the small ridges of charred remains. A smell like that of burning leaves carried along the sidewalk.

    I can’t say that I knew no one along the way. Crossing Main Street, I said hello to a second cousin and one of her children and spoke briefly to a real estate agent I recognized from his Web page about how dangerous it seems to step off the curb. A little farther on I greeted a writer and composer who lives in Springs who once taught a boat-building course I attended at the Town Marine Museum.

    Other than those four, I was like a stranger in my own town. The shops held nothing of interest for me except to note which had potential customers in them and which did not. As I looked in a new shoe store, too new to even have a sign out or for me to have noticed before, three people sitting near the cash register swiveled their heads in my direction quickly as if they had been having a slow day.

    It was, truth be told, what might be considered a beautiful day to be at the beach, not shopping or walking the village streets. A sense of how far removed Main Street and Newtown Lane are now from what once was figuratively the center of village life hung in the air, a subtext to the colorful displays.

    I ate my lunch at one of the concrete tables outside Citarella. Two young women on a lunch break from the shops sat nearby talking about men and checking their phones every now and then.

    The Public Works guys had just about finished up by the time I went past again. The brickwork they left behind was neat as a pin.

   Nancy Pelosi was on the South Fork last weekend, although hardly anyone noticed amid all the excitement about Mitt Romney’s fund-raisers hereabouts. Ms. Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives, was here to promote the re-election of Tim Bishop, who is running for a fifth term as the representative from New York’s First Congressional District.

    If you’ve seen Ms. Pelosi on television, you know she is a polished and agile speaker. On this occasion, she praised Mr. Bishop’s leadership and mentioned bills on which he had offered “pragmatic and sustained” help. She warned of a national Republican victory and said Democrats were being outspent. A Democratic Congress next year, she said, would make public financing of campaigns a priority, second only to a new jobs bill.

    “We need to amend the Constitution to get rid of Citizens United,” she said, referring to the Supreme Court decision that gave meteoric rise to super-PAC funding of national campaigns. “We need to elect reformers. I don’t even care if they are Republicans, as long as they want to protect democracy.”

    In shorter remarks, Mr. Bishop reported that Karl Rove’s PAC, American Crossroads, had put thousands of dollars into the 2012 campaign by starting to run ads against him only four days after his election to Congress was confirmed in 2010. (He won by 593 votes.)

    Representative Nita Lowey, the Westchester congresswoman, joined Mr. Bishop in saying a few words. They agreed that his campaign needed enough money to offset the funds going to his opponent, Randy Altschuler, although, they said Mr. Altschuler’s war chest could not be matched. For Mr. Bishop, the election is about “what kind of a country we are going to remain.” Observing that he was Catholic, he said the bishops had spoken out against the Republican Party’s stance on the federal budget, saying there is an “obligation to care for the weak among us.”

    Disparaging the Republican belief that people would pull themselves up and out of poverty once government assistance were withdrawn, he asked how an infirm 86-year-old in a nursing home could do so. “Sixty percent of Medicaid money goes to support people in nursing homes,” he said. “Reasonable people must reject” that G.O.P. vision, he said.

    Ms. Pelosi touched on other campaign issues, as well. She agreed that the Affordable Health Care Act had not been put before the people effectively. The Supreme Court had given Demo­crats “a second chance” to do so, she said, as she vowed to “tell the White House to take advantage of it.”

    If you happened to wander down Egypt Lane on Sunday when one of two quiet events that day for Mr. Bishop was taking place here, you might have noticed a state trooper in a parked car and heard his dog bark. Closer to the house where the event, an ice cream social, was taking place, a handful of security personnel were at the ready. I wasn’t surprised that Ms. Pelosi is protected. I couldn’t help but remember the awful vitriol directed at her when she was speaker of the House (and, by the way, second only to the vice president in the line of presidential succession).

    The sun was still up and many of the toppings for ice cream sundaes still in bowls when the official group moved on to Sag Harbor to make another pitch.