Looking ahead to Presidents Day weekend, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is getting ready to tally North American birds in what it calls the Great Backyard Bird Count. Unlike the almost invitation-only Christmas counts for experienced birders, this one draws on the willingness of even the most casual observers, so it appeals to me with my middling identification skills.

    Last year, I took a crack at it, submitting a checklist along with more than 92,000 others from all over New York State. Observers counted 11.4 million birds of 594 species. I was responsible for logging 224 birds of 8 species, mostly gulls, although a fair portion were goldeneye, black duck, and mergansers, which I saw in Napeague Harbor.

    My home hamlet of Amagansett should be better represented by birders I concluded after seeing in a list on birdsource.org that the 83 herring gulls I counted that day were just about the only ones for which numbers were submitted by only three people. Submitters from the East Hampton ZIP code coincidentally produced a mere 83 herring gulls in five reports.

    There was a lone checklist filed from Montauk in 2011 from a single observer who counted 59 birds, with 14 red-winged blackbirds the high-species winner. A single observer put in a list in 2010 as well. It’s wide open territory for the ornithologically oriented to make a mark.

    The process of taking part in the Great Backyard Bird Count is simple enough. Participants are asked this year to tally birds for at least 15 minutes on at least one day from Friday, Feb. 17, to Presidents Day, Feb. 20. You can count in as many places as you like, so, for example, I might peer through my binoculars at Lazy Point for a while, then head to Montauk to look at sea ducks at the Point.

    Regional checklists can be foundon the birdsource Web site, which is where results are entered daily. One of the features that I appreciated in the online form was that I could rate my birding skill as fair, good, or excellent. Presumably, this allows the lab to mash the results using a sophisticated mathematical formula to account for the fact that from a distance, for example, I find it hard to tell a hen mallard from a black duck — and forget about me and sparrows.

    This year, I hope to get at least one of my daughters interested in helping out. Provided it is not too cold or windy and that I can set up in my truck where the viewing is good, I may get some help from youthful eyes. Maybe we will beat last year’s gull count.

   Since I’m having surgery on that part of my leg that I promised in my last column I would never write about again on the morning after Valentine’s Day, it’s a sure bet that my husband and I will be spending Valentine’s Day at home watching “Jeopardy” while he cooks dinner.

    It will be even better if there is a storm raging outside and wind and rain thrashing against our windows, with a fire burning in the woodstove and my dog at my feet.

    We watch “Jeopardy” every night and our favorite part of the show is the little stories the contestants tell Alex to give the audience a peek into their personalities. If their stories are any indication, they might want to think about getting a new life.

    One guy, an adult, bragged about squeezing 13 people into a bathroom. Another whined that his favorite cereal was discontinued, forcing him to search all the local supermarkets for it. He finally found one that had four boxes left, so he scooped them all up.

    That’s the best they can come up with on national television, with all their old high school chums watching?

    Oh, the tales I could tell Alex. One of the best, though, is from when I was three months pregnant and visiting my mother on City Island in the Bronx, where I grew up. After a family dinner, I was suddenly doubled over with stomach cramps. Either my mother had just poisoned me or I was having a miscarriage.

    I was rushed to the hospital and it turned out my appendix was ready to burst, which is never a good thing to have happen when you’re pregnant. I needed emergency surgery, stat! At this point Alex would chuckle and say something comforting and move on to the next contestant. But I’d grab his arm and say, “But Alex, wait, you have to hear the rest of the story.”

    Because it was so early in my pregnancy there were no visible signs of a pregnancy and not enough time to run a test. They had to take my word for it, which, for some odd reason, they seemed reluctant to do. Jeez, I didn’t think I looked like a liar. Why would anyone lie about a pregnancy unless they wanted to trap the guy they’re with? I had already hooked him a few years earlier with my charm and good looks.

    They couldn’t knock me out so they gave me an epidural and told me I’d probably lose the baby, our first, and one that was desperately wanted. While I was on the operating table my brother, an anesthetist, was in the room. I could feel them cutting my belly open and flashed upon a fish being filleted with its guts running out. I was a bit wobbly from the sedation but aware enough to know that my brother was looking on. I didn’t want him to see my bits and pieces, so I asked him to leave.

    While all this was going on, my family called my husband, who had stayed back in Montauk and told him to get in there and bring whatever he thought I might need. When he arrived he brought with him his slippers that I often wore around the house and were about four sizes bigger than mine — not a pair I would wear in public.

    After the surgery I couldn’t laugh at all because it hurt so badly. My sister came in the room and as she went to kiss me tripped over the clodhopper slippers and fell right on my belly, which was stitched up like a zipper. (A bikini cut was out of the question for a pregnant woman.) Her fall, besides hurting me, made me pop a few stitches, but also made me laugh until tears ran out of my eyes.

    People are usually encouraged to walk around after surgery to expel the gas that is in their body after they’ve been cut open. My cousin Ricky, who was more like a brother to me since he practically lived in our house (my mother and her sister were married to brothers), pushed my intravenous pole while we walked the corridor with me tooting away, mortified, but without a choice.

    I’m having the surgery on the day after Valentine’s Day and I expect a bit more tooting on the car ride home. I hope it’s a nice day so we can keep the car windows open. But we’ve been married for 38 years and have been through an awful lot as a couple, what’s a little flatulence between lovers? Happy Valentine’s Day, honey! Toot, toot, toot-toot, toot.

—

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

    Who knew that so many homicidal maniacs were running around loose in the Swedish countryside? Before Stieg Larsson’s revelations of murderous Nazi enclaves, before Henning Mankell’s dramatic decapitations, I had viewed Sweden as a liberal template for humanistic advancement. Now, though, it has to be acknowledged that Larsson’s heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is a touch unconventional, and that Mankell’s police inspector, Kurt Wallander, is serially depressed. Can this be chalked up to the effect of Swedish winters on the human psyche?

    The fascination with Scandinavian mystery novels was kick-started by the phenomenal success of Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the first of his Millennium trilogy, originally planned as a 10-book series. The author’s tragic death of a heart attack before he knew of the unprecedented worldwide acclaim for that book and the two sequels — they would have made him a multimillionaire — is a real-life drama beyond even his capabilities to imagine.

    Now Scandinavian writers with names like Jo Nesbo and Lars Kepler are being hailed by the critics. Nesbo is a Norwegian musician and writer of mysteries featuring the burned-out hero Harry Hole, and Lars Kepler is the pen name of a husband-and-wife team, Alexander and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, two impossibly gorgeous Swedes.

    My introduction to Swedish novels was through another his-and-hers team, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Their excellent Martin Beck police procedurals from the 1960s and ’70s are, I’m pleased to see, being reprinted with admiring jacket blurbs from writers like Michael Connelly. They usually open with a bloody murder and concern themselves with painstaking investigative work by a cast of individualistic policemen who become more appealingly familiar as one reads each successive novel. This provides a compelling reason to pick up each book as it becomes available. Larsson was planning the same strategy.

    What makes a successful mystery, beyond, naturally, a plot with suspense and unexpected revelations, is a believable central investigator with a regular cast of supporting characters and an intriguing setting (country or town). I’m a fan of the writers Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri because they amply supply all of these elements in their very different mysteries set in Italy. A passion for Italian cuisine is their one connecting tissue, but Leon’s mysteries are always set in Venice, where the delightful Commissario Guido Brunetti gives the reader a tour of the ancient streets, monuments, and gardens with their fabled history. Camilleri’s amusing, iconoclastic Inspector Montalbano pursues his criminals in Sicily, where the sun and the sea play a large and sometimes lethal part in the crimes he investigates.

    Some of the interest in Swedish mysteries surely has to do with how little we know about the country. Is it a socialist paradise or is it home to a rabid cadre of political operatives and murderous industrialists? Could it be both? Why are most domestic relationships depicted as so tortured? Isn’t anyone happy in paradise?

    And poor Kurt Wallander — is he ever going to get a vacation? Despite the violence that is an essential part of the action, there is pleasure in accompanying him to places like Skane, Malmo, and Ystad, but how on earth does one pronounce Gryt, Fyrudden, or Saltsjobaden? I don’t know, but the dreary weather and unfamiliar territory lend color and authenticity to the novels.

    “Lars Kepler” has had one book published, “The Hypnotist.” It has an original, well-paced story and enough mayhem to satisfy the most bloodthirsty reader. Bodies literally litter Stockholm. More lie scattered, staining the snow, in the upper reaches of the country, and the hero, the hypnotist, while likable, has some truly terrible ideas. Early in his career he decides to gather a group of psychotics and put them and himself under deep hypnosis to release their various original traumas. It is an effort at group bonding that goes seriously wrong, generating a plot the twists and turns of which keep one glued to the page.

    The authors of that book, the Ahndorils, have a second one, “The Paganini Contract,” translated and waiting in the wings, and a third planned, so we can look forward to weeks of gruesome reading when they are finally released to us Swedish crime addicts.

    Jennifer Hartig is a regular contributor of book reviews to The Star. She lives in Noyac.

Perhaps it has always been so, but it struck me last week that so many of the sports stories I wrote in the past year had to do with people who had surprised themselves. In brief, they had not known it — whatever that might be, a faster time, a stronger performance, a more chiseled body — was in them.

    Ed Petrie, the East Hampton High School boys basketball coach who recently retired after a Hall of Fame career, was said to have gotten the best from each of his players, presumably not only surprising themselves but others — perhaps even him!

    The first woman to win outright a triathlon here — and they have been contested in Montauk and Sag Harbor for the past 30 years — said she hadn’t known she had it in her. The high school golf coach would probably have been content with yet another league title, but his team outdid itself, winning Suffolk County and Long Island championships as well. Driving back from the Bethpage golf course with the silver trophy given to the best high school golf team on Long Island had been a mystical experience, he said, and perhaps in all the cases I’m talking about the achievement had been, at least to some extent, a mystical experience.

    I ended the recap of the year in sports with the words of Joe Vetrano, a 51-year-old Pan-Am karate champion, who continues, he told me, to learn more about the sport as he continues to practice. He said he presumed it was the same with writing, with everything. It never ended, he said. One could always work to improve.

    That sounds better to me than Churchill’s injunction never to give up. Well, yes, it’s so: One shouldn’t give up, but more than that one should, rather than just stubbornly hang on, work toward getting better, toward being better at whatever one’s hand findeth to do.

    That’s why it’s good, at least good for me, to hang around athletes. As far as I can tell, they are always upbeat. They are earnest and ever optimistic. I’m sure they have their low moments, but I doubt they last long. There is joy in what they do, in graceful movement, in mastering challenges, in daily practice.

    I would have said in past years, perhaps, that graceful movement and athletic feats were the province of the young, but, as we have seen, that is not so. Aging athletes turn in surprising performances too — all the more surprising because they are older. One has to look no further here than Albert Woods, who in his 80s has become an All-American swimmer. In his 70s, he took up the breaststroke, said to be swimming’s hardest stroke, and has gone on to win many national championships. He has surprised himself.

    My father once, borrowing from Aristotle, advised that I practice the quality or qualities I admired, just as I would baseball, which he knew I liked.

    I would love to say that I have become courageous as a result — it’s a quality I admire. But because I’m a coward I haven’t practiced acting courageously that much!

    But if it’s optimism you want, at least as much optimism as can reasonably be expected — I’m surprised I was hesitant when first offered the sports beat 32 years ago — I’m your man.

   Although I constantly see art that I am moved to talk or write about that falls outside of my usual geographical constraints at The Star, few exhibits have challenged my actual perception of art, and particularly sculpture, as much as the current installation “Maurizio Cattelan: All” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

    The Italian artist has taken over the center of the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright building with almost every hyperrealist sculpture and art piece he has ever conceived. The dozens of works are suspended in a dizzying amalgamation that viewers take in by climbing or descending the spiral.

    Since this is not a review, I won’t touch on the more critical aspects of it from an art historical perspective. I’m not certain that it succeeds on that level. This is, rather, a visual appreciation of a work that I think anyone who has a chance to experience it should.

    The objects include self-portraits, realistic facsimiles and taxidermy of animals, full-scale painted billboards, perching pigeons, upside-down cops, a praying Hitler, and other odd, irreverent, and punkish visual pranks and jokes sometimes striking a chord, sometimes simply facile and bratty.

    It is the installation that makes the show. Upon entering at ground level the eyes are drawn up to a clotted grouping of things all too detailed and obscured to take in at once. Entering the spiral ramp, the details of each object begin to emerge and the overall piece begins to engage: dangling feet lead to legs, bodies, and heads; an elephant either Klanish, ghostly, or embarrassed, hangs hiding under a sheet; a seemingly full-scale dinosaur’s skeleton and a 20-foot-long foosball table are some of the objects that emerge.

    Students of modern art history will note references to international artists or countrymen such as Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys, Lucio Fontana, and Piero Manzoni.

    The objects may refer to other works (the foosball table was actually used for a competition as part of a larger work) or are stand-alone pieces. They may suspend by themselves or sit on pedestals to provide some grounding and better visibility. Without its room-like setting, for example, a squirrel that has committed suicide in its well-appointed kitchen would not be readable, whereas a respectable older woman crammed into a gleaming new stainless-steel refrigerator is a piece that can stand (or hang) on its own.

    At each new level and each new vantage point the objects become more and more fascinating. Even the ones that may be familiar offer new interest and insight. At the same time, the architecture remains in view, forever part of the work. With no art displayed in the bays, the building’s form is its function and an inextricable accomplice in the work. In fact, all of the self-references and cross-references flying back and forth between the works themselves and the building can be as dizzying as the horses, donkeys, dogs, wax figures, and death-masked effigies doing their acrobatics throughout the installation.

    With each new angle and vantage point, from worm’s eye up to bird’s eye, the piece forces you to constantly engage with it and its components. I cannot remember any exhibit that ever saturated me with its imagery in such a way. It is exhaustive and exhausting. Upon reaching the top, I was relieved and a bit elated. It is somewhat like reaching Valhalla, and the delirium from so much engagement certainly plays a factor in the exhilaration.

    That is the show’s strength. Its weaknesses become more apparent on the way down. We decided to take the ramp rather than the elevator. At the time, it seemed there might have been even more to glean from the parts now that they had been taken in whole. That was where the spell began to break. It was not clear if it was the objects themselves or the intensity that had built up over such intimate and repetitive viewing, but seeing them once in this context was certainly enough.

    Those same works that seemed to possess such mystery and present endless revelation had nothing to offer on second glance. Weaknesses already apparent became fatal flaws and strengths became merely amusing tidbits. It seems that the genius of the artist was to understand his own works’ limitations and play against them, by refusing to elevate them in one way while quite literally doing so in another. This may leave you with some disappointment, but only because of what the experience initially offered. That would be my endorsement of this unusual and still compelling juggernaut.

—

    Jennifer Landes is arts editor at The Star.

   It being the New Year, I suppose I should make some resolutions — resolutions for the irresolute. My first one is not to write, at least for the moment, about politics or the state of the economy, dreary subjects that have nothing much to do with the hope that should attend a new beginning.

    Instead, I will write about my imminent colonoscopy, and how everyone’s been ingesting flavorsome food here at the office as, drearily, I sip from a bottle of Gatorade whose contents look very much like Pres­tone.

    Come to think of it, perhaps it is a good way to begin the New Year, cleansing, you know, and there is, of course, a certain probity involved.

    Like jury duty, these tests come along every few years, an annoyance that must be borne. One must be stoic. But, speaking of stoicism, back to my resolutions.

    I resolve not to smoke in the coming year. I resolve not to contract any ghastly diseases, and I resolve not to lose my mind, which means, I think, that I must stop playing Scrabble with Georgie, who’s been cleaning my clock lately.

    I resolve further not to play fast and loose with the facts — insofar as they are known to me. I resolve not to eat Cheerios in our coffee cups or to leave them in the sink overnight where they will become impossibly caked.

    I resolve not to speak ill of myself in 2012. I resolve, moreover, not to take Tim Tebow’s name in vain. I resolve not to caress my incredibly soft cashmere sweaters in public, or to use many words of more than five syllables. I resolve not to relish violence overmuch, only in sustainable doses as on Sunday afternoons when the Steelers are playing.

    I resolve not to complain about having to shoulder the coffee-making burden at home.

    I resolve not to eat any flavorsome food, or any food at all, for that matter, today.

    I resolve not to cease wondering what it’s all about.

    And I resolve to order a cosmopolitan and a small Capri pizza for Mary, and a glass of house Chianti and a small Gorgonzola salad for me at Sam’s tomorrow night.

   You can’t even really call it a January thaw, since December was mild, and, save for a 15-degree night a week ago yesterday, 2012 has had above-average temperatures. This has been a very good thing where the Amagansett Rattrays’ gardening, outdoor chores, and playtime are concerned, as we (read: your humble correspondent) let things slide this fall.

    A week or two after Thanksgiving, a guy at the boatyard  in Montauk, where I keep my boat, said, “We dodged a bullet.” And, if you remember what was expected to be in the running for storm-of-the-decade at the end of December 2010, this still seems to be the case. There is still plenty of weather to come, but the break we’ve had so far on this end of the Island has been welcome.

    Saturday was mild enough to let Evvy and Ellis and me spend the morning outside, which was a relief since Ellis, who is not quite 2, has taken a recent interest in painting. Evvy and I laid paper and pots of colored tempera out for him on the brick patio, saving the hassle of cleaning up spills had he gotten in touch with his diminutive muse indoors.

    While the kids were busy, I took on our two small garden plots, hacking back the growing season’s weeds and dead stalks. After that, I pulled the electric hedge trimmer and a pair of loppers out of the basement and attacked the vines along the sides of the raised beds.

    By this time, the kids had become bored with painting and were tearing around in a plastic, battery-operated Barbie Jeep. Ellis had figured out how to get the thing moving, but not how to steer; chaos ensued, but there were no injuries.

    On Sunday, it was a little colder and windier but much the same. The kids played in the lee of the house while I turned the garden soil and thought about putting in a bigger plot this spring and if it were possible to keep the deer at bay.

    According to the National Weather Service, the temperature will fall by the weekend. Saturday and Sunday will see highs only in the mid-30s. This will make for less time in the Barbie Jeep, and the painting sessions will move inside. I’ll still try to get some yardwork in, but it depends on what the kids want to do, which is fine. The garden can wait for another thaw.

   Although I constantly see art that I am moved to talk or write about that falls outside of my usual geographical constraints at The Star, few exhibits have challenged my actual perception of art, and particularly sculpture, as much as the current installation “Maurizio Cattlelan: All” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

    The Italian artist has taken over the center of the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright building with almost every hyperrealist sculpture and art piece he has ever conceived. The dozens of works are suspended in a dizzying amalgamation that viewers take in by climbing or descending the spiral.

    Since this is not a review, I won’t touch on the more critical aspects of it from an art historical perspective. I’m not certain that it succeeds on that level. This is, rather, a visual appreciation of a work that I think anyone who has a chance to experience it should.

    The objects include self-portraits, realistic facsimiles, and taxidermy of animals, full-scale painted billboards, perching pigeons, upside-down cops, a praying Hitler, and other odd, irreverent, and punkish visual pranks and jokes sometimes striking a chord, sometimes simply facile and bratty.

    It is the installation that makes the show. Upon entering at ground level the eyes are drawn up to a clotted grouping of things all too detailed and obscured to take in at once. Entering the spiral ramp, the details of each object begin to emerge and the overall piece begins to engage: dangling feet lead to legs, bodies, and heads; an elephant either Klanish, ghostly, or embarrassed, hangs hiding under a sheet; a seemingly full-scale dinosaur’s skeleton and a 20-foot-long foosball table are some of the objects that emerge.

    Students of modern art history will note references to international artists and countrymen such as Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys, Lucio Fontana, and Piero Manzoni.

    The objects may refer to other works (the foosball table was actually used for a competition as part of a larger work) or are stand-alone pieces. They may suspend by themselves or sit on pedestals to provide some grounding and better visibility. Without its room-like setting, for example, a squirrel that has committed suicide in its well-appointed kitchen would not be readable, whereas a respectable older woman crammed into a gleaming new stainless-steel refrigerator is a piece that can stand (or hang) on its own.

    At each new level and each new vantage point the objects become more and more fascinating. Even the ones that may be familiar offer new interest and insight. At the same time, the architecture remains in view, forever part of the work. With no art displayed in the bays, the building’s form is its function and an inextricable accomplice in the work. In fact, all of the self-references and cross-references flying back and forth between the works themselves and the building can be as dizzying as the horses, donkeys, dogs, wax figures, and death-masked effigies doing their acrobatics throughout the installation.

    With each new angle and vantage point, from worm’s eye up to bird’s eye, the piece forces you to constantly engage with it and its components. I cannot remember any exhibit that ever saturated me with its imagery in such a way. It is exhaustive and exhausting. Upon reaching the top, I was relieved and a bit elated. It is somewhat like reaching Valhalla, and the delirium from so much engagement certainly plays a factor in the exhilaration.

    That is the show’s strength. Its weaknesses become more apparent on the way down. We decided to take the ramp rather than the elevator. At the time, it seemed there might have been even more to glean from the parts now that they had been taken in whole. That was where the spell began to break. It was not clear if it was the objects themselves or the intensity that had built up over such intimate and repetitive viewing, but seeing them once in this context was certainly enough.

    Those same works that seemed to possess such mystery and present endless revelation had nothing to offer on second glance. Weaknesses already apparent became fatal flaws and strengths became merely amusing tidbits. It seems that the genius of the artist was to understand his own works’ limitations and play against them, by refusing to elevate them in one way while quite literally doing so in another. This may leave you with some disappointment, but only because of what the experience initially offered. That would be my endorsement of this unusual and still compelling juggernaut.

—

    Jennifer Landes is arts editor at The Star.

   The price of The New Yorker magazine if you buy it on a newsstand is $5.99, so it came as a surprise when I received a notice at the end of December telling me that if I renewed the subscription I get in the mail, I could send a second — free — subscription to anyone I chose.

    Newspapers and magazines are not rolling in money these days, but I didn’t think things were so bad that a well-regarded and venerable journal like The New Yorker would have to resort to such tactics to enlist subscribers. Tut-tutting about the undignified depths to which a publisher might be forced to sink, I took advantage of what seemed a surprisingly generous deal.

    The price of a year’s subscription is $69.99; that’s for 47 editions. I am not so good at simple arithmetic (at least not anymore), but I think that as a subscriber I pay only about $1.54 a copy. The dilemma was who to give the free magazine to.

    My husband and I share the copies of The New Yorker I get without a problem, so it seemed silly to send another subscription to him, even if he does spend part of every week in New York City. On the other hand, I thought, maybe if I had it sent it to him at my own address, I could pop each copy into an envelope and mail it to my daughter in Nova Scotia.

    That turned out to be a mistake. I sent her the first free copy that arrived, but the postage was $2.64. A gift subscription sent to Canada would cost $120 for a year, or about $2.54 cents a copy (without the hassle of going to the post office). So I began hunting for someone else, or some organization, to send the free subscription to.

    Then, this week, opening my mail, I came upon another offer from The New Yorker. As a courtesy to “selected professionals,” the mailing informed me, I could subscribe for $25 for 25 issues. A dollar apiece. Having just plunked down my $69.99, all I could do was sigh.

    It next dawned on me, slowly, that maybe I was coming out on top of this subscription game, after all: I am now getting two subscriptions for that $69.99 . . . and so that works out to, what? Seventy-seven cents per issue?

    Though perhaps the value of doubles arriving at the same time in my very own postal box diminished the true value. . . .

    Of course, this being the digital age, there had to be another solution to sending copies of the magazine to Nova Scotia. Going to its Web site, I found an offer that seemed to say the publisher, Condé Nast, was offering a free four-week trial for an online subscription. I signed her up. But when I tried to find out how much an online subscription would cost once the trial was over, I couldn’t.

    Did The New Yorker not want me to know? That seemed rather below its dignity, too.

    I clicked on the customer-service button, but didn’t find any advice, just an e-mail address for inquiries.

    Back on The New Yorker’s home page I went, to look for a phone number. Naturally, I couldn’t find one.

    I could have pulled down the Manhattan phone book, but I doubt subscriptions are handled by Condé Nast in Times Square these days, anyway. Probably Des Moines, or something, right?

    It was time to consult a member of the younger generation, who might be more skilled at finding answers on the computer. I set my daughter on the case, up in Nova Scotia, and she wrote back quickly to break the news gently: I hadn’t signed her up for a four-week magazine subscription, but for a four-week trial of the magazine’s online digital archive.

    Oh, well. A digital archive sounds interesting. And maybe a $2.64 trip to the post office is easier, after all.

    Having inherited from my wife a laptop, the first I’ve ever owned, I realized in thumbing through some old columns that had not yet made their way to my archivist in Carlsbad, that for me the computer age began 23 years ago, in the summer of 1988. . . .

    “Recently, I was carried kicking and screaming into the technological age, which is to say that the manual typewriter whose carriage I had flung back and forth until it cried uncle, and whose ribbons I had pounded into shreds and tatters, was replaced by a computer. Now, instead of carrying on a lover’s quarrel with a cantankerous Royal, I stare, fascinated, as green words march silently by on a screen.”

    The relationship is decidedly different. The former was far more physical, more noisy, more confrontational. With the Royal, I knew where I stood — usually at a disadvantage, because there was always something wrong. The ribbon wouldn’t rewind, the spacer would slip, the capital T would become unhinged, o’s and e’s would become obscured by caked ink, elfin screws would pop from parts unknown. I used to say, not with any bitterness, really, that even when all the typewriters in the office were fixed, they were broken. You had to take them warts and all.

    The computers are, by contrast, cosmetically perfect, cooler, and more mysterious, inasmuch as, unless you periodically summon up word counts, you never know quite where you are with them. Rather than noisy arguments, silent dialogues are conducted, and since pages don’t roll out from the machine, the interplay can become mesmerizing. The first column I wrote on a computer was twice as long as normal, and was greatly improved by radical surgery that removed a large, unwieldy digression.

    “Soon,” I said following a euphoric week at the keyboard, “all I’ll have to do is press ‘Point of View’ and the computer will do my column for me!”

    You do get the feeling with a comuter that you’re not the active agent you once were. Perhaps that is because everything is so silent now. Thoughts arrive and are borne away with equal ease, it seems, by the cursor. Sometimes, perversely, whole chunks of text vanish, which is why I’ve learned the hard way to periodically implore the machine to “save.” I never would have groveled that way with my typewriter.

    Perhaps computers do deserve some obeisance, as they can make one’s job easier. Second thoughts become first thoughts without having to wad up and toss away a sheet of copy paper, or smudging a line with xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

    And I find satisfying the rat-a-tat of the printer as it transposes what had been somewhat ethereal into down-to-earth black-and-white, proof positive that I have, indeed, been working.