On July 5 The New York Times had two articles datelined Clear Lake, Iowa, noting that Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich had marched in the Fourth of July parade. I was there and saw both of them. Ms. Bachmann wore heels. How impractical, I thought, for walking in a parade.

    Clear Lake is a town of just over 8,000 in north central Iowa on I-35. On the Fourth of July the crowd was estimated at 40,000. The parade has always been an attraction for those running for office. The summer before the 2008 caucuses Hillary and Bill were in the parade, as was Mitt Romney. Not together, of course.

    My family summered in Clear Lake, driving up from Webster Groves, Mo. We stayed in a cottage on the south shore that my dad bought in 1939. My mother gave it a Sioux name, Tipi Koda (House of Friends), and furnished it with a Native American theme. My siblings and I reluctantly sold the property in 1999, but I have continued to return to Clear Lake.

    In order to see the parade up front and center, I got up at 4:30 a.m. to stake a place along Main Street. Carrying folding chairs, I saw that most of the spots along Main Street had already been taken by blankets and chairs that had been set up after Rookies, a bar, had closed.

    I was staying with a childhood friend, Richard, in his house two blocks from City Park. I knew the house as a child when his grandparents lived there. Richard and I met 70 years ago, in the summer of 1941, just before we entered second grade. Later, I was best man at his wedding and he was best man at mine. He’s now a widower, I was divorced more than 30 years ago, and the two of us rattle around in his house of modified Prairie design, stucco with large overhanging eaves. (Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses and a hotel in nearby Mason City, which is also River City of “The Music Man.”)

    Summers, growing up, Richard and I were part of what we called “the gang.” We were three boys and three girls who swam and played along the south shore, dating others independently when we were teenagers. There was roller-skating at Bayside, the amusement park, and dancing at the Surf. That’s the Surf where Buddy Holly played on Feb. 2, 1959, just before he was killed in a plane crash north of town. The annual Winter Party commemorates Buddy Holly and the Crickets each February, when Clear Lake, as on the Fourth, swells to thousands.

    Richard practically never left. He taught for a few years in Blue Earth, Minn., and Sioux City, Iowa, but mostly he’s been in Clear Lake. His life is as bounded as the streets or, for that matter, the lake. Life is predictable. I join that order, or re-enter it, when I visit, detached from most everything else. The sky is expansive, the air sweet. I breathe it in as I walk the tree-lined sidewalks into town.

    Clear Lake falls back into place after the Fourth. The next morning I walked with Richard for coffee at the deli. A group of about six men and six women meet there every morning at 8. The men sit at one table, the women at another. Talk is town gossip — never malicious, that I’ve heard, but of the kind that derives from the same root as “gospel,” gossip meaning good talk. It is good, too — about folks in town who might be ill, the weather, the crops, with droll humor as in a play. “That’s a nice lookin’ Hawaiian shirt ya got there,” to one man, to which he said, “So expensive I couldn’t take the trip to Hawaii.”

    After coffee, I headed back down to the lake and sat on a bench looking out at the water. The lake is 15 miles in circumference. Summers during college, I sailed a boat for guests at the Lake Shore Hotel. The hotel, which was torn down in 1964, was a rambling building of three floors, one bathroom per floor, with rates ranging from $1.25 to $4.50. In the summer of 1941 the Iowa artist Grant Wood lived in town and took some of his meals at the hotel. The Whisters held their annual convention there, old men and women playing the card game. It was serious business, so serious that at their request we covered the mirrors in the dining room where they met to make sure no one cheated.

    Occasionally at night some of the other college boys and girls and I would sail the Lake Shore Hotel boat to the head of the lake near Lone Tree Point. We would beach the boat on the sand, spread our blankets, and break out the six-packs. We did not get drunk but just talked, about life ahead of us, who was dating whom, college. There seemed to be no cares and little pressure. We got into college without difficulty; we would get jobs without difficulty. Life was open and promising.

    Of course all that is gone, including our family cottage. Lakeside property is too dear to keep as a summer residence alone. Most cottages have been replaced by very large houses on narrow lots, the height of the houses making up for the lack of breadth. It’s endemic to the country.

    On a quiet weekday, Richard and I joined our friend Sally from the old gang and slid into a booth where we could look out over the lake and enjoy our hamburgers and fries. Drinks of water or iced tea. Lunch for about $8. Yes, we reminisced, but also talked about ourselves at present and, considering where we are in life, penultimate concerns: living on modest retirement incomes that have been flat for three years, matters of health. Meanwhile the lake, where once the Winnebago camped, remains perennial for us — the boundary of it, as well as its beauty and enchantment.

    The geography is different there, the history, the air. The wind brushes your face differently. As Sally said of Clear Lake and Mason City, no one would think to ask, Do you go to church? The question would be, Which church do you go to?

    Another day and I flew to New York, landing at La Guardia. I took a shuttle bus to Manhattan and then a Jitney to East Hampton. Oh, the glamour and the clamor! Each time I return to Clear Lake I am momentarily startled when someone I am passing on the sidewalk makes eye contact and says good morning or good afternoon. Back on Main Street in East Hampton I am again guarded.

    I have never figured out quite where home is. It is here, of course, in the literal sense, with friends and my son, Tom, and his partner, Brian. But I was born in Minneapolis, and there is that axis from the Twin Cities to St. Louis right through Iowa. I am on that axis. I could kid my friend by saying, “Hey, Richard, marriage is legal now in both Iowa and New York. Where shall we be married?” But I don’t say that. The question would further reveal the ambivalence of home.

    Richard has his family plot in Clear Lake Cemetery. My family plot is there, too. “I hope you’re buried here,” he said, “then we can wave at each other.” I guess that would settle things.

The Rev. Robert Stuart is pastor emeritus of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. He lives in Springs.

    At about midday on Monday, I took a walk into the East Hampton Village business district just to get a little air before changing gears at the office. There was the beginning of an east wind, a bit of chill in the air. The elms lining Main Street were almost entirely denuded of their leaves.

    Downstreet, as the old-timers call the downtown area, was bare in spots as well. As everyone knows, many shops are closed and the ones that remain open, with only a handful of exceptions, seem to be selling things of no particular interest or usefulness to ordinary people.

    In past winters, readers have written in to suggest that, at the very least, the papered-over stores display work by South Fork artists to bring some color and visual interest to the bleak facades, which now are broken only by real estate for-rent signs.

    The most bitter pill of all, at least as far as this community’s children are concerned, is the “closed for the season” banner across the window at Dylan’s Candy Bar near the movie theater. The New York-based store shut down just after Halloween.

    Since school is out this week, my older daughter and a friend were hanging around the office, bored and with nothing to do, when I got back from my walk. After rejecting a couple of my suggestions, they perked up when I said they should make some signs, go to Waldbaum’s or CVS to buy some treats, and hand out free candy as a form of protest in front of Dylan’s. This they did, hand-lettering messages on cardboard and lining up another out-of-school kid for their mission.

    I wasn’t there, but my wife reported that they had a hard time getting any takers for their candy among the few people who hurried along. My daughter and her comrades thought this was amusing; whether any passers-by caught the unspoken message I can’t know.

    The nothingness of East Hampton Main Street in the off-season has become a self-fulfilling reality. Shops that cater only to a certain transient clientele scare off locals and others not interested in Juicy Couture and the like, and it grows ever more lonely.

    Saturday is the second annual Support Local Business Day. I’m all for it. But except for books, hardware, skateboards, sneakers, and drug store items, there isn’t much I’d want to buy in this village anyway. And that’s a pity.

    Well, I’ve gone and done it — joined Facebook — though I have an eerie feeling it won’t end well.

    Mary made me do it. She wanted me to play Scrabble with her. That way we can argue in the traditional fashion if we’re seated next to each other as to whether a word is misspelled or not, or even if it’s a word. You can cheat on the Facebook version by plugging things in and getting a “valid” or “invalid” answer posthaste. And then you make your play. It used to be more fun when the give-and-take (“Yes it is!” “No, it isn’t! Whoever heard of a ‘za.’ What’s a za. . .?!”) was settled by a visit to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in our living room, the Final Arbiter.

    In order to get together Facebook-wise, I had to confirm that I had in fact volunteered to join on my e-mail at the office. When I opened it the day after she’d signed me up, I found that Facebook had already chosen some possible “friends” I might want — none being Mary!

    I thought that was indeed strange until we discovered, while investigating the matter further, that there are 856 Mary Graveses known to Facebook at this moment in time, and there a whole lot of John Graveses, too.

    So today, having been told that Mary Graves wants to be my friend, and having clicked when asked if I’d like to see her profile, I was nonplused yet again to learn I had somehow befriended a Mary Graves who has urged that I let grace flow freely from my heart, a Mary Graves who has proferred a “verse of the day,” and a Mary Graves who has “just earned a score of 57,700 points.” Still no sign of my wife!

    Under “recent activity” it says “Mary is now friends with John Graves and 2 other people.” But, as I said before, given the fact that there are 855 other Mary Graveses on Facebook, and God knows how many John Graveses, I am not reassured.

    The thing is I don’t want to be friends with anyone but Mary (well, maybe my children). I fear that this is spinning totally out of control, as I knew in my heart it would (which is why I’ve been resisting for so long), and that before you know it I will be linked in with half the people on the planet and feeling I should converse with them.

    This, of course, is the deepest fear of a professed compassionate secular humanist.

    Under “recent activity” the “Facebook Team” also says — oh God — “Mary is now friends with Victory and Dominion Church and 10 other people,” and “Mary is now friends with Grateful Of Plantersville and 10 other people,” and “Mary Graves went to Lee Williams & QC’s (!).”

    I’m shutting it down. I’m shutting it down.

    Talking with Kenny Mann, whose film “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots,” about her ancestral past, will be shown at Bay Street on Sunday, got me thinking about identity and, of course, how it relates to me.

    But after I suffered from a weekend of tryptophan-induced writer’s block, my husband, the beautiful Eric Johnson, suggested that I get in touch with Who I Am by describing the stickers on my car. And you know what? As his suggestions go, which usually include all sorts of naughty stuff not fit for print, it’s not half bad.

    I drive a white 1998 Volvo with 190,000 miles on it. You would know it if you saw it around town, because it is covered with colorful magnetic flowers and insects, and is frequently pointed at and commented on. I have emblazoned my last three cars with magnets, which make me smile every time I see them.

    But what sends me over the moon is the giant-size magnetic Band-Aid I recently added to the front driver’s-side panel over a big boo-boo that I can’t afford to fix. What a great idea. Thank you, magnetic car Band-Aid inventor. Almost makes me want to go out and sideswipe another one of those invisible yellow cement poles.

    “Bonac Football” — I found this in an overstuffed desk drawer I was cleaning out at The Star. My daughter, Jo, is now a sophomore at East Hampton High School. I sport the Bonac colors with pride.

    “We’re Not Going to Guam, Are We?” — From the fifth season of “Lost.” The pilot, Frank Lapidus, an island escapee, notices that his planned flight to Guam is filled with familiar unplanned guests, namely the folks who are now trying to find the portal that will get them back to the middle of their ocean paradise by crashing Frank’s plane. In a very serious show, it is one of the lighter moments. Losties honk their horns at me when they see this sticker.

    “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” — literally “I honor the mystic law of cause and effect through sound vibrations,” the chant that my family of Nichiren Buddhists repeats twice a day, morning and evening, for about 15 minutes. “Renge” is the lotus flower, which has its roots deep in the sludge of a pond, but produces a beautiful blossom, symbolizing the Buddhist tenet of “changing poison into medicine.” It also is the only flower that simultaneously blooms and seeds, and therefore symbolizes the simultaneity of cause and effect. I know, I know — that’s a little long for a bumper sticker.

    “Leave the World a Better Place Than You Found It” — the most recent arrival on my back bumper. I got this one last month when I visited my best friend in the whole world, Jenn Dwight, down in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is also the home of the Edgar Cayce Institute, practically the originator of the New Age movement, with a fabulous store chock-full of crystals and chimes and books and healthy snacks and more, including this bumper sticker. The sentiment is something my mother has tried to instill in me. So when I look at this, it reminds me of Jenn, of my mother, and of the serenity I feel when walking the labyrinth in front of the institute, with the Atlantic Ocean twinkling in the distance.

    “SPG” — I finally succumbed and got one of those elliptical European stickers. My home hamlet of Springs.

    “The East Hampton Star” — It’s where I work.

    When this car finally conks out — years from now, let’s hope — I may choose to drive an anonymous, unadorned vehicle simply reeking of class and status, and save my precious viewpoints for long and deep conversations over dinner with a trusted few. But for now, my car is an extension of Who I Am, and Who I Am is sort of a mess and always in a hurry. But cheerful, just like my Volvo.

    I have no problem expressing myself with shallow, pithy aphorisms, at least for now, and especially if the flowers and butterflies on the sides of my car, or the person who’s driving, can make someone smile.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    Traffic between East Hampton and Bridgehampton just after 4 one afternoon this week was heavy west of the Stephen Hand’s Path intersection with Montauk Highway. At this time of year, when it gets dark so early, the roads fill up at dusk, the day over for those who work outdoors, while others are rushing home or to the market.

    I was headed to pick up one of our daughters at a play rehearsal, and as I turned onto Woods Lane, a light rain began to fall. In Sagaponack I turned off onto the back roads to avoid the backup from the Bridgehampton light. I am one of those who, even if it’s going to take the same amount of time to get someplace, would rather be moving than creeping forward in a stop-and-go line.

    The difference once I got in the woods north of the highway was remarkable. Instead of the multitude of red taillights, there was only one other pickup on the road. It was as if I had driven somehow back in time, or to another, less-crowded place. The trade parade, as some call it, is more than that really. Whether tending oceanfront mansions or keeping a restaurant going, many jobs in East Hampton are held now by people who live somewhere to the west.

    I was looking this week at the Census 2010 data for East Hampton Town and was struck that despite all the building during the past decade, the number of year-round residents had not grown all that much. The population has moved around, abandoning East Hampton Village to second-home owners, for example, while filling in the outlying areas.

    Three decades ago, when I was in high school here and lived in a house behind the Star office, I had school-age friends in the neighborhood and an ample supply of other kids with whom to gin up rivalries. I doubt there are more than a dozen kids within a half-mile of the office now, even though the school population has grown. December’s onset tends to make me nostalgic.

    I loaded my daughter in the truck, and we headed east. The westbound traffic had not let up, but it was light going east. By the time we left the Amagansett I.G.A. with something for dinner, there was only one other vehicle on the road.

    In one sense, my basement flood couldn’t have happened at a better time. With Christmas approaching, the drive to accumulate (or should I say, more generously, “to give”) more worldly possessions grows ever stronger. The wanting is magnified. Consumerism calls. The pent-up demand begs for release.

    But then I look to every available upstairs storage nook in a house with few closets. I look to the steps leading downstairs, piled high now with stacks of boxes that once lived in the basement. I look to the Portable on Demand storage unit on one side of my driveway, the Dumpster on the other, and to the still surprisingly full basement and the boxes upon boxes that made the journey from one house or another to our house, rarely if ever to be opened since. I think about how I’ll have to move it all again, and probably again after that before all the damage can be made right. And I ask myself: Do I really need more crap? Because when you have to schlep it upstairs into your livng room, then back onto the steps, then out to a storage unit in the driveway, only to eventually lug it back to where it started, even the prettiest heirlooms start to seem like a bunch of junk. If I were a turtle, the weight of this shell would be crushing me.

    My husband announced last week that all he wants for Christmas is for someone else to come clean our house. What I find myself wanting after a broken washing machine hose filled our 1,400-square-foot semifinished basement with half a foot or more of water are things that make other things go away. A really powerful wet-dry vacuum. A DustBuster. Waterproof containers. Santa, give me organization! I want my storage spaces to look like something out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine.

    It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of holiday buying. This year, when I feel the pangs of desire for something I’ve seen on TV, I consider whether I would still want it once the thrill of getting it was gone. Would I have to have it if I had to keep it in the middle of my living room, for example? Anything that needs to be stored and does not also clean or compress something else is not on my holiday wish list this year.

    The basement flood has given me perspective on my worldly possessions, many of which are not nearly as worth saving as I once thought. Or are they? That question has held me hostage for some time now. Why are we keeping my dearly departed mother-in-law’s college and grad school diplomas, and would we be sorry if we let them go? She worked so hard for them. More to the point, why do I hold on to the contents of a large plastic container labeled “Purses and Shoes”? Each time in the past that I’ve attempted to cull, I’ve taken detours down Memory Lane and never found my way out.

    Do we just continue through life like human Velcro, picking up more and more and more as we go? In a world where so many people go without, is it okay to just throw things away?

    And, not to be all bah humbug, but do the kids really need any more toys? They have so much more than they can enjoy, and more toys equal more cleanup. Still, I love to watch them open presents. And I like something new to play with, too.

    What we all need is a purge.

    I’ve started to sneak out the toys that Jasper and Jade have grown tired of, and I’ve gotten incrementally more realistic about my own things. More than a few times since our basement flood I’ve asked myself: Do I hoard? We have just the right amount of stuff for a house of 2,000 or so square feet, but our house is much smaller, and with the basement temporarily taken out of the equation, it’s been hard not to feel like we’re living in an episode of “Hoarders,” despondently walking the trails between the piles trying to justify why we can’t get rid of anything.

    Part of this tendency to gather, to bring home the best of other people’s castoffs, comes from living through lean times. I hate to waste. I don’t love that sweater, but it is a wool sweater and if I’m cold enough and all the other clothes are dirty and I’m not going to be seeing anyone I care to impress I might wear it.

    In last week’s paper, we had an interview with a professional declutterer, Chucky Bologna, and it got me thinking. She advised that if you haven’t worn something for two years, you should get rid of it. I love the idea so much I am tingling with excitement. I can’t wait to go through every piece of clothing I own with that in mind. She also said, “Step away from the yard sale.” She’s right, and I have, but there’s a history to overcome in that basement of mine.

—

    Carissa Katz is an associate editor at The Star.

    Because I don’t pay much attention to fashion, I didn’t know who Tomas Maier was until the other day when, thumbing through an August edition of Vogue magazine, I learned he had designed a velvet-on-python satchel (read great big handbag) for Bottega Veneta.    

    Mr. Maier, it turns out, is the creative director of the company, a high-end clothing and accessories purveyor best known for the “luxurious sensuality of leather,” at least according to New York magazine. He has been experimenting with new interpretations of the company’s “intrecciato” pattern, which Vogue described as the label’s “signature weaving technique.”    

    Vogue also said it can take an artisan three years to learn how to properly do intrecciato. No wonder the satchel, made by aligning the python’s scales precisely on the velvet to create a “continuous serpentine pattern,” costs $3,450. The text trumpets that the handbag reaches “painstaking new levels of opulence.”    

    Snake and crocodile are all the rage this year, with crocodile out-pricing snakeskin, as far as I could tell by perusing a number of Web sites of notably spendy stores. The most expensive bag I came across was made for Tiffany’s in South Africa of glazed crocodile skin: It had a 24K gold-plated brass fastening and a price tag of $17,500. Elsewhere, a crocodile clutch (a small, hand-held purse, for you gentlemen readers out there) was $5,810. For the most part, however, if you’re in the market for a chic leather bag for Christmas, expect prices to begin just under $300 and hover in the $1,000 range.    

    The modest commercial building at the southeast intersection of  Sayre’s Path and the Montauk Highway in Wainscott bore Tomas Maier’s name until recently, although the property now has  an “in contract” real estate sign. Until the boutique closed, I hadn’t actually noticed that a Tomas Maier shop had opened there in the summer of 2010. Who knows what goods I missed, and at what prices? I’m told Mr. Maier is also a designer of sexy swimwear for both men and women, and I guess that’s what was being sold to the summer crowd. (Clearly I haven’t been in the market for a $395 twist-tie bikini.)    

    That handbags have joined watches and jewelry in displaying status and wealth is old news. I know it’s a pipe dream, but I still keep wondering when I see an adornment that costs in the five figures — when equally stylish inexpensive alternatives are available  — why no humanistic government has yet evolved that would get up the gumption to impose a hefty luxury tax on these decorative items for body building — a sort of Robin Hood tax that could come into play. So you want to buy a $17,000 handbag? How about an extra $1,000 for underprivileged kids’ school lunches?    

    My husband and I recently went to the new Islamic rooms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where extraordinary tiles, rugs, and gold jewelry, among other treasures of an earlier age, are on display. I am glad, and amazed, that such lavish and beautiful items exist. The question is, at what human cost?    

    The best I can do to frame such wild luxuries in a positive light is to think back to Reaganomics, the trickle-down economics theory. Surely someone in South Africa raised or captured that python, right? Someone tanned the leather, someone shaped it, someone designed what it was to become, someone executed the design, someone marketed the product, and someone offered it for sale. . . ? Perhaps Ms. Warbucks is justified in thinking the outrageously expensive bauble she wants for Christmas has done mankind some good?        She might very well think so, but I am not so sure.

    I counted the number of players who had their shirts off following American Samoa’s first-ever World Cup soccer win the other day, a singular victory reported on in The New York Times, and there were six. All happy fellows in good shape. Nothing to offend as far as I could tell, though if partial disrobing becomes the norm one shudders to think what will happen should it extend to boccie, bowling, shuffleboard, and bridge.

    All by way of saying that I found the shirt-waving glee that followed East Hampton’s first-ever county championship in boys soccer not in the least offensive either.

    Nor did the school’s athletic director, Joe Vas, who, having coached state-champion teams in boys and girls soccer in his career, is well acquainted with the rules. Nor did the team’s head coach, Rich King, or his assistant, Don McGovern. All were outraged — and justly so — when Bonac’s star center midfielder was red-carded, and thus banned from playing in the Long Island championship game — a game the Bonackers could well have been expected to win were Mario Olaya in the lineup.

    That’s why it was a bit galling to learn not long afterward that Jericho, which had defeated East Hampton 2-1, went on to win the Class A state title as well.

    There was no objection to Olaya’s initial yellow-carding for having delayed the restart of the county championship game after shirtlessly celebrating what proved to be the winning goal that he scored with 34 seconds left on the clock.

    But there was to his postgame red-carding, which followed upon the team’s brief celebration with its fans at the far end of the field, nowhere near Sayville’s bench.

    East Hampton’s athletic director has said the excessive-celebration rule, whose purview is confined to the time in which a game is contested, was in this case “misapplied.” And he has asked the state’s soccer rules committee to confirm this contention.

    To have merited a red card after the game, Olaya, he maintains, would have had to have been found guilty of unsportsmanlike conduct of some kind. Yet that clearly was not the case, he and King have said. Olaya was not taunting Sayville’s players, nor was he rubbing their noses in it, nor was he showboating. He had merely, along with his teammates, rushed over to share the historic moment — for just a few moments — with their schoolmates, their parents, their teachers, and other well-wishers.

    While time cannot be rolled back, a clarification of the rules, Vas and King say, should prevent such an injustice from ever occurring again in Suffolk.

    When you’re watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” this Christmas season I hope you’ll note how much this masterpiece by Frank Capra has to tell us about the way we live now — and the way we used to live then, in a more rational and humane time.

    The Bailey Building & Loan Association helped to build Bedford Falls into a thriving community where even an immigrant like Giuseppe Martini could start a business, buy a house, and share in the prosperity of postwar America. Why? Because the economics of Bedford Falls was local, not global. George — and before him his father, Peter — knew the human beings their bank lent money to. They judged their reliability, their creditworthiness, by looking into their eyes. If someone slipped behind in payments, they made a human judgment: Will he recover? Or will he go under?

    I doubt George Bailey foreclosed on many residents of Bedford Falls. Most of those who had fallen on hard times would recover. Bailey Building & Loan had little to lose giving them some flexibility. If you can’t pay a 20-year mortgage, maybe a 30-year mortgage would help. I’ll bet George even took rent instead of mortgage payments from some of the residents of Bedford Falls. No way he wanted to see empty houses in Bailey Park.

    But that was then: a more personal, local, rational, real economy. This is now: a globalized, digitized, abstract, virtual economy. George Bailey’s Building & Loan was swallowed up by some international financial conglomeration when George died in 1982 and Zuzu and her siblings couldn’t come up with the cash for the inheritance tax. And the new bank doesn’t own the mortgage on Giuseppe Martini’s house — 100,000 investors own a sliver each (although none of them know it).

    Blame it on computers. When George had to write down each loan and each payment by hand he was forced to think about the people getting the loans, making the payments, living in those houses. Now we live in a shell-game economy where you never know which shell hides the pea.

    Mr. Potter would have understood this in a trice: What a great idea! Separate the money from the people, a little sleight of hand with the people, then market these “assets” sliced and diced to a huge crowd who have no idea about the people who owe them money!

    But in the classic movie, Mr. Potter didn’t win. When Uncle Billy foolishly misplaced the eight grand deposit (think Fannie Mae, or the S.E.C.), the people came to George’s defense with an outpouring of necessary capital. Perhaps that is what we are now trying to do (although so far, the capital has gone to Mr. Potter, not Bailey Building & Loan, or Mr. Potter’s victims).

    The question no one has asked or answered so far is this: Out of all these disastrous foreclosures, how many are the result of stupid loans that George Bailey would never have written, and how many are due to shell-game scams by the Mr. Potters of this world — mortgages that would otherwise work if Bailey Building & Loan took them over, at fair rates, on honest terms? My guess is that 90 percent of recent foreclosures would never have happened if a local, honest banker like George Bailey owned the mortgages.

    At one point, Mr. Potter observes, “Peter Bailey was not a businessman.” How true. When Peter and Potter were boys, 100 years ago, the great American economist Thorstein Veblen castigated “businessmen,” whom he defined as those whose only aim was to make money, and contrasted them with “industrialists,” who made products they were proud of. George and his father before him were in the banking service business — not the corporate profits shell game.

    And what would George (or Thorstein Veblen, for that matter) think of the current situation if Clarence brought them back for a visit? Didn’t we fight these battles a century ago when Veblen wrote? How did we erase the progress of the first 80 years of the 20th century so quickly?

    It once was a wonderful life — and it can be again. We just need to shift focus from the money to the people: fewer bailouts, more Baileys.

    (Clarence, can you hear us?)

___

    James Monaco is the author of “How to Read a Film,” a new edition of which came out in 2009, and other books about film and media. A “confirmed localist,” he lives and works in Sag Harbor.

    The bathroom scale started sending unusual messages as soon as the unusually pleasant and warm fall weather began to turn. I have a pretty small frame, and I’ve kept fairly slim in recent years due to a regular yoga practice, so when my weight varied by a whole 10  pounds on the digital screen one day a few weeks ago, I was more befuddled than alarmed.

    Was the scale broken? Or had I really been, unconsciously, fattening up for a cold winter like a prize goose?

    It turned out that not just was the scale’s aging battery dying, the whole scale was going on the fritz. I have put off getting a new one.

    It has always been my habit to weigh myself every morning. Whenever the scale goes up two pounds from one day to the next, I decide it is time to pay attention to what I am eating. Now that there’s no device in the house to sound the alarm, I’ve thrown caution to the winds and eaten whatever, whenever, all through Thanksgiving and over the last two weeks since. It’s going to be interesting to find out what the new scale will tell me — one way or the other.     

    All during my adult life, I have devoted a lot of time to experimenting with different diets, from the scientific to the ridiculous. At least twice I have come under the misimpression that I had invented a unique brand of weight control and should write a book about it.

    The first method had to do with the difference between glucose and sucrose, which contains fructose. I can’t remember how I thought it was supposed to work, but I was a real enthusiast for my pet theory for a time.  The second “diet” was a simple matter of imagination: Instead of going for an actual helping of mashed potatoes, for example, I would conjure them up in my mind and visualize myself eating them.  This actually worked for a while, but, in retrospect, it’s hardly an original approach.

    Then there was the time I went on a protein-and-water diet. My doctor told me not to do it for more than two weeks. Obviously, if you lose weight on a two-week, get-thinner-quick regimen, it’s hardly likely to be permanent. But I did learn something from it: Protein in the morning fends off hunger. (But I guess you knew that?)

    In classic Jewish mother fashion, my grandmother used to insist, especially when I was a teenager, that I needed more meat on my bones. She, herself, was quite thin, but I’m afraid I’ve always taken after the other side of the family, which isn’t.

    Notably, the mealtime traditions my grandmother brought with her from Eastern Europe did not include dessert. The only sweet I remember her making was a blueberry “pie” that wasn’t pie at all but deep-dish sponge cake over a layer of blueberries.

    My mother’s dessert offerings, such as they were, were limited to Jell-O and chocolate pudding. To this day, I’m her daughter. I would rather have a second portion of whatever the savory stew might be at dinner than ice cream and cookies at meal’s end. Wait, oh dear . . . I’m afraid I am probably going to have to eat my words. Christmas cookies are only two weeks away.

    Ah, well, the scale can wait till the New Year.