On the eve of the 21st century, a new generation of professional women entered the work force. With them, a trend in feminist surnames was emerging: the taking of their husbands’ last names as their own. Is the trend a shift backward? Or does it indicate the completion of a circle?

    Despite what people may think, the trend certainly symbolizes a desire for simplicity. The past three decades saw a deluge of information, new technology, and societal upheaval. As a result of this chaos, time seemed to speed up. Modern professional women were looking for a way to streamline the complicated issues they are confronted with each day. Identity is just one of those issues.

    As a young lawyer, I adamantly did not want to take my fiancé’s last name. I wanted my identity and my career to remain intact and separate from his. Fast-forward a few years to a different fiancé: I was giddy at the prospect of waiting on line at the D.M.V. to get my husband’s surname emblazoned on my driver’s license. What changed?

    On the surface, I thought it was simply because my husband’s last name was monosyllabic like my maiden name. The ring of my name did not change. A deeper examination revealed that I was beginning a different phase of my life and evolving into a new (and hopefully improved) version of myself. I became softer. Maybe even a little more patient. I was growing up.

    Once I was frightened of becoming someone’s wife or mother. I never wanted to become someone else’s anything. I just wanted to be me. But slowly my fear of background relegation began to dissipate. I started to relish the idea of taking on the role of wife and mother. I was becoming aware of my true identity and, ultimately, my place in the universe. A transition such as this is often fraught with angst and fear as one struggles to pull away from the person formerly known as “me.”

    Once thought of as something people just did after college, marriage came to symbolize so much more. Marriage is the coming together of each individual to form a powerful unit better able to navigate time and space. Marriage is the creation of something bigger than oneself — a concept that the younger me could never appreciate. Marriage is an equal combination of characteristics of two people, where weaknesses are diminished while strengths soar. Marriage is about flourishing, not overshadowing.

    Today, professional women rarely keep their maiden names for their careers while reserving their married names strictly for their personal lives. In a world dominated by chaos and confusion, the use of two different names became too convoluted. Even less popular is the hyphenation method.

    And even less popular than that is the blender method, the blending of two names into one weird and confusing last name devoid of history. Typically, once a professional woman gets married, she will simply tack her new surname on after her maiden name with nothing more than a space to herald her new identity. After a sufficient amount of time has passed for colleagues to become familiar with the new surname, she will unceremoniously drop the maiden name.

    The idea of bucking the surname norm to assert feminist individualism started in the middle of the 19th century. Lucy Stone was the first American woman to keep her birth name after marriage, leading to the moniker Lucy Stoners for all those who followed her. (Women in my generation didn’t have to shun their husbands’ names to earn the “stoner” label.)

    In 1921, Ruth Hale, a journalist, formed the Lucy Stone League. Seeing an impossible social task, the league slowly disbanded. Since its inception, it has been revived three times. Now in its latest revival, which started in 1997, the league touts “equal rights for women and men to retain, modify, and create their names.”

    Despite the efforts of the league and its predecessors, a woman’s right to adopt her husband’s family name as her own continues to be a widely practiced tradition. According to a 2005 study conducted by Diana Boxer, a professor of linguistics at the University of Florida, the vast majority of women surveyed had taken their husbands’ surnames for the sake of family unity. Ms. Boxer depicts this as a failure of the feminist movement because “societal traditions and gendered hegemony are so hard to overcome.”

    Consistently viewing this tradition as harmful to a woman’s individual identity is antiquated. Instead, the return to tradition should be celebrated as a marker of the strength of feminist ideals and achievements while honoring family values.

    Women in America are successful. The acceptance of multifaceted roles such as wife, mother, and professional allows women to express themselves in ways never thought possible. It used to be that when a young woman was brought to the altar, her name was all that gave her any sense of identity.

    Professional women no longer have time to focus on a symbolic gesture when this world has entrusted us with more important tasks. Women make discoveries in science and technology. Women mold our society with legal opinions and social commentary. Women produce legislation. Women color our world with art while providing the soundtrack to the stories we write.

    While doing all this, they continue to define our future as nurturing mothers. It is precisely because of this ability to create and nurture as applied to their roles in American society that women have also made more choice for themselves.

    When a newly engaged woman starts thinking about her surname, she has many options. Not only is it a testament to honor and tradition that modern women are adopting husbands’ surnames, it is also a wink and a nod to the notion that a woman’s identity inevitably becomes entangled with her husband’s. Instead, she can continue her life’s work while gracefully fashioning a coexistent life as a wife and mother. If power is choice, then the feminist name game proves just how powerful women are.

    I did not examine the genesis of my husband’s surname or my maiden name until we were expecting our first child. We wanted to grace our daughter with a moniker that combined the heritage of both families. My Germanic maiden name, Marsch, means marsh, indicating that my paternal ancestors lived near or made their livelihood from the marshlands. The surname Kerr is descended from the Scottish Kerr clan, a border clan that often lived in and made their living from swamps.

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    January Kerr, a lawyer turned writer, lives in East Hampton with her husband, their 23-month-old daughter, and an Alaskan malamute.

    Who is Shear Ozeri and why would I want to follow her on Twitter? The reason I ask is that Twitter thinks I would. Never mind, I can look her up on Google if I really want to know. The question arose when I got the following e-mail: “We’ve missed you on Twitter, Helen S. Rattray.”

    I had only been to Twitter once, so I was flattered. I clicked to find out what else it had to say. After all, Twitter has helped topple repressive governments, hasn’t it? Who was I to ignore it? That’s where Ms. Ozeri came in.

    She was among three “people” Twitter thought I might want to follow, the others being the White House and CNN News. I don’t know why Twitter picked them. I do know that Big Brother Internet has a way of keeping track of and letting marketers know the e-mails we send and Web sites we go to, but I had never met anyone named Shear Ozeri and don’t think I have ever corresponded with the White House or CNN News.

    Apparently, Twitter didn’t like my not having visited it since August — and that once was only because I clicked on a tweet, at the horse show’s Web site, about how the Hampton Classic Horse Show had taken down all its tents and postponed opening day because of Hurricane Irene. I gave myself a user name and put in a password and then tweeted the word (with an exclamation point) “whew!” It was the first time in a decade that The Star was not publishing a newsletter called The Daily Classic for the show, and, given the power failure and all the rain and wind, I was relieved.

    I’m something of a late starter — at least age-wise — at this Internet game, but my skills are improving. Spending a few days last weekend in my husband’s New York apartment, I decided to stop trying to figure out how to get where I wanted to go on the subway by looking at an old, tattered, fold-out map. Going to the computer, instead, I was successful. I used four different trains on three lines, transferring between two of them, and wound up exactly where I wanted to go, feeling a bit smug.

    I have been getting better at choosing the right search words to dig up information and articles (something kids today learn in, I suppose, second grade). To give an example, I had for a long time been in the habit of searching for things I might want to buy by entering their general category (“rain boots” or “vacuum bag”) and then clicking on the companies Google presented.

    I’ve finally realized that you can fine-tune the search by being absolutely specific. If I want another pair of Levi’s petite mid-rise jeans, well, I enter the brand, the size, and the style . . . and, presto, here are several outlets that have what I’m looking for, and without shipping charges.

    Back at my desk in East Hampton, I turned back to the Twitter question. Okay, so I looked up Shear Ozeri. But Google just directed me to . . . Twitter, where I read one of her tweets, a coarse remark about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s taste in women. Meanwhile, this column will be live on the Web by the end of the week; I wonder if Shear Ozeri will friend me on Facebook? Help. I think it’s time for a classic novel and a nice cup of Hu-Kwa.

The annual onslaught of ticks is in full swing around here now, which has prompted talk of drastic measures. Each of the members of our human family on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett has pulled at least one of the horrifying little pests from his or her person recently, and our animals have been playing unwitting hosts as well.

Leo the pig, whose pink skin and white bristles make it easy to spot ticks, seems to enjoy being examined each night. The dogs, with thick, darker pelts, are more difficult to groom and have both been diagnosed this year with various tick-borne diseases. Weasel, a Lab mix, stopped eating anything other than the softest foods, and Lulu, a long-haired mini-mutt, is finishing off the last of her prescription pills after first being given a big dose of antibiotics in a shot at the veterinarian’s office.

My wife, Lisa, has had enough. With good reason, she worries about Lyme and the other illnesses ticks can carry, and is nearly beside herself about the Powassan virus, which is fatal in a 10th of its cases. If it were up to her, she would have the lawn sprayed with something noxious as soon as possible.

I, on the other hand, am loathe to poison our surroundings, especially since we live surrounded by marsh and boggy places and birds and amphibians of all manner. According to its manufacturer, Ortho, one of the leading home-use products, kills more than 150 kinds of insects, including ants, bees, caterpillars, grasshoppers, moths, and, presumably, butterflies, and one of its key components is highly toxic to fish.

No way do I want to put that sort of stuff into our environment. Besides, the dogs are likely to bring ticks into the house from farther afield anyway. For now, I think I have prevailed in arguing for monthly applications of Frontline to the pets and nightly tick checks for the kids.

Next, of course, will come the mosquitoes. But that is a discussion for another day.  

    By the time I got home from the Hamptons Marathon I felt as if I’d run one. Standing for a long time trying to find recognizable faces from whom to cajole quotes in a crowd of 2,000 can make you feel like you’ve hit the wall.

    My time was four hours and change. Coffee stops at John Vassilaros’s stand in the parking lot got me through it.

    He and I talked a bit about tennis and about how a fellow player with two knee replacements — as is the case with me — had been persuaded to get a new shoulder too. That gave me an idea. We should have an all-prosthetic tournament! Scott Rubenstein once phoned to see if I’d be interested in being the fourth in just such a grouping, but I called back too late, they’d already found somebody. I forgot to ask if he was whole or modified.

    The marathon, half-marathon, and 5K weren’t the only sporting things going on that day. There were a whole bunch of other contests scheduled as part of the high school’s homecoming, not to mention the rugby team’s fall debut here — too much excitement (or ennui, as the case may be) for a septuagenarian who’d been told recently by his mother-in-law that he was stooping again.

    She was right. I had been feeling as if a weight were pressing down. I couldn’t wait, frankly, for Carolyn Giacalone’s men’s stretch class at the Y to begin again in mid-September so that I could resume my fight against gravity.

    I not only did so through that hour and a half of stretching, I did so on the tennis court when I turned to my partner and asked him if he’d heard the one about the shrinking man.

    This guy, I said, goes to a doctor and tells him he’s shrinking. “You’re shrinking?” says the doctor.

    “Yes,” says the man.

    “Well, you’ll just have to be a little patient.”

    (I owe that one, by the way, to Mary.)

    The only other joke I know that’s worth telling is the one about the Dalai Lama and the hot dog vendor, but you’ve probably heard that.

    Thinking about Buddhists reminds me of the laughing boat that was supposed to sail all over the world promoting laughter. Perhaps it’s been torpedoed or hit a mine. I don’t know, I haven’t heard about it lately. It sounded like a good idea.

    Certainly we need more of that kind of thing. Everyone knows laughter’s good for you, releasing the endorphins that running long distances releases, but in much less time (and without running the risk of hyperthermia) so that you can do other things. Like take a nap.

    When fall arrives, people prepare by decorating their houses and businesses with colorful mums, Indian corn, and orange-tinted fairy lights. Children jump in piles of crunchy leaves, without a thought of the chiggers or ticks that are lying in wait, and smoke spills out of chimneys, filling the air with the wonderful scent of burning wood.

    It’s all a lot of fun, but it does mean the time has come for us hardy locals to settle in for a long winter’s nap, which I welcome, because what I’ll miss most about the end of summer are my dreams. In truth, I hope they continue, I have such fun in them.

    I continue to suffer from a painful knee condition that is baffling three doctors, all specialists, and I am on medication for it. I think that’s the reason my dreams have become so realistic and graphic. I’ve hung out with Julia Roberts, driven a race car, talked to Tom Hanks on the phone in the house I grew up in on City Island, protected Sarah Jessica Parker from a stalker, whom I then beat up, and sang in front of a large crowd and received a standing ovation.

    I almost had a romantic dalliance with Alec Baldwin, which is all I’ll say as my husband is a jealous man.  If I described that dream he’d be hunting down Alec and the two of them would make a formidable pair. I see Mr. Baldwin out here occasionally, and now I’m embarrassed. I wonder, does he dream of me? Should I say hi? Will he recognize me? 

    As I’ve gotten a bit older, my life has become more sedate. I’ve been married to the same guy for 38 years, raised three amazing children, and have a grandson whom I adore and get to spend a lot of time baby-sitting for, since his parents both work. It’s all good, because I’ve sown my wild oats — boy, did I sow my wild oats! My body is tired, but in my dreams I’m on fire, a wild woman, and I love living vicariously at night when I sleep.

    Entering the REM stage of sleep is like entering the Twilight Zone for me. I never know when I rest my head whose life I will be saving or who I will be partying with. When Julia and I hung out we were at a lake and we swam together, me in a bikini! Damn, I looked fine. In real life I’ve never worn a bikini; my thighs and hips were genetically doomed at birth. When Julia tossed her head back and laughed her trademark laugh, I stood next to her and tossed my head back, smiling my trademark smile, with my hair perfectly blown out, and looked just as good. Hey, it was my dream, and Julia Roberts was not going to upstage me in my dream!

    My hair is often silky-straight in my dreams, though I’ve fought a lifetime battle with curly, frizzy hair. If I still had all the money I’ve spent on straighteners and defrizzers, I’d be a wealthy woman, dreaming on a yacht and sailing to Europe.

    I look forward to spending a winter of dreaming. I just wish I could order my dreams like Netflix, and choose who I’d like to be in them. I’d order — oh well, I can’t say who I’d order, but let’s just say my movie star idol, Roy Scheider, would make an appearance. He’d be grappling with a huge shark and I’m sure I would save him from harm. I would dive into the water, hair perfectly straight, wearing my itsy-bitsy bikini with a belt wrapped around my tiny waist and a knife tucked into it to tackle the shark and bring him down.

    We’d celebrate afterward with chilled Champagne, aboard a large boat. I’d toss my hair back and laugh at all his jokes. Of course I’d invite my husband, whom I do dream about, but that we’ll keep to ourselves.

—

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The East Hampton Star.

    Tuesday’s lunch was delayed by a stop at Egypt Beach, where I tried a little surfcasting. October’s early days are among the most enjoyable here, with their easy pace. The office phones ring far less often, the urgent calls of public relations people reduced to a trickle.

    With the letters to the editor checked for grammatical consistency and put in some semblance of coherent order, it seemed okay to extend my usual run for food a little. The bass had not yet begun their run along the ocean beach, this I knew, but giving them a try just in case seemed a reasonable excuse.

    It’s hard to describe, but fellow anglers know this: Sometimes the water just doesn’t look “fishy.” This was one of those times, but I cast awhile anyway — more just for the doing of it than in the expectation of catching anything.

    The ocean is notably warm for the beginning of fall. This, a surfcaster friend tells me, is the reason there are no fish to be found, except at Montauk. Few birds passed overhead, and few sandpipers or plovers could be seen picking for a meal on the sloping foreshore.

    It was, now that I think about it, my second trip to the beach of the day. My wife had an early class to teach, so I had our toddler, Ellis, and some time to kill before work. We stopped first at Main Beach, then went to Wiborg’s. There, a small knot of people and dogs stood off to the west, the dogs digging and barking, the people chatting.

    Ellis “asked” to put on his rain boots, the ones with the smiley faces on them. We walked hand in hand down to the wrack line, where he picked up sticks and poked at the tangles of eelgrass.

    As I recalled, at his age each of the children began to have an interest in throwing things. Ellis, in his turn, found each of us a proper piece of driftwood and beckoned me to follow him toward the water. I did. We threw our sticks in several times until a bit of current took them away.

    The wide ocean beach is a wonderland for a child. For an adult, too, those of us able to steal a few minutes to enjoy it.   

    At dinner with friends not long ago, we got to cataloging all the terrible things abroad in the world, from natural disasters (tsunamis, floods, and earthquakes) to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to severe malnutrition among millions in the Horn of Africa.

    I was reminded of that old saw purported to be an old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

    There is no evidence that this phrase, which sounds a bit like a witch’s spell, is actually Chinese — much less ancient — but it seems particularly apt for our post-millennial days.

    It’s possible, or even likely, I’ll admit, that the times we’re now living in might not actually be more interesting than other decades; maybe the impression of dark days and watershed moments has more to do with our increased awareness of what is occurring around the globe.

    Still, I never expected that I would live to see some of the truly interesting events that have transpired so far in the 21st century — the Arab Spring, for example. (If these revolutions are the fulfillment of some mystical curse, clearly it was cast not at the people in the streets of Tunisia and Egypt but at the leaders of those repressive regimes.) Like the Arab Spring, the occupation of Wall Street, which came as a most “interesting” surprise to me, is a positive movement in American history: The Tea Partiers are not the only activists with conviction and spirit. 

    Meanwhile, while I’ve happened upon the subject, I think it’s time to abandon this idea of the Chinese curse and other so-called Chinese (hence exotic or mysterious) thises and thats. At The Star, we’ve had a longstanding rule against using the term “Chinese auction,” for example, in our editorial columns. Silent auction is a perfect substitute. More often than not, our forebears tacked the word “Chinese” in front of a noun when they wanted to suggest that whatever it was was spicy, mysterious, secretive, and hence intriguing. (Because, don’t you know, “Orientals” are inscrutable?)

    Even worse is the continuing use of the word Chinese to indicate something that is confused, disorganized, or inferior. A Chinese fire drill may sound harmless enough, especially when it refers to a collegiate-style prank in which everyone in a car that has stopped at a traffic light gets out and circles around it. But it also is associated with a number of other phrases dating back to World War I that have, thankfully, disappeared from common use. (A “Chinese national anthem” supposedly once referred to an explosion, for example, and a “Chinese ace” to an inept pilot. Oy!)

    I am sure that no one in any of our local organizations that sometime hold Chinese auctions ever realized the term could be considered outright derogatory at worst and obnoxious at best. Two of my grandchildren now go to a school that is making the study of Mandarin Chinese mandatory. When I went to grade school, it was likely to be Latin. But, well, we live in interesting times.

    Occasionally, I get a bee in my bonnet. Or ants in my pants. Whatever insectually-inclined idiom you use, I call it “hot-foot.” I need to fix something that isn’t broken, I try to change something that doesn’t need changing, I want to pack up my bindle and hit the road.

    Why? It could be genetic. Being a “matzo-pizza” I am the product of two famously nomadic tribes — the Jews, usually at the hands of some Cossack-induced pogrom, and the Sicilians . . . well, let’s just say mi famiglia had to move and change their names a lot.

    For whatever reason, I am at the top of my form whilst planning some escape route — whether it’s a three-day vacation or a total 180 in Who I Am and What I Do.

    In the past 10 years I have been a journalist, an editor, an artists’ model, actor, innkeeper, life coach, screenwriter, restaurant owner, fund-raiser, goatherd, Reiki master, pug breeder, minister, mom, retreat leader, public speaker, Civil Service liaison, and a director on endless volunteer boards, from those of statewide lodging and restaurant associations to local business bureaus to arts organizations, and sometimes juggling many of those at the same time.

    Some people don’t like change. I thrive on it. And the change that I have been focusing on lately is to become a farmer.

    In my Harriet the Spy notebook, I furiously jot notes of vegetables we would grow, animals we would keep, where we would live, how much acreage we would need. Would I sell food, make candles, or form some other cottage industry, or simply become self-sufficient enough to live off the fat of my own land? It’s a fantasy that dwells in a John Steinbeck dream. Maybe I could tend the rabbits. I love rabbits.

    An honest appraisal is always useful at this point. I know as much about farming as, say, a dog knows about cooking. I love the sights, the smells, the delicious outcome of farm produce. But only rarely, if ever, has one of my dogs fixed me dinner. And my sad little 6-by-6 garden of fragile eggplants the size of teardrops, grossly misshapen cucumbers, and tomatoes that adamantly refuse to ripen certainly does nothing for my pastoral résumé.

    What I know about farm life is what I read: I am an armchair farmer, plowing through books instead of fields; the stories of Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and other writers who try their hand at living the rural life grow verdant in my imagination.

    Earlier this season, my husband, Eric, brought a tomato worm into the house. It was beautiful in its own way; huge and bright green, with interesting little horns on its head, and cute little baby tomato worm eggs on its back.

    “Awww, how sweet,” I thought. But they weren’t destined to be cute little worm babies. They were wasp eggs, ready to devour the caterpillar the moment they emerged, eating him alive to become big nasty stingy things.

    I was horrified. I insisted, before the revolting larvae hatched, that we all stand around the toilet, say a little blessing for the tomato worm, and then ceremoniously send him off to the great Septic System in the Sky, a vastly preferable fate to being wasp food.

    Eric, who was born here, learned how to drive a tractor on the Dayton farm when he was 10 or 12. Or maybe it was at the Marders’. He has worked at various garden shops and nurseries over the years, and had his own landscaping business back in the day. Planting comes naturally to him. He can name everything in its original form — “plantica erratica” or “silexia novatopia,” sending me into a marginally less-mustachioed Gomez Addams swoon. Plant Latin is my Spanish Fly. Don’t think he doesn’t know it.

    But planting, as a career, is obviously way over my head, as are all the other things that make up a farmer’s life: keeping books, marketing wares, packaging, shipping, tomato worms and wasps, dealing with subsidies and farm bills, keeping up with new laws, and other things so beyond my comprehension that it would be insulting to a farmer for me to try to include them here.

    I could never do it. Ever.

    So then I have to ask myself: Why change? I wake up every morning next to a guy who says “another day in paradise” while looking at me, and he seems to mean it. I have three healthy, brilliant children who appear to enjoy my company 94 percent of the time, and have the power to make me laugh even when I don’t want to. I have parents and siblings and friends who love me (and the feeling is mutual), and a career that — if I look at my mental punch list for the perfect job — pretty much covers the bases.

    The best way I can show my love for the bucolic ideal in my head is to support those who actually do it for a living. I buy from local farmers as much as possible.

    It’s time to take a few deep breaths and put down roots; not the kind that grow in the ground, but those of the rare yet productive “bridgetus stayputicus” variety.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    With the economy hesitating to recover, is it time to think about finding or changing jobs? Normally, about one person in 10 changes occupations per year. Nowadays, about twice that number contemplate switching. What’s so good about saying goodbye to a job or career? What’s good about being fired?

    Finding a new job and changing jobs, careers, or occupations can lead to job satisfaction. Many studies (and our personal experience) show that job satisfaction is an important predictor of job performance. A happy worker is a productive worker. So it’s not surprising that changing occupations led us, and can lead you, to career satisfaction. But how do you find your true calling, your passion-at-work?

    Some of us acquire practical job satisfaction by changing careers repeatedly until we find what’s right for us, sometimes through chance encounters. (Louis Pasteur, who discovered penicillin serendipitously, said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”)

    But our studies of thousands of downsized employees and job-changers prove that there’s a special population who learn how to find or switch jobs naturally, easily, and freely. They find new ways to direct themselves in new avenues, to use their skills and strengths. They figure out how to find a job that dovetails with their skills. They arrive at a kind of inevitable match to their work. Their skills fit their work like a glove. They are invigorated, not exhausted, by work. They fully enjoy the exercise of their signature talents and their strongest and most enjoyable skills. One of these rare individuals put it this way: “My work is now a worthy expression of who I am.”

    Parents or well-meaning friends may suggest to career-bewildered youngsters, “Become a lawyer or a doctor, and you’ll never have to worry about making a living.” We find that many lawyers and doctors later in life, after following this advice, actually experience a rude awakening: They have a mortgage, a lifestyle, and a family to support and realize they’re doing what their parents wanted, not necessarily what they want.

    Career changes late in life, now common, are difficult: Is perfect paralysis better than imperfect movement?

    The workplace is filled with those who do find satisfaction. A landmark study of young people by Eli Ginzberg, a Columbia University economist, found that as adults almost two-thirds had moved in a “straight-ahead career path,” entering and remaining in one field. Almost a third pursued a “broad career pattern,” shifting fields within their occupation. The rest (some 13 percent) zigged and zagged in a “variant pattern,” changing career directions completely.

    The study concluded that achieving career satisfaction is not a fully conscious process but had to be learned from the alternatives encountered — by trial and error. Those people who switch jobs or careers (by getting fired or quitting until they find the right fit) tend to be productive and satisfied in their work . . . eventually. Hard work, years of random or systematic job-changing, and even floundering may be necessary.

    Compared to other countries, the U.S. labor force works the most hours annually and has the shortest period of unemployment benefits and the shortest vacations of any capitalist democracy. Charles Darwin observed that variability of offspring “coupled with the energetic searching for a niche” produce hardened survivors. Layoffs and career-changing help give us a productive American economy because of the variety and energy in our work force, in our start-ups, and in our established companies.

    Changing jobs or careers lubricates and smoothes the operation of the economy. “Free movement of workers between occupations,” according to economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “can be beneficial to both the individual and the economy.”

    The global economy drives local labor supply and demand in the U.S., making rapid competitive responses essential. For example, FedEx keeps cargo planes in the air half-empty so they can mobilize promptly in response to changing demand conditions.

    Similarly, workers can mobilize their dissatisfactions as motivation to change jobs, occupations, specialties. So work force versatility and even employee unrest or layoffs become a resource waiting to be used — a virtual national asset. The U.S. economy can, in effect, turn on a dime when necessary by allowing versatile, talented, and productive workers to shift jobs or careers with ease and alacrity, as facilitators to the survival of the fittest. This is as true for laborers and tradespeople as it is for lawyers, business executives, or doctors — no matter what color collar they wear (white, blue, plaid, pink, or gold).

    We do work harder and more efficiently when we work at jobs or careers we like. “The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface,” Darwin wrote, “with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” Individuals striving to find jobs or penetrate an economy (a face of nature) are similar to sharp wedges. The incessant blows that move us forward are our confident refusal to accept job loss, our energetic persistence, our struggling to the utmost, our willingness to push ourselves.

    Getting fired and changing jobs or career directions may not only turn out to be good for us, but may also be good for the economy. Saying goodbye to a job layoff or career mismatch can provide a new lease on life and lead to genuine career satisfaction. Isn’t imperfect movement better than perfect paralysis? You don’t have to break glass to get fresh air. You can open the window.

    Stephen Rosen is chairman of Scientific Career Transitions, which specializes in the career problems of scientists and physicians. Celia Paul, his wife, is president of Celia Paul Associates, a New York City-based career-counseling firm specializing in lawyers. They live part time in East Hampton.

    We’ve all heard of, and possibly heaped scorn upon, stage mothers who push their children into the theater or onto the TV screen. Of course, more recently, stage fathers have been in the news, too, pushing daughters onto the pop charts and tennis courts.  

    The tendency may be hard to control. Parents want to, and should, encourage their kids to do well, but it is sometimes difficult to separate children’s own interests and talents from what their parents wish them to be. Trying to get your children to fulfill your own dreams is an obvious mistake.

    I am pretty sure I wasn’t a stage mother. In fact, I may have erred by neglecting to praise my kids enough — by being engaged with my professional life at their expense. Be that as it may, this is all moot now that I’m a grandmother. Yes. Yes. I plan to be a stage grandmother.

    On Columbus Day, a day off from school, my Amagansett granddaughters, pursuing their own interests, filled me with delight. One of them is learning to play the viola, and she brought it along when they came over for the afternoon. Did she catch on to how thrilled I was while listening to her practice “Jingle Bell Rock”? The other showed off her two-handed prowess at the piano — after only one lesson. They both love to sing. And one, I must admit (if I’m going to be a stage grandmother I might as well go all the way) is quite magical when she dances.

    I sometimes carry on about not having pursued music as a career. There was even a time, in the 1970s, when I entertained the idea of going back to school for a master’s degree in music. Instead, I took voice lessons and courses here and there in theory.

    At a recent piano recital sponsored by Music for Montauk at the Montauk Library, however, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.  (Fortunately, for me and everyone else, I did neither.)

    Konstantin Soukhovetski, a Pianofest alumnus, is, at the age of 30, an astounding pianist. His pyrotechnics in Ravel’s “La Valse,” for example, won a deserved ovation. He also is a graceful interpreter of quieter pieces. One of them, Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor, struck an emotional chord (if you’ll pardon the pun). My husband couldn’t believe I had once been able to play it, let alone at about 12 or 13. I know how young I was because I stopped studying the piano at 14 when more effort and time would have been required to move ahead. I still wish someone had convinced me that I would eventually find the piano more important than hanging around listening to Frank Sinatra with my girlfriends.

    No one has to push either granddaughter toward music now. They are excited about what they are learning.  And it sounds good. Living vicariously, I can’t wait to watch and listen as the beat goes on.