It really was a steam laundry. Of course you already knew that if you were a Laundry restaurant patron during its 25-year run on Race Lane dating from 1980. The large industrial washing machine on the patio was a good clue.

    I had written to the Laundry’s owner, Stuart Kreisler, and its executive chef, Andrew Engle, that fateful October of 2005 just before the restaurant moved from Race Lane in East Hampton Village to Pantigo Road, where it closed a few years later. My wife, Carol, and I had dined there in April during our spring visit and planned a fall visit to show some historical steam laundry photos. Carol’s great-uncle, Jud Banister, later village mayor for 18 years, built the brick laundry on Race Lane in 1913. Patrons and visitors to the Laundry Web site were familiar with the masthead photo showing Jud and two young men and a boy standing by the laundry wagon in front of the prominently displayed “East Hampton Steam Laundry” sign.

    Others familiar with East Hampton history may recall the old Star photo, reprinted in “From Sea to Sea: 350 years of East Hampton History” by Averill Dayton Geus, of the original East Hampton Steam Laundry on Cedar Street in 1904. Opened by Jud and his brother-in-law, Jeremiah Miller Huntting, a k a Jere or Jerry Huntting, the Cedar Street laundry later burned, to be replaced by the Race Lane establishment. You might get the impression that they were the owners when it burned, but they weren’t.

    Jere married Jud’s older sister, Edith (Ede), in October 1903, arriving home from their wedding in Malone, N.Y., to a band’s “customary serenade.” Ede had convinced Jud to move to East Hampton from Malone earlier that year, bringing his considerable mechanical skills to the bustling summer resort on Long Island’s South Fork. He did, met her beau, Jere, and they decided to join together in building East Hampton’s first steam laundry on land owned by Jere’s parents, D.H. and Harriet Miller Huntting, and next to their house near “the Hook.”

    By March 1904, they were advertising on The Star’s front page as the firm of Huntting and Banister and expected to open for business April 1. Although many thought the name would be Banister and Huntting, by the opening the names had been reversed. And why not? The business was on Huntting land and the name carried a long and distinguished local history with it.

    Always eager to keep its readers up to date on the latest business activity, The Star within a year reported that the young men had installed a “new rotary washing machine and a big collar and cuff ironer of the latest design,” declaring the machine capable of ironing “collars and cuffs in a perfect manner [to] give them what is called the ‘dead finish.’ ” East Hampton’s business community and ladies were going to be as stylishly and freshly dressed and pressed as anywhere!

    Jud and Jere started running a small ad on the Business Directory page touting their capabilities. A smiling young lady with a full head of hair fashionably parted in the middle looked out at you, her neck surrounded by a high white collar, her right hand proudly pointing to the exquisite work of the collar’s finish. The ad proclaimed “Something to Be Proud of” and surely she was. The laundrymen said that “not even ‘the beautiful snow that caps Mount Blanc’ is whiter or finer in finish in its glacial smoothness than is the linen that we are doing up every day.” How could that not be good!

    But the good news reports, including the assisting of Tong Lee when his laundry was damaged by a nearby fire, could not cover up the growing problems in the partnership. Soon Jere sold his business interest to Jud, then Jud sold out to him. Each sued the other. The court threw Jere’s case out, and a jury found no cause to support Jud’s, with the judge splitting court costs between them. So much for the partnership.

    Jere didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps as a farmer, nor, it seems, was he much of a laundryman. He had to install new equipment to get “everything in good working order” again, apparently the result of customer complaints. And with Jud out of the picture, he hired a Mr. T.B. Whitney to be his laundryman.

    The big 1907 fire changed everything at the Cedar Street laundry. Fred Dayton, a “wide-awake business man,” according to The Star, but now without a clothing business, immediately purchased the laundry from Jere. Who do you think Fred hired to run it? If you guessed Jud, you’d be right. Soon his ads were pronouncing the “Laundry operating under new management. Satisfaction Guaranteed.”

    But Jud, involved in other business adventures, left the laundry sometime in 1908, and Fred sold it to T.B. Whitney, now married and with ties to East Hampton. Mr. Whitney owned the laundry for less than five months.

    “Steam Laundry Burned,” The Star reported on Jan. 29, 1909. “Started by an accidental explosion of gasoline, Mr. Whitney was lucky to escape with his life. Though the fire department was called and responded as quickly as they could, by the time they laid 1,000 feet of hose, the building was totally engulfed with no hope of saving it. Turning their attention to Mrs. Huntting’s nearby house, they were successful protecting it.” (The S. Hedges Miller house — Mrs. Huntting’s — still stands across from the fire station on Cedar Street.)

    The estimated loss was $3,000, and insurance covered about half. Mr. Whitney said he hoped to rebuild, but perhaps in a more central location. He never did.

    The first Race Lane laundry was built in 1911, but it, too, burned, in 1913, to be replaced by the brick building in the restaurant’s masthead picture. But that’s another story.

    Steve Rideout comes to East Hampton a couple of times every off-season to research family history. He lives in Shutesbury, Mass.

    On entering the office one recent deadline morning, I was told that the electricity had gone out and would be out for the next six hours.

    Since I had one more story to write, not of much moment, but nevertheless a story that needed to be done to fill out the page, I thought, for the first time in a very long time, of manual typewriters and how they would — for me at any rate, because I don’t have a laptop — save the day.

    We have a few of them downstairs, all of which I’ve probably used at one time or another, but I quickly learned that they were hopelessly gummed up, and before I could properly mourn their loss, concluded that I would have to go home and work on Mary’s laptop.

    I hate computers, if the truth be known. I never feel at ease with them. At least with typewriters you knew where you stood and where what you’d written was, right there on the page. What I’ve written on this screen thus far looks palpable enough, but it’s a deception. A thundercrack or power surge and I’d be cursing the dark again, agonizing over the fact that I had not yet hit “save.”

    I have just done so, but I’m still not reassured.

    At any rate, I went home to our new computer. The old one had drowned a few weeks before, having fallen victim to an open window and a vigorously oscillating sprinkler. Nothing could be done, though our editor, who is very much at home in this technological age, did his best, for which I genuinely thanked him.

    Before leaving to work at home, I asked for the address to send the story to and was given [email protected].

    Not wanting to bother Mary, who was at her mother’s and who is very computer literate, with any importunings, I wrote the story as an e-mail, and when I was done the better part of an hour later I hit “send” and quickly picked up the phone.

    “Did you get it, Kathy — I just sent it.”

    No, Kathy said after checking, they hadn’t gotten it. Sometimes it took a while. She suggested I try another address, [email protected], and then went back to work. (The electricity had been restored to the back shop early on, a line having been run over from the library.)

    As soon as I began to type in the new address I knew I’d done something horribly wrong. I went posthaste to the “sent” box, the one with the paper plane at the left of the screen, hoping against hope. . . . The story wasn’t there!

    Mary said she’d be right over. Frankly, I moaned, I doubted that even she would ever find it. And I’d been working the better part of an hour!

    But she did! In some unexpected place, after clicking on everything there was to click on. “Don’t ask me how I did it,” she said as she began to print out a copy, which I tugged from the machine as if I were performing a forceps delivery.

    She also, bless her, sent what I’d written to the second address given, and off I went to the office, relieved but seriously shaken.

    Later, I was told that the e-mail I’d originally sent did, in fact, arrive, but well after the one Mary had sent.

    Where, then, had it been?!

    It would have been a good question to raise at the computer class I’d signed up for that afternoon, but which, because of all of the above, I’d missed.

    Another day and I am not yet saved.

    The transition from urban dwelling to small-town living has been anything but easy.

    You would think that 15 years in Manhattan would have better prepared me to deal with the hassles that “normal” adults face everywhere else in America. However, in my former town, a large percentage of the population, including myself, suffers from arrested development. There are many reasons for this, but some primary contributing factors are access to a city that is up and running 24 hours a day, occupants who share a blatant disregard for rules, and the fact that no one needs to own a car.

    My first step to this ongoing lifestyle adjustment (and adulthood) was to find a car. Dealing with Craigslist in Manhattan was like trying to find an apartment in the city. Not only do you have to be the first caller, but then you have to be in close proximity to wherever the car is (usually an outer borough far away), and finally, if you are lucky, you get to test-drive the car and see what kind of situation you are getting yourself into.

    As I know practically nothing about cars — okay, really nothing — the final step of this process was a mystery. Friends told me that I would get a vibe and instantly know if the car was right for me or not. As that method did not exactly work, I had to rent a car for about a month while I continued the search.

    After tapping out friends who were willing to help, and exhausted by taking cars to mechanics to get checked out, I returned to Craigslist, Long Island style. This time the process was slightly more relaxed, but I still had to render the final determination. Exasperated by involving other people, I decided to trust the guy who sold me his vehicle. When he offered to sign a piece of paper that said he would buy back the truck if there were any problems with the engine or transmission, I just wanted it to be over and agreed. Now I own a huge manly-man pickup truck.

    I sent a picture of me with the truck to my family, and my 13-year-old nephew replied “OMG” via e-mail. And he’s right. It is totally egregious. My dad liked the juxtaposition of the truck parked next to a Porsche, and my sister-in-law wanted to know if I had some Lynyrd Skynyrd to blast while driving. As a product of the ’70s with two older brothers, I found myself doing exactly that the other day, followed by some Bad Company.

    Having a monster truck is kind of fun. People seem to move out of my way, (maybe that is not such a good thing) and come winter, a friend claims, I will be glad to have it in the snow. My buyer’s remorse has started to wane, even though that nice guy was not so nice, and there have been a few necessary repairs already. But now that the passenger-side window works, I have some cross-ventilation, and my ability to navigate the size of the pickup, as well as park it, is vastly improved.

    In terms of fitting in, one of my co-workers told me I was a real bub with the truck, now all I need is a black Labrador to throw in the back. Another said I should put a bumper sticker on it — “Piping Plover Tastes Like Chicken” — then I would really be local. While the dog could be a future consideration, I currently live with two blue heelers and I love them. And the bumper, with its reflective tape, is the coolest part of the truck, according to my boss, and I am not messing with that.

    Besides the blend-in factor, on a pragmatic level, the truck already makes sense. I live at the end of a long dirt driveway that is more blown-out than sections of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. A durable pickup covered in mud is perfect for the journey back and forth to the farm, as I affectionately call it. Yet another adjustment, my new digs are a world apart from my one-bedroom East Village apartment. The farm includes a goat, sheep, chickens, roosters, lots of land, a fabulous garden, and a house filled with roommates.

    My city skills have come in handy. There is an ornery black rooster on the farm that most of my housemates are afraid of. Undeterred, I decided to give it a try and exited successfully with some eggs. My housemate was amazed, and wanted to know my tactic after dubbing me the “new egg girl.” As a former urbanite, I pretended I was on the subway and employed the golden rule, look confident, and do not make eye contact.

    This did not help me when I was asked to help capture the bee swarm. By the time I got myself into my “protective gear” — long sleeves, pants, and hunter boots — two other people had arrived on the scene wearing proper beekeeping suits. Relieved, I more than willingly stood back and took pictures instead. Living on the farm and watching my housemates extract honey or gut a 42-pound striped bass up close has its appeal.

    Other small-town qualities are going to take some getting used to. It feels like anonymity does not exist here. Friends report back when they have spotted you in public. People seem to all know one another. It has been hard to sleep without the hum of the city, and I only recently have stopped waking up at 5:30 a.m. with the light. But my transition will be in due time, as this city girl makes her way to the next country installment.

—

    Heather Dubin, a reporter, covers planning and zoning for The Star.

    Somewhere in the archives here at The Star, perhaps in the myriad “Looking Them Over” columns written by the late Jeannette Edwards Rattray, are stories about how the Atlantic sturgeon was caught here and made into caviar.

    In “Men’s Lives,” Peter Mat­thiessen’s elegy for the traditional baymen of the South Fork (which accompanies a stunning book of photographs), he reports that Capt. Frank Lester of the Amagansett Lesters, who was born in 1890, set nets for sturgeon.

    So I called Milton Miller, who at the age of 96 is one of the last of the old-time fishermen, to ask whether Captain Frank made caviar. Yes, he said. As a boy Mr. Miller watched Captain Frank bring in sturgeon. He described the sieves used to separate the roe. It was, for a time, he said, a money fish for Captain Frank, more so than cod. “I wouldn’t have eaten it,” he said of the caviar.

    The Atlantic sturgeon, one of more than 20 sturgeon species, is endangered. Adults of the species are known to be as long as 12 to 15 feet and to weigh up to 800 pounds. It is among the oldest of aquatic animals, and its appearance is said to offer a glimpse of what fish may have looked like in the time of the dinosaurs.

    Mr. Miller told me a funny story about a friend who, upon seeing one at Lion’s Head Rock in Gardiner’s Bay, thought it was an alligator.

    My interest in what had become of the sturgeon here was aroused recently when I read in The New York Times that Abu Dhabi, one of the seven of the United Arab Emirates, “is talking caviar on a scale that would make czars blush.” It is developing a $120 million indoor sturgeon farm, the world’s largest, and by 2015 expects to have 35 tons of roe, more than a quarter of the worldwide quantity, to turn into black gold.

    The best caviar used to come from the beluga sturgeon of the Caspian Sea, but overfishing, destruction of spawning habitats, and pollution have caused its decline, if not its collapse, there. Companies in Russia, second only in caviar sales to Iran in the past, have branched out to partner with technologically sophisticated enterprises in such countries as Germany, Uruguay, and Argentina. But in the Emirates, they do things in a bigger way.

    According to The Times, the demand for caviar far exceeds worldwide production. Sturgeon in Abu Dhabi “are coddled in the piscine versions of five-star luxury,” The Times said. And Persian Gulf residents are “increasingly seeking the roe . . . as a symbol of their wealth.” Everything is in place in Abu Dhabi to satisfy, as The Times put it, “the growing appetites of the newly wealthy in Far East markets, especially in China.”

    I have never been to Abu Dhabi, but we spent 24 hours last month in its neighboring state, Dubai, on our way to Ethiopia, where many people are hungry. From what I could see, Dubai has elevated conspicuous consumption to an astronomical level. And I read that in Abu Dhabi ATM machines dispense gold bars.

    Single-color flags on poles along the ocean beaches in Amagansett and Montauk are part of a new program this summer initiated by the Town of East Hampton and the local lifeguards organization to broadcast surf conditions. Also part of the program are numbered signposts along the beach at Beach Hampton and Napeague, which are intended to help anyone calling for help direct emergency responders to the correct location.

    Trouble on the beach of one sort or another is inevitable once the days get hot and the water reaches a swimmable temperature. Just Tuesday, listening to the emergency radio scanner on my desk, there were two simultaneous calls at Indian Wells in Amagansett and another at about the same time in Montauk.

    There was a good swell running that day — yellow flag, which signals caution — and the injuries, a dislocated shoulder and some sort of knee issue, could well have been from the victims’ being tossed around in rough surf.

    I had been up at Georgica Beach myself a little before noon. Jumping into the water to cool off at one end of the area set off for guarded swimming, I dived under a couple of waves, body surfed a few more, and within just a few minutes had been swept all the way east, past the lifeguard stand and out of the protected zone.

    Not that I was particularly worried; I am a confident ocean swimmer, having taken the town’s lifeguard training course lo those many years ago, and I have been surfing now for more than 30 years. Still, the thought crossed my mind that I had drifted out of the lifeguards’ line of sight and, if something did happen, I would be on my own with a hard fight back to the beach. (Nothing did.)

    It is remarkable, frankly, how few really bad incidents there are at the ocean here. I took our 10-year-old for a surf lesson Sunday at a beach where there are no lifeguards and was alarmed to see parents allowing small children to go into the waves on body boards as the adults, half paying attention, talked to one another under umbrellas.

    Of course, of the recent ocean drownings I remember here, the victims were adults. Perhaps kids have the inherent sense not to go outside their depth. Perhaps Poseidon just watches out for them.

    Back to school catalogs have begun to arrive, and summer, the season that when you’re young you think will never end — Labor Day being barely visible on the horizon — has barely begun. We are pulled into the future even as our darting eyes try to catch a glimpse of the present and reflect upon the past.

    “Did you see that. . . ? At the feeder. I think it was a vireo. Let’s go to the book. . . . Wait, what’s streaking across the lawn? A chipmunk? What do you call the color of the shirt you’ve got on? Magenta, puce. . . ?

    “Dark raspberry, I think.”

    “Ah, dark raspberry. . . . You’re very beautiful. Don’t you think the honeysuckle in the outdoor shower smells wonderful. Seductive. And that clematis vine’s so pretty, and the hydrangeas by the fence have bloomed. . . . You’ve got to go. . . ? Drive carefully. Come back. . . .”

    Come back and we’ll dance to an ever-faster tune and dream we’ve awakened to a winter’s fire from whose ashes spring will poke, whisking us through golden backyard summer evenings to autumn’s silver, slanted light and on to talk at holiday tables of other moments when we’ve felt blessed, moments when we stopped to look before we were called away.

    “Wait, what streaked across the lawn. . . ? The twins! The day they played hooky from school. My mother, paying us a rare visit, got a glimpse, she said, of their shadows darting between the trees.”

    And I got a glimpse of her, and of my forebears. Glimpses made on the run, whose tender moments we reserve against the time when, ennervated, we approach the speed of light. . . . Archaean Pre-CambrianCambrianOrdovicianSilurianDevonianCarboniferousPermianTriassicJurassicCretaceousTertiaryMesozoicPleistocenePaleolithicNeolithic. . . .

    “I remember that Christmas morning when the living room was a veritable mountain range of presents from Aunt Kate and at the far end, by the tree, a two-wheeler. . . !”

    “Wait. Look! At the feeder. . . . A flicker.”

    A good friend called during work hours early this week and said he had something important to discuss. Immediately, I thought that he was calling to say he was engaged now that New York is about to allow same-sex marriages.

    As it turned out, he was calling about an idea he had for something entirely unrelated and of a less thrilling nature. I love a good wedding, and my friend, if and when he decides to marry his long-term partner, would probably throw one hell of a party.

    Because of him, the same-sex marriage debate in New York State was personal for me. It was inconceivable that he, the best man at my own wedding, could not enjoy the same basic rights I do as an adult citizen of the United States of America.

    And I thought, too, of the gay children of other friends. How could it be that they could not grow up, fall in love, and marry whomever they damn well pleased. What if one of my own children was told by the state who was an appropriate spouse and who was not? If ever there was something for government to mind its own business about, it was this.

    I remember going into Town Hall back in 1998 with my now-wife, Lisa, for our marriage license, though I can’t recall who on the staff handled the paperwork. We had the required documents, and enough cash to cover the modest fee. At no time did anyone question our choice of each other, and it was a lighthearted transaction. We might even have received a gift bag with laundry detergent samples and other things newlyweds might need.

    Monday is the first day that the town clerk’s offices in East Hampton and Southampton Town Hall will technically be able to process marriage licenses without regard to the gender of applicants.

    Not that I wish any more work on the long-suffering town clerk staff, but it would be gratifying if there were a long line of spouses-to-be there hoping to be among the first same-sex couples here to take officially sanctioned vows.

    My friend and his boyfriend will not be among them, but at least they now have the option. And, you know what? It’s about time.

     Because one of my friends wants to lose a lot of weight and recently asked whether I had any recommendations about how he should go about it, I’ve been thinking about diets.  We had discussed counting calories and the Weight Watchers system of food points, but I had seen a new documentary called “Page One: Inside The New York Times” and knew that Brian Stelter, a reporter, had lost 90 pounds in a relatively short time. The question was, how had he done it? The answer was easy to find.

    Mr. Stelter, a former TV blogger, was hired as The Times’s new media reporter in 2007, shortly after graduating from college. “For me,” he subsequently wrote, “Twitter is an early warning system for breaking news, a tool for interacting with readers, and a great way to promote and improve our work.” It comes as no surprise, then, that he lost weight the digital way.

    If Twitter posts helped spur the Arab Spring, using it to lose weight should be a breeze.

    In March 2010, Mr. Stelter let it be known on Twitter that he was going on a diet. His first goal was to lose 25 pounds by his 25th birthday. Five months later, in an article in The Times, he explained his thinking, and the results.

    Rather than blog about dieting, join Weight Watchers, or keep a diary, Mr. Stelter chose to Tweet what he ate, and sometimes what he drank, along with his weight. It took him a while to make it known publicly that his weight as he started was 270 pounds, but he lost 25 pounds in two months and, by August 2010, he had lost 75 pounds and was proud of it.

    On Twitter, he accumulated a big audience. Strangers across the country Tweeted him. He had wanted the “help of a cheering section,” he said later, and he found one. “You’re ruining pastries for me with this Twitter feed, Bri,” a friend said.

    Mr. Stelter acknowledged that he wasn’t the first person to divulge his weight on the Internet. (Drew Magary, a writer for Deadspin, a Web site that puts an irreverent spin on sports news, for example, had blogged about his “Public Humiliation Diet.”)  Mr. Stelter, however, also decided to give the world images of himself as he lost weight, using a short-form-blog platform — which I didn’t know anything about until now — called Tumblr. Anyone who wants to see a collage of his photos can do so there

    The biggest hurdle, he said, was admitting the truth after a long evening of drinking or a late-night pizza binge. With the aid of the “Page One” film, he is now a media celebrity. It has been widely reported that he is dating a CNBC anchor, Nicole Lapin. Gawker, the online gossip site and newsmagazine — which usually has particularly sarcastic things to say about the media and publishing world, and can be just short of nasty — took aim at him about a month ago.

    “So there you have it,” Gawker said. “Brian Stelter lost a bunch of weight and is starring in a movie, and now he has a famous girlfriend. He also seems to be wearing decent clothes. How long before he quits journalism entirely? You don’t belong here, Brian.”

    The screening of “Page One” at Guild Hall tomorrow night — with the film’s director, Andrew Rossi, The Times’s outgoing executive editor, Bill Keller, and the columnist David Carr taking part in a question-and-answer session afterward — is sold out. Brian Stelter is not expected to attend, but I’m sure he’d be looking fabulous if he did.

    My horoscopes have been encouraging lately, though while I’m not a believer, reading them helps me with my Spanish, which, if nothing else, improves as a result of the exercise.

    I think El Diario’s astrologer said I’d be vouchsafed some happy financial news, certain planets (not the ones found this week to be floating aimlessly about) having come into alignment, much, I think, as my spine has thanks to recent Pilates and stretching classes at the Y.

    Indeed, the financial news lately has been good, good, at least, in small potato terms, but it’s not the money that has quickened the pace of my heart: It is the knowledge that I scored a treasure trove in jazz CDs at the Ladies Village Improvement Society. I couldn’t believe it. I’d carefully scanned all the ones in the room to the left and was on my way out when one of the women who work there passed me going the other way with a hefty load of new arrivals.

    There were stacks more at the desk. The woman there was holding up for perusal “Solo Monk.” I told her that that was “a very good one,” whimsical and soulful songs by the iconic left-hander, and immediately began riffling (riffing rather) through the pile, exclaiming as I went. Gerry Mulligan’s band, Duke Ellington with Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington with Billy Strayhorn, Billie Holliday, Chet Baker (with East Hampton’s own Phil Markowitz playing piano), the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Sweet Emma the Bell Gal and “Slow Drag” Alcide Pavageau. . . . What a pick-me-up!

    And all for a grand total of $11 — $11.95 with tax.

    “I didn’t get you any food, Henry,” I said on walking out of the place and unhitching him from the bench in front, “but I did get us some wonderful ear candy.”

    On my return to the office I looked on our Web site to see if perchance a story I’d written about East Hampton High’s baseball team making the playoffs for the first time in four years was there — an exciting, well-played game that had taken place here the day before, and which I couldn’t wait to get out over the airwaves or whatever they are.

    And there it was! With a photo I’d taken too! Instant gratification.

    I have had some cavils when it’s come to posting things posthaste on the Internet. I mean they don’t pay us enough to be so diligent. But every now and then, I, who came out here aeons ago with the express purpose of going local, get excited. And I just can’t hide it.

    The difference between good and evil seemed straightforward when I was a child. Call it what you will: the Judeo-Christian ethical code, the Golden Rule . . .

    As a Jewish kid growing up during World War II, I thought the world had only one set of evil people: the Nazis. I learned to revere those Americans who died in that war, who fought not only for us but for the Jews of Europe. I didn’t ponder the role of Stalin’s army, or where an ally like Stalin might fall in my simplistic good-versus-evil mental filing system; and that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor didn’t figure much in my parents’ or grandparents’ thoughts, much less mine.

    On Monday, Memorial Day, I will again remember those Americans who sacrificed their lives, but my absolutist understanding of good and evil has considerably changed. Although nations do sometimes sway, in mysterious ways, toward one or the other, as an adult, I certainly don’t think any country has a monopoly on either.

    The United States is one of the most religious countries in the developed world. According to Wikipedia, a 2002 study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found the U.S. to be “the only developed nation . . . where a majority of citizens reported that religion played a ‘very important’ role in their lives, an attitude similar to that found in its neighbors in Latin America.”

    With Memorial Day approaching, I have been wondering what American children, these days, are being taught by their religious elders about how to do good in the world. I think about the men and women we have sent to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And about Abu Ghraib (where a few of those men and women committed acts of humiliation and inhumanity). We know that the violent exigencies of fighting in a war have extreme effects on those who take part, but can they destroy a soldier’s gut understanding of right and wrong?

    The killing of Osama bin Laden on May 1 probably will be heralded in speeches on Memorial Day as a victory against evil. However we personally received the news of his death (relief, jubilation, fear), we should not because of it be tricked into condoning the “harsh” interrogation of alleged Al Qaeda prisoners — waterboarding, for example —  on the theory that torture led to a tip about Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

    We are also apt to praise the Central Intelligence Agency for tracking down Bin Laden. But we should not forget that since 2001 the C.I.A. has hidden and interrogated alleged terrorists in secret prisons from Afghanistan to Thailand and has engaged in what is called “rendition,” sending prisoners to Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, where human rights activists report torture has been routine.

     A terrible World War II image of Jews crowded into railroad cars on their way to concentration camps came to my mind’s eye when I read recently that in the winter of 2001 “Afghan generals” with whom the U.S. was allied crowded so many captives into metal containers that some died of asphyxiation.

    It is time for the United States to dedicate itself to a document it signed in 1994: the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. To do so would be a true memorial to those Americans who have died for liberty, on American soil, in Europe, and beyond.