Mary and I met an ornithologist while perched at the Hyatt Regency bar in Bethesda a night not long ago, and our conversation immediately took flight.

    First off, Mary wanted our new acquaintance, Viviana Ruiz, to know the trick I’d played on her of old, by saying with such conviction, when asked what a certain bird was, “It’s a tufted towhee.” While Viviana smiled, Mary told her she’d since learned the truth, to wit, that there ain’t no such thing as a tufted towhee, that it had been a conflation. Frankly, I hadn’t known whether there was or wasn’t: I’d been asked for an opinion, and, without hesitating, delivered myself of it. That’s what columnists do.

    Viviana asked me what I did, and I said I covered local sports. Mary added that I also wrote a column.

    “For how long?”

    “For a millennium!”

    Hadn’t I ever had writer’s block?

    “Oh yes. I used to run to Mary and say, ‘Geez, what’ll I write about? My deadline’s nearing.’ And she would come up with at least 10 ideas.”

    “None of which he ever used.”

    “The best thing, I’ve found, is not to have any ideas. Things often turn out better that way. I let my fingers do the talking, just like magpies. We saw one in Ireland. We didn’t know what it was at first. When I described it to a woman at a pub, a big black-and-white bird, she told us what it was and that ‘If you see one magpie, it’s sorrow. If you see two, its joy.’ Of course, with us it was two. Or maybe it was one and I was seeing double.”

    As she laughed, I said, “But I didn’t see any nightingales. I’d been hoping to.”

    Then we told her of the time we’d been with Audubon magazine people on Gardiner’s Island, in a truck driven wildly up hill and down dale by the late Lord of the Manor, scattering all the birds (and anything else that moved) before us as Tony Hiss called out to the group in the other truck, which was following behind, “You just missed a golden eagle, a rough-legged hawk, and a snowy owl!”

    Viviana said she was primarily interested in tropical birds, which made sense because she was from Costa Rica, by way of Amherst High School and Cornell.

    When she heard we’d never been to Costa Rica, she gave us the address of her mother, who was retired now, and said in so many words that when we flew down there we should alight at her mother’s house inasmuch as we all were, it seemed, birds of a feather.

    It’s April and the dandelions are back.

    “We hate dandelions,” sniffs the soccer mom in a Scotts lawn care commercial as her husband, agile and bonny, rolls for a Frisbee on an expanse of pristine grass.

    Cities, states, and even a branch of the United States government agree.

    “Grub them out,” roars the California Agriculture Extension, warning of clumps that reduce the aesthetic quality of turf grass and golfer footing on the fairways. Topping California, a Utah State University horticulturist, Jerry Goodspeed, has warned that dandelions employ a “wicked plot” that “attracts any passing child” to “whimsically blow the dreadful seeds around the neighborhood.”

    The wicked plot can cost you. The city code of Pueblo, Colo., decrees a $300 fine plus eradication costs for dandelions that grow to 10 inches (easy for a well-fluted specimen) on a property’s lawn. Aberdeen, S.D., outlawed them as far back as 1909, when its mayor, Alva Aldrich, beseeched residents to “eradicate this evil from their lawns.” Over the years, the local government paid bounties on dandelions equivalent to the prevailing price of wheat. With help from the American Legion, tons of dandelions were burned.

    They’re still at it. In 2006, Sue Gates, a columnist for The Aberdeen American News, wrote that 100 years after the war was declared, “the fight to eradicate the pesky weed from the lawns of Aberdeen continues.”

    In 2000, East Hampton experienced a crackdown by the feds. An inspector from the Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the manager of Windmill Village to eliminate all dandelions from the lawns there because they were beneath HUD standards for the Hamptons.

    Botanical nativists label dandelions as undesirable aliens. My 88-year-old sister, a Berkeley liberal long before the term meant much, gladly welcomes aspiring immigrants of all stripes, but snarls at dandelions, though they were brought here from Europe in the early 19th century (to succor honeybees), decades before our own forebears arrived.

    To the Taraxacumophobe, it matters not that poets from Shakespeare to Lowell to Ginsberg, as well as Emerson and Thomas Wolfe (“the inchoate sharp excitement of hot dandelions in young spring grass”), have rhapsodized about their beauty, or that chefs such as Pierre Franey, Julia Child, and Craig Claiborne extolled their culinary virtues, or nutritionists their vitamin and mineral content (more iron and calcium than spinach, more beta-carotene than carrots).

    Dandelion lovers revere what dandelion haters detest: their unpredictability. “Their only sin,” asserts one admirer, “is that they have not learned to grow in rows.” Another equates dandelions with the 19th-century buffalo — noble, useful, and targeted for extinction.

    Both sides see dandelions as a moral issue. Robert Fulford, a Canadian writer and dandelion admirer, observes that the presence of dandelions on a lawn indicates to lawnistas that “sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction.” To Mr. Fulford a bumpless, weedless lawn champions the intrusive values of imperialism — control and cleansing one’s surroundings of the unkempt.

    On the other side, Pastor Donald J. Gettys of the McDonald, Tenn., Seventh Day Adventist Church preaches that “Sin and dandelions are a whole lot alike. They are a lifetime battle that you never quite win.” He advises us to “Give the problem to Jesus.”

    I cheer them. Dandelion greens, plucked from vacant lots of San Francisco, were a basic vegetable for my family during the Depression. John Giannaris, owner of the Hellenic Snack Bar and Restaurant in East Marion, tells me that in Greece during World War II dandelions kept his family alive. In Germany in 1945 I saw Polish displaced persons and German Army deserters survive on them.

    Busy proliferating, often where one least expects to find them, the dandelions remain impervious to all this. On a sunny day last spring, I found them sprouting through the base of a street lamp, the shell of an air-conditioner, the trunk of an oak tree, and the wood of an inside windowsill.

Though at their peak in spring, dandelions continue to pop up through the year, into those early January days when the temperature nears 50. Bend close to grass that has not been sprayed and you will find one. Pick it. Nip its stem and hold it in your mouth. Relish the juice that will refresh your lungs and bear the flower’s progeny to the next cycle, and the next, and ever beyond where dandelions will continue to taunt and sustain us.

Richard Rosenthal is the author of “The Dandelion War,” a satire on Nimbyism on the South Fork. An East Hampton resident, he won the Alliance for Community Media’s 2010 Jewell Ryan-White Award for the quality of nonmainstream broadcasting on his LTV program, “Access.”

Subtitles. For years, the mention of the word sparked one of two emotions in my fellow filmgoers: curiosity or hesitation. I first became curious about films with subtitles because they were from foreign countries and in different languages, but many people are hesitant for the same reason. 

Reading the subtitles of a film or a television series sounds as if it betrays the essence of the medium itself. Film and television should show their stories through visuals, not tell them through dialogue. When we read subtitles, it can feel as if they are telling us how the narrative unfolds. 

On a practical note, it can be hard to read while trying to watch at the same time. In the past, when I have read subtitles, I have sometimes missed key moments onscreen that confuse me when that element of the plot comes up again. 

On the other hand, people can struggle with subtitles because of the speed at which they appear. This can sometimes relate to the language or dialect spoken at a fast pace. Out of all the non-English films I have seen, the two languages I find the most difficult to keep up with are Italian and Mandarin. 

The Chinese crime-thriller “Drug War” from the director Johnnie To, for example, is easy to follow when you pay close attention. That is, if you can read the dialogue fast enough. Mandarin can sound fast to Western ears, and this means the subtitles have to change as quickly in order to match up with the characters’ dialogue. After a while, I had to skim the film’s subtitles to get the gist of what the characters said. Although not much talking happens by the film’s end in a fantastical shootout to rival Michael Mann’s “Heat.” 

The issue is the same in regard to Italian cinema. Whether it is Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” or Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” Italian films require fast readers as much as avid viewers. Even if hard to follow, both films are worth experiencing, subtitles or no. 

With these subtitle challenges, why do I watch as many foreign films as I do Hollywood blockbusters? The answer is simple. I want to have different experiences onscreen.

When I turned 14, my love of film and television grew and my expectations became more demanding. At a certain point, I wanted something different. While on a search for that new experience, I came across the South Korean thriller “Oldboy” from Park Chan-wook. I discovered a DVD copy of it at my public library. To this day, I have no idea how the librarian allowed me to check it out, given its R rating, but to this day I thank her for doing so. 

When I first watched “Oldboy,” it was dubbed into English. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t know any better, so what can you do? 

Based on that terrible experience, since then I have never watched another foreign film dubbed into English. My problem with dubbing is that it takes away from the original actors’ performances. English voices can overshadow the hard work the actors put into their roles. It can also be a distraction when the English voices do not synchronize well with the actors’ lips. To be honest, it baffles me that there is still an audience for dubbed films. 

When I say I hate dubbing, I refer only to live-action films. Animated features and shows are better suited for different voice-overs. When it comes to anime, however, I prefer to watch it in the original Japanese for authenticity. (Unless it is “Cowboy Bebop.”) 

Every once in a while, you find a film that touches you, a film that changes your life. For me, it was “Oldboy.” It not only made me want to become a filmmaker, it also made me appreciate what the rest of the world had to offer in storytelling. 

So, the next time you’re watching a foreign film on Netflix, maybe you’ll be able to read the subtitles and enjoy the film at the same time. If not, I hope you at least get a glimpse of the cinematic offerings from the rest of the world and learn something about new places and their cultures. If the subtitles still bother you, however, I suppose you could watch it dubbed.

Or, better still, you could learn the language.

Patrick Harford has a master’s degree in screenwriting. He spends summers at his family’s house in Springs.

On Jan. 2, my wife, Ellen, and I drove to the Sussex County Jail in New Jersey. We hugged outside the entrance. Then I entered and began serving a 20-day sentence for civil disobedience at the state’s black bear hunt.

I had served jail time during the previous two Januaries, but I hadn’t expected to return. Gov. Phil Murphy had made a campaign pledge to halt the hunts. But once elected, he stopped them only on state-owned land. He allowed the hunts to continue on county and private land, where most of the bears are usually killed. 

I dreaded going to jail again. But I felt I had to demonstrate how seriously I regarded the killing. 

For the first three days I was in medical lock-in. This is the standard practice. The jail holds new inmates in a cell until they receive a medical exam and the staff determines their permanent placements. During the lock-in, inmates spend only a few minutes a day outside their cells. 

In the past, I had spent the lock-in alone. This time I had a roommate, a young man arrested for drug possession. It would have been great to pass some of the time in conversation, but my roommate wasn’t up to it. He was withdrawing from drugs and mainly moaned and expressed hopelessness. My efforts to cheer him up failed. 

After medical lock-in, my roommate was placed in a large, minimum-security section of the general population. I requested the same placement, but I was kept in a small, special housing area. The area housed up to six men, two to a cell, with each cell opening to a common dayroom. While I was in the area, two inmates left and two came, but the area was always full. 

The jail used this special area to separate men from the general population. Some men had gotten into too many arguments or fights in other units, or had been harassed. Others had been charged with or convicted of sex crimes against minors. These inmates are generally despised by the others, and the jail kept these men in special housing to protect them from attack.

During my stay, there were three such inmates. All anticipated long sentences in state prisons. In addition, they all took pride in being tough fighters. When I asked them if they feared attacks in the state prisons, they said no. As one told me, “If they jump me, there better be 10 of them or they’ll all end up in the hospital.” 

I didn’t entirely understand why I was placed in this area, but a corrections officer told me that one reason was the publicity surrounding my case. Apparently the jail believed that it could keep a closer eye on me in a small area and help prevent bad press.

My fellow inmates had read about me in a local newspaper. They knew I was a 75-year-old college professor who owned a farm sanctuary and was in jail to protest the bear hunts. Several told me they didn’t necessarily agree with me about the bear hunts but respected me for acting on my convictions. 

The other inmates and I had numerous personal conversations. We were quite open about our lives. The men also got into some heated arguments, often during card games, and they played practical jokes that could be upsetting.  

The chief prankster was a tall man who liked to tell everyone he was bisexual. One afternoon when I was resting in my bunk, he pretended to be sneaking into my cell. I found this unnerving and told him never to do it again. He agreed.

On another occasion, some inmates hid a man’s razor. Because razors can be used as weapons, the jail gave them to us only twice a week and required us to promptly return them. When the man couldn’t find his razor, he became frantic. He searched his cell over and over. All the others laughed. I could understand the humor, but after a couple of minutes I asked those who had hidden it to give it back. They then moved it to a place where the man readily found it.

When a corrections officer came into our area to pick up the razors, a young inmate asked him what would happen if a man’s razor were missing. “A rectal search,” the officer replied. “And it wouldn’t be just him. Everyone in here would have it.” That statement produced a nervous silence.

During my jail terms I learned about the inmates’ values. Many of the men, especially those charged with sex offenses against minors, valued power over others. When I asked one man why he didn’t seek sexual relationships with females his own age, he said. “I can’t mold them.” Another man said he would like to be a dictator or a tyrant.

All the men had a low opinion of those who try to steal from other inmates. But they saw nothing wrong with deceiving others in the course of selling and buying. They told me about state prisoners who sold cigarettes filled with tea leaves instead of tobacco. They also told me about prisoners who misled others into thinking they were getting great bargains. Whenever I asked my fellow inmates if they approved of such practices, they replied with statements like, “Yeah, that’s business.”   

I had always assumed that criminal values are different from the values of our mainstream society. But as I thought about what the inmates said, I began to wonder. Doesn’t our mainstream society also promote, at least to some extent, the quest for power? Doesn’t our society frequently accept deception as part of doing business? 

In some respects, jail was easier this time. The building wasn’t as cold, and the kitchen staff tried to accommodate my vegan diet — an effort I appreciated.

But on the whole, this January was more difficult. For one thing, my area was more crowded, noisier, and more boisterous. When the men pulled pranks and got into heated arguments, I didn’t always know whether to intervene, and this uncertainty was an added stress. 

This time, in addition, we had less freedom to move from our cells to the dayroom and back. We frequently had to go to an intercom to ask an officer for permission. 

And this jail stay was more difficult simply because it was longer. In the past two years, I served eight and 12 days, after my sentences were reduced for good behavior. This year, I was in jail for 16 days, receiving four days off for good behavior.  

Sixteen days is shorter than what most inmates must endure. Even so, on two occasions I felt quite downhearted. At those times, brief phone conversations with my wife helped immensely. Ellen reminded me that I was in jail “for the bears.” Focusing on my purpose gave me strength. 

When I was released, my first steps outside the jail felt wonderful. I felt so free! But I hadn’t completely left the jail in my mind. Night after night I dreamt I was lying on my back in my bunk, wondering if I would ever be released. This same dream occurred for seven straight nights. Then it went away. 

Bill Crain is a professor of psychology at the City College of New York and a part-time Montauk resident. 

Many of today’s leaders, ranging from Donald Trump of the United States to Theresa May of Britain, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Vladimir Putin of Russia, liken those who oppose their nation-centric views to “losers” and those who support them to patriotic “winners.” This harks back to the comforts of the zero-sum game, where for every winner, there is a commensurate loser, or in mathematical terms, 1-1=0. Put more succinctly, “to the extent I win, you lose.”

This comforting dichotomy describes a finite two-player game/conflict in which a victor, clutching a trophy, places an unwelcome boot on the neck of his opponent.

If only disputes were this simple. In the world we live in, aptly described by complexity theory, political movements and institutions emerge in interdependent networked forms that cannot be disentangled. Much as Donald Trump would like to reimagine the United States of the 1940s and 1950s as an entity that can be duplicated today and erect a moat around American commerce, and, in similar fashion, Theresa May would like to excise Britain from the European Union while enjoying all the benefits of Continental trade, these feats cannot be accomplished.

Just as you can’t disassemble a brain into its component neurons and then reconstruct it, you can’t substitute 19th-century nationalism for 21st-century globalization. Once networked forms emerge, they can’t be deconstructed, no matter how powerful the instrument used to destroy them. The sum is already greater than the parts. In mathematical terms, 1+1=3.

What is complexity theory and why does it matter? Drawing from many disciplines ranging from computer science to sociology, from engineering to earth science, complexity theory seeks to describe nonlinear (noncausal) relationships between parts of a system that perform a collective function. The interaction of the interconnected, yet independent, elements of the system produce “emergent properties.” An example of an emergent property includes human consciousness, which emerged through the evolutionary process that led to Homo sapiens.

Complex systems, because they are so heterogeneous, are extremely delicate. Think of the effects of one errant cancerous cell in a body or a hate-filled meme on social media. This effect, called the butterfly effect when describing the devastating impact of tiny perturbations on global weather patterns, demonstrates the harm that can be perpetrated on terrifyingly complex systems, whether physical or social.

But conversely, great good can also come about.  Consider the nascent resistance that led to social movements such as the civil rights movement in the United States, or, in a biological context, the remarkable coordination of the human body’s immune system.

How can an understanding of complexity theory come to the aid of today’s leaders? As Americans watch the complete paralysis of the federal government and British citizens consider the possibilities of food shortages and the future loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland in a worst-case no-deal Brexit, it is clear that tampering with the body politic must be approached with surgical sensitivity.

A great focus must be placed on achieving desirable outcomes by observing the actual functioning of the body politic. These systems are “black boxes” that can be understood only by monitoring how they behave. 

Toxic assumptions, largely fear-based, must be avoided. An assumption of scarcity leads to the hoarding of global resources and scapegoating of people deemed “other.” An adversarial presumption creates distortions when applied systemically — witness the disruption of global trade brought about by tariffs or the fraying of diplomatic relations between former allies. 

Political relationships are just that, relationships, and it trivializes them to deem them a game with a finite binary outcome. Just as a prospective spouse would object to entering a marriage characterized as a game, so politicians must endeavor to treat their constituents and their global neighbors as stakeholders in the complex system that is the world.

Celia Josephson is an attorney who also teaches E.S.L. and high school equivalence classes at the East Hampton Library. She studied quantitative methods at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Last year during the drought in South Africa I had to fly to the oldest desert in the world, the Namib, to have a shower. This year my hometown, Cape Town, was reborn — green. Dams filled with unseasonable, welcome rains. This may have been tough on vacationers, but it was cause for celebration among the locals. In the shower we could kick the bucket placed there to catch every drop, at least for a minute, until guilt made us put it back.

Rain has changed the picture of a place the BBC once named “the world’s first city to run out of water.” Unlike in Britain, people here now talk about weather in joyful terms. Other pictures, however, have not changed. 

Twenty-nine years have passed since Nelson Mandela completed his “long walk to freedom.” But the long rash of shantytowns remains unhealed. That’s not changed.

Sure, you may have left those sad clusters of corrugated iron as you exited the airport and headed into one of the world’s loveliest cities. But did you drive to Hout Bay, where ChapmansPeak Hotel would have offered you the best calamari in the world? On the way, you would have passed Imizamo Yethu. “Imi” is a shanty­town (excuse me, “informal settlement”) where 35,000 souls eke out a living. That’s not changed. 

Or drive over a hill from suburban Glencairn to the tiny seaside dorp of Scarborough. As you crest the ascent, to your right you’ll see a fresh rash of shacks — perhaps 200 — that house the poor. Now some may tell you that the “previously underprivileged” prefer to live in shacks rather than bricks and mortar. Why? Because they don’t have to pay property taxes or any of the encumbrances of home ownership. Huh?

Twenty-nine years after seismic political change, black men are still building handsome homes for white men. That’s not changed. Construction workers are always black people, always men; their average wage is 20 rands ($1.40) per hour. The crews I saw were supervised by people of mixed-race origin — some of them women — many of them holding clipboards. While it’s odd to see black men in overalls scrolling their cellphones as they clomp about in work boots, you can be sure they’re not making a booking on OpenTable; you will never see them chowing down a T-bone steak at 200 rands ($14). That’s not changed.

Strangers come to your door begging for money or food. At almost every traffic light, three or four beggars — even a sprinkling of whites — will ask you for coins. That’s not changed, but it has increased.

“Jo’burg is different,” I’m told by people who live there. “Hell, boet, there’s a ton of social change in Joeys.”

Why doesn’t that surprise me? Because politicians and their hangers-on, like tick birds pecking a rhino, cluster around the watering holes of Egoli, the “city of gold.” That’s where the pols, if they’re not already in prison or facing indictment by a lazy Prosecuting Authority (itself under suspicion of corruption), will be found jolling around in their Mercs and BMWs — in Johannesburg and its satellite city, Pretoria (the legislative capital). 

Here there are rich pickings for politicians. Any time the words “tender” or “procurement” or “contract” are in play, these men and women, like the mafia, are eager to dip their beaks or collect the vig. And afterward, they’ll dine on T-bones and the best red wine. That’s not changed.

After my two months in the exquisite Cape of Good Hope, here’s what has changed: People of all colors are at ease with one another. At a concert at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, a visitor from England told me, the vibe of friendship in an audience that was 80 percent black and 20 percent white was potent. In stores and cafes, loose service is always rescued by apologetic, unflagging smiles. 

My own behavior changed earlier this month when I did something I never would have done before. I gave a lift to a large black guy. He told me he was from Johannesburg and had come south in search of work; so far, nothing had come up. 

“Where do you live?” I asked. 

“Clifton, sir.”

I was impressed, as Clifton is one fancy suburb. Then he added, “In a cave.”

The guy had a broken foot, was on crutches, and lived in a cave about half a mile from my apartment. I gave him something, knowing that anything I could do for the guy would be inadequate. 

Point is, if I hadn’t felt the new spirit of this city, this rainbow nation, I would have driven by. That has changed. (I know, “Big deal,” you may be thinking. Hey, it’s a start.)

Optimism is, literally, made concrete by buildings that are being hammered out all over the city and its sprawling suburbs. Traffic is horrendous. I used to call Cape Town “the 10-minute town” when I was a teenager here, learning to drive. No more. A commute from a fancy suburb either south or west of the city bowl can take 90 minutes each way. That has changed.

For the half million whites in this city of nearly four million, much is the same. The sun sets as gloriously as ever across the stoeps of the $2 million homes at Clifton. The food at five-star restaurants can’t be bettered in any world capital, and yet is relished here at a fraction of the price. (Last week I tried to make a reservation at a top restaurant, Chefs Warehouse, and they are booked solid through the end of March.) 

Are more changes afoot? Many whites worry that younger blacks, frustrated at the pace of social change and the corruption of politicians by businesspeople, will force dramatic change on the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa. The man himself has spoken of “land expropriation without compensation.” Chilling to hear if you own a thousand-acre wine farm.

Meanwhile, the government has accelerated “white flight,” particularly by young professionals, via a policy of appointing blacks to critical positions, at times regardless of qualifications. 

Some say that “reverse discrimination” in South Africa is “when karma comes and bites you in the ass.” But be it black or white ass, 29 years on, karma doesn’t discriminate.

Brian Clewly Johnson is the author of “A Cape Town Boy: A Memoir of Growing Up, 1940 to 1959.” He lives in Amagansett.

Most of us have been to the dentist. Aside from the very lucky who need only a biannual cleaning, there are those of us who must relinquish a tooth or two over the course of a lifetime. But what if the necessary extractions leave you with no ability to chomp on an ear of corn, a toasted bagel, or a crunchy salad? What if the molars that turned steak and roast beef into digestible mush “bit the dust”? What to eat? Oh Lordy, what to eat?

So for the dentally challenged, a brotherhood and sisterhood long unrecognized and unacknowledged, I offer creative cookery solutions. Indeed a roadmap of good eating and good nutrition.

When I mentioned my gourmet food tips to my dentist, she was very enthusiastic. “We hear that from so many patients,” she said. “They just don’t know what to eat. It would be really helpful.”

What is essential is an open mind and a creative and adventurous spirit. A good chef’s knife, a food processor, and happy recollections of tastes and foods that you loved when your battalions of teeth were at the ready will open doors. No baby food or cans of chemically enhanced food supplements. Real food! Good food! Sometimes deconstructed, but familiar and nourishing and always made to suit your taste.

Admittedly, one or two of the preparations might look odd. But the goal is not art, but satisfying meals. I recall one morning, half awake, cooking old-fashioned oatmeal. Feeling especially hungry, I beat an egg and tossed it into the cereal. The egg cooked quickly. I put it into my blue bowl, topped it with a pat of butter, and then enjoyed my one-pot breakfast. If you like sweet things, you could add applesauce, brown sugar, and cinnamon to your oatmeal.

At that moment, I wondered if I could approach all my cooking with the same intrepid attitude. The goal was good nutrition and good taste. We all know the guidelines — protein, carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, good fats (canola, olive oil, avocado), and less salt and sugar.

Eggs became my default meal: scrambled, boiled, fried, omelettes with shredded cheddar. Egg salad made with low-fat yogurt and mayonnaise or mashed avocado with fresh lemon juice. I love bread and found that cutting up toast or artisanal bread into itty-bitty bits and throwing them into soups or sauces worked for me. Bread soaked in milk and egg for French toast led me to quiche. A frozen piecrust sprinkled with cubed Swiss cheese and cooked chopped spinach, with a custard of milk, eggs, and fresh-ground nutmeg baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees produced six lovely meals to be enjoyed any time of the day or night.

Meat loaf or turkey loaf with the spices or herbs of your choice (curry, oregano, thyme, fresh dill, Italian parsley), eggs, and Panko bread crumbs if moist can be eaten comfortably in small bite-size pieces. Small and tender is the target. Chicken, tuna, chopped beef in cream sauce (remember S.O.S.?) go down easily. In restaurants, even a gourmet burger, half the bun ignored, can be eaten slowly with knife and fork.

Pasta is my love. Many of the dentally challenged can manage spaghetti al pesto, even lasagna in red sauce with minced sausage. Grated pecorino, a great source of calcium, is always welcome. And let’s not forget chili or black beans and rice.

We’ve talked about loaves, what about fishes? Broiled salmon, cod with lemon or remoulade sauce, cooked shrimp minced in a food processor, herbed rice, couscous, quinoa, green peas, and overcooked broccoli provide vitamins and minerals.

Let’s include more vegetables. Those crunchy salads might be a thing of the past, but chopped greens sautéed in olive oil and garlic, or baby kale or young spinach, will keep your eyes young. Roasted vegetables with a modest spray of olive oil spread out in a single layer on a cookie sheet, or baked whole sweet potatoes oozing sweetness, call my name. Soups with onion, carrots, and celery can be a starting point. Just add dried lentils or dried split peas and some tender greens. When ready to eat, crumble in a few Club crackers.

What about snacks? Forget about popcorn, Cheetos, or potato chips. A small serving of creamy mac and cheese is a happy option. There’s always hummus, salsa, guacamole. Try smooth peanut butter with yogurt and preserves, or sprinkled with low-sodium soy and sesame oil on leftover noodles. Baked beans with a dash of maple syrup (the real thing) and a bit of minced smoked ham will satisfy the midnight snacker.

For sweet treats, enjoy fresh raspberries, blueberries, or mashed bananas with fresh lemon juice. There’s ice cream, rice pudding, custard, even Jell-O. Try small pieces of Graham crackers that will literally melt in your mouth. I love homemade applesauce topped with crushed Graham crackers and a dash of cinnamon. It is deconstructed apple pie at its finest. And for a really indulgent sweet, there’s tiramisu or cheesecake.

There is a universe of good eating out there. Your imagination can lead you to satisfying and nutritious meals that can be enjoyed sans a full set of choppers. The only downside is that while your food choices are expanding, so might your waistline.

Carol Sherman is a poet who lives in East Hampton. Her most recent collection is “Adios, San Miguel.”

At 63 years old, my child-rearing days are long over. And I haven’t missed them. My husband and I started very young, had four rambunctious rascals a couple of years apart, and then threw ourselves into the ring with earnest and blind ambition to raise perfect specimens. Thank God, they were less than perfect, just like us. 

When the last one went to college, leaving us empty nesters, we didn’t shed a tear. Well, I didn’t. My husband cried with joy. I did have a moment in the kitchen the morning after my last little cowboy left the ranch, staring into the backyard, sipping coffee and contemplating what I should cook for dinner. It hit me hard that it didn’t matter anymore what we ate for dinner. We had only ourselves to please from that point forward. My husband and I were free to eat Spam on toast at 9 p.m. with a Guinness if we felt like it. 

Admittedly, we had stumbled and bumbled our way through Parenting 101, with mixed results. I say mixed because we weren’t super parents. We started out strong with drug-free, natural childbirth, breast-fed all for at least a year, and kept a bushel of new-age parenting primers on hand for how-to tips to tackle temper tantrums, finicky eaters, potty training, puberty, and rebelliousness without turning them into sociopaths. But, little by little, we began to waver and adopted our own philosophy of coping with four different personalities ranging from Mother Teresa to, dare I say, Donald J. Trump. 

It was a hit-or-miss strategy. We weren’t strong on discipline, relying more on reverse child psychology and behavior manipulation. We implemented the team approach. Stick together and don’t cave. Problem was, I was a sucker for tears, and my husband traveled a lot. You see where I’m going — when you can’t beat them, join them. I spent a lot of time on the floor with them reliving my childhood.

We got through it. With the help of “Sesame Street,” Slurpees, Super Mario, McDonald’s French fries, Eggo waffles, pagers, and anything else we could bribe them with, we managed to function on a high level with pretty good results.

Fourteen years ago, our first grandchild was born, and we were beside ourselves with utter wonder and heart-crushing love, as if we had never laid eyes on a baby before. Often when I held her I had no words, and my heart pumped with joy. We had been given another chance to do it all over again, to get it right, but without the mess of conflicting emotions. Oh, you don’t want to eat, obey, do your homework, brush your teeth, or get dressed? No problem. We’re okay with that because Mommy and Daddy will be picking you up soon and can deal with you. Here, have another bowl of ice cream. We just love smelling and holding you. 

Recently, our son and his wife asked us to watch our long-distance, 16-month-old granddaughter for a few days while they went away for the first time since her birth. She last saw us around her first birthday. I immediately agreed, but as the time approached I wondered if my husband and I were up to the task of very early mornings and nonstop activity. We had done the same for our two eldest granddaughters over the years, but this was different — we were older now, and this one didn’t really know us.  

How would she react to strange, wrinkled people she might have some recall of but likely not, dressing, bathing, playing, and feeding her? Upsetting her entire universe that was entirely made up of her mommy and daddy? I wondered if I still had it in me — the knack to win over a small child and gain her trust to take your hand in hers and lead you to a toy, to wrap her arms around your neck in a bear hug, to reach up to be held, to see a pucker of rosebud lips and return a kiss? 

I couldn’t bear to see her cry or miss her parents miserably. I wasn’t cut from that kind of cloth. Yet I had to accept it might happen. Would we fail? Collapse from exhaustion? Would she ever adjust to us and not scream in fright every time we lifted her from her crib? Where had my confidence gone, I worried.

When my son and daughter-in-law returned three days later, I admit we were a bit bug-eyed and sore. They bounded in the door from the airport murmuring her name, blowing kisses; arms wide open for her running embrace as if they’d been in solitary confinement, locked away from her for months. She looked up from her Duplo blocks and waved at them casually from a full squat I hadn’t been able to do in 50 years. And went right back to knocking down the pink-and-purple architectural wonder we had built together, belting out a high-octave shriek and breaking into a giggle of supreme pleasure, clapping her pudgy hands in glee.

“How did you do it, Mom, with four of us?” my son asked later after our granddaughter had kicked and screamed her way through a rough patch of being drawn out of the bathtub when she wanted to linger longer. Wrestling a toddler through a tantrum takes a certain resolve and strength. But he managed it so firmly, lovingly, and patiently that I was taken aback. I couldn’t have handled it better myself.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and wondered. Chaos reigned often in our spirited family, I remembered. He wasn’t the first of my children who asked the question, but, in all fairness, this time, running out of time, I gave it more thought.

“Raising children is a lot like marriage,” I confided. “One day you wake up and decide how you’re going to make it work. The answer is you have to be 100 percent committed. You can’t be absent or fake it, and you can’t seek perfection from your child or yourself. You have to put the time in, though. You have to pay attention. The rest mostly takes care of itself.”

On the return trip home a few days later, our baby granddaughter’s sweet baby scent of Dreft detergent and milky breath lingered on my clothing, and I closed my eyes with a nagging ache in my heart. I missed her already and longed to live closer to her. At the same time I felt renewed, younger than I had in a very long time.

My husband reached over and hooked my arm under his as the airplane lifted off the tarmac, grateful one leg of the high-altitude journey was out of the way.

“What’s on your mind?” he whispered with our heads touching, staring at the closed tray tables of the seats in front of us.

I couldn’t put into words what I was really thinking, so I smiled seductively. “Let’s make a baby,” I whispered back.

He understood, and we laughed behind cupped hands. Once back in the trenches, we had taken up where we had left off like old master yogis. But now on our way home, I pined for my orthotic slippers and the leisurely draining of a morning pot of coffee.

There is a lot to be said about aging and staying vibrant. Hanging with a child doesn’t hurt. I am growing old, but I think I still got it.

Carol Dray, a previous Star contributor, lives in Bridgehampton.

Speaking of the proposed offshore South Fork Wind Farm, I’d like to suggest a couple of basic principles that I’d hope most people of good will could accept:

First, we have a moral obligation to reduce our carbon emissions. Second, if that entails costs, no particular group of Long Islanders should bear an unreasonable share of the burden.

The first principle is one of worldwide fairness. We want the energy and the benefits it provides, but we don’t want any of the risks that energy production entails. So we continue to burn fossil fuels, exporting dangers to people far away who do not benefit from the energy we use and who have no say in the matter. This is just plain wrong.

The second principle is one of local fairness. Once we recognize that reducing our carbon emissions is going to involve some adjustments, we ought not to expect a small group of us to bear most of the burden. 

To put a human face on this, consider two families. One lives in Montauk and earns its livelihood through fishing. This family is very concerned that the wind farm would impose limitations on its ability to make ends meet. These concerns need to be addressed.

There’s another family, though, that also earns its livelihood by fishing and farming. They live in Bangladesh. They are being driven from their freshwater fishing grounds and farm fields by the incursion of salt water from rising seas caused by global warming. Our carbon emissions are contributing to their plight. Their children are just as dear to them as ours are to us. We need to own that.

Both of these families deserve our consideration. The principle that no local group should bear an unreasonable burden doesn’t mean that no one should bear any burden, however. We have an obligation to minimize the problems faced by the fishing community here as much as possible, but we also have an obligation toward that Bangladeshi family.

Unfortunately, besides these legitimate concerns, there’s an awful lot of fake environmentalism that opposes anything that will have any negative environmental effects, even though it means we’ll continue with business as usual, with much worse impacts. 

When we rejected the Shoreham nuclear plant, people said, “We’ll do wind power instead.” Now that wind power is a live option, some of the same people are opposing it too. Before they will accept any form of carbon-free energy, it must have no environmental impacts whatsoever. It must be perfect. Anything short of perfection is unacceptable. Any imperfection gives them talking points to make people think it must be bad.

Of course, that means no form of alternative energy is acceptable. Even solar panels have an environmental cost in terms of the toxic metals, such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, generated in their production. Does that mean we shouldn’t go solar? Of course not. The pollutants generated just have to be dealt with responsibly. My point is that not even solar is perfectly clean. 

So don’t ask “Is it perfect?” Instead, ask if it is better than the alternative of continuing to burn fossil fuels. And don’t make the mistake of saying we should do solar instead of wind. We should do all the solar we can, regardless of whether the wind farm is built or not. The two are not either-or propositions. Compare the wind farm with the fossil fuels we’ll save.

The wind farm would reduce Long Island’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 200,000 tons. By itself that won’t solve the global climate problem, but if every locality rejects carbon-free energy projects, the lost opportunities to reduce carbon emissions will add up to something tragic.

Don’t forget that what goes around comes around. It won’t be long until we, too, suffer from the effects of the world’s increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Even today the fossil fuels we burn on Long Island degrade our air quality and respiratory health. Long Island’s air looks cleaner than it is, though, and so we ignore that aspect.

I’m convinced that people of good will could figure out how to do offshore wind power and also preserve the local fisheries. It’s only when we make an emotional issue out of it and demonize anyone who disagrees with our own entrenched position that solutions become impossible. 

Or, we can just keep on burning fossil fuels as if there’s no tomorrow. If the whole world does that, maybe there won’t be a tomorrow.

John Andrews is co-group leader of the Long Island East chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. He lives in Sag Harbor.

What better name for the daughter of the middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano than Roxee? Her parents obviously thought she was a champ too.

What kind of father was the tough guy who had one of the hardest-hitting right crosses in boxing? According to Roxee, her dad was kind, sweet, thoughtful, and a bit old-fashioned, leaving the raising of his daughters to their mother, Norma. 

And what kind of woman was Norma? Roxee said she was unlike the retiring, nearly shy character portrayed by Pier Angeli in the Rocky Graziano biopic “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Norma was tough, smart, and knew where to find answers to any questions she had. She guided the Graziano finances, never letting her husband invest in the many schemes that were brought to him. In fact, he once commented that the reason he hung around with millionaires was because they never asked to borrow money. Though knowing what a soft touch Rocky was, the schemers — no doubt — felt he would dig some money out of his wallet for them, and he often did. 

There is an anecdote about Rocky sitting around Stillman’s Gym following his retirement from boxing and observing the up-and-coming fighters. Off in a corner, he noticed a former boxer who had gone blind. The man was nearly destitute, living a crummy fleabag of a hotel. Rocky went around to everyone in the gym, collecting 20 dollars here, 10 dollars there. He put in some money of his own, folded it all together, and inserted it in the blind boxer’s breast pocket. He told the man to come back every month, for he would get the same thing. Because of such acts of generosity, Rocky’s manager, Irving Cohen, suggested that Norma put Rocky on an allowance so that he wouldn’t give all of his money to needy cases.

When I asked about the Graziano marriage, Roxee told me that her parents were madly, passionately in love with each other. And what attracted her mother to Rocky when he was just starting out and his future looked grim? “She thought he was sweet and innocent and positively gorgeous.” And photos of the young Rocky show a young man who was indeed movie-star handsome. Boxing, of course, leaves one with a face that’s a history of one’s bouts, and Rocky was no exception.

I asked Roxee, who survives her older sister, Audrey, how it felt to be the daughter of a celebrity. And Rocky’s celebrity increased exponentially through the years of Roxee’s life, as she went from being a little girl to a teenager. As a boxer, Rocky was admired for this athletic prowess. But as an entertainer seen regularly on television, he became known to millions of viewers who may not have been interested in boxing. Rocky’s career as an entertainer began when he co-starred in the TV series “The Henny and Rocky Show” with Henny Youngman. That was followed by another co-starring role opposite the great rubber-faced comedian and singer Martha Raye in her eponymous TV show. The show ran for three years, and Rocky was in every episode. 

Martha became a good friend of the family, and Roxee said she regarded her as Aunt Martha. 

Before the show went into production, its producer and creator, Nat Hiken, was sitting around with the director and advertising agency people, and they decided that Martha needed a boyfriend. They agreed that it should be a warmhearted, inarticulate guy. Someone suggested a guy like Rocky Graziano. Another said why not get Rocky, and so Nat Hiken went to Stillman’s Gym and offered Rocky the part of Martha’s Goombah. Off screen and on, Martha and Rocky were true pals. 

And Nat Hiken also became a lifelong pal of Rocky’s. He went on to create numerous hit TV sitcoms, including “The Phil Silvers Show” and “Car 54, Where Are You?” 

But they weren’t the only show business people to light up the Graziano household: There was Paul Newman, who played Rocky in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” which catapulted Newman up into the stratosphere of stardom. He spent months with Rocky, learning to walk like him, to talk like him, to punch like him. And then there was Frank Sinatra, who had not only befriended Rocky at Stillman’s Gym in the early 1940s, but also cast him as his sidekick, Packy, in the movie “Tony Rome.” The Grazianos became quite friendly with the singer Tom Jones, whom they met through the owner of El Morocco, one of the premier New York nightclubs and watering holes for celebrities from the 1930s to the 1960s.  

I asked if the Grazianos were friends with any former fighters. The one who came around most often was Jake LaMotta, and Norma Graziano disliked him. She did not think he was a nice man, and one could certainly see that from his portrayal by Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull.” Nevertheless, Rocky went out of his way to find work for Jake, including parts in movies and TV programs. There is a photo of Jake and Rocky with Martha Raye, and another of Jake and Rocky relaxing with their wives poolside in Miami Beach.

Though those were pals of her parents, Roxee had her own celebrity friend, Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland. In addition to hanging out at El Morocco, Lorna and Roxee, who were the same age, often went to Broadway and Off Broadway shows together.

Surrounded by entertainers, it was no wonder that Roxee embarked on a career to become a stage actress after graduating from Forest Hills High School in Queens. As many aspiring actors have discovered, the road to success is decorated with potholes, and there are many side streets and detours that are dead ends. She eventually gave up her dream of acting and attended college at C.W. Post and Adelphi, earning a master’s degree in education. For 20 years, she was an elementary school teacher, as was her present husband, John Lore.

I asked Roxee to sum up her father, a man who was brutal in the ring and a warmhearted charmer out of it. Roxee said he was a regular guy, never bragged about his careers as a boxer and actor. He had many friends who thought the world of him. 

I can certainly attest to that, for I attended Rocky’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. There must have been 1,000 mourners in attendance. And when his coffin left the church, cops cleared a path for the hearse and the limos that followed, not just on Fifth Avenue, but all the way out to a cemetery on Long Island. (Norma, who died years later at age 83, is buried beside her husband.) 

Rocky was the last of the great fighters from the golden age of boxing. And his daughter remains his biggest fan.

Jeffrey Sussman is the author of “Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune,” among other books about boxers and boxing. He lives part time in East Hampton.