The “male gaze” is the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure.

I entered the M4 bus on the coldest of winter days. I cannot say I bounded the steps with youthful alacrity, but I did pretty well — no cane or walker to assist my ascent. There was a hat pulled down over my brow, a thick scarf swaddling my neck, and I was bundled head to toe in parka, fleece-lined yoga pants, and boots fit for hiking an Alpine trail.

At first sight of me two passengers jumped up simultaneously — as if an electrical current had just passed under their seats. Indeed, the posted sign “Please Give Your Seat to the Old or Disabled” suggested they do so. But how — even with sunglasses concealing all that nasty business around the eyes — did they know? 

The sign itself — two adjectives in search of a noun — has always amused me. I picture a phalanx of the old and disabled (humans? barnyard animals? zoo creatures?) boarding the bus at once as in some dystopian movie of the end of days. What would become of the other passengers? Would the driver change the destination sign? Pull a hood and scythe out of the duffle bag that sits beside him in the huge plastic enclosure that engulfs him? And exactly what anticipated catastrophe was that enclosure designed to resist? 

Such thoughts could consume a reverie the whole length of a Fifth Avenue ride. But this day was different. Something had changed. After decades of being invisible, I was seen again. The sense of emitting an electromagnetic force, a force I could neither understand nor control, recalled the time I was first seen.

It was the white latex bathing suit with the zipper up the back that did it. I wore it to the beach at Winthrop, Mass., the summer I turned 15. Before that day I had spent years sunbathing or swimming at that beach, a body among a mass of unremarkable bodies. The suit changed everything. The very air around me was suddenly charged; wave upon wave of the male gaze. It was to follow as I grew older, but didn’t disappear for good until I reached my 50s. 

I was never a beauty — and that irresistible flush of just-bloomed desirability was soon to fade — but any woman of average looks who takes reasonable care of her appearance lives in its web. And finds a way to respond. 

The BBDO I entered as a young secretary was the quintessential New York advertising agency of “Mad Men.” The suggestive speech that would trigger an H.R. investigation today was a matter of course; being cornered in an office or having a breast cupped from behind as your boss reached for the phone in your hand earned him the designation of “pig” and taught you how to duck and weave. I recall only one moment of indignation on my part, one rebellion.

I had overheard one of the senior account executives commenting to my boss on a memo “your broad sent me.”

Perhaps it was “your” — the implication that I was a possession of my boss. Perhaps it was “broad” — a crude degradation of all things female. 

Empowered by rage, I waited until he returned to his office and was seated behind his desk, walked right in, walked right up to him, and said: “By ‘your broad,’ did you mean me? Were you talking about me?” 

His response (surprise, confusion, shame, apology) affirmed that I had a voice. And although I used that confrontational voice in other situations thereafter, it was never in response to the male gaze.

There was no need. Catcalls or once-overs on the street were simply part of the urban scene. And many encounters with the male gaze were welcome, even fun. Half a century later I remember a sudden burst of rain as I was waiting to cross Broadway and a large umbrella opening over me, held by a tall, handsome stranger. We kept an even pace as we walked and talked under that umbrella for two blocks until I reached my destination, and he gave a swift bow and disappeared into the crowd. 

I remember other men; occasions when I traveled alone for work or to visit family — less tall or handsome, but interesting nevertheless. Men who struck up conversations in an airport lounge or hotel lobby or clearly chose the aisle seat when they saw me seated by the window. 

It was easy enough to work affectionate mention of my husband into early conversational forays — and though some wandered off, many stayed. A few live on in memory: a constitutional lawyer headed to D.C. to plead at the Supreme Court, a Texas rancher, a filmmaker. We talked until it was time to go, parted with good feeling, and that was that. Each meeting a window into lives different from my own. Each meeting a confirmation of my continued viability in the world. More than viability, agency — the power to attract, to effect action — in the world around me.

By my 50s, I began to notice that the seat next to me remained vacant until occupied by a woman — often, like me, one in her middle years. I colored my hair, let it grow and restyled it into a straighter bob, tweaked my makeup. My dear husband — who always saw me as young and appealing as the day we met — didn’t notice. Nor did anyone else. 

I had become a hologram, a disembodied mirage. It was to last for 25 years. 

Not that long ago, slowly making my way through the heavy revolving door at the Yale Club to attend a memorial service, I felt a shove that practically knocked me over. As the well-dressed shover raced by me, he murmured over his shoulder, “Push!” 

And what I had assumed was the male gaze was not gender specific. I would struggle to heave my suitcase onto the overhead rack while the young woman beside me secured her own and took her seat. Even the flight attendant looked right through me as she made her way up the aisle. 

Until that day on the bus when — as an object of the geriatric gaze — I was seen again. It kept on happening. There were “mama”s and even a few “grandma”s from homeless people seated on the sidewalk. When I paused in a store or restaurant to ask directions to the ladies’ room (an increasingly common occurrence), people often stopped in their tracks to walk me right up to the door. Hesitating on a curb, wondering whether to charge a heap of snow or attempt a wide stride over a pool of water, someone would wordlessly appear and offer an arm. 

It took time to replace “No thanks, I’m okay” with “Thank you very much” to offers of a seat or a helping hand. I now take it as my due. As I move into my ninth decade of life I have learned that it is at least as blessed to receive as to give. And really rather pleasant.

Ann Burack-Weiss is the author of “The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman’s Life,” published by Columbia University Press in 2015. She has lived part time in Montauk for 44 years.

I hate rubbernecking. I think it’s mean to stare down a waitress after she’s dropped a tray of dishes, cruel to slow down to inspect a highway wreck, stupid to obsess over the extramarital flings of the C.E.O. of the U.S.A.

Yet I gladly rubberneck “The Affair,” the Showtime series that spins around two couples who split but can’t quit each other after a summer infidelity in Montauk. For four seasons I’ve avidly followed four basically decent people who keep making disastrous mistakes: abandoning a child to get mentally well; burning down a house to deny and confirm a family curse; stalking a stalker who may not be a stalker. Alison, Cole, Helen, and Noah are the black sheep of my TV ark, the rogue surfers of emotional tidal waves that crash into my life on and off the South Fork.

My affair with “The Affair” began on Halloween 2014, a day of expected and unexpected treats. I was visiting friends in Wainscott, where I lived from 1967 to 1972, when I discovered all my major passions, from baseball to sex to writing. That morning I satisfied my love for nature by walking the Walking Dunes in Napeague, the Sahara stand-in in Rudolph Valentino’s silent film “The Sheik.” I hiked over the mountainous mounds into the sandy bowl where I once ate hot dogs grilled on a hibachi and listened to twilight ghost stories. All that trudging made me hungry, so I headed to the Clam Bar on Napeague for Manhattan chowder, sweet potato fries, and my first-ever midday beer. Driving back to Wainscott I saluted another Napeague landmark, the Lobster Roll, where I ate my first lobster roll and met my first lover. 

That night I accidentally tuned into a rerun of the first episode of “The Affair,” which opens, lo and behold, at the Lobster Roll. Not only that, the eating place is the meeting place for the titular cheaters: Noah, a bored Brooklyn writer and teacher summering with his family in Montauk, and Alison, a Montauk-raised waitress and nurse mourning her drowned son. In an instant a sexy coincidence became seductive.

“The Affair” sucked me into its riptide of misery, ecstasy, and murder mystery. What really sucked me into the show was the undertow of my memories of Montauk, where I first made love, flew a kite, bodysurfed, clammed, clam baked, picked black-eyed Susans, and roller-coastered on the slaloming Old Montauk Highway. My senses go haywire on the East End’s East End; the Montauk Point panorama makes me feel enshrined in one of those huge Kodak photographs that illuminated Grand Central Station.

“The Affair” is a handsome exploration of ugly behavior. Writers and actors expertly examine the detritus of divorce: the guilt, the relief, the guilty relief, the torn treaties, the lashing limbo. I know because I’m one of divorce’s children. My parents’ 15-year marriage dissolved after my father sold our Wainscott house without telling my mother. At the time he desperately needed money after losing his job and $10,000 of his kids’ college tuition on a bad business deal in Montauk. The bickering between Mom and Dad escalated after he married the owner of a bigger Wainscott home, which I passed every time I visited Beach Lane Beach. Their arguments were aggravated by their loneliness. Dad missed his children; Mom missed her mate.

My parents made peace after Dad’s second divorce. Three months before he died, they agreed to share a gravestone. Three months later, she came with me to see his corpse. She wanted to comfort her son and say goodbye to the only man she truly loved.

“Affair” characters bury axes with their exes, too. Alison and Cole buy and restore the Lobster Roll, which replaces the Montauk horse ranch he lost with his brothers and mother. Helen nurses Noah out of a psychotic haze caused by a nearly fatal stabbing; he swears his attacker is his alleged stalker, a jealous prison guard. Helen is essentially repaying Noah for essentially saving their family by confessing to a crime she essentially committed. 

Noah’s hell is very much like my father’s. My dad mastered pretty much everything: selling ads, playing tennis, singing barbershop, telling stories, writing whimsical animal poems worthy of Ogden Nash. The only things he couldn’t master were his alcoholism and his manic depression. Living alone in Hampton Bays after his second divorce, he substituted wine for lithium, which led to a stroke, which led me to move him into my apartment. Embarrassed by feeling like a burden, he disappeared for a month, living in shelters and parks in Manhattan, where he’d worked for four decades. He was rescued by psychiatric nurses, social workers, and loved ones who knew he was a good guy in a bad way.

Noah pays dearly for his affair. He turns it into a best-selling novel that angers Alison, who has a child with Cole that Noah thinks is his for two years. My affair was a lot less costly. Helen — yes, she shares the name of Noah’s ex — and I had four nights of passion 12 years after one night of passion that climaxed a year of beautiful mental foreplay. She was tickled when I told her I decided to scratch our itch while I watched Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep do the same in “The Bridges of Madison County.”

After our erotic reunion, Helen returned to married life in Texas. I returned to single life in Pennsylvania, where I’d met Helen and the very decent fellow I always knew she would marry. Over the next 20 years our friendship deepened while our yearning lingered. We never regretted our affair; we only regretted that we didn’t pursue a romance when she was single. We continued to have refreshingly frank, funny phone conversations until three weeks before her sudden death less than a year after her daughter’s sudden death. 

I hear myself talking to Helen and my other exes whenever “Affair” characters ruthlessly inventory their relationships. When Noah and Helen fill a favorite restaurant with confessions, accusations, and resolutions, it reminds me of the last great chat I had with my former wife. It took place, lo and behold, in our favorite restaurant right after I told her, in our therapist’s office, that I didn’t want to be married anymore. We were so relieved that we still liked each other, we hurried home to make unfettered, unmarried love. 

It took me 30 years to realize we were auditioning for “The Affair.”

Geoff Gehman is the author of “The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons” (SUNY Press). He lives in Bethlehem, Pa., and can be reached at [email protected].

Three in the morning. Deep sleep. Sensuous dream. Noise from the kitchen. Plates crashing. Silverware jangling. Adrenaline pumping. Grab weapon. Descend staircase. Clatter gets louder, more brazen. Men are in my house. Thieves like silverware. Easy to carry, easy to sell, hard to trace. Take a deep breath. Collect yourself. Race into the kitchen screaming like a banshee while flicking on the lights and six stunned raccoons stop to stare at the crazy intruder. Twelve eyes. Iridescent yellow and blue. As frightened of you as you are of them. 

Ransack interruptus.

There is one in the garbage, in the sink, in the cat food, in the coffee maker, on the counter, and one wedged between wall and ceiling. Stillness. A standoff. Having never hosted raccoons, I do what any logical man would do — slowly back out of the kitchen, locate my smartphone, and ask Google: “How do I get rid of raccoons?” 

Turn on all the lights, turn up the music, open all doors and windows so they can exit at their leisure, and, whatever you do, leave the critters alone. They can be dangerous and/or diseased. 

I follow instructions. Lights, music, sit. 

The marauders scatter cautiously: One tippy-toes into the laundry room, another ducks behind the piano, one sneaks into the woodpile. The others have already parked. I know not where.

We listen to the Doors and Sun Ra. The Lizard King and the Arkestra. They should frighten any creature. I throw tennis balls and scream every so often. The guests whimper and growl and eventually a solitary coon slowly exits through the side door, followed by another. It is not an exodus. Each raccoon picks his own time and place. Around 7 a.m., I watch the last Procyon lotor waddle out the front door. 

The kitchen is a royal mess. The raccoons had removed the window screen and climbed right in. I secure the premises. Hammer and nails. I scrub all nooks and crannies. With Bon Ami and malice. 

My wife wants to know why the kitchen is spotless and everything else is nailed down. She had spent the night in the city. She is happy to have missed the excitement. We spend the day locking up garbage cans, taking down bird feeders, and cleaning wild seed from the lawn. She retires at midnight. I go to work in the studio. 

I hear movement, odd noises, not squirrels scampering on the roof, not blinds blowing in a breeze. I go upstairs with a flashlight and trepidation. I find nothing in the bathroom, nothing in the second bedroom, nothing in . . . uh-oh . . . a beam of light catches a pair of shimmering ice-blue eyes in the high rafter of the barn’s ceiling; perched there, like the Cheshire cat, stone still, staring at me, is a fat, furry, frightened coon who must have been stuck since early this morning and has racked up 21 hours without food or water or making much of a stir.

Here we go again. Open doors and windows. Turn on the lights. Led Zeppelin would rattle the rafters but would also scare the hell out of my wife. I want to join her in sleep. I approach the raccoon cautiously. He climbs higher, into a distant corner of the cathedral ceiling, navigating the wooden joists as if they were his home all along, and not mine. It is now 2 a.m. I move a chair into the hallway, take a seat, and train the flashlight on his masked face. He is nocturnal by nature. I am old and tired. It’s an unfair fight.

At sunrise, I call the police. “I want to report a masked intruder who broke and entered, who is trespassing, who is menacing my family, who is . . .”

“Call an exterminator,” says the officer. I make phone calls. Too early. I make coffee. At 9, a woman on the phone says I should “shoo the coon with a broom.” 

“How much do you charge to shoo for me?” I inquire. 

“Starts at $75, depends on how long it takes and how difficult the critter is.” 

Two raccoon wranglers arrive at high noon. They approach the coon with a noose dangling at the end of a long pole. If they can get his head into the noose, the raccoon will capture himself and they will cart him away. I call him “him.” I can’t discern male or female, boar or sow. I hope the #MeCoon movement is kind. 

The wranglers tell me they have to exterminate the animal. It’s the law. I feel terrible. I feel relief. I am no Jain. What choice do I have? The drama unfolds. When the noose glances the raccoon’s ringtail, he jumps and runs, sprints across the slanted ceiling, moves faster than any raccoon is supposed to move, down a wall, down the hall, down the staircase, and takes refuge behind the upright piano. The two professionals are impressed. 

“This one is vicious,” says the senior wrangler. “Good thing you didn’t go after it on your own.” 

“Please tell that to the woman who answers your phone.” 

A wrangler stands on either side of the piano and pokes the raccoon. There is a commotion. There are squeaky sounds and guttural growls. There is urine. There is a capture. The raccoon is dropped into a cage and the cage into a truck and the truck into the distance.

It is illegal to transport a coon without a license. The authorities fear you may release it at the doorway of an ex-lover, the parking lot of your least favorite restaurant, at Alec Baldwin’s place. 

Two nights later, outside the bedroom window, a nursery of young raccoons frolic on the low roof, flouncing about, eating bunches of grapes from a nearby arbor, playing tag, and taunting me. The kits are adorable. The kits are detestable. They have returned for a reason. They think a relative is being held hostage. Do they want to negotiate? Their parents cannot be far away. And they want revenge. They know the truth. They know about the noose. I feel as if I am in a Stephen King novel even though I’ve never read nor have any desire to read a Stephen King novel.

Havahart. That’s the name and intention of the trap I purchase. I spring-load it with marshmallows and peanut butter, chunky style. Come the next morning, I have two caged raccoons. Two extremely agitated caged raccoons. They squeal and gnaw and try to escape, using 40 teeth and 4 five-digit paws. They are indefatigable. Running a nightly marathon will get you in good shape. There is the occasional plangent moan. I feel for them. I give them water. And then I give them away. To a licensed professional who will relocate them. I don’t know where. (I understand there are 100,000 acres of Pine Barrens near Manorville.) The professional vows compassion and a pardon. I believe him. He gets $40 per coon. He gives me a break when I catch two at a time. 

So far, I have paid him over $275. Plus gratuities. 

Fast-forward: It has been a while since the last visitors. I would say I am suffering from Post Raccoon Stress Disorder (PRSD) except that would suggest the war is over, the truce has been signed, and it is time to lick wounds and attend group therapy. But the enemy is still out there. And still wants to come inside here, into the dark, into the quiet, into the food, into the psyche. The enemy has no known pattern or timetable for attack, so a constant vigil is required. 

You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

The enemy is sly and his army swells; nationwide, their number has grown 2,700 percent since 1955. (No typo — two thousand seven hundred percent.) Locally? Your guess is as good as mine. When you take away their natural habitat and provide generous garbage . . . best estimates say 100 raccoons per square mile, not to mention raccoon ghosts, raccoon visions, raccoon chimera, raccoon fantasies. I hear them everywhere. I see them everywhere. On the road. On the lawn. No, a rabbit. In the flowers. Just a cat. On the roof. A squirrel. Normal gurgles from the refrigerator cause midnight panic. I double-check windows and doors. I inspect the attic and chimney. I pace. I lie down. Raccoons run through my last conscious thoughts each night. And then I dream of them.

It has been a year since I caught my last raccoon. Or was it yesterday? It’s only a matter of time.

Bruce Buschel is a writer, director, and producer. He lives in Bridgehampton.

When Philip Roth died in May, I got some condolence emails. Though I never met the man, people in my life associated me with him. After I read Lisa Halliday’s “Asymmetry,” featuring a fictive author based on Roth in a relationship with a younger would-be writer, I developed a virulent case of banter envy and wished I had known him. That Halliday’s Ezra Blazer was passed over for the Nobel Prize in the novel seemed a delicious inside joke, Halliday having been a younger would-be writer when she and Roth had a liaison. 

When women began to vent in print and in public about their not seeing themselves in Roth’s women, I wondered why they thought they should. Literary constructs do not have to resemble real people, even when they do. Then, my husband’s ex-girlfriend got in touch because her husband was simply disgusted by the backlash, an attack, after all, on a beloved now-dead author. While many people see themselves as characters in Woody Allen movies, I inhabit imagined Rothian scenarios, especially when the ex asked me to write about Roth, to respond to the assault.

Until he died, Philip Roth for me was the greatest living writer. Death being so irredeemably final, I will now have to reconsider that distinction. One time in a conversation with James Frey at a Guild Hall summer gala, he asked me who I thought was the greatest, and I answered Denis Johnson, who remains for me, though he too is now dead, great, but not in the same way as Roth. (Frey, by the way, thought that he himself was. You can see that greatness is a slippery category.) 

Roth could in the space of a page take the reader by the throat, engage you with a character at hand, and situate the context within the immediately historical. Consider, for example, the opening of “The Human Stain”: the way he introduces the character of Coleman Silk within the scandal of a presidential dalliance involving one Monica Lewinsky, tragicomedy of the highest order, zooming in to a relatable ethos. 

His themes of Judaism, anti-Semitism, racism, Freud, the full panoply of American preoccupations, contradictions, obsessions, were mine, most especially what it means to be a man. A bookish girl, I wanted most to understand men, how to emulate and bed men, and comprehend their behavior and values. Roth explored the concept of Menschlichkeit, what it means to be human.

In the beginning for me was “Goodbye, Columbus,” explaining the Jewish men of my time and why they were not paying attention to me, a dark-haired refugee Jew, born out of the displacements of the Holocaust. Roth’s shiksa obsession was formative, for Roth a literary device despite the feminist critique. I took him seriously. How could I not? “Portnoy’s Complaint” was a turning point for both of us. The book that put Roth on the literary map was a blueprint of the male psyche, explaining the erotic, the neurotic, the looming enemy of mother, the maternal womb, how one leaves it and re-enters, the literary equivalent of de Kooning’s women with their sharp teeth. 

But we women had a counterpart in the voice of Erica Jong: the “zipless fuck” of her transformative book, “Fear of Flying,” the image of married sex as having the consistency of Velveeta, her first husband’s hairless balls. Roth and Jong were the yin and yang of the sexual revolution. 

Later on, much of Roth’s fiction, like “Deception,” smacked of easy conceits. I am fascinated that he loved his own “Sabbath’s Theater” the best. I struggled to read it, the masculine in it too esoteric. Men friends like it more than I do. But I can always appreciate the virility of the prose.

Regina Weinreich is the author of “Kerouac’s Spontaneous Poetics.” She lives in Manhattan and Montauk.

When you think about Mick Jagger, what springs to mind? Do it now for a quick second while I still have you off guard. Annnnd . . . time! 

Okay, what came back? I’m sure most of you thought about him growling into a microphone and goose-stepping in front of the Rolling Stones, which would be fair, it has been his occupation for the last 56 years. But what else? 

Maybe your brain was besieged by a series of evocative images gathered over a lifetime: ’60s Swingin’ London, flashes from the Maysles brothers’ documentary “Gimme Shelter,” Mick all glammed up at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol and Bianca in the ’70s, all the Jagger women and scandals, a pastel-and-pleated Mick gyrating into a lather with Tina Turner at Live Aid in 1985, Mike Myers sending him up on “S.N.L.” in the ’90s, on and up to a present-day YouTube clip of him sprinting down a stadium catwalk, a kinetic human meteorite of unprecedented septuagenarian marvel. 

But did anyone think of him in terms of what he actually is in his purest form, a singer and a lyricist? I’ll bet not that many of you did.

After hearing a Stones classic on the radio, and I’ll just pluck one out of the air, say, “19th Nervous Breakdown,” have you ever once heard a D.J. wax on about the depth of genius in Mick’s lyrics the way they do Dylan, Lennon, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, or any other of rock’s “poets”?

It seems Mick’s larger-than-life persona as an outrageous performer and cultural icon, along with his reputed vanity, has, through the years, distilled him down to a cartoon character in our consciousness and bounced him out of that conversation. Trust me, the minute he dies, as evidenced by what happens every time we lose one of these greats (and, lo, there have been quite a few these past few years), there’ll be a tsunami of sorrowful social media messages from heartbroken fans praising Mick as a much-dismissed writer, and why didn’t anyone ever think of him that way? You know it’s comin’ — hopefully not for a while yet, but it’s comin’.

I’m not overlooking the brilliant contribution from the infamous other half of the Glimmer Twins songwriting team, Mick’s simultaneously beloved and “be-hated” battery mate, Keith Richards. Unbeknownst to some, Keith, in addition to being the main riff supplier of the operation, also wrote some timeless lyrics of his own (“Ruby Tuesday” and “Happy,” to name just two), and Mick, in turn, was responsible for some classic guitar hooks, like the opening salvo of “Brown Sugar.” So they did have cause to switch hats on occasion. 

Also, lest we forget, the vital importance of the bassist Bill Wyman, the drummer Charlie Watts, and the succession of three brilliant (in their own right) guitarists, Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, and Ronnie Wood, who make up the rest of “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” The sound they all make together is what makes it special, what makes it the Stones, and who could ask for a better sonic palette from which to create? 

However, I’m focused solely on Mick as a designer of vocal melodies and author of lyrics, and as heralded as he is for being “Mick Jagger,” I really don’t think he gets the credit he deserves for the ideas he attaches to these songs. 

As a singer-songwriter and also the frontman for a band, I know how hard it is to write lyrics. You want something that matches the mood and feel of the tune and is gonna give it that liftoff. The words have to sound good together while being sung, and a strong theme has to emerge for it to have the thrust required for it to connect with people, otherwise it fails. 

If you go through the 30 studio albums the Rolling Stones have made, taking them song by song, it’s astonishing how high Mick’s batting average is using what I just spelled out as criteria for grading. He rings the bell almost every time and has the versatility to move you in all different directions: He can break your heart with “Angie” or “Wild Horses,” rev you up with “Rocks Off” or “Monkey Man,” crack you up with the unhinged talk-sing spontaneity of “Shattered,” be intensely topical in “Gimme Shelter,” theatrical and dramatic in “Midnight Rambler” — everything is represented in his lyric canon.

I’m a full-time musician, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not tremendously thankful for that, but I’d be lying if I said I felt grateful at every gig. Some cover-song shows I have to play can be a real slog, but being able to crank out some Stones songs at these things is a quantum saving grace. I never feel more badass than when I’m singing Mick’s lyrics, and if I do happen to be in a funk, rest assured, by the end of the song I won’t be. 

When I was a kid in the ’70s, my dad and I had an ongoing debate, “Who was better, Jagger or Sinatra?” He would always say, “When Frank sings a song he tells a story . . . your guy just hops around wiggling his ass like some cockney prostitute.” Then I’d say, “Yeah, well, Mick writes his own songs, Dad. Frank needs them written for him.” He’d grumble, and the argument would grind to a stalemate. 

In those years, the family would often pile in a station wagon and head out to Montauk from Huntington to beach it for a few days and go fishing on a neighbor’s boat. I remember on one of those rides out, D.J. “Scottso” Muni of WNEW coming on the air and talking about how the Stones liked to vacation out in Montauk, and in his signature gravelly voice said, “even wrote a song about one of their favorite spots out there,” and spun “Memory Motel.” 

My 10-year-old mind went all a-flutter with the far-out fantasy of sneaking away from the family in the middle of the night and stumbling upon Mick and Keith on the beach writing songs around a bonfire, and, of course, me joining in to lend a hand.

Right as that daydream started to dwindle I guess ol’ Scottso decided to make it a “twofer” and segued into “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and I noticed my dad’s body language acquiescing to it. His head started swaying back and forth and his shoulders relaxed. He dropped one hand off the wheel, turned around, and asked, “This is a good one . . . who does this number?” 

Excitedly realizing I was about to take a huge lead in our never-ending debate, I yelled, “The Stones! This is Mick, Dad, he wrote this, I told ya!” 

He kept driving and gingerly humming along with it. About a minute later he shook his head and said, “You know what, you’re right . . . sonofabitch can really write a song.”

Christopher John Campion, a singer-songwriter and regular visitor to Amagansett, is the author of “Escape From Bellevue: A Dive Bar Odyssey,” published by Penguin-Gotham.

A childhood friend and I were talking on the phone recently. He’s someone who has forged a long and successful career in digital marketing, and we discussed how technology is changing the way we experience the world — in particular, the speed at which we can get information. What is the score of the game? Who authored the Second Amendment to the Constitution? Who do I know who can explain how to sell things on Amazon? So much good can be found in a flash, yet we both believe there is a fundamental virtue being damaged. Waiting. 

The act of waiting is a strange thing to feel nostalgic about, but more and more I’ve come to miss the time I once lost in pursuit of what I wanted to find. For example, my friend and I reminisced about going to a local library whenever we needed to research a school assignment or just to discover an answer to a trivia game question. Traveling to the library took time, and, once inside, it took more time to find the right book or books, and even more time to find the information needed. Now, all this can be done in seconds, with the push of a button or the click of a mouse. 

But what we gain from expedience, we subtract from experience: A computer screen can’t provide the unique smell of a library, the awe of being surrounded by shelves and shelves of books, even being chastised by a librarian for speaking too loudly. Chances for human connection are decreased — the catching up one does with a friend when he calls to ask a question, sharing successes and struggles, affirming and reinforcing relationships. You can’t do this with Google or email, or a LinkedIn profile. It might take longer to get to the result, but the secret is the journey.

So what, you might say. Who has time to waste nowadays? If we can remove as much waiting as possible from our lives, won’t our lives improve? 

Perhaps not. Jason Kurtz, a New York City psychoanalyst, award-winning playwright, and author of the memoir “Follow the Joy,” sees waiting as an opportunity for people to exercise patience, something critical for our psyches. 

“Patience,” he writes, “or what we might call frustration tolerance, is an essential component of mental health, simply because not everything can come on demand, or according to our schedule. Learning how to be patient, learning how to tolerate the frustration of things taking longer than we want them to, ultimately helps us get more of what we want and need, while impatience often means missing out on the most important and gratifying things in life.”

The good (or bad) news is that modern life still has lots of logjams to keep us on our toes, even if we’re standing still. According to a Timex survey, for instance, Americans wait an average of 20 minutes a day for the bus or train, 32 minutes whenever they visit a doctor, 28 minutes in security lines whenever they travel by airline, 21 minutes for a significant other to get ready to go out, 13 hours annually waiting on hold for a customer service representative, and 38 hours each year waiting in traffic.

That’s a lot of waiting. Plenty of time to feel upset, to accept the situation, or be grateful for the opportunity to not only practice patience, but practice to be patient. 

No rush, it’s up to you to decide.

John McCaffrey is the author of “Two Syllable Men,” a collection of stories published by Vine Leaves Press. He lives part time in Wainscott.

To this day, she can’t look at the photo without silently recharging emotions her mother had captured that warm East Hampton summer day in 1946. Sand pail by her bare feet, her cotton summer dress pressed against her back, she faced the sea she would come to love so much. She was barely 2 1/2, and the wonder of the saltwater, sand, and sea life became the foundation of her lifelong affair with beaches and oceans, especially on the South Fork. 

Beryle Huntting Stanley, who was born in 1904 on East Hampton’s Cedar Street, added the year and the title “The Wind!” — sensing the love of place her daughter, Carol, was developing on those summer vacations to uncle Judson Banister’s Three Mile Harbor camp.

Jud, as he was known to friends and family, then into his 10th year as village mayor, enjoyed the company of his only niece’s child, especially delighting her with Three Mile Harbor and Gardiner’s Bay’s seafood bounty, shucking clams and scallops in his camp basement. But for young Carol the ocean’s edge held the strongest affection. Standing on the shore, her tiny arms outstretched to catch the breeze like a seagull, she gazed out to sea, lost in this world tugging at her. 

Jud built the camp in 1919 shortly after he and five young local businessmen bought adjoining lots on Three Mile Harbor’s east shoreline from John Edwards. Carl Reutershan was Jud’s neighbor to the south. Black Marsh was to the north, home for years to Juan Trippe’s seaplane before he created Pan American Airways. Trippe later sold his lot to the Grom brothers, who developed Shagwong Marina. These camps became the scene of many joyous parties and social events for locals, often wrapping up late in the evening after they’d devoured meals of fresh-caught seafood and watched sunsets worthy of a painter’s dream.

For young Carol, her parents, and later her baby brother, the camp was simply heaven on earth. Each summer as August approached she strained with anticipation during the New London to Orient Point ferry ride and the seemingly never-ending drive through Riverhead and on to East Hampton. Oh, what wondrous days lay ahead. That ride was never quick enough, and the trip home always came too soon. In between was the stuff of dreams that built up all winter and spring, coiled in her, waiting to unwind at Jud’s glorious camp.

East Hampton’s affinity for the beach guaranteed that time spent at the camp would be the hub of spokes leading to exotic places — exotic to a 2-year-old even though nearby. Maidstone Park, Main Beach, Sammy’s Beach, the Montauk Lighthouse: These were adventurous playgrounds to delight any child.

Jud docked his beloved Jersey boat, the Kema, at the head of the harbor, ready to take his anxious great-niece and great-nephew picnicking and fishing in nearby Gardiner’s Bay. The memories of those fishing trips and the mystery of what she would pull up on her handline, or Jud teasing her with a freshly shucked oyster on the end of his penknife, still bring smiles. She shuddered and swallowed but never got used to the slippery oysters, Jud joking, “These get $3 apiece in the city.” 

For Carol, the beaches were indeed places of enchantment, and they stimulated a developing imagination. Places of constant change and mystery, especially at low tide, when nature’s debris revealed so many treasures. All kinds of scallop, clam, and other shells, sand dollars, star and jellyfish, and those funny little hermit crabs tickled heart and mind. The salty, musky smell of a receding tide only enhanced the visual memory. 

But for Carol, the camp was thevery special place. From her small upstairs bedroom, she could see the Texaco sign down harbor, and she would be lulled to sleep by the soft sounds of lapping waves, the salty smell of the bare rafters and studs of her room, and the muffled voices of the adults downstairs on the screened porch.

She loved that porch, with its swings and views of sunsets and boats returning to moor each night. It was a gathering place for her family almost every evening after dinner. From there, steep steps down to the shoreline invited her to explore, and just offshore, Jud’s houseboat, Sunshine, was the subject of many fascinating stories from before her time.

Abundant bird life added character to the atmosphere, seagulls, loons, ducks, and songbirds exhibiting their own differing behaviors. Sandpipers were real fun — one, two, a handful, or a crowd, they amused. And when the crowd took flight the ballet began. All a source of enjoyment and fascination for a young mind.

Her mother recorded more photographic memories of Carol with her friend Nancy Parsons at Maidstone and Main Beach. Later years included Rick, her younger brother, building on images she would keep forever. Each season added to the wondrous mosaic of memories from that special place. 

But what her mother captured in that 1946 photo was the essence. “The Wind!” caught her enthralled daughter’s arms outstretched, embracing the magical world of the sea with every ounce of her being. A place where a little girl could let her mind wander with the breeze at her back, once again captured . . . by the wind!

You can go back, and she still does.

Steve Rideout and his wife, Carol Stanley Rideout, live in Hampden, Me. They regularly visit East Hampton to research family history.

Something must be done to address the problem of guns and suicide. About half of the nation’s suicides — a distressingly high number of around 23,000 yearly — are accomplished with firearms. And it is well known that when a society reduces its access to lethal means, such as guns (or even pesticides, as was done in Sri Lanka), the rate of suicides drops sharply. It is no wonder that the suicide rate in the United States has been climbing in recent years, from 11 per 100,000 to 13 per 100,000, with the help of guns that are all too easily available.

I tend to take a long-range view of the firearms regulation issue. I’m reminded of the image of the 1960s Marlboro Man, perched confidently in his pickup truck, smoking his Marlboro cigarette, with his rifle at the ready on a rack behind the passenger cabin, reflecting an image of autonomy and freedom that Madison Avenue so carefully cultivated. Who would have thought that over the last 60 or 70 years, thanks to various public health interventions, smoking rates in this country would have declined from half the population to the less than 15 percent it is today. Big Tobacco, has, for the most part, been tamed, though smaller-scale battles still remain with unregulated e-cigarette distribution. 

The automobile industry also has been tamed by various public health interventions and new laws, going back to requiring seat belt use, to the adaptation of new and expensive emission control mechanisms, to the many other new rules adopted to promote better automotive safety. Thanks to these, yearly highway death rates have drastically fallen as a percentage of total mileage driven, and most large U.S. cities now have reasonably good quality air, compared to 40 or 50 years ago.

The one industry that has evaded practically any federal regulation is guns. Manufacturers have carefully manipulated all public discussions of gun control to encourage more Americans to buy more guns, and we now have almost as many guns as there are people in this country — millions of people buying military weapons annually, slipshod and inconsistent record keeping of gun sales, and an inadequate system for denying guns to people with documented histories of mental illnesses and violence. 

It is no wonder that America has a rate of mass slayings that is 20 times higher than any other country; no wonder it has much higher gun homicide and gun suicide rates than any other country. Evidence shows that states that apply more stringent gun control laws, like Connecticut, New York, and California, do reduce all types of gun-related fatalities. The Australians have demonstrated that government buyback programs actually work. 

I can envision a time, probably not within my lifetime, when all guns will be registered, just as automobiles are, when better mental health and previous violent history record keeping keeps guns out of the hands of unstable individuals, and when military weapons like the AR-15 cannot be purchased by ordinary civilians. It will be a long, uphill climb to implement some of the reforms that are so obviously needed, given the resolute opportunism of gun makers. But citizens like us must mobilize to oppose politicians standing in the way of gun reform. We must enact more gun safety practices and more sensible gun ownership policies to advance public health. 

Fortunately for us, New York has become a haven for gun safety. But talk to your friends and relatives living in Sunbelt states like Florida and Arizona, where some of the worst gun violence incidents have occurred, where some of the more dangerous gun policies are still found (like easy access to purchasing firearms and few regulations for their safe storage, such as keeping them locked up and unloaded). It is no surprise that these states have gun suicide rates practically double New York’s. Tell them to advocate more gun safety. 

We must begin to tame this last unregulated industry, gun making, which, like any other industry, must be socially responsible.

William Feigelman is emeritus professor of sociology at Nassau Community College. He lives in Springs.

What do Steve Martin, Pete Seeger, and Béla Fleck have in common? They could fire up audiences with their banjos. 

What is there about a banjo that invites such popular enthusiasm, musical intimacy, and political engagement? And how does politics — the art of the possible — come out of a banjo?

The banjo is a four, five, or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head, which is typically circular. The membrane is typically made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally but rarely used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in America, adapted from African instruments of similar design. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, Irish traditional, and country music. And social causes.

Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in African-American traditional music before becoming popular in the minstrel shows of the 19th century. The banjo, with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music. It is also frequently used in traditional jazz.

The banjo arrived in America in the 18th century with African slaves, but whites co-opted it for their own purposes. Slaves may have used the instrument for expressing discontent, but banjos eventually became popular among whites — like Steve, Pete, and Béla.

Béla Fleck, a 16-time Grammy Award-winning banjoist, traveled to the African continent to study the instrument’s history and to collaborate with native musicians. Sascha Paladino, a filmmaker, joined Fleck for his journey, and “Throw Down Your Heart” is their memorable documentary film. It follows the banjo virtuoso as he travels through Gambia, Mali, Tanzania, and Uganda — meeting with historians and musicologists and making music with artists from all walks of life, ranging from world music stars like Bassekou Kouyate and Oumou Sangare to ordinary people who share the love and joy of making music. As a result, Fleck invited these contemporary African professionals as freedom-loving music makers to America to perform together. 

The film’s title refers to the slaves’ feelings of fear, dread, and impending tragedy when they were captured by slavers, and then saw the prison-like ships that would end their freedom and begin their bondage. Their last act before becoming slaves was to get rid of their feelings and “discard” their hearts.

“In making our movie,” Sascha Paladino said, “we learned that slaves on plantations were not allowed to play drums, because they could communicate with slaves on other plantations, but they were allowed to play their homemade versions of banjos, since these were considered harmless. We also learned that slave traders were likely to capture musicians first, because they realized that if a musician was on the slave ship, they would keep spirits up, which would lead to a lower mortality rate on the ship’s long journey. The history of the banjo in the United States is inextricably linked to our history of slavery.”

For many aspiring pickers coming of age in the 1950s and ’60s, Pete Seeger was the banjo, largely thanks to his remarkable banjo book. “How to Play the 5-String Banjo” is the banjo picker’s bible that launched a thousand fingers . . . and many banjo careers. He wrote the book to earn a living because he was blacklisted in the U.S. after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Seeger died in 2014 at age 94. He was a powerful musical and social presence who transformed music into political protest in the 1950s. His song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” became an antiwar standard, and “We Shall Overcome,” adapted from an old spiritual, became a civil rights anthem. Pete’s words and banjo politics are simple: “Which side are you on, boys? / Which side are you on? / Which side are you on, boys? / Which side are you on?” (Where is he now that we need him?)

A banjo is a unique crossbreed, both a social and a musical instrument. Steve Martin once described what he loved about the banjo: “When you first hear it, it strikes many people as, ‘What’s that?’ There’s something very compelling about it. . . . That’s the way I was. . . . I’d like to think it’s because we’re Americans, the banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.”

Martin’s homage to the banjo, and a valentine to 20th-century small-town Americana, is his tuneful, folksy bluegrass musical “Bright Star.” His banjo became a social character on the Broadway stage, expressing a comfort-food commentary on its folkloric role in the lives of its characters and, by extension, us.

The banjo has an honorable and glorious tradition of offering us vivid musical and social affirmations. 

Because the banjo is not an orchestral instrument, it is considered an outcast. So when Béla Fleck composed his first concerto for banjo and orchestra, he called it “The Imposter.” Commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, it’s dedicated to the late great Earl Scruggs. Fleck also made a documentary film called “How to Write a Banjo Concerto.” Thanks to major U.S. orchestras, and thanks to Béla Fleck, three concertos for orchestra and banjo now flourish in international concert halls. 

Songs that address our treatment of migrants, unfair practices toward coal miners, and other current social causes can be heard on a new album, “Echo in the Valley,” performed by Béla and his charismatic wife, Abigail Washburn, herself a virtuoso banjoist.

So how does a kid from the Upper West Side of Manhattan end up as a banjo superstar? Composing banjo concertos? Performing Scarlatti on the banjo? Playing cool bluegrass, hot jazz, and jazz fusion on the banjo? Concertizing with Dave Matthews, Chick Corea, Joshua Bell? And having his own group, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, which recently packed Seiji Ozawa Hall at the Tanglewood Music Festival to overflow crowds and standing ovations?

While watching “The Beverly Hillbillies” as a young boy, the bluegrass sounds of Flatt and Scruggs flowed out of his TV set and became imprinted in his brain. “The banjo spoke to me . . . like sparks going off in my head.”

In 1973, when he entered New York City’s High School of Music and Art, his grandfather Mike Rosen gave him a small banjo, purchased for a few dollars at a yard sale. 

Clearly, I’m a big fan. And how do I know so much about him? (Hint: Mike Rosen was my father.) Full disclosure: I’m Béla Fleck’s uncle.

Béla Fleck will give a solo concert at Guild Hall on Sunday at 8 p.m. Stephen Rosen, a regular contributor to The Star who lives part time in East Hampton, will speak at the East Hampton Library on Aug. 31 at 5 p.m. on “Albert Einstein: Rock Star.”

On Saturday evening Bruce Willis and a troupe of noted actors will fly into town to celebrate at Guild Hall the writings and life of Brian Doyle.

Just another summer celebrity event in the Hamptons, you might think. We are awash in celebrities. But Brian Doyle was not a celebrity, and only a few people have had the good fortune to know his work. I myself have never met him in person or talked to him.

Even so, to my mind, Doyle is one of the great but unknown authors of recent times. I first encountered him 10 years ago via a piece submitted to the annual small press anthology I edit, “The Pushcart Prize.” It was a nomination from The American Scholar titled “Joyas Voladoras,” and is a rumination on hearts: the heart of the hummingbird, the blue whale, we humans. It is a brief work of art that will change your life. Here’s a sample:

“Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser . . . each one visits a thousand flowers a day. . . . The biggest heart in the world is inside the blue whale. It weighs more than seven tons. It’s as big as a room. . . . So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. . . . We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart.”

Brian would go on to win three more Pushcart Prizes for his brief essays and memoirs from journals like Oregon Humanities, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. His essay “The Wonder of the Look on Her Face,” a marvelous pondering on the nature of writing, is included in next year’s Pushcart Prize.

We lost Brian Doyle last year from a brain tumor. He was 60, with years of stories and poems left. 

But who was he?

For starters, he was the editor of Portland Magazine, a literary journal at the University of Portland in Oregon. The review’s circulation was minimal, and yet over the years he attracted and published the work of writers like Ian Frazier, Mary Gordon, Barry Lopez, William Stafford, and Edward Hoagland.

Much of his own writing was published by small presses like Orbis Books, Franciscan Media, and Sorin Books. His novels include “Mink River” and “The Plover,” and there are many collections of essays, poems, and stories.

His writing is like nothing else I have read, and — from Cynthia Ozick to Pico Iyer — I am not alone in my unwavering admiration for him.

Here he is again in a meditation titled “Cool Things”: 

“I sing a song of things that make us grin and bow, that just for an instant let us see sometimes the web and weave of merciful, the endless possible, the incomprehensible inexhaustible inexplicable yes. . . .”

In his last book, “Eight Whopping Lies,” just published by Franciscan Media, Brian’s dad, Jim, provides a eulogy for his son: “In his essays and poems, in his person, we learned his passion for God’s creation — us marvelous human beings and the other creatures of our world — denizens of the woods, waters, and skies. He was surely one of America’s best storytellers . . . showing God’s love for us.”

I couldn’t have said it better. Brian Doyle’s work deserves to be read, to be heard, to be praised, and thanks to Bruce Willis and company, and especially to Cedering Fox — the indomitable producer and spirit behind WordTheatre (and daughter of the late acclaimed poet Siv Cedering of Sagaponack) — he will be celebrated here on Saturday night.

His books are available from all independent bookstores. And read him you must. May I suggest you start with his short essay collection “A Book of Uncommon Prayer.” It will blow your socks off (if you are wearing socks this summer), as Brian might have said.

Rest in peace, my friend Brian whom I never met. I feel I can talk to you now. Your spirit pervades the universe.

Bill Henderson publishes the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His memoir “All My Dogs” is now out in paperback. He lives in Springs.