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.

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.”

I’m going to tell you a story of survival. And I’m going to ask you to put new ideas and images in your mind about what it means to love someone. And about what we are teaching the children in our lives about romance and relationships.

My survival story does not involve a plane crash or a shark attack or being kidnapped in South America, although those are all fascinating, revealing survival stories. Instead I found my life threatened by the last person on earth you would think to be a danger — my husband, a man I thought loved me, a man I actually knew loved me, a man I was sure was my soul mate here on earth.

Abusive love can ensnare anyone, man or woman. Abuse can be lethal — over 500 men kill their girlfriends, wives, or former partners in this country every year. Anyone can be a victim and anyone can be an abuser. Data show they come from every race, religion, income or education level, and that abuse occurs in every community, including privileged beach homes along the Atlantic Ocean. 

Behind closed doors, it’s always worse than you imagine. It’s also far more common: One in three women will be abused in their lifetimes, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 15 million children are abused every year. That means that in your school, your neighborhood, your church or synagogue, shopping at Citarella, getting a coffee at Starbucks, or lying on the beach, you pass by victims and abusers, every single day.

As you think about my story, imagine this: How would you react in the same situation? If you found yourself, once it was too late, inside a psychological trap disguised as love? Would you choose yourself — or the person you thought you loved more than life itself? 

I met Conor on the New York City subway when I was 22. I’d just graduated from Harvard and had my first job as an editor at Seventeen magazine. At first, I thought Conor was perfect for me. Smart, handsome, funny, self-deprecating, loving. He told me I was the prettiest girl he’d ever dated, and he loved that I was smart and dedicated to helping teenage girls navigate adolescence. He told me I’d be a great writer one day. Even more poignantly, he said I’d be a great mother, which, trust me, the other 20-something men I was dating in Manhattan did not tell me. 

He’d had a hard life, overcoming terrible child abuse, but he’d managed to find his way to an Ivy League college and a job on Wall Street. We fell in love and made plans to get married. It all happened very quickly.

Then he choked me five days before our wedding. I thought it was jitters, cold feet, the kind of nerves people say all men experience when making a commitment. Then Conor began buying guns. He held them, loaded with hollow-point bullets, to my head at night during our fights. He threw food at me, pulled the key out of the car ignition as I drove down the highway, pushed me down the stairs of our house. I lied to everyone about what he did to me. If you had confronted me, I would have told you I wasn’t a battered wife. I was a strong, smart woman in love with a troubled man. This abuse lasted for four years, until one dark night when I faced that choice — me or the man I loved.

The only reason I am here today is that I chose me. Conor is gone from my life; it’s been over 25 years since I’ve seen him, and he lives in another country now. I’m still here. I remarried, had three children, and created a violence-free life. But I wouldn’t be here without the people who work at the South Fork’s domestic violence agency, the Retreat, and people like you, reading this article right now, who want to help victims of abuse break the cycle and rebuild our lives. 

Like the two police officers who came after the final sadistic beating, and who calmly told me they’d find me dead on my own living room floor if I gave Conor another chance. The locksmith who canceled his other appointments to change my locks. The Legal Aid advocate who helped me in family court. The savvy lawyer who convinced me to pay Conor a lump sum to get divorced, because then Conor would be convinced he’d beaten me forever. The therapist who told me none of this was my fault. My mother, who hated Conor when what I felt was far more complicated than hate. 

Thank you all, for helping me and so many others break the vicious cycle of abuse.

Leslie Morgan Steiner, the author of “Crazy Love,” a memoir, lives in Washington, D.C., and East Hampton. She will tell her story at All Against Abuse, the Retreat’s annual fund-raiser at the Muses in Southampton on June 9 from 6:30 to 11 p.m.

Like so many homeowners in Montauk, under the seductive spell of commerce (a.k.a. making a buck), I had designs to rent my one-bedroom condo last summer. Perched on a high hill overlooking the hamlet and the Atlantic Ocean, with great views out all windows, this baby would move, and I wanted in on the seemingly booming online rental game that others were exploiting.

My asking price was $15,000, Memorial Day to Labor Day — granted, an outrageously inflated price for 650 square feet, compared to 15 years ago when Montauk was a working-class family destination and $100-a-night rooms were the norm for the summer. If you’re not going the route of a legitimate agent, there are three main venues: Airbnb, HomeAway, and a little thing called Facebook. God forbid Amazon delves into real estate.

I was intrigued by the raving success other owners were apparently having on Airbnb and HomeAway. Many were fetching close to 70 grand for a modest ranch house on cinder blocks (Montauk is not known for its architecture). I’ve liked the online platforms ever since they humbled the high-end hotels in the cities. Remember how a single glance at one of the those hotel telephones ended in $95 on your bill, and a soda from the mini fridge cost more than a gram of coke?

I was aware that the online platforms had obstacles, and I had heard the horror stories, renters partying and charging admission, for example, subdividing rooms with Sheetrock or plywood then subletting to other tenants. Places basically being destroyed. I knew that Montauk was now a party destination, and my condo board would throw me out if I tried to cater to rabble-rousers. It was also a family spot where nice people worked, and therefore I did not want to disrupt the tranquillity with coked-up stockbrokers. For this reason the Town of East Hampton was cracking down on temporary rentals. I could be fined. 

I started with Facebook. In the beginning, I had strict criteria for potential candidates: Must be over 30 (no college kids), nonsmokers, married, loads of references, and good credit. Golfer types, people who occasionally indulged in a couple of glasses of wine at the Harvest as opposed to partying at the Surf Lodge. Oh, and no chefs. (I had read Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential.”) They are absolute animals. 

But as the summer drew closer, maybe because of the flood of inventory, I hadn’t secured a single deposit or landed so much as a prospect, so I relaxed my criteria: “First person with $12K gets it! No background check necessary! No one denied!” I was like a 40-year-old ex-model on Match.com. I was willing to settle and couldn’t have cared less if they roasted a pig in the hallway. I wanted the money.

I posted pictures of my condo with some attractive copy — “Happy sun-drenched apartment,” “Bike to the beach” — hoping to find someone old, stable, and rich. 

Ah, the enigma that is Facebook: One part wholesome sharing of news and pictures, one part entertaining videos, a big part sticking it in everyone’s face. I always feel somewhat deflated after viewing it. No one wants to see a picture of a happy family skiing in Vail over the holidays — no one except maybe the people in the picture — or how their daughter landed a gold medal in fencing at Yale, while you’re struggling to get your daughter into her third rehab. Personally, I like the sad posts, the worse the story the better, like seeing a guy in a cast or after a terrible operation, hashtag “rough road ahead.” 

Despite my 2,000 friends, only a woman named Anna bit on my Facebook offer. We had been friends in Manhattan 25 years ago, and she was, by my recollection, a very kind person who once let me stay at her house for no charge for a few weeks. Through no fault of her own, Anna had fallen on hard times. She had some health issue, lupus or something, so she did not work and had apparently left the real world and become a Facebook person. She walked among us, but she was not one of us, since her world consisted of briefly stimulating but ultimately unfulfilling and boring cybercommunication and attempts to get her friends involved in playing Candy Crush Saga.

Then I saw her comment under my rental ad: “Hey, Jeff, if you don’t rent, my husband, Michael, and I would love to come out for a weekend. Love you! We will pay you, of course!” 

I responded affirmatively — bear in mind this was February, so I could afford to make all the empty gestures I wanted. “Of course you can come!”

A month went by, and I would post again: “Looking to rent luxury apartment in MTK.” No response. Although Anna would comment cheekily, “We’re coming in June, Jeff, don’t worry.”

It was March, so of course I wrote, “Can’t wait!”

Time passed. May arrived. I posted again. Anna could clearly see that I had not rented the place, so they traveled overnight from southern Jersey to avoid the Hamptons traffic. I made plans to take the husband fishing the next day.

Condos in Montauk can get tight in June, and there are rules: parking passes, signing in at the facilities and pool, and so on. There is an understanding that in tight quarters or in a shared space guests try to stay as inconspicuous and courteous as possible. Have a blast but no drama, please.

Enter Anna at 5 a.m. with her stick-in-the-mud husband. 

Anna did not drink. I was to find out later, however, that she was on high doses of antidepressants and Kpin (a valium cocktail). Nonetheless, Anna appeared to be drunk. Her husband and I left for the boat, and Anna somehow instantly got into an altercation with the pleasant security guard over being asked for proof that she was a guest, ripping him a new one, going by the complaint report, and bellowing my name to anyone who would listen, I’m sure.

To top it off, while I was out fishing with her painfully quiet husband, Anna apparently got into several other confrontations: at the pool, on the shuttle to the beach, with the housekeepers. For each of these I got a call from the manager, a lovely woman with a sense of humor, thank God.

Now for the sake of the story and candor, I’ll tell you an embarrassing tidbit: I’m 51 years old and my mom had helped buy me the condo. The office still had her phone number, so at 6 p.m., during a dinner out with my guests, I checked my messages and found one from her: The office had called about the commotion and would I try to be careful with the people I brought to the place and was I drinking again?

I was indignant. “My mother just called. What the hell went on today at the condo?” 

Using Airbnb and HomeAway, finally, in late June, I started to get bites online. 

I got a call from a Boston banker. His family has had a beach house here for years. He sounded like an old WASP, which seemed good. He told me that he would use my place only for family “spillover.” Over the course of the conversations, subtle at first, I became aware that this man had one agenda: to find a place for his 18 and 19-year-old daughters to stay for the summer. He explained that they were hard-working girls, with 4.0 averages, who would be waitressing at the Surf Lodge and were there to work, not party. 

Now, the guy may have been right, but I don’t have such an expansive imagination. I know what I was like at 18 and simply could not take the chance of a bunch of teenagers having a keg party in my small condo.

It was a tough spot. There was no easy out. I told him that the condo board would not let me rent to people under 25, and he countered that that was discrimination. I absorbed some nasty texts and moved on.

Both Airbnb and HomeAway are specific and demanding and make you really kiss their butts. If you’re not getting good reviews, they threaten to drop your ranking so you get less exposure to prospective renters, or if you’re booking they threaten to totally drop you and do. Hypersensitive, they will accuse you of cutting them out. 

Therefore, everyone who has a property on these platforms has his head in his cellphone the entire summer, desperately trying to meet the criteria and get his property placed ahead of the formidable competition. Answering the smallest inquiries from prospective renters consumes all your time. I once took a friend fishing and half the time she was on the phone, screaming at “agents” as to why her listing was down at the height of the season.

Here is what I know: 

If you’re not computer literate, you’re not going to have an effective listing. Pictures have to be cropped and edited before uploading, etc.

Expect to be lowballed. But that’s not the worst part. If you don’t know how to modify your price, you get browbeaten by management and your ranking drops considerably.

If you receive one bad report, your offering will be buried. They will always take the renter’s side, in my experience, and you will get a 1099.

God forbid you double book, you will be banished. 

To make a long story short, from my personal experience with these online rental sites and Facebook, I would suggest going with traditional real estate agents, who have all but given up on the rental market. 

Jeff Nichols’s book “Trainwreck: My Life as an Idiot” was made into the movie “American Loser,” released by Lionsgate.

Thank you. Not sure you hear those two words enough, at least not in English, so I repeat: Thank you. (In Russian, spasiba.) 

Thank you for testing the elasticity of our democracy. Thank you for illuminating the loopholes in our Constitution. Thank you for pulling out of the Paris Accord, the Iran Deal, Puerto Rico, and Stormy Daniels. And thank you for getting someone to read this letter to you.

Thank you for showing the world our unfathomable empathy for ruthless despots like Putin and Duterte and Erdogan. America will take no marching orders from foo-foo, first-world, fact-based nations. Nyet spasiba! We have God and Mike Pence on our side. (BTW, when the V.P. has his annual checkup, does he see a medical man or a clergyman?) 

On a personal note, I want to thank you for strengthening the bonds of one nuclear family. My two sons, after leaving home, rarely consulted their parents on political matters (or any other matter for that matter); no questions about which candidates to support or what bicycles to buy. Doggedly independent, they knew their way around this American life, all issues great and small. And fended for themselves.

Then The Election. The first call came in around 9 p.m. Shock and awe. The next trembled with fear and loathing. Your victory was as stunning to them as to you, and provided as electrifying a jolt to this family as to yours, which is to say it was anxiety-provoking, sleep-depriving, and damned discombobulating. My sovereign sons started calling home regularly to discuss kompromat and emoluments and golden showers (which are not necessarily related, but could be by the time Mueller is finished).

Their calls usually ended with the question heard round the world: How the hell did this happen? 

Any answers beyond the obvious were beyond me. I pointed to Nate Silver and Carlos Danger and 100 million voters who didn’t vote. And then to Hillary herself: What other mistress of a mighty political machine could lose to a young progressive black man in 2008 and then to an old reactionary white man in 2016? That voice, that baggage, that entitlement. Oy. The best I could muster was “We’ll get through this, boys — the family that panics together takes Xanax together.” My wife had a refillable script and Medicare Part D. Slava bogu. (Thank God.)

My wife, by the way, is the fourth cousin nine times removed of George Washington. Yes, that George Washington, the president who could not tell a lie. Truth is, although my sons, like this nation, were born in Philadelphia, after The Election, they felt like strangers in a strange land, immigrants in their own country, and sought some small sanctuary in the timorous bosom of family.

Phones continued ringing at all hours, depending on the crudeness and mendacity of your tweets. Calls were followed by emails, texts, and links. So many links. To international trade wars and local gun shows and upcoming events in cities (Charlottesville) and states (Wisconsin) we never took much interest in. Thank you for the re-education. Your Apprentice Presidency enrolled us in a virtual university to study everything from the F.B.I. chain of command to D.I.Y. plans for building walls too tall and bridges too far. We now know India has more Muslims than Iran and Iraq combined. We grasp the subtleties of being a target of a federal investigation as opposed to the subject of one. 

A theatrical thank you for Anthony Scaramucci, who apparently wandered in from a commedia dell’arte performance of “The Iceman Cometh.” One could easily imagine Hope Hicks’s saloon filled with drunken dreamers named The Mooch, Sebastian Gorka, Chris Christie, Reince Priebus, Rex (The Till) Tillerson, General Flynn, and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hanging on the every word of garrulous Comey, the tall teller of tall and devastating tales.

Thank you for reinvigorating the Masochistic Mainstream Media (3M). The more you spank them, the more obsequious their reportage. The more obsequious, the more they delight in delivering lamentations about the crumbling republic and venturing predictions about everything they deemed unpredictable in the previous segment. From the moment you glided down the escalator and stepped on Mexicans, 3M has trained their cameras on you. They became your 24-hour PR machine. They elevated your 140 characters to Monroe Doctrine status. They repeated your every gaffe ad infinitum. They fixated on the length of your hair, your ties, your fingers, your Pinocchio nose. They helped get you elected once and they are doubling down as they luxuriate in your Pornographic Presidency. 

3M broadcasts begin with “Breaking News” and five heads pop onto the screen and the moderator asks an interminable question to prove he or she has done his or her homework and the viewers are left with questions of their own: How did all these print journalists get so primped and camera-ready? When do all these investigative reporters actually do their investigating? Who buys a Washington Post when they are spoon-fed the big scoop the night before? 

Thank you, Mr. President, for not relying on 3M newspapers for your morning briefings, but opting instead to watch “Fox and Friends” whilst scarfing down an Egg McMuffin. Or two. With ketchup. We understand your obsession with Fox: Mika Brzezinski is just too much after getting so few Zs. If C-Span is cheerless, Rachel Maddow is the gravedigger of journalism — she buries the lead so deep that Lawrence O’Donnell has to disinter it an hour later. Only Steve Schmidt manages to be enraged and eloquent at the same time. 

As for the so-called late-night comedians, we, like you, Mr. Potus, find them to be unfunny pedestrian vaudevillians. You have taken us to a higher form of humor, darker and more sophisticated, more Gogol than Gervais, more Nabokov than Louis C.K. You bring Russian komediya into our political culture when you name an E.P.A. chief who considers clean water and clean air as dirty jokes, when you appoint federal judges who have never spent a day in a court, when you send your wife to campaign against cyberbullies even as you censure your own citizens and institutions as “sad,” “weak,” “stupid,” “failed,” and “moronic.” Not sure about the swamp, but you have definitely drained all the laughter from the nation’s capital, if not the nation. Spasiba, Kloun vo Glave (Clown in Chief).

When our family gathered at Easter, the conversation naturally rolled around to The Egg Man in the Oval Office. Rather than giving you short shrift, we embraced the whole of your humanity and sang along with John Lennon: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” We took a hard look at ourselves in the mirror and tried to face our own racism, avarice, homophobia, pettiness, hubris, lust, vulgarity, insecurity, myopia, xenophobia, sadism, perfidy, dishonesty, misogyny, superiority, and vindictiveness. 

Narcissism was a stumper: Can narcissism be addressed by looking in the mirror?

One last thank you, Mr. Prezident, this one from my wife, who says you had a hand in goosing, galvanizing, and energizing women all over the world. Spasiba. Between your beauty contests and trailer confessions and revolving wives and (hardly) hushed-up affairs and leering at your daughter, well, you have helped turn a hashtag into a crusade. In this tapsalteerie world, you have done more for women than Hillary; she is always preaching to the choir — you have given voice to the muted and the meek, the muffled masses yearning to breathe free.

My wife thanks you. My sons thank you. My country? As you like to say, “We’ll see about that.”

Sincere spasiba,

Bruce Buschel

Citizen

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

Paul’s acceptance letters to his choice colleges, Baruch and Stony Brook, arrived soon after Christmas, and with them, the dilemma of which one to choose. After much family brainstorming, endless bickering, countess YouTube videos, and microanalysis of each, the choice became more clouded, until I blurted out, “Flip a coin.”

Stony Brook, a smorgasbord of music, medicine, and sports, won, and a new dilemma surfaced: Paul’s major, a decision molded by his 18 years of life.

Michael Clark, who owned Crossroads Music on North Main Street in East Hampton, a 1960s-style mom-and-pop store straight out of an “Andy Griffith Show” episode, often hosted family-friendly, community-happy, staged concerts in the Springs Presbyterian Church for local bands to show off their talents, much like comedy’s Catch a Rising Star, but sans the hecklers. It was a jovial gala that charged $5 per person and always filled the sanctuary’s adjoining meeting room with what appeared to be the entire community, especially when I nearly knocked over Tony Soprano’s sister (Aida Turturro) leaning for a cup of cider — an exciting and welcoming gathering I miss today. 

Since Michael knew I shot and edited videos, he asked me to produce a polished video for airing on the cable access channel, but instead of collecting cash, I offered to trade my services for an instrument in his store that I could take home to my kids. Soon, every room in my house was littered with six guitars, a violin, a flute, a trumpet, and a set of bongos Ricky Ricardo might have owned. (The Steinway wouldn’t fit in my Civic.)

With instruments everywhere, it was only a matter of time before Paul, 7 at the time, would claim one as his own: a New York Pro folk guitar. A month later, he played the entire middle break and ending lick to “Whole Lotta Love.” Two months later, when Paul had an electric guitar, his sister, Elizabeth, bought him a tiny but loud Pignose amp, and, well, I’m trying to forget those sleepless nights. 

Fourth grade at the Springs School brought a new challenge: which instrument to play for band.

“Trumpet,” Paul quickly filled in on the application, an instrument not needing an amp, but, amazingly, he continued with it for the East Hampton High School band and jazz band, competing in the renowned NYSMA, SCMEA, and HMEA contests, leading to his Tuesday concerts with the Sag Harbor Community Band, playing summers in front of the American Legion and hundreds of visitors.

The other Saturday, he played trumpet in Stony Brook’s marching band for the spring football scrimmage in LaValle Stadium.

Music, it appears, is Paul’s love.

When Paul entered high school, his love shot another arrow: science.

“I love science,” he once said. “I think I could become a doctor,” he would often say, with family members beaming at holiday events: “My cousin Paul the doctor.”

Standard science classes morphed into A.P. science classes, and his TV viewing switched from “Family Feud” and “Cash Cab” to science-related shows on Discovery, A&E, and Bravo. Getting test scores in the high 90s became a regular occurrence.

“Ya know, Dad,” Elizabeth would often say, “Paul should be a doctor, he can do it.”

Science, it appears, is Paul’s love.

Baseball was a game Paul slowly grew into. His older brother, Anthony, was a star pitcher back in our Levittown North baseball league, his sister played on the East Hampton J.V. softball team, easily hitting home plate from deep centerfield on one bounce, and we made regular jaunts to Long Island Ducks games with seats next to their dugout, so baseball was not foreign to him. 

Reluctantly, 10-year-old Paul would accompany his sister and me to Maidstone Park to shag flies, but he always shied away from her hard, deliberate throws, often leaving the field in tears from the rockets she would hurl his way.

As Paul developed physically, so did his self-esteem, playing for the East Hampton Little League, mostly in the outfield, until one day when the team needed a pitcher, he hopped on the mound, and over the next seven years he hasn’t moved from that position, pitching for the high school team. (I built a pitcher’s mound in our backyard, with backstop and home plate, where he pitched every night; my left palm has the hairline fracture to prove it.) 

I found his pitching prowess impressive, so last year I took him to the U.C.L.A. Bruins’ baseball showcase in West Los Angeles, where he pitched at their Jackie Robinson Stadium and had a great showing, with the coach asking him to return to their next workout, but before that, Stony Brook sent its acceptance letter, and he started working out with the baseball team there, leading, we hope, to his becoming a hurler for the Seawolves.

Playing the opening lick of “Sweet Child of Mine” and knowing the difference between H2O and H2O2 impresses me less than Paul’s gift for hitting a 17-inch white slab of rubber 60 feet away, especially when that gift is a commodity, much like gold, silver, or eggs. While his decision between music and medicine could be a coin toss away, my hope is his field of study focuses on the mound, with emphasis on a much different major: M.L.B.

Baseball, it appears, is my love.

Frank Vespe is a regular “Guestwords” contributor. He lives in Springs.

A half-century ago, my life was transformed by the untimely and tragic deaths of four men: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Thomas Merton, and Joseph R. Williams. King, 39, and Kennedy, 42, assassinated. Merton, 53, a Trappist monk, electrical accident. Williams, my father, 40, a nuclear veteran exposed to ionizing radiation while in Nevada during the Korean War, acute leukemia. Today, I realize how much their lives shaped me. I now understand, too, how vulnerable I was after they died.

A year later, at 13 years old, innocence vanished. I was raped by a male teacher. A year after that, I was sexually molested by a Roman Catholic priest, and this clerical abuse continued throughout my high school years. There is no statute of limitations on interior pain. One’s core is forever scarred. You simply never forget nor free yourself completely from the darkness of shame. 

Human sexuality is simply staggeringly complex, and the violation of a person, especially a child, must be paramount to any discussion of sustaining the presence and substance of healing. I know. It takes decades to utter anything about the experience, and some are never able to. That women are coming forward now, across so many industries and walks of life, is so right. I applaud their courage. Voice does bring down power. 

When I first heard Pope Francis’s comments this past January during his visit to Chile, I was astonished and perplexed. I had come to embrace with gratitude the hope this papacy raised across the world, particularly with respect to victims of sexual abuse in and out of the pews. The bishop of Rome just seemed out of character when pressed to comment on Bishop Juan Barros of Chile, a man widely known for protecting a notorious Chilean pedophile priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima. 

Victims like me questioned why Francis seemed to be protecting Barros, denying any knowledge that his fellow Latin bishop was part of a cover-up, becoming defensive, saying that no one had come forward, even proclaiming calumny in broadly describing Chilean abuse claims.

Right after the pope’s visit to Chile, and then Peru, I wrote Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, archbishop of Boston and head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, who came out strongly defending the survivors in Chile, an exceedingly rare display of a prelate bucking his boss, the successor to St. Peter. 

Encouraged, I penned, “As you so rightly implied, survivors must never feel exiled; the abused seek the hope found in the cross, the joy that comes from being able to embrace and live the gospel. But, going forward, I trust you agree wholeheartedly, our beloved church must continue to discern both deeply and strongly and, when appropriate, take action with those found complicit in any way.” 

After much pressure from the press and many inside the church, including Cardinal O’Malley, I’m sure, coupled with, I presume, significant prayer and reflection, Francis sent a delegation to Chile led by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, known for his unabashed investigation skills. Scicluna got right to it, taking testimony of 64 people involved, including one prominent victim, Juan Carlos Cruz, who never wavered from shining a light on a horrid past.

His courage was palpable. If the essence of the church meant being a field hospital, reaching the margins, loving the poor in spirit — as Francis had told his flock — then there was the promise of compassion, understanding, and justice, finally, with the investigators’ findings. 

The pontiff, in response, acknowledging his own weakness, invited Chilean victims to meet with him in Rome and with welcomed humility wrote, “As far as my role, I acknowledge, and ask you to convey faithfully, that I have made grave errors in assessment and perception of the situation, especially as a result of lack of information that was truthful and balanced.” 

The wounds of the abused bled truth. At 81, Pope Francis, able to change, sent a piercing message of mercy to survivors not only in Chile but throughout heaven and earth. As Dr. King said, “The time is always right to do what’s right.” 

After spending much time with Mr. Cruz and two other Chilean survivors in his private residence, Pope Francis convened a session in Rome with the bishops from Chile, and all 34 offered their resignations, an unprecedented sign of omission for those in positions of power within the church. 

As a survivor, this feels like a watershed moment. For prelates to admit sin is freeing. As Mr. Cruz put it, “the mass resignation was an enormous victory for survivors of abuse all over the world.” The bishop of Rome, I can only imagine, was profoundly pained when telling these complicit bishops how the systemic failures within the Chilean church had left him “perplexed and ashamed.”

In my mind, he was speaking to me as a survivor as well as to the entire church. If the Holy Father can change, then the church can and must change, perhaps forever, from this Chilean experience. 

As I thought further about this hopeful historical moment regarding the clerical abuse scandal, I recalled what Pope Francis had expressed when he addressed Congress in the House chamber in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24, 2015, citing the example of four courageous Americans who truly changed history: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. He told the assembled: “They shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people.” 

Merton’s words, especially, which are etched on my father’s tombstone, speak to the journey of all humankind: “Our world without storms and our lives without agony would give us nothing to grow on. Make us glad for stormy weather.”

Mark Joseph Williams, who grew up in East Hampton, is a forensic social worker and management consultant. He lives in Far Hills, N.J., and is at work on a memoir.

When I was a little girl in the 1920s, I wasn’t interested in politics or even who was president. (Unless, later, it was Roosevelt, who my parents told me was a good president.)

Then, when I was in middle school, I began to have nightmares about Hitler, hearing about his message of violence and hate that was spreading throughout Europe — how powerful and contagious it was, how successful the spread of Fascism was in reducing whole populations to submitting to the rule of evil. Eventually we supported and then entered into World War II — to save us, but not just us, to save the world from Fascism, to save the world for democracy. 

We all took part. Immediately after college, I joined the Red Cross (at 20, the youngest ever accepted), my brother joined the Navy, friends joined the Navy, or the Office of War Information, the Army, the Air Force. Some never came back; some came back burned, crippled, permanently diminished. The shock, the immediacy of what war, hate, violence did to relatives, friends, neighbors, never left me.

Voting, of course, was an obligation — an imperative and exciting one. But only for a president. I was uninterested in politics. I more or less felt as I had as a child, that everything trickled down from the decisions a good leader would make; everything followed from voting for a good president. During my young adulthood, all I did politically was vote every four years for someone who I thought would be the one who respected the democratic process, was learned, articulate in promoting (my) good values, who was a strong and (if possible) charismatic leader. Oh, would that it was that simple.

As the years wore on, the pendulum swung back and forth between what I considered to be a president with good values (I was always a registered Democrat) and the ones who systematically dismantled (or tried to) some good programs, appointments, and subsequently laws. I became discouraged. I still disliked politics, still voted only in presidential elections, sometimes for a senator, and rarely for a representative. 

Until that wonderful day when I was an octogenarian and Obama emerged as a candidate to become the very good president. The excitement was such that it took me to Florida, to Pennsylvania, to Massachusetts to campaign. This had to happen for me — for all of us — for the whole world. I had to act, we all did, to make it happen. And it did.

There followed eight years when I was in my 80s, filled with hope and pride for our country, for the people who had elected Obama, for his presidency. But at the same time there were increasing concerns for the whole world, the complications of climate change, health care for all, and so forth. How much could the United States, even with a very good president, do about it?

Now, well into my 90s, I realize that we are again in great danger, the same kind of danger that Fascism had posed when I was a teenager. Reverberations from the rhetoric and promotion of exclusion and white supremacy, hate and violence symbolic of Germany and Italy in the ’30s, are bubbling up here and now. I am frightened enough to feel that I have to be more involved, to act — again. But how? 

I realize today it no longer means merely voting for a president every four years. It means voting at every level, locally for the school board, for the First Congressional District candidate who might replace the incumbent, for a New York senator, for anyone and everyone who represents true democratic values that mean well-being for all, in any election at any time.

Others who agree about our precarious times have stepped up to run for office and are now candidates trying to replace incumbents who do not represent our values. We now have five reasonable candidates vying for the Democratic nomination to run against Lee Zeldin in November. We are at the pivotal moment when we must choose one of them. But which one?

I’ve been wrestling with this question since the first panel I attended back in January at the Stony Brook Southampton campus. All six answered questions on the main issues, and one has since dropped out. I found two to be reasonable candidates, but how to pick one to back? I went to meet-and-greet parties, I read everything I could about them in the newspapers and in position papers sent out by the campaigns, talked to candidates or their representatives, talked to people I respected about the process of deciding whom to choose.

Should I choose the one who seems to have had the most experience as a legislator, or the one who is most appealing personally? Should I weigh the money each has raised to pay for a strong campaign, or pick based on which is best at delivering her or his message? Should I pick according to what my friends say? Should I pick the one who might be most capable of beating Zeldin (according to the “experts”)? Or should I pick the one who shares my particular values?

Deciding, or even figuring out how to decide, isn’t easy. A knowledgeable friend who has been part of the local political scene for many years said to me, “It doesn’t matter. They all pretty much say the same thing — not the same as what they will do in office. So just tell me whom you would like me to vote for and I’ll do it.” Not comforting. 

So I am still thinking and trying to become better informed on the candidates’ past performances, to gauge where idealism and pragmatism meet for each of them, and to figure out how much ego is involved for each of them in winning. 

What I really would love to see is the five candidates sitting down together, this week or next, to decide that at least three of them would withdraw, so that each vote can go to only one of two candidates, since many say that a larger number of votes for a single challenger in a primary makes it more possible to unseat an incumbent.

Who am I going to vote for on June 26? How am I going to decide? I’m still thinking. What about you? 

Tinka Topping founded the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton in the late 1960s and is one of the founders of the Hayground School. She lives in Sagaponack.

The circus has left town. And won’t be back until 2026. You missed a doozy. No elephants and only one Tiger (briefly), but lots of clowns and cops and barkers and ushers and walking billboards with names like Justin Thomas and Zach Johnson and Justin Rose and Dustin Johnson.

There were protesters too. While the pros were teeing off, the Shinnecock Nation was pretty teed off too. They were marching and carrying signs. Unlike the insiders, however, they never complained about wind or rain or slope of the earth. The Shinnecocks are accustomed to the natural elements and receive them all as gifts from the Creator.

The golf course logo is a different matter. It’s insulting — it’s a cartoon Indian with a big hook nose wearing a war bonnet festooned with an arrow and a putter. Like a kindergarten coloring book circa 1955. So the tribe requested a redesign or a flat-out removal. They got neither. Shinnecocks don’t have much luck when negotiating with the white man, not here, there, or anywhere. 

Sand traps and bad lies.

On Monday last week, in an 11th-hour compromise, the Shinnecocks were given permission by the U.S.G.A. to lease parking spaces on their own reservation during the tournament. Shuttle buses would collect and deposit golf fans. The tribe would collect $100,000 — if they were lucky. The winner of the U.S. Open got $2 million. The losers shared another $10 million. (Phil Mickelson also lost his priceless cool on Hole 13 on Day 3.) The U.S.G.A. got $93 million from Fox TV to televise golf this year; most of it for the Circus in Southampton.

Some tribal members wanted to make a big deal out of the bigger deal: Who owns the golf course land? Millions becomes billions. The Shinnecocks say the answer is right there in the name: Shinnecock Hills. Near Shinnecock Bay and Shinnecock Park and the Shinnecock Canal.

Rebecca Genia, whose Shinnecock roots go back hundreds of generations and thousands of years, says that every story she heard while growing up began with the same hopeful and baleful sentiment: “When we get our hills back. . . .” That’s what she cares about, reclaiming the land. Ms. Genia was on Old Montauk Highway, near the smoke shops, protesting the Open, in rain and sunshine, all week, and will continue dissenting all year and beyond. Ms. Genia can envision hundreds of far-flung native people marching on Shinnecock Hills as they did at Standing Rock to derail the Dakota pipeline. 

“This week was the wrong time for such a protest. Not during the Open — that would be too confrontational and might bring ugliness. We are a peaceful people. We are warriors, don’t get me wrong, but we are not trying to provoke any violence. The Open is too big to mess with. We’ll pick a better time.”

About 600 Shinnecocks live on the 800-acre reservation. The tribe is reluctant to reveal details; they never know how governments local, state, and federal will use specific names and numbers. You call it paranoia; they call it historical trauma. After you get the short end of the stick long enough, you keep your counsel. 

The U.S.G.A. would have preferred not a single Shinnecock take to the streets, so as part of the payoff, or compromise, they promised a modest training facility to be constructed on the rez, one mile south of the golf course. Make no mistake: The Shinnecocks love golf. Two members of the Shinnecock Nation competed in the second U.S. Open, the first at Shinnecock Hills, in 1896. “Like chocolate is to the natives of Hershey, Pennsylvania,” says Sports Illustrated, “so is Shinnecock Hills Golf Club to members of the Shinnecock tribe.” 

No matter what any white man has written down on yellowed parchment or yellow legal pad, the Shinnecocks have a covenant with Shinnecock Hills and that covenant was ordained in places higher than the State Legislature and goes beyond money and media and treaties.

Treaties? 

1703 — The Shinnecocks sell 3,200 acres to the colonists for $2,500 (or $67,500 in current currency) but retain a 1,000-year lease. Such a decision demands forethought and unity. 

1859 — A document is presented to the New York State Legislature that shows the Shinnecock Tribe has agreed to sell off parcels of that sacred leased land to some powerful businessmen. The tribe calls the document preposterous — they would never sell out their ancestors, and never undermine their own 1,000-year compact. The document has 20 Shinnecock signatures. Of those 20 names, 10 are not Indians and the other 10 are dead Indians. 

Par for the course. There is a railroad coming through and a golf course to be constructed and mansions to be built.

1890 — Shinnecock Indians, getting good pay as day laborers, help build (and protect the integrity of) the Shinnecock Hills Golf Course.

1892 — Willie Dunn, the redoubtable designer, says the land where Shinnecock Hills is built is “dotted with Indian burial mounds.” The tribe says ancestors were disinterred and moved to various sites. 

1894 — The Shinnecock Hills Golf Course opens. It is instantly one of the great links courses in America, if not the world. The clubhouse is designed by Stanford White (no irony intended). 

1896 — Because two young men from the reservation, Oscar Bunn and John Shippen, compete in the second U.S. Open, the other golfers threaten a boycott. The powers that be stand strong. The Open at Shinnecock Hills happens. John Shippen finishes fifth. And for the next 90 years, Shinnecock Indians maintain Shinnecock Hills. 

1931 — A revamped course is created by the noted William Flynn. George T. Smith is the greenskeeper. Smith is a Shinnecock. The course flourishes.

1954 — Elmer Smith, son of George T. Smith, is named the first full-time superintendent at Shinnecock Hills. The New York Times will report: “Smith is a legendary figure, famous for his grass-growing genius, his probity, his decency, his way of treating everyone, caddies and members, with the same respect.”

1980 — Elmer passes away. His son, Peter Smith, is named superintendent at Shinnecock Hills. Peter had worked with his father before earning degrees at Rutgers and Dartmouth. Two other Smiths, Charles and James, also help maintain the course. 

1986 — Peter Smith prepares the course for the return of the U.S. Open after a 90-year lacuna. It goes without a hitch.

1995 — Peter Smith again prepares the course for another U.S. Open. No hitches. The Shinnecocks use their powwow grounds for parking, as they had in 1986 and 1995. They earn an estimated $100,000.

1999 — Peter Smith is demoted without stated cause. Crestfallen, he decides to manage a course in Rhode Island. Sixteen of the 20 Shinnecock grounds crew go with him. Shinnecock Hills will never be the same. Tournaments in the future will be criticized and condemned. No one calls this the Curse of the Shinnecocks. Someone should. 

2004 — The U.S. Open is declared a disaster. An embarrassment for the U.S.G.A. and a frustration for the players. The seventh hole, in particular, is too hard and too dry and plays like a trampoline. 

2005 — The Shinnecock Nation petitions New York State to return the 3,200 acres of Southampton that are adjacent to the Shinnecock Reservation. The motion is denied by the New York State Supreme Court. Laches is the basis of the decision. Laches means too much water under the bridge. It means life as it is known would be turned upside down if the land were returned to its rightful owners. Laches. Tough luck. Sextuple bogey.

2013 — Another treaty. This one does not involve the Shinnecocks directly. The U.S.G.A. sells the rights to televise the U.S. Open to Fox TV for $1.1 billion over a 12-year span, $93 million per year. 

2017 — The U.S.G.A. passes over the Shinnecocks and sanctions farmers’ fields for parking, and Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach and the Hampton Classic Horse Show grounds in Bridgehampton. The U.S.G.A. says it wants to clean up traffic congestion and move parking areas away from the course itself. They also mention vandalism. The tribe finds out about losing their slim piece of the Open pie by reading local newspapers. 

Lance Gumbs, the chairman of the Shinnecock trustees, describes it as “a slap in the face. You couldn’t pick up the phone?” Gumbs also thinks the U.S.G.A.’s decision is political. “It happens at a time when we’ve come out of the box and are trying to make ourselves economically self-sufficient. It’s a little too coincidental.”

2018 — Monday, June 11. Three days before the Open opens, facing bad publicity and demonstrations, the U.S.G.A. caves and promises to build a golf facility on the reservation — driving bays, putting greens, and a short-game area — and to allow the Shinnecocks to reap some parking revenues. 

Was it too little too late? Is it all too little too late? The players weighed in on Twitter: “designed by Bozo . . . pure carnage . . . greens are Disney on Ice . . . zero entertainment value . . . make us look like fools . . . I needed 6 mulligans today . . . they ravaged a beautiful golf course.” And from S.I.’s Dan Jenkins: “The forecast for Shinnecock tomorrow looks improved: Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death.”

Many Shinnecocks do not appreciate being called Native Americans. They were here long before America was discovered by Leif Erikson, by Christopher Columbus, and by Amerigo Vespucci. First Nation would be more accurate. Indigenous people would suffice. Even Indian is preferable to Native American.

The Shinnecocks take no glee in the public disasters that have befallen Shinnecock Hills since the tribe was excommunicated, since the indigenous people were removed as caretakers of their own land.

No one talks about karma. And no one talks about the Curse of Shinnecock Hills.

Someone should.

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

On May 10, I had the good fortune to join a large Brooklyn living room filled with people in one of several celebrations around the country for the 35th anniversary of an organization that I, along with a group of women from different social and political movements and backgrounds, founded in 1983. I directed the organization, MADRE, for its first five years. In response to the women of Nicaragua’s plea — Please tell your president [Ronald W. Reagan] to stop killing our children — we created the group in partnership with women across borders, in countries adversely affected by U.S. policy, in support of their self-determination and as an exchange of skills and understanding. 

In 1994 my husband, young daughters, and I moved back to the East End of Long Island, where my husband and I had both lived as children and where my mother still lived and lives. Today MADRE works in partnership with grassroots women’s groups in support of women facing war and disaster in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East to meet urgent needs and create lasting change.

The MADRE celebration on May 10 reminded me that it is possible to make a social organism that can sustain, stay relevant, and offer meaningful contributions over time through agility and perseverance, serious critique and reflection, and some good fortune, among other elements. It reminded me that amid the daily horrors inflicted by the current U.S. administration and all the old horrors that are structural, ongoing, and showing up drastically now, each day groups of people of all ages, colors, sizes, gender identifications, geographies, languages, and skills resist brutalities, denial of rights, denial of histories, and denial of meaning, while building different ways of being, toward wholeness, cherishing beauty. It reminded me to trust what I know about love, about welcoming, mutuality, the imagination, and about the risk of starting something. 

The biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber writes in his book “Matter & Desire”: “My conviction is that being alive in an empathetic way is always a practice of love. And only by relearning to understand our existence as a practice of love will we grasp anew the overwhelming ecological and human dilemma that we face in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century and find the means to deal with them differently than we have thus far.”

I celebrated MADRE this year with my younger daughter, who is a teacher, one of my graduate students who has directed cultural institutions in her South American country, and a number of people who were just joining the group. Those new to MADRE expressed relief and gratitude at finding a way to connect with a community working for something that matters urgently to them. They talked to me about the loneliness of not being part of an engaged community in such a scary time. I was reminded that often people want to be part of making change but, at the same time, between jobs, home, and getting by, may not know where to turn or how to participate. 

As I think about our lives today and talk with people at home on the East End regarding the vicious policies of rounding up new residents and separating families, I recall the powerful sanctuary movement led by people of faith, with which we allied ourselves in those early MADRE days. 

I remind my students at N.Y.U. in the department of art and public policy that sanctuary is not a new concept, but a living legacy, that it is not rigid or literal, but a commitment, a tool — practical, physical, and also spiritual and emotional, resonating back to slavery. To declare sanctuary means standing with, standing up for, welcoming, caring for. It means recognition of the rights of any human being to live with relative safety and to be protected from cruelty, injustice, and great danger by a symbolic support, and when possible by physical shield. 

I keep wondering how anyone today can look at the Statue of Liberty, that woman in the water, and think it’s actually okay to haul off people who pose no danger, from their jobs and their homes, to tear apart families, interrupt lives, to forever traumatize small children. What is this activity reminiscent of? What images jump into the mind? 

I think of my great-grandparents arriving, Jews from Eastern Europe, fleeing a pogrom, not knowing where they would land, or how. And building lives. 

I think of the auction block. The Trail of Tears. Internment camps. Checkpoints. The unspeakable.

Must be spoken. 

There are different ways to address the further decimation in this country of what’s been named democracy or freedom. Some of us have long asked: Freedom for whom? Off the backs of whom? (I certainly have long enjoyed my unearned privilege of freedom.) Some will work for sanctuary, some will march, take part in a vigil, sit in, some will accompany neighbors to court, some will litigate, some will build homes, some will create policy, some will share music and poetry, some will petition, some will share food, some will translate words and testimonies, some will invent new ways of intervening . . . all. . . .

On the East End, the group OLA (Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island) valiantly leads the work in support of the rights of those most vulnerable while celebrating Latino culture. A group called Herstory Writers Workshop beautifully leads sessions for those most immediately affected by current dangers to write their stories. I believe it is essential for those of us who are not Latino or not identified with a group immediately at risk due to our national or ethnic origin to stand with our neighbors in a long tradition of solidarity and community. No business as usual. We are witnessing the disappearing of humans. We are witnessing the wrenching of children from their parents’ arms, thrown into cages or wrapped in Mylar. We are witnessing the most horrific denial of basic human rights and decency. 

When a society blatantly attacks children, it cannot be considered a civil society. Never could.

I am writing these words while in Florence, Italy, participating in an international poetry festival. On the way to one of our readings, my friend and I stopped for a brief moment to stand with those gathered at the start of a protest in support of opening borders, against the stark rejection of people in boats, in water, fleeing brutality. This was one of numerous demonstrations throughout Italy on this day. 

All over the world great numbers of people are and have been insisting on welcome and mutuality.

I believe we must weave ourselves together in a human chain around the world to stand in the way of the ejection and rejection of those needing sanctuary, needing home. To insist on the opening of borders. It is imperative that we recognize and act on our connectedness, our responsibility to one another as human beings in a time of historic worldwide turmoil and uprooting. These great waves of turning away cannot continue. If we don’t interrupt this course we will become a species of turnaways, void of our very substance, void of relationships, loveless, having rejected who we are by rejecting with whom we are connected, including nonhuman animals and plants, all life — the rejected and rejecters bound together in negation. 

A local group has come together, initially convened by the Rev. Kimberly Johnson of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork, Minerva Perez, the director of OLA, and Ella Engel-Snow, a housing advocate and poet, and joined by a fast-growing list of individuals and groups including Christ Episcopal Church, Racial Justice East End, Progressive East End Reformers, Canio’s Cultural Cafe, Temple Adas Israel, the Children’s Museum of the East End, Solidarity Sundays, the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons, the Hamptons Lutheran Parish, and others. The Walk for Interdependence: Keep Families Together / Caminata por la Interdependencia: Mantengan Nuestras Familias Juntas will gather this July Fourth at 11 a.m. at the windmill in Sag Harbor to show who we are as community members, to stand for interdependence and welcome.

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, wrote this:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

Let us join, speak out, and stand up for one another, so there is always someone to speak for any of us.

For more information on the Day of Interdependence, Ella Engel Snow can be emailed at [email protected]. Please join your neighbors on this July Fourth on the East End to stand on the just side of history.

Kathy Engel lives in Sagaponack.