Have you ever wondered what’s in that bottle of detergent or softener you pour into your washing machine, or on that fragrant dryer sheet you throw into your dryer? Well, it’s time you did, because the truth about your laundry products might make you change your laundry routine forever.

Many of the common laundry detergents, softeners, and dryer sheets that sit on our supermarket shelves, like Procter & Gamble’s popular original Tide, and fragrance-free Tide Free and Gentle, contain high levels of 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogenic pollutant. Lesser amounts of the same contaminant were detected in Bounce, both original and Free and Gentle. It’s no wonder that this carcinogenic contaminant has been found in 39 Long Island water districts, many of them in the Town of East Hampton. It’s a shame and a disgrace that Procter & Gamble has consciously chosen not to reformulate these toxic products that people use every day. 

Neither New York State nor the federal Environmental Protection Agency regulates dioxane in drinking water. According to Citizens Campaign for the Environment, “Once this chemical flows down your drain, it travels into our groundwater through our septic tanks and cesspools,” before flowing “outward into our surface waters or downward into our aquifers, which are the sole source of Long Island’s drinking water. Removing it is a difficult problem once it hits the groundwater and soil.” 

Not only is this toxic chemical found in laundry detergents and soaps, it’s also found in shampoos and body washes. Citizens Campaign for the Environment reports that “approximately 46 percent of personal care products, including detergents, dishwashing soaps, shampoos, cosmetics, deodorants, and body lotions, contain 1,4-dioxane.” In addition, dryer sheets, a common part of many people’s laundry routine, are laden with a multitude of toxic ingredients.

Why would you expose your skin to such dangerous contaminants? If you look on the box of those dryer sheets, you’ll discover that none of the toxic ingredients are listed. Why not, you ask? Well, the current U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t require it.

Dr. Anne Steinemann, an expert on pollutants and human health at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has studied the chemicals that discharge from people’s dryer vents into the air and then into our lungs and found that “there are seven dangerous air contaminants and 25 volatile organic compounds that are emitted into the air from fabric softeners and dryer sheets, such as acetaldehyde and benzene. These contaminants are not safe at any level; they are the same pollutants that are emitted from the tailpipes of automobiles. Acetaldehyde is a common ingredient used in fake fragrance blends. It’s potentially carcinogenic to humans and adversely impacts the kidneys and nervous and respiratory systems.” 

Just take a bike ride or a walk through any neighborhood in East Hampton and you can smell these noxious chemicals being blown out of your neighbors’ dryer vents.

In 2016, Dr. Steinemann conducted a study that found that “12.5 percent of people blamed scented laundry products spewing from dryer vents for health issues. These included migraines, respiratory issues, skin issues, asthma attacks, and gastrointestinal symptoms.” The scary thing is that Procter & Gamble, the company responsible for most of these products, touts them as being “ideal for newborns and babies.” 

What can you do? Stop buying these contaminated products. Each of us as individuals, working together as a community of concerned citizens, can make a difference. All you need to do is say no to the use of these products and purchase eco-friendly detergents instead. There are several companies, such as Seventh Generation, that have come out with healthy but effective cleaning and laundry products.

In addition, the not-for-profit organization Earthjustice recently asked residents of New York to contact Gov. Andrew Cuomo because “he promised to make protecting the public and the environment from chemical contamination a top priority.” For your health, and the health of the environment, “tell Governor Cuomo to require disclosure of all cleaning product ingredients — not just those products the manufacturers add intentionally.” 

We should be holding the governor to his promise. Let him know who you are, where you live, and that you’d like transparency for everything that’s being put into cleaning products, shampoos, and body washes that are being sold in New York State.

Remember, it’s never too late to take a stand for your health and for the health of our environment. 

Helene Forst is a teacher, environmental activist, and the author of two young-adult novels, “The Journey of Hannah Woods” and “Stoked — 1969.” She lives in East Hampton.

In 1997, when I lived in New Jersey, I read about the state’s proposal to hold black bear hunts. I was becoming very concerned about the well-being of nonhuman animals, and I testified against the proposal at public hearings. After the hunts began, in 2003, I participated in protests every year and was arrested several times for civil disobedience. Typically, I stepped outside an area designated for protesters. 

For a while my arrests resulted only in fines. Then, last year, I spent eight days in the Sussex County jail. This year I was sentenced to 15 days, beginning Jan. 2. I will describe my recent jail stay. Although it was shorter than that of most inmates, I hope my experience adds to people’s knowledge of what jail is like. 

I spent my first two days in medical lock-in. I was isolated in a locked cell until I received a medical exam and a more permanent placement. The cell door had a window, but it was so small that I could catch only occasional glimpses of other people. I was let out a few times — to see the doctor and nurses, make two phone calls (to my wife, Ellen), and take a shower. 

While returning to my cell on the first day, I saw a novel (“The Girl on the Train”) on top of a TV, and the corrections officer allowed me to take it into my cell. I had trouble reading because of the noise from the TV and because my cell was very cold, but the book helped me pass a few hours. I also tried to pass the time by sleeping, but the bed’s uncomfortable plastic mattress made this difficult. For many hours, I had nothing to do. The monotony was tough. 

After medical lock-in, I was assigned to the same cell but I now could leave it for extended periods. I could go into the small, common dayroom shared by two other inmates, O and R. 

Our unit was called the “overflow area.” It’s used when other units are full. It’s also used to separate some inmates from the general population. The jail staff wanted to make sure that I, a 74-year-old college professor, was safe. Staff members had placed O and R in our unit because they considered them to be too volatile and aggressive to mix with the numerous inmates of other units.

It seems odd to place two short-tempered inmates and me together, but one corrections officer told me that when there are just a few inmates in an area, they usually form friendships and relax.

O was discharged three days after I left medical lock-in. He was eager to tell me about his jail and prison experiences. I felt I was just beginning to know him. 

R was initially cool to me, even refusing to say hello. But after listening to O share personal experiences, R joined in. After that, R and I had many personal conversations.

R was recovering from a suicide attempt that followed his recent sentence. He believed the sentence was very unfair, and he fought with the corrections officers who tried to take him from the courthouse to the jail. An armored police squadron came in and subdued him. As R sat in his cell, he felt powerless; the entire criminal justice system seemed too much to cope with.

In addition, R’s marriage had recently broken up. Feeling helpless and without anything to live for, he tied bedsheets together and tried to hang himself. He passed out four times before a corrections officer found him. Blood was coming from his nose and mouth.

After his suicide attempt, R was taken to the psychiatric ward, given medications, and sent to the overflow area. To my surprise, he was upbeat and chatty with the officers he knew, but he hated one. He said the officer had insulted him just prior to his suicide attempt. 

One day this officer was assigned to monitor our area. Whenever he appeared, R hurled loud insults at him, to which the officer tried not to respond. 

The next morning a sergeant privately asked me if I felt safe with R, and if I wanted to be moved. I said I wanted to stay where I was. Later that morning, R told me the sergeant had asked him the same questions, and he also said he wanted to remain where he was. R speculated that the sergeant was worried about R’s feelings toward me because when inmates get angry at officers, they often redirect their anger toward inmates. R told me that this wouldn’t happen with me; he liked me.

The dayroom wasn’t as cold as my cell, but it was cold. We often wore blankets over our shoulders.

The officers and medical staff were friendly and tried to be helpful. The kitchen couldn’t accommodate my vegan diet and gave me some non-vegan items (like cheese), which I handed to O and R. They gave me some of their vegetables. 

During our conversations, O and R used so many prison expressions that they sometimes seemed to be speaking a foreign language. I frequently had to ask them to stop and translate. Here is an example of jail talk:

“He is in jail a long time because of his jacket [prior criminal record]. He’s upstairs with the jitterbugs [rowdy young adult inmates]. I didn’t like it there. A lot of them want to kick up [fight].”

O and R spent considerable time watching TV, especially shows about survival in Alaska and auctions. But they wished they had more to do. They envied inmates who had jail jobs like helping to deliver the meals. (I requested a job, but my sentence was too short.)

Inmates can receive books from the outside only if they are sent directly from the publisher. After medical lock-in, I had to wait two more days before I received three books my wife ordered. They were by Thoreau. After another two days, the jail’s book cart came around, and it had an old sociology book that I read from time to time.

An officer gave me a pen — a small, rubber pen that couldn’t be used for stabbing. I had no writing paper, but O and R gave me some of theirs. I mainly took notes on the Thoreau books, writing for 15 or 20-minute periods, until the TV noise and the cold got the better of me.

During my second week, I attended the hourlong recreation periods. Each day about 15 inmates exercised on the gym equipment, interspersed with walking. I only walked. Most of the men seemed to be in their 20s and 30s. They were full of high spirits, joking about gay behavior and talking about pro football. 

I had heard so many stories about jail abuse that I initially focused on my exercise and hoped I wouldn’t appear vulnerable. A couple of inmates recognized me from newspaper articles about a vigil the Bear Education and Resource Group held for me while I was in jail and an award I received from PETA. The inmates seemed happy about the articles. But when I said goodbye on the second recreation day, they seemed resentful. They barely mumbled goodbye.

That night, I thought about their reaction. It occurred to me that I had been acting like a young man who was focused on his image, whereas these inmates saw me as an elder and wanted some affirmation from me. I couldn’t think of a great way of doing this, but the next day I complimented one man on his numerous push-ups and another on his pull-ups. To my surprise, the entire mood in the recreation room changed. Everyone became friendly. When I said goodbye, they happily responded with expressions like “Peace, Bro.” 

I was given three days off for good behavior, shortening my stay from 15 to 12 days. One might guess that I felt happy as my stay came to a close, but I did not. Instead, I felt increasingly closed in and was troubled by irrational thoughts that I wouldn’t get out. 

Following my discharge I had upsetting dreams that I was still in jail. In one dream, I was forced to enter a small crawl space from which I might not return. After 10 days these dreams went away. 

Jail was difficult for me, but I believe it was worth it. I needed to make a statement about the terrible plight of the black bears. Since 2003, the state-promoted hunts have killed more than 4,000 bears, including cubs. New Jersey’s new governor, Phil Murphy, will place a moratorium on the hunts. It’s about time. 

Bill Crain is a professor of psychology at the City College of New York. He lives part time in Montauk.

You are walking out of a gourmet market with a chockablock shopping bag in either hand when an employee holds the door open and says, “Have a great day, young fella.”

You halt in your tracks. The tone is polite and the intention well meaning, but the millennial gent knows full well you are not a “young fella.” You are a 72-year-old fella who knows the definition of sarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt, and the definition of irony is stating the opposite of the truth for humor or emphasis. 

You wonder if you should say something to the nice lad. You might ask, “Had I been African-American, would you have said, ‘Have a great day, Caucasian dude’? Or had I been morbidly obese, would you have said, ‘Have a great day, Beanpole’?” Unlikely.

You say nothing. Anything would sound like “Get off my lawn!” Even though you have a song in your heart and a pretty good hop in your step, you fear you appear as little more than crow’s feet encroaching on a white unironic mustache perched above a smile. If anyone needed to augment “Have a great day,” couldn’t he have found visual targets other than your sags and wrinkles? 

You are wearing a gray overcoat with epaulets, ludicrously skinny blue jeans, white New Balance sneakers, and an old black Eagles cap. (That’s right: You are a Philadelphian and Philadelphians are a particularly sensitive lot, especially when unflattering words are hurled in their direction or snowballs whiz by their heads.) You would like to hear, “Have a great day and congratulations to the Eagles.” Or, “Have a great day, you tall and stylish gentleman.” You hear only a sophomoric wisecrack about being a generic senior citizen.

To the millennial at the door, you wish you had said: One knows when one is getting old, young friend; one is reminded often and dramatically, incessantly and subtly, and one need not be reminded when one is on a pleasant afternoon jaunt shopping for dinner with friends in blissful, if temporary, obliviousness to the passage of time and the nearness of death. 

You have a hankering to explain all this in complex detail, but you realize folks of fewer years prefer snappy lists to protracted essays, so you produce a baker’s dozen of the ways one knows one is getting long in the tooth.

1. You think readers know what a “baker’s dozen” is or what “long in the tooth” means.

2. You find yourself brushing your long teeth with warm water.

3. You talk to more doctors than bartenders any given week.

4. You watch “Jeopardy” (and excel with questions about the ’50s and ’60s).

5. You are offered a seat on the bus by a pregnant woman.

6. You do not know one musical group in the Billboard Top 10. (You do not know if there still exists a Billboard Top 10. Or if they still ascribe a bullet to an ascending song. You hope not.)

7. You own Apple products you don’t know how to use.

8. You notice glazed looks every time you mention Tony Curtis or Norman Mailer. 

9. You take a nap when you didn’t plan on taking a nap.

10. You meet someone and her first question is, “Are you retired?” 

11. You get a senior citizen discount at the movies without asking for one.

12. You hear “Sir” and look around for your Uncle Joe or Father Xavier.

Baker’s Bonus:

13. You are younger than Ringo and always will be.

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

In this newish century, who needs marriage? Eight of my closest friends are in four marriages, each of which has lasted more than half a century. Admitting that fact is designed to dispose of any suspicions that I don’t support conventional marriage — if that’s what you think you want.

All eight of my friends, however, were young at a time when, if you wanted to leave home, bed your girlfriend, and build a life of your own (not necessarily in that order), you simply had to get married. And so despite the pressures these four couples have faced over the years — the differing evolution of their personalities, their often nomadic lives, and, in some cases, their challenging children — they’ve been able to keep their unions intact. I honor and love them for their tolerance and strength of purpose.

But when people ask me if I’m married, I give the answer Jeff Goldblum uses in “Jurassic Park”: “Occasionally.” Because after two marriages and three score years and 10, I simply don’t see the point of visiting that institution again.

I’ll go further: I’d say it has nothing to do with the fact that I may one day need someone to ask me why I’ve put the car keys in the fridge — again. If I were in my 20s, “savage with health and armed to the teeth with time” (as Philip Roth had it), I would still question why I should get married when a sensible pre-partnership arrangement could take care of any financial or offspring fallout if things didn’t work out.

Recently, I heard the actress Goldie Hawn explain why she and her partner of 33 years, Kurt Russell, never felt the need to marry: “If you need to be bound to someone, then it’s important to be married,” she said. “If you are independent, then it’s important to not be married.” She went on to say that, had they been married, “I would have been long divorced.”

That’s a live-and-let-live response if you want to be branded as someone who needs to be bound to someone. Yet I can’t hear today’s millennials of either sex confessing to such neediness. But, hey, what do I know? Other than having a daughter who is solidly in that demographic and determinedly independent.

Here’s the strange thing: When I describe the kind of relationship I now have with my partner, every married couple I know (and even those simply contemplating marriage) says, “We should have that!”

So, what is “that”? 

She and I live within what I believe is now called an “apartnership.” We’ve both been married before, usually for some happy years, but the need for independence, for not being bound, as Goldie says, brought those marriages to an end.

I guess the core of any successful relationship is simply enjoying each other’s company. But who says you have to cohabit?

My partner and I don’t live together, but we’re lucky enough to live at the beach. Her house is two sand dunes away from mine. Broadly, we like similar movies, books, places, people, and political ideas. We enjoy reading, eating, drinking, and traveling together — and at the same pace. We love our separately created children and grandchildren; we see them independently and, on special occasions, blended. We never quarrel about money because our finances are separate; on joint ventures, we split costs evenly. We love being alone; we love being together. When one of us is away, we know there’s no need for regular updates because we respect that the other person should have that independent time, free of any obligation to “stay in touch.”

“That’s terrific,” you might say, “but you’re older, you don’t have young children.” 

Sure, it’s easier for child-free people to live this way, but couples who are separated or divorced still manage to raise children through shared households. Be honest: In a conventional marriage, you start as a man and a woman, then you become husband and wife, and, finally, most couples slope toward domestic oblivion when they squeeze into that androgynous onesie known as “Mum ’n’ Dad” or “Mom ’n’ Pop.”

In an apartnership, each partner has time to be independent, each has a chance to be a man or a woman for a few days of the week — instead of being stifled in those passion-killing “girl jobs and boy jobs” (as British Prime Minister Theresa May instructs us) every day of the week.

Many married couples have, of course, evolved into apartnerships. The passage of time, the departure of children, the care of aging parents, the claustrophobia of propinquity, or, sometimes, the need for one partner to be based elsewhere for financial reasons — all or any of these produce pragmatic reasons for being apart. After only a short period of adjustment, however, being in separate rooms often gives the marriage more room to breathe — a second wind, in fact.

Finally, those four marriages I told you about? The couple with, in my view, the richest, most balanced relationship suggest that it’s due to their jobs: She’s an academic; he’s an airline pilot.

Brian Clewly Johnson is the author of two recent memoirs, “A Cape Town Boy” and “A Roller Coaster Man.” He lives in Amagansett.

In August 2017, the mountain world witnessed an impressive manifestation of global warming. An entire mountainside in the Swiss Alps broke loose and crashed into the Bondasca valley. The mountain is called Piz Cengalo and is next to Piz Badile, both of fame among the world’s top rock climbers.

The crumbling of an entire mountainside is extraordinary. You might want to take a look at the live videos on YouTube, or Google “Cengalo rockslide.”

The massive landslide crashed through Val Bondasca and partially destroyed the village of Bondo, which lies at the bottom of this valley, near a major transit way from Milano to St. Moritz in the Engadin. I had visited Bondo in the summer of 2016. The highlight of my trip was a five-hour hike up Val Bondasca to the Sciora hut. That is the mountain hut where serious climbers prepare to climb Cengalo and the neighboring peaks. I stayed overnight with about 40 climbers. 

They set off on their climbs at 4 a.m., while I headed back down into the valley. I knew the area was considered a danger zone for rockslides, but I stayed on the marked pathways and avoided those trails that were marked chiuso (closed). In the wake of the recent rockslide of Aug. 23, there were eight hikers missing, later presumed dead. They, too, descended from the Sciora hut through Val Bondasca along the same path I had been on. Sections of this path are now covered with up to 40 meters of rocks.

In Bondo, television images showed a trail of destruction left by a river of mud and stone. Satellite images recorded the event, as did people in the Sciora hut and even climbers hanging from ropes on the neighboring mountain (Piz Badile). From Swiss authorities at Swissinfo.ch I learned that thawing permafrost and heavy rainfall have been responsible for several fatal landslides or rockslides in recent years.

Why should we care in the Hamptons? Here, the major dangers brought on by global warming are the increased severity and frequency of hurricanes, flooding, damage to infrastructure (and to expensive homes along the beach), and disappearing salt marshes, which represent the breeding grounds for fish and shellfish. Some ignoramuses in our country even doubt that global warming is occurring or that humans have a role in it. 

In the mountains there is no doubt. Glaciers that were once tourist attractions have all but disappeared. And famous mountains, like Eiger and Matterhorn, are now crumbling. There is concern that pillars supporting mountain telecabines (tourist installations) might be in danger, and they are being carefully monitored. Lack of snow, receding glaciers, and now the danger of rockslides are all threatening tourism in a major way.

Europeans cannot understand defiant American politicians who pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement. They cannot understand people like President Trump, or his cheerleading congressman, Lee Zeldin, when they appear to support banning science from the Environmental Protection Agency and banning the very words “climate change” within the Department of Energy’s climate office.

For mountain folks, the disasters are real and all too close to home.

David Posnett, M.D., is emeritus professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan. He lives in Springs.

I wonder if it would be socially acceptable to dump my family and invite myself to eat the holiday feast with the Johnsons, total strangers who live down the block — ’cause I don’t think I can take another year with my overzealous, politically inclined relatives. And I predict this year will be a doozy.

Besides, I hear the Johnsons are politically apathetic. So what if the cooking is bland? I can picture my surrogate relations now — they’ll have mellow yellow candles glowing in each window. Zen music will be coming from every orifice of their walls. Maybe all they’ll argue about over dinner is the wishbone. 

In our family, Uncle Frank, the family’s gourmet chef, hands out meticulously printed menus to each of the 20 dinner guests seated at the long table. His recipes are so confidential even the Secret Service can’t break the code. Except for the caucus . . . I mean carcass. That’s a given. “Kill bird, cook bird, eat bird,” says our gun-toting Uncle Sam, ready to stab the poor unpardoned thing with his fork. 

At the last gathering, I knew trouble was a brewing when some of the giggling teens started to draw renderings of elephants and donkeys on the backs of the cartes du jour. The alcohol and appetizers were the precursor for the mix of high-strung personalities and a melding of different generations, as stirred up as the food we were about to receive: corn bisque with red bell pepper and rosemary soup, Brussels sprouts with pecans, baked spiced butternut squash drizzled with pure maple syrup, ensalada verde, and, of course, the main course, crispy roasted applejack tarragon turkey with mushroom, bacon, and leek stuffing.

Ah, a family with such political appetites, including the I’m-gonna-save-the-world United Nations human rights attorney nephew; his brother, the liberal elitist New York Times journalist; the protesting but creative nieces and nephews in the music business; the high school sophomore who thought he could apply for his higher education at the Electoral College; the What-am-I-gonna-do-now? recent Ivy League college grad student; the pompous English professor, and the peace-making surfer dude who says, “You know, it doesn’t matter who’s in office, the cycle of political eras just goes up and down . . . you gotta ride ’em out like a wave, man . . . you gotta just ride ’em out.” And others, way too complex to describe in that run-on sentence. 

Aunt Mary, from Philly, is the one who always wears those crazy hats and counts every gram of fat out loud, and her sister-in-law, Flo, from L.A., eats only organic foods like African plant roots. I think last year she brought her own tree to the table. And, of course, I can’t forget the spinster, Cousin Zoey, the vegan, who lives on beans and garlic. There’s usually an empty chair next to hers. She goes into great detail about how she “cleanses the toxins from her body” the day after Thanksgiving.

The Floridian couple complained throughout the entire meal about how long the flight was, while others at the opposite end of the table boasted about their latest exotic trip to Egypt.

Yes. Thanksgiving. Our annual gathering. Very entertaining for any fly on the wall when everyone attempts to skirt the political issues at hand. I recall in the year 2000 (which seemed like such a futuristic date at the time) we turned into the Hatfields and the McCoys. A good old-fashioned food fight would have been more civilized between the staunch Republicans and the resilient Democrats. I remember wishing there were no utensils within anyone’s reach. 

The chitchat then seems so harmless now, arguing over the pimpled and absentee ballots, rather than the Russians and nuclear weapons we now face. Someone had suggested if the ballots were printed like bingo cards, they never would have counted wrong. 

But everyone was eating in between the discussions, except for the vegan, who started to cry. “I keep thinking of all those poor turkeys. Isn’t it bad enough they had to walk around their entire lives with those stupid red things hanging from their necks?” There was silence between gulping. “And what about animal rights?”

“Animal rights? What’s that?” Great Aunt Millie from Brooklyn asked innocently. She reminisced. “I remember the old days on Mulberry Street. We were sooo poor back then. There were stables across the street from where we lived, and whenever a horse died they would just put it out by the curb until someone would come and take it away. I once sat on a dead horse when I was little, eating my sandwich.” 

“I think I’m gonna be sick!” The vegan bolted from the table. Brussels sprouts rolled everywhere. Again, silence.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Uncle Tooty bit the ear off a dog?”

“Shut up!” someone blurted.

“At least we got off the subject of politics,” the host said pleasantly. 

Then the leftover hippie from the ’60s spoke up. “The last time I voted was in 1976 for Jimmy Carter.” Uh-oh. I knew that wouldn’t sit right with the rich bastard Cuban-cigar smokin’ uncle from the Gold Coast. The food was passed around abruptly. To say there was a lot of clattering is an understatement. 

The wide-eyed Why-is-the-sky-blue? little ones watched the adults as if it were a tennis match. One of the youngest asked, “What is a gravy boat, anyway?”

“I don’t know, but it sure is starting to thicken!” someone said. 

“Why are you all fighting?” little Bobby asked.

“We’re not fighting, Bobby. We’re having a discussion. A debate, if you will.”

“Enough!” the hippie from the ’60s yelled.

Then the main platter, the “head honcho,” was placed in front of us all — the Big Orange Bird — and we broke into roaring laughter. 

Outside the window I saw the American flag on the tall white pole, and I waved back, gratefully, whispering under my breath, “Good luck, America.”

Janet Lee Berg, the author of “Rembrandt’s Shadow,” a historical novel, has been a Star contributor for many years. She divides her time between Charleston, S.C., and East Moriches.

When I entered grad school at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1956, my graduate professor in American history asked if I had a thesis subject in mind. I said I didn’t yet have one, and he asked if I would take a project on. Then he explained what it was.

He was Howard K. Beale, who was one of several historians who had been asked by the team for the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka to do some research as background for the case. Did the 14th Amendment in its equal protection clause support integration in public schools? The resulting 1954 Supreme Court decision answered that question in the affirmative. Mr. Beale told me he felt he and his colleagues who had been asked to do background work were rushed to offer their opinions. He wanted a more thorough study of the question. Would I take it on? I said I would.

The result was my thesis, its title in language from the time, “The Intent of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment Concerning the Question of Separate Negro Schools.” 

I brought a personal interest to my research given my own background. I had graduated from Webster Groves High School in Webster Groves, Mo., in 1952. It was a white school separate from the black high school in town. I thought nothing of that at the time. Indeed, segregation can be so much a frame of mind, let alone the law, that I didn’t even know there was a black school in town. 

Or not until I was 16 and able to drive. On my own one day, I discovered the black community on the other side of a hill within our St. Louis suburb. Simultaneously I remember hearing the black maid in the home of one of my friends lament the pending destruction of her area of St. Louis to make way for what became one of the first housing projects in urban American planning. I sensed, listening to her, that something was wrong about that — that she would lose her home. 

When I went to DePauw University I intentionally chose to live in an independent fraternity with open membership. That democratic spirit appealed to me and meant that black male students could join the fraternity if they wished to. One of those who pledged the fraternity when I was pledge chairman was Vernon Jordan, who soon became involved in campus politics (and later in the civil rights movement and the Clinton administration). I was astonished to learn from another black student that he had to take a bus 40 miles into Indianapolis to get a haircut. No one in Greencastle, including a black barber, would cut hair for a black man.

Therefore, when I went to the University of Wisconsin and was offered an opportunity to examine the background of the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, I was interested personally as well as in the history. 

My focus was to get at the intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment with regard to the question of education. I wasn’t interested in what later became a related question, namely, does original intent determine what the courts should say now? 

I didn’t know how exhaustive the study would be. Probably no one under 40 today can appreciate what research in primary sources required in earlier decades. Primary sources were hard copies of books, newspapers, journals, and other written material. A student took notes by hand, writing these down on cards or by whatever means devised, then organizing the material to see what might come of it. Specifically to form a thesis. I spent days, weeks — years? — looking at congressional debates recorded in the Congressional Record, 1866 to 1875. Then into the archives of state legislatures in their debates leading to ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. And a look at newspaper editorials at the time, and policies of state and county boards of education where sources were available.

There were days when I would emerge from the stacks of the Wisconsin Historical Society and, feeling slightly dazed, wonder where my car was parked. And once I dated a letter to a friend with the year 1857. 

I came to appreciate the careful language of the 14th Amendment, specifically Section 1, and in context the three Civil War amendments in sequence, abolishing slavery, establishing a federal definition of citizenship with a guarantee of due process and equal rights, and the right to vote. Then, during Reconstruction under the leadership of the Radical Republicans, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, whose delineation of civil rights (excluding education because it was too contentious) was the most comprehensive definition of civil equality until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (The 1875 law was declared unconstitutional in 1883, a Reconstruction frame of mind having been abandoned after the election of 1876.) 

I won’t write a synopsis of my thesis here, except to say by way of conclusion that when the education of the newly freed slaves was discussed at the national and state levels, and in the press and within boards of education, opinion was divided. Not surprising. There were those, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts chief among them, who said equal protection required integration. There were definitely others who argued for segregation. On the ground among the states and in local jurisdictions, practice varied, and we know from other studies that strict Jim Crow segregation did not come into full play until the 1890s. It was the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 that laid out the separate but equal doctrine. 

Sidebar comment: It’s too easy to say the Civil War was fought over slavery, and it’s equally short to say the division was over the question of what constitutes a federal system of government. Each was tied into the other inextricably. 

It took a long time for me to have my thesis approved and my master’s degree granted in 1960. Howard Beale, my professor, kept admonishing me to dig deeper, which I did. He never rejected my draft chapters, but he never signed off on them either. It was always more, more, more, until the thesis eventually became 219 typed pages on my Smith Corona, including footnotes and bibliography. Among the sources examined were Beale’s own papers, which included notes and working papers by other historians who had worked on background for Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. 

In the years between 1956, when I began, and 1960, when the thesis was approved and the degree granted, I was drafted, in late 1957, and served as a conscientious objector in a hospital for two years before going to Princeton Theological Seminary in 1959. By that time, what to do about the thesis? 

I was persistent. Should I say by an act of God? No, I don’t believe that, but Beale died of a heart attack in December 1959. A committee at the history department at Wisconsin saw I had in fact concluded my studies and the thesis. A date was arranged for the spring when I met the committee for my oral examination. Though a bit nervous initially, I realized a few minutes into the exam that I knew more about the subject than the committee, and I sailed through. Degree granted.

I have always harbored the idea that I would like my thesis in print, simply because the question of segregation and integration in American life, including education, has remained current. And today it is of heightened interest and tension. 

Being a member of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop, I have kept abreast of the publishing world (a bit chaotic) and come to realize I could get the thesis printed myself. Therefore through CreateSpace, a division of Amazon, the thesis is now in print with the title “The Fourteenth Amendment in Its Intent for Education.” It is my hope to get the title into electronic and print bibliographies to be available as a reference.

In the meantime, because of my study of the 14th Amendment and its history, I am a passionate advocate for its federal definition of citizenship and guarantee of due process and equal rights. For whatever excesses might be stated, I nonetheless remain a student and advocate for advances made during Reconstruction. We didn’t fight the Civil War to have the whole thing turned back to the states. Then or now. 

Thus the voice of a Northern boy with family in Minnesota and Iowa, who came of age in the border state of Missouri. 

Robert Stuart is pastor emeritus of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. He lives in Springs.

Those of us who’ve been there know where the mind goes when the words “It’s cancer, I’m so sorry” become an indelible part of one’s story. I won’t even try to cover the possible reactions we experience, whether the news refers to us or to a loved one. But the shock passes and the acceptance slowly takes over, and the search for strength and solace begins.

For me, diagnosed with lymphoma eight years ago, the plan included bringing as much music into my life as possible. Music has always played a significant, if not always easy, role in my life. I decided then and there that what I needed at that difficult time was to sing. I joined Rising Voices, an informal singing group for patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan, where I was being treated.

In one of our many discussions, I shared these thoughts with Dr. Bill Di Scipio of Fighting Chance. I also shared what I had learned from research about music and healing. I described the benefits I was experiencing from singing with the group — as well as the insanity of traveling for three-plus hours each way to sing for an hour and a half! 

Bill’s quick response was “Then let’s start a chorus here on the East End,” and he immediately went to work, seeing if it could be arranged through Fighting Chance, while I went to work on a flier that said, “If singing makes you happy, join us in song.” And the Fighting Chance Chorus was born. 

After a brief recruitment campaign that involved posting fliers and placing announcements in the local newspapers, we held our first meeting in March of 2014 at Fighting Chance’s office in Sag Harbor and set about the business of finding the right music director — not an easy task. In the end we were blessed with Dominick Abbate, who at the time was choir director and organist for the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. The church became our home thanks to the generosity of Pastor Mark Phillips, and our first performance, in 2015, was a Christmas concert in which we got to blend our voices with the church’s vocal and bell choirs. We’ve performed with the Old Whalers group in subsequent holiday concerts as well.

The history of the Fighting Chance Chorus is dynamic. Members have sung and left and returned to sing again. We’ve sampled various rehearsal venues generously donated to us over time (the Basilica of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Southampton, Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, and Fighting Chance’s office, in addition to Old Whalers). We have been treated to variety in our musical direction and have built a repertoire that includes patriotic songs, doo-wop harmonies, songs for the seasons, and pop and old-time standards. We’ve sung at Fighting Chance fund-raisers like Swim Across America and at public events like Sag Harbor Community Band concerts and Fighting Chance holiday parties. Last month we opened for the King’s Chapel Gospel Choir in Southampton. 

We are now a core group of music lovers who bring our enthusiasm, commitment, and voices to our current home at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor each Tuesday from 6 to 7 p.m. (A big shout-out and thank-you to our new patron, the Rev. Karen Ann Campbell, who allows us to rehearse at the church.) 

With the help of Dominick Abbate, the talented, accomplished, dedicated music director (now with Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary), we continue to explore our musical capabilities. We are ever grateful for the opportunity supported by Fighting Chance to come together to share our love of music. 

The Fighting Chance Chorus represents much more than a singing group in fulfilling its mission as a resource for East Enders whose lives have been touched in some way by cancer. The opportunity to come together in song is a source not just of comfort but also of healing — the kind of complementary medicine shown by research to be a critical component of the road to wellness.

On a personal note, the chorus stands apart from other groups I’ve sung with. For one hour a week, we are not thinking or talking about illness, yet there is an unspoken message of shared experience and support because in one way or another, we’ve all been on the same difficult journey. We welcome you if such an opportunity speaks to you as well.

Jessica Fitzpatrick is the manager of the Fighting Chance Chorus, which will join the Old Whalers Church choir in a concert on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the church.

Like many of you, when I was growing up, all the outdoors was my playground. From the rocks left behind by long-ago glaciers to the mysterious seashells washed ashore on the beach, this dynamic environment of ours has always fascinated me. That fascination with nature turned into my pursuit of science. Physics led me to a world of problem solving; biology reaffirmed my reasons for trying harder to understand our world and to make it a better place. 

From 1996 until very recently when I applied to be a congressional candidate, I worked as a scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Now, although ever a scientist at heart, I am running to represent the diverse community of the First Congressional District to protect our jobs, create new ones, and especially to protect our Long Island environment — home to the most stunning seascapes in the country as well as to more than 7.5 million of us who look forward to keeping our beaches beautiful and our water clean and safe to drink.

For Long Islanders, water is our common ground. Regardless of the size of our paychecks, our politics, our ethnicity, or our religion, all of us benefit from our beaches, which attract tourists from all over the world. Our economy, particularly on the East End, centers on tourism, and Long Island has long been a coveted vacation destination. As locals, we get to enjoy the sand, the surf, and historical towns year round. So when our beaches become polluted, when the safety of our drinking water is at risk, we all face the same health and economic threats. Therefore, we should all be a part of the solution.

There have long been questions about the safety of our water. With the high rate of breast cancer on Long Island and throughout the country, for years there was much speculation that toxins in our water could be the culprit. To date, no conclusive link has been established. However, there have been studies to suggest that contaminants have made their way into our drinking water through irresponsible waste disposal. In those bygone days of Long Island manufacturing, some big employers, it is believed, were responsible for a toxic plume, posing a risk to the water supplies of Bethpage, South Farmingdale, and Massapequa. 

Closer to home, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has focused on East Hampton Airport as a possible inactive hazardous waste disposal site. And last month, the Suffolk County Water Authority sued 11 manufacturers for polluting our public water wells with harmful chemicals used in the production of firefighting foam, industrial greasers, detergents, and other household products.

Cleaning up these contaminants will cost many millions of dollars — something that could have been prevented. But if, as the plaintiffs have alleged, these companies out of either ignorance or arrogance allowed these chemicals to infiltrate our groundwater and present a threat to the health of Long Islanders, there perhaps need to be much clearer regulations and stiffer penalties for pollution. In law, ignorance is not a defense.

Fortunately, we live in New York, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has invested heavily in the preservation of our public water. In fact, he recently announced nearly $27 million in grants to support 13 essential Long Island drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects. But this kind of environmental protection is crucial throughout our government. Municipalities, local governments, and state governments cannot be expected to shoulder alone the expense or the complex scientific research required to investigate and clean up contaminants. Water pollution, air pollution, and, of course, the devastating effects of climate change require a national effort — it is a matter of our civil rights. We have the right to live on Long Island and in this country without getting sick.

Unfortunately, today we are seeing a near decimation of the one agency in the federal government charged with protecting our whole environment — the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead of making deep cuts in this agency (established in 1970 by President Richard Nixon), we should be making further investments in it. A well-funded and properly functioning E.P.A. would be able to zoom out and broadly assess how clean water flows in all of our U.S. waterways, and also determine the trouble spots. Despite the political fervor of the last year, as congresswoman for the First District, I would lead the fight to restore and build upon the assets of the E.P.A.

What has too often happened in this district is a narrow focus on a few Long Island estuaries rather than a comprehensive assessment of all our waterways. After all, it is wholly inconsistent to vote for a bill to protect Long Island Sound and Peconic Bay in 2015, and then abandon environmental principles two years later to vote in sync with a new administration that seeks to gut the E.P.A. Protecting our environment is a lifetime commitment — it should be and used to be a bipartisan commitment — and that is the least of what we should expect from our elected officials.

What can you do? For starters, you can get involved in local environmental groups that address issues pertaining to Long Island bays, estuaries, and pine barrens, Plum Island, and First Nation lands. National organizations with Long Island chapters include the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and Citizens Climate Lobby. You also can write to pressure the current Congress and the Trump administration to increase their support of the E.P.A.

Elaine DiMasi, a Democrat who lives in Ronkonkoma, will take part in a forum for progressive candidates on Saturday from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Stony Brook Southampton’s Chancellors Hall.

I love musicals. Maybe you’ve seen my writing about them here. My encounters with Stephen Sondheim, my adoration of Kander and Ebb. And now, how much I also love Jerry Herman, with “Hello, Dolly!” hitting the big-bucks time with the revival (tickets top a grand, I just read). I’ve seen it twice. Once with the Divine Miss M, and then with the lesser but equally fabulous other Miss M, Donna Murphy.

Brilliant.

I put on “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” often on Pandora or Sonos. Or with my headphones on my iPhone. A rousing song from the show. (Jerry Herman does rousing well.) Although I did think of him as underrated in the era of the aforementioned Sondheim and Kander and Ebb. But he is really redeemed now. And like Sondheim and Cole Porter before him, Jerry Herman does it all, does it both: music and lyrics. He may have been underappreciated earlier on, but one thing he did do early on was send Bernadette Peters into the stratosphere of Broadway broads.

I have seen Bernadette Peters a lot, although not in her Herman breakthrough, “Mack and Mabel.” I did, however, see her perform in a concert where she sang the heartbreaking love song from that show: “Time Heals Everything.” (Jerry does love very well.) I compare the idea of that song to one of my favorites from Sondheim: “Losing My Mind.” Both are about obsessive love. Unforgettable and forever love. (Often a theme in show business, regardless of how unrealistic.)

But back to Bernadette. In 1984, she was divine as Dot, a corny name for a character in Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.” About the painter Georges Seurat, with his pointillism. Dot. Get it?

I got it and saw it half a dozen times, a wondrous musical about, of all things, a painting. I also caught the more recent London import at Studio 54 another half-dozen times. This, with animated trees and a lake in the park. And boats. And soldiers. And parasols. (I’ll have to Google and see if Peters or Mandy Patinkin — never better — won Tony Awards for the original. I know the show won a Pulitzer Prize.)

Sondheim: There may never be another like him, with his sophisticated cleverness, his hilarious wordplay, and his haunting visual references to love, among many other unequaled attributes. And the themes: Not only a musical about a painting, but also about a murderous barber. And a group of assassins. Also Follies girls, aging and revisiting their past. The range! I digress to Sondheim, but there is an ultimate point if you keep reading.

So back to Peters once more, and the extraordinary coincidence of seeing her at two different opening nights of two very different Broadway shows. Here goes:

In 1997 a revival of “Chicago” opened (and is incidentally still running). I happened to catch the original in 1976. Liza Minnelli was filling in for Gwen Verdon alongside Chita Rivera. Kander and Ebb again. They also paired up those two legendary performers in two other (lesser) shows later: “The Act” and “The Rink.” But I digress. Again.

In 1997, it was Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth playing the merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail. I was invited by my good friend Tony to the opening night, and there, on that opening night, in the audience, was Bernadette Peters — along with Mary Tyler Moore, I might add.

You can’t miss Ms. Peters — that curly mop of vibrant red hair, her pale, pale skin, the Kewpie doll lips. And Mary was Mary. Regal. An icon among the rest of us ordinary people that night. I saw the two of them on my way out of the theater after the show ended. A great New York City celebrity spotting — good thing I was too shy at the time to tell either one of them, or, actually, the two of them, what a fan I was. Of the two of them.

Flash-forward to 2017. Opening night of “The Band’s Visit,” an invite by my dear friend Edward, an investor in the show.

Now, I do go to the theater a lot. But I’ve been to only two opening nights. And there, at “The Band’s Visit,” was Bernadette Peters. (Sadly, not with Mary, gone now but living on in reruns of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and her own namesake sitcom.)

Now, I ask you: Wouldn’t you call that quite a coincidence? Two opening nights? Twenty years apart? And, once again, Bernadette Peters with the glowing white skin, that hair, and those lips. Amazingly, she looked exactly the same 20 years later.

Does she go to every opening night?

Which brings me back, I always go back, to Stephen Sondheim.

One night, in the middle of the run of “Gypsy” in which B.P. was playing Momma Rose, I saw S.S. in the theater. Not shy now, I asked him to sign my Playbill. I gushed and went on and on to let him know that I was his greatest fan.

“Cool it,” he said as he signed.

For the other theater die-hards out there, allow me to digress one more time — I promise, it’s the last digression. In London a couple of years ago, I saw “Gypsy” with Imelda Staunton in the Rose role, and who was there, behind me, entering the theater? No, not Bernadette, but Sondheim, I repeat, in London, on just an ordinary night of the run, long after the opening night. I didn’t ask for his signature on a Playbill this time because in London there are no Playbills. Only larger size and more colorful programs that you have to pay for.

Coincidental, right? Like Bernadette? Fate, it seems that I must get myself tickets as she appears in her own opening night in “Hello, Dolly!” come Jan. 20. I must. And just did.

Hmm . . . maybe Stephen Sondheim will be in the audience, too.

Hy Abady is a former advertising executive who had a house in Amagansett for 30 years. A contributor for 25 years, he has collected his “Guestwords” essays in two books, including “Back in The Star Again: Further Stories From the East End.”