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.

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.

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.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau. In recognition of the occasion, celebrations have highlighted the better-known aspects of his life and work. For example, events have featured Thoreau’s two years of spartan existence at Walden Pond and his decision to go to jail rather than pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War and slavery.

I would like to call attention to a relatively neglected theme in Thoreau’s thinking: The high value he placed on childhood.

Thoreau’s thoughts on childhood are particularly relevant today. Our education policymakers are so focused on preparing children for the future that they ignore how children think and feel. Hoping to get children ready for the competitive global economy, policymakers are raising academic demands at younger and younger ages. Today even kindergarten classes are highly academic and assign homework, which becomes heavy in the grades that follow. Many children are stressed out.

Even in the mid-19th century, Thoreau objected to the hurry to prepare children for adult society. Although he saw the need for academic instruction, he knew school could be stifling and wanted children to enjoy free time out of doors. In his journal, he wrote, “I remember how glad I was when I was kept from school a half a day to pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill. . . . A half day of liberty like that was like the promise of life eternal. It was emancipation in New England.”

In Thoreau’s view, childhood is the precious time when we are most receptive to the miracle of nature. With fresh and keen senses, children experience animals, ponds, flowers — indeed, every aspect of nature they encounter — with wonder and awe. 

Thoreau said that adults, in contrast, perceive nature through society’s conventional categories. They see what they expect to see. Little is truly new. Thoreau emphasized that scientists also view the natural world through conventional nomenclature and classifications, rendering their knowledge stale and dry. 

Thoreau asked us to consider the child’s discovery of fishes. “Was it the number of their fin-rays or their arrangement, or the place of the fish in some [classification] system that made the boy dream of them?” No, it was their beauty and “a faint recognition of a living contemporary, a provoking mystery.” 

Our great task as adults, Thoreau said, is to recapture the fresh outlook of the child. We should try to open ourselves to nature’s sensations as if we were experiencing them for the first time, receiving impressions just as they come to us. If we can do this, we will be enchanted and uplifted. 

Thoreau recognized that it is difficult to clear our minds in this manner. We value our accumulated knowledge. We take pride in being in the know. We don’t want to be ignorant. 

Thoreau himself sometimes struggled to observe nature as freshly as he wished. He found it helpful to drift in his boat or take long walks with no goal in mind so he could be taken by surprise. When he encountered animals, he sometimes stood still for hours, allowing the animals to overcome their fears and engage in natural behavior he hadn’t observed before. 

And unexpected observations fill Thoreau’s writings, especially his journal. He was frequently astonished, for example, by the beauty of birds’ songs, each song making him happy to be alive.

Many of Thoreau’s neighbors thought he was a loafer, but children did not. One of Thoreau’s biographers, Walter Harding, told about a girl who was careful not to disturb Thoreau while he stood all day at a river’s edge, watching a mother duck and her newborns. That evening, Thoreau went to the house of the girl, who said, “While we ate our suppers there in the kitchen, he told us the most wonderful stories you ever heard about those ducks.” 

Can we follow Thoreau’s advice today? Can we appreciate the child’s joy and wonder in natural settings, and recover a measure of the child’s feelings in our own lives? 

It won’t be easy. We are often so focused on children’s academic achievement that we cannot see the value of their explorations of parks, woods, and beaches. And we are frequently too concerned with our own occupational success to see any point to adopting childhood attitudes.

Adding to the problem is the popularity of mobile devices like smartphones. Even when people go outdoors, they often fix their attention on the phones’ screens, ignoring breezes, birdsong, and other natural sensations. And of course electronic devices are more and more popular with children, too. 

Still, if Thoreau was right, we cannot lead fulfilling lives unless we open our senses to the beauty and mystery of nature. 

In honor of Thoreau, then, let’s take his recommendations seriously. Let’s make sure children have opportunities to explore natural settings, and let’s set aside time to relax and freshly observe nature in our own lives. Residents of the East End can do this in beautiful surroundings. But urban residents can find a bit of greenery and open their senses to nature.

As a specific strategy, it can be rewarding to take a walk with a toddler, letting the child take the lead. The toddler typically walks with no destination in mind, just enjoying the walk and stopping to examine objects that catch her eye — a leaf, a worm, a puddle of water. Each object is a source of wonder. The child, in short, meanders in the manner of Thoreau. If we can see the world as the toddler does, enchantment can re-enter our lives.

William Crain is a professor of psychology at City College and a part-time resident of Montauk.

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.

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.

I am 76 years old and I have been listening to sermons for all those 76 years. My religiously devout parents took me to church from the get-go. I had the longest string of perfect attendance pins in the history of the Oak Park Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia — one of the longest strings of perfect attendance pins in the whole of the U.S.A. I have heard thousands of sermons, sung millions of hymns, and heard the Bible explained in trillions of ways.

Often while listening or singing I have wished I had a basket of rotten fruit to heave at the pulpit and express my opinion of the preacher — such nonsense from the pulpit, such pap in the hymns, such utter confusion in Bible spinning. 

I have often thought that any of us in our little church in Springs could cook up any new religion at all from the Bible. It is so endlessly confusing and contradictory and too often appallingly violent. 

Once I took my 12-year-old daughter to a Bible discussion group at my Congregational church in Maine. A liberal bunch are these Congregationalists (at least in Maine), but Lily was so appalled by the violence of the Bible stories, she swore she would never go back to another Bible class. “How can you explain all that killing when you speak of Christians as people who love God and love their neighbor,” she said. In essence she pointed out that we’re all either hypocrites or psychotic. 

And yet that is what Jesus said, these few simple words: “Love God, love your neighbor.” We say God is love, and therefore, at least in my calculation, love is God. Love is the spirit that surrounds us, or should. That’s where we should be, in the spirit. But too often — daily — we stray from love to pettiness and hate and casual violence.

How is it that this Christian nation is also among the most violent? More mass shootings than any country on the planet. A love of guns that often equals our love of the church. Where does this violence come from? Why do we sit quietly and listen to our politicians speak of wiping out North Korea — which means millions of deaths, people like you and me? And we tolerate politicians who treat these people as nothing. We hear lie after lie from our politicians and we see violent death after violent death on our screens and think nothing of it. 

Is it that we Christians have been infected by our own Bible? “Guns and God” is what some of us worship, said a former president. Is that who we are as a nation? As Americans?

Consider if you would the New and the Old Testaments. We start with genocide. This God ethnically cleanses the earth and sends Noah out on a ship to save a few lucky critters, including us. When I was a kid in Sunday school we loved this tale — think of the neat animals, the fortunate humans, the great sea adventure. Never once did our kindly teacher mention the slaughter of innocents that this God had brought about — the millions of little kids dead in the sea. Imagine the stench of their decaying bodies. We kids were not encouraged to think about any of that gloomy stuff. God made a mistake in his creation so he wiped it out. What a rollicking tale. 

Then we come to Abraham and Isaac. Abe wanted to prove to God what a loyal fellow he was. His devotion and his willingness to sacrifice his only son are the basis for three religions — Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. He stakes out Isaac on a hill and prepares to kill him when, presto, God lets him off the hook. In some interpretations he does kill Isaac. 

What a fine example to us Christians. Instead of suggesting that he be locked up after all these years, we admire Abraham. But of course this history of child murder is not over. Many more human sacrifices follow. We come to the tale of God and his only son, Jesus. The lamb slain by his dad to erase the sins of the world. I’m not buying that spin and neither should any Christian. 

We do not worship baby killers. We are not a religion of human sacrifice. This has nothing to do with who Jesus was or who Jesus thought he was.

But just to make it even worse for those of us who worship the God of love, we run smack into Revelation at the end of the Bible — a bloody bookend with Genesis. Revelation is nothing less than a bloodbath of vengeance. Odd 10-horn beasts and various hate-inspired monsters slather the world in gore. Revelation alone has inspired more human violence than almost any book, including “Mein Kampf.”

I bring all this up to suggest to you why the Christian Church worldwide is in decline. The cathedrals of Europe are empty; American churches are in free fall. Our own little church — which is precious to me — has dropped to less than half its size in the 25 years I’ve been a member there. 

My friends are amazed I still call myself a practicing Christian. They consider the hypocrisy, the fundamentalist, evangelical jihads that support a racist, a liar, a philanderer, and woman abuser in power, a cruel narcissistic would-be tyrant who calls himself a Presbyterian. This is why our churches are failing. We have forgotten Christ. Christ was about love, forgiveness — a gentle man who abhorred violence. A rebel surrounded by a vicious Roman occupation and a rule-bound, power-mad organized religion. They killed him for daring to point to a different idea — a God of love, compassion, healing, empathy. 

This is the divine person Christians have worshiped over 2,000 years, about whom organized religion — and yes, I include the Presbyterian structure — has made up rules and myths such as walking on water, rising from the dead, casting some of us into hellfire, including unbaptized babies, to say nothing of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the endless stream of wars fought in his name. All these ridiculous and blasphemous ideas and adventures in the name of the Prince of Peace.

I think, in order to save our precious Jesus and precious little church, we must get back to the divinity who inspired us originally. The Jesus of love, of forgiveness, of turning the other cheek, of total nonviolence. I think, as Jesus said, God is love and love is indeed God. We must remember this or our Christianity and our beautiful Springs church will perish.

Bill Henderson is an elder at the Springs Presbyterian Church. He edits the annual Pushcart Prize, and his latest memoir is “Cathedral.”

I am sending a letter of resignation to Minnesota Public Radio, the three major networks, CNN, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post in anticipation of allegations that I might harass someone if I were hired to become part of their staffs. Harassment is viral and I am no longer certain my autonomic nervous system can be relied on in situations where there are other bodies in an enclosed space. After all, it’s by definition autonomic, right? It’s easy to forget that man’s an animal as well as a conscious being.

People who are suffering from illnesses that make them particularly vulnerable to infection have to be quarantined in germ-free rooms in which they run no risk of contamination. That’s what is slowly happening in America today. The only ways to avoid allegations of harassment are quarantine or recusal. Who knows if the next handshake or attempt to help someone who has tripped will result in a firing? 

Doesn’t anyone remember the House Un-American Activities Committee, the blacklist, and the tarring and featherings that are an ignominious part of our history? The alacrity with which whole careers and lifetimes are disposed of without even a semblance of due process and the self-righteous outcries for revenge all reek of the lynch mob style of justice. Why is no one speaking up? 

When you read that “The Best of A Prairie Home Companion” will no longer be rerun and that the version of the show hosted by Chris Thile will appear under a new name, and that “The Writer’s Almanac” will no longer be distributed by American Public Media, it recalls the Nazi book burnings. (“Garrison Keillor Accused of ‘Inappropriate Behavior,’ Minnesota Public Radio Says,” NPR, Nov. 29.) Garrison Keillor touched a woman’s back. What about more severe offenses? 

Does this mean we will no longer be able to read or see work by thieves like Jean Genet, sex offenders like Roman Polanski, or bigots like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot? “Israel Horovitz Plays Canceled After Sexual Misconduct Accusations” read a Dec. 1 headline in the arts section of The Times.

There was the Counter-Reformation in Europe, which was basically a reaction to Luther. The question is will there be an equivalent movement here in response to the sexual revolution of the 1960s? The issue with the current spate of harassment charges against prominent figures in politics and the media is not sex but power in the workplace. Remember that iconic office harassment scene in a 1960 episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “A Stop at Willoughby,” about a beleaguered advertising executive whose only exit from the pressures of his life is ultimately death?

On the other hand, Hollywood casting couches notwithstanding, it’s unlikely that any of the liberties taken by the likes of Harvey Weinstein would have occurred were it not for the umbrella of liberalization that took place in the ’60s. In fact, almost all of those accused are onetime love children who were products of the ’60s counterculture, with the exception of Roy Moore, that is. And even back in the heyday of love-ins, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse coined the term “repressive desublimation,” which anticipated the notion of sexual addiction in pointing to the soporific, drug-like effects of the culture of hedonism. 

However, with statutes like “affirmative consent” in states like New York and California, it appears that those who wish to express their sexual desires have to run a gauntlet of new laws. These statutes play into an undercurrent of puritanism in American culture that makes novels like Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” more pertinent today than ever.

Francis Levy, a Wainscott resident, is the author of the comic novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” His “Tombstone: Not a Western” will be released in April. He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com and on HuffPost.