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.

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.

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.

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.

The harrowing tales of sexual assault and harassment have continuously bombarded my computer screen for the last two weeks. I knew this kind of abuse was happening throughout the world, but I didn’t know how ingrained it was in the everyday lives of American women. I thought Harvey Weinstein, who tyrannically harassed and assaulted Hollywood actresses, was a phenomenon, but I was wrong. The trending #MeToo has opened my eyes to see that sexual violence, assault, and harassment are far too common. 

Yet we don’t need Facebook or Twitter to teach us about the timeless harassment of women. Just open up the Bible.

#MeToo: Sarah is forcefully inducted into the harems of Pharaoh and Abimelech (Genesis 12 and Genesis 20).

#MeToo: Jacob’s daughter Dinah is raped by Shechem (Genesis 34).

#MeToo: Bathsheba is sent for by David, taken into his bed, and returned by messengers later (2 Samuel 11).

#MeToo: Tamar is brutally assaulted and raped by her brother Amnon (2 Samuel 13).

#MeToo: Queen Vashti refuses to be sexually displayed before the guests of her husband (Esther 1).

Why are these stories in our sacred scriptures? Because they stand as warnings to us about the dangers of the power imbalance we see in our society. For far too long have men abused women and subjugated them to harassment, assault, and rape. Nothing is new under the sun. Such was the biblical reality, such was the medieval reality, the Renaissance reality, and this is our reality. 

In the Talmud, a legal code and compendium of Jewish wisdom, the rabbis recognize that there is danger in certain social situations and offer a set of societal safeguards. For starters, they stipulate that any time there is a power differential between two people, their interaction should have a third party present. In other words, if you are in a position of power, it’s improper to meet someone in a private hotel room alone. Instead, meet them in the hotel restaurant. And if for whatever reason there is an issue with a public space, defuse the tension with a third person. 

The social attention given to #MeToo should be a wake-up call. I don’t believe it’s about redefining entrenched power inequity. We need leadership roles, we need elected officials, and we even need some sort of hierarchy in business. #MeToo is about hearing the cries of women. #MeToo is a call for all of us to see that the trauma is real and has been swept under the carpet for far too long. It’s about saying that the actions of those who take advantage of, harass, and sexually assault others are unacceptable, and anyone who perpetrates them should be punished. It’s about making this kind of harassment marginal, instead of an accepted norm. 

The teachings of religion should embolden each of us to stand up and be righteous. Religious teachings remind us not only to be upright in our own actions, but also to stand up when others are being victimized. Proverbial Jewish wisdom offers that “in a place where there is no one, stand up and be the one” (Avot 2:4).

The biblical character of Noah is antithetical to the idea of being an upstander. In Genesis, he is described as being “a righteous man of his generation” (Genesis 6:9). We should see the words “of his generation” as a negative qualifier. Noah was righteous among a group of the world’s most terrible people. He was a moral Cyclops in the land of the morally blind. Even the etymology of the name Noah (Noach in Hebrew) implies that he was at ease or apathetic to the corruption around him. 

The Bible steers us instead toward the example of Abraham, who enters Sodom and Gomorrah to raise a wicked people from their depravity. To the men out there, perhaps we’ve been like Noah, upright in our own ways but not advocating when we see the exploitation and abuse around us. And perhaps this is why Noah is ascribed little biblical importance. He isn’t the example that we look to as a model of what it means to be a good person. He is only as good as others are bad, and that is not quite good enough. 

I can’t from my own life say #MeToo. All I can do is stand up and say that we’ve turned a blind eye far too long. To quote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “while only some are guilty, all of us are accountable.” 

This I promise: I will never turn a blind eye to those who cry out, or to those who aren’t able to cry out. I will never put anyone in a situation in which his or her safety is compromised by a power imbalance. 

I will work to create a community here at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, and in East Hampton, that will not tolerate sexual abuse, assault, or harassment in any form. I will always be here to listen to the stories of #MeToo from anyone who needs to share. I will hear you, I will see you, I will support you, and I do my best to ensure that the East Hampton community is a safe place for all genders.

Rabbi Joshua Franklin was installed as the rabbi at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in September. He lives in East Hampton.

Recently I joined a group on the Viking Ferry to Block Island to see and hear more about that island’s experience with its five offshore “windmills” and the proposed farm of 15 or more, 35 miles over the horizon from Montauk in federal waters. Deepwater Wind’s proposal to provide clean power for Long Island with offshore turbines was chosen by the Long Island Power Authority as the least expensive bid, and it is clearly the environmentally preferable one too.

I was impressed with what I saw and heard, as well as by the scientific articles I have since read. Block Island’s turbines supply 100 percent of the island’s electricity usage. They do so at a substantially lower cost and greater reliability than the diesel-fueled power plants that were shut down as the wind power came online. In addition, Deepwater Wind funded valuable community projects as a way to give back, including a significant contribution to help restore the Southeast Lighthouse.

These windmills succeed where the fossil fuel power sources failed. Our bus driver and residents told us that the diesel-fueled power was unreliable and that their electricity bills varied wildly from year to year, depending on the cost of the fuel. With wind turbines, the power is reliable and the bills are stable, enabling households and businesses to plan better.

On the East Coast, the ocean wind is considerably stronger and more constant than on land, and it blows hardest during peak demand periods. The cost of wind power is declining rapidly, down 50 percent in the last two years, according to a recent Bloomberg analysis of bids in the United Kingdom. This giant leap results in large part from 25 years of commercial offshore wind experience and advances in Europe.

In East Hampton, residents broadly agree with the town’s commitment to generating all our energy from renewable sources by 2030. The South Fork Wind Farm off Montauk has wide support here too.

The local fishing industry has expressed concern about the farm’s impact on fisheries. All of us feel a special affinity for the commercial and recreational fishing community and treasure our glorious fresh local fish. (Block Island has recreational and tourist fishing, but little commercial fishing.) The evidence to date from ongoing scientific studies of the Block Island farm provides reassurance. They find no adverse effect on the hauls there since the modern windmills went online, nor have birds been found killed by collisions. Similarly, the experience in Europe, which has installed nearly 4,000 offshore turbines, is overwhelmingly positive. The turbines act as reefs, attracting and harboring a rich mix of marine life.

For the year and a half of construction, moreover, Deepwater set up a fund to pay Block Island fishermen for any smaller hauls, using a comparison with revenue from the year before. It should do the same here in East Hampton.

Some people have expressed fear of potential harm to marine life aside from the commercial catch. So I called the National Wildlife Federation to seek advice. The federation has a venerated 80-year history of fighting to protect wildlife. With the proper protections in place throughout the development process, the group finds, the risks to marine life from offshore wind power is minimal, especially compared with fossil fuel sources of energy that create air and water pollution, degrade wildlife habitat, and drive climate change.

For marine animals, noise during construction is the most worrisome aspect. Of most concern is the North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species that migrates along the Eastern Seaboard and is highly sensitive to noise. The National Wildlife Federation has not seen any evidence of harm to marine life (including larvae, dolphins, and whales) from the low-frequency vibrations of wind turbines once in operation. It is important that construction activities not occur during peak whale migration seasons, and vigilant year-round monitoring should be in place to ensure that the turbine operation and maintenance vessels do not place whales at risk.

In addition, techniques developed and deployed in Europe can muffle the underwater construction noise. Deepwater Wind has a strong track record of environmental protection with the Block Island Wind Farm, where it adjusted its construction schedule to avoid whale migration periods, earning the broad support of environmental advocates in New England, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and Oceana.

Deepwater Wind is eager to develop good relations with residents here. That’s smart because succeeding with the exceedingly complex approval process is worth a lot to Deepwater Wind. So support not only for our fishing community but also for energy-related community projects is a reasonable expense for the company. What should we and our elected officials press for in our participation in stakeholder consultations and negotiations? Three main things: Protect marine life, provide decent jobs, and fund community projects.

Deepwater Wind should maximize the opportunities for local engagement and jobs throughout all stages of the project development process. Rhode Island has added 300 jobs in the construction of the Block Island Wind Farm, many of which are well positioned to become long-term jobs as the offshore wind industry takes off in this country. Let’s get it right and create as many decent local jobs as we can in order to meet New York State’s goal of 2,400 megawatts from offshore wind by 2030.

When it comes to community projects, East Hampton has the first shot at the site where the deeply buried cable could come safely ashore. Ask Deepwater for a generous water and energy-related community benefit package for the town: How about helping the quality of our waterways by restoring critical wetlands and providing grants to homeowners who install state-of-the-art septic tanks that remove nitrates, to add to the rebates the town already offers?

Or how about funding a community solar farm? Or better landscaping for the eyesore substation PSEG put next to the Amagansett railroad station? Or burying those ugly overhead PSEG transmission wires? Deepwater plans for all of its transmission wires to be underground.

Our local politicians have an important role to play both in approving permits and also in assuring that state-of-the-art environmental protections are built in and that residents benefit. The Democratic candidates for town board in Tuesday’s election — Peter Van Scoyoc, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, and Jeff Bragman — are supportive of the wind farm. Most of us know less about town trustee candidates. It is critical to keep the Democratic majority on the trustees because they have created a constructive dialogue between the concerned commercial fishing community and Deepwater Wind.

The South Fork Wind Farm, if approved, would be the first offshore industrial-size windmill farm in the United States. It would generate 90 megawatts, enough to power 50,000 homes annually on the East End. That’s a huge win for slowing climate change and for energy independence for the nation.

It is the only practical way that East Hampton Town can fulfill its commitment to deriving 100 percent of its power from clean renewable energy. We all need to get the free energy audits available from the Long Island Green Homes Initiative and to install geothermal or solar where practical (we have it on our house). But that alone won’t be enough. I urge all of us to support this clean energy initiative. I urge our government and trustee agencies to grant all the approvals in a timely manner, while seeking Deepwater’s good-will support of local energy-related projects.

The East End needs wind power. It is time to return wind power to its 350-year history in East Hampton. That’s the story science, economics, and common sense tell us. And it’s the story our windmills tell us.

Alice Tepper Marlin was named distinguished fellow at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, where she teaches a course in business and society. She is a board member and president emerita of Social Accountability International and lives part time in Springs.

Last fall my mother and I planted 16 hyacinth bulbs in five municipalities in three counties all over the northeastern Pennsylvania countryside. Our pilgrimage took us to her Zionsville cemetery, the Kutztown church where she had a nearly nasty fall, and a Moore Township tree almost as old as her 94 years. 

The floral odyssey is part of a master plan to help Mom forget her fading body, to raise her game during her final innings, as her fellow Brits like to term time. The mission includes kicking items off her Bucket List: whitewater rafting; nibbling a marijuana brownie; reuniting with the Englishman who painted her portrait in Ireland in 1954. It also includes turning virtually everything we do into a comic, cosmic school: visiting the E.R. for everything from irregular heartbeat to constipation; signing her cremation contract; playing bridge with two 80-something friends in a group we call Three Queens & a Joker and I call My Three Moms. Every adventure, every laugh, every twist is grist for my book “Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent From Aging,” a crazy memoir married to a sneaky self-help guide.

Pat and Geoff’s Great Hyacinth Planting Spree began in late October on Gehman Road, named for another branch of the family tree rooted in Berks County’s Washington Township in the late-18th century. We cruised for 20 minutes, up and down and up again, until we admitted defeat. We decided that my trowel couldn’t make a dent in the lush grass framing the farm fields, and that the low-flying hyacinths surely would be wiped out by a tractor or a runaway car on the wide-open, naked berm. We drove away disappointed that our flowers couldn’t be neighbors of the Butter Valley Golf Port, a course/runway owned for two generations by a Gehman. 

We headed to another Gehman sanctuary in Doris, a 2000 Honda Accord named for a dear friend who willed Mom the money to buy her. Ten miles later we stood in the cemetery of the Zionsville Bible Fellowship Church, co-founded in the 1850s by my great-grandfather William, a Mennonite minister, after a feud with a nearby congregation. His gravestone borders memorials for my grandfather, another Mennonite minister named William, and my father, Larry, a Madison Avenue advertising man who fancied himself a lay preacher. 

After we buried Dad’s ashes in 2001, I planted a Montauk Daisy to thank him for planting us on the gorgeous South Fork, where I fell in love with Montauk daisies, which have fluttery white petals and a center resembling an egg-yolk button. Three months before Dad died, he and Mom agreed to share a headstone, a gorgeous gesture for a couple divorced for 37 years. His inscription, courtesy of Thomas Jefferson, is typically vigilant: “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Her inscription, courtesy of John Greenleaf Whittier, is typically benevolent: “If thou of fortune be bereft, / And in thy store there be but left / two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, / buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

Under Whittier’s lines I began digging holes for four hyacinths, one each for Mom, Dad, my sister Meg, and me. I was on the second hole when Mom convinced me the bulbs would grow better in a trench. Within 30 seconds she was scolding me for shallow troweling, using the same stern, singsong voice she uses when my fly is down.

“That’s not six inches.” 

“Hey, will you lay off? I know what I’m doing. I’ve been planting flowers for 40 years.” 

“Well, I’ve been planting flowers for 70 years and I say that’s not six inches. Don’t argue with your mother superior.”

Pissed off, I decided to settle the score with the cardboard ruler stapled to the bulb bag. Lo and behold, my trench was two inches short. My mother, bless her benevolent soul, refused to gloat over her victory. In fact, she apologized for her chiding.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mensch.” 

“Actually, mensch is the opposite word for what you are.” 

“Grinch?”

“That’s more like it.”

We left the cemetery with a good laugh at a gravestone for the Trumps, never thinking that in eight days they would be very distant relations to America’s new president. We hadn’t even exited the parking lot when I was slammed by the strangest sensation, a sort of déjà-vu tsunami. It took me three seconds to realize that it was the 15th anniversary of the day we buried my father’s ashes right here in Zionsville. I quickly chalked up the incredible coincidence to divine justice for a cemetery caretaker chopping down Dad’s daisy, ambushing it after it sprouted into a wild bush.

The next day we scouted suitable spots in rural Northampton County, one of six territories for the weekend countryside jaunts we’ve been taking for six years. After two hours of futility we felt as bleak as the gray, grim weather. We were bouncing along Beacon Road in Moore Township, a rolling, rutted lane between Bath and Nazareth, when we found our grail. There, by a bend by a sweeping field of corn, was a gently magnetic oak tree: huge, ancient, charmingly gnarled. It reminded us of shrine trees in County Clare, where Mom’s mom grew up; where Mom discovered paradise during World War II, safe from the blitzing of her native London, and where I set a book about seeing old rural Ireland through Mom’s eyes.

Under the oak I dug a hole in a mound choked by vines and gravel. Carving and chiseling, I cursed myself as a third-rate Johnny Appleseed and a first-rate Doubting Thomas, doubting that any flower, even a spring-awakening, faith-reviving hyacinth, could rise from such a tomb. I felt better knowing that the hole-filled tree was already holy, sanctified by a yellow 15 m.p.h. sign with an arrow bent in its direction.

The next weekend we roamed the Blue Mountain bowl, a series of slaloming valleys between Fogelsville and Kempton that I’ve nicknamed the Gods’ Steeplechase Course. We ran into obstacles at two of our favorite pit stops. We were thwarted by an overflow crowd for an annual oyster dinner at Jacob’s Union Church in Jacksonville, and by impenetrable plastic weed cover at Jerusalem Red Church in Kempton, site of one of my favorite Mom epiphanies. One afternoon we were strolling through the Jerusalem cemetery when we came upon a gravestone for the family Seltzer. After a perfect, poker-faced pause, Mom asked: “Where’s Alka?” And that’s when I realized my elegant, earthy, elderly mother was a true-blue, honest-to-goodness, fox-sly comedian.

We found happiness at Mount Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kutztown, site of an unhappy event. It was here in 2015 that Mom had a frightening fall after slipping my grip when I tripped on an uneven sidewalk. After I yanked her up, she prayed hysterically that she wouldn’t add a broken hip to a broken pelvis (2013) and a broken rib (2014). She ended up intact, cushioned by the grass and saved, she swears, by her guardian angel. In honor of her No. 1 deity, we planted three hyacinth bulbs in a garden bed by Mount Zion’s parking lot. As we rolled out of the lot, Mom rolled down a window and shouted: “Hallelujah — you are forgiven!”

This winter was unforgivably harsh to Mom’s health. A scary tumble in the lobby of her apartment building in Bethlehem was followed by a two-week hospitalization and rehab for the flu. Every time she caught her breath she was left breathless by bouts of irregular heartbeat. She was buoyed by the thought of seeing her hyacinths in bloom, a living memorial to her buoyant spirit. She even coined a rallying cry, suitable for bumper sticker and banner: “The hyacinths have to push up before I push up the hyacinths.”

We started our second pilgrimage at Mount Zion, where our three hyacinths were perfectly perky. We were happy to see them nested among equally happy tulips. We were happier to think that churchgoers would think our flowers were planted by angels. 

In the Zionsville cemetery we witnessed a minor miracle. The four hyacinths by my parents’ headstone had five blooms. Better yet, the bonus bloom was purple, Mom’s favorite color. I plucked a blossom for her to smell, knowing she couldn’t. Two years ago a .virus planted a wicked bacteria in a sinus cavity that blocks her from most smells and tastes, hell on earth for a big tfan of food and fragrance.

We found heaven on earth under the oak tree on Beacon Road. Rising from a heap of weeds and stones, our one white hyacinth was a noble sentry, a tiny tower of divinity, a bloody marvel. After staring at it for a good five minutes, I removed a bloom for Mom to smell, hoping for a bigger miracle. Filled with grace, she caught a whiff of perfume, her first truly enjoyable smell in 24 months. The car flooded with her larkish laugh and joy.

Driving away, we passed a woman walking a dog. Being a gregarious guy, I wanted to tell her to stop by the hyacinth under the oak, there because of the grace of us. Mom, being an exceptionally modest, exceedingly private English woman, told me to leave her be. I agreed, against my better nature.

A few hundred yards later, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the woman standing at our tree shrine. I peeked at Mom peeking at the stranger in a side-view mirror. Her smile blossomed.

Mom died, suddenly but not surprisingly, on June 11 at St. Luke’s Bethlehem, where she spent six splendid years volunteering in the O.R. waiting room. Her heart, and will, wore out before she could test her brand-new pacemaker. Her ashes were buried next to Dad’s on July 23, 10 days after the 60th anniversary of their wedding. In the spring she’ll be pushing up 16 hyacinths in five municipalities in three counties.

Geoff Gehman, a former resident of Wainscott, is the author of “The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons” (SUNY Press). He lives in Bethlehem, Pa. His email address is [email protected].

An open letter to Diane Patrizio, director, Department of Human Services, Town of East Hampton.

Re: Disturbing changes in the Suffolk County Expanded In-Home Services for the Elderly Program, or EISEP.

Dear Diane,

As I noted to you in my email of July 5th, your recent one-store-only food shopping order for the town’s EISEP clients requires me to defy my doctor’s orders.

This results from diagnoses over recent years of such old-age-related conditions as a carotid artery blockage, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and low red cell counts, which translates into my need to consume fresh fish and meats. I have not found the fish at our local supermarkets, the I.G.A. and Stop and Shop, to be reliably fresh.

If your home care workers are to shop for me at a nearby location, my fish should be bought at Citarella, and I should continue to rely on the I.G.A. and/or Stop and Shop for basics, many of which are not available at Citarella and are usually much more expensive when they are.

Additionally, I often need sandwiches on hand for occasions when, because of an injured hip and temperamental back, I am unable to prepare my meals. So, over the four years I have had the good fortune to be an EISEP client, the shopper assigned to me has picked up fresh poultry sandwiches from Mary’s Marvelous. The supermarket sandwiches are generally made from processed food, which my physician discourages.

Surely, these health challenges and consequent dietary regimen are not unusual among a client pool made up entirely of senior citizens. But when I tried to inform your social worker who called to inform me of your one-store edict of my diet necessities, she told me that nevertheless town helpers could now food shop at only one location.

If this restriction would actually save money or time, I could see some reason for it. But it does neither. Shopping at the I.G.A. (or Stop and Shop), Mary’s Marvelous, and Citarella is a compact undertaking. Everything is central. For me, it involves driving in one direction in a four-mile circular route from and back to my house. A similar ease of access to the necessary healthy foods exists throughout the town and probably most of Suffolk County. No one is asking you to send your shoppers all over the countryside.

The one-store rule also does nothing to save wage costs. EISEP’s structure precludes this. A worker is assigned to each client for two hours once a week. My shopping list and mail collection have seldom if ever required the two full hours to complete. The remaining time is used to clean my kitchen and bathroom, help that I welcome. But my priority is healthy food. I am grateful to have been getting that.

What difference can it possibly make to your office and EISEP funders how much of the two hours is used for food shopping and mail pickup and how much for other tasks? Am I not, with my 90-plus years on this earth, qualified to make such decisions for myself, especially when it has no meaningful bearing on your employees’ workload or EISEP’s expenses?

I have other questions. Prior to issuing this order, was thought given to findings that healthy diets actually save taxpayer money by reducing demands on emergency medical services? Was thought given to the psychic cost that enforcing such nonsense will have on our young social workers, many of whom entered the field to help make the world a little better? Or to the effect such needless micromanaging will have on your efficient and committed helpers, who take such pleasure in helping us thrive?

Why mess with it, Diane? EISEP is, at root, a lovely, productive program. So, let’s dump this dehumanizing edict.

We survived the Depression, fought great armies in World War II and the younger among us in Vietnam. We also fought for race and gender equality, disabilities access, and peace. We supported families and educated our kids, often by working long hours at grinding hardscrabble jobs. And now, for no good reason that I’ve been told, we are faced with senseless, nitpicking little orders that treat us like irresponsible children.

On a recent Friday at the East Hampton senior center, I had the pleasure of being honored along with other East Hampton 90-plus-year-olds. Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc gave a nice speech in which he extolled our wisdom, leadership, and integrity. During the same week, I got the call from your social worker about the one-stop rule and was blown off when I tried to inform her of my doctor’s inevitable reaction.

So, Diane, what are we old folks? Stalwart members of the community? Or demented old farts to be infantilized?

I look forward to receiving your response.

With best regards, 

Richard Rosenthal

Richard Rosenthal recently celebrated his 92nd birthday.

Over the past 25 years covering the Hamptons International Film Festival for newspapers, TV, and radio, it has been a wild ride of different theater venues, celebrity interviews, after-parties, and films that often went on to win Academy Awards.

Sir Patrick Stewart, of Shakespeare and “Star Trek” fame, said it best at one of the festival’s “A Conversation With . . .” programs on Saturday when he emphasized the importance of the arts. Whether it’s painting, writing, music, or dancing, he said, the arts give a community its soul and inspiration.

This is certainly true of East Hampton and Southampton Towns, which turn into “Hollywood East” each fall. Who would think, I asked myself, watching Stewart speak at the East Hampton Middle School, that this used to be my little high school, and it now hosts movie stars?

Of the scores of events I cover each year throughout the Hamptons, this festival has always been my favorite, for the major actors I get to meet and for the educational value of the top-quality independent films. Before this festival, I never realized how different an independent film was from a mass-produced one, with filmmakers for the most part creating films they really care about, rather than just to make millions. 

It’s been an amazing journey to see this festival grow from small parties and brunches at Nick and Toni’s restaurant in the early 1990s to bigger gatherings at the Wolffer Estate Vineyard, at the home of Stuart Match Suna, a founding HIFF board member and chairman emeritus, and at other venues. It was fun to wait among throngs of press to interview and photograph guests at the opening night parties at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, East Hampton Point, and the former Lily Pond nightclub.

I remember the excitement of watching “The King’s Speech” at its 2010 premiere at the Southampton movie theater, and of going to the after-party at a nearby restaurant with its producer, Harvey Weinstein, its director, Tom Hooper, and writer, David Seidler. Seidler told me how he got the idea for the movie, about the king of England’s stuttering problem, because of his own struggle with stuttering as a child growing up in that country. I was even more excited as I saw the film go on to win an Oscar for best picture, as did the festival movies “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Moonlight.”

Besides getting an inside view of the best upcoming films, the festival has given me entree to interviewing the stars. I talked to Richard Dreyfus, Roy Scheider, and Steven Spielberg about the making of “Jaws” and the controversy with Capt. Frank Mundus, who claimed that Peter Benchley, the author of the book and one of the screenwriters, did not credit him for teaching him how to fish for sharks on his Montauk charter boat, Cricket II. The late Roy Scheider said later that of all the various roles he’d played, “I guess I’ll always be remembered for ‘Jaws.’ ”

But it’s not always easy to get these movie stars to talk, let alone open up. Following a “Conversation With . . .” in 1996 with Angelica Huston at Guild Hall, where she also talked about working with her famous father, the director John Huston, she refused all interviews with the press and hurried out the back door. At the time I was working for WVVH-Hamptons Television, and my cameraman, David Nadal, and I ran to the back parking lot and caught her climbing into her limousine. 

“Can we just have one interview for the local TV station?” we pleaded. To our surprise, she came over, just for a second, she said, but we ended up getting a 10-minute interview for our show before she darted off. Once we got her talking about her first film as a director, “Bastard Out of Carolina,” she couldn’t stop.

Following Richard Gere’s “A Conversation With . . .” in 2012, I saw him at an after-party and asked him for an interview. Of all the stars, he turned me down in the best possible way, putting his arm around me warmly and saying he was sorry, he just didn’t want an interview. I was so happy to be hugged by Richard Gere, nothing else seemed to matter, and I never forgot it. 

Then there was an enjoyable evening sitting on the porch of the Maidstone Arms, laughing with another of my favorite actors, Paul Giamatti, who was in town for the opening of “Barney’s Version.” He was funny, easygoing, and gave me plenty of time as he discussed the film. I had to tell him how much I enjoyed one of his most popular movies, “Sideways,” and how much I admired his various roles.

And last year I finally met someone I’d always wanted to meet, the globe-trotting Anthony Bourdain, outside the East Hampton movie theater after the screening of “Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent,” about the famous chef, which he produced. When asked if he lived in the Hamptons, Bourdain said he often visits here and loves to shop at the farm stands, and that he usually lets his daughter decide what’s for dinner.

Over 25 years, the times were not always funny or magical. On the afternoon of Oct. 24, 2005, tragedy just missed the festival. While watching a film by Polly Draper in a packed Guild Hall, there was a loud explosion, and I ran out of the theater to see that a small twin-engine plane had crashed across the street on Mill Hill Lane. Smoke and fire were coming from it as emergency crews rushed to save the pilot, who died. He was the only one inside the Cessna, which just missed the Maidstone Arms and some houses on the street. Inside the theater with Draper were the actors Kevin Bacon, his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, and Miranda Richardson. 

But there was no shortage of happy times, through all the film festivals, hanging with the press at the Maidstone Arms, the Huntting Inn, and John Papas Cafe between screenings. Now celebrating his own 25th year in business, John Papas told me he opened in June of 1992, three months before the festival. “Being so close to the movie theater, I always enjoyed having the movie crowd come here and chat about the films,” he said. “We also served many of the stars, so it’s been a lot of fun over the years.”

Kudos to Alec Baldwin, a HIFF co-chairman, Stuart Match Suna, Anne Chaisson, the executive director, and David Nugent, the artistic director, and their whole crew for all their hard work in helping to reach this big silver anniversary. 

David Nugent made a good point while introducing Rob Reiner at Sunday’s “A Conversation With . . .” in East Hampton: “Movies change your life,” he said. “I was 13 when I saw Reiner’s film ‘Stand by Me’ for the first time, and it had a big effect on me.” He said it made him want to see and study more films, which eventually led to his passion for the industry. 

I look forward to seeing more great films and stars over the next 25 years at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Debbie Tuma is a freelance writer and a host at WLNG Radio. She lives in Riverhead and can be reached at [email protected].

About two years ago, I canceled our subscription to Sotheby’s fine art auction catalogs. I canceled our subscriptions with Christie’s and Phillips too. During auction season, which is roughly twice a year in New York, the catalogs would come fast and furious, hand-delivered by a bicycle messenger, sometimes twice or three times a day, a battered delivery log for me to sign, a creamy white “With our compliments” card tucked into the package. 

For a while I liked having the catalogs around. They were printed on thick, glossy paper, one artwork per page, the color reproductions expensive and gorgeous. When the boys were young, we cut up pages from the catalogs and made collages and Christmas cards out of them. We made paper snowflakes and taped them to our dining room window. We once pressed fallen leaves between a catalog’s pages then laminated them with a machine we had bought at Staples. Sometimes, before dinner, I would use a stack of five or six catalogs to press the water out of a block of tofu. 

Some of the particularly interesting catalogs — one on kinetic art that seemed obscure and unfamiliar — or ones that featured photos of my husband’s father, the art dealer Leo Castelli, I would save and place on the shelves downstairs with our other art books. But mainly I would let the catalogs accumulate on the kitchen counter, unread, in increasingly teetering towers, until I had the time and inclination to flip through them. 

Eventually I would place them in a neat stack in the pantry near the recycling bin or down in the basement, just in case one of us wanted to look at them again. My husband would sometimes transfer a catalog from the basement back onto the kitchen counter: “Hey, you’re not throwing this away, are you?” he’d ask. It would then stay on the counter for quite a while, the base for another stack of catalogs. 

Some of the catalogs wound up in Montauk, but I don’t remember how. Some I gave to artist friends. Twice I hauled a box of the catalogs across town to the boys’ school and gave them to Liz, the art teacher. I don’t know if she ever used them. 

As the boys grew older, I would try to interest them in some of the catalogs’ images. They liked the work of Lucio Fontana, the idea of a knife-slashed canvas being particularly compelling to grade-school boys. They liked Salvatore Scarpitta and his racecars. They liked a print by Bruce Nauman that read “EAT SHIT AND DIE.” But, for the most part, they’d rather look at something else. 

And, frankly, after a while, so did I. The problem, of course, was the prices. All those zeros! No matter how lovely the Mark Grotjahn painting or smart the Cindy Sherman photo or riotous the Rauschenberg combine, one could not ignore the 8-point type marching across the bottom of the page: $16 million . . . $6.7 million . . . $12 million. . . . And in case one didn’t have a calculator handy, prices were given in pound sterling and euros as well. Chinese renminbi, too. 

In the city, we live down the street from the painter Lois Dodd, who is 90 years old and still painting. One day an artist friend took me along to visit her. We brought sandwiches and berries and walked five flights up to the apartment/studio where Dodd has lived and worked for over 50 years. She welcomed us warmly, dressed in jeans and a cotton button-down, a no-nonsense digital watch on her wrist. Inside, there was a small kitchen, a wooden table and chairs, a mirror. But mainly there was art: In racks, in boxes, on shelves, on tables, on easels, on the floor. She had been painting for over 70 years. Seventy years! She had founded a gallery, taught, applied for fellowships, raised a son, found larger studio space in Maine, sold paintings when she could, but mainly she painted and painted and painted. 

After the sandwiches and berries, Dodd showed us some of her work. She yanked the canvases out of the racks, dusted them off with a flick of her hand, propped them up without ceremony on a chair. A barn. A tangle of flowers. White windows against a blue-black sky. “I don’t know about this orange,” she laughed at one painting, as if it were alive, as if it were some zany relative. She pulled out another and shrugged: “This one is good.” And another: “No one seems to like my tunnel paintings, but I do.” 

The room turned golden as the afternoon drifted into evening; the air, cool and still. We drank tea. We looked at art.

Shortly after that visit, I gathered all of our auction catalogs, bundled them up with twine, and set them out on the curb for recycling to pick up. “They are a horrible way to look at art,” I told my husband. The next morning, on my way to Whole Foods, I noticed a man selling books on the sidewalk. Lined up neatly on a red blanket were the auction catalogs I had just tried to get rid of. 

“Ten dollars each,” the man told me when I stopped to look. “But for you, I’ll take 5.”

Lisa Silver is a freelance writer who has been spending summers in Montauk for the past 16 years.