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

Brilliant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does she go to every opening night?

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

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

“Cool it,” he said as he signed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever transpires in 2018, cancer will not defeat John McCain. 

Cancer is neither an opponent nor a binary condition, and the sooner we stop pitting humans against a disease, stop using war metaphors in the field of medicine, the better off we all shall be, especially cancer patients and their loved ones. Many a mislabeled loser has been quietly valiant and privately heroic.

A war veteran, prisoner of war survivor, and presidential candidate, Senator McCain’s courage has never been in question. But glioblastoma cares nothing about mettle or fortitude. Only 5 out of 100 people outlive the illness, and, according to the best studies available, their survival was not due to willpower or fighting spirit. Teddy Kennedy and Beau Biden lacked for neither, and both were felled by the disease. 

If “battling cancer” has long been a misguided metaphor, it seems spectacularly inapposite in connection with the redoubtable John McCain. Cancer is not an adversary to be conquered or outflanked; cancer is the emperor of all maladies. An oncology team finds it, cuts it out, poisons it, irradiates it, and prays for the best. If they are successful, your cancer will go into hiding and lurk just outside the gates of good fortune for a long time. The idea of winning or losing is just cruel, as it has been since Susan Sontag made the point 40 years ago in her classic “Illness as Metaphor.”

When first diagnosed, unspoken shame strikes all patients: You must have smoked or drunk too much, eaten unwisely, exercised insufficiently, loved incompletely, or mangled your emotions into some sorry state. And then, should you succumb to cancer, the unuttered implication is you did not fight doggedly enough, or you chose the wrong hospital or wrong protocol or, God forbid, the wrong God. 

It is all unnecessary and untrue. You do not declare war on nature; cancer has been with us since ancient Greece, when Hippocrates, the father of medicine, removed tumors around 440 B.C. Just like my doctors did for me in 2015. 

Tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma is not as lethal as glioblastoma, but it’s a serious disease. Cancer of the head and neck is the sixth most common malignancy in the world. Possessing neither the energy nor inclination to charge into battle, I surrendered to the new realities of the constant companionship of mortality and the hard work ahead.

After CAT and PET scans, I took drugs, took notes, had teeth removed, then a tonsil (by a robot) and dozens of lymph nodes. No food or water for eight days. Thirty-five radiation sessions scrambled my taste buds like eggs, burned my throat like toast, and fried my saliva glands. Eating was a chore. Forty pounds disappeared. Talking was difficult, breathing was compromised, and any social life was fantasy. Hardest of all, perhaps, was trusting total strangers who introduced themselves as my doctors and nurses and technicians and dietitians and therapists — far from a battalion of warriors, they made up a gentle, lifesaving team. They addressed my cancer. I dealt with my psyche. And my family. I can only hope I did as well as they.

Battle cancer? At 67 years of age? At 80? At 8? Other than “following orders,” military language never came into play. If a metaphor were needed, weather provided a more useful lexicon. Weather can surprise, strike hard, and then dissipate. Cancer was akin to a great northeaster; once spotted on the radar screen, you batten down the hatches, consult the experts, follow the playbook, gather supplies and community, and hope for the best. You don’t fight weather. You don’t blame its victims, and you don’t put the onus on the stricken.

Then, as now, support and encouragement can be salutary during hard times and health challenges, but they are not magical. With cancer, the only real war is the war of words. People mean well, but their best wishes can be laced with unintended meaning. 

And even a wordsmith like Barack Obama, ever empathic, could use some re-education.

“Give it hell, John,” is what Mr. Obama tweeted to Senator McCain last year.

You cannot give cancer hell. Cancer is hell.

Some metaphors work.

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.

“Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better,” wrote the philosopher Thoreau — an idea that has always been alien to me. I am the perpetual proponent of the new, new thing. The grass is always greener, is my motto, where you’re not responsible for cutting it. 

Yet all that changed on my recent cruise along the Mediterranean coast. In fact, if a renewed appreciation for home is the criterion, then my cruise last summer was an A+, a proverbial 10 out of 10, Success with a capital S. 

I’ll confess: Envy was at the heart of all bad decisions. Over the summer it seemed that everyone I knew was traveling abroad. As consolation I perused last-minute trip packages over the internet. I leapt at a small boat cruise that started in Nice and ended up on land in Florence two weeks later. 

Ooh la la! The Cote d’Azur! And, later, Portofino, Italy, was on the itinerary! I had always wanted to get to Florence to see The David “in the flesh.” Here was my fantasy getaway, I thought. If I could commit to an imminent departure, the $5,000 cruise would cost only $2,800. “Go!” said my husband, who couldn’t get a break from work, ever supportive of spontaneity on a budget. 

You get what you pay for, including a roommate. Herewith, the “Things I Wish I’d Known” before I started.

You could argue (though I won’t) that it was worse for Donna, my poor “roommate.” A veteran traveler, Donna had never shared so much as a Chinese meal — whereas I’d had countless roommates over the years. Yet the cruise line (which shall remain nameless) assured me that Donna, a senior from The Villages in Florida, always shared. Someone clearly had her signals crossed.

I had read the stories. Among retirement communities, The Villages has the swingingest reputation in the U.S. I pictured a hip senior, a cool survivor of the sexual revolution, with, I don’t know, novelty pointers on lubrication? What I got was a solid, no-frills, Canadian in her 80s without a trace of irony.

Donna was positively livid at having to share. “I snore,” she said, throwing it down as a challenge, “and I keep the TV on all the time for company.” What was I? An inconvenient truth, is what, with apologies to Al Gore.

In decibels, I’ve not yet met a man to equal Donna. I don’t mean to brag, but that’s saying a lot. The noise penetrated double doses of Ambien and earplugs. The din began as soon as she dropped off before 9 p.m. and reached a crescendo in the middle of the night. At that point, arms splayed, Donna dramatically flung herself across the bed, putting her within spitting distance of my eardrum. 

Tip: No need to worry about disturbing Donna. I could have been running an ISIS cell in the night without her knowing.

Our tour leader, Lois, was a zaftig, gorgeous, 50-something Brit, with a cascade of romantic languages under her belt. “I feel like I know you through our emails,” she said when we met at the Nice airport, as she clutched me to her ample frame. Her ravishing up-do was an architectural marvel, through which I gladly would have taken a guided tour.

To you I suppose this would have been obvious: Your leader is paid to act like your BFF, even after your continued presence on the tour is a migraine. It’s your leader’s job to solve problems on the tour, before they turn into catastrophes. An example of a problem might be: “My medication needs refrigeration,” or, more challengingly, “My headset is dead” (check the volume, you dunce). 

If, in your free time, you take a dive onto the pavement outside the Matisse Museum in Nice due to sleep deprivation, this is your bad. You would expect your actual BFFs to be all over it with bandages and sympathy. But your tour guide recognizes this didn’t happen on her watch. Her assistance is entirely optional. 

Tip: To avoid infection, pull the gravel out of your hands and knees and wash immediately. If you have trouble opening doors, remember to use both hands. Try not to be carrying a tumbler of bourbon as you go.

After several days of sharing with Donna, something had to give. I was on the verge of confessing to random acts of terrorism just to make it stop. Alas, the 30 or so staterooms on our good ship, the Arethusa, were all booked; Donna and I were bound for life — or what had come to feel like it. 

It came to me in an epiphany. I realized — hurrah — that the enclosed deck outside our stateroom was the precise width of the stateroom beds. That night, docked in Porto Venere, I hoisted my mattress under one arm and dragged it outside. To a lifelong sailor, I reasoned, sleeping under the stars is no hardship, but rather one of the great advantages of the cruising life.

“I hear you slept on the deck,” said Lois, who ambushed me the next morning, thunderclouds gathering on her expressive brow. What, was there satellite surveillance? A spy network? It had not occurred to me that this would truly be a problem until I caught her tone. 

“Do it again, and I’ll send you home,” hissed Lois, warming to her role as the punishing headmistress. Really, expulsion? Okay, so the goal was to keep Lois happy, not the other way around? 

I was going to get to Florence, come hell or high water, an expression that turned out to be eerily prescient.

Tip: Keep calm and carry on. A daily dose of the Lorazepam that you brought for fear of flying will keep you grounded. 

The cruise line was no luxury outfit. Yet they aimed to make travelers feel like they were getting a high-end experience — or else. 

In the interest of cutting costs, travelers ate largely the same meal — just like in school, except that you didn’t need to line up. But unlike school, complaining was not cool. If you can’t swallow the mystery meat on your plate, best to leave it until it’s removed. And btw, the fish is not actually bad — probably just fed up. If group members privately wonder if the tomato soup was thickened with kibble, keep it quiet. 

We observed what I came to think of as the “Omerta Pact” — fitting, as the bulk of the trip was in Italy. “Did you all have a great meal?” our guide asked, once we were all back on the bus. We learned to answer, “Fabulous!” with enthusiasm. If our response was less than resounding, she repeated the question until she heard real conviction in the reply. Pretty soon, you believed it yourself, particularly if you hadn’t slept the night before.

Tip: Your tour leader is always in a position to send you home. You won’t be getting a refund.

A warning like “Fire!” activates your fight or flight response — as would, “Man the lifeboats, we’re going down!” However, words like “learning” and “discovery” fill a traveler with happy wonder, which I guess is the point. It took a while for us to figure out that the words “learning” and “discovery” together meant we were probably f—-ed, big time.

We knew stormy weather was ahead when the good ship Arethusa made its way to the island of Elba, where Napoleon was exiled for under a year. “Trust me,” said Lois, which should have tipped us off, as if the fishbowl full of Dramamine on the foredeck didn’t send a warning. She called it “an opportunity for learning and discovery.” By then, we were Pavlov’s dogs. We knew the words meant unpleasantness ahead; we just didn’t know what. 

Half an hour in 10-to-12-foot waves crashing against the upper decks; the ship lurched through the squall like a toy boat in a bathtub with Dwayne Johnson. The few who weren’t throwing up were fixated on a knocking noise in the stern that sounded like the ship was breaking apart. Lois, smart girl, was nowhere to be found. Six hours later, we reached port, exhausted by the effort of staying upright. The next day our Croatian captain confessed to having been “terrified.” 

Tip: If your captain wonders aloud if the ship can handle high seas, time to locate the nearest airport.

Ten days into the trip I seemed to be suffering some form of P.T.S.D. “Who am I?” I asked my husband two or three times a day, after I’d upped my mobile plan to Verizon’s international bilking and roaming. But my salvation came in an app. In Florence, hotels.com offered a single room for $150 in our hotel, which I snapped up before we reached shore. 

I don’t need to tell you that this didn’t sit well with Lois, who had floated the room for 300 bucks. However, in a masterful stroke, she was able to seize the advantage, telling Donna that she had organized a “special surprise” for her in Florence. 

Michelangelo’s David — I am happy to report — brought tears to my eyes. My single room was bliss, though the ceilings were substantially higher than the room was wide. Still, I boarded Alitalia back to the U.S. as if it were the last airlift out of a war zone.

“We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with a new experience and character,” to get back to Thoreau. Or, I can attest, there’s no place like East Hampton in the summertime.

Ellen T. White is the author of “Simply Irresistible,” about great romantic women in history. She lives in Springs.

This morning, brushing my teeth, I closed my eyes. I saw only black. I opened them again, all without thinking, and the light rushed back in, not just light but the outpouring of information it brought, the edges, the planes, the colors, the textures of the world; its orientation, heaviness, opacity and translucence, weight and delicacy and shimmer, its meeting points and the interplay between everything and everything. So much. It spoke to me from all around.

I immediately closed my eyes again, overcome by that inpouring. Even the slightest glimpse, a momentary opening of a closed eye, can give me so much connection to the world; all in a microsecond I saw far more than I could take in or detail in words. If that’s true of a momentary glance, what an abundance of wealth I take in with my eyes when they are full open, and maybe even more when I let them rest and gaze.

I just lost a good bit of the sight in one eye. I woke one morning and saw a black round sun against the background of the window by my bed. I turned and looked at my alarm clock. There was that dark circle again. It had moved with my gaze. I got out of bed, put on the kettle for my tea, and called the eye doctor.

Yes, it was a long day of drops and tests and bad news. And yes, I realized, if it happens again in the other eye that would be quite a change for me — I would be legally blind. And so I’m precariously between two worlds right now, and working hard to keep my balance, and my root, in the one where both eyes work — at least to the extent that is left to them now.

When I don’t focus on it it doesn’t seem like too big a deal because the other eye is so willing and able to fill in. The unfathomable brain is weaving the pieces of the patchwork of information that it’s gathering from my left eye and putting it together with what is coming in through the right. And one thing I’m seeing, ha-ha, one thing I’m seeing is that what is happening with the left eye now is that I am actually seeing the eye itself; it’s getting in the way of its own flow that all my life has been an open river of information it’s been pouring into me, allowing, interpreting for me. It’s as if the eye were saying, hey, pay attention to me, not to the information I’m giving you. 

And I see that that’s happening in so many other ways in my psyche and in my life as I get older. My body is saying it. My mind is saying it; my ego is too. All the parts that I think are separate from the world around me.

This is a transient, ephemeral time of adaptation, getting to be a witness to this process. The blood vessel broke only a few weeks ago, and my brain hasn’t finished relearning how to see, is in the process of relearning how to weave things together in this new way, so I’m getting to watch this as it happens. I’m thinking that, if the progression stays on this course, I will experience a seamless flow of connection with the world through my eyes as I did before. It won’t be the same as it once was, for sure. Those patches of comprehension have undeniably become more fragile, almost threadbare. But it will still seem like a whole quilt, a blanket that I can wrap myself in.

But of course there’s that fear, that finally there won’t be enough material for my brain to work with, that this time of change will simply be continuous, fast or slow, with the dear brain working to accept, weave, interpret, and categorize a whole new, and fading, alphabet.

When this first happened, I had to cancel a class, tell my daughter, ask a question of a friend. And every time I dictated into my iPhone the phrase “my eye,” it typed in “mayeye.” Uncomfortably close to the word “mayday,” from the French m’aidez, or help me, but also reminiscent of that old childhood game, mother may I? May I, Great Mother, each day for one more day, continue to see?

Tina Curran has taught tai chi and qigong for many years and enjoys photography. She lives in Hampton Bays.

While some politicians claim that climate change is a hoax, and climate scientists try to refine their models and forecasts of exactly how much warming will take place in the next few decades, marine scientists can see clearly the evidence of what has already happened. 

Everyone has heard about melting glaciers and dying coral reefs, but climate change is doing something else that is equally dangerous. The oceans absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels. In one way that’s good, because it slows down the warming, but it is making the seawater more acidic. CO2 in the ocean combines with water to form carbonic acid and makes the water more acidic — in fact 30 percent more acidic in recent decades. 

This affects marine animals; the most severe effect is impairing shell formation in animals with calcium carbonate shells, such as clams and mussels. This has already occurred: In the Pacific Northwest, oyster larvae in hatcheries are unable to make their shells properly. Tiny planktonic snails are showing eroded shells. Acidified water poses an additional stress to corals already suffering from rising temperatures. Another effect is on behavior. Acidified waters impair the sense of smell of fish, causing them to be unable to find their home reef and to move toward, rather than away from, the odor of a predator. 

Another reason global warming has not been too bad yet is because the ocean absorbs most of the earth’s excess heat. But oceans are warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, half of the increase in ocean heat content since 1865 has occurred over the past two decades. Warmer water holds less oxygen, but the respiration rate of animals (except for marine mammals) increases with temperature, so they need more oxygen at the same time that less is available. A warmer ocean has less turnover (vertical water movements), which normally brings nutrient-rich water up from deep water to the plankton that photosynthesize near the surface. With fewer nutrients, they photosynthesize less and animals can’t get enough food.

Many species are moving north to find more suitable environments, including species of commercial importance. Lobsters are disappearing from Long Island and southern New England, but increasing in the Gulf of Maine and Canada. Commercial catches are regulated by regional management agencies, but now these animals are fewer where they had been, and are increasing in places where they weren’t important before. 

The most dramatic responses to warming oceans are in corals. When stressed, corals eject the single-celled symbiotic algae that live in their tissues, which normally photosynthesize and provide the coral with most of its nutrition. When they are ejected, the coral is “bleached” and appears white. While they can still get some nutrition by catching plankton with their tentacles, most species get less than half of their nutrition this way, so if the stress persists and zooxanthellae do not return, corals die. About 30 percent of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia died in 2016-17. This is devastating not only for the corals, but also for the thousands of other species that depend on the reef, including humans, who depend on it for $6 billion in tourism revenue annually. An excellent documentary about this tragedy, called “Chasing Coral,” is available on Netflix.

Major changes are occurring in the polar regions, where the extent of sea ice is diminishing rapidly. As ice melts, the water gets fresher and normal algal blooms diminish, providing less food at the bottom of the food chain on which the rest of the ecosystem depends. Some species that rely on sea ice, like Adelie penguins in Antarctica and polar bears in the Arctic, are in trouble.

Closer to home, sea level rise is one effect that is apparent in coastal regions. Sea level rise results from water expanding when it warms plus addition of new water from melting glaciers. It is happening faster than was predicted. Increased flooding from storms is common, and many areas (e.g., South Florida) have flooded streets even on sunny days. Since much of the world’s population lives in coastal areas, threats to human lives and well-being are becoming apparent. 

In Bristol Bay, Alaska, the ability of local communities to access subsistence resources is impaired. Changes in the timing of ice freeze and melt are affecting safety, making it difficult to travel to neighboring villages and in some cases causing loss of life. Residents of some small low-lying Pacific islands have already moved elsewhere, and such “climate refugees” will increase in the future, which can cause political and social problems. Despite this, the Trump administration has recently undone a regulation that required that development near the coast take sea level rise into consideration, to reduce the risk of future damage. 

Natural communities are also at risk. Coastal salt marshes in the intertidal zone are very important ecosystems that reduce storm surge and winds, absorb pollutants, and provide habitat for a variety of crabs, shrimp, fishes, birds, and mammals. In the face of rising seas, marshes must either increase their elevation or move inland. Increase in elevation results from new sediments being deposited and organic matter accumulation from marsh plants. Many marshes in the Northeast do not have adequate input of new sediments to increase their elevation, so moving back is the only option. (The marshes in Accabonac Harbor are increasing with sediments but not organic matter from plants, and have not been keeping up with sea level rise over the past decade.)

In developed regions, there are roads, sidewalks, etc., immediately inland, so there is no place for the marshes to go. Subject to “coastal squeeze,” many marshes that protect us from storm surge and winds will disappear. Recently, the East Hampton Town Board very wisely used the community preservation fund to buy some properties adjacent to marshes to allow for migration. 

Another component of forecasted climate change is increased rainfall in the Northeast. This will intensify the nitrogen problem in estuaries, since more rain means more runoff and nitrogen going into the water. Much of our local nitrogen problem is due primarily to leaching from septic systems, but the expansive green lawns in the Hamptons suggest there is a lot of fertilizer runoff also. Warmer water in the future will also accelerate algal blooms.

What can be done? We need rapid decreases in emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. While governmental actions are vital, and it is important to keep up the pressure on elected officials to do more, collectively individuals can make a difference. Examine your “carbon footprint.” Does your car use a lot of gas? Next time, buy a hybrid or electric. Do you drive short distances that you could walk or bike or take public transportation? How high is your electric bill? Could you keep your house a bit warmer in the summer and a bit cooler in the winter to save energy? 

I am surprised and saddened to see so few houses around here with solar panels. Solar technology has improved greatly and the price has gone down. Could you eat less meat and more vegetables? Animal agriculture, especially beef, creates a huge amount of greenhouse gases. Studies indicate that the most important thing you can do — if you are still in a position to do this — is reduce the number of children you have. 

All these actions will make the quality of life better for the children and grandchildren you do have.

Judith S. Weis is a professor emerita at Rutgers University. She has a house in Springs.

It’s gone. I know. Another summer, another year barreling by.

That title up there actually has a second meaning. Summer is the name of a poof of a poodle, under six pounds, jet-black hair, now aging with some white around the mouth. She’s got this very (purposely) unkempt look — her hair covering her eyes and dangling haphazardly in soft twirls off her bony body. She also appears as if she’s walking on tiptoe. Everyone on the street wonders what kind of dog she is. 

She’s Summer, dark and small and shapeless, hard to tell her front from her back. At rest, she resembles a black mop head. Or a fake-fur throw pillow.

Her owner passed away this past winter. A lovely and courageous woman named Carol Lee, of Southern heritage. The dog wound up outliving her at 14 years old. Carol Lee was 74 when she died but told everyone, for years until the end, that she was 59. (Except, of course, when she was 59; then she recalibrated to the mid-30s.)

Sam, her brother, had a summer house this summer in Sag Harbor. A rental, a spectacular one on the edge of the cove, a more remote part of Sag — you travel along Long Island Avenue to Redwood Road to Cove Road, and there it is. About a mile from the American Hotel.

It’s a gorgeous house, modern and chic, with stunning views of the cove — a tranquil body of water, smooth as glass; it ripples slightly when a family of ducks glides by, or a lone paddleboarder drifts along, or a kayak, a canoe, or a rowboat. There’s a low bridge at one end, so larger boats are blocked from entering. You rarely hear a motor. It is quiet and serene and reflects the ever-changing skies above. Even the recently complained-about noisy helicopters don’t seem to pierce through, but, frankly, the workers who trim the hedges on a Saturday slightly annoy. 

The house has a small fenced-in pool, but the rest of the grounds, with an elaborate grill and an outdoor dining table where we would often dine, is open to woods and nearby houses. After dinner, we would sit outdoors, look out at the water, and listen to music, the air glittering with fireflies as night began to fall.

“Where’s Summer?” is what Sam asks a thousand times a day. Even when the dog is on a leash, sitting under us at an outdoor table at Page restaurant, for one, inches from our feet. 

“Where’s Summer?”

Maybe I passed over too quickly how the dog came to be Sam’s. She belonged to Carol Lee since May of 2003, and my husband and I were there on her first night in Carol Lee’s East 60th Street apartment in Manhattan. For years, when we had a house in the Amagansett dunes, Sam and Carol Lee would come and visit, Summer tiptoeing behind them.

The two of them (make that the three of them) would rent houses each summer in various locations but seemed to settle on Sag over the last few summers. Houses, some grand, some simple, with pools and without, and always walking distance to town.

There were dinners and backgammon and rosé wine. Carol Lee’s passing was sad for many people who were touched by her. But no one was more bereft than her brother. They were closer thanthis.

This was his first summer in decades that she hadn’t been there with him, often in the city, and constantly in the summer houses. Shopping together. Museums and movies together. Gabbing and laughing together. Screaming at each other.

David (he’s my husband) and I became sort of grateful stand-ins for Carol Lee this summer. Sam was lost without her, and we would show up. David would cook — David and Carol Lee often cooked together on summer weekends, and also holidays and birthdays, for as long as I can remember.

And now she’s gone. And summer is ending. But Summer, the dog, is always right there no matter how many times Sam asks where she is. We wonder if she misses Carol Lee. We always do wonder: What do dogs think? (They must think something.)

Maybe Sam believes that Carol Lee lives on in Summer. He takes her everywhere, in his arms on the subway to his office (she’s that tiny). She’s there at any outdoor restaurant here and in N.Y.C. Carol Lee may be gone, but the dog seems to be thriving.

But back to the house where we have spent weekends, four in all, since Memorial Day. There were lots of laughs and lots of reminiscing about Carol Lee, the dog a constant reminder among other reminders and stories shared. How we would curse at each other over backgammon moves. How we thought how she would have loved to see Glenn Close in “Sunset Boulevard” or Bette Midler in “Hello, Dolly.” Carol Lee was a sometime actress, along with her other gifts. Gifts of interior design, of fashion styling — the greatest gift-giver I have known. (Lorne Michaels, in fact, used her for a time as his personal shopper.)

I would write pieces in this column and on my blog and she would insist she portray one of the characters in my stories. She wanted me to write a one-woman show for her. In the end, she would have been much better qualified to write her own story and portray herself in a one-woman show. She had an Imogene Coca comedic quality. And she looked somewhat like Carson McCullers. It was often discussed how she could play those two women in that never-to-be-done one-woman show.

Meantime, summer does speed along. It is August as I write this; my husband and I are in Provincetown for the month, a new summer spot since selling in Amagansett.

But I’m lucky enough to still spend time in Sag Harbor and the Hamptons, driving around, getting takeout from Round Swamp Farm and Cavaniola’s, eating dinner at the bar at the Palm, shopping at Turpan. Reading and reminiscing.

Weekends in June and July were not great, weather-wise. Some sun. More clouds. Rain.

What happened to the summer of 2017? Where did it go? And, more specifically, where is Summer, that wayward, but always underfoot, shadow of a dog?

Where is she?

Oh, there she is. Right there.

Hy Abady has collected his “Guestwords” essays in two books, the latest of which is “Back in The Star Again Again! Further Stories From the East End. And Beyond.”

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.