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.”

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.

“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.

Hello. My name is BB Gun and I am an addict. For the last 23 years, first thing every morning and last thing every night, I check up on my fantasy baseball team — good news, bad news, mixed bag. Never a dull moment. Several times throughout each day, I go to various websites to find out about trades, tirades, injuries, and pertinent updates. The hourly findings trigger substitutions or self-pity or fist pumps. Up and down like a corked yo-yo. 

My league has its own e-bulletin board on which we share every minute maneuver (except our secret strategies). The races are tight, the competition stiff; any nugget of information could swing a whole season, so you best not miss any games, including postseason, spring training, minor leagues, winter ball.

El Diario is obligatorio. The DirecTV MLB package is de rigueur. The financial investment is modest — less expensive than one ski trip or one golf outing at a fancy country club. Some years, finishing in the first division, you even take home some cash. 

Winning the whole shebang gets you a new plush sofa and a puffed chest. 

The BB Guns have been a consistently solid squad that has delivered a little money, a little glory, and surprisingly deep pleasures. A home run hit by a longhaired stranger in Anaheim or Arlington lands deep in your soul. A shutout hurled by a tall lefty in Toronto or Cleveland fills you with relief and rapture. The less you paid for the player at the draft, the more you celebrate such joyful moments. You are, after all, head scout, general manager, and chief dealmaker. You learn about the beauty and the business of the game, as well as the complicated nature of cohorts-cum-competitors. (Why do grudges have no final inning?)

This desultory season, this terrible Summer of Seventeen, the BB Guns suck. I mean, suck on steroids. (How I wish I could force-feed some anabolic-androgenic compounds into my feckless power hitters every time they whiff.) Poor projections on my part, coupled with constant injuries and dunderheaded trades, have my psyche catching Aroldis Chapman fastballs without a mask or mitt. I ache in cranial nooks and crannies I didn’t know could ache. I pore over box scores and Bleacher Report and Baseball Prospectus like a Franciscan monk studying scriptures. 

My better angels — no, I do not own Mike Trout — want me to stay far away from the whole mess: my league, my stats, my failings. But I am failing at that too. I am hooked. And unhappy. I chase my misery doggedly, compulsively, first thing each day, last thing each night, and twice on Sunday — Rays vs. Jays at 7 p.m. followed by O’s vs. A’s at 11. And then I pace and sulk, sulk and pace, until dawn’s early light.

But why? Oh why?

Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that reading positive items about yourself or, by extension, your fantasy team, on a regular basis, can be as addictive as cigarettes or alcohol. Facebook is just a gateway drug. Instagram is mere porn. Twitter dulls all pain and makes anyone feel omniscient and loved, in a poetic fashion.

Who needs fentanyl when you have fantasy baseball? 

At Harvard University, M.R.I. scans of the brain revealed high activity when subjects received personal attention and/or approbation from websites like OnRoto and FanGraphs. They concluded that “self-disclosure communication” stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers much like sex or food. “High-scoring participants experience greater excitation of their amygdala and striatum, the two brain regions involved in impulsive behavior. These patterns are on par with those who are addicted to cocaine.”

Soy un adicto. Yes, I am an addict. In two languages.

Science equates 20 years of fantasy baseball to decades of cheap booze, rough sex, a pack a day, and crack. This sad season, I am experiencing all the lows and none of the highs of a debauched lifestyle. I want to get off this unmerry-go-round. Seeing oneself in last place, sinking like a stone, day in, day out, will do serious damage to your amygdala and striatum, not to mention ego and erections. The BB Guns are misfiring. 

Oh, say can you see the grand opening of The First Real Rehab Center for Fantasy Ballers. It will be in Florida, and likely located within the Devil’s Triangle of Clearwater, Dunedin, and St. Pete’s (spring homes of the Phillies, Jays, and Yankees). I pray for the day, and have to trust it will be covered by Obamacare. 

If you, dear reader, are looking for a happy ending or a silver lining — a miraculous ninth-inning comeback — you have come to the wrong place. Just like the Trump presidency. 

Or the Yankees’ pennant drive.

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

I fall in love regularly.

With a red spindly flower that blooms for only a few days in the backyard. With a rush of tall grass swaying in the delicious South Fork breeze. With family. Old and just-met friends. The band of turkeys roaming our yard. In love with poems and the anticipation of penne with fresh tomato sauce. The surprise of dolphins lifting and diving arcs through the exhilarating waves with which I am in love.

I fall in love with a nugget of promise lighting my path when my eyes are open.

On Saturday evening, Aug. 12, like people throughout the country, I felt the need to stand together with others in our community in a public showing of outrage, grief, and commitment to stop the calculated madness that erupted this time in Charlottesville, Va. A number of local activists began an email thread discussing the idea of a vigil. The wharf in Sag Harbor, 3 p.m. Then 4 p.m. 

We were reminded that Willie Jenkins, an East Ender who was a leader in local Black Lives Matter events last summer, was organizing the first Bridgehampton Day at the Bridgehampton Childcare and Recreational Center on the Turnpike. We needed to show support. To show up. After more back and forth and an invitation from Bonnie Cannon, the director of the Center, who was on the thread, it was agreed the vigil would be held there, at 6 p.m., following the celebration. 

I arrived around 4:30 p.m. to a vibrant gathering of families and neighbors, plentiful with food, a cacophony of music, conversation, and the scud, slide, shout, and bounce of basketball. The flowers in the garden seemed as if they were talking. T-shirts marking the day decorated torsos of every size. The barbecue grill sizzled. Whatever was happening in a place called the Hamptons, on Shinnecock land, where houses get torn down and rebuilt adorned by instant installation of humongous trees mostly with the labor of Latino workers threatened by deportation, where S.U.V. Porsches line the roads leading to beaches, and where white supremacy also hides and doesn’t hide in every village — while the realtor in chief was not condemning the terror in Charlottesville, thereby condoning as he wagged and roared a threat of first strike — on the grounds of the Bridgehampton Childcare and Recreational Center on the Bridge-Sag Turnpike in the heart of the black community, life was happening. 

The people gathered seemed to be doing what they needed, taking pleasure in their community. I asked Bonnie if we shouldn’t change plans, invite those who would be coming for the vigil to just join. She thought it was important to take a few moments to honor the losses and pain in Charlottesville, speak our commitment together. But it seemed like there would be two distinct events, possibly with two separate groups of people — one mostly black, already there and engaged, and the other mostly white, joining soon.

When the vigil group began to arrive, they gathered in the front area of the grounds, waiting for instruction, while the celebration, although diminishing in size as it was set to end at 6 p.m., continued. Willie announced there would be a vigil. 

There was some confusion. I worried that Bridgehampton Day was being invaded and in that sense disrespected, although the opposite was the intention. The situation would have been funny, had it not reflected something so serious, to see the awkward separation of lives, cultures, and colors. How would someone from another planet interpret the human checkerboard?

Bonnie called everyone into a circle. She acknowledged Bridgehampton Day, its great success, announcing officially that it would be annual, thanking Willie. She spoke about Charlottesville, asked for a moment of silence. She noted that white people were on one side of the circle and black people on the other, as usual, and asked the white people to cross to another part of the circle, join hands with a black person, speak to someone they didn’t know. Any who then wished to take signs and go stand by the road for a vigil were invited to do so.

She and I suggested that those who didn’t know the Center could get to know it. Willie called for volunteers for next year’s Bridgehampton Day. There was an animated rearrangement of bodies and voices, an excitement and release that happens during a cellular shift. A momentary lightening of spirit.

People chatted and moved around the parking area between buildings, and then some walked toward the road. Soon a group stood at the side of the road in front of the Center, some with signs, some calling out. Passing drivers honked, offered a V with their fingers and yelled affirmations.

We don’t want and can’t afford for these small, resonating steps toward what the late Grace Lee Boggs called “growing our souls” to come only after an explosion, to rewind a few days or weeks later. That’s not change. (Bonnie reminded me that the Center was built in the ’60s after a tragedy, to offer safe care to children of the seasonal farm workers.) What’s happening is not new. And the daily subtler behaviors of white supremacy didn’t end or just begin. But it’s all out there now, raw and unfiltered — a big, naked, many-tongued body of a nation bleeding out.

It shouldn’t be that in 2017 this is where we still are. It shouldn’t be that the black woman has to fix it. Just as it shouldn’t be that talks and exhibitions offer the work and voices of only or predominantly those who are white identified, planned by the same, or that young people of different ethnicities, gender identities, or sexualities aren’t regularly affirmed by accessible curriculums, books, programs, and teachers. None of the historical and ongoing affronts and assaults or the treachery spewing from the whitest house threatening to unravel any shreds of decency, safety, or democracy, should be. There are a zillion shouldn’ts. And here we are. 

Bonnie and I, and it seemed others I encountered, agreed that a glimmer danced in that place among ordinary humans of different ages, skin tones, living on different neighboring roads, on Aug. 13, 2017, following a jubilant celebration in the hub of a black community. 

Adrienne maree brown writes in the introduction to her visionary and hopeful book “Emergent Strategy”: “If love were the central practice of a new generation of organizers and spiritual leaders, it would have a massive impact on what is considered organizing. If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression.”

Being at the Center again after having spent time there some years back reminded me that the essential work of building takes plodding persistence and tenacity, along with vision. Long and slow. Hard to keep in mind as the very future of life on earth daily becomes more precarious. And yet this is the work of being alive. The work of love.

James Baldwin wrote: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace — not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

I shared with those gathered at the Center a phrase I had heard in the ’80s in a country experiencing war and also promise: “The joy of the people is what the enemy fears most.” 

The enemy and opposite of love is hate. The opposite of remember is dismember. The opposite of facing whatever has been and is, is denial. Denial can last for only so long. Then, like acid, it eats the soul. Of a person. Of a country.

I wake to an email from a dear friend, the writer and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller. His words lyrically cry a succinct warning and challenge, including this line: “The only cure is love yet so many refuse to accept or take their medicine.”

Here, once again, in the pregnant portending of August, as afternoon turned to evening on a piece of earth emanating past spirits and struggles, in a living project actively caring for and preparing those who will carry on, as one morning glory planted by Mr. Doug, the Center’s director of culinary arts and Sol Garden, began its blue overture, I fell in love.

Kathy Engel is associate arts professor and chair in the department of art and public policy at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

Every season our marathon of philanthropic events combines our passion for giving back with the splendor of the South Fork. From galas to tea dances, live auctions to dance parties, we improve lives, protect and celebrate nature and art, and model what it means to be good citizens.

This year as I headed back east to kick off another summer, I thought back on my recent travels around the world, struck by something jarring: What if you came from a society where philanthropy, volunteerism, and “giving back” — all the things we do so naturally here — were shunned historically or not part of the mainstream? 

It may seem like a stretch to us, of course. In the United States, more than $390 billion was raised for charitable pursuits in 2016, according to Giving USA. Education, health, human services, and the arts are concerns we can all get behind, and we do. Add to this increasing youth philanthropy, crowdsourcing, and peer-to-peer fund-raising, and you find a well-developed field dedicated to doing good.

And yet across Central and Eastern Europe, from Estonia to Ukraine, these practices were all but alien for decades up until the time these societies were released from the shackles of communism over the years ending in 1991. Indeed, people were taught that such pursuits were the state’s responsibility, and those who engaged in charity and volunteerism were doing so for nefarious purposes, whether personal gain or to advance poisonous political ideologies.

Today that trend has changed.

Thousands of youth and families in the region will gather for summer activities run by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish humanitarian aid group, whose board I serve on. In places where both philanthropic pursuits and Jewish identity were forbidden, and the double trauma of the Holocaust and Soviet oppression took an even greater toll, a culture of volunteerism and Jewish community activity is blossoming.

Often driven by passionate young people with virtually no memory of Soviet times or adults who dedicated their lives to helping others after the fall of communism, summer camps and social service groups in this region offer many opportunities to give back. In Odessa, Ukraine, volunteers assist thousands of poor, homebound elderly by delivering groceries to them, engaging in arts and crafts projects, and even providing grooming services.

In Hungary, at the flagship Szarvas International Jewish Summer Camp — a joint project of the Joint Distribution Committee and the renowned philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder — and in Bulgaria at a multigenerational family summer camp, participants volunteer at orphanages and a center for people with disabilities, clean local Jewish cemeteries and memorials, and tend public nature preserves and paint park benches.

In other parts of the world, particularly those hard hit by natural disasters, volunteerism and philanthropic action emerge out of necessity, when frameworks for response — be they government-led or outside relief — are slow in coming. What follows are community-based actions in which neighbors facing crisis or trauma band together to ensure care for the neediest in the initial aftermath and organize networks to aid rebuilding and disaster mitigation for the long term. That spirit of community, the passionate drive to take care of one’s family, friends, local village, or country, fuels momentum and a desire to serve.

Such efforts mirror facts in this country. A little over 62 million Americans volunteer every year, and the American Camp Association reports that half of American-based summer camps now offer community service activities. These trends indicate a move toward greater hands-on experiences and a push to match more “doing” with traditional giving.

Several months ago, I visited Nepal with the committee to learn more about current challenges, especially among women, and how our ongoing efforts in the wake of the 2015 earthquake through local nongovernmental organizations and volunteers are making change. Our work there is an expression of global citizenship and our commitment to tikkun olam, the Jewish value urging us to repair a broken world. 

I visited a community center in Khokana, one of six we built with an N.G.O. dedicated to assisting home-based women workers in Nepal. These centers provide job training for women who lost livelihoods in the disaster, child care, and psychosocial counseling. Through the different services provided, the women come together to help one another and cope with unfathomable circumstances, often a combination of poverty, gender discrimination, and the loss of home or employment. Together, they create networks for empowerment whose ripple effects have reached hundreds of women and their families to date.

I was humbled by the idealism of those women and their endless ambition to make their villages and communities better places. When the women leaders in Khokana told me about their initiative to establish their own disaster management committee and take greater leadership roles in the community, I was inspired by their drive to overcome any obstacle.

This summer, let’s follow their lead, and that of countless people devoting their time selflessly to improve the lives of others by doing more, and doing better. Let’s bolster our already impressive efforts to save lives and build community.

Michele Rosen divides her time between Amagansett and Seattle. This essay was inspired by remarks she gave at a fund-raiser for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at her house here on July 30.

In Leonardo da Vinci’s day and in Greek and Roman times, humanities and science were not separated into what C.P. Snow referred to as “two cultures.” Humanities, literature, and art are concerned with the nature of human experience. The sciences are concerned with the physical nature of the universe. Some see them as divorced and divided.

“Science and art are like long-lost lovers,” Alan Alda has said, “yearning to be reunited.” By promoting science communications, he is active as a matchmaker.

The Nobel laureate Dr. Eric Kandel of Columbia University, another matchmaker, has written a fascinating and sophisticated book, “Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures,” in which he sees the divide between them as bridgeable by looking at their common overlaps. In both brain science and abstract art, one can think about processes that can be simplified, or “reduced.”

Dr. Kandel is on to something. He engaged in such simplifications when he studied learning and memory in a simple sea slug, a marine snail, in the hope that this would shed light on learning and memory in much more complex creatures — otherwise known as people. He demonstrated differences in short-term and long-term memory in important experiments he performed on the humble snail. When stimulated once, the snail’s recall lasted minutes; when stimulated many times, the snail’s memory lasted days.

Does this sound familiar? This is consistent with what happens when we learn. Repeated attempts to memorize a song or a poem or a person’s face will change parts of your brain so that long-term memory kicks in. “So if you remember anything of what you have read here,” Dr. Kandel says in his book, “it will be because your brain is slightly different than it was before you started to read.” Your neurons “spoke” to each other.

Not only do learning and memory enable us to come up with new ideas, but they also allow us to understand the world (science) and to embrace human experience (humanities and art).

It’s a giant leap to comprehend how the human mind and the neurons in the brain process art. But by examining many works of both figurative and abstract art Dr. Kandel leads us on an ambitious, energetic tour de force of how it happens. This is heady stuff.

Each of us sees a work of art differently. It’s a creative act. We interpret art in personal terms, bringing our life experiences to add meaning to a picture. This is called “the beholder’s involvement” or “the beholder’s share.” You might say that when we think we are merely observing a picture (or reality), we are most certainly drawing inferences.

“Our perception of the world is a fantasy,” according to the cognitive psychologist Chris Frith, “that coincides with reality.”

The author guides us through the lives and works of many artists who are familiar to professional and amateur artists, collectors, and art lovers on the East End: Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, and several others. Readers will be enchanted, rewarded, and maybe a bit mystified by the book’s beautiful color reproductions of the abstract art Dr. Kandel has chosen to analyze in terms of brain science.

He explains that abstract art uses “crudely depicted features [that] trigger a perceptual experience that is then richly completed by the observer . . . to create conditions that enable the viewer . . . [to draw on] unique personal experience.”

He quotes a fanciful legend about J.M.W. Turner’s unusually painted sunsets. A woman said to him, “I never saw a sunset like that, Mr. Turner,” and he replied, “Don’t you wish you could, madam?” If not true, as the Italians say, it is well invented.

Dr. Kandel concludes his fine book by acknowledging that we are “at an early stage of exploring the biological underpinnings of our response to art.”

Eric Kandel will sign copies of his book on Aug. 12 at the Authors Night benefit for the East Hampton Library, and Alan Alda will be there with “If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating.”

Stephen Rosen, a physicist who lives part time in East Hampton, will give a talk, “Albert Einstein: Rock Star,” at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton on Aug. 10 at 5:30 p.m.

Some of my liberal friends wonder why I bother talking with conservatives about global warming. Everyone knows conservatives don’t believe in climate change.

Well, “everyone” is mistaken. The Yale Program on Climate Change and Communication has found that “more than six in ten Trump voters (62 percent) support taxing and/or regulating the pollution that causes global warming, with nearly one in three (31 percent) supporting both approaches. In contrast, only about one in five (21 percent) support doing neither.” Some other polls are less encouraging, but it is simply wrong to give up on conservatives.

Another thing my friends on the left tend to say is that conservatives are close-minded and bigoted. Some are, of course, but, frankly, so are some liberals, just in different ways. Most conservatives are good people who love their families, revere our flag and our nation, and want to be right with God. If that describes you, I hope you will read on.

The changing climate poses many risks to our families and our country. These can be summarized as follows:

Health and safety risks: Global warming will expand the range of diseases that are now confined to the tropics. Heat waves will become longer and more intense. Wildfires will proliferate. Storms are likely to become more severe.

Economic risks: Rising sea levels will impose huge costs on our coastal communities. Droughts will harm agricultural productivity. Drinking water will become scarcer and more expensive in many areas of our country.

National security risks: Our military leaders agree that climate change poses serious challenges to America’s national security. Conflicts between nations over diminishing natural resources and livable land are likely to pull us in even if we are not involved at the outset. Refugee crises much worse than the current exodus from Syria are likely. Terrorism will increase as people in the most seriously affected countries blame the richer nations for their suffering. It is the combination of anger and despair that turns ordinary people into suicide bombers.

These risks are serious and close at hand, but the strongest reason why conservatives should be concerned about climate change is that it is an affront to God. The richer nations, most of which are in the temperate zones of our planet, have been the main drivers of climate change, but the effects are falling disproportionately on the more vulnerable nations of the tropics. Within our country, the poor and the powerless will suffer the most. Two millenniums ago Jesus said, “What you have done to these, the least of my brethren, you have done unto me.” He would say the same today.

In view of this spiritual dimension, I can understand why some conservatives want to believe that humans are not causing climate change. Such a belief relieves us of any guilt. The fact is, however, that although our burning of fossil fuels may not be the only cause, it is the main cause. We need to confront this if we are really to be right with God.

Fortunately, there is a way to redemption that doesn’t require us to give up everything we have worked so hard for. America can do its part in a way that will help the economy and create millions of good jobs. The key is to use market forces rather than government regulation. Conservatives are right when they recognize that the free market is the greatest engine of progress ever invented, but it works that way only if the price signals are right. If I can dump my garbage in your backyard without paying you for that right, that isn’t the free market, it’s exploitation. The atmosphere and the oceans shouldn’t be free dumping grounds either.

We need to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Charge a fee for the use of fossil fuels and return the proceeds to all Americans in equal shares. This will cause the price of fossil energy to rise, encouraging us to become more efficient in our use of energy and encouraging electric utilities to move toward carbon-free methods of power production. It will spur the development of new energy technologies that will keep America competitive in world markets. At the same time, the rebates will enable those of us who pay heed to the need for energy efficiency to come out ahead. And because the plan is revenue-neutral, it won’t increase the size of government.

Prominent conservatives have embraced this solution. Cabinet members of previous Republican administrations, including James Baker III, George Shultz, and Henry Paulson, met earlier this year with President Trump to advocate just such a plan. It’s a conservative plan because it relies on market forces rather than regulation and doesn’t need swarms of government bureaucrats to pick the winners and losers from among competing forms of carbon-free energy. It is sad that the president has listened to his friends in the so-called alt-right rather than these distinguished and responsible Republicans, but conservatives don’t have to go along with that decidedly unconservative move.

Many Republicans in Congress would like to come out publicly in favor of climate action but hesitate for fear of being subjected to primary challenges in the next election. Some, including our congressman, Lee Zeldin, have taken a step in that direction by joining the Climate Solutions Caucus in the House of Representatives. It’s a good start, but only when conservative constituents express their desire for a workable solution that is consistent with conservative principles will Republicans in Congress really feel safe in expressing such ideas publicly. Republicans in Congress need to feel that people who are actually going to vote for them want action on climate. Liberal Democrats can’t help there. We need conservatives to speak up.

If anything is to be done in the next few years, we will need both Republicans and Democrats behind it. We need to make climate change a nonpartisan concern. We need people of all political persuasions to join on this issue even as they differ on others.

America had many political issues in the 1850s, but the only one we remember now is slavery. Similarly, of the many political issues surrounding us now, the only one that people in the next century will remember is what we did about the climate.

What Thomas Jefferson once said about slavery is equally apt now with regard to climate: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” America didn’t heed him then, and the result was civil war. Let us heed him now.

John Andrews, who lives in Sag Harbor, has been named co-group leader of the Long Island East chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. The group will next meet on Aug. 27 at noon at the Unitarian Universalist meetinghouse in Bridgehampton.

The women in my book club, all in the Medicare stage of life, are planning our yearly trip. Grand Canyon? Paris? A posh resort where we can experience the life of the rich and famous? No. After much contemplation, we’ve agreed on Lourdes, site of the most famous healing shrine in the world. It’s practically an emergency. The group is falling apart.

Claire has a breathing issue. Mary has a knee thing. Dorothy is close to deafness — at meetings, a tiny microphone that enhances her hearing aid is passed to whoever is speaking; a hindrance, in my opinion, because we need constant reminding to talk into it, thus forgetting what we’re talking about. But when it comes to falling apart, Miriam was the champ. She just up and died. Right when it was her turn to host.

At Lourdes, we will be renewed, as was St. Bernadette before she was a saint. Her story is simple yet miraculous: While at the site, visions appeared that enhanced her well-being, in particular the healing of her paralyzed arm. A shrine was built to mark the site of the occurrence so others could come and try their luck. Why not us?

Note #1. There are three rules for declaring a miracle, and they are not complicated. First, you cannot be a crackpot. Second, you must be diagnosed with a legitimate affliction; something’s really got to be wrong with you. Third, after all medical science and home remedies, including green tea and the like, have been exhausted and one is declared incurable by any worldly potion, not even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put you together again. But then, hopeless as it seems, all suffering due to said affliction vanishes. Miracle!

Note #2. One does not need to have inclinations to sainthood to achieve results. All are welcome to plead their case at the shrine and wait for an outcome. Usually instantaneous. You’re fixed or you’re not. No excuses given if it’s the latter. You can return at will. Maybe the first time you really weren’t in the mood, went along for the walk, didn’t want to be miracle-deprived. Now you’ll be a little more respectful.

Note #3. There are two Catholics in our group, so we assume we can get in on their coattails. It is a Catholic shrine, after all.

We will return from Lourdes with our faculties in order. Our wrinkles smoothed over. We will dispense with the part of our book club known as the Organ Recital, wherein we discuss our organs — those that work and those that don’t. A depressing preamble to the discussion, but important because it offers opportunity for comparison: What our doctors say — fats okay, fats not okay; red wine okay but, according to Adele’s doctor, no more than four glasses a night. Finally, a doctor who knows what he’s talking about.

Exercise, which most doctors say is vital to good health, is getting on my nerves. When I get to Lourdes I will pray that exercise moves over to the “will kill you” list. Much deterioration of our knees and elbows is caused by exercising beyond a certain age (again my opinion).

Case in point: In my youth and still I blast rock ’n’ roll music through the earbuds of my iPod (formerly my Walkman), transforming myself into a power-walker! Still power-walking now, but a bit deaf, it’s hard to hear the cars whizzing by and honking for me to get out of the way. (Just one of many hidden examples of how exercise can kill you.)

What to wear: In the old photos, most people approaching the shrine are in rags, presumably thinking little about wardrobe, concentrating on the mission, throwing away the crutches and going for a run — a short one, of course, they’ve only just begun. Blind eyes seeing where before they could not. So we too will wear rags. Whatever it takes.

But now I’m feeling a little angst. What if only some of us are cured? Will there be resentment? What if nobody has a miracle — all that time trudging uphill to the shrine for nothing, maybe even falling and breaking a hip? And what if by some miracle we are all cured? What will we talk about? The book? Please.

The book discussion is a substitute for companionship; companionship includes complaints. But if all goes well we will be free of complaints. Talk about the world situation? That eliminates fun. Family troubles: also too depressing. A joke, shortened version: Two moms talking. First mom: “Oy!” Second mom: “Oy oy.” First mom: “Okay. Enough about the children.”

Nobody wants crying on a night out. What then?

I’m coming up empty. Maybe the book club is the real problem. Somebody picks a book, may not be our style, but we’re committed. Much preparation and maybe even missing a new “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” on book club night.

So now I’m thinking when I get to Lourdes I’ll pray for the end of the book club. If things go bad for us, it’s back to the organ recital (really boring unless it’s my turn, then it gets good).

But wait. I don’t need a miracle to end the book club. I can just quit. Now I’m not sure I want to go to Lourdes. Probably they won’t want me. I haven’t been that good — although my last new year’s resolution was to do one good thing a day, to make up for past infractions; I posted it on stickies so I don’t forget. Yesterday I helped a wheelchair person up an incline. This morning I talked to my doorman about his family instead of hot outside/cold outside.

And then it happens! Last night’s meeting. Claire practically danced on the table. Pacemaker was all she needed. Dorothy announced the recovery of her hearing through a cochlear implant — you could tell she had it because of the little light that blinked through her hair signaling low battery. Mary’s knees kicked in.

Am I fantasizing? Did the miracle come to us? Yes. Believe it. The mystery of life all over again. I accept. So I don’t need to make the trip. Life just keeps getting better.

Hinda Gonchor’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Gannett newspapers, and previously in The Star. She lives part time in East Hampton.