Your cat needs litter. It’s Saturday night and your usual outlet is closed until Monday, so you go to King Kullen. You better hurry. King Kullen closes at midnight on Saturdays, unlike the rest of the week when it’s open round the clock. You’d like to think that Bridgehampton is the only village in America that can support a Starbucks, a Gap, a T.J. Maxx, a Kmart, a 24-hour supermarket but can’t get mail delivered by the United States Postal Service. 

Your cat has been a resident of Bridgehampton for 20 years. (She has never received a letter.) She deserves a kitty litter she can appreciate, and by appreciate we mean soil, freely. 

You start to peruse the well-lit lineup of cardboard boxes and plastic jugs along a long shelf dominated by Purina products. The first TIDY CAT litter is called Instant Action. Sounds reasonable. The next one is called Breathe Easy.

All right. A third is MULTIPLE CATS and that abuts 24/7 PERFORMANCE. Then there’s one made for “Small Spaces” and another guaranteeing “TIGHT CLUMPS.” That’s a half dozen kitty litters without moving a step. The words are not just footnotes, nor mission statements, they are proud titles, front and center, in large and loud letters, in several fonts and several hues, upper and/or lower cases, willy-nilly, boldfaces and slender script and crazy promises. Innocent that you are, you thought any decent litter would combine all of the above — instant action and 24/7 and easy breathing and tight clumping and all effective in a small space.

Now, on a cold dark Saturday night in January, you find your human self in a metaphorically tight space where breathing is labored and answers are not instant. Your instincts stink. You never realized that 21st-century kitty litters have become, like doctors, so ultra-specialized.

There’s more. There’s CRYSTAL and there’s DUAL POWER and OCCASIONAL and POWER BLEND and a big yellow bucket called SCOOP that screams, in orange letters, “Now! TIGHTER CLUMPS For a CLEANER Litter Box.” It yells, in white, “CONTINUOUS Odor Control.” It exclaims, in aquamarine, “With the Power of ODOR ERASERS.” Odor erasers? Whatever. As you reach for SCOOP, you suddenly notice PREMIUM SCOOP. Above the silhouettes of two black cats, PREMIUM SCOOP says: “Antimicrobial Action Helps Inhibit Growth of Bacterial Odors in Litter.” Antimicrobial? Bacterial odors? Inhibited? I’m sold.

Wait. Right next to PREMIUM SCOOP is 4-in-1, a somber-looking jug with blue lettering and dark gray images against a yellow sky. It says: “4-in-1 Attacks and Neutralizes the 3 Key Odors + Powerful Clumping. TARGETS AMMONIA ODORS, URINE ODORS, FECAL ODORS.” Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty. And 4-in-1 is 99.6-percent dust free. And 4-in-1 weighs seven pounds. And your forehead is spinning. And your saliva is clumping. 

You look around sheepishly. A well-dressed woman is buying little cans of grilled cat food down the aisle. You ask her how she deals with the mind-blowing variety of kitty litters. She smiles and rolls her eyes and moves along. She thinks you are putting her on or picking her up. You scratch your chin, much like your old cat does. Feels nice.

Although the kitty litter tubs are festooned strictly in English, your first language, the same language by which you make a living, occasionally — but let’s not get into that right now — you are confounded by the excited and descriptive lingo and designs. You assume they all have been chosen with great care, or no care at all. Gives new meaning to hypertext. You have to figure that Purina is pulling your leg. Who could tell the difference between “neutralizing fecal odors” and “24/7 odor erasers”? Who knows the difference between litter for multiple cats and the litter you have been using for 20 years for your singular feline? 

Do humans have anything vaguely equivalent in the realm of toilet paper?

NEW! LightWeight. Your search continues. This one has a gray feather floating toward the ground, casting a shadow just above the words ALL THE STRENGTH, HALF THE WEIGHT. The plastic container with the handy handle is just under four pounds, which is far lighter than the seven pounds of PREMIUM SCOOP, but not really as light as a feather. It also costs almost twice as much. It could read Half the weight, twice the price, with only slight exaggeration.

How do they make kitty litter lighter? What miracle ingredient did they extract? Or add? Why isn’t there a Moore’s Law of Litter, where scientific advances would make it lighter and cheaper every two years? Why are you dripping with questions? You find a King Kullen employee and implore. 

“Excuse me, sir, in your pet aisle, there’s like a dozen different kitty litters. Could you help me out?”

“I have a dog,” he says in a semi-haughty dog owner way and leaves it at that. You want to tell him that your cat is very affectionate and loyal and that the whole species gets a bum rap. You want to tell him that E.D. doesn’t hunt or gather much anymore, though the door remains open for her to come and go as she pleases, and she likes to eat grass and puke. She was named by your kids, who were, two decades ago, gender oblivious and named their newest pet after their favorite baseball player, Eric Davis. Their parents, far more gender sensitive, acronized the name to female-sounding E.D. As her scampering days have diminished, her need for a good kitty litter has increased. And by good, we mean easy to soil.

There is much research to be done. In the meantime, pressed for time, you grab the nearest box and head to the exit. It is Arm & Hammer Clump & Seal. You are a sucker for ampersands. And a fan of revolutions. “Clump & Seal is a revolutionary cat litter . . . with moisture-activated micro-granules . . . and a 7-day odor-free home guarantee.”

Hold on, E.D. I’ll be home any minute now. As soon as I can figure out this self-checkout system, this damn Semi-Attended Customer Activated Terminal.

SACAT!

Bruce Buschel is a writer, producer, director, and restaurateur.

How did we meet? I’ll tell you.

I was working at the radio station WEHM as a D.J. with a Saturday afternoon show, “Kyle on the Dial.” Rusty listened all the time and fell in love with my voice. Curious as he was, he called the station.

“Is this Kyle?” he asked.

“Yes, would you like to request a song?” 

“No, not exactly. I’m Rusty. Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, just like that. 

“No,” I said.

“We should go out for coffee some day.”

Instead, I suggested, “I get off at 5 — meet me for a drink at Cyril’s. Oh, and can you bring a sweater? It’ll be cold at the bar.”

He came, he saw, he conquered.

He brought me his sweatshirt. It was May 2004. The Kentucky Derby was on the TV. He picked a horse named Rock Hard Ten. Neither of us won the race, but we won the jackpot that day. That first date I saw all the cherries line up on the slot machine. I had hit the big time! A charming, handsome, smart, funny, sexy writer, sailor, skier, surfer, and adventurer. Perfect.

We have a winner. He was my king and I was his queen.

No playing hard to get. We knew what we wanted, and we knew destiny, somehow, had a hand in this.

What a lucky girl I was to have Rusty show me his world. And, I would add, what a lucky guy Rusty was to have me. “We’re both lucky,” he would say. Where every day was fun and full of adventures. 

We went up the coast of California and down the slopes of Zermatt, drinking Swiss beer under the Matterhorn, sipping Singapore Slings in Raffles and Bintang beer in the Mentawai Islands, surfing in Indonesia.

“Let’s go to Tobago, Stowe, Jackson Hole, Hawaii, St. Barth, Cartagena!”

“Okay,” I’d say and start packing. He didn’t have to ask me twice. I was ready to go anytime and anywhere. We had so many more places to see together. His dream was to get on a freighter with armfuls of books and sail the world . . . with me.

In Montauk in the dead of winter, he would check the ice on Fort Pond and come home excited.

“The ice is perfect. Get your skates. Let’s go.”

In our matching Dickie snowsuits we flew across the ice, exhilarated, and would come home to a nice warm fire he would make in the wood-burning stove. He would always say, “Let’s find a good movie on TCM.”

If there was snow, we grabbed a sled and went to the top of the hill at Navy Road and raced down screaming and laughing like little kids. Rusty was a beautiful boy who greeted each day like it was Christmas morning.

In the summer we woke up early, grabbed our bathing suits, and jumped in the brisk ocean together. Rusty body-surfed like a dolphin, carving beautifully through the waves.

When the hordes of summer invaders were at their worst, what did we care? We loaded up our beloved sailboat, Leilani, with rosé wine and “poo poos” and off we sailed to distant shores. Just the sound of the wind in the sails and the waves gently slapping the hull.

Rusty, ever the Master and Commander of the sea, while I his cold-water-loving mermaid, always diving overboard. At night we’d anchor at our mooring and barbecue the porgies Rusty gleefully caught off Gardiner’s Island while I cried and begged him to set them free and not kill them. Sometimes he would release one or two back in the water, just for me, because, believe me, he didn’t want to.

Then after a 360-degree sunset on the lake under the crystal stars we’d sleep the blissful sleep only a rocking sailboat can promise. He believed the fish were singing to him.

“Did you hear them last night?”

I’d wake up early to the aroma of coffee and the sound of his splash into the water for his morning swim. He’d then zip me to shore in his dinghy so we could go to the beach.

We couldn’t walk five steps without stopping a dozen times to greet all the friends he had. Everywhere we went there was a chorus of “Hi, Rusty.” He always replied with his sparkling smile and a hearty hello. It was like being with a movie star, which he was.

My kids and I had a game we played, keeping a tally of all the people who greeted him, knew him, liked him.

“I’m up to 20.”

“Hey, Rusty!”

“That’s 21!”

It could easily get up past 30 at any given time on any day.

He would say in his humble way, “It’s only because I’ve lived here for 40 years,” but that wasn’t it. People just loved him. Everywhere he went he touched lives and made friends for life. From Jimmy Buffett to Joey Flapjaws. He had no enemies. He was an icon.

We saved turtles crossing the road and wounded birds on the beach. We would even save those prehistoric-looking crickets that were always in the bathtub. Rusty would just pick them up and toss them out the backdoor. Every living thing had a destiny. He was Mother Nature’s boy.

Rusty named his beloved trees. There was Daisy the Elephant. And nothing made him happier than seeing his catalpa tree bloom in the spring with fragrant orchid-like blossoms. Every year he took a photo of me standing among them. Who will do it this spring?

I used to say my dog Lucy taught me to love unconditionally, to which Rusty, always with the quick retort, said, “She died too soon.”

He taught me where she left off, to see the good in people no matter how bad they were. It’s a gift; I don’t think you can teach it. But I will try to be like him. My new hashtag: #whatwouldrustydo?

If I complained, he’d quote his mother and say: “Don’t be an oboe solo.” If I boiled over in rage, he just circled, cool and poised, until I ran out of steam, wisely never engaging in crazy moments. No drama.

Rusty didn’t have time for that. He was too busy paddling out on his surfboard to dominate the waves or hoisting the mainsail on his beloved sailboat while quoting poetry. Like he did on our first sail out to sea, from Edward Lear:

“The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea / in a beautiful pea-green boat,” he recited.

I was First Mate Moneypenny, because he, of course, was James Bond.

He would always say, “That’s a beautiful song,” when I played the piano or guitar, or “Fabulous writing,” when I was working on my novel. When I cooked dinner he would yell out, “What smells so good?” every night. Every time I sneezed he said, “God bless you.” Even when it hurt for him to speak. When we got dressed to go out he admired me with a love in his eyes I may never see again.

Always seeing the best, the good, the positive. What an evolved human he was. A super-mortal, maybe even an Ascended Master who came down to visit us just to show us how it’s done.

The clouds looked like horses’ tails, the ocean was Coke bottle green, and the crickets were trying to tell us something — it was a beautiful orchestra, listen to their symphony, he would urge. A piece of driftwood you passed on the beach was more: “It’s a log from a beaver dam. It floated down the Hudson River and washed up here in Montauk. See the teeth marks?” he’d point out. He knew the answer to everything. Sheer brilliance.

He would tackle anything life threw at him with style, grace, aplomb, and always humor, while letting his “freak flag fly.” He was a knight disguised as a beach bum, walking barefoot everywhere all summer long and rolling in the hot sand until he was caked like a veal cutlet and then throwing himself into the surf to get pure. Whenever the day had messed with my “wah,” as he said, he would just drive me to Ditch and walk me down to the ocean.

“Jump in, you’ll feel better,” and he was right. Dr. Drumm knew it was time to take my medicine.

The horrors of the world weren’t going to defeat him and darken his day. Even cancer would be defeated.

Knowing Rusty, how could one doubt he would beat it? Strong, healthy, vibrant Rusty. He’ll never die. How could he? He was invincible. Immortal.

He fought as bravely as he could, never flinching, never complaining, pressing on with faith and utter determination to live. I marveled at his courage, his threshold for pain and torture. He told me spending time in the rigging of Eagle gave him the courage to face anything when you’re furling the royal in the middle of the night 140 feet above the water with blinding wind and rain.

“What do I do with the batteries for Leilani next summer?” I asked, frantic. How would I do anything without him? We did everything together.

“We are going to recharge them and go sailing next summer,” he told me. Even though I was giving him morphine every four hours, then every hour, for his pain. He refused to consider death. It wasn’t in his plan. He had another 20 years! At least! He promised me. I believed him. I had faith. Miracles happen every day, right? If anyone deserved a reprieve it was him.

He subjected himself to the sickening chemotherapy, weeks of radiation, brain surgery, and merciless pain without a whimper.

“We’re going to get through this together,” he said. “So let’s plan a trip, South of France, New Zealand, Australia, Tahiti — all the places we haven’t seen, we’ll write our novels and groove . . . where do you want to go? We can stop off in Hawaii for a few days on the way, would you like that?” He was so looking forward to going.

But he didn’t. His final words to me were, “We had hope.”

If you knew Rusty, remember how he lived his life and set your compass. If you didn’t know him, I feel sorry for you. There will never be another like him, ever. He did it right. He knew how to live. He gets an A+ for his time here on earth. What a stellar example for everyone. If there’s a heaven, he is being feted now. I hope he got his wish. He wanted God to say to him when he arrived at the pearly gates, “Here’s your surfboard and here’s your wax.” I hope there’s an epic swell and his dog Drifter Boy is there waiting for him on the beach like he always did.

In his final days he would get so mad about the stupid, petty, wasteful things people were upset about and occupying their lives with. I saw it too through his eyes. Knowing how brief the time he had left was, he cried over the foolish squandering of precious life and finite time. Foolish humans. With all there is to appreciate in this beautiful world.

So be kind, have compassion, be brave, have fun, and be happy. Enjoy and, most of all, love with all your heart. And stop whining. You’re alive!

I’ll let Rusty finish this with this opening quote from his book “The Barque of Saviors”: “He rises by lifting others.”

Kyle Paseka has lived all over the world and recently finished writing a memoir about her adventures. She was married to Russell Drumm, who was a reporter and columnist for The Star for many years. He died on Jan. 16 at the age of 68.

To be candid, I walked into the Southampton Antique Firehouse (yes, there is one, and it is fully functional) with a singleness of purpose: to sell them a comedy show. 

As I once was a comic based in Manhattan, I sometimes, with enough prodding, can get old comic friends to travel from the city to do a fund-raiser out here. The shows are a lot of fun, and I charge a slight fee for putting them together. I get posters made and put them up, and so on. My old high school friend Chris Gaynor, a longtime Southampton volunteer firefighter and contractor, gave me the lead that the department was entertaining the idea of putting on such an event. When I arrived, I imagined I would see a couple of tough-looking guys, possibly with pronounced beer bellies, holding wrenches, hanging around some dilapidated old truck, saying, “We need money to fix this thing but we got none!” I expected to feel intimidated by “real men”; I can barely change a flat and am always hiring men to fix stuff at my house as I make them lemonade.

But as soon as I entered the spotless garage on Flying Point Road, around the corner a ways from the Princess Diner, I was transported into another world. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s also the truth. I was blown away, to fall back on another cliché. There before me were four or five immaculately preserved antique firetrucks, magnificent, proud anachronisms, serving as sparkling, tangible proof of the past. The Hamptons’ past.

Southampton is well known for the sprawling, garish estates that now occupy what used to be farmland, but, considering history and time served, I would submit that these trucks should be the stars of the Hamptons. 

The 35-foot American LaFrance Type 14 city service hook and ladder truck, which arrived in Southampton in 1913 (it took three days to drive it out — I wonder if there was backup at the Lobster Inn), was the first firetruck model in America with a gas engine. It cast a particular spell on me: I could visualize firefighters from days gone by scurrying about it, taking ladders off, then trying to scale burning buildings to save people or douse a flame with foam from a copper canister that hung from the side.

The guys who met me were warm, educated, and obviously very competent. Craig Raynor, the president of the Fire Department’s antique truck committee, and Bobby Cox gave me a tour. The first question I asked was: Why was this not open to the public? Apparently they do have designs on a museum, and I think it would be a damn good one — but of course that requires more funding. 

Right now they are just trying to keep the trucks running so they can compete in shows and serve the community. To date, the trucks have been shown at various festivals nationally (often winning best in show) and at local parades, funerals, and other events. 

Simply put, these guys, Craig and Bobby, know firetrucks. It is beyond a hobby for them; it is their life. From the model numbers to the engines down to the ornamental copper and brass fittings, they know where each piece was manufactured. The trucks, all a-glimmer, looked in such fine condition that they did not seem to need any repair — not to the layperson’s eye, specifically mine.

What needed to be fixed? That was a Pandora’s box: “Well,” Craig said, “this fender here is dented and is not an original. We have to keep these authentic or we can’t compete . . . and look at the decolorization here, and that paint’s hard to find and match, but we will find it. . . . And this truck needs a whole new windshield, and we have to get the brass canister’s copper finished, and this windshield is completely missing; it will take one hundred calls to track one down. And if we don’t replace the engine mount on the Model 250, which already has a crack in the block, then. . . .” 

And here lies the problem and the need for modest funding: As things go, time goes by. The people who built and designed these trucks are of course long gone, but what’s worrisome is that the generation that inherited the firetruck “culture” has aged, too. According to Craig, there was once a functioning and robust mechanism in place to serve as a distribution network of dedicated firetruck preservationists. It used to be that if you needed a part, all you did was call a distributor and get it, or someone would know where to go for it or whom to call and ask. But now there are fewer parts distributors around. 

And, according to Craig, it is harder and harder to get young people interested in working on these trucks. “A lot of the guys have died, and the parts get lost along the way,” he said. “The parts are not on eBay. The young guys don’t know how to work these old block engines like the ones before the Model Ts. They’re all about computers now.”

Now here is where this all gets even more interesting. Before the mass-produced Model T, some engines in the early 1900s had only one or two pistons. Today, if you crack a block (break the engine) on one, there is only one guy to call in the tristate area: Tony Guarnaschelli. He is 80 years old but still works on trucks.

His secret if the engine block is cracked completely? He puts them in a tractor-trailer and takes them to Lancaster, Pa., of all places. Tony won’t tell you the address because, well, he doesn’t want to overburden the guy, but also because the guy who fixes his and hundreds of other departments’ engines meets him at the end of an unmarked dirt road in a horse and buggy and takes him up to his 5,000-square-foot garage loaded with old firetrucks and parts. 

The Amish man is a welder by trade. Amish, you say? Electricity? How can that be? Apparently the Amish are allowed one electrical line, which they can run many tools off of, if used for work. No one else can weld like this guy, Tony said. “He will spend three days on one block. You can’t find welders around here that have that kind of time and dedication.”

Craig Raynor and his wife, Amy, travel all over the country with the trucks. One is a pumper truck from 1946 (in service till 1969) that pumps faster than any truck its size. Nice to see that the trucks are ambassadors of the Hamptons, and even though they have won countless awards and blue ribbons in competitions, and even though the hook and ladder truck appeared on the front lawn of the White House, the only press they have had before now was in 1913, in a newspaper called The Seaside Times.

So let’s keep those trucks moving and representing the past. The fund-raiser starts with a spaghetti dinner at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Hampton Road firehouse. Dan Naturman and Lynne Koplitz will headline the comedy show at 8. Tickets are $40 for the show, $50 for the show and dinner.

Jeff Nichols is the author of "Caught: One Man's Maniacal Pursuit of a Sixty-Pound Striped Bass and His Experiences With the Black Market Fishing Industry." He lives in Springs.

“The Duke makes me puke” is what I said to Ben, my 90-year-old stepfather, about his idol, the film star John Wayne, a.k.a. The Duke. Words I can never take back but will take to my grave.

Ben was a tall, broad, and strong man, and I think he sort of fancied The Duke as his second, the one who stood for him, was him, really, had he not been hampered for most of his life by a smashed-up leg. The handicap caused him to stay close to home, but he took pleasure where he could — family get-togethers were big, fixing the unfixable household appliances was big. The Duke was a thrill.

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore!” he often said with a satisfied grin on his face after watching Wayne drive the cattle through hostile territory or teach bad guys a lesson in right and wrong. As far as I was concerned — young moron and faux hippie that I was — that was good news. 

Ben came into my life after I was already married and had children, and while he was never my dad, he was the definite grandfather to my children. They adored him. He parted with very little on the monetary front — he was the kind of guy who owned two pairs of pants: one on him and one in the wash. Rather than forking over the money for an ice cream cone, he enlightened them with worldly information: how to climb a tree, tie a square knot, bake bagels; all this from his chair, bum leg straight out, cane at his side. 

We lived upstairs in his two-family house, so opportunities for togetherness were constant. Over the years, my son Joey had developed a way with tools. Ben had a woodworking shop down his basement. 

“Where’d you learn to do this or that?” I’d ask. 

“Papa taught me.” A much more lasting memory than a trip to the candy store.

Even with the bad leg keeping him close to home, Ben managed to have several wives, one before my mother and one after. He outlived them all, including a couple of girlfriends later on. The widows liked him, he said, because better than the fact that he had all his marbles, his eyesight remained intact. He could drive them to where they needed to be . . . the doctor, the supermarket, the hairdresser. When he finished his daytime taxi service, he went straight to the John Wayne videos. He didn’t care how many times he saw them. 

“The Duke makes me puke” just slipped out. I knew instantly I’d made the blunder of a century. Ben turned white. Although he was already kind of white, his hair, his skin, but now it was like a white shock. And he was sad. I made him sad. It was as though I’d said I hate America, to a soldier who had just won the Medal of Honor. 

Grown-up Joey was present at the height of my Duke stupidity. After said words were spat out, Joey looked at me like he hadn’t heard me right. Of course he was aware of the bond between his grandfather and The Duke. He was as stunned as I ever saw him. I had crossed the line with both of them. The incident gnaws at me.

Now, years since Ben’s death, if Joey and I are in the same place and John Wayne’s name comes up, he looks at me and I know he’s thinking, “The Duke makes me puke.” He knows I’m thinking the same thing. Joey and I are pals, in a way (as much as parent and child can be), but along with our respect and appreciation for each other, there’s always this Duke thing. It’s my everlasting punishment. 

Hinda Gonchor lives in East Hampton and New York City. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times and Self magazine.

A New York Times headline on Nov. 10, 1919, read: “Lights All Askew in the Heavens: Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations. Einstein Theory Triumphs: Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to Be, but Nobody Need Worry.”

Albert Einstein turned universal gravitation into geometry. He converted space into space-time curvature. His equation of general relativity “rules the universe,” as the science reporter Dennis Overbye vividly put it, “describing space-time as a kind of sagging mattress where matter and energy, like a heavy sleeper, distort the geometry of the cosmos to produce the effect we call gravity, obliging light beams as well as marbles and falling apples to follow curved paths through space.” 

Because Einstein had upended Isaac Newton’s theories and our homespun intuitions about space, he said: “To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”

Bill Bryson quoted the best compliment: “As the creation of a single mind, it is undoubtedly the highest intellectual achievement of humanity.” I agree.

Einstein became not merely famous, but what we would today call a “rock star.” Everyone wanted a part of him. He was asked to speak at so many science conferences and ceremonial public occasions that he tired of fame. There’s a photo of him sticking his tongue out at the photographer. 

A reporter encountering him on a train said, “Dr. Einstein, I’d like to interview you for my paper.” Einstein replied, “I’m not Dr. Einstein!” The reporter said, “But you are; I’ve seen your picture many times!” Einstein said, “Who should know better — you or me!”

Explaining General Relativity (1915)

How would you explain this to your parents, kids, or grandchildren? Here’s how I do it: Smartphones with global positioning systems use satellites, which need instantaneous corrections because their speed alters space-time (a la special relativity), as does the gravitational field of the earth (a la general relativity). 

For your kids who inquire: “Space-time” has replaced our daily intuitive notions of space and time as separate entities. “Mass tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells mass how to move.” Still puzzled? Einstein himself had trouble understanding all the nuances of his own theory, which others later improved on. When stumped, he once said, “I’m no Einstein!”

For grandchildren, I rewrote “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”:

Al/bert Ein/stein what a guy!

Had more thoughts than you and I

Spe/cial rel/a/tiv/it/y

Yeah yeah Em See squared is Eeeee.

Grav/i/ta/tion holds us down

It bends light a/round the town

It makes G/P/S/es right

Squee/zes space-time oh so tight!

Genius

There are two kinds of genius: one, the garden variety who’s just like your smartest friends and colleagues — only much smarter; the other kind’s abilities and profundities are so extravagantly beyond the first kind’s that their mysterious gifts seem to imply they came from another planet . . . like Einstein.

When he was only 5 years old, Einstein discovered a magnet and, mystified, later observed, “Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.” At 12, he was enchanted by plane geometry and its lucid methods of axioms and theorems. In 1905, he wrote three papers — each worthy of a Nobel in Physics. 

A Dimple in Space-Time

General relativity is simpler to visualize by analogy. Imagine a rubber sheet stretched like a drum skin. Push down at the center, depressing and stretching the sheet (like putting your finger to your cheek creating a dimple). Now imagine many small BBs rolling along the dimpled drum skin toward the depression. Some of the BBs will strike the central depression and some will skirt it, curving around the depression as they follow the easiest path (called a “geodesic”).

The BBs resemble particles of light (photons). The depression resembles a dimple in the (four-dimensional) space-time continuum, like the one that surrounds a massive object: our sun. Its huge solar mass “warps” the surrounding four-dimensional space-time fabric enough to cause the BB or photon’s path to “bend” enough to be observed astronomically. Gravitational warping of space-time is enough to really bother a satellite, to cause galaxies to act as a lens, magnifying objects far beyond them, and to produce gravitational waves. Their detection is the next frontier for astronomers.

Special Relativity

More subtle and slippery to grasp, special relativity (1905) started when Einstein tried to define simultaneous events as seen from a moving train versus as seen from the station. Einstein knew the startling experimental result that the speed of light is constant no matter whether the light is coming or going from a moving or stationary source of light. He postulated there is no preferred absolute reference frame. Time has to slow, space has to shrink, and mass has to increase when viewing a moving train from the platform, or when viewing the platform from a moving train. This is why Einstein (a great wit) asked a train conductor, “Does Oxford stop at this train?”

Einstein’s Long Hair

My mentor, Banesh Hoffmann, has his name on a scientific paper with Einstein and spoke about their work together in the 1930s at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. 

Sitting side-by-side in Einstein’s office, they were baffled by a problem in the complex equations of general relativity. To contemplate a solution, Einstein got up and paced the floor while twisting his famously long hair (now fashionable), muttering, “I vill a little think.” After a few moments, he sat down with a good solution. 

After Einstein died in 1955, Banesh told me that whenever he got stuck on the same equations, he would get up from his desk, pace the floor, twist his hair, and think. “But,” he said, “it never worked.”

Dr. Stephen Rosen, a physicist who lives part time in East Hampton, is the author of a memoir, “Youth, Middle-Age, and You-Look-Great!” He will discuss “Einstein’s Jewish Science” on Dec. 20 at 1 p.m. at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor.

I am sitting in my car waiting for the Quogue courthouse to open when I see this on my mobile phone: “Results of a study by AAA indicate that motorists using hands-free technologies in their cars could miss stop signs, pedestrians, and other vehicles while the mind is readjusting to the task of driving. Drivers can be distracted for 27 seconds after changing music or dialing a phone number.” 

The courthouse opens for business. I am patted down by an unjolly officer. He is looking for cellphones and guns. I am clean. In due time, the bailiff offers me a deal: plead guilty, pay $250, and receive one point on your record. If you want to fight the ticket, a court date will be set and you have to engage a lawyer and costs will spiral upward and the points will be between 3 and 5. 

All this because my left hand held my smartphone to my left ear as I sat at a red light and talked. Talked is not quite accurate. Listened is more like it. A dishwasher had been arrested the night before and needed bail money. I only answered my cell when it was the restaurant calling; we have a brief history of fires, firings, fights, and intransigent inspectors. It took two minutes to hear the bad news and another minute before I got pulled over. The policeman was curt and disinterested in the details. He saw what he saw. I was using my mobile phone while driving a vehicle. It was not hands-free. Nothing is free.

That was three years ago. I had forgotten all about it until I received a very belated summons last month. Upon reading, I called the courthouse in Quoque and asked if there had been some mistake. 

“Mistake?” echoed the voice. “No mistake. You’re a lucky guy. You had three years to save up and prepare.” 

I called my attorney to find out if this were kosher, hoping there was some statute of limitations. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he said. “Go to court, plead guilty, pay the fine, pay the surcharge, go about your life. Nothing I can do about it.” (Just yesterday, I received a bill from said attorney for the sage advice that he had no advice: $56.25 for one quarter hour. Nothing I can do about it.)

The judge asks how I plea. I take a deep breath. I look at the bailiff. I look at the American flag. I am one patriotic sonuvabitch who has had a full month to think about this moment and what I want to say.

“I drive an old car, your honor. My dashboard has buttons and levers and my flat tire can’t fix itself. There’s no compass, no screen, and no bells or whistles to warn me about black ice or when the Ice Capades are coming to town. I drive an actual car, not a computer on wheels. It is therefore deaf and dumb. No Bluetooth.” 

“But I am a safe driver, your honor. Check the record. I steer clear of dangerous activities. Like eating French fries. For some reason, French fries don’t come in normal cups that nestle into cupholders. They come in upside-down paper ziggurats that are impossible to hold or stand up in a stationary fashion and they need catsup and catsup comes in those little plastic packets that require hands (and teeth) to open and you squeeze them and invariably squirt dribs on your pants or shirt and then you have to find a napkin and wet it and rub the right spot and let’s face it, your honor, French fries are far more intensely hands-on and hazardous than listening to a cellphone for two minutes.”

“While we’re at it, what about cats? Not the Broadway cast album — though that can make you want to drive head-on into oncoming traffic. I mean the actual felines who sit smugly on their owners’ shoulders and get spooked if they look out the window or see a fly buzzing around the windshield. They may be cute on YouTube, but not so much when their sharp claws are untethered in the front seat of a moving vehicle. And don’t get me started on the perils of driving with a loose ferret. Or hot coffee. Or my wife.”

“You married, your honor? I love my wife as much as the next guy, but, er, oops, that came out wrong, you know what I mean — anyway, she blames me when an S.U.V. cuts us off and then she carps about how I pick the wrong route and always end up stuck in that perpetual bottleneck called Water Mill. This is not good for my concentration. Worse is when she gets a call from a girlfriend and they yak interminably and I have to listen to that palaver and, well, there ought to be a law, your honor — DWM. Driving While Married.” 

“On the other hand, if you’re single, that first hot date can be a killer. You’re a nervous wreck to begin with so you have a drink to calm down and then your date slides into the car with a short skirt and smells so sweet and tells you right off the bat that she just got a new tattoo on a particular swath of skin and you figure you might as well drive directly to this courtroom and pay a large fine and be done with it. Distraction in extremis. DWH, your honor. Driving While Horny, even though some have misinterpreted that acronym to mean Driving With Hard-On, but that would constitute a law with gender bias. Am I right?” 

“One more thing, your honor, I don’t know your politics, but when Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity start spewing the news and rearranging reality, they can drive any right-minded person off the road. You start to pound your fist on the steering wheel and your blood pressure skyrockets and if you’re smart, you switch the station to some music, but if it’s a live Phish jam, the trance might dislodge your gyroscope and that’s not good. Some friends are convinced that ‘Bouncing Around the Room’ triggers acid flashbacks, so they avoid the radio altogether and pop in a talking book. If it’s ‘The Notebook’ or ‘My Sister’s Keeper,’ they end up sobbing, all bubbly and blurry-eyed, and that makes them more of a menace to society than a smartphone.”

“In summation, your honor, as much as I try, I can’t get my head around all this money and punishment for a two-minute phone call that led to getting someone out of jail three years ago. You probably don’t remember him. He hasn’t been back here and I don’t think he will be. He’s a good guy who learned his lesson. Which is more than I can say for myself.”

How does the judge react to all this? Well, truth be told, hand to Bible, I didn’t really deliver the above monologue, not a word of it. I thought about it, but what I ended up saying was, “Do you accept credit cards, your honor?”

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

There’s no doubt formality has gone the way of the typewriter, and I have to tell you, I’m sorry to see it go. I write that with the humbleness of one who has flouted convention along with every other flower child and anarchist dating back to 1968. To say I’m not a prude is to put it mildly. I lust after sexy entertainment, have been known to shout out a vulgarity or two, and like to ride fast roller coasters.

But in separating formality from everyday encounters, we’ve blurred relationships and made living more complicated than it used to be.

Witness my visit to a fast-food restaurant. I don’t usually eat fast food, but when I heard a certain establishment was selling a turkey burger, I thought it might be easier to swing by a drive-thru rather than try to make my own after a hard week’s work. After ordering at the speaker box, I approached the window and encountered a busy clerk holding a half-filled soda in one hand and a stack of napkins in the other. She had a sour look until she saw me, immediately perked up, opened the glass window, and said, “Your order will be up shortly, sweetie.”

I wasn’t quite clear that I’d heard correctly. Being of a certain age, illusion and hearing loss often substitute for reality and silence, and some people like it that way. But when the glass doors swung open a second time and she said it again I knew what I’d heard — from someone half my age. She followed up our encounter by waving me through and telling me to “Have a nice day, sweetie.”

I could have excused the fact that it was Friday and she was busy, but not too long after that something similar happened at the bank. This time with a male clerk who looked all of 21.

As he handed me money from a transaction, he blurted out, “Is there anything else I can do for you today, Jill?” and when I said no, he said, “Thanks for your business, Jill,” with a tone that made me think the next words out of his mouth were going to be “And where are we going for dinner tonight?”

Leaving the bank, I got the idea for this essay. I know the world doesn’t stop. It revolves, evolves, and the generation that’s blooming withers, fades, and provides compost for the next crop of flowers.

The fact that I’m no longer in charge is evident in the way I now communicate with my children. We’ve gotten rid of the telephone and replaced it with Facebook and IMing, as in, “IMHO, LU, TTYL.” But as we’ve all found out, mistakes can happen. When I messaged my daughter to tell her we were having potatoes with LOL — as in Land O’ Lakes margarine — she corrected me: LOL means laughing out loud, living on line, and even League of Legends.

I’ve since learned I’m not the only one to misinterpret computer chatter. After all, who can forget when Sarah Palin made the unforgivable faux pas of believing that “WTF” means “winning the future”?

But let’s face it. A line in the sand has to be drawn. When people I don’t know start calling me by my first name, I lose a little bit of the respect I think I’ve earned after living through political assassinations, the Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11, and more deaths than births in my family. When solicitors call, they often ask, “How are you doing, Jill?” before they pitch me their products. Do they really want to hear about my arthritic hands and sagging skin? I mean anyone can be Jill. But not everyone is Mrs. Evans (though I have to admit I hated being called Mrs. Evans when I was first married, because I’d look around the room for my mother-in-law).

It’s not that I’m crotchety, but informality has gotten out of hand. Everyone would turn and freeze if I addressed the clerk in the bank as “bro” and the girl in the drive-thru as my “BFF.” Even in my most radicalized youth I still addressed my friends’ parents by their surnames.

We live in a casual culture; I admit it. But is everyone I encounter allowed to address me as though I’m their best friend, even as they’re handing me change or inquiring if I have any coupons? No clerk behind a counter asking “How are you?” really wants to know how I am. I reserve my most personal conversations for people who have my shared experiences and those I want to learn from — be they old or young. Everyone fights depersonalization, and no one wants to go unacknowledged, but it’s the form of acknowledgement that’s important.

So, henceforth, I give everyone fair warning. The next time someone I don’t know addresses me by my first name and asks me how I am, I’m going to tell him — right down to my aching ankles — and then I’m going to ask him where we’re going for dinner.

Jill Evans teaches a continuing education class in creative writing at Suffolk Community College. She lives in Patchogue.

Make no mistake, you are living through a U.S. version of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump repeat almost daily that the wealthy control the political and financial systems for their own benefit, in effect asserting that our revered democracy and acclaimed capitalism just camouflage the unfairness.

Sanders threw the first punch, saying politicians are influenced, one might say corrupted, by donor money directly or through lobbyists. Then Trump landed the knockout punch, confirming he contributed to Democrats and Republicans to get business deals done. None of their opponents have risen to object.

Sanders says the top one-tenth of 1 percent own about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and it is getting worse. Trump speaks of his Wall Street friends, with wealth earned just by moving pieces of paper around, who get tax preferences.

Revolutions are usually initiated by some event. Here there are three:

The Great Recession of 2008. Subprime housing loans were approved throughout the government, by rating agencies, by investment bankers, by business school professors, all for billions of dollars in compensation. When exposed, the country lost 800,000 jobs a month, and banks will still not make decent home and other loans. Not one person has been held criminally accountable, and few have had to fork over the millions they earned.

The invasion of Iraq. Sadly, the aftermath of our invading Iraq has not been good. Democracy failed to elect as our leaders the best and the brightest, instead putting in power people with political connections who lacked competence, for sure, and perhaps honesty.

The control of Congress by billionaires. When the Supreme Court ruled that political messages could not be limited, it unleashed enormous funds from billionaires on the right like the Koch brothers to express their views against the government helping the less fortunate. Their Tea Party congresspeople agreed not to compromise and were willing to shut down the U.S. government. Today, many of the political action committees (PACs) of both parties are breaking the law by using the funds to help campaigns, not just pay for messages.

Politicians, political consultants, and pundits failed to see the revolution coming because they are immersed in the establishment that pays their rent, and we are all unaccustomed to a revolution demanding dramatic increases in standards of living. Not since Andrew Jackson anyway.

Can a non-politician be a good president? Yes, and even better!

Sanders and Trump would pick the best candidates for jobs, regardless of political party affiliation. That is what has so alarmed the party faithful. Restoring a vibrant meritocracy to democracy makes 2015 a very scary Halloween for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Unfettered by political party ideologies, Sanders and Trump reached the right decisions on our biggest challenges this century. Sanders long argued for greater bank regulation that would have prevented the recession of 2008. Trump wrote in 2000 that we were susceptible to a major terrorist attack on our soil and it could come from Osama bin Laden. Sanders and Trump both were against going into Iraq, Sanders voting against it and Trump writing in 2003 that it would destabilize the Mideast.

This is in contrast to President Bush, who listened to, and appointed, his loyal Republican colleagues, who overruled the more informed Gen. Colin Powell.

Condoleezza Rice, a Russian history professor and university administrator who helped Bush prepare for the 2000 presidential debates, was rewarded with the position national security adviser even though she was far away from being the best person to keep us safe. After failing to protect us on 9/11, Rice was promoted to secretary of state. She advocated for the invasion of Iraq with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, the three so incompetent that they hung a giant banner, “Mission Accomplished,” behind Bush for his speech on an aircraft carrier in 2003.

Is a full-blown revolution inevitable?

When Sanders and Trump tell us not to revere the politically and financially entrenched they are inciting us to revolt.

Trump can regain Hispanic votes because he is certainly no racist. People never welcome even legal immigrants for fear it could cost them their jobs or businesses.

Sanders is safe as a socialist because people welcome help when they cannot see a way out of their financial challenges and view the deck as stacked against them.

Sanders and Trump are both against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, contending it does not do enough for U.S. jobs.

Trump has created jobs as an entrepreneur and might be able to make the pie dramatically bigger, not just redistribute a static pie. Similarly, Sanders could surround himself with people like his fellow Vermont citizen Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, who has fought to limit C.E.O. salaries to seven times the lowest salary and lived by that rule.

If Sanders or Trump is elected it will be a revolution indeed.

Jeremy Wiesen, a longtime East Hampton resident, is a retired professor of entrepreneurship at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is part of the U.S. State Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program.

This year there have been a number of fish kills and harmful algal blooms in the Peconics and Shinnecock Bay. In my previous “Guestwords” column, I discussed how these events were caused by excessive nutrients (primarily nitrogen) coming mostly from fertilizers running off from farms and lawns, and from human waste, coming in primarily in groundwater from septic tanks.

Algal blooms, stimulated by the nutrients, sooner or later die off and the dead cells sink to the bottom, where bacteria are stimulated to decompose them. The decomposition process uses up dissolved oxygen from the water. The overall phenomenon of excessive nutrients causing algal blooms that decay and use up oxygen in deeper water is called “eutrophication.”

The decomposition of dead material is due to the activity of respiration by bacteria and fungiliving at the bottom. Respiration is a process that all living things do; the process uses up oxygen and at the same time releases carbon dioxide. This is the same as when we respire — we extract oxygen from the air and add CO2 to it.

Most of what we hear about carbon dioxide these days has to do with its release when fossil fuels are burned and its role in producing the greenhouse effect or global warming. While the preindustrial value of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million, as of May 2015 it was greater than 403 ppm. About one-third of the CO2 emitted into the air dissolves in the ocean, where the rate of CO2 increase directly parallels its rate of increase in the atmosphere. The CO2 that dissolves in the ocean reduces the amount in the air and thus the degree of warming it causes; however, it has effects on the chemistry and biology of the ocean. The dissolved CO2 combines chemically with seawater to form carbonic acid, which releases hydrogen ions. The increased concentration of hydrogen ions causes the water to become more acidic, a process being called “ocean acidification.” The oceans have already become 20 to 30 percent more acidic than they were in preindustrial times.

One major biological effect of acidification is that it impairs the process of shell formation in organisms that make calcium carbonate shells — there is less carbonate available in the water that they can use. What kinds of organisms make shells out of calcium carbonate and are affected? Primarily mollusks, corals, and certain types of single-celled phytoplankton. These organisms are very important to the ecology of the ocean, and in the case of mollusks, important to us as seafood.

Growth rates of these organisms are reduced in acidified conditions, shell formation in the young larval stages is impaired, and in some cases existing shells can be weakened and eroded away.

Some of this is already happening. There have been failures of oysters in Pacific Coast hatcheries because upwelling of more acidic deeper water prevented their larvae from growing shells; this was an economic disaster for shellfish growers almost a decade ago and has since been averted by hatchery staff checking the acidity of the incoming water and adjusting it.

Pteropods (tiny planktonic snails) in the Pacific have shown a 30 percent greater incidence of shell dissolution over the past few decades. These pteropods are important food for young Pacific salmon when they migrate out of rivers into the ocean. Other effects that are being discovered involve impairment of the olfaction (smell detection) system of fishes so they cannot migrate properly or locate “home.”

Research on biological effects of ocean acidification is relatively new, and additional effects on other processes and other organisms are being reported in scientific papers every month.

This is happening in the ocean. What does it have to do with our local estuaries? Remember, when algae blooms decompose, not only does dissolved oxygen go down, but CO2 is produced. This local source of CO2 causes additional acidification in the estuaries and coastal waters, making the acidification greater than in the ocean and the problems worse. The combined impacts of warming, acidification, and low oxygen cause intensified effects. While environmental agencies routinely measure dissolved oxygen, the degree of acidity has not been routinely measured. Studies in Long Island Sound have shown that when the dissolved oxygen gets low (usually in late summer), the acidity is greater.

A recent study examining the vulnerability of different states of the U.S. to ocean/coastal acidification ranked New York as “vulnerable” due to its shellfish industry combined with its level of nutrient inputs and algae blooms. That rank for the state really is for Long Island, and Suffolk County in particular, where there are shellfisheries and shellfish aquaculture.

In order to make a difference in remediating acidification in the world’s oceans, international action to curb CO2 emissions will be necessary. However, here is a case where the old environmental slogan “think globally, act locally” really applies. Local and state action can reduce the additional acidification in coastal and estuarine areas by reducing nitrogen inputs. This would be a win-win situation, since it would at the same time relieve the more immediate effects of eutrophication (fish kills, harmful algal blooms) as well.

Judith S. Weis, who lives part time in Springs, is a professor emerita at Rutgers University and the author of the recent book “Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know.” She chaired the committee of the Science Advisory Board of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection that produced a report on ocean acidification.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Newly (and consciously) coupled, we needed to be comfortable driving each other’s cars. What better plan than to drive the vehicles to the car wash, followed by a leisurely lunch at Southampton’s Sant Ambroeus?

So we set out from Amagansett, she in my Mercedes and I in her Range Rover. Emerging from the car wash 45 minutes later, I can’t spot my Mercedes. Surely the smaller car would be finished first? I park on the shoulder of Route 27 and wait for my car to emerge. Five minutes pass before my cellphone rings. This dialogue ensues:

She: “Where are you?”

Me: “Waiting for you to come out of the car wash.”

She: “I’m out. I’m parked on the Southampton road. I’ll wait for you on the shoulder.”

I gun the eight cylinders and hang a right toward Southampton. After a few minutes, I spot her glossy gray hair some hundred yards ahead. She waves and eases into the traffic. I follow her. In less than a minute, I realize I must have lost her. There’s no Mercedes convertible in the knot of cars ahead.

Arriving at the outskirts of Southampton, I parallel park the big vehicle and call her. More dialogue:

Me: “Where are you?”

She: “I’m in the village parking lot. Where are you?”

Me: “Parked on the street just outside town.”

She: “Well, what are you waiting for? Drive in and go straight to the village parking lot; you’ll see a sign. I’ll meet you there.”

I work my way out of the parking spot and drive into town. Before I can turn into the parking lot, I see her waving me toward an empty parking space on Main Street. I slide the Range Rover in, lock it, and we head for lunch at Sant Ambroeus. It turns out to be a long lunch enlivened by a glass of wine, and then we window-shop for a while to let the alcohol neutralize.

“So,” I say, “should we head back?”

“Guess so. I have an appointment in East Hampton, so why don’t you keep my car and I will bring yours to your place and we can swap them there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say, and we part, she to the parking lot, me to my spot on Main Street.

Forty-five minutes later and four hours since we left the car wash, I swing into my Amagansett driveway.

My cellphone rings. “Southampton Car Wash here. Sir, when are you coming to collect your car?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your car, the Mercedes convertible? It needs to be picked up. You took the wrong Mercedes.”

Blood leaves my body. “I’m on my way. How did you get my cell number?”

“We rang the cops. They ran the plates. Your name popped up.”

“Great, so now I’m a felon. And where’s the other car?”

“You mean the one that’s missing? You’re driving it, I hope.”

“Not exactly. But I think I know where it might be.”

“Well, sir, I suggest you bring it back as soon as possible. We have a very unhappy customer here who’s been waiting nearly five hours for his vehicle.”

“Like I said, I’m on my way.”

I call her.

“Where are you?”

“At White’s Pharmacy. Why?”

“You drove away with the wrong car. Don’t move. I’m on my way.”

At the parking lot, I can see it’s a Mercedes, but it’s not my Mercedes.

“But it’s a Mercedes,” she says.

“Yes, that much is true, but it’s blue, not gray, and it’s a sedan, not a convertible. All I could see when you waved at me was your hair, not the color of the car.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” is all she says.

I leave her with her Range Rover and drive the blue Mercedes to the car wash, but not before filling it with gas.

I hand the keys to the car’s visibly irritated owner. “Is it driving okay?” he asks. Fortunately, he avoids eye contact.

Assuming this to be a man-to-man question, I say, “Well, actually it’s pulling a bit to the left.”

He looks alarmed. “It wasn’t doing that this morning. I’m going to drive it around the block. I’ll be back if there’s a problem.”

He doesn’t return.

For weeks afterward, the car wash staff call out the same greeting: “Hey, here’s the guy who drove off with another guy’s car!”

Eighteen months later, we’re still together.

Brian Clewly Johnson recently published a memoir, “A Cape Town Boy.”