Real estate agents serving the Hamptons number in the thousands. This occupation represents one of the largest sources of employment in the area. Based on 2014 figures, agents in the Hamptons achieved income totaling approximately $167 million. This is an enormous amount of income that supports local families and fuels our local economy, yet too much of it is wasted because of poor financial planning.

How often have you heard this tale? A home described as a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath residence on a quiet street in East Hampton south of the highway near the village and ocean beaches. It’s the idyllic weekend summer house for a New York City family who five years ago bought it for a little more than $2 million. Last month, this little slice of heaven sold for close to $6 million.

The sizzling real estate market in the Hamptons has brought with it a wave of spec houses, competitive one-upmanship between buyers and builders alike, and a dramatic rise in commissions for the area’s real estate offices and their agents.

According to Miller Samuel Inc., an independent real estate appraising firm, the average sale price of a Hamptons home in 2014 exceeded $1.7 million, with over 2,400 total transactions through the year. That brings a total transaction value for 2014 of over $4.2 billion. This represents an increase of almost 2.5 times the total transaction value in the five years following the financial crisis; 2009’s total was $1.7 billion. These figures do not include the commissions generated from rental properties, which is a very significant business in itself.

In most instances, real estate agents are not employees of the firms they represent; rather they perform their services as independent contractors and are therefore not offered benefits including health care and retirement plans. There is also no opportunity to earn equity in the firms they support. Agents simply receive cash compensation upon the closing of a transaction. The challenge, then, is to structure their businesses in order to take full advantage of the tax savings available to business owners.

Agents own and operate their own businesses; it is therefore essential they create a well-thought-out financial planning strategy. Agents should consider setting up a limited liability company to receive the revenue generated from commissions and, similarly, use the L.L.C. to pay for all work-related expenses, from taxes to professional services. Use of an L.L.C. can help keep personal and business assets segregated, which provides the added benefit of protecting the agent’s personal assets from liability in the event a client decides to sue.

Agents should also consider setting up Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP, I.R.A. plans. These are retirement savings vehicles for self-employed individuals and are a great way to reduce taxable income and set aside money that can be invested and increase in value on a tax-deferred basis. Every dollar contributed to a SEP plan is deducted right off the top line of taxable gross income. The contribution limits in SEP plans are high, $53,000 in 2015. This is dramatically more than what is allowed inside a traditional I.R.A.

As independent contractors, agents must take it upon themselves to understand their planning options in order to save as much of their hard-earned dollars as possible. After all, everyone should have an opportunity to purchase a perfect slice of the Hamptons, especially those who live and work here full time.

Andrew Stern is a financial adviser with Lebenthal Wealth Advisors in Bridgehampton.

Mallet Man (MM) can be found at Indian Wells Beach when the summer sun is ablaze and you probably shouldn’t even be out in it. “But Ma, you promised. There’s surf to ride, pails to fill, holes to dig.”

You spread your blanket on the sand, open the chairs, and begin the struggle with the umbrella, screwing the bottom pole down to China so it doesn’t fly off and impale other beachgoers. Superman is not going to swoop down to lend you muscle, nor is Batman going to Batmobile-it over. There are no miracles, says you.

But wait! Who is that man making his way over to your blanket? And why does he carry a mallet on the beach? Alas, he proceeds (with your permission, and with the mallet) to help you out by banging that sucker into the sand like there’s no tomorrow. Yes, Virginia. There is a Mallet Man.

A brief history of how MM came to his calling — I’m privy to this because Mallet Man (when not in disguise) is my husband. With retirement came more time for fun and games, which landed us a house at the beach. It was good for a while, yet wore heavy on the skin. MM spent much time at the dermatologist, who carved away like there was no tomorrow, and perhaps there wouldn’t be one if he hadn’t done his job.

“Old sun stuff,” the doc diagnosed, but MM was taking no chances on a new accumulation. Thus the purchase of a beach umbrella. Being the handyman that he is, aware of the ordeal of the umbrella setup, he ran for his mallet and moved it to the trunk of the car. Voila!

It was just our little trick at first, yet when Mallet Man saw a couple struggling with their umbrella, he couldn’t help but offer his assistance. They were so pleased. About three clops. And then a little chitchat. “Where ya from? C’mon over for a drink” — them to us, us to them. Friendships blossomed. People were grateful. A friend made him an MM T-shirt so the world would know help was near.

But then. Progress will out. People will upgrade, especially when they are in vacation mode. Beach umbrellas were popping up at Indian Wells Beach with a screw-bottom attachment that can be worked into the sand without too much difficulty . . . without a mallet, even.

Mallet Man got caught up in despair. He no longer wanted to go to the beach — what would he do there? Not fond of the sand and rarely putting a toe in the ocean, his presence there was mostly a matter of helping keep an eye on the grandkids.

“Make peace with technology,” I told him. “Move on. Be a volunteer lifeguard at the pool. Hardly anyone uses it so you probably will never need to get wet.”

“Meanwhile,” I continued, “I’ll phone the classifieds.” Free: 1 mallet, 1 Mallet Man T-shirt.

MM was horrified. “This mallet belonged to my father,” he said. “It’s a family heirloom. I’m not just getting rid of it.”

“Give it to our grandson,” I suggested. “He’s 10 years old. It’s his turn to pick up the mallet. Give him the T-shirt too. He’ll grow into it. And someday he’ll say to his kid, ‘This mallet belonged to my grandfather and his father before him.’ I’m crying already.”

“Don’t forget to take a selfie of you and the mallet. And then a shot of the transfer.”

Hinda Gonchor is a freelance writer living in East Hampton and New York. Her work has been featured in The New York Times and other newspapers as well as on the radio.

This June we were appalled to read about fish kills in the Peconic Estuary, turtle kills, and harmful algal blooms in the Peconics and Shinnecock Bay. This was especially shocking to me since for many years I used these waters as clean “reference” sites for studies on effects of pollution in fish, crabs, and shrimp living in the waters of northern New Jersey.

The cause of our local problems is excess nutrients, especially nitrogen. While nitrogen is an essential nutrient (a part of all proteins and nucleic acids) and a fertilizer that is important for agricultural productivity, when too much of it gets into the water it is a pollutant.

The sources of nutrients include sewage, animal wastes, and fertilizers that are discharged or run off from agricultural areas. On land, excess nitrogen flows from agricultural fields and suburban lawns, entering freshwater and going down to estuaries via streams and rivers, altering water chemistry and ecology. Synthetic fertilizer was a benefit in terms of crop yield but is an ongoing environmental problem, primarily because of runoff into aquatic ecosystems. The increased use of commercial fertilizers has increased nitrogen inputs tenfold in many parts of the world.

Waste from septic tanks enters estuaries through seepage into groundwater, which moves slowly into estuaries. In eastern Suffolk we rely mostly on individual septic tanks rather than centralized sewage treatment plants. Most of those systems were built many years ago. Where there is more residential development and more septic tanks in the neighborhood (and where isn’t that happening?), more nitrogen seeps into groundwater and nearby water bodies.

Nutrient enrichment promotes excessive growth of algae (fertilizing the algae), mostly microscopic phytoplankton blooms. Small increases in these algae can increase productivity in food webs and sustain more fish and shellfish. However, like too much of anything, overstimulation of algal growth can degrade water quality and threaten human health and living resources. When algal blooms die off, the dead cells sink to the bottom, where they stimulate bacteria to decompose them. The decomposition process uses up dissolved oxygen from the water. If the aeration of water by mixing is less than the bacterial metabolism, the bottom waters will lose oxygen and become hypoxic (low oxygen) or anoxic (no oxygen), creating stressful or lethal conditions.

The dissolved oxygen was down to zero in the Peconic during one of the fish kills this June. Hypoxia is a major problem in many estuaries, especially in late summer and early fall, and has been increasing globally. The fact that these incidents occurred so early in the summer indicates the local problem is particularly severe.

Low oxygen reduces the abundance and diversity of adult fish and reduces the growth rate of newly settled lobsters, crabs, shellfish, and juvenile flounder. Species that cannot move or move slowly may die in low-oxygen water. Fish larvae are poor swimmers and become more vulnerable to predation. Animals generally deal with low oxygen by reducing their activity in order to consume less oxygen. This often means feeding for shorter periods and eating less food.

In many areas hypoxia is so severe that they are called “dead zones” because nothing (aside from bacteria) can live there. Areas with oxygen sufficient to sustain some life (below two or three milligrams per liter) have reduced bottom (benthic) communities, made up of very small animals. When the benthic community is stressed, only small, short-lived worms remain; animals like crustaceans and mollusks (shellfish) can no longer survive. Hypoxia tends to be overlooked until conspicuous fish kills occur.

The turtles in the Peconic were not killed by low dissolved oxygen, since they breathe air. They were killed by toxins from some of the phytoplankton. Some phytoplankton species produce toxins that can impair respiratory, nervous, and other functions, and even kill fish, shellfish, seabirds, and mammals.

Harmful algal blooms have been called “red tides” or “brown tides” because of water discoloration when they occur, though many do not discolor the water. Their economic impacts can be severe if shellfish harvest and fishing are closed. Reports of such blooms have been increasing worldwide and often correlate with nitrogen inputs.

This year we have been revisited by a brown tide in Great South Bay and Moriches Bay, a fairly regular recurrence on eastern Long Island since the 1980s. But this year we also had a bloom of Alexandrium, which produces the toxin saxitoxin, in Shinnecock. While brown tide can cause ecological problems, it is not a human health concern. On the other hand, saxitoxin causes paralytic shellfish poisoning when people eat shellfish that have accumulated the toxin from the plankton they feed on. Such poisoning can make people very sick because, as the name implies, it causes paralysis. If the diaphragm is paralyzed, a person can’t breathe and can die.

Reducing the nitrogen inputs into our estuaries is an urgent necessity that will not be easy. I recently heard that there is a requirement for homeowners to have their septic tanks tested — something we never knew about for the 40 years we’ve had our house. Our officials should communicate with towns on Cape Cod that are experiencing similar problems in their estuaries from similar septic tank sources. Like the East End, they derive considerable economic benefit from the attraction of their coastal areas and healthy marine environment.

There is no quick fix for this; it will require considerable effort and expense. It also will take time for improvements to be seen after we curb the nitrogen inputs.

Judith S. Weis is a professor emerita of biology at Rutgers University who lives part time in Springs. She will be giving a talk about her newest book, “Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know,” at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton at 11 a.m. on Aug. 8.

Generations of summer residents have expressed abhorrence about the changing demographics and mores of East Hampton. They revile the crowds of strangers in odd dress on Newtown Lane (this year’s crop seems to sport a return to formality, with women appearing in high heels and dresses in the middle of a summer afternoon), while forgetting that they themselves were once neophytes.

The other day, with the Vita Coco van ferrying the nouveau something or others through the center of town, the scene was reminiscent of Rome, yes, the Via Veneto of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.” Imagine how the townsfolk, for whom East Hampton has comprised both home and work for generations, must feel! Of course these latter are chastened by the reminder that tourism rather than progress is East Hampton’s most important product.

One must always remember that except in the most advanced astrophysics something is generally not considered to emanate from nothing. So we have to have respect for this new class of vacationer, no matter how affluent and devoid of this or that trait that might have been displayed by earlier generations of sojourners.

So what that there are likely no budding Jackson Pollocks, Lee Krasners, Willem de Koonings, Barney Rossets, James Joneses, James Salters, or George Plimptons in the crowd! So what that the heroes for a new generation of Hamptons summer residents are hedge-fund honchos like Carl Icahn and John Paulson, whose financial machinations form the template by which a whole new generation is able to pay ever-escalating rents. So what that East Hampton is no longer an artists and writers enclave, but the watering hole for stock market tycoons, real estate moguls, film executives, and Silicon Valley venture capitalists. It’s still good old East Hampton.

Remember Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”? In that sci-fi classic a human who was born on Mars comes to Earth. But old-timers who were born and raised in East Hampton or vacationed here for decades might experience a similar effect. The windmill is still there and so is White’s Pharmacy (though in slightly spruced-up form), and institutions like Sam’s still provide the illusion of continuity. And after all there is still an Artists and Writers Softball Game and you can still find a few heavy hitters on the rosters of both teams.

Heidegger and Freud shared an interest in the concept of Unheimlichkeit, which means estrangement, literally not feeling at home. So if you’re an alumnus of the ’60s and ’70s, when East Hampton emanated a different kind of class, it’s easy to walk around town on a summer’s afternoon with the latest wave of summer vacationers and feel like you’re living out a scene from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “Night of the Living Dead.” In those movies familiar faces become zombies.

There’s also Capgras syndrome, a neurological condition in which one suspects that the familiar face is a stranger, or its sister condition, prosopagnosia, in which the sufferer fails to recognize faces. If you’re a repeater you might experience one or all of these symptoms when strolling through town today.

But be assured, that’s how the ancien regime felt back in the ’60s when they spotted you rolling into town in your Day-Glo-painted VW bus packed with Gibson and Fender guitars, paintbrushes, and a Royal typewriter loaded in the back.

Francis Levy, a Wainscott resident, is the author of the comic novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” His blog is TheScreamingPope.com.

Donald Trump says he would be “God’s greatest jobs president.” So far, the candidate has focused on renegotiating trade agreements, would have stopped Ford from building its new $2.5 billion factory in Mexico, and would have retaliated against China’s recent currency devaluation.

Regardless of whether this would work perfectly, Americans know Trump as a first-rate entrepreneur and businessman. They have legitimate expectations that Trump, at the least, would build an ecosystem that would foster and mentor their entrepreneurial aspirations; secondarily, he would have the best chance to drive the economy and jobs.

Many nonaffluent Americans know that a redistribution of wealth, such as Hillary Clinton’s proposal to increase capital gains taxes, is less likely to increase their standard of living than an increase in the economic pie for everyone. So, candidates must immerse themselves in ways to stimulate entrepreneurship and dramatically and quickly increase our gross domestic product and jobs.

I have been advocating the following silver bullet for the economy for several years. Company balance sheets have an estimated $10 trillion in liquid assets that could be put to work voluntarily, without government involvement or political partisanship, in the following win-win-win ways:

Help employees buy and rent homes.

Assist small companies seeking financing, especially suppliers and clients.

Finance public-private infrastructure investments, such as repairing highways, bridges, pipes, train systems, and schools.

Invest in solar and other alternatives to fossil fuels.

Today, home ownership is at the lowest level since 1994, with new housing starts off by 40 percent. Consequently, home building is down to 2 percent of G.D.P. from 6 percent. Banks remain very conservative on mortgage lending, and developers are afraid to build middle-income apartment houses because of a lack of renters who can show an adequate history of income and yet collectively have $1 trillion in student debt.

Companies know their employees better than banks do and have much to gain by helping employee living conditions. Likewise, no one can better project the future of their suppliers and customers, so providing them with financing is a good bet in many ways.

Putting to work some of the trillions of dollars sitting relatively idly in company bank and securities accounts — if not needed for acquisitions and stock buyback programs — would be a free-enterprise solution to our most important economic and social challenges.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, our recent prosperity presidents, governed during a dramatic increase in available capital after the U.S. Labor Department ruled in 1980 that pension funds had to diversify their portfolios away from just publicly traded securities into private company investments. The venture capital industry took off, funding whole new industries in computers, telecommunications, and biotech, and new low-tech ideas, such as big-box retailing (e.g., Staples) and competitors to the Postal Service (e.g., FedEx). Other alternative investment vehicles were basic economy drivers, such as real estate.

By the mid-1980s, Reagan could observe it was “the age of the entrepreneur.” Business schools created courses on entrepreneurship, and initial public offerings, which were virtually nonexistent in the 1970s, emerged and liquefied the venture capital portfolios.

Clinton’s term in office fed off this equity capital and hit the technology jackpot through cellphones and the Internet, with productivity increases that would never be fully measured.

In 2016, presidential hopefuls must focus on the federal funding of pure technology research that is too speculative for the private sector, as we appear to be on the verge of another hyper-tech era in areas such as biotechnology, robotics, metallurgy, nanotechnology, and new uses of the Internet. We cannot forget that the Internet was developed by America’s Department of Defense.

More urgent for our economy, however, and crucial for the millions of non-tech workers who are unemployed or underemployed, we need win-win-win help from corporations that can provide a new source of capital.

Americans who yearn for a Reagan-Clinton booming economy should concentrate on finding a president who sees the need to develop new strategies to tap underutilized financial resources for low-tech businesses especially, and who appreciates high tech, too.

Political commentators apparently have such cushy jobs and such a static sense of things that they cannot understand why jobs, the economy, and an attack on lobbyists are a primary concern of so many voters, or why the essence of Trump is not entertainer, where The Huffington Post still has him, but entrepreneur, or why Bernie Sanders is a savior, not a socialist, for many Democrats who lack economic security.

Politicians, like all Americans, have become jaded in thinking there could be a way to substantially increase our economic pie quickly, except for Trump’s focus on our international trade. They do not search for broad, innovative ideas based on what worked before.

There is a silver bullet for the U.S. economy — within our past, our borders, and our will!

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.

When I first came to the Hamptons in the summer of 1981, Tina Fredericks, who died in May at age 93, was the pooh-bah of East End real estate agents. “Realtor to the Stars”: So she anointed herself in her business ads, and so she was. The impression, widely held and not discouraged by Tina, was that she was the Queen Bee, and the rest were drones. It was more or less true.

I had rented (not through Tina) a house in Water Mill: a grand old shingled, veranda-ed, three-story, 12-room, post-Victorian wreck looking out upon a broad greensward that sloped tenderly down to Mecox Bay. There were massive trees. There were rushes at water’s edge. There were swans gliding. There were evocations of Merchant & Ivory. The rent was $12,000 for the summer.

Midsummer, the owners came to confer with me. They were getting a divorce and were putting the house up for sale. Since I was currently in residence, it was being offered to me first. They were embarrassed to tell me the asking price. “Things are getting crazy out here,” the husband said, red-faced. The price was $325,000.

“Buy it!” Tina hissed in my ear as we stood on the veranda gazing upon all there was to gaze upon, which was plenty. “The land alone is worth twice as much.”

Of course, the land alone, in the bittersweet fullness of time, would come to be worth more like — I’m guessing here, perhaps absurdly lowballing it — 10 times as much. Even Tina could not have anticipated the full dimensions of the tulip-bulb craze that would sweep over these golden acres. But she was, in her moment, ahead of the game. She had the eye. She had the nose.

I needed a 12-room house like I needed a hernia. Anyway, it was impossible. I had neither the means nor the spirit. I was recently widowed and still a bit of a basket case, beset by ghosts that prowled the Provincetown house, a dear, decrepit behemoth smack on the harbor, that my husband and I had owned. I wanted to sell it, I didn’t want to sell it, and in the throes of that indecision had taken the advice of friends, who urged a change of scene and found me this place in Water Mill.

I called Tina. There were connections. Way back I had worked for The New York Times, where her then-husband, Rick Fredericks, the Sunday picture editor, had been my pal and colleague. Now she and I met, hit it off, and fell easily into the habit of dining together often. We had mellow dinners in the lovely Georgica Road carriage house (purchased by Tina and Rick in 1950 for $6,500) that was her home and office. We sat rocking, nursing drinks, and trading intimate war stories on my dandy veranda-by-the-bay (which she never visited without sighing, “The land alone . . .”).

Land was much on her mind that season. Land was always much on Tina’s mind, but especially that season. She and a partner were developing something new on the Hamptons landscape: an ambitious amalgam of co-op units and private homes, all spread over 150 rolling acres that had once been a dairy farm.

That summer, her vision existed mostly on paper. By the next, it was almost complete. I saw it often, traveling east along Route 27. It looked like a period etching, a pastoral dream incarnate. Horses peacefully grazing in a huge meadow that sloped upward from the road. At the top of the incline, the silver crowns of two vintage silos gleaming in the sun. Big open spaces. Clusters of co-op units discreetly hidden from one another by the lay of the land, a touch of the Japanese aesthetic, a tad of the potato barn in the way they hugged the ground.

Condos and co-ops, though common enough in the city, were still a rarity on the East End. “It’s the future!” Tina said, waving an arm as though to summon the future now. “Somebody else takes care of the pool! Somebody else takes care of the tennis court! Somebody else takes care of the grounds!”

I was still not in the market, and Tina knew it. “Oh, I wish . . . ,” I would say, and she would say, “Well, maybe someday. . . .” But by the time someday arrived, my life had taken several different turns, and I was no longer spending summers in the Hamptons.

In 2000 I was remarried, to a man who had himself been widowed. With his late wife he had owned a vacation house in Springs, which was traded for a house on the Connecticut shore, to be closer to their children, which was traded for no house at all because, he said, the hell with it. Enough of the groundskeeping and the deck repairing and the tennis-court maintaining. No more houses.

And sitting there in our co-op on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I heard a bell. Ping. Or maybe a voice. A remembrance of a voice long past, coming softly, seductively, through the ether: “Somebody else takes care of the pool! Somebody else takes care of the tennis court! Somebody else. . . .”

Et cetera. Also, eureka.

“Uh. How about a co-op?” I said.

So we came and we saw and he liked and we bought, and I have never since had any cause to beware the 30-year-old wish that came true.

Tina was long retired by then, and ailing. So she never knew, which I regret. And now she is gone and sometimes, particularly in those hours when we are sitting idle-handed on our little patio and watching somebody else cut the grass, I find myself thinking of her. Salut, Tina, I think, lifting a glass. You had the nose.

Martha Weinman Lear’s most recent book is “Echoes of Heartsounds,” published last year.

­While it is arguably the best time to be on the East End, with the sun still shining brightly and the local farms bursting with their harvest, our attention begins to refocus away from the joys of a glorious summer. The traffic has given way to yellow school buses as our children return to their classrooms. This is the perfect reminder to parents about the need to plan for the costs of higher education.

Starting early may ease the burden, as parents can take advantage of opportunities and programs specifically designed for saving for college. Parents and others who are thinking about funding education expenses should try to be as informed as possible and carefully consider their options, their own financial situation, and future objectives when deciding on appropriate levels to set aside.

According to a recent study conducted by the United States Department of Education, the average tuition cost of one year at a public university is north of $15,000, and a private institution is approximately $33,000. Consider also that these costs have grown over the last decade at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent, far outpacing both inflation and wage growth. This means that for my twin boys entering kindergarten this year, when they reach college age it is likely that one year of public tuition will cost more than $44,000. One year of tuition at a private university may reach close to $130,000. These are daunting figures.

The costs associated with obtaining a college degree might seem discouraging, but they are important to know and understand. Knowing what costs to expect drives parents to consider various planning strategies. Regardless of one’s financial condition, the best results are often achieved when a plan is initiated at the earliest possible stage. With that said, it is never too late to start.

For parents of young children, 529 plans have become popular tools to save for education. These state-sponsored plans offer tax advantages and are even transferable among family members. Education Saving Accounts also offer certain tax benefits, but differ from 529 plans in their contribution limits.

Student loans, too, are an important tool, but come with a cost. The burden of carrying debt for young adults entering the work force handicaps their path toward financial independence, a goal every parent has for their children. Merit and performance-based scholarships and financial aid packages may also play a role in covering some of the costs of college, but cannot be guaranteed and should not be fully relied upon. Other strategies to set aside money for education exist and vary in their complexity and have benefits and limitations all their own.

Watching my kids paddle out to the lineup at Ditch Plain with the warmth of summer still lingering in the air, it is fun to dream about one of them getting a full ride to college on a surfing scholarship, if there even is such a thing. I think instead I will add a little money to their 529 plans on Monday and make sure they do their homework.

Andrew Stern is a financial adviser with Lebenthal Wealth Advisors in Bridgehampton.

Stella Goldschlag was a German Jew from the Berlin provinces who worked with the Gestapo during World War II, identifying Jews stuck in Berlin who were masquerading as Aryans. Those German Jews who performed this betrayal service for the Nazis were called “catchers.” There were many in her profession, more than one would like to think, their Aryan good looks protecting them.

They could pass, at least for a while, unless a catcher turned them in.

The Jews in hiding — also protected by a non-Jewish mien — were referred to as U-boats, after German submarines, taking refuge underwater, false identities, so to speak, coming up for air in busy public avenues that they thought were the safest.

With Stella’s Nazi collaboration, the U-boats’ cloak of concealment became a shroud for those German Jews she unmasked.

She was a great-looking Aryan-type German Jew who, to be fair, had suffered an arrest, torture, and imprisonment by the Gestapo. Then a release, because her captors understood the potential Stella had in their racial cleansing of Germany.

Raised in 1930s Nazi Germany, growing up with Hitler, Stella Goldschlag attended a special school, the Goldschmidt School, for Jewish children founded after the Nazis removed all non-Aryan, that is, Jewish, children from public schools.

Her family did not get away while getting away was possible, while one could go to Hamburg, take a boat to Shanghai, where no visa was required and important Jews were looked on as Europeans, as opposed to their non-Aryan brand in Europe. Her father had failed to swiftly ask his St. Louis relatives for an affidavit of support then needed for Jews to emigrate to America, to the United States, to be more precise. Basically, the U.S. was not too sympathetic to migrants.

First, to save her family on a promise from the Gestapo that, with her complicity in disclosing Jews in disguise, they would not be deported to the death camps, Stella betrayed other Berlin Jews, the U-boats who were living in public as Aryans. When the Nazis reneged on the deal and shipped her family off with the others, however, Stella continued her work for them, to save herself. She would eventually become known as the “blond poison.”

The adage “one becomes what one does” applies to this Jewish woman whose self-serving tip-offs aided the Nazis in their Jew-hunts. Stella Goldschlag was responsible for the capture and subsequent deaths of hundreds. And she continued to help the Nazis long after her family was deported.

She would sit in an outdoor cafe on the main drag, and when she recognized a Jew she would high-sign the Gestapo agents who were there as well. They would efficiently leap — no, trip over each other — to action, to pull in the prey. She stalked and hunted down German Jews — U-boats — for the Gestapo, as well.

What is one willing to do to survive? We cannot know about ourselves in similar circumstances. But clearly, to this writer, the first step is the critical one. That is, the first step can embody all the others. The logical extension of an act flows from that first decision.

In the two major Western religions, Christianity and Judaism, the first believes in mercy, forgiveness, and love, while the second subscribes to justice, that is to say, acts have consequences for which we are responsible.

In Western philosophy, Kant writes that humans are responsible only for the intent of an act or decision, because consequences are out of one’s control. For the ancient Greeks, however, like Aristotle, referred to as the Philosopher by early Christian theologians, remorse is not a virtue. Sorry just won’t hack it.

Would any of us be Stellas, be catchers in Nazi Germany to save our family’s life? To save our own? Remember, the first decision is the trap.

So, more about Stella and the catcher crews some other time. She had three trials after the war, and her one daughter moved to Israel and would have nothing to do with her.

But now we look today at the Kentucky clerk jailed for not issuing a marriage license to a gay couple. She was put in jail, pleading that a higher morality she held to would be transgressed if she did her job, that is, if she followed the law of the land, in this case.

Now let’s go to the post-World War II Nuremburg trials. Nazi judges were tried and convicted for crimes against humanity because they did follow the laws of the land at that time, Hitler-time.

Oops! Are we hypocrites? Is an act a crime if and only if we don’t sympathize with the cause for which it was done? Hmm. And what kind of decisions would you entertain in order to survive?

Survival, betrayal, immigration, marriage licenses . . . if you live long enough there’s too much to think about! Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?

Lona Rubenstein moved to East Hampton more than 50 years ago. Her books include “Itzig,” a novel set in Germany from 1900 to 1935.

You’re not the only one with a summer rental, reads the sign in the window of the J. Crew on Main Street in East Hampton. The store is currently undergoing renovation and the sign is merely meant to direct customers to J. Crew’s “rental,” a pop-up shop just across the way, but when I came upon it the other night all brightly lit, it nearly stopped me dead in my flip-flops.

We have been renting houses on the East End of Long Island for years now, more than a decade at least, and there is something at once both dispiriting and enlivening about coming here on a temporary basis. As renters we are interlopers, transients. If the pecking order begins with those whose families have been here for generations, think the Halseys, the Toppings, and all those who have ever had a street named after them, and then descends to locals and then summer people, well, we are right after them, which is to say just one notch above day-trippers.

But our status — if you could call being a summer renter a status — also has its benefits. If to be an insider is to lose all perspective, and to be an outsider is to have no access in order to gain perspective, then we as outsiders temporarily granted a degree of insider access are well positioned to observe, and keenly.

Every house that we’ve rented here has had its great points and, as if by dint of some kind of Newtonian penance, its equal and opposite not so great points. There was the house on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton that had a swanky address and was, true to its name, walking distance to the beach. But that house also had a garage door permanently lodged in its dining room ceiling, the house having been cobbled together out of the garage of an erstwhile estate plus its various outbuildings. I loved that funky house even though I understood that it most certainly didn’t want to be loved for its funkiness. The house was like the personification of a failed bid at social climbing: It so badly wanted to move up in the world and yet, for all its desire to succeed, it nonetheless couldn’t help but keep exposing its awkward pedestrian roots.

Once, in the Village of East Hampton, we had a lawyer for a landlord who asked if he could commingle our security deposit, which was legally mandated to be in an escrow account, with his own personal checking account. Trying to be accommodating we said yes, and though it all worked out well for us in the end (we got back the correct amount), we did later learn that our landlord had been disbarred from the practice of law for those very sorts of infractions.

Another year, in Wainscott, we moved into our rental only to find that the next-door neighbor’s house was suddenly, irrevocably gone. This didn’t strike fear in my heart but it sure did strike fear in my husband’s. “It’s the Hamptons,” he said. “Someone will be building a house there in no time.” Perhaps truer words have never been spoken, for the very next morning the incredibly noisy job of laying the foundation and framing the house began and continued right on through till the end of our lease. When I called up our broker to complain he not only yelled at me, but hung up on me midsentence, and then for years afterward, no matter how many times I tried to unsubscribe from his emails, he wouldn’t stop sending me listings.

Much as I remember, and even in some ways hold dear, the ups and downs of each particular house, each particular renting experience, what after all makes up a decent chunk of my life experience, the simple fact is that it’s the memories of the people with whom I shared these houses that matter to me most.

Thanks to both an albeit shakily shot home video and the home video (perhaps also shakily shot) that is my now middle-aging mind, I remember my mother coming to visit me, my husband, and our then-toddler son 11 years ago on Job’s Lane in Bridgehampton. Things were already rather Jobian for my mother by that point as she had Stage 4 ovarian cancer, and yet what I most remember from her visit was not how stressed or depressed she was, but rather how carefree and grateful and happy she was to be there, with us, at that particular home, and how lovingly she trailed my son around everywhere he went.

The home wasn’t large but it had a huge and beautiful breezy backyard that stretched to the shores of Sam’s Creek, and I remember my mother sitting on a wooden swing on our back porch and saying to my father, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it, Charlie. Let’s offer the owner a million bucks in cash.” She was joking, of course — my father never would have gone for it and neither would have the owner, who well knew just how valuable his land was — but in a way my mother was also very much not joking. Even though the house, which had been built by Leonard Lauder in the 1970s and not really been updated since, was a teardown, my mother loved the house just as it was. It was as if the experience of being there with us freed her chemo-addled mind to be itself again, to play, imagine, and even, for the first time in a long time, to dream about the future. So what if it would never come true?

The next summer we were back at that very same rental, all of us except my mother, who by then had her own piece of Long Island real estate, a burial plot in one of those gigantic godawful mid-Island cemeteries that are so big they practically have their own ZIP code. She was buried on July Fourth and I remember thinking, after a long hard six months of feeling devastated as I watched her essentially disintegrate, is her death going to ruin my summer? But the truth, in fact, was otherwise. Not only did her death not ruin my summer, it made it that much more poignant. Maybe we were all just renters. Maybe we were all just passing through.

This year we are once again in Wainscott, re-renting the house we rented eight years ago, and the experience is a bit odd, like going both backward and forward at once. Last time we were here we had just two children; now we have three. The first time we rented was from someone named Rob, whose nickname, for some reason I’ll never know, was Rebel. Sometime not long after our departure Rebel sold the house to an actress who happens to be a Buddhist, and though I myself am not a believer and the house is substantially the same as it was before, its aura is nonetheless completely different, more expansive, all-embracing, peaceful.

The other day my youngest child, whose very existence we hadn’t even yet wished for or imagined the last time we were here, turned 5, and so my father, now 87 years old, came by with his girlfriend for a family party. My father looked and seemed great, on point as ever, and yet in my mind I couldn’t help but compare him to the him of eight years ago. Last time he was here he walked the 1.2 miles to the beach, swam, and walked right back. This time he barely wanted to get out of his chair on the back porch. “I could just sit here forever,” he said, as the children played around him.

“You know we really should rent out here next summer,” said his girlfriend, who is one year younger than my mother would now be had she lived. But my father said nothing, just smiled, nodded. Later, when the sun went down, my father would admire the sky but then become eager to leave. He was getting cold, and like all good things, summers, rentals, and life itself, this too would have to end.

Johanna Berkman has been published in The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, National Geographic Traveler, The Harvard Review, The Observer, and Glamour. She is working on a novel called “(M)Other Life” and writes about family life on her eponymous blog.

It is the early fall of 2016. The so-called Iranian nuclear nonproliferation pact is diplomatic history, although accusations of clandestine Iranian noncompliance are rampant.

Then, on Oct. 12, 2016, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the collective fears of Israelis of once again facing mass extermination ignited. Four small nuclear weapons secreted in cars and trucks were detonated in strategic locations in Israel — one near Ashkelon, another in Neve Yaakov, and two in Tel Aviv. Two cars were stopped near Jerusalem before their cargo could be detonated, and the drivers were shot dead.

Early reports had the death count and injuries into the tens of thousands, and the likelihood that because of radiation levels vast parts of the land would be uninhabitable for generations to come.

Shortly after the attack took place, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (PM BN) initiated a call to President Obama (POTUS), a transcript of which was obtained through Israeli security channels. It is not a verbatim version of their exchange and, for purposes of brevity, leaves out certain more nuanced aspects of the dialogue.

POTUS: Mr. Prime Minister, before you say anything, on behalf of all Americans, I want to personally assure you that we stand with you during this horrendous time. Our nation will do everything possible to help your nation recover from this unthinkable attack.

PM BN: Mr. President, as we speak, our Air Force and Navy are preparing strikes against Iranian interests and other non-Iranian targets that assisted them in this attack.

POTUS: Are you contemplating a nuclear retaliation?

PM BN: I am not at liberty to say at this time, Mr. President.

POTUS: I must assume that you are contemplating this course of action, Bibi, and if so, I implore you to reconsider.

PM BN: Reconsider? Most respectfully, why?

POTUS: How can you be sure that these weapons were acquired through the Iranian network?

PM BN: We have been following the development of Iran’s nuclear program and we were aware that some of the smaller weapons they were working on were being passed off to terrorist networks through its Hezbollah affiliation.

POTUS: But, do you have irrefutable proof of this? What I’m saying is, why not take some time in ascertaining the exact source? We can take the lead on this for you and present the findings to the United Nations and bring the leaders to justice.

PM BN: We are not looking to have this horror wind up in some criminal court, Mr. President. Our nation is broken; it may, for all we know, be destroyed. We need to defend our people.

POTUS: But, Bibi, there is another direction you can take.

PM BN: What do you mean?

POTUS: You have already suffered a grievous loss to your people, to your land. I know the loss is unimaginable and I understand the impulse to retaliate, but think for a moment, what will be gained? It will destroy another civilization, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

PM BN: We will not perish without a fight; we will not permit our extinction without being heard.

POTUS: But, let it be heard in a world tribunal, maybe the United Nations or the World Court.

PM BN: Mr. President, most respectfully, this conversation is tending toward the absurd. Our nation is under siege, we have suffered a deep, penetrating wound, perhaps a mortal one, and you are hectoring me about some justice initiative?

POTUS: Mr. Prime Minister, you have already suffered grievous loss. But what is to be gained by killing 10 times or more of the casualties that you have suffered today? Wouldn’t that be an act of pure retribution and vengeance?

PM BN: Our people will not stand for us to sit quietly by, as we have in the past. We also have to make sure that another attack doesn’t come.

POTUS: I give you my word; there will be no further attacks. We assure you of that. We will convene an emergency session at the United Nations so that your nation can be convinced of its continued safety.

PM BN: How can you say that, sir? Is this another red line of yours? You gave us your word that you had our back — that you would prevent Iran from developing nuclear capability. And so we let up on our guard because we thought that your words and assurances would be backed up.

POTUS: Listen, I don’t need to be lectured by you. Our foreign policy is and never will be based on anything other than our national interests — not the interests of any other country.

PM BN: Most respectfully, Mr. President, was your alignment with Iran really in the interests of your country? You know, Mr. President, before this conversation veered off, I was going to inform you that our security network has been reporting picking up sustained chatter about extending the attack to your country involving some small nuclear weapons being secreted on cargo ships headed toward your West Coast, or perhaps already there.

POTUS: I appreciate your heads up, Mr. Prime Minister, but we have carefully monitored our ports of entry and have turned up nothing. We are confident that a threat inside our borders is remote at this time.

PM BN: As you say, Mr. President, I was just trying to pass on some useful information that you might not already have.

POTUS: Look, thanks, but let’s try to get beyond these personal differences. Recrimination won’t help us now either. You must look ahead and see things through a different prism — that of starting over. And, we can help you.

PM BN: What in the world are you getting at, sir?

POTUS: Mr. Prime Minister, there are large, unoccupied swaths of land in the world for which resettlement arrangements could be facilitated. I can assure you that something like this could be fashioned with the cooperation of world leaders.

PM BN: Mr. President, that is utterly out of the question. Our existence is inextricably tied to our historic land. It is the land of our forefathers and of the prophets. We cannot have an identity in what you call a “swath of land” located somewhere on earth. In any event, Mr. President, I don’t want to take up any more of your valuable time. I just wanted to make sure that you understood our predicament and resolve and that our military was preparing a counterattack. And, as I indicated, I also wanted to make you aware of our latest intelligence for your benefit.

POTUS: Bibi, please reconsider; you can call this off.

PM BN: We will not, Mr. President. You should know that they will find ways to infiltrate your nation as well, I warn you.

POTUS: Mr. Prime Minister, as I just told you, our intelligence has been working around the clock and have found no such initiative here. You are trying to not only change the focus of our conversation but to frighten us as well. It won’t work. We would prefer that you not implement the course of action you are alluding to; it is in our national interest that nuclear proliferation not expand. Your intended strikes threaten those interests.

PM BN: Mr. President, I’m not sure I understand you. Are you threatening us? We are not asking for your help. I called you as a courtesy to provide you notice of our impending counterattack and to also provide you with a warning about a possible impending tragedy in your country.

POTUS: I cannot let you start the world down the path to a worldwide nuclear holocaust. You must stand down for the good of humanity.

PM BN: Mr. President, with all due respect, this sounds pathological. There is no peace. We didn’t start anyone on this path. We are victims.

POTUS: But, Bibi, as I told you, you have already suffered this crushing assault. Nothing further can happen to you. Your country is in ruin. Your attack now is one of pure retribution. Let us help you recover.

PM BN: With all due respect, Mr. President, we cannot agree with your position. We are not asking for your support or help. We can only depend on ourselves. Remember what is written in the Ethics of the Fathers, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” That is all I have to say. Good night, Mr. President.

POTUS: Bibi, please. Listen. Don’t underestimate our resolve to keep the world from descending into an abyss. Don’t test me.

PM BN: You mean to say that you finally may start a military option and we are your target?

POTUS: You heard what I said, don’t test me.

PM BN: Test you? Test you? This is not personal to you, Mr. President. This is about Israel, about Jewish people everywhere. We were unable to protect Jews in Europe from the scourge of the Holocaust. We can protect ourselves now.

POTUS: Don’t do this, Mr. Prime Minister. Don’t go there. Uh, wait a minute — hold on. I’m being alerted to an emergency call that I must take. I have to go.

Click.

David B. Saxe divides his time between New York City and North Haven.