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.

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.

David Sedaris has gotten me through some pretty tough times. Whether it’s divorce, death, or disaster, I read “Me Talk Pretty One Day” and know that everything’s going to be okay. So I was thrilled to hear he would appear at the John Drew Theater, directly across from the library where I work. As luck would have it, the show was sold out and I didn’t have a ticket. Being Facebook friends with the wife of the theater’s artistic director, I figured my best tactic was blatant begging.

I had been their son’s nursery school teacher and he had adored me, Kate always telling the story that I was his first love. He’s in high school now, but she always mentions it whenever I see them, which I’m sure he really appreciates. Nevertheless, I was an important part of his life, so they owed me. Kate couldn’t come through with a ticket but kindly invited me to the autograph session before the show.

I walked into the theater lobby, and there he was. A slight young man was kneeling worshipfully before him, talking earnestly. The kneeling posture gave me pause. Kneeling or bowing is a sign of reverence or submission. For David Sedaris, this was totally deserved. But should I, must I, kneel?

Luckily, Kate was right there and distracted me from this dilemma by handing me a Post-it, instructing me to write exactly how I wanted David Sedaris to autograph my book. This was a big decision, so I discussed it with everyone else waiting in line, letting go of my natural shyness and forming an instant bond because we were all meeting David Sedaris together!

The woman behind me quickly decided to have him write, “You can’t kill the Rooster,” which was clever, because by quoting a line from his book he would know she had read it. That would impress him, but I wanted something more personal. All I had come up with was “To Lisa” when the kneeling young man suddenly stood up and it was my turn.

I started off by telling him that his books have gotten me through tough times, I always recommend them to library patrons, and “Jesus Shaves” is the best story ever written. “Except for the Bible,” I said loudly, for the benefit of the minister who was next in line. I discreetly nodded in her direction so David wouldn’t think I was a religious fanatic. He seemed concerned, saying, “Why is there a minister here?” But after I whispered, “I know her and she’s cool,” he seemed to relax. He was really paying attention to me, so I decided to tell him my library school story.

I prefaced it by saying, “I’m going to tell you something, but don’t take this the wrong way.” That really got his attention. His eyes widened in alarm, as in, “Is this the deranged fan I’ve been waiting for all these years?”

I noted his reaction but bravely continued: I had gone back to graduate school in my 40s to earn a master’s degree in library science at Queens College. Always the good student, I sat at the front of the class (until my last semester when I was so burnt-out from working a full-time job while commuting to Queens that I sat in the back row with the smokers, who made snide comments and took frequent breaks). I participated in class discussions, but because of my shyness my contributions were always well-planned-out comments of a professional nature.

One night, the class was assigned to read humorous essays, one of the authors being David Sedaris. This was exciting. We were going to discuss the brilliant comedic genius of my favorite author! A bonus of the assignment was that I had already read all of his books numerous times, so it was going to be an easy week.

The following week, the class discussion began with a student complaining that she really didn’t think David Sedaris was all that funny, calling him “whiney.” Other students chimed in with agreement. I was outraged. Something rose up within me and I let them have it. “What? What is wrong with you people?” I blasted. “David Sedaris is a masterful and witty satirist . . . he is not whiney! Come on, he is so funny! What about his mom, Sharon? When she locked all five kids out of the house during a snowstorm and they tried to get the youngest sister to lie down in the road and get run over so Sharon would let them back in? That’s funny!”

The room went quiet, stunned into silence. The professor surely must have agreed with me, but she diplomatically smoothed it over and we moved on. (When telling David the story, I left out the word “whiney,” feeling that it was just too hurtful. When replaying it in my mind later, I realized he totally could’ve handled it.)

What my classmates — and other people who read one or two of his stories and then make a judgment — don’t understand is that it’s not just that we like his stories and think he’s funny. We love him. We know him and his siblings and his parents, Sharon and Lou; he’s let us into his life and laid it bare. So, sure, some of his stories might fall a little flat, especially the earlier ones where he was on crystal meth and in the throes of obsessive-compulsive disorder. But he had told us about all that and we understood and forgave him, loving him all the more for his humanness.

My fear of hurting his feelings because some crazy people/losers don’t think he is funny was assuaged when he responded to my story with a piece of advice. “What works for me when people don’t think something is funny is this: I say, ‘Why are you being so difficult?’ ” We both laughed. I was laughing with David Sedaris! I knew the people waiting in line were jealous.

Then he told me a story of his own. He once met a young aspiring writer who had told his English professor that the author he most wanted to emulate was David Sedaris. The professor advised, “Perhaps you should set your sights a bit higher.” We laughed again.

I didn’t want to leave him, we had a lot more to talk about, but the line was building and I could see others were getting anxious. So I bade him goodbye, telling him how much it meant for me to meet him and thanking him for being such an important part of my life.

I immediately went to my new friends still in line so we could all read together what he had written: To Lisa, I’m so happy you’re a librarian. David Sedaris.

Lisa Michne, a librarian at the East Hampton Library, grew up in Bridgehampton and lives in Springs.

David Sedaris will appear at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater on July 27 at 8 p.m.

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.

“This is not who we are,” blinked the message from a white friend who lives in Charleston, put up a few days after the brutal murder of nine people in a church not far from his home.

The sentiment was a well-meaning expression of astonishment and outrage. But in it there’s a troubling implication of denial. Many of us Americans simply don’t want to see that racism is part of us and has been for centuries. We need to acknowledge that to address its poisonous consequences: inequality, poverty, despair, injustice, violence.

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley characterized it this way for the local paper: “We see this locally as the huge, heartbreaking tragedy it is for us, but I think we don’t understand fully what a heartbreaking tragedy it is for our country. This is heartbreaking for the United States of America.”

In other words, this attack reflects the ugliest truths of who we are as a nation.

For Mayor Riley, and for all of us, there’s a powerful significance that Charleston is at the center of this moment. The city was a crucible of American slavery, the port of entry for the greatest number of African slaves, the site of numerous slave revolts, a birthplace of Southern secession, and the site of the first shots fired in the Civil War. It is also known as the Holy City, for its many churches and its powerful spirituality. So, here we are — again — at that intersection filled with portent and possibility where spiritual grace, reflection, and the chance for atonement meet our terrible racist history.

White fear and hatred of blacks — the kind the killer expressed — is rooted in our history. Instead of fully enfranchising blacks after the Civil War, America built a legally segregated nation that would endure for another hundred years. Racial subjugation continued unabated for generations, both fueling and fueled by deep-seeded racist fear and, in the South, whites’ resentment at losing the war that persists to this day.

Racism — institutional and personal — was allowed to continue due in large part to denial, a sort self-serving dishonesty. Segregation, proponents argued at the time in a stunning piece of racist logic, was good for whites and good for blacks. Many Americans still contend absurdly that the war wasn’t fought over slavery, a falsehood that conveniently absolves the losing Southern side of its unjust cause that is nonetheless pushed in many Southern schools and households.

This is who we are.

When the civil rights movement brought an end to official segregation and Americans were forced to come face to face with the nation’s terrible racial injustices, some whites picked up the Confederate battle flag and stood up in violent opposition. And yet many still contend that the flag is a benign symbol of Southern heritage.

This is who we are.

In America today, streets, parks, and bridges still bear the names of former champions of slavery, and many in the South still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day in honor of Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. And yet, even amid all this — which could be called, at the very least, institutional hat-tipping to our racist heritage — many Americans still contend there is no such thing as white privilege.

This is who we are.

It takes more human horror, like the killings in Charleston, to open our eyes and hearts. The Confederate flag, forever an affront to many Americans, is an example. Overnight after the Charleston killings, even ardent opponents of removing the flag are finally saying: “I get it now.”

In a sermon a week after the killings, Nelson B. Rivers, a Charleston civil rights activist and minister, described his conversation in 2000 with his state senator, Glenn McConnell, over the removal of the flag from the state capitol. Rivers told the story to his mostly black congregation in the fittingly named Liberty Hill section of North Charleston. McConnell, a career Charleston politician, told Rivers the flag would never be removed.

“He told me,” Rivers said to his flock, “taking it down would cause too much pain.”

Rivers paused, then boomed in reply: “I told him: ‘Don’t have a pain contest with me!’ ”

The minister went on: “I’m from the land of never: Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve been told all my life I’ll never graduate from high school, I’ll never graduate from college, the flag will never come down.”

Never say never. With battle flags coming down across the South by mandate, even McConnell now agrees they should be removed. But the flag is just the beginning. The symbols of America’s original sin are everywhere.

In Charleston, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the site of Dylann Storm Roof’s alleged June 17 killing rampage, stands on Calhoun Street. John C. Calhoun, a U.S. vice president, senator, and a penetrating political thinker in the early 19th century, is considered one of Charleston’s most illustrious citizens. Calhoun also was an ardent anti-abolitionist and a leading national proponent of slavery. Slavery, he famously said, was a “positive good.”

Yet, there is John C. Calhoun atop a towering pedestal a few hundred yards from the A.M.E. church, peering down sternly on thousands of black churchgoers, many of them descendants of slaves, queuing up to bid farewell to the nine black lives lost in that racist attack.

This is who we are.

President Obama was well aware of the historic significance of his presence and his eulogy two weeks ago. In honoring nine murdered black Americans he would speak words rarely spoken by any U.S. president, let alone a black man: that the South’s cause was wrong, that segregation was wrong, and that the terrible legacies of slavery poison our society still today.

The response in the arena was universally positive.

“Removing the flag from this state’s capitol,” Obama continued, “. . . would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history. . . .”

“But I don’t think God wants us to stop there. For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career.”

Let them not die in vain, many said afterward. Grief, some said, is empty without action. But just how far America will move to address its race ills remains to be seen. Relegating the Confederate flag to museums and history books would be merely a symbol of the profound atonement that needs to come.

When the president broke into “Amazing Grace” at the end of his eulogy, he was not only seizing the soaring emotion of the moment, he was sharing a story that describes the task ahead. The hymn was written by John Newton, a foul-mouthed, drunken former slave-ship captain who made many trips across the Atlantic laden down with humans in chains, stacked up like cordwood. Some of their descendants might well have been among the 6,000 in that hall.

Newton underwent a conversion after a violent storm at sea where he begged for forgiveness and another chance. He would become a priest and an abolitionist and the creator of the eternal “Amazing Grace.” The hymn tells us that, regardless of the sin, redemption is possible. But only if we are willing to see ourselves for who we really are.

Biddle Duke’s newspaper reporting career in several states and abroad included a stint at The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C. An editor and publisher of weekly newspapers in Vermont, he began his reporting career on the South Fork in the 1980s. When he’s not in Vermont, he lives in Springs.

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.

When I was younger East Hampton felt so alive. Local businesses made up the majority of Main Street and Newtown Lane, and for someone in their preteenage years, there was plenty to do in every season. As I got older, however, more and more of what made this place feel like home disappeared.

One of the biggest losses was the RECenter, built by our community as a promise to young people that they did in fact matter. My friends and I would go to the REC after school to do our homework, hang out, and play.

The first floor was made up of a small gym in the front and a computer lab in the back. The middle floor housed a big-screen television with a PlayStation 2, a Ping-Pong table, foosball, a basketball shooting game, and board games. Up top there was a juice bar and food area that never really got off the ground, but hey, it could have been great. In addition to the hangout space there were basketball courts and a swimming pool.

It was at the REC that I got my first taste of independence. While there were programs offered to kids, its biggest asset was that the building provided a space for free play.

Youth development experts like Peter Gray, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of psychology at Boston College, have long stressed the importance of free play. Free play is self-directed and an end in itself. It is through this very specific kind of recreation that kids learn about what interests them. It also helps develop their abilities to make decisions and manage emotions.

I was 12 when the Town of East Hampton signed its first contract with the Y.M.C.A. Initially the change in stewardship wasn’t apparent, but over the years differences became noticeable. The first was the expansion of the gym area in front, but that was only the beginning. Now all three floors of the REC are inundated with exercise equipment. There is no more space for kids, only programs organized and run for them by adults.

I’ve said it before, but East Hampton is a microcosm of the rest of the country. Indeed, free play has been on the decline since the 1950s, giving way to adult-organized activities. This trend has led to an increase in developmental and mental disorders, as well as increased suicides among young people.

“Over the same decades that children’s play has been declining, childhood mental disorders have been increasing,” Professor Gray wrote in “The Play Deficit,” a 2013 essay in the digital magazine Aeon. “It’s not just that we’re seeing disorders that we overlooked before . . . the rates of what today would be diagnosed as generalised anxiety disorder and major depression are five to eight times what they were in the 1950s. Over the same period, the suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 has more than doubled, and that for children under age 15 has quadrupled.”

When the East End New Leaders first got together to discuss a strategy, we agreed that the foundation of any community is the youth. East Hampton’s young people are in dire need. Heroin has made a resurgence at the high school, and we’ve recently become a suicide cluster area. The bowling alley is now gone, so there is no place for kids to free-play in the wintertime.

That is why we’ve taken up this cause of bringing more kid space to the Y.M.C.A. It is our hope that the people of this town will recognize the problem and join with us in our efforts to solve it. We can revive the community, which has been shrinking over the years, and this is step one.

Walker Bragman lives in East Hampton.

I didn’t understand what was happening until years later, but the realization will remain with me always. It was 1982 and all my husband and I thought about was how we were going to raise our two young children and pay our newly acquired home mortgage with its 17-percent interest rate.

Since my husband worked as much as he could, we both knew I would need to find a job. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially since we couldn’t afford day care and I had no car. As luck would have it I scored a part-time job at an answering service that was near our home. The pay wasn’t great, but it was shift work, which meant I could schedule my hours around my husband’s and pick up extra work on weekends and holidays.

Back then, answering services were primitive by today’s standards. Nothing was computerized and the operators relied on plug boards with up to 50 lines each. Operators wore headsets that attached to the board consoles. We’d answer calls by pushing plugs into jacks and flipping a switch to the “on” position. Messages were written on slips of paper and placed in wooden mailboxes above the boards.

Our accounts ran the gamut from oil services to electricians to trucking companies, plus all types of medical doctors. We even had a woman who sold cosmetics and sexy lingerie. She flew all over the world, and I thought she must be amazingly successful as a retailer, until another operator told me her real occupation was that of a high-priced hooker.

The way the boards were set up allowed the accounts to listen in on us as we took calls, and some accounts took to listening in frequently to be sure were we answering their phones correctly and that we were following their procedures. What they didn’t realize was that we could listen in on their conversations as well.

I worked the hectic late-afternoon shift, which was so busy that operators were often on their feet taking calls from more than one board as frantic secretaries anxious to get home relayed the evening’s coverage.

A few months passed and I settled in; I was proud of myself for finding a reliable job. Operators were always reminded to check the bulletin board for updates, and I wasn’t surprised when I saw a notice announcing that two infectious-disease physicians had joined the accounts. The doctors were fresh off their fellowship training and had few patients. Both were soft-spoken and polite. All the operators were rooting for them. But night after night, as other lines buzzed away, their phone sat mostly idle. Their account became known as the dead zone with the phone that never rang — until one day it did.

I plugged into the call and the voice at the other end was that of an internist not on our service asking for a consultation. His patient, a young man vacationing on Fire Island, had a rare form of cancer, which, the doctor explained, might be related to a new infectious disease. I had never heard of the cancer and asked the doctor how to spell it. When I disconnected the call, I was both thrilled and confused. Thrilled because the physicians received a call, but confused about the internist’s insistence that I relay his message right away.

A few days later, another doctor called. Then another and then another. All asking for consultations. The slow trickle of phone calls turned into a steady stream throughout the summer and into the fall and winter. Soon, the doctors needed a second line.

Then patients began calling. They were anxious to talk to anyone about their symptoms. “What do I do?” “How can the doctors help?” “What medicine is available?” Some patients cried, other’s talked about their families, their dashed hopes, their regrets. Many were lonely — reaching out to a stranger just for human contact. I could only listen, take their messages, and excuse myself when another call came in. How does one interpret the anxiety in a stranger’s voice and write it down on a sterile white pad?

I worked for the answering service for another two years before moving on. My children grew older, my husband and I refinanced our mortgage at a lower rate, I finally got a car. My husband picked up more overtime at work. Life evolved into something better.

I never worked that answering service again. But those two I.D. specialists are still in the book, still practicing, unlike many of the other doctors on the boards who moved on or retired.

The summer of 1982 was just one in a long thread of summers that saw life changes — through birthdays and graduations and new hopes that painted life sweet. But 1982 was the only summer I remember so vividly because it was the beginning of the explosion known as AIDS, and I talked to some of its first victims. And that’s what I remember: As my life flourished, theirs probably ceased soon after; there was no cure. There wouldn’t be a summer of ’85 or ’91 or ’06 for them. The bright glow of a future faded the same year they got the disease. There would be no second glass of wine, no new Christmas presents, no photos of retirement.

Today, things are different. AIDS is just another disease. It’s still fatal on one level, but people have long-term treatments to prolong their lives. Ebola’s the new killer. But years ago, AIDS was the Ebola of the times.

And as for me, I still hear the hesitation in the voices that ask, “Can the doctor help me?” and in a strained whisper I could only say, “I don’t know.” In some ways those voices focused me on how small we all are against the randomness of life — the voices of people I never saw, who connected through a phone line so many summers ago.

Jill Evans’s writing has appeared in Newsday. She lives in Patchogue.