Sunday night, Labor Day weekend, 2014: So here we find ourselves in the bedroom of Cabin #3 at Devon’s Fancy on the very, very last night, the end of an era. We fell in love here, so it’s with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our secret hideaway in the woods.

Our cabins are rustic, for sure. Not everyone’s notion of the Hamptons. How many visitors have come, walked about the grounds, and marveled at the fact that something like this could possibly exist in Amagansett? In Maine, maybe, but the Hamptons? No way. Amagansett from the old days, the way we imagine things were when Roy Lichtenstein was a tenant here.

We wish we knew more of the history of Devon’s Fancy, not the least of which the name. We wish we’d pressed our landlords, George and Teda Balasses, for more details. The charming hand-painted sign in the common cabin suggests some memorable times have been had here prior to us, but they would never confirm or deny that Swedish nudists were in residence at one time. We can totally see it, though, so we’re sticking with that colorful (but quite possibly imagined) history.

We do know now, having learned it at George’s memorial service, just shy of what would have been his 98th birthday, that the cabins were formerly officers’ barracks at Camp Hero in Montauk, moved to their current location on Fresh Pond Road sometime in the 1940s.

George and Teda lived next door to Devon’s Fancy in their “winter home.” (Their “summer home” was on Outlook Avenue in Springs.) They were such reserved, private people. And so interesting they were. Traveled the world collecting furniture to stock their Amagansett institution, Balasses House Antiques. Is there a single fashionable home on the East End that doesn’t have something acquired at Balasses House? End of an era for that as well. Balasses House, a fixture in Amagansett since 1959, is gone, closed when George and Teda’s younger business partner, who had taken over the shop, died in Cancun several years ago. You are remembered fondly as well, Tom.

Was our little Shangri-la called Devon’s Fancy before George and Teda bought the property back in the early 1960s? All we know is that little has changed since that time — no upgrades, no fancy landscaping, and all tenants still share a communal outdoor shower. Dana wearing her famous “Across the Universe” bathrobe to and from the shower, a touch of glamour for our little compound, is a favorite memory. And there was nothing better than a cool rinse in that shower after a long, hot morning of tennis, then preparing a Caprese salad with ingredients from Balsam Farm, with a glass of Lillet under our picnic table umbrella. Ah, summer.

None of the cottages have stoves, so barbecuing is a way of life here. One Memorial Day weekend many, many years ago we were so excited to arrive, get settled in, and kick off the summer with a steak on the grill. But we were having one of those bone-chilling early-season rains. Not to be deterred, David and Kelly bundled up and covered themselves and the grill with a golf umbrella while Patty and I uncorked the first of many bottles of red. The four of us couldn’t have had a better evening bundled in fleece in our damp, chilly cabin, talking, laughing, and playing the first of many summer Scrabble games until the wee hours.

That’s the thing about Devon’s Fancy, it’s simple, about as close to camping as you get without a tent. So, day and night here, it’s been about loving and appreciating our quiet, special place in the woods and one another’s company.

Jane, thanks for the tomatoes, the veggies, and the gorgeous flowers from the farm, and for keeping your bird feeder full, providing hours upon hours of enjoyment watching birds that love Devon’s Fancy as much as we do. And to Dell, thank you for also falling for the charm of Devon’s Fancy and making these last few summers possible for all of us.

None of us thought George and Teda would ever be gone; we thought Devon’s Fancy would always be. But as I write this, tomorrow morning Devon’s Fancy will no longer be ours. As part of their estate, Devon’s Fancy has been sold, with the proceeds going to charities named by George and Teda. We are very glad for that, and while it will no longer be Devon’s Fancy, may the new residents of George and Teda’s special cabins come to have as many happy memories as we do.

Suzanne Lengyel, a financial adviser living New York City, has been a summer resident of Amagansett since 1990. She and her husband, David Steadly, now own a house in Barnes Landing.

Some of you, I’m sure, will assume that by the Great Satan of Energy I must mean nuclear power, but I don’t. The Great Satan of energy is coal. Whether nuclear power is a lesser demon or a good angel is beyond the scope of this article. It’s just not the Great Satan. I want to convince you that even if nuclear power is every bit as bad as its severest critics maintain, coal is far, far worse.

My argument is based solely on the contribution of coal to global warming. Of course, coal has other environmental impacts, none of them good. Soot. Sulfur. Smog. Toxic waste. And did I mention that coal ash is radioactive? It emits radon gas that had been trapped in the coal seams before the coal was mined. But set that all aside. Let’s just look at the impact of coal on the global climate.

To estimate how bad coal is, one needs a little context. The world’s population is about 7 billion, or 7,000 million. Each year, 130 million babies are born and 60 million people die. The main causes of death are heart disease and stroke (18 million), infectious diseases and parasites (15 million), and cancer (8 million).

Among specific causes of death, according to the World Health Organization, H.I.V./AIDS kills 1.5 million people each year, while smoking kills 6 million annually.

Where will climate change fall in relation to this spectrum of deaths? Right now, respectable estimates of the yearly death toll from climate change are in the hundreds of thousands. However, the impacts of climate change are just beginning to be felt. If the world goes on burning fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate, the average toll in the coming century will certainly be much higher than this.

An optimistic estimate would be that deaths from climate change will be about as numerous as those from H.I.V./AIDS. If the impact of climate change remains at this level, they will be “lost in the noise” of the total death rate of 60 million, which in any case will climb in coming decades as the current bulge of younger people age up. To claim that the death toll from climate change will be much less than this is to claim that it is not important enough to worry about. A certain breed of climate denier makes this claim, namely that world resources should be directed toward other goals, such as fighting poverty and finding cures for the “big three” killers.

Consider, however, the multitude of ways that climate change will kill us: agricultural failures (think of the monsoon not coming to India); depletion of critical water supplies (think of those vanishing glaciers in the Himalayas and the drought in the American West); rising sea levels (think of catastrophic floods in Bangladesh); spread of tropical diseases into the temperate zones (think of a malaria epidemic in New York), and wars fought over diminishing resources (think nuclear war as India and China claim that they need the relatively vacant and enticingly warming lands in Siberia to house and feed their starving millions, and Russia takes exception).

I am going to use 1.5 million deaths per year as a base case even though, for the above reasons, I believe this is very optimistic. Perhaps climate change will have an impact comparable to that of smoking (6 million deaths per year) or infectious diseases (15 million annually). Even the apocalyptic scenario envisioned in the film “Interstellar” cannot be ruled out. That would mean perhaps 60 million or more excess deaths annually.

How long will these impacts last? Experts say centuries. Because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about 100 years, however, I’m going to charge the coal plant for only 100 years’ worth of deaths, even though one could argue that as the instigator of longer-term effects, our fossil fuel combustion now should be charged with all of them. In other words, I’m giving coal the benefit of the doubt every step of the way, but as we will see, it still looks very bad.

How much of the climate-change impact is one coal-fired power plant responsible for? The logical answer would be to estimate its greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime and compare that to the world’s expected emissions for a century. As an approximation, I used its input energy over a 45-year plant life and compared that with an estimate of the world’s fossil energy use over 100 years.

This yielded the conclusion that a typical million-kilowatt coal plant would be responsible for one part in 20,000 (1/20,000 or .005 percent) of the total damage. That may seem like a tiny sliver, but it’s a tiny sliver of a very big number.

If you take the base case, the coal plant kills 1/20,000 times 1,500,000 deaths per year times 100 years, which works out to 7,500 excess deaths. For the more likely case in which climate change will be comparable to smoking as a cause of death, the coal plant kills 30,000 people. The two worst cases yield estimates of 75,000 and 300,000 excess deaths, respectively.

The thing to note is that these estimates do not apply to a coal-fired power plant that has a major accident, but to one that operates exactly as designed and with all available environmental controls in place. These controls do nothing about carbon dioxide. The comparison with nuclear power demands one’s attention. In contrast to what might happen in case of a terrible accident, with coal we have something comparable (or worse) happening even when there is no malfunction.

To put it another way, every coal plant is a Chernobyl. Every coal plant is a Fukushima.

John Andrews, who has a Ph.D. in physics, did research on solar energy and energy-efficient buildings for 25 years at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He lives in Sag Harbor.   

Alive. So says the title of Stephen King’s 2011 short story. What with a personal trainer popping in twice a week, a yoga teacher swinging by another two days, and his banging out books, I’d say Herman Wouk is very much alive.

“The Lawgiver,” his latest work, brackets a career that began when he was a student at Columbia University, the editor of the Jester, the college’s humor magazine, and penning variety shows. A Bronx boy, Wouk was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home 100 years ago.

Though Wouk has a couple of decades plus on this Jewish writer, I’m from the boroughs too, Brooklyn, my town. I also started writing in college — a stint at part-time schooling that began in my 40s and ended 11 years later — putting me in league, a minor one at that, with Wouk.

Religious teachings at home, a secular education in a public school — Wouk would complain to his father that studying the Talmud, the basic book of Jewish law, “took too much time.” Years later, a B.A. in comparative literature and philosophy from Columbia tucked into his carry case, he announced to his family, “To hell with all that noise [Jewish traditions], I’m going to be a funny man,” and was soon on the payroll of the comedian Fred Allen.

He wrote his first book, “Aurora Dawn,” longhand when he was at sea — a Navy man, Wouk was an officer in World War II. Laying out the high cost of Manhattan’s high life as a young man struggles toward fame and fortune in the early days of radio, the novel established Wouk as an up-and-comer. A Book of the Month Club selection, it led legions of readers to him.

Four years down the road, Wouk took a Pulitzer for “The Caine Mutiny,” his 1951 novel of life on a Navy warship. Also a play, the book was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart, who wanted the part of the twitchy, paranoid, ball bearing-clicking Captain Queeg as soon as he read the script, and it won Bogie an Academy Award for his efforts.

“Marjorie Morningstar,” also made into a movie, featured Natalie Wood as a young middle-class Jewish woman who longed to become an actress, and Gene Kelly as her love interest. Wood’s character, a nice Jewish girl nice no more, was punished for her peccadilloes and never got that acting career she so wanted. Wouk homed in on Morningstar’s rebellion against the middle-class values of her family and married her off to a nebbish who “took her as she was, with her deformity . . . that could no longer be helped; a permanent crippling, like a crooked arm,” instead of cute Gene Kelly of the dancing feet.

Deformity? Permanent crippling? Really, Herman? I know it was the ’50s, but cut the girl some slack.

Turns out, Wouk’s sister was ostracized for a similar breach of behavior. And Wouk, true to his craft, his time, and his Judaism, put a writerly spin on it, marrying Morningstar off to a good provider — the sine qua non of a Jewish husband. He gave her kids and a kosher home in the burbs.

Wouk enjoyed his work as a novelist and the recognition it brought, but he wanted something more substantial and was drawn back to his earlier teachings, setting him to write “This Is My God,” a 1959 work of nonfiction that strove to explain the tenets of Judaism to both Jews and non-Jews.

An ardent supporter of Israel, he wrote ads to sell war bonds. On a personal mission, his Jewish heritage becoming essential to both his life and his work — he was a founder of the first synagogue on Fire Island — he meticulously researched World War II and the Holocaust. In the 1970s, “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” became the focus of his talent and effort — “the story I have to tell.”

Stories well told . . . and seen: “The Winds of War,” for which he wrote the screenplay and appeared in a cameo, was made into a TV mini-series and enjoyed by tens of millions of viewers.

Three years ago, his love of satire still strong and his comedic timing still sharp, Wouk invoked his early “funny man” and took on Hollywood with “The Lawgiver,” walking his characters hand-in-hand with his bent for biblical themes. He doesn’t text yet, but he’s no slouch in the high-tech department, using emails, tweets, and Skype transcripts to tell a tale of a fictional group of folks making a movie about Moses.

“Sharply conceived characters, amusing narration, irresistible command of story, and the wisdom of a lifetime,” said Jonathan Karp, his publisher at Simon & Schuster. A fan of Wouk’s from way back, Karp wrote his master’s thesis on Wouk’s novels while a student at N.Y.U.

Asked by Brooks Barnes of The New York Times if he ever planned to stop writing, this uber senior showed no signs of kicking back. “Sometimes, when I’m down,” he said, “I feel like I’ve shot my bolt. But it passes, and I go back to the computer.”

Me too! Right after my nap. Happy birthday, Herman Wouk!

Rita Plush is the author of “Lily Steps Out,” a novel, “Alterations,” a short-story collection, and the forthcoming “Feminine Products.” She lives part time in East Hampton.

Herman Wouk turned 100 on May 27.

When my first daughter was born in Rome, my wife, a nonpracticing but (it became apparent) believing Catholic, arranged for her baptism. At a distance of 47 years, I can’t be certain of anything about the arrangements, not even the location. The scene that my memory and my imagination have conspired to paint shows the four of us in a kind of catacomb, windowless, with a few candles burning on a plain wooden table. The priest’s white face reflects the flickering light; he is dressed like a monk, in some sort of long, black cassock. He dips two fingers into a baptismal fountain and sprinkles a few drops of water on my daughter’s bare head. She is swaddled in white lace and rests quietly in my wife’s arms.

However fanciful this recollection of the setting may be, I vividly remember one thing: the priest’s young voice. He was mumbling through the ritual in his Italianate English when I realized that he was trying to draw me in. “Will you pray with me,” he said, “to purge the sin from this child’s soul.” I took it as a question and shouted “No!” I’m not sure what followed, but the priest evidently ignored my outburst and forged ahead, because we carried my daughter’s baptismal certificate with us when we emerged into the Roman sunlight.

I’ve often wondered over the years why I reacted so strongly to the priest’s words. My Jewish heritage has never prevented me from singing the prescribed Christian texts in certain settings. At college I earned a few dollars as a choir member at Sunday services, and I’ve since sung enough requiems with amateur choruses to know the Credo better than most of my Christian friends. The reason I refused in that Roman setting to affirm a belief I didn’t hold was not that I held a different belief. On the question of original sin, my Jewish education, such as it was, provided no guidance. If I had any thoughts on the matter, they would have reflected Wordsworth’s glorious lines, which we read in high school and which remain with me still: “Not in entire forgetfulness / And not in utter nakedness / But trailing clouds of glory do we come / From God, who is our home.”

I had a similar run-in with Catholic theology many years later, when my wife proposed a church wedding. We had been married in Virginia by a justice of the peace who required only that we both were white. My wife wanted “to renew our vows” (as she put it), and I was willing (as I saw it) to help her complete the sacraments. I agreed to take “lessons” from the officiating priest, but I managed to avert his hints about baptism. He settled for my perfunctory repetition in his study of some basics of Catholicism, and I made it clear that I would say my “I do”s but would make no public affirmation of belief.

Nonetheless, at one point in the ceremony, he said to me, “Please repeat after me: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” I was now annoyed at his careless dismissal of my position, and I leaned forward to remind him. “I don’t say that,” I whispered — a bit too loud, apparently, because a titter sounded from the assembled guests in the pews behind me. The priest ignored me, of course, and completed the ceremony. As in the earlier experience, I refused to repeat a Christian means of referring to God in a trinity, but not because I practiced another, Jewish way of calling on a divinity.

I have come finally to realize that I have been an acknowledged Jew for all of my four score years without holding any Jewish beliefs about God and man. On the two occasions I’ve described, I did not have to worry about compromising my own beliefs to help my wife follow hers; I had no beliefs to compromise. It was that discomforting thought that undoubtedly provoked my reactions. The question pressing on me now is whether it is even possible — what could it possibly mean? — to be a nonbelieving Jew.

I know I am not alone, although accurate numbers are hard to pin down. Estimated breakdowns of the world’s 18 million or so Jews by their degree of belief vary widely. As the old joke goes, ask three Jews about any topic and you’ll get four opinions. In broad terms, however, it is generally agreed that somewhere over half of all Jews worldwide are members of either orthodox communities or conservative synagogues, who accept as true the biblical descriptions of God and of God’s historical interactions with the Jewish people. Perhaps another 25 to 30 percent of Jews believe in a God who, as the Bible says, requires from mankind only “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God,” but who read the full Bible with some skepticism as to God’s particular relation to the Jewish people.

That leaves a sizable number of Jews who are like me — and, I’ve discovered, like most of my Jewish friends — in finding the very concept of God, as portrayed in the Bible, problematic at best. Most of us have had a limited Jewish education, although few were as nonexistent as mine. Jewish holidays were not celebrated in my home, and on Yom Kippur my father lay quietly in bed until the sun set and then washed and dressed for dinner. He lit yahrzeit candles for his parents, but if he held any beliefs about their souls, I never heard them. As far as I know, his only visit to a synagogue was on my bar mitzvah, for which I did not have to learn a letter of Hebrew. My Torah portion was transliterated into English sounds, which I memorized and then repeated, bent over a large scrolled Bible, while a rabbi swung his pointer from one group of black scratches to the next.

So how can I explain still thinking of myself as a Jew? The notion that we remain Jewish because the world treats us as Jews is not the answer in my case. My great-grandfather, according to our family genealogist, lived in Romania as Elimelech Rothenberg, but changed his family name to Michel (a form of his first name) in order to save his sons from conscription into the tsar’s army. His first born, my grandfather, was therefore Moshe Leib Michel, which was the name he bore when he left Romania in 1900 with his wife and three children. At some point after he arrived in New York City, he became Louis M. Mitchell, not only creating a Scotch-Irish family name, but reversing the initials of his given names. (My father and uncle were apparently unaware of that reversal of initials, since both my cousin and I are M.L.M.s — Morton Lewis and Malcolm Lewis Mitchell.)

In Louis Mitchell’s New York household, it is unlikely that Jewish traditions and education played any greater role than in my father’s household, since neither my father nor his older brother continued them. (My cousin’s bar mitzvah was more traditional, because his mother arranged it.) The reason my father and his brother considered themselves Jewish must have been that their father told them so. But why? Louis could have been accepted into a church in the Bronx, where they lived. The city did not force his Jewishness on him.

Perhaps it was Louis’s wife who gave their sons and daughters some Jewish education. Perhaps his membership in a Jewish-Romanian burial society prevented his passing as anything but a Jew; his 1914 grave can still be found in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, surmounted by a tall memorial placed later, inscribed in both Hebrew and English.

In any case, my own father had no such hindrances. He was 16 when Louis died, and he left school to become a typist and stenographer to help support his family. From then until he married 15 years later, he made his living as a secretary to railroad executives, traveling the country with them, and then as an advertising executive, finally with his own advertising agency. Nothing prevented Samuel Mitchell from presenting himself to the world as something other than a Jew. He could have married a non-Jewish woman — he hinted to me once that he would have but for the objections of his sisters — and neither the world nor his children would have seen him any differently.

Because my father clung to his Jewishness (perversely, as I see it now), I became the third generation in a family of American Jewish men who declare their Jewishness but maintain no Jewish beliefs or traditions. At least I have spared my own son, and my daughters, that fate. They know I am Jewish, but they do not feel compelled themselves to acknowledge, nor to deny, membership in any religious group.

On the other hand, I hope they believe, as I have all my life, that humans, all of us, are unique among our planet’s animals, and that the origin of that uniqueness is, and will remain, a mystery to us. Our search for meaning should take us to the roots of things, like Tennyson addressing the flower he plucked from a crannied wall: “If I could understand / What you are, root and all, and all in all, / I should know what God and man is.” I hope that is how my progeny will approach religious thought.

Malcolm Mitchell is editor and publisher of Investment Policy magazine. He lives in New York and East Hampton.

South Africa and I parted company 40 years ago. A while back, I started making annual visits to Cape Town, not simply to avoid our Hamptons winter. I wanted to measure the changes taking place in what I still consider to be my “beloved country.”

When Mandela was freed, hope surged, as I know it did for all South Africans, and the world. So is that hope being fulfilled? How much has changed?

Let me start with what has not changed. Two elements stand out: one, the staggering beauty of the country, and two, the warmth of its people. In a heartbeat, I would exchange the relaxed “Howzit?” of a white South African or the friendliness of an African for many of their U.S. equivalents. There’s something about the South African joie de vivre that lifts the heart. There are good people at work. Here are a few of them:

I met a farming family that has diversified into making cheeses; their products bring home international awards. I know of an Englishwoman who came here a few years ago, adopted two African children, and heads a charity that delivers health and educational resources to the children of vineyard workers. A young American, Amagansett’s own Mark Crandall, visits Cape Town for months at a time; in crime-infested Crossroads Township, Mark teaches young black kids the skills of basketball.

All these entrepreneurs add vitality and hope to the local scene. Are they fearful of the future? They are realists. One family, recently returned from “sanitized” Australia, summed up their feelings this way: “We only have one life, so you may as well feel the marrow in your bone and not just the wash of multiple shades of vanilla.”

Sadly, the beauty of the land, the energy of most people, and the successes of a few entrepreneurs are the only positive features I discovered on this most recent visit to the sun-splashed country I love.

In the shadows, I detected widespread disappointment. There’s dismay — even resentment — among people of every color at the inability of the government to deliver on its promises. There’s a sense, as Archbishop Tutu is said to have said some years ago, that “the gravy train only stopped to change passengers.”

I found that incompetence and corruption seem to be the defining features of South African governance. Yet, paradoxically, the ruling African National Congress party still pulls 62 percent of the vote. So, what causes this cognitive dissonance? Why do dissatisfied people vote for the source of dissatisfaction? I detected a number of issues at play, all of them a reaction to various forms of what could be called social engineering.

The A.N.C. runs provincial governments in all nine provinces (what we might call states) except the high-performing Western Cape. The governing party is desperate to win control of the Cape’s white-dominated administration at the next local elections. With this goal in view, one of the strategies has been to encourage compliant media ownership. The target is the local morning newspaper, the Cape Times.

The Cape Times was founded in 1876 and has always had a liberal slant. In recent years, though, it seems to have become in thrall to the government’s party line. This loss of editorial independence has had a drastic effect on circulation: Wikipedia reports a drop from 267,000 in 2012 to 31,930 in the fourth quarter of 2014.

A topic of more national import is — as someone described it to me — “affirmative action on steroids” or “reverse discrimination.” A recent newspaper headline, “Half Bok team must be black,” referred to the Springboks, the hallowed national rugby team. The national rugby chief believes “we have got to do our duty in terms of transformation” and implied that coaches are selecting heavier white players over lighter black players. Talent, speed, and ability, the usual yardsticks of potential, seem now to be less important than being of light weight. Many South Africans see this as a policy to make game-winning potential secondary to racial ideology.

Local people speak testily about what they call “reverse discrimination.” Whites agree when I point out that, after three centuries of discrimination, some balancing of the books is bound to occur. But they add, “If only the people who get the jobs were competent.” It is true that many public services are in disarray: the post office, telecommunications, power supplies, national pensions, and passport applications.

What seems inescapable to me is that these examples of sputtering public “service delivery” are a direct consequence of the apartheid era. How so? Because the previous Afrikaner government failed to train Africans for anything other than menial (domestic servants, cleaners) or manual labor (construction, diamond and gold mining) jobs. That karma is now back to disrupt everyone’s daily life.

Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd (1901-1966), Afrikaner prime minister and apar­theid’s architect, once said that he preferred to call apartheid “good neighborliness.” Yet he also believed that his African neighbors would forever be, as his Bible verse (Joshua 9:21) put it, “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” So his government decreed where people should live (Group Areas Act), which jobs they would be allowed to have (Job Reservation legislation), and with whom they could — to put it politely — fraternize (Immorality Act). It is, indeed, payback time for such “good neighborliness.”

This embedded incompetence, however much justified by the past, saps the spirit of many South Africans, regardless of color. A mixed-race engineer was told that his job application was rejected because he was “not black enough.” Some African garage attendants laughed when I asked them what they thought of their president: “He’s always smiling because he steals from us and we can’t catch him!”

In a country village in the dusty Karoo, a white health worker put it to me this way: “When I visited America to see my daughter — all my children have left here — I got a fantastic sense of how proud Americans are about their country. Yet here, our national motto of ‘Proudly South African’ is a joke; how can you be proud when President Zuma is stealing from taxpayers to build a 250 million rand [$21 million] retirement home? How can you be proud when we have power failures and our national airline is bust, and broadcasting chiefs plus dozens of other government officials are under suspicion of malpractice? How can you be proud when, after 20 years in power, our politicians are still blaming our failures on the legacy of apartheid?”

Has the “transformation” to a black government affected the lifestyle of ordinary white people? I mentioned to another citizen that the status of white South Africans didn’t seem to have changed much. He smiled. “Sure, we’re still traveling first class, but now we’re on the Titanic.” But he asked me to remember that, in a country of 54 million, of which 4.5 million are white, the largest percentage of tax revenue comes from the white sector (white people earn about five times as much as black people). There are 17 million “indigent” blacks in South Africa, and the government gives them the equivalent of $95 U.S. per month in support. Although there are 13.7 million registered taxpayers, only 5 million submitted tax returns in 2013.

So, most whites feel that they are doing their bit for the country. “Essentially, we are carrying the unemployed and the unemployable,” said my source.

At street level, I did not see much improvement. What I did see: tramps sorting through rubbish bins, poor whites standing at traffic lights with begging notices, criminals living on hillsides and attacking unwary hikers on Table Mountain, the walls of every home spiked with barbed wire. What I missed was any sign of law enforcement. Vigorous but fair law enforcement is a symbol of good government; the lack of it is evidence of a failing state.

Yet tourists love the beloved country! Tourism is the chief growth engine in the Western Cape. It’s a beautiful region and with the rand so puny (an exchange rate of about 12/1), it’s cheap to visit. As they say in New York, “What’s not to like?”

Restaurants, many in fabulous settings, are plentiful and serve world-class food. Service, however, is glacially slow. I dined at 25 restaurants in nine weeks (like I said, it’s cheap on dollars) and only twice did a manager walk up to our table to ask if we were satisfied. So I never blame the servers; they’re victims of poor training and supervision.

The impression I took away this year is that South Africans are shrugging off their nation’s dysfunction. (And let’s not forget that only 9 percent of Americans think that their Congress is doing a decent job.) The majority of citizens in my beloved country — as in America, as in the world — treat their self-serving politicians with disdain. People just try to get on with their lives.

South Africans seem to have accepted that this is how Africa works. They’re all passengers in a stolen car that’s steered by a learner driver who seems to treat his incompetence as a bit of a laugh. But the countryside is vivid with sunshine and the sky is blue. Sure, the car breaks down a lot, but hey, that comes with the territory.

Brian Clewly Johnson is the author of “Deep Memory” and a forthcoming memoir, “A Cape Town Boy.” He lives in Amagansett.

We’d have cracked up laughing had we known of the “greatest generation” con that would define us 50 years later. The greatest generation was our parents who saw us through the Depression. Our children, we were sure, would be an even greater generation. We were clearing evil from the earth so that could be.

There was certainly much to praise in our conduct. We were kind and generous to the defeated population, especially to children. Several married men from my battalion took displaced children back to the States and adopted them. We were persevering, brave, loyal, brilliant improvisers with machinery. When the Allied command overlooked the big defensive advantage Normandy’s hedgerows gave the German defenders, it was the G.I.s who concocted solutions to cut through them and enable our 3rd Army’s breakout at St. Lo.

We also displayed greatness as a country. We invested much labor, money, and expertise in restoring the infrastructures of our allies and enemies alike. Yes, it was partly to create markets for our products and counter the appeal of communism, which was taking over Eastern Europe and threatening France, Greece, and Italy, but it was also an action that came from our hearts.

But then, we had a dark side. Many of us profited from Germany’s war-devastated economy and consumer shortages by selling our cigarettes and manipulating our dollars’ pay on the black market. We were intensely racist with Afro-American G.I.s, who were largely relegated to service functions and performed stunning feats of efficiency and endurance trucking supplies to our advancing armies.

And we looted and raped, not to the extent of our enemies, but we did this, and U.S. soldiers shot German prisoners. During the Battle of the Bulge, Wehrmacht soldiers wearing U.S. Army uniforms and fluent in American English infiltrated our lines and were misdirecting our reinforcement and supply convoys. If we believed captured German soldiers knew of the saboteurs’ whereabouts, we would give their top-ranking officer a few seconds to start disclosing it. If he didn’t, we would shoot him, then demand an answer from the next in rank. Either he or another captured soldier would then reveal it.

I have absolutely no criticism to offer on this. I would have done it myself if called upon, held my carbine to their heads and fired until we got the information we had to have and done so without a qualm. And though I have been registered as a conscientious objector since my discharge in 1946, I would probably in a similar situation shoot them today.

But, in addition, I might also shoot a surrendering soldier because I feared him, or coveted his Wehrmacht overcoat, which didn’t get waterlogged like ours did, or in revenge for their shooting G.I. prisoners en masse at Malmedy, or because my squad’s orders that day were not to take prisoners.

Which is to face the essential point. There is really very little room for greatness in war.

Indeed, a reason for us to avoid war is that we are lousy at it. During World War II, our leaders repeatedly made huge, inexcusable mistakes.

Gen. James Doolittle, commander of the U.S. 8th Air Force in England, flew combat missions over German-held territory despite his intimate knowledge of the Allies’ plans for the invasion of France. Had he been shot down and captured, German enhanced interrogation would probably have extracted these secrets from him, and they’d have been ready for us in Normandy.

Gen. Mark Clark, commander of the U.S. 5th Army in Italy, ignored a direct order from his superior, British Gen. Harold Alexander, to bypass Rome in order to surround the German 10th Army. Clark got the glory of entering Rome as a conqueror; the Germans got leave to fight in Italy for another year.

In the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a hero of World War II, defied President Truman’s order not to use American forces in his advance through North Korea to the Chinese border. As Truman feared, the Chinese entered the war, sent us reeling, and retook most of North Korea.

The Allies were lax in other crucial ways. We woefully underestimated the Japanese, in part because of our presumptions of racial superiority, and were late to recognize Germany’s ability to produce game-changing weapons, such as jet airplanes, which were 100 miles per hour faster than any warplane the Allies could put in the sky. If Hitler had not insisted most of his jets be bombers rather than fighters, for offense rather than defense, we would not have prevailed on D-Day or in our air campaign to disrupt Germany’s transportation system and war production.

My nomination for the most ruinous and ignorant act of all would go to J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In August 1941, Hoover blew off evidence from a British MI5 double agent, Dusan Popov, that Japan was preparing a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Hoover, a prude, detested Popov, a high-stakes gambler and womanizer. Popov’s most famous conquest was Simone Simon, a kittenish French movie star now renowned by cinema buffs for her performance in “Cat People” of a young woman cursed by her inner panther and also for providing her lovers with gold keys to her boudoir.

Rather than pass Popov’s information to the president and military chiefs, Hoover threatened to arrest him under a federal law, the Mann Act, for transporting a woman across state lines (New York to Florida) for “purposes of debauchery.” That Popov’s paramour was a consenting adult mattered not to Hoover. Four months later, Japan killed 2,400 Americans and crippled our Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor and proceeded to overrun most of the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.

All of these gentlemen were extolled during the war and long afterward. President Truman awarded Doolittle a Silver Star for, among other things, his “personal example” during the very time his hubris was endangering our invasion of Europe. Clark was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, our second highest medal, by General Eisenhower. After Truman fired him for insubordination, MacArthur came home to a hero’s ticker tape parade in New York, an invitation to address a joint session of Congress, and beseeching from Republican leaders to run for president. Hoover led the F.B.I. until his death in 1972.

In tragic contrast, Alan Turing, the young English mathematician whose solving of Germany’s “ultra” code probably saved the war for us, was harassed by the British police because he was gay and in 1954 killed himself. The appropriate outcome was Popov’s, who became Ian Fleming’s model for James Bond.

If Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq mean anything, we are no better at war now than in World War II. The greatest generation will be the one that finds peace.

Seventy years ago today, May 7, 1945, Germany’s armed forces surrendered to the Allies.

Richard Rosenthal served in the 1251st Combat Engineer Battalion during the Battles of the Rhineland and Central Europe. He lives in East Hampton.

Remember game shows? “Concentration,” “The Big Payoff” (with a former Miss America, the late Bess Myerson, in a pre-feminist mink coat)? Remember “What’s My Line?” and “I’ve Got a Secret”? “Queen for a Day”? “You Bet Your Life”? I do.

And quiz shows like “The G.E. College Bowl” or “Twenty-One”? Game shows, quiz shows — you and your family can feud over the distinction and which falls under which genre. But, for the most part, they have given way to reality shows that aren’t really reality.

I mean, how real was Bruce Jenner all those years with all those Kardashians, when, out of the blue, he declares he’s about to undergo a gender reassignment? That we never had a clue? Frankly, with his Peggy Fleming kind of hair back in his reality days as an Olympian, in his short shorts a la Richard Simmons, we should have guessed. But that’s another story left for Diane Sawyer to gather and uncover.

Of course, there is still “Jeopardy!” and the annoying “Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price Is Right,” but that last one is just not the same without Bob Barker, or, prior to him, Bill Cullen. “Let’s Make a Deal” is dull without Monty Hall. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”? I’d rather watch “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

And then there was “Password.” Allen Ludden, the host, dead a century, and his wife, as a contestant, Betty White, living approaching a century, with the odd way the off-camera announcer would tell, no, whisper the password to the studio audience and those of us viewing at home: “Sh-h-h. The password is . . . ubiquitous.” (Try that one on for size — Soupy Sales, a contestant on the offshoot “Password All-Stars,” would have a struggle, as anyone would, with that.)

The password is ubiquitous. And this is where I shift gears and segue and transition to the real point of this piece: passwords!

In fairness, and with ease, the password to unlock my iPhone, when it was the 4 and the 5 and now the 6 Plus, has always been the same. Four measly digits. Just four. No symbols, no combinations of numbers and letters. Easy. Breezy. Memorable. In fact, the same four digits I use at a cash machine.

Beautiful.

But every other password I need — to get into my Chase account online, to sign onto Amazon, to log on for my 401 balances (which I do daily, and you would too if you were retired, as I am, as I have been for three years now) — requires, no, demands difficult combinations: no less than eight characters, no two letters in a row the same, a cap, some lowercase, a symbol, a number or two. Then, to make matters even more humiliating, they tell you (They? Who are they? Some little people inside the laptop, or even littler people inside the phone?), “Your password is weak.” Or “not strong enough.” I need criticism that I am inadequate from an inanimate object? Believe me, I get enough from my life partner.

Netflix, on my smart TV, makes me feel like an idiot. You have to use the remote to scroll up, down, and across to hit the precise password, which I never remember.

Facebook is another killer in the random way it asks for a password. Generally, you just go to the app, but occasionally, and for no good reason other than Mark Zuckerberg is a genius and we are all morons and he constantly throws it in our faces, they ask for a password. “Your login has expired.” Why? How come? Don’t f**k with us, Zuckerberg. We are not as clever or as brilliant as you. I barely know how to work the electric can opener! (Full disclosure: That last line was stolen from a Woody Allen movie.)

But it gets even worse. Yes, it does. If you want to order something online, or respond to a friend’s article, or comment on how despicable technology has become, you are required to type a code of letters and numbers that run together, smash into each other, to prove you are not a robot or a monkey. Believe me, monkeys would be more adept as deciphering those indecipherable collections of numbers and letters. Uppercase? Lowercase? I wind up, after half an hour of ordering this watch or that pair of jeans, frustrated and canceling my cart. I just can’t make out the strung together, no, squashed together, code. Plus, my fingertips are too fat.

How many times have you wanted to toss a device out a window when you are told that after three attempts and failures you need to reset the password? And then you get a series of numbers as a temporary password, brief seconds to find a pencil, write it down, and make the effort to change.

The Notes app on my iPhone has a tab titled Passwords. It currently has 28 passwords listed, most already obsolete.

Pandora and iTunes and PayPal and Ticketmaster and Skype. There are also accompanying pins attached to a bunch of them. Twitter and Cargo and J. Crew and God Knows. That last password number never works. Because God, nor anyone else for that matter, knows how or why the universe of passwords has become so . . . hellish.

There should be a new quiz show or game show, a la “Name That Tune.” “I can name that password in four numbers combined with letters and symbols.”

Oh, @#!+*%& it. I can’t.

Hy Abady is just out with a new book, “Back in The Star Again, Again!” — a sequel to his 2010 collection of “Guestwords” and “True Stories From the East End.”

Saturday morning, 7 a.m. Look up the weather. Check. Organize the ads. Check. Comfortable shoes. Check. Wallet full of small bills. Check. GPS. Check. Okay, I’m ready!

With five years of serious yard-saling experience after I moved from a house to an apartment, I feel I have become somewhat of an aficionado of yard/tag/garage sales. So before the season begins in earnest, I would like to offer these tips to a) make your sale more profitable and b) make your visit to a sale more rewarding.

Sellers: Know your market! Someone else doesn’t need to pay the same amount for something used that you paid new. You must decide whether you really want to sell it and maybe do a little research to see what others will pay. That’s what eBay and Craigslist are for.

If you can’t price everything individually, then put items together that you want priced the same and mark the table. If you have a busy stream of people, you will be glad you did this, as buyers won’t have to ask about each item along with the myriad questions you will inevitably receive.

Some items should just be bulk-priced to sell more easily and more quickly. Like books, CDs, and kitchen utensils. Clothing especially falls into this category. Unless you have a special item, like a winter coat, or formalwear, most items can be sold in quantity. I keep a stash of I.G.A. bags for my sale, and you can fill a bag for $5 to $10 depending on the type of items. You can usually fit five to seven pieces in a bag, especially children’s clothing, although I have seen some crafty women stuff them to overflowing and still expect to pay $5. This gives buyers incentive to take more. The more you sell, the less you have to take to the recycling center.

A word about linens. They are a huge seller, but if they are not in good condition, point it out. Many people will still buy (my friend can get any stain out) even if they use it for a different purpose. Just be honest. Actually that goes for everything you are selling.

Many sales I have been to were special because the sellers went out of their way to be friendly and helpful without hounding people while they look. I have even seen coffee and bagels offered while you shop. If you have large items or furniture for sale, try to have a hand truck or other device to help get an item to a vehicle. A buyer may not have intended to purchase something so large, so it would be great to have help getting it to the car.

Layout. Beg, borrow, or steal any tables you can get. Looking at items at ground level is difficult, especially items you need to thumb through, like albums, books, and CDs. I see many people using large tarps on the ground, which is okay as long as you leave room for people to walk across it to reach items in the middle. If you do not have a rack for hanging clothing, a rope from tree to tree will work, but the items tend to slide down to the middle, making it hard to look through. And a full-length mirror ($5 at Kmart) is great to have also.

Tools are a brisk seller if they are in good working order. If you are selling power tools, have them near an outlet or extension cord so they can be tested by prospective buyers. If you have additional items that go with a power tool (think sanding disks for an orbital sander), make it a package deal and I’ll bet it all goes quickly.

If you have some items that really belong in the dump, please take them to the dump. No one wants your broken appliances, stained or torn clothing, or worn-out dirty toys with pieces missing. So save yourself the effort of putting them out and pricing them.

Personnel. It is very difficult to do a yard sale alone. You need at least two, better three, people just for the selling. Many more to help with setup and breakdown. Try to have someone at the entrance/exit of your sale to make sure people have paid for their items. Small items, like costume jewelry, have a tendency to disappear easily. I have unfortunately seen people who pick up items and just walk away with them. Just a heads up.

Have plenty of small bills on hand. It seems everyone carries twenties but will inevitably want to buy a book for a dollar. There go your singles and fives.

Advertising! You can’t sell if they don’t come. List in the paper and open the ad with the address, day, and time. I hate having to read through a long list of articles for sale to find the location while I’m driving or trying to map out a route. A very brief list of general items is good to have, and if you have a large, coveted item (think kayak), or something collectors may find interesting, do point it out in your ad.

As for signs on the road, they are very helpful but only if they can be read from a car. Use neon paper and a Sharpie. Give only the address, date, and time. Write big and clear. If your address is hard to find, then give a quick direction and make sure to put guidance signs at turns near your house. Too much information on a sign makes it hard to see the address, and then we’ve missed it — and you’ve lost a customer. And please remember where you post your signs and go back and take them down so people aren’t showing up at your house for weeks after.

Don’t forget social media. Facebook has multiple pages dedicated to selling individual items and you are welcome to post your yard sale info on those. Believe me, people read ’em.

Buyers: Know what you’re looking for and what you’re looking at. But also know how to judge value and condition so you are not disappointed.

Keep in mind, you are going to someone’s home and behave accordingly. Keep your children in check, or better yet, in the car, and do not take your pet onto someone’s property. I am sure a lot of people won’t agree with me on these two points, but use common sense. You have no idea if the seller or a family member has allergies or a fear of animals. And children have no interest in a yard sale unless there are toys, and then they will play with them and be in the way of other buyers.

Keep an eye out for unusual items. Retro is big these days, but keep in mind that what you buy is going to take up space in your house, so don’t let nostalgia run wild in your wallet. There have been times when I have regretted not buying something that I impulsively wanted, but much more frequently I regretted buying something I didn’t really need.

Don’t be an early bird! People who put that in their ads are serious. A sale listed for 9 a.m. is not going to be ready at 7, and no, you can’t help us set up. Come back when we are ready, you know, like the time we posted. Sometimes there is good reason for starting later, so respect the owner and be a good guest to his or her property.

Bargains and bargaining. Keep in mind that sellers are looking to make some money here. Don’t insult them by trying to get the price lower if it is already very low. Certainly give your best offer on big items, but if something is a dollar, just pay the dollar.

A word about tag sale companies. As a rule, I don’t go to them. Not worth the time, unless you are looking for antiques or furniture, and they are trying to make a profit so the prices aren’t great.

I could fill this article with stories of the treasures I have found over the years, but I would rather you take all of this advice and make your fortune or find your new favorite trinket. And let me know if you find a good sale!

Megan Collins Ganga is a business manager for a local landscape contractor. She lives in East Hampton.

I flew on the first direct flight from J.F.K. to Havana, March 17, 2015. My six companions were members of several South Fork Presbyterian churches, traveling in mission partnership with the Presbyterian Reformed Church of Cuba. Our destination was the country town of Guines, 50 kilometers southeast of Havana.

Traveling that day were Barbara and Dennis D’Andrea, Zanetta Classens, and Karen McCaffrey, of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, John Loper and myself, also from East Hampton, though as pastor emeritus I represent the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, and John White of the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church.

Anyone traveling in Cuba or going to meetings while there knows that Cuba time is not corporate America time. Sunday worship in the Guines church may be scheduled to start at 10 a.m., but it actually starts whenever everyone gets there and when the leadership and the musicians get their act together. Never mind getting out in time for whatever else someone may have planned on a Sunday. In Guines, with Bible study, a children’s choir in performance, prayers, announcements, then worship with a gospel rock band, preaching, and prayers, plus a break for refreshments between the Bible study and worship, Sunday morning moves along at its own internal pace. It is worship in Cuba time.

I enjoy the leisurely pace. On weekday mornings I rise early and sit on the church porch with a café and watch the neighborhood wake up to the new day. In March it is still dark at 7 a.m., but with a streak of dawning light and on this day a crescent moon just above the one-story rooftops of houses across the street. Children emerge, dressed in colors by school grade, and some of them are taken to school by a parent on a bicycle. Men and women walk to work, with “Buenos dias” said between us as they pass by, or the shortened form, “Buenos.” There are cars and trucks, too, and tractors and motorbikes, and horse-drawn taxis or pedibikes for transport.

One woman sits with straight back, dressed in a yellow skirt and white blouse. Her posture suggests royalty. But there are no royals in Cuba, or corporate officers or lawyers with briefcases, or media entertainers with an entourage. Not in Guines. These are “the people” of the socialist revolution now 56 years on, a revolution that is running itself out in experiments with market economics. Change is in the air, and the question is, what will become of Cuba time when corporate time gets planted on those island shores? It is a prospect both anticipated and worrisome.

Our flight from J.F.K. was on a Sun Country Airlines 737. Because this was the first direct flight there was more than the usual check-in and security. There was a long line taking three hours to get to the first of several check-in desks for passports, baggage, payment for excess weight, and then security. The plane was due to leave at 3 p.m. but left closer to 5:30. It was as if Cuba time had reached up to affect the efficiency of airline punctuality touting “on time.”

About 95 percent of the passengers were Cuban-Americans. When we landed at José Marti Airport and it was announced, “Welcome to Havana, Cuba,” there were shouts and cheers and loud applause. In previous years our mission group has traveled through either Nassau or Miami. Now there are also daily flights for Cubans and Cuban-Americans between Miami and Havana, travel restrictions having been relaxed by both countries. The direct flight on Sun Country at present flies only on Tuesdays, one flight down, one back.

When in Guines, our group visits people in their homes. These are members of the church, some of whom may be infirm or ill, but on this trip we also visited some newer church members. Pastor Abel Mirabel is doing very well in his leadership. The church is thriving, as are other churches in Cuba, all as a result of 20 years of rapprochement between the government and religious communities. There were 200 in worship the Sunday we were there, with 40 in the Sunday school and a dozen in a youth class.

The church rocks, and it is also a social center the way churches were in our country in the 1950s, going by my recollection of the Midwest. Indeed, there is this sense that Cuba time is a variant 1950s warp, visually augmented by all the American cars of that era that have been kept going by clever maintenance.

But of course it is not the 1950s, it is revolutionary Cuba time moving into an unknown transition period. I saw a government sign that said something like, Individual opportunity is the new socialism. Will there be a postrevolutionary time? If there is, it probably will be gradual, or that seems to be the hope. There is a reluctance — shared with us in anecdotal conversation — that too rapid a change with a heavy influx of American capital would be disruptive. Nonetheless there is a clear desire to ease relations between the countries, certainly to get rid of the embargo, which the Cuban government calls a blockade.

Each year, I visit a family in Guines who are not church members. I met them through their son who is now 19 and doing his obligatory military service. When I first met him he was 11 playing ball with friends in the street. He was home for a few days. Sitting in their living room, I told them of our flight from New York and how the Cuban-Americans had cheered when landing in Havana. I noticed a certain expression on the mother’s face suggesting displeasure, though being respectful she said nothing.

Her expression reminded me that Cubans in Cuba have mixed feelings about Cubans in America. There are many lines of personal history, but among them is the knowledge that thousands of Cubans fled Cuba or have defected, and among those there is a political base that is hostile to Cuba. Cuban families have also been split by a son or a daughter leaving the parents behind or older Cubans joining married children in Miami, perhaps to find it’s not the paradise they thought it might be. What I saw in a flicker of expression on this woman’s face was a sense of herself as a Cuban who does not easily identify with Cuban-Americans, if at all.

That same afternoon conversation included the young man’s grandparents. The grandfather spoke with skeptical hope about talks that have opened up between our counties. With the people, he said, speaking in Spanish, there is not a problem. He gestured with an open hand, leaving unstated the suggestion that it will be challenging for the governments to work things out.

It is these conversations multiplied a thousand times over for many years that help build amistad, friendship, between our countries. Indeed, the many mission partnerships that congregations and religious groups in the United States have had with Cuban churches for over 20 years have created words of understanding that percolate through the church’s social fabric. The political initiative between President Obama and President Raul Castro might be seen therefore as a conversation that has been happening all along at a local level. Cuba time and corporate America time are now engaged in a dance as intricate as the salsa.

Those of us who travel to Cuba on religious visas are often asked, “But what do you do there?” The inference is that we might engage in hands-on projects, like building or painting or repairing structures. But that isn’t what we do. We are there in friendship, where conversations and home visits and worship are integral to our purpose. As Barbara D’Andrea, our mission group leader, once quipped, when we invite friends to visit our homes here we aren’t asking them to build a room or paint the house. What we do, though, is give money collected from our churches, which the Cuban churches use for their needs and programs. One new outreach in the Guines church is to provide a free lunch once a week for senior citizens.

There is one hands-on project, however, that we have been involved in. Two years ago a water-filtration system was installed at the Guines church. The same has been done at several other churches in Cuba by way of Living Waters for the World, a mission project through the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. For the installation in Guines, money for the project came through the mission budget of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church, with the actual installation done by a trained team from the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.

The Guines church distributes clean water to people in town without charge. They come three days a week, 900 people who are allowed up to four gallons of water each visit for their households. The results of drinking clean water are immediate and dramatic. Chronic gastrointestinal problems clear up.

The people walk to the church for the water, each one carrying large clean bottles to be filled. It is still Cuba time, measured by walking, and by talking, sharing the gossip of the neighborhood, the complaints of the day and the good will. People dress for the 80-plus-degree weather — which our group welcomed with exaltation, having come from a severe winter.

To fly to Cuba, even now by a direct flight, is in some respects to fly back in time. But then again it is to fly forward in time because of pending changes. My hope is that Cuba will not be pressed into a model of corporate America “on time.” Perhaps the tropical climate and Latin culture will prevail. We shall see.

The Rev. Robert Stuart, a longtime “Guestwords” contributor, lives in Springs.

Every few months I drive to Sagaponack from the Berkshires, where I live. I come to stay in my childhood home on Daniel’s Lane and visit with family. Each time I arrive, as I round the corner of Sagaponack Road and Main Street, I look over and see my 6-year-old self, pale and skinny with lank hair, sitting on one of the swings in the narrow patch of grass running along the side of the Little Red Schoolhouse (where a swing set still stands), getting an under-push from Sally Kinkade or Cookie Dombkowski.

If I were to compose a timeline of my life, it would connect one school building to another. The first would be in Manhattan, where I attended preschool at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Nursery School (though I was a Jew). Miss Allen, my kind, composed, and elderly teacher, often oversaw the group of 3 and 4-year-olds from a rocking chair.

The next dot on the line would be a preschool in Springs, I think, run by Jackie Jackson. She danced and sang for us, and we made hats, which we decorated lavishly with balloons and brightly colored paper. From there the timeline leads to a kindergarten class at the elementary school in East Hampton, where all I can remember is that a group of 5-year-old boys staged an uprising when I tried to boss them around in the block corner. I cried not in sadness, but in outrage.

Then came Sagg School, where I was first introduced to finger painting, Dick and Jane, the pleasures of peeling open milkweed in the spring, and the confusing fact that there was an S in the printed version of Long Island. Silent letters. Unforgettable. I may have learned the word peninsula that year, as well.

From there the timeline leads right to the Hampton Day School, held, its first year, in the Mullers’ house on the corner of Ocean Road and Paul’s Lane in Bridgehampton. Our playground was one large tree in the backyard. I found out that bats would try to hide in your hair (and learned only recently that it wasn’t true). I acquired encyclopedic knowledge of the Greek myths (and wore my mother’s blond fall, bought for a party, the day I dressed as Aphrodite for our Festival of Greek Mythology). I learned from Tony Hitchcock how to use my five senses to make observations of the natural world.

In a slight detour from the sometimes weird but always riveting years at the Hampton Day School, I spent my sophomore year at East Hampton High School. There I first encountered something called a G.P.A. and the pleasures of walking up and down hallways as a form of socializing. I also learned how to ace an algebra test, though it’s fair to say I didn’t learn one single thing about mathematics. I returned to the Hampton Day School for one last year, where on my graduation night I performed with my friend Coco in a Pinter play about two strange old sisters.

All in all, a quirky educational history.

But I must have liked something about all those teachers, desks, assignments, friends, and foes, because in the ensuing 40 years, I’ve spent the bulk of my waking hours inside of a classroom, or thinking about one. I love school. But I’m beginning to dislike education. And it’s not just that too many schools aren’t good enough for the kids inside, or that standardized tests punish children and teachers without providing much of value, though I do think both of those things. It’s worse than that. Our basic idea about what kids should learn in school has slowly gone farther and farther offtrack, right into the ditch.

Somehow, instead of reasonable, achievable, and humane goals, ones that would actually help all kinds of children, from many backgrounds, become well educated, we’ve created a set of expectations and hurdles that would make the most eager young student want to crawl back into bed and pull the sheets over her head. In a misguided mission to make every child well trained, we insist they complete boring sentences, define words they’ve never used, do a kind of algebra that has little meaning to them, fill in blanks on test after test, sit up straighter and straighter at their desks, become skilled with a bewildering assortment of technology, memorize various chemical formulae, balance a checkbook, recite facts about other continents, speak a second language, pass more tests, and behave kindly and cheerfully even while sitting in dull classrooms with overworked, underappreciated adults.

Even if the current approach succeeded (which it doesn’t), we’d end up with a population of well-trained but undereducated (and possibly unhappy) citizens.

Right around the time of my last visit to Sagg, my younger sister, Jenno, sent me a photo of her son Ike and his friend Max, both 7 years old. In the picture, Ike and Max are standing on the street corner near Jenno’s house in Santa Monica. Next to them, on the ground, lies a red wagon filled with their wares: old toys that they are hoping to sell to passers-by. But these two entrepreneurs had a trick up their sleeves, an unbeatable retail strategy: In the photo, they are holding up a cardboard sign on which they have applied thick exuberant lettering, which reads, “Toy Sale! Toy Sale! Unless you have no money, then it’s free!”

When the picture first popped up on my iPhone, with my nephew’s crazy shock of red curls and asymmetrical grin, I gulped with laughter. But then it hit me. This was what we should see in schools. The boys had such energy for their work. They longed to be industrious, put their good ideas into action, and see the fruits of their labor. It’s hard to know whether their handmade sign reflected their generosity and good values (everyone, rich or poor, should get a toy) or their zeal for getting rid of inventory. Either way, what I saw in that picture was what I don’t see enough of in classrooms — interest, purpose, invention, and teamwork. And joy. They seemed so happy to be working hard and trying out their new idea.

When I revisit all those schools from my past, I can string together an educational story of skills (many of which were learned only to be forgotten), accomplishments, and grades (also of defeats, boredom, and uncertainties). Much more vivid than any of those, however, are specific memories of Aphrodite, kindergarten insurrections, and the surprise of using all five senses to observe a sugar cube.

Mostly though, it’s not what I remember that stayed with me. It’s the habits and inclinations I did or didn’t acquire (some for better and some for worse): the inclination to read everything all the time, to seek and stay in a conversation, to avoid math whenever possible, to savor the process of building an idea slowly and carefully, and, until I was in my 30s, a regrettable reluctance to be equally slow and careful in revising my work.

The dispositions we acquire in school are what last, and they are what really matter. Those dispositions have nothing to do with a mission statement on a wall or the curriculum written in a book. They come from the practices and orientations that are ingrained, day in and day out, while children fill out worksheets, worry about test scores, answer unimportant questions about correct though dull books, and master math skills that appear to have no intrinsic meaning — or, as the case may be, from launching a used toy sale where kids give away toys for free.

Susan Engel is a professor in the psychology department at Williams College and the author of two new books, “The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools” and “The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood.”