I recently visited the genome exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. A genome is an organism’s total DNA, which includes the genes that provide instructions for the organism’s development and maintenance.

    Twenty-five years ago, the task of finding the total DNA sequences for any organism seemed overwhelming. But large teams of scientists have uncovered nearly complete sequences in many species, including ours. Genome research is indeed impressive, and the Smithsonian exhibit provides a clear and lively introduction to it.

    But I felt a bit frustrated.

    The exhibit’s emphasis is very much on our own species. It tells how genome research might cast light on human diseases, and it provides us with information about our own personal genomes. This human focus is understandable because the original goal of large-scale research was to sequence the human genome.

    But the exhibit gives too little attention to some of the most startling discoveries — the similarities between human and nonhuman genomes.

    The poster that most directly addresses these similarities includes a provocative heading: “I’m Related to What?” It then says, “You may look nothing like a mouse or a jellyfish, but you share thousands of genes with them.”

    I anticipated that this poster would then say more about these similarities. Instead, it returns to the exhibit’s focus on humans, explaining that “scientists study other species to explore how genes influence human disorders.”

    One display does inform us that we share 96 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees (which is actually a low estimate). I wish the exhibit provided additional specific examples of cross-species overlaps, such as the findings that we share about 60 percent of our genes with fruit flies and 80 to 90 percent with mice and rats.

    Why do I consider such cross-species similarities so important?

    For one thing, they add support to Darwin’s proposal that we and other living species share common ancestors. Even before the recent genome research, microbiologists had found that all species essentially use the same genetic code and create proteins from the same amino acids. Now genome findings suggest that human beings and other species, which might seem very different, share large segments of the same DNA. It increasingly appears that Darwin was correct when he speculated that all living species descended from common progenitors.

    Our similarity to other species also is important to me as an animal activist. Those of us who try to defend animals constantly run up against the Western cultural view that animals are very different from and inferior to us, and we can therefore treat them any way we wish. How often we hear, “Oh, they’re just animals!” Even most Western philosophers have excluded animals from moral consideration. In the 1990s, when I began my involvement in animal rights, I had difficulty saying precisely why we should include animals in our moral deliberations.

    Since then, I have come to believe there are two strong reasons for including nonhumans in our moral considerations. The first reason has been extensively argued by Peter Singer, who is something of a maverick in modern moral philosophy. Singer emphasizes that other animals, like us, experience pain, and if we believe we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering in the world, we must include nonhuman animals. To ignore their suffering and focus only on our own species is self-serving and prejudicial.

    The second reason for giving moral status to animals comes from the genome findings and the other cross-species commonalities I have noted above. The evidence strongly suggests that we and other living beings are all related. We are all part of the same extended family. And as members of the same family, animals deserve to be included in our moral decision-making.

    Now some might point out that we are also genetically related to plants, albeit more distantly. Do we have moral obligations toward plants, too? If so, how can we fulfill these obligations, for even vegans must eat plants to survive.

    I do believe that our ethics should include plant life, and that we should try to inflict as little harm as possible on it. Paradoxically, people would consume fewer plants if they adopted a vegetarian or vegan diet. This is because animal industries harvest enormous quantities of plants for feed — more than people would need if they adhered to plant-based diets.

    Moral decision-making has never been easy, and extending its scope to nonhuman species won’t make it any easier. But such an extension is vital for all the living beings who experience horrible suffering, as occurs in factory farms and many other settings. Thus far, animals’ suffering has had limited impact on the public or government officials. Perhaps it would make a difference if people knew that those subjected to such misery are their relatives.

    Bill Crain is the president of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife. He lives in Montauk. The genome exhibit at the Smithsonian is on view through Labor Day.

    My father, Edwin Courtland Mulford, was born in East Hampton on March 16, 1896. He first saw the light of day in Congress Hall, the Mulford family homestead overlooking the village green, directly across from Home, Sweet Home and what became known later as the Mulford Farm. The land on which Congress Hall stands had been granted to William Mulford in 1650, and had never been out of the family. His parents were David Green Mulford and Elizabeth Osborne Mulford, and he was descended from virtually all of East Hampton’s founding families.

    When he was 21 years old, the United States entered World War I, and he knew immediately that he would be a participant. He joined the Army in December 1917 and was sent to Camp Upton for training. From there he was sent to France, where he participated in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. He survived, and was shipped home early in 1919, returning to the family farm. He married Charlotte Davis, his high school sweetheart, and I was their only child, arriving on the scene in 1931.

    As a boy I knew my father had participated in the war, not because he talked about it, because he never did. It was as though that period of his life had never happened. I became aware of it when I found and subsequently pored over two books. One was titled “History of the 77th Division,” and the other “A History of the 305th Infantry.” These books, plus his Army helmet and uniform, which I discovered in the attic, opened up a whole new chapter in my father’s life that I scarcely knew existed.

    That was only the beginning, however. Much later, some 80 years after my father returned from France, I discovered a packet of letters tied in a faded ribbon. They were letters exchanged between my father and his parents during his time in the Army. As my wife, our two adult children, and I read those letters, tears streamed down our cheeks. For those letters caught the horror and sense of separation experienced by those young men huddled in the trenches of France, as well as glimpses into life in East Hampton nearly 100 years ago.

    The first group of letters and postcards, dated from Dec. 3, 1917, until April 9, 1918, deals with life at Camp Upton. A number of them refer to the trips home over the weekends, provided by Ed Schaefer, owner of a taxi service in East Hampton. On Dec. 18 Dad tells of a trip back to Camp Upton. “We spent 2 hours in Bridgehampton looking for one of the fellows. One of the headlights went out and we got a lantern. We got there at 4:30 a.m.”

    As spring approached, the mood of the letters changed. He writes: “Oh, how I wish I was home beginning the spring work. Never mind, I will be home next spring anyway, don’t worry.”

    Two letters, one dated April 29 and one May 2, indicate that the Atlantic had been safely crossed. From this point on the letters are heavily censored.

    His thoughts went frequently to East Hampton and to the members of his family, as his letter of May 24 indicates: “France is a very pretty country but I think England has it beat a little. Tell Papa I have seen some of the best looking horses that I have ever seen. By the way the paper [The East Hampton Star] looked, I should think the Old Town was pretty lively. Two or three dances a week, what more do they want, but that isn’t doing me any good, is it?”

    His almost casual references to the horrors of the trenches are interspersed with concerns about life at Congress Hall. He worries that the houses might not be rented for the summer, or that his father was working too hard. He asks how many chickens his father had raised that year, and whether the hay was in.

    Since Dad knew his letters were censored, he would often write “I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.” One letter in the packet, written by his friend George Eichorn and somehow sent by George “on the sly,” paints a gruesome picture. George writes, “I am in a place called Fiames . . . and we captured a few towns and two big hills. It cost us a few men but it cost the Germans a good many more. We also captured a lot of prisoners. The gas the Germans send over us is awful. It burns the skin right off any place where you sweat.” George then mentions the names of some of “our boys” who were wounded, and then the name of one who “was blown to pieces as we could not find any trace of him at all after the battle.”

    On Oct. 20, only a few weeks before the end of the war, Dad wrote to his sister: “Well, Sis, I have seen a little fighting but I didn’t mind much. You can tell Dr. Stokes [the former minister of the Presbyterian Church] I had the chance to get eight German scalps for him, but I took pity on them and took them prisoner instead. Tell Mother I have received her letters and, O, how glad I was to have Pop write those few lines.”

    On Nov. 17: “Of course by this time you have heard of the wonderful news. Well, I was right at the front when the last shot was fired. I won’t bother to write much about the war, because I soon expect to be home to tell you all about it. Of course, after everything is over, I had to go to work and have a nice little boil come on the top of my instep caused by a bad shoe.”

    That boil turned out to be more than Dad had bargained for, as it continued to bother him for months and led to his return home on a hospital ship. By March 1919, Dad was back in East Hampton. His parents, about whom he fretted while in France, both lived into their 80s.

    The song “How Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?” certainly didn’t apply to Dad. During the rest of his long life, he left East Hampton seldom and always reluctantly. He maintained the family property on the corner of Main Street and Buell Lane meticulously until his death, at age 80, in 1976.

    David E. Mulford is a retired Presbyterian minister who continues his fascination with family and East Hampton history. He and his wife live near Princeton, N.J.

    When I was 8, my artistic parents divorced and my mother married an intelligent lawyer who took us from a small house to a much bigger house. The basement in our new house is where I learned to box.

    I was like a small mole, burrowing down into the dark, dank soil of that basement, and it quickly became my new home. It proved a refuge from the verbally violent atmosphere my mother unwittingly got us into. Boxing became my passion. The heavy bag, the light bag, and the brown leather, 16-ounce boxing gloves became my allies. I was a young boy and didn’t do introspection too well; all I knew was punching a heavy bag felt really good.

    The rigors and ecstasies of boxing lasted throughout my childhood. Anger became an exciting and profitable emotion, and now that I knew what to do with it, I refused to give it up. Boxing was brutal and bitter, but I loved it. At least that’s what I told myself.

    The truth was I hated boxing as much as I loved it. Boxing was my successful dysfunction.

    The angry dropouts in school became my tribal family. Ours was a rough clan of punks whose cardinal rules were “Shut up or put up” and “Never start a fight, but always end it” and “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” Our pastimes were sports, hanging out in town, and neglecting homework.

    For me, the ultimate goal of my dark, angry existence was to one day fight in Madison Square Garden for a Golden Gloves title. Throughout my school years I honed my arms, chest, and legs in preparation for my forthcoming epic battle in the Golden Gloves.

    Growing up, I purposely ignored my mind’s development. My deep, underlying belief was in the strength and nobility of my body. Unlike my belligerent stepfather, who battered us with his intelligent tongue, my body was my weapon, not my brain.

    At 18, I finally entered the Gloves. Week after week, I beat my opponents until I reached the finals. The night of the finals, I was sick with the flu and weighed six and a half pounds lighter than normal. Weakened, but still confident, I stepped through the ring ropes of Madison Square Garden and lost a close three-round decision. Losing was horrible.

    Soon, my boxing family began to break up, too. Some guys entered the pro boxing ranks, some went to work, and others landed in jail. Somehow I squeaked into college. I quit boxing as if I were quitting a drug. I was afraid it would fatally distract me from my studies, and I didn’t want to become an occasional boxer.

    So I plunged into a life of books, libraries, and endless studies. I began hitting books instead of people. The classroom became my ring, but I had to work double-time in order to overcome my lackluster academic past. I rarely spoke of my previous life. There were too many clichés and preconceptions about flat-nosed pugs to overcome.

    Years later, in my mid-30s, I found myself working as an English teacher in New York. For me, becoming a high school teacher was like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. I had always convinced myself that I was born with more fast-twitch muscle in my body than quick synapses in my brain. College had proved to be an emotional roller coaster, but it was there where I discovered that punching out a perfect paragraph was fundamentally more profitable and exciting than punching someone’s face.

    One afternoon, after teaching school, I entered a local boxing gym. Although I had never truly abandoned boxing, it set about saving me once more — this time from a gnawing sense of middle-aged alienation and hollowness. I didn’t drop to my knees in great happiness or feel a rush of adrenalin. I was older and wiser, and the youthful fantasy of Golden Gloves redemption had long melted away.

    When I first hung up the gloves as a kid, I was relieved not to be getting smacked on the nose anymore. Life was gentler. I could eat juicy hamburgers and tasty cupcakes whenever I wanted, but I always felt as though something had been subtracted from my flesh. My blood never pumped so fast. Did I miss the human contact?

    I began training again.

    One day, the gym owner called me over. “Wanna be my head coach?” he said. “You c’n work nights, after teachin’.”

    I looked at his damaged face, the sweaty fighters, and the grimy gym. What I once saw as brilliant, beautiful, even magical, I now saw as ordinary, ignorant, and even pathetic.

    Was I too soft for this again? Was I more comfortable with the civility of teaching?

    “In’erested?” he slurred.

    New York City is the mecca of boxing, and there is truth in that name. Many confused young boys have started out as punks in these dark, violent gyms, fought in the Golden Gloves, and ended up world champions. Two of my friends did. But did I want to be part of this wild, dangerous, stupid, crazy sport anymore? Beating people up? Damaged faces and brains?

    “Well?” he said.

    Did I want to burrow down into my stepfather’s dark, dank basement again?

    I looked at the man’s flat nose. “Boxing is stupid!” I said to myself. “I hate boxing. I hated it the first day I laced up my first pair of gloves down in my basement. I hated it 10 years later when I quit. But boxing saved my life. It was the bloodsucking leech that fed upon my anger, my hurt, my hate, and my fear. Boxing purified me. That’s why I love it.”

    “Okay,” I told him.

    A month later, a middleweight named Denny walked into the gym. “You the coach?”

    I nodded.

    “I wanna enter the Gloves,” he said, dropping his duffle bag to the floor.

    What personal pain had brought Denny here? Did he have the same appetite for violence that I once had?

    He continued looking at me.

    Was this the circle of life? There were still so many unhappy memories breathing in my gut about my stepfather’s sad basement. Could I convince myself that by coaching Denny I could sculpt beauty into his body and brain? When a kid moves sweetly, is that art? Does a coach chisel a human statue?

    “Why don’t you get outta here and learn how to write a perfect paragraph instead of learning how to throw a perfect punch,” I almost spit.

    “I need a coach,” he said, rolling his wide shoulders.

    I stared at Denny and saw my own face. “Okay,” I whispered, “suit up.”

    Sure enough, Denny’s past was miserable: a mother’s suicide, a father’s death, and his own heroin addiction. I watched him gracefully punish the heavy bag and murder his reflection in the mirror. Here was a boy-bomb with beautiful muscular violence just begging to be molded.

    If Martha Graham can sculpt a ballerina, I can sculpt a fighter. If she can educate toes, I can educate fists.

    Three months later, I pried the ring ropes open with my foot and arms and Denny stepped into the ring to fight for the Golden Gloves middleweight title in Madison Square Garden. We looked at each other silently, but at the same time held back, afraid of what each other’s eyes were saying. There was a patina of Vaseline and sweat on his chiseled face.

    The bell rang. I sat in the corner and watched him pound out an elegant, passionate, and lopsided decision over his opponent. Denny was a thing of great beauty — a wonderful work of art.

    Boxing is insane. But it’s a healthy insane.

    As the referee raised Denny’s hand in victory and the crowd cheered its approval, I realized that I had climbed out of that dark basement and a part of me was up in that ring with him.

    Peter Wood, an English teacher at White Plains High School who spends summers in East Hampton, is the author of “Confessions of a Fighter: Battling Through the Golden Gloves” and “A Clenched Fist: The Making of a Golden Gloves Champion,” both from Ringside Books. The 2014 Golden Gloves wrap up April 17 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

    For me, Loehmann’s in White Plains wasn’t simply a discount department store. It was a rite of passage. My first serious pilgrimage occurred the summer before I left for Emory University. I was 17.

    Mom and I were on a mission to find every outfit I would need for my first semester at college. We piled into the dressing room, arms stacked with Diane von Furstenberg dresses, A-line skirts, Calvin Klein jeans, and a variety of tees. I think there were even a few Fair Isle sweaters. The magic of sifting through the endless racks, finding something fantastic, and wondering how anyone could pass up the treasure you’d just found was nothing compared to the drama of the dressing room.

    A woman was stationed outside the entryway; you were allowed only 10 items. A bench ran around the entire perimeter of the octagonal mirrored space. There were no cubbies. No privacy. You jockeyed for a post to hang your clothes on and got started. You could see everyone (and everything). And everyone could see you. Underwear in every color. Bodies in every shape and size. And opinions for days.

    “That’s a great color for you.”

    “Sorry, but that doesn’t flatter you from behind.”

    “Do you think this is too tight?”

    “Uh, maybe the next size up?”

    “Oh, that emphasizes your thin waist.”

    “You have to buy that! If you don’t, I will.”

    Even though my mom hated shopping, she knew how to navigate the communal dressing room. And she carried an additional 10 items for me, bringing our total to 20.

    “Hang your clothes on a post in the corner, that way you see more angles. Shop fast so you can go out and try on more!”

    She told me to watch who entered the dressing room, while they still had their clothes on. If they were well dressed (which to her usually meant classic, tasteful, and subtle), I should ask them their opinions. “Who cares if the lady in the hideous outfit loves something on you?”

    One time, she tactfully explained that a leopard-print dress she obviously didn’t care for fit the woman trying it on very well, so, if she liked that sort of style she would enjoy it.

    The truth is, my mom and I have never had much in common when it comes to style. She thought I was flamboyant, I thought she was boring. I doubt she’s ever purchased a fashion magazine, I know she’s never had a manicure, and when I was in high school, I’d beg her, “Could you puh-leeze put on some lipstick?” By the time I’d graduated from college, if she thought something would look good on me, I was sure I’d loathe it.

    At 22, I had landed a job on Madison Avenue — I got paid to weigh in on what models in our ads and TV spots wore. I even got hired by a director to style a commercial. Didn’t she realize at this point that she should be deferring to me? It was the ’80s, I was into huge belts, shoulder pads, neon accents, and, dare I admit, Madonna-inspired lace gloves.

    One day I bumped into my dad, who worked around the corner from me, in an office near Grand Central Station. I was wearing a new Norma Kamali jumpsuit (which I wish I still owned). The call came the next morning: “We’re concerned about your professional image. Shouldn’t you be wearing suits?”

    “Mom, my boss is wearing a blue-jean miniskirt today! You’re so square.” Jeez!

    By the time I was 26, we rarely went shopping together. What was the point? But I remember one last sojourn, maybe I’d just been promoted to full copywriter, perhaps I was home for a holiday? We dashed into the Back Room — the part of Loehmann’s with the real designer steals. My eye went straight for it. The perfect black turtleneck in fabrics that required dry cleaning (another pet peeve of Mom’s). It was silk and cashmere. It cost $100.

    I had never, ever purchased a sweater that expensive. But I was tired of buying disposable clothes. This was classic. Calvin Klein. Deliciously soft. My mother cautioned me about spending too much. I told her it was an investment and you could wear it with anything. And, I still do.

    Loehmann’s is gone. But I not only have my sweater, I have my mom and my memories. And if you ask any of my friends, they’ll tell you, I also still have all those opinions.

    Lynn Blumenfeld is a member of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop and a partner in the Montauk advertising, marketing, and design firm blumenfeld + fleming. She recently completed a young-adult novel, “Finding Grace,” under the name Lynn Blue. The Loehmann’s chain of stores closed for good at the end of February.

    My partner, David, and I, as is comme d’habitude, generally spend Thanksgiving in Europe. It’s a time here in this country that seems more and more like a week off.

    I remember when leaving work early on a Wednesday afternoon prior to the four-day holiday was a luxury — sneaking out for an almost five-day break from the tedium of employment. Some years, when I had my beach house, I headed to Amagansett on a Tuesday night. Then it became Tuesday afternoon, to Italy, the ad agency I worked for at the time quiet as a library. And then, off and away on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, the days before that Thursday, dead.

    The people who were around probably had nowhere to go. Those of us with places to go and people to see were already gone and seeing them, making Wednesday, touted as the busiest travel day of the year, spread out over a handful of days before.

    A week off. Blissful, really. No gifts to buy. Just food. And more food. And leftover food.

    I myself do not work anymore. For me, every week is a week off. What I do is write. And not just here, elsewhere. Published! Books in the works. I write with a glass of red at the ready. Writing is a lonely profession, filled with distraction, henceforth, the vino. Keeps me centered. Focused. There are those who find writing glamorous, but that would be only people who don’t write.

    But back to the subject at hand: Thanksgiving. Paris. A world, smaller. Un petit monde, where what happens here in the U.S. seems to bleed through to every region the world over.

    In London, in Leicester Square this past November, days before heading off to Paris, a big poster over a large multiplex — and isn’t that an American phenomenon? — advertised “The Counselor” with Michael Fassbender, a hunky new American star, and Cameron Diaz, more established but solidly Hollywood, there for everyone to see. Even if not too many people actually saw it. In London. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

    Kevin Kline, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Douglas look out at you from the sides of a red double-decker bus: “Last Vegas.” Really? “The Hangover” for the senior set? Whatever happened to “Georgy Girl,” or “Alfie,” or even “Strangers on a Train”? The great British movies — are they still running in Great Britain?

    I think: If I were Jennifer Lawrence, somewhere in her early 20s, traveling and seeing my puss plastered all over posters in London and Paris and, no doubt, Tokyo and Bangkok promoting “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” how would I feel? Freaked out? I mean, I’m — I mean, she’s — just a kid. How can that kind of global recognition sit well with someone who just three or four years ago was as unknown as me?

    And “Wicked” is playing to packed houses in Seoul, South Korea.

    Now. Thanksgiving. Once a defiantly, stoically American holiday, it is now talked about in Paris like it was Bastille Day.

    I’m annoyed by this. I am bothered by the idea that not much of anything is unique to anywhere. Mickey D’s cover the globe. Starbucks coming soon to a nearby star. You can take the Metro or the Underground for a footlong at a Subway. Even KFC is not far from YSL.

    Am I too old now?

    When younger, I didn’t notice the proliferation of all things American in all places exotic. And now, Thanksgiving joins the ranks of things American now appearing in a restaurant near you. Wherever you may be.

    A few Thursdays ago in Paris, you heard plenty of people gobble up the sentiment “ ’appy Thanksgiving!” on the street outside the Cafe de Flore and throughout the Marais section.

    Joining the ranks, but entitled as Americans, we reserved a Thanksgiving dinner at Ralph Lauren’s restaurant on St.-Germain-des-Pres. With a kir royale at the Brasserie Lipp prior.

    There were two seatings: 6:30 and 9. We opted for the earlier one and it was packed. With Americans and Russians and Germans and Parisians.

    It was lush and plush with men in suits, women in furs, families, and festivities — a twinkling Christmas tree and a table at the entrance groaning with a big, fat turkey, encircled by all the side dishes bathed in candlelight and flashes popping from smartphones from every diner who entered.

    It was a prix fixe affair — butternut squash soup, thick with cream with an island of a small bruschetta and olive paste, topped with a teeny dollop of creme fraiche. A glass of champagne arrived, and small, fried stuffed olives, mixed nuts, and a buttermilk biscuit. The service was fast and furious; there was a second seating to consider. The wine list was (mostly) French and way up there in the stratosphere. We settled for a pinot noir at 105 euros (approximately $145) and then the meal began.

    Plates of turkey, white meat and dark, appeared, with a slush of mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts that tasted vaguely of tobacco, and stuffing. Waiters, in sexy Purple Label striped pants and vests, slipped around the tables, balancing further platters — mashed sweet potatoes. Baked root vegetables. And seconds. And pouring water and wine. Briskly. Very briskly.

    Finally, as it neared 8:30 p.m., plates of slivers of pie — pumpkin, pecan, and apple — came and went in a blur.

    The whole event, two hours or so, was delicious, if rushed. As checks were paid, swag bags — small blue Ralph Lauren shopping bags — were handed out. To women. To women only. I got a glimpse of something silvery. A frame, maybe? Whatever, it felt a little sexist.

    It felt rushed and sexist and somehow not quite right. Of course, we could have taken a pass and saved roughly 350 euros (about $500). But I never get to have turkey — except for Oscar Mayer slices on rye with Swiss, but that doesn’t count. And I was curious to see how Ralph and his classic Americana lifestyle — dark blue and green plaid woolen walls, wood trim, candelabras, and mood lighting, like his Madison Avenue mansion-shop — looked translated, transplanted, halfway across the globe. It was glittering and gorgeous. Still, it felt somehow wrong on the Right Bank.

    The next day, we went to the Pompidou Center. And there, atop this industrial behemoth of a museum, lies Georges — a Parisian treasure of a restaurant with breathtaking views of rooftops and chimney stacks and, in the distance, the Eiffel Tower surrounded by misty, romantic gray cloudiness.

    We ordered cheeseburgers. But at least the fries were French.

    Hy Abady is finishing up his third book, this one with a collaborator. “Dish: Juicy Gossip and Tasty Recipes, a Private Chef Goes Public” is due out in early 2015.

    Once upon a time I would skip out the front door of my house in San Francisco, jog to one of three destinations, and return feeling victorious because not only had I completed my run but also some other small errand, powered by my own two feet. I joined Le Video on Ninth near Lincoln, so if I ran to Golden Gate Park I would both drop off and pick up a DVD. On return from Stern Grove, I purchased cilantro and lemons at Taraval Produce. And at the top of Mount Davidson, I ran around the humongous Armenian cross and prayed drive-by.

    All this eco-friendly double-tasking left me feeling quite industrious and “mindful.”

    Then one day we bought an electric car. It can be plugged into our own home electric outlet. We reasoned, however, that because we no longer needed to pay for gas, we shouldn’t have to pay for electricity either. I’m not sure how we arrived at that conclusion. Something like, if we’re giving the environment a break, someone should give us a break.

    We pressed “Charging Stations” on the bright blue futuristic touch-screen dashboard and planned our lives around those locations. On Saturdays I parked at Park Merced Apartments, plugged in the car, and ran Lake Merced. On Sundays I parked at the new Whole Foods on Ocean Avenue, plugged in the car, bought a small bag of groceries for $178, ran to my gym, worked out, and ran back.

    To stretch it out I’d order a Balboa Blast juice, which fortunately took about 20 minutes due to mindfully paced staff wondering if the parsley was kale. Running while charging an electric car for free and in addition bringing home organic food made me feel even more green, thrifty, and superior.

    Because of this great smug and got-something-for-free feeling, we started looking for more reasons to visit charging stations. Noting a station at Civic Center Garage, I checked all of my family’s passports for a reason to visit City Hall. Luckily, two of our passports had expired. Unfortunately, we finished the process before the battery was fully charged. As we passed by the stairs to the rotunda where we had been married, I suggested we walk up there and renew our vows. But neither of us could remember what they were.

    But then one day I found a non-electric car in my usual parking space at Park Merced. I looked around for some kind of security guard to complain to. Until I remembered that I was not actually a resident of Park Merced Apartments.

    Another day I pulled into the garage at Whole Foods and found a blue Prius hogging my space. I finished a cappuccino at Whole Foods Cafe, then checked the garage. Still there. I ordered a Balboa Blast and drank it, then checked again. Still there. I shopped for the entire week. Still there. And the Prius has a gas tank backup!

    Hopping mad, I started up the stairs to complain to customer service. Until I realized that increased surveillance on the Prius might mean increased surveillance on a certain new black Nissan Leaf. Until I realized that the Prius owner had just as much right to complain about me for hogging the space while leaving the store.

    Then Park Merced Apartments starting charging for charging. And Whole Foods hired a security guard who informed me he had an eye on my Leaf.

    Then I got a credit card bill with charges from Whole Foods that could feed a small country. Along with two passport applications rejected because of errors. Which is really too bad because there is a charging station at SFO’s International Terminal.

    Now, even though I return from my run with a DVD, cilantro, lemons, and Greek olives and have put in a word for my family with the Armenian God, I don’t feel as triumphant as I used to. Because there in the driveway sits the Leaf, sucking energy from our outlet.

    But here comes my husband running excitedly out the door and down the porch steps.

    “What can you think of to buy at Walgreens? Their charging stations are still free!”

    Lynn Hollenbeck, an attorney and nonfiction writer, grew up in East Hampton.

     The year was 1991. I was 14 years old. Scallops had made a comeback, and the price was very low. Local markets wanted to pay my father, Calvin, only $4 a pound shucked. It was at the point where my dad told us shuckers that if we wanted a job, we would have to take less money per pound to shuck or he wasn’t going to go anymore until the price came up. We were getting $1.25 per pound to open scallops then.

    Robyn Bennett, Dad’s number-one shucker, started calling every restaurant in town, peddling scallops. “Kelly, go make a sign and put it up in the front yard,” Robyn said. “Just like old man William Havens is doing.”

    Dad called up Havens and said, “Kelly’s putting up a sign to sell scallops here. What are you selling them for out of your house?” We had to keep the price the same. It was $10 per pound.

    Dad made it very clear: He caught them, we shucked and sold them. He would not wait on customers, that was our job. At that, Dad’s shuckers were back in business.

    Robyn, being an awesome saleslady, got Dad restaurant accounts. So it went. Robyn and I busted our asses and moved a lot of fresh local product and the rest is history.

    Some years were great, some were not. The following year we didn’t have scallops here. I got a phone call from baymen over in Southampton — they had the scallops! Local markets wanted to pay them $6 a pound for shucked meats, just as the markets tried to do to my dad. The Vandyke boys from Southampton brought Robyn and me their scallops to shuck and sell. We got the Vandyke boys $12 a pound and they were very happy. We were happy to be employed.

    Then there was the year we all used looking boxes and scoop nets in Three Mile Harbor. Dad would bring home 10 to 15 pounds a day, still a day’s pay. In those days, George, of Gordon’s restaurant in Amagansett, was Dad’s number-one guy. George got his scallops before anyone else. Don’t we all miss Gordon’s? The best food in town.

    Dad knew I had everything under control. I made sure the shop was clean and tidy, scallops were properly handled, shuckers were paid, and orders went out on time. I shucked away and Dad’s lifelong fishing partner, Brent Bennett, stuck a $100 bill in my pocket for all my hard work. At 14 years old, that was gold to me. I was so excited. It was something I never forgot.

    I would get paid for my shucking, and I would make a profit off other baymen, say, $2 a pound for every pound I sold. I never wanted to make a profit off my dad, but at the end of the day, he would throw me cash and insist I take it. I was so proud when Dad told Mom that I was just as good as he was at shucking scallops. After all, I was Dad’s right-hand girl. We worked very hard together and we made it work.

    Dad passed away a young man, at 54, in August 2007. His death left a gaping hole in this fishing community. Robyn died a few years later.

    In the fall of 2010, I got a phone call from my brother, Paul. “Come to Little Albert’s now. Pick up my dogs, and bring me five gallons of gas for the boat.”

    My neighbor and best friend, Terri, jumped in the truck and headed right for the bay. Paul, gleaming with joy and excitement, had found the mother lode of scallops. Racking the dredges right to the blade, Terri and I going, “Holy shit, wow, that’s awesome!”

    Back in the day, in the 1960s and ’70s, before my time, the old-timers like Milton Miller used to scallop off Little Albert’s and Bonac Creek once the inside waters were either frozen solid or depleted of scallops. That fall and winter, I told everyone that Paul kept half the town employed. As many as 60 bushels in that shucking shack at a time. Shucking scallops that year with all those young men who didn’t have a clue how to shuck was very interesting, to say the least. A lot of scallops got butchered in the process. It was bad.

    “Stop! Everybody just stop opening, please,” I shouted. So one by one I gave lessons to young local fishermen on how to shuck scallops, one being my boyfriend, Billy. Now he’s professional, almost as good as I am.

    The following year it was time to move on. I needed my own place. The cold, bitter reality was that things would never be the same without my right-hand man, Dad. Times had changed and everyone had differences. Billy and I built our own shucking shack at our house.

    The end result was great, because before there hadn’t been enough room to accommodate so many people and scallops. Although I did have a lady stop by and tell me how rotten I was for setting up shop next to my brother. I looked her dead in the face and said, “This is my business. Robyn and I started this for my dad when I was 14 years old.”

    So we have two shucking shacks up and running, with a total of about 12 fishermen. It doesn’t matter who you purchase your scallops from, we all work together.

    It is a source of great pride that the big fish companies are coming to me, begging me to sell them scallops for cost. I tell them our price is $20 per pound, at least for now.

    Last year we were shucking and open for business on Thanksgiving and through the new year. I must say my customers are great. I usually know exactly what they want. A few years ago I was told to stop talking to them so much. Now I can talk all I want at my own place. I have customers who stop by just to chat. I love it.

    Dad and I once had a customer who wanted a discount. I will never forget Dad saying to the guy, “There’s the truck, boat, and dredges. Boy, take it. You go pull on those irons for a while and then come back and tell me you want a discount.”

    One time I got an order from a local fish market for 10 pounds of scallops shucked — and do not rinse them! I shucked out the 10 pounds, did not rinse them, and delivered them. The owner of the market started in with me and swore I had rinsed them. I’d just shucked them myself. That’s how I open my scallops. My scallops are perfect and I open clean. After all, I learned from the best of the best, my dad.

    I turned around to the man and said, “If you don’t believe me, come to my shucking shack and watch me open 10 more pounds.” I was pissed. First off, I do not lie. I went home and told Billy what had gone on. If that guy ever calls here again, tell him no!

    Come on down to the sucking shacks on Abraham’s Path. Meet our local fishermen. Taste the most delicious, sweetest bay scallops in the world. My scallops are featured in some of the finest restaurants in Manhattan. My oysters have become known as Golden Abraham’s Path Oysters. I thought that was great!

    What fun it is to watch your dinner being shucked by local fishermen.

    Kelly Lester lives in East Hampton.

    With a federal budget deal apparently at hand, the facts of Social Security financing need to be re-emphasized. Last April, when President Obama, in a gesture of compromise to Republicans, proposed cuts to Social Security benefits to help reduce budget deficits, liberal Democrats were outraged. At the time, Republicans simply ignored the federal budget, preferring to create havoc over raising the nation’s debt limit. Eight months later, behind-the-scenes negotiations to come up with one are taking place, with Social Security cuts still on the table.

    What is most peculiar is that no one in either party has challenged the president’s assumption that cutting Social Security benefits will reduce government spending. The reality, as most Americans know, is that Social Security is self-supporting and has nothing whatever to do with the federal budget. It is the nation’s collective 401(k). Every employee contributes 6.2 percent of his or her salary into a trust fund, and those amounts are matched equally by employers. Retirement benefits are paid from that fund to American workers who have contributed during their working years, and to their survivors.

    The Social Security Administration manages the fund, investing its balances in Treasury bonds. All the money in the fund today — nearly $3 trillion, or more than three years’ worth of benefit payments — came from, and belongs to, American working people; none came from the government’s “general revenues” (except for the interest the government pays on its bonds, regardless of who owns them). Most Americans understand all this. Comments like “Social Security does not cost the government a dime” appear regularly in the web postings of ordinary citizens.

    So how did the false idea that the government “spends” money on Social Security spread? The answer is that ever since the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, most politicians and public policy experts have argued that only the federal government can guarantee retirement benefits. All the European retirement systems that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisers studied as models, beginning with Bismarck’s German system in 1889, relied on government money to bolster workers’ contributions when, as was expected, those contributions were insufficient to pay promised benefits. F.D.R.’s cabinet and his advisers believed that the U.S. system would follow the same pattern.

    Not F.D.R. He insisted that every dollar would come from the contributions of working Americans and their employers; America’s retirement system would carry no hint of “the dole.” Payroll contributions, he said, give the contributors “a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions.” If the system runs low on money, the contribution rates would have to be raised. By removing the government from responsibility for funding benefits, F.D.R. argued, “no damn politician can ever scrap my Social Security program.”

    As in most New Deal programs, F.D.R. had his way. The 1935 Social Security Act contained no provision for government financing of retirement benefits. Most of Washington criticized the omission, and the political urge to change the law remained strong. In May 1977, when President Jimmy Carter asked Congress to raise the rates for Social Security contributions (the trust fund had run down to barely three months’ worth of benefit payments), he also asked for new legislation to allow the federal government “to compensate the Social Security trust funds from general revenues.”

    Support for Carter’s request came from 70-year-old Tom Eliot, who as a young lawyer from Harvard had played the major role in drafting the original Social Security bill. Permitting the government to supplement payroll contributions from general revenues, Eliot wrote, would “get rid of the notion that the system should be forever ‘self-supporting.’ ” The payroll contribution, he continued, “while necessary to effectuate the contributory principle, is a regressive tax and should be held at a very low rate.”

    However, neither Carter nor Eliot reckoned with the enormous popularity of Social Security among the American people, based on the very ideals that F.D.R. defended. Although Carter got all the changes in contribution rates he had asked for (the rate rose in increments from 4.95 percent to 5.4 percent by 1982), Congress did not allow the federal government to shift other federal funds into the system. Jim Guy Tucker, a young representative from Arkansas at the time, exemplified Congress’s opposition. “My father,” Tucker said, “was manager of the Social Security system in Arkansas, and I grew up with a respect and understanding of Social Security and its importance for the working people of this country.”

    Social Security remains to this day self-funded. The contribution rate was raised to 6.2 percent in 1990, in anticipation of baby boomers’ retirements, and it has not been changed since. With the trust fund surplus now covering over three years of payouts, the system’s actuaries expect clear sailing for at least 15 years. If any problems arise after that, they can be dealt with, as in the past, by slight increases in the contribution rate or, more likely, increases in the salary cap (now $113,700) on which the rate is collected.

    Social Security has no role to play in efforts to reduce government spending and no place in debates over how to reduce government deficits. The challenge for American working people, now and in the future, is to remind Washington of that fact.

    Malcolm Mitchell, who lives in New York City and East Hampton, is editor and publisher of Investment Policy magazine. His e-book, “Up From Gold,” was recently published on Amazon.

    When Goldberg’s Bagels opened in Montauk last year I laughed inside. I recalled the story a woman had told me, about how years ago she’d waited on line for a bagel and lox at Herb’s Market and was told if she wanted locks, she had to go to the hardware store across the street.

    I started driving to Montauk five days a week about 11 years ago when I met my business partner, Jill Fleming. Jill’s up there on the WASP-o-meter. Blond, blue-eyed, stoic, Canadian. She works hard, lives well, and can make me seem like the female version of Woody Allen. We started our advertising and design firm in an addition to her home. You could say we balance each other, or that we couldn’t be more different.

    When I met the Fleming family, Maggie was 8, Mack was 11, and despite the fact that she never cared all that much about Christmas, Jill bent over backward to make the season special for them. Her husband, Thom, a fine carpenter and local fireman, was way more into it — taking care of buying a great big tree, always putting a beautiful wreath on the door, and filling the house with bright red amaryllis. There were stockings for everyone, even the dogs. I loved every bit of it, and looked forward to delivering presents from the Springs Santa each year.

    Despite the fact that my parents celebrated Hanukkah with us, lit the menorah every night, made potato latkes, spun dreidels, and even gave us gifts eight days in a row, I was a little girl with visions of sugarplums dancing through her head. At age 4, I hid under a neighbor’s tree, hoping to disappear into the pine scent, magic tinsel, and twinkly lights. I sang carols whenever I could, even a cappella in Grand Central Station (the acoustics are amazing). I organized Project Santa Claus at my high school — a bunch of us, dressed as elves, went door to door collecting toys and gifts from retailers and marched them over (with Santa Claus) to the children’s wing at the local hospital.

    Finally, I married a lovely Englishman, raised in the Church of England. I thought, “At last, I can deck the halls and get a tree.” Of course my parents’ voices were loud and clear in my head saying, “It’s not your holiday.” But Simon, the Englishman, didn’t want a tree; he wasn’t interested. He barely wanted to exchange gifts. “I’ll go along with the nonsense if you need me to,” he said. Humbug!

    When we moved to Montauk, on Christmas Eve in 2007, something shifted. Of course, the sunsets here were better, the sky and the ocean were bigger. Hiking became a new passion. But . . . in Montauk, the streets are decorated for Christmas, the Lighthouse is decked with lights for Christmas, and nary a latke can be found. Within days of moving in, a man across the street waved me over. “I heard I had a new neighbor. Your name is Schwartz, right?” The schools in my new hometown are open on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur even though they’re closed in East Hampton. And, I’ve never been invited to break the fast or for a Shabbos dinner on this side of the Napeague stretch.

    But on a cold December morning when I walked into the office at blumenfeld + fleming, I was startled, not by the wreath on the door, but the sign someone had placed over the top of it. A wood carving with a child’s handwriting announced: “Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hanukkah from b+f.” Carved underneath the words was a menorah. Mack Fleming had made the sign in wood shop. I think he was in seventh or eighth grade. No one had asked him to do this. But, this boy was acknowledging my holiday. He wanted me to know I was included — and that we could celebrate together.

    That for me is the spirit of Christmas, the spirit of Hanukkah, the spirit of brotherhood, the spirit of everything worth celebrating. And yes, all these years later, there is nothing I won’t do for that boy.

    Lynn Blumenfeld, co-partner at blumenfeld + fleming, is a member of the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop. Her first novel, “Finding Grace,” set in Montauk, was excerpted in Beach magazine’s September issue.

    My neighbor the slob hasn’t been blown in almost two weeks.

    I sit here watching leaves fall in his yard, leaf by leaf, a Chinese water torture. Leaf by leaf. I want to run over there and catch the leaves before they hit the ground. But that would be trespassing. It’s his rotting yard.

    You see, he’s away. In the city, where he does something. I’m not sure what. Now and then he shows up. I don’t wave.

    What right has he, an away person, to mess up the whole neighborhood with his sloppiness?

    Maybe he’s become one of those Ban the Blowers — a secret conspirator against tidiness. Somebody shoved one of their fliers in my mailbox yesterday. Him? Is he goading me to run screaming into his yard and blow it? (Not me. That’s why we have workers. Leaves support the poorhouse industry out here. They blow, we pay. Everybody’s happy.)

    The Ban the Blowers say blowers are too noisy. They ruin the “quality of life,” whatever that is. Well, let me tell you something, my quality of life is destroyed by the accumulating rot next door.

    And besides, what’s the matter with noise? I welcome it. Hear the roaring traffic and the airplane racket — busy people with busy lifestyles. What’s wrong with that? You want sloth?

    Here in Springs we have one-half-acre lots and each requires two or three leaf-blowing fellows to tidy up — the little guys I see hanging out at the train station waiting to blow. When I hear the screams of blowers, I think redemption! These guys have work! We’re all working! This is industry! America up off its butt! Win, win!

    I say to the leftie Ban the Blowers, take your bamboo rakes and go back where you came from. Noise is beautiful!

    Here’s what the elite anti-leaf blowers say at BantheBlowers.org: “Our citizens are unwillingly exposed to hazardous carcinogens like hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, whipped up in hurricane-force windstorms of pesticides, fertilizers, mold, lead, arsenic, mercury, fecal matter, and more. . . . A leaf blower generates as much tailpipe emissions in one hour as an automobile does in over 350 miles and deposits it all in one front or back yard.”

    Yeah right. Big words. Where’s the proof? I think I have to check these factoids. Fox News told me leaf lefties fake their “research” — you know the morning show with the long-neck-tied guys and the girl in the middle with her skirt up to here? I trust them. The jury is still out. I have lots of questions.

    Meanwhile, my slobby neighbor has still not shown up. And he still hasn’t been blown.

    I just wrote a note and I will sneak it over and tack it on his door. Here’s what I said, a quote from some old movie, “You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just pucker up your lips and blow.”

    Maybe he will get the hint.

    Bill Henderson of Springs is thinking of buying a rake.