People who study suicide scientifically, like me, have long recognized how society stigmatizes those who complete suicide and their remaining relatives. Historical records show that during the Middle Ages suicide corpses were regularly mutilated to prevent the unleashing of evil spirits. Suicides were denied burial in church cemeteries. Afterward, the property of their surviving kin was usually confiscated, and families were excommunicated for failing to pay the heavy tithes expected by the church.

    Today analysts claim suicide stigma is subtler, with blame being cast upon bereaved relatives, often called survivors, and survivors being subjected to informal isolation and shunning.

    As a survivor of my son’s suicide (he died tragically 10 years ago at age 31) and as a survey research sociologist, I wanted to further investigate contemporary suicide stigma. To do so I assembled a team to more thoroughly study this subject — my wife, Beverly Feigelman, who is a social worker, and two psychologists with great expertise in the bereavement field. We amassed a nationwide sample of 462 suicide-bereaved parents and 113 other bereaved parents who were kind enough to fill out our lengthy and exhaustive 27-page questionnaire. The findings from this massive data collection greatly illuminate the post-loss adaptations of bereaved parents and are summarized in our recent book, “Devastating Losses: How Parents Cope With the Death of a Child to Suicide or Drugs” (Springer Publishing, 2012).

    One of our most striking findings was that half of the suicide-bereaved parents and half those whose children died from drug-related causes heard comments from socially significant others blaming the child or the parent after the death. People heard remarks such as, “It’s just as well he died; he was tearing your life apart anyway and was only going further downhill.” “She was so selfish, only thinking about herself.” “That was such a cowardly thing he did.” “Didn’t you see it coming? Why didn’t you get him into therapy?”

    Almost none of the other parents whose children died from ordinary accidents or natural causes had heard blaming comments like these. Such comments produced a twofold vexation for bereaved parents. For one, they devalued the importance of their deceased child, essentially claiming that he or she was not worth grieving over. Grief experts call this disenfranchised grief. For another, they inspired even greater blame on the part of the bereaved parent, who unceasingly nags himself or herself afterward for not having averted the suicide or drug-death disaster. These parents usually feel they don’t need any extra help to examine themselves in their obsessive ruminations about what they could or should have done to prevent the death.

    Suicide-bereaved parents also faced other manifestations of stigma following their children’s deaths. Avoidance was very common, with close friends and family avoiding them, not mentioning the deceased child’s name after the death, quickly changing the subject at the mention of the deceased child, averting any discussions about the bereaved parent’s recovery, and making comments to the effect that, “Isn’t it time for you to move beyond your grief now?”

    We developed a 22-item scale of stigmatization, and the suicide survivors showed the highest scores on this scale, while natural-death survivors showed the least stigmatization. Many of our suicide-bereaved respondents stated that it was difficult for them to publicly mention their children’s cause of death. Some, even many years after the death, still remained unable to openly admit that their child died from a suicide or a drug overdose. These deaths were riddled with shame, embarrassment, and feelings of being shunned.

    With our scale it was noted that more than half of the suicide-bereaved parents reported that one or more close family member and more than one-third of close friends had reacted unhelpfully and unsympathetically after the death. Unfortunately for these more stigmatized bereaved parents, they experienced greater grief difficulties, more complicated grief, and more assorted psychological problems than their counterparts, who gained more compassion and support from friends and family after their children’s deaths.

    One of the important take-away points from this research appears to be that suicide and mental health difficulties are interwoven with secrecy, shame, and humiliation. Anyone alleged to harbor mental health problems or suicidal impulses is be likely to be demonized. With this as a likely possibility, most people will be especially reluctant to articulate their own suicidal impulses. Not very many will be able to handle the revelation of suicidality in other persons, as well. Therefore, no good friend will want to risk humiliating another by asking about suicidal impulses, fearing for the enduring scorn and condemnation that might be heaped upon that person.

    Two recent studies among family doctors suggested that even among these important health providers only a minority would be willing to broach the suicide subject with their patients. These two separate studies showed samples of U.S. doctors’ information on patients with unambiguous signs of clinical depression and great anxiety. Only a third of these sampled doctors said they would have asked the patients if they were contemplating suicide. For the most part, the doctors did not want to risk embarrassing these patients and did not feel sufficiently competent to ask them about their suicide risks.

    We live in a society where too many of us feel timidity and reticence to approach the suicidality within our midst. With this mind-set we only add to the suicide risks of those who are mentally vulnerable among us.

    For most of us, if we witness someone in great physical distress, someone coughing violently, in a convulsive state, or showing some other sign of a serious physical health abnormality, we would ask if that person is having difficulties and offer to take him or her to a hospital or a doctor’s office for immediate help. Yet we refrain from doing this with mental illnesses, and then sometimes suffer the consequences of enduring very tragic outcomes.

   William Feigelman, a longtime resident of Springs, is professor emeritus of sociology at Nassau Community College in Garden City.

   In the end it really boiled down to Nelson Osborne declaring it wasn’t a good idea. The proposal to consider a name change for the Incorporated Village of East Hampton developed at a village board meeting and ended with reader feedback through The East Hampton Star. Jud Banister, well into his third term as village mayor, surfaced the suggested name change at the board’s regular March 21, 1941, meeting. The minutes reflect that the board members C. Louis Edwards, Charles O. Gould, Chester M. Cloud, and Willard B. Livingston, and the clerk, J. Edward Gay Jr., “were enthusiastic concerning the proposed change, and requested that Mayor Banister write a letter to the East Hampton Star in which he would recommend the change. . . .” The Star published his letter the following week.

    “Suggests Change of Name to Maidstone From East Hampton,” declared the eye-catching title of a letter to the editor starting on the front page. As background, Jud pointed out that the village boundaries were the same as the old Maidstone Fire District, and “since the incorporation and more particularly since I have become Mayor, it has been brought to my attention many times that a large number of our people would like to change the name of the Incorporated Village of East Hampton to the Village of Maidstone.” He went on to say he had written the postmaster general to determine any possible issues.

    The official reply noted that while there were a number of other East Hamptons of both one and two words in other states, there were no other Maidstones. Further, the post office would have no objection to a name change.

    Jud told The Star his purpose was to start a discussion though the paper of the advisability of changing the village’s name. He closed by asking, “Will you kindly publish this letter so that the people may be informed, and I hope they will express themselves without restraint.”

    He got what he asked for, if not what he hoped. Over the next two weeks, readers’ comments came in. Though not overwhelming in number, they were clear in message. In short notes, Mrs. Francis H. McIver and Mrs. Virginia Kent Cummins enthusiastically endorsed the name change. Mrs. McIver, lamenting that East Hampton was not sufficiently socially distinct from Southampton, proclaimed that the name Maidstone “is euphonious and charming.” A call to action if ever there was one! Mrs. Cummins called the proposed name “a beautiful name — a distinguished name with international associations” and thought the mayor’s suggestion should be implemented, “the sooner the better!”

    But three others objected. And perhaps the most persuasive was Nelson C. Osborne’s lengthy defense of keeping the name East Hampton.

    Nelson wasn’t just anybody, but, as he pointed out with unabashed pride, a ninth-generation Main Street Osborne tracing to the first English settlers of East Hampton. In addition, he served three terms as president of the incorporated village from 1922 to 1925 before the title was changed to mayor. He started his letter, “It is with reluctance that I take pen in hand to oppose any change in the name of this community. Our good mayor is honest in his opinion and has the best interests of the Village at heart, but I do not believe he has ‘thought through’ on the subject.” The education of Jud and the board began so they could think it through.

    Osborne went on to remind readers that East Hampton had been the name for nearly 300 years and no one had felt the need to change it before. He further challenged the notion that the area had been called Maidstone for any significant length of time, citing Judge Henry P. Hedges’s “History of East Hampton” (1897) as evidence that it was called East Hampton at least as early as 1650. Osborne further cited town records pointing to the original land purchase from the Native Americans by Gov. Theophilus Eaton of the Colony of New Haven and Gov. Edward Hopkins of the Colony of Connecticut. That agreement, considered a deed for the land, was then assigned to the “inhabitants of East Hampton.”

    Town records proved that the name East Hampton was consistently and purposefully used from 1649 to 1651 at the town’s formation. Suggesting that the village fathers perhaps had little moral authority to change the name, Osborne closed his letter by saying, “Two generations will hardly suffice to effect the change in the mind of man — the only place where it really means anything. To those living today it will always be East Hampton.”

    A week later, Jack Hadder, writing from the University of Maryland, which he was attending, expressed similar views. Jack’s father served a period as town historian and compiled a history of the men who served in World War I, including the two New York Guard companies, Jud commanding Company 1 at the time. Jack had started writing his letter before he saw Nelson Osborne’s, and in a postscript to The Star suggested that they might not need to print his since his views mirrored Osborne’s. The Star printed both letter and postscript.

    Perhaps capturing the sentiment of many who cherished the existing name and its associated history, Jack declared, “Surely those of us who ‘stick up’ for such things as tradition don’t want to have been born in East Hampton, lived in East Hampton, and died in Maidstone.”

    No other letters to the editor were printed in the following weeks, and village minutes never reflected any initiative to put the issue before the voters. One of Jud’s strengths as mayor was his ability to seek and listen to all sides of a debate. He did, and though the number of comments were few, the weight of the opposition’s arguments, especially from a ninth-generation Main Street Osborne, were sufficient.

    Osborne, always one to view any issue solely on its merits as he saw them, would months later strongly endorse through The Star Jud’s recommendation that the village purchase the decaying Dominy house on North Main Street for its historical value, containing both the family clock and woodworking shops. Both men were to be disappointed when no support was forthcoming, but Jud’s appeal and Osborne’s endorsement came only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, when the war consumed the public’s attention.

    Jud was still mayor during East Hampton’s 300th anniversary in 1948. As irony would manifest itself, he played the role of Gov. Edward Hopkins in the Guild Hall Players’ historical pageant, in scene two of the second episode, depicting buying from the Indians the land that became East Hampton. Is it possible that standing at the edge of the village green, Nelson Osborne turned to a nearby Mulford, or Gardiner, or Edwards, and said, “Do you remember the time the good mayor proposed renaming East Hampton?”

    Steve Rideout, who lives in Shutesbury, Mass., regularly visits East Hampton to research family history. Jud Banister was the great-uncle of his wife, Carol Stanley Rideout.

    Daisy, Violet, and Gladiola are flowers, but they’re also people who happen to have charming floral names popular in England when they were born. These three blossoms are known among family and friends as the Three Flowers. Perennials who are getting past their prime, first bloom long gone, but they remain vital, engaged, and reasonably healthy for their 96, 93, and 88 years.

    Violet is my mother-in-law, whose 93rd birthday we celebrated recently in England, where she lives. Her mind is tip-top, her legs give her a bit of trouble, and she walks with a cane, but she never complains. Except about her oldest son, my husband’s older brother. She reports that he’s forgetting things and repeating himself and she thinks he’s starting to lose it at 70.

    A knitter like Madame Defarge, she knits tea cozies and doll outfits to raffle for orphanages and raise money for British troops in Afghanistan. The local paper lauds her efforts at giving back to the community. Violet leads a very full life and looks forward to canal boat trips, shopping expeditions, and local theater productions. We just got our first e-mail from her to inform us that she is now online. She cooks herself a hot meal at midday. A bit of a demon on the senior scooter that we bought for her, she does her shopping in the neighborhood and whizzes around like a Hells Angel granny. On a shopping expedition to IKEA to buy things for her flat, which she is redecorating, she careened around the aisles waving her list like a flag. We trotted meekly behind trying to keep up.

    She lives in her own little flat in a senior citizens development with her own living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath. Most mornings at 11 she has coffee in the lounge with the other seniors.

    The commodious lounge is the hub of gossip, parties, and dinners with residents and guests alike. Violet helps organize Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve parties. They had a special tea party with champagne, sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and jam and wore fancy hats to celebrate the wedding of Prince William and Kate. The other residents call Violet the Queen Mum, and a special wingback chair is reserved for her use. No one else dares to sit in it. She gets the royal treatment being the next-to-oldest person in the compound. A glittery tiara she wears occasionally accents her regal demeanor. She has perfected the Queen Elizabeth wave, and took a tour of the public rooms at Buckingham Palace, where in the gift shop she bought me two white tea towels with the royal crest embroidered in gold thread.

    Gladiola, or Glad, as she is called, is my sister-in-law’s mother. She was a talented seamstress who for years worked in a factory sewing dresses. The youngest flower, she is gossip central and takes pride in breaking news before anyone else. She doesn’t always get the facts straight but is a fountain of information nonetheless. Glad is also the designated tea and coffee maker to guests and residents alike.

    “Would you like a nice cup of tea? How about a coffee?” British biscuits, cookies in America, are passed around, including my favorite, Scottish shortbread.

    Daisy, my husband’s aunt, used to live in the flat next door to Violet but now resides in a nursing home since she needs more care. My husband, Violet, Glad, and I went to visit Daisy. When we walked into the room, Daisy was slumped in a wheelchair but rapidly came to life when my husband said, “Aunty Daisy, it’s me, Mick.”

    Daisy answered, “Mickey from America,” remembering that he lives in the States.

    We had a good visit talking about the old days and what a terrific cook Daisy was, especially her peach and apple pies. Daisy asked, “Where is Charlie?” — her dead husband — and “Where is Peter?” — her son killed years ago in a car accident. When asked how the food was, she said, “Palatable,” not a bad Scrabble word. As we said our farewells, Daisy took my husband’s face in her arthritic hands, stroked his beard with crooked fingers, and said, “I always loved you, Mickey. But get rid of that beard.” And she laughed.

    My mother-in-law, in her own wheelchair, faced the opposite direction — dueling wheelchairs; one heading toward death, the other away from it. The opposing chairs’ arms touched but created a barrier for the women. Violet managed to lean over and plant a kiss, maybe for the last time, on Daisy’s withered cheek.

    “Love you, Dais.”

    “Love you too, Vi.”

    Two flowers having lived through many seasons together, now wilting and preparing to return to the soil that had nourished them. I started to cry but turned away so Daisy couldn’t see my tears.

    Joanne Pateman is a regular contributor of “Guestwords.” She lives in Southampton.

    As a resident of greater Philadelphia, a summer resident of Montauk, I sat in horror as I watched the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. It was my wake-up call and I knew I had to do something, so I headed to Staten Island.

    Kissam Avenue may be the single most devastated street that bore Sandy’s savage assault. Eight houses redeemable — I have worked with a circle of friends on Bob’s house and Nancy’s house, watching their pained faces as we dismantled the interior of their homes prior to rebuilding. In addition to those eight houses, there were eight more clearly beyond repair and 17 that are gone. Gone! The 12-foot surge pulverized them and the churning waves that followed scoured what remained.

    With Mother’s Day approaching, I am reminded of those warnings we got as young boys and girls, “Listen to your mother.” It might have been over something quite minor, but if my father said, “Listen to your mother,” there was likely some trouble ahead if I didn’t.

    What about these messages that Mother Earth is sending us? Who is listening to her? Who is heeding her cries?

    “The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15,” President Obama said in his State of the Union speech. “Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods — all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late.”

    Perhaps we should not only be listening to our mother but also to our scientists. Are we at a tipping point, or, more starkly, a “point of no return”?

    Mother Earth has spoken beautifully and powerfully over the eons of deep global history, graciously giving us “spacious skies and amber waves of grain.” She has been a voice of bounty, beauty, and balance, and her story brims with instructions that we ignore at our peril.

    The evidence is overwhelming: catastrophic global storms and alarming melting of the Arctic sea ice. A mass of dead water debris the size of Massachusetts floats at the mouth of the Mississippi, and a similar island the size of Texas drifts in the North Atlantic. Snowmelt, a primary source of water supply in the Northwest, is rapidly diminishing. Aquifers across the country and the lakes and rivers in the Northeast are being steadily compromised.

    The statistics are daunting, but discouragement disables listening . . . and acting. Thankfully, there are inspiring stories of individuals and communities taking action, along with promising legislative options.

    Maria Aguinda, an elder of the Quechua indigenous people of Ecuador, succeeded as lead plaintiff in a $9.5 billion lawsuit against an oil-producing giant.

    May Boeve and a dozen others challenged their alma mater, Middlebury College, to reduce carbon emissions — and formed one of the world’s largest action networks, Step It Up, in the process.

    The city of Chicago gathered the creativity and courage to take on stiff corporate resistance and establish more than 200 rooftop gardens, including at City Hall — 2.5 million square feet of green that purify and store water and reduce summer temperatures.

    Waterloo, Ontario, distributed 40,000 rain barrels that have reduced public water depletion by 12.7 million gallons each year.

    Legislative action must accompany individual and community action. A bill introduced this year by Senators Barbara Boxer (Democrat of California) and Bernie Sanders (a Vermont independent) is promising. It calls for a fee on carbon with a portion of that revenue returned to the public.

    Those demolished houses on Staten Island told me that it is time that I listen to my mother, and not just on Mother’s Day. Yes, listen to your mother . . . and act!

    Howard E. Friend, a former pastor of the Montauk Community Church, is an organizational consultant, teacher, and writer. He is active in the Pachamama Alliance, which helps indigenous people in the Amazon rain forest preserve their land and culture.

    Let us say that my brother is married to a woman from Yemen. Let us say that they are good people (whatever you think that means). Let us say that she and my brother have become estranged, but share custody of their children. Let us say that they are good parents. Let us say that their son learned Latin at Boston College, their daughter Arabic at the University of Maryland. Let us say my sister-in-law once worked as an actuary for the I.R.S.

    She worked after that for Morton-Thiokol, as the company was then named, in Utah. The company produced table salt for the American family and rocket propulsion systems for the U.S. military. I never knew which division she was in. Did she have a finger in my spice shelf, or a hand in government missile projects about which she could not tell me one word?

    She has extended family and friends in Yemen. There have been many calls from that country to this and this country to that over many years. There have been calls to government officials about obtaining student visas. There have been calls to artists about painting urban vistas. There have been calls cousin to cousin, nephew to aunt. There have been thousands of e-mails, e-mails with photos of babies, e-mails with photos of women in burqas, photos of men with guns, out in the woods of the Adirondacks in New York, looking for turkeys. And other men in other countries with guns.

    Both my brother and sister-in-law live in Utah near the former Thiokol headquarters. When I moved to Maryland I swear I did not know that Thiokol had a thriving plant in Elkton, a bottle-rocket’s flight from my new house. I swear it. I did not know.

    I call my brother on the telephone on a weekly basis. (We both have health issues.) He is an important figure in his community, an attorney. I have been described as a ne’er-do-well painter or poet. But we both know the telephone country-code for Yemen. We know it by heart.

    Let us say there is a knock on my door when I am home alone, painting.

    Let us say I have sent my brother a JPEG of “Three Paintings Against Three Wars” on the Internet. That once when pissed my e-mail to him said that Dick Cheney was an evil bastard. (I wrote that then in caps to make sure he got the point.) Suddenly I remember sending my brother an e-mail denying that Americans walked on the moon. It was Kubrick, or Spielberg, I wrote, using aliens in Arizona. Look at Armstrong’s picture of Aldrin with the American flag beside him. Look at “Whistler’s Mother.” If the moon shot wasn’t composed by an artist, why if you lay one picture over another is there white on white, gray on gray, black on black?

    Let us say that though I have a wife and adult daughter I am told I may make only one telephone call.

    Let us say I love this country of my birth.

    Brother, can I call you? Did I have the wrong sister-in-law? Or the wrong big brother? Why are they doing this?

    Man, will you save me? I’m calling you now. Calling on you now. Please answer. Please.

    Dan Marsh, a native Long Islander, is a previous “Guestwords” contributor. He writes from Garrett Park, Md.

    You line up like a captive on a pirate ship, steeling yourself for the final walk off the plank. Common sense reminds you that air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation. And yet just to be on the safe side, you surreptitiously glance at the other passengers to catch a sign of any instability that might have been overlooked during check-in.

    Suddenly a voice is heard over the speaker system, “The flight to Miami will be late taking off,” and a collective groan is heard from the passengers on line. Everyone scatters as cellphones are whipped out of pockets to notify the travelers’ friends and families to start dinner without them.

    This simple announcement can trigger a variety of scenarios in the mind of an imaginative passenger. Is it a simple maintenance issue that is causing the delay, or is a temporary fix being applied to an airplane that has made one too many flights? Although the sun is shining at the departure airport, perhaps a decision has been made to delay the flight until a series of tornadoes moves out of the flight path. To the suspicious mind, images of drunken pilots and called-in bomb threats increase an already tense mood.

    There was a magazine article many years ago that advised fearful fliers never to read about or view photos of airplane crashes. However, even without media input, it is very difficult today to insulate yourself from the ominous possibilities of air travel. How many ways can you rationalize the need for removing your shoes when going through security other than acknowledging their possible use as containers for explosives? Or do you start to become uneasy while undergoing the latest hand-scanning for bomb-making residue?

    What determines your level of anxiety as an airline passenger? People fly for business, pleasure, or as the result of an emergency, sickness, or death. Expectations of what awaits you upon disembarking influence your emotions when flying. If you are going to visit your mom in the hospital the entire trip will be spent anticipating her condition. It’s already party time if your destination is a beautiful tropical island or reunion with a loved one.

    We all know people who can never relinquish control of any situation as well as happy souls who are content just to be alive. If we fall into that first group, we become anxious when abdicating our control, but we’ve learned to employ different methods to sooth our anxiety. If felled by a serious illness we still maintain the right to choose the doctor who will care for us and to research his or her qualifications. When we fly we have no idea whose hands we are placing our lives into. That soothing voice telling us to relax and enjoy the ride could be the voice of a severely depressed person planning on flying himself and us into oblivion.

    People with controlling personalities experience an uncomfortable sense of helplessness when they become simply part of the pack. And unless your face appears continuously on the front page of magazines, you will become just another anxious face in the crowd while waiting to board an airplane.

    The social equity seemingly established while waiting to board vanishes when the magical words “boarding first class” are heard. The reality surfaces that there are three classes of people who fly: the wealthy, the frequent flier road warrior, and everyone else. The third class quietly watches while the privileged few elbow to the front of the line with superior smiles on their faces. Their self-esteem plummets to new lows as they contemplate what the words “first class” mean. If they’re not in it does that mean that they are second class? And what does that imply? None of these thoughts help to relax the already disgruntled passenger.

    You have spent the two hours waiting to board your flight thoroughly studying your fellow passengers and are finally satisfied that there are no terrorists on board. Only then do you notice that in the corner someone is hacking away with what is certain to be a highly contagious virus, while several people back is a young family with four children all under the age of 6. Possible death or certain torture — which of these passengers would you want to sit next to?

    Finally you are seated on the plane. It is backing out and your long ordeal is over. The plane comes to a screeching halt and the captain’s voice can be heard thanking us for our patience but he’s sorry to say a minor glitch has come up and we must return to the gate. As we slump back into our seats we wonder what the code words “minor glitch” really mean.

    Maybe that happy soul across the aisle has some extra happy pills he can share.

    Sandy Camillo, a regular “Guestwords” contributor, lives in St. Louis and East Hampton.

   My mother just sent me a birthday card with the five volumes of “Origins of the Past,” the series on local history that recently had its latest installment published. Her note on the card: “I think that your heritage can influence your whole life.”

    Emma Louise Edwards, my grandfather’s sister, started teaching on Gardiner’s Island at the age of 16 in 1884. She was paid by the Springs School District (since Gardiner’s Island is within the district’s boundaries). Her salary was $25 to teach during the summer term and $35 in the winter for all grades, first through eighth, in one room. She taught a freed slave, James Stuart, to read and in return he gave her a pin made from an arrowhead found on the beach.

    My mother, Norma Edwards, Emma’s niece, gave that arrowhead pin to me. Bertha Edwards, another relative, filled in as the principal for one year in 1920. She is one of the few female administrators to have held that position, and one year may be the record for the longest tenure by a female administrator at Springs.

    My grandmother Alice Look (Edwards) came to Springs in 1920 and boarded with Merton Edwards’s family diagonally across Fireplace Road from the church. She married Merton’s youngest brother, my grandfather, and was known as a strong-minded, devoted teacher and not much of a housekeeper. Although I never knew her, since she died the year before I was born, I am told that I inherited both traits.

    When I started school at Springs in 1955, it looked much the same as it had in 1931 (the year the new school was built to replace the wooden one that had burned in 1929). I was a year younger than my classmates. All my friends were already 6 and starting school that fall. As there was no kindergarten, my mother opted to send me. We had 12 students in my class of mostly girls. Bradley Mott and Danny King were greatly outnumbered by the likes of Shirley Talmage, Susan Talmage, Terry Miller, Linda Rea, Margie Miller, and Mary Ann Reichart, to name some of my friends.

    The first grade was presided over by Nellie Thiele in the room that had been the school’s first stage and gym. My grandmother had taught at Springs for many years, and Mrs. Thiele showed me a book with her name in it and let me shelve it. At that moment, I planned to be a teacher someday.

    My art teacher was Marge Neylon. She traveled from class to class. Our first assignment was to draw a pet. I chose my cat, Pansy. She added a few whiskers and eyelashes to the rectangle and it was posted on the bulletin board. My day was a complete success.

    Springs was known for its educational excellence and the warmth and dedication of its teachers. Mary Alice Sargent, the teacher of the combined grades two and three, embraced her classes with creativity, a hug, and a song. She built a tepee that was as tall as our high ceilings would permit. Each day was started and ended with patriotic music, which she played with gusto.

    Emma Lester taught grades four and five in one room with the traditional methodology of rote and repetition. Each spelling word was copied 10 times, and students who were not attentive were sent to their desks to copy a sentence of contrition up to 25 times.

    Leila Lee was hired to teach sixth grade in 1960, the year the building’s addition was added, sparing my class from transferring to the high school until ninth grade, to my great relief. She was an actress, an anthropologist, and a free thinker. I adored her. I had always felt great pride in Springs — the beauty of its building and the competence of its staff — but my devotion was renewed.

    Ophelia Harris and Fred Yardley were the mainstays of the junior high, caring, consistent, and reliable — very patient with the junior high students, a difficult age at best. Bill Lycke was the principal. He taught math to the eighth graders. We started a literary magazine, By You, with Mrs. Harris and organized a small library where the business office is now. We played basketball in the beautiful new gym, on the site of the school’s library today.

    I stood on the stage at the end of that old gym in my starched crinoline and fresh corsage to graduate from Springs, very sad to leave, apprehensive of the high school, and hoping to return someday.

    I went on to teach high school in Baltimore County, Md., for 23 years. Finally I returned home to Springs in 1996, when Hugh King retired to teach the academic enrichment program. I have made it my mission to instill my love of the school and its traditions that were passed on to me many years ago.

    Sue Ellen (Edwards Marder) O’Connor lives with her husband in Southampton. She was inspired to write this “Guestwords” after she read the booklet about the Springs School recently issued by the Springs Historical Society and on sale at the Springs Library.

   My partner, David, and I had dinner recently at Nick and Toni’s. We eat at bars; the drinks seem to come more quickly and you get the check faster and you can dine alone at a bar if you like with a magazine or a book and not be bothered by other solo diners looking to meet, or converse, or just feel less lonely.

    For better or worse, with or without reading material, you often wind up talking to people to the left and right of you, whether you’re attracted to them or not. It’s kind of like airplane seating when you fly alone, without the turbulence. Or the meals.

    The other night, at the redone Nick and Toni’s, an acquaintance from East Hampton came in and sat down to my right.

    “Nina,” I said, “how nice to see you. You look amazing!” I say these things to acquaintances whether they do or not, but she happened to. “Are you here alone?”

    She said she was meeting a girlfriend and quickly threw in that she was hoping that this woman’s boyfriend wouldn’t show up with her. “I don’t particularly care for him,” she added.

    She ordered a glass of pinot noir and kept repeating, “I really hope he doesn’t show.” But, some minutes later, he did. And her night turned disappointing to her, I could tell through my zucchini chips and lamb chops, all the while devoting my conversation to David. But you could just feel her disappointment.

    As I ended my meal, I discreetly turned back to Nina and said, sotto voce, upon leaving, “So the boyfriend wound up joining — how was that?”

    “It is what it is,” she said.

    How do expressions come to be? “It is what it is” seems to be what so many people now say. (Along with “at the end of the day” and “having said that” and, among younger people, sprinkling “like” and “you know” liberally across every sentence.)

    My friend Jonathan says “it is what it is” about his father’s Alzheimer’s.

    David’s boss, laid off after 30 years at the firm, told him when he asked how she was holding up: It is what it is.

    What is it about words and phrases that come and go? How do they start? Why do they retreat? Can one Google and get those answers?

    “Chillax” is rather a new word, a hybrid of chill and relax, when one or the other is not expressive enough, and again used by young people. It is a brand-new version of “cool it.”

    “Cool” is interesting. Since the 1950s it has been something that comes and goes, but mostly stays. “Cool,” all by itself, with a nod, perhaps, is used to express approval. “That’s so cool!”: an even more intense declaration of approval, at a louder volume with its exclamation point. “Crazy cool,” from “West Side Story.” “I’m cool,” with a palm turned up to a bartender when you don’t care for a second pinot noir.

    “Groovy,” from the era of cool, has yet to make a comeback.

    “That’s awesome, dude,” is a bit of a perennial, and, frankly, bothersome in its overuse and now even more annoying as women seem to refer to women as dudes. (Men never own anything for too long.)

    Equally annoying: LOL, which has been getting a lot of play for quite a while, but maybe that doesn’t count in a piece like this. I don’t hear many people actually saying it out loud; it’s just used in e-mails and texts. And don’t get me started on :-) or its inverse.

    I am 65 years old. I like to refer to my age in this column because it helps for readers to have a frame of reference as to “where I’m coming from” or “where I’m at,” both of those phrases phased out.

    But where I am coming from, nonetheless, is at the tail end of a long advertising career as a writer. And, as a writer, I strive to veer away from the clichés, from the lazy phrases, from the shortcuts to express oneself. And I believe I have succeeded, only in that when I hear those familiar phrases I think: Try harder. I try to try harder, like that famous Avis tagline from half a century ago. (I didn’t write it.)

    Being at the tail end of a career, I face an uncertain future in my beach house in Amagansett, for sale after 31 years living here, thinking it’s time for a change — “change is good,” an expression that survives, but barely, as so many people are forced into change, are not choosing to change, so it becomes bittersweet or complicated or difficult. Not necessarily good.

    It is what it is.

    Finally, and clearly, there is something defeated about that expression. It is often accompanied by a sigh, as if to signify: I wish it were different from the way it is, but it isn’t. It is, simply, sadly, and what can one do about it, what it is.

    It has none of the cheeriness of “have a nice day,” sometimes accompanied in writing by that cloying yellow smiley face, or the newly coined, but somehow tinged with a tad of doubt, “it’s all good.”

    It doesn’t even reflect the also downbeat but somehow more devil-may-care aspect, because of its chic accent, of “c’est la vie,” a French cousin to I.I.W.I.I.

    Maybe it’s the times. Business is tough; once scrappy baby boomers are now requiring hip replacements. College graduates can’t get jobs. Love is negotiated. Sex is protected. Life is hard.

    “That’s Life,” a favorite song of mine by the phenomenal Mr. Sinatra, has the same resigned element as “it is what it is” — you’re riding high in April, shot down in May. Or, as I recently heard it spoofed: You buy a house in April, foreclose in May.

    That’s life.

    It is what it is, life.

    And, if you live long enough, you get to experience the highs and lows. The joys. The loss. The good times. The bum times. (I’m still here.)

    If I live long enough, I will be waiting for a new expression to take shape. A new, heartfelt, enthusiastic, and optimistic word or phrase when people feel it is no longer what it is, but it is something better than it is. And, being a writer, I may have the good fortune to pen it.

    So keep your eyes peeled to this column for the day when I will be happy to report: It is better than it is. It is what we hoped it would be. It is what we hoped it would always be.

    But, for now, alas, it is what it is.

    Hy Abady is the author of “Back in The Star Again: True Stories From the East End.”

    It is Day 12 and I am doing well, thank you. It was rough at first, when my Internet service suddenly crashed. Ugly detox. I had no idea that one week without the Internet could simultaneously recover repressed memories, trigger temper tantrums, damage my standing as a freelancer, drag my fantasy baseball team from first to fifth, place undo stress upon my marriage, and thoroughly disrupt any rhythm of a normal life.

    I would have consulted Dr. Drew had I been able to contact him, but that is nigh impossible without Google. Without Zaba. Without Yahoo. Without Gmail. Without ESPN. Without American Apparel ads.

    Veterans of Betty Ford and Hazelden have told me how important it is to A) keep a diary during withdrawal and B) share your experiences. I humbly and desperately offer some excerpts.

    Day 1. No big deal. Stuff happens. Verizon is not perfect. I make the phone calls. I follow the instructions. I check jacks, cables, wires, filters, router, modem, computer. I reboot. I pray. It takes only a few hours. I retain a fine mood when I am promised that the cause of the disturbance will be fixed from inside within hours.

    Day 2. I make coffee and call 800-VERIZON. Another round of trouble-shooting. And long periods of nothingness. Every once in a while, you hear: “Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us.” You have had your doubts. When a fellow finally tells me, in no uncertain terms, that my router is in disharmony with my modem and both have to be replaced, I am surprised. They have worked together so splendidly for so long. Verizon will FedEx a combo modem/router.

    I go to the Candy Kitchen to buy a New York Times. $2.25? It feels odd reading about world catastrophes without being able to click through to substantiating videos or commentaries or Kim Kardashian images.

    Day 3. I make coffee and wait for FedEx like a faithful dog. I nap like a cat. I eat like a goat. I mope around like a turtle. Late in the day, a brand-new black modem/router is hand-delivered. It takes only an hour to hook up. It takes only a few more seconds to realize it makes no difference at all. I am still unconnected. Unsettled. Crestfallen. I dial 800-VERIZON. I am on hold for 21 minutes. I hear an annoyingly bouncy tune. A prerecorded voice tells me about helpful hints I can find on the Internet at Verizon.com. Cruel.

    Eventually, a man named Dominic tells me to type 192.168.1.1 in the Safari address bar. Type admin and admin1. Go to the Status page. Click Internet. Go to Utilities and click a certain icon. No icon? Do you have any other devices? No? Can you get a MacBook? No? If you get another device, we can resolve your issue.

    Let me get this straight, I say: You want me to run out to the Apple store and buy another computer in order to resolve my Internet issue on this computer? Yes, sir. I hang up. Violently. My carpal tunnel syndrome seems to be improving.

    Day 4. I make coffee and call India. Actually, I dial 800-VERIZON and speak to a woman in India. I tell her how much I loved “Slumdog Millionaire.” She is very polite and apologizes for everything wrong in my life. She is reading from a manual. She puts me on hold several times for extended periods. I find myself singing along, note for note, with the bouncy Verizon theme song. It’s a funky fusion number like an early Return to Forever number, or maybe Spyro Gyra. The nice Indian lady tells me that someone will call me back with all the pertinent information I need to get back online.

    I stare at the blinking green lights on my new and ineffective black modem/router. I feel lonelier than ever. Out of touch. No stranded Nigerian is asking for money. Lands’ End is not enticing me with khaki vests. No penis enhancements are recommended. No trade offers come from my fantasy competitors. And no one from Verizon calls.

    Day 5. I wake up, make coffee with Baileys Irish Cream, and call the Philippines. Actually, I dial 800-VERIZON and get a fellow in the Philippines. He promises to get to the bottom of this right away. He too is reading. Finally, he says a technician will be dispatched to my house in three working days. This does not work for me. He puts me on hold. Is there another company that can put you on hold for 10 or 15 minutes two or three times during a single phone call and then not deliver the goods? Maybe I should write lyrics for this bouncy theme song. Does despisin’ rhyme with Verizon?

    A technician will arrive at my house tomorrow between 10 and 2. I say I might have to leave my house at some point and would greatly appreciate a text message when the technician is headed my way. Yes, of course, says the voice, if you are willing to pay for the text. What? There will be a charge for the text message, he repeats. Let me get this straight — I have to pay for a text message from Verizon because my Verizon Internet has failed and my Verizon modem has not solved the problem and I am waiting for my Verizon technician. Yes, sir. I yell something that might get my tongue removed in the Philippines.

    Day 6. I make coffee with Kahlua and wait for the technician. When neither tech nor text arrives by 2 p.m., I dial 800-VERIZON. A computer tells me I have to call another number now, the tech number: 866.995.5632. Tech cannot find my records. I am put on hold for 17 minutes. A woman from the Philippines tells me I have no Internet service and a tech will arrive between 3 and 5. But the appointment was between 10 and 2, which does not incorporate the numbers 3 or 5. She says the tech was held up. At gunpoint? I ask. Silence. She cannot find the answer in her manual.

    The tech arrives at 4:45. He mistakes my computer for a modem. I don’t work on many Macs, he says. Confidence eludes me. After checking the system with a skinny stethoscope, he tells me I have no Internet service. I stare at him. He sits in my ergonomically lousy chair and works on my G5. Nothing. Then he works on the lines outside my house. Nothing. Then he crosses the street to the pole with the Verizon box. At 7 p.m., he tells me he has to leave and I will have no phone service. I ask when he will return. Tomorrow, he says. Tomorrow when? Just tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow . . .

    Day 7. I skip today. Sue me.

    Day 8. No coffee today. Venom is my caffeine. I get a text around 10 a.m.: We have dispatched a technician. These five words will cost me. Even when no tech shows up. High noon, I call 866.995.5632 on my cellphone. After reciting name, rank, and account number for the umpteenth time, I talk to a gentleman in India. He says the tech is outside somewhere and my issue will be resolved today. I ask if I am allowed to leave my house. I do not have the authority to grant that request, he says. I am now unofficially under house arrest. Murderers at San Quentin have Internet service. I consider the pros and cons of being a con. At 7 p.m., I start to drink Jack Daniel’s. From the bottle. You got a problem with that?

    Day 9. I make coffee, take two yellow pills, and call Verizon. Yada, yada, yada. A woman asks me questions. She knows nothing of my status or struggles. She says the tech is working on the problem and I will receive a call when it is fixed. I ask for an approximate time or day. She cannot help. She thanks me for being patient.

    Do I sound patient, lady? Maybe patient like a mental patient ’cause I am going batty without news, without weather, without YouTube tangents, without Wikipedia, Netflix, e-mails from family, friends, enemies, Canadian pharmacists. She apologizes. I tell her that I could have Optimum replace Verizon within two days. She thinks I said Octomom. I scream at her. She hangs in there. I string together a filthy bracelet of unmentionable expletives. She is still there. I am starting to like this dynamic. I hang up fast.

    Day 10. I do not get out of bed. I do not make coffee. I call 866.995.5632. I beg to speak to a technical specialist. I get an American male voice. The trouble is between the pole and Babylon, he says. That is a great title for something, I say. He continues: The whole shelf is out. It’s a flooded station. It will not be repaired until 24 other people complain. What? It takes 25 people to fix a station, he says. That’s another good title, I say. Don’t ask me why, he says, but your neighbors have not complained in sufficient numbers. Maybe they are weekenders or on vacation or whatever. I suggest you mobilize your neighbors.

    Mobilize my neighbors? I have not heard that phrase since the war in Vietnam. I must mobilize my neighbors. I am having an acid flashback. Thank God for medical marijuana.

    Day 11. I make coffee and eat a cheesecake. I think about shaving. I look in the mirror. I put down the razor. I call Optimum. They have no bouncy theme song. They play Coldplay. There is a loud knock on my door. I ask Optimum to hold on. At my front door is a man in a Verizon shirt. My hopes soar. My atria fibrillates. He asks if my Internet is running. I ask him if this is a joke. He says no. I say no. He asks how long. I tell him 10 days. He shakes his head and then shakes my hand. I feel the compassion. I tell him my rehab is going well. He looks right, he looks left, and says, softly, conspiratorially, “Off the record, I think Verizon wants you to quit.”

    “Say what?” I say.

    “I have worked at Verizon for 15 years and there is no other explanation for what’s happening.”

    “What’s happening?” I ask.

    “Transfers, open tickets, outright negligence. Ugly things.”

    “Why?”

    “Follow the money.”

    “What money?”

    “The East End is a loser. They employ too many people and too many disasters and too few customers. You can’t get FiOS, can you?”

    “No, but . . .”

    “They want you to quit so they can dump the business.”

    “Verizon wants me to quit Verizon?”

    “You didn’t hear this from me.”

    “You mean Verizon wants me to sign up with Optimum?”

    “I am going door-to-door in 2013. Think about it.”

    Deep Throat turns and walks to the end of the driveway and disappears. Optimum is still on hold. I cancel my order. I refuse to be a pawn in their game. I want to contact The Washington Post or The East Hampton Star but my flashing green lights are now frozen red. I sit down with a pad and a pencil and a bottle of Jack.

    At the top of the page, I write “Between the Pole and Babylon.”

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

    “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.” Harvey Shapiro did repeat himself (when he was reading his poetry), and unless I missed something, he did not rhyme.

    I met Harvey 30 years ago at a memorial service for a friend of Harvey’s, a poet, who was also my uncle. When I met Harvey again years later at a dinner party in East Hampton, he said that it was the funniest memorial service he ever attended.

    In Harvey’s retelling of the story, the first three eulogists blessed my uncle with banalities. Then, according to Harvey, I spoke the truth, which was that my uncle was not a very nice man. (Harvey referred to him as “a son of a bitch,” a man who fit A.J. Liebling’s caustic description: “Show me a poet, and I’ll show you a shit.”) Laughing at his affectionate recollection of the event, his eyes twinkling, Harvey said that everyone who spoke after me also spoke the truth.

    This suggests I speak the truth at memorial services, at least according to Harvey. So here’s the truth about Harvey: He was a man with a big heart and a big brain and a wonderful, deep, booming laugh, an excellent conversationalist, a man with many friends and colleagues who respected him, and a fond mentor to many young writers.

    Harvey and Galen Williams were frequent guests at dinner parties in our home in Northwest Woods, and he would read his poems on request with great energy and enthusiasm. He read our favorite, “New York Notes,” at the brunch that launched our tree house (described in a “Guestwords” column in The East Hampton Star on April 10, 2008).

    During dinner and table talk, his eyes would often appear to glaze over, as if he were dozing or in a trance. But he would insert a brilliant remark on point, frequently to show he was as completely attentive and as observant as ever. He remained this way to the very end.

    Harvey always chose his words carefully. So it was a special treat to get a very short note from him after he read an essay I wrote for The Star. Four words only: “Good work. Keep writing.” Whenever I write, I think of Harvey and this example of his passion for brevity. (Being verbose, I heed his advice so often that I am a candidate for membership in that legendary support group for the long-winded . . . On-and-On Anon.)

    Harvey loved to laugh; I loved to hear his robust, heartfelt laugh so much that I told him jokes every time we met. On one occasion, he said, “That was the worst joke I ever heard.” In this way, I learned Harvey did not suffer fools gladly. The next time he and Galen visited us for dinner in East Hampton, I practiced and vetted the joke to make sure it was good enough for Harvey.

    Here’s one he especially liked. “If a tree falls in the forest and my wife is not there to hear it, is it still my fault?”

   This essay is adapted from remarks Stephen Rosen and his wife, Celia Paul, presented at a memorial service for Harvey Shapiro on April 28 in Brooklyn. Mr. Shapiro, who lived in Brooklyn and East Hampton, died on Jan. 7 at the age of 88. Another service and reading will be held at Stony Brook Southampton’s Duke Lecture Hall on Saturday at 6 p.m.