We of a certain age and perhaps a certain degree of affluence may not have a huge store of old photographs. Certainly nowhere near as many as are being accumulated in this digital age. But, thank God for the ones we have! They capture past moments of a reality, for the most part, a reality that had a gala edge. One can almost enter an old scene and re-experience the moment. Sometimes that step-in even will allow you to supply your own soundtrack.

    There is one that I treasure of my wonderful, large-souled, big-bosomed aunt who never married. She was the taker of our pictures, the owner of the cameras, the photojournalist of our family’s very insignificant significant moments. Born in 1900 — so her age was always easy to remember — Big Gert — her figure and her largesse earned her that name — was the only one in her family to complete high school. She immediately landed an excellent job that launched a career as a legal secretary. Her beauty and brightness made her the pet of a set of some nouveau riche Irish lawyers. The job led her into a life of generous opulence where she became another family backbone and was referred to as our rich aunt. She livened up all our lives, enriched them, and bailed out many of them, especially that of my own widowed mom, Maggie Murphy.

    The picture was taken in 1956. She is standing in a darkened hallway that fed into a living room where I know a party was taking place. There is a flashbulb jammed up each nostril, and she smiles toothlessly, dentures having been removed to add to the comic effect. The youngest child of widow Trepold, she had lost those teeth during an impoverished childhood in an old Brooklyn neighborhood that they used to refer to as the Northside.

    She must have done that flashbulb trick a lot on other occasions that were not caught in film. I recently attended a wake more than half a century after the taking of that picture. An elderly woman (a rank that I am gingerly and reluctantly joining) whom I hadn’t seen in scores of years said, “Oh, I remember those Murphys. They were high steppers.”

    I had never heard that expression before. How quaint, how colorful, and how ego-gratifying to have my simple tribe referred to as high steppers. And she then added, “I remember your aunt with the flashbulbs up her nose.”

    I have that picture and others like it. I also have the one of her stripped down to a corset and very wide, skin-covering bra; she is twirling a recently shed garment in the air. Sadly, there is no soundtrack to accompany this act. The song was always “Rosie, the Queen of the Models,” and always a command performance at family gatherings. Gatherings of beer and highballs and very simple fare, sometimes spontaneous, always inclusive. Gatherings of songs and recitations — “Gunga Din,” “Ivan Skavinsky Skavar,” “Levinsky at the Wedding,” “Oh Willie I Forgive You,” “Oh They Built the Ship Titanic,” “To Arms, to Arms,” “There’s a Ring Around the Moon,” and all the world wars’ sing-alongs.

    Yes, pictures hold memories. The frozen memory is but a snippet of a life. The before and the after are not told or sung there. The births and the deaths, the transitions, the proverbial ups and downs and twists and turns become the books that frame the events.

    My wonderful aunt fell victim to depression as she aged. We saw her lose her “affect” and we were helpless and saddened. Had we been more knowledgeable of psychology or social services (had they existed as they do today), perhaps we might have suggested some sort of therapy. Perhaps we wouldn’t have dared because of her spiritedness and our own timidity.

    Another picture that she left me was taken the day after the flashbulb incident. I know the date precisely. I am in it, standing on a street corner in New York City. Kneeling at my feet are three grinning teenage friends in mock piety; their laughter was prompted by their posturing as though in a holy card. (Holy cards were the things that Catholic kids used to collect prior to Vatican II.) My arm is stretched over them as if in bestowing a blessing. Actually, there is a cigarette in my hand.

    And that picture always stirs up the memory of another song:

She sailed away in the merry month of May on the back of a crocodile.

“You see,” said she, “I’m as safe as safe can be,” as she sailed off down the Nile. . . .

At the end of the ride, the lady was inside, and the smile was on the crocodile.

    The date of that picture was Sept. 8, 1956. It was the day I entered the convent.

    Gert Murphy is a retired public school teacher who lives in Montauk. She recently joined the Ashawagh Hall Writers Workshop.

    Yes, Virginia, Santa’s North Pole is covered with snow and ice. But this just in: Trillions of tons of ice really exist at the North Pole of Mercury, our Sun’s hottest companion.

    NASA’s Messenger spacecraft recently detected the nuclear signatures of water ice using galactic cosmic rays as probes. On other NASA missions, cosmic rays helped discover water on the Moon and Mars. Cosmic rays probe and “X-ray” volcanoes to predict when they will erupt. Very high-energy cosmic rays also generate recurring avalanches of nuclear particles, even Higgs bosons, everywhere in our atmosphere. These “cosmic showers” rain down over square miles of the Earth’s surface, penetrating our bodies — for the most part harmlessly.

    Cosmic rays are the only samples of matter that arrive on Earth from outside our solar system, and we now know that they are very energetic extraterrestrial protons (nuclei of hydrogen) and nuclei of heavier elements. Some low-energy cosmic particles originate in the Sun, high-energy cosmic rays come from stars in our own Milky Way galaxy, and very high-energy cosmic rays come from beyond our galaxy.

    The highest energy cosmic rays observed, if somehow converted into useful work, could probably lift a locomotive — but there is no simple way to harness this immense deluge of energy constantly raining down on us. (Very sad, really, when you think about how much oil and gas we consume . . . and how expensive electricity is on the East End.) Astronauts sent into space are exposed to the primary or extraterrestrial cosmic ray beam and can experience serious health consequences if they are unshielded on long voyages. At the bottom of the atmosphere, where we reside, we are mostly protected by the blanket of air above us, except when a rare energetic particle strikes a chromosome. Genetic changes may ensue; fit mutations will survive.

    Some cosmic rays come from the core or nucleus of our galaxy, where stars are born — and a giant black hole lives. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has recently detected huge bubbles there that emit gamma radiation and X-rays. Cosmic rays are messengers carrying scientific information as gifts from beyond.

    The information content of cosmic rays tells us their energy, their origins, their age, the directions from which they come, and what they passed through on their way here. Evidence comes from very sensitive, sophisticated scientific instrumentation on mountaintops or sent aloft in special balloons and satellites. Data also come from the International Space Station, the Mars rover Curiosity, and Mercury’s recent visitor, the Messenger spacecraft.

    The most energetic cosmic particles striking nitrogen and oxygen air molecules at the top of our atmosphere generate a cascade of nuclear reactions, fanning out over thousands of acres by the time they reach the Earth’s surface. These “cosmic showers” are an avalanche of nuclear air-molecule fragments sharing the high energy of the initial incoming cosmic ray. Vast arrays of nuclear particle detectors placed at ground level are set to count only those nuclear events that occur simultaneously. This indicates that the original triggering cosmic ray came from interstellar or intergalactic space. Cosmic particles come from all directions in the universe uniformly. The cosmic ray beam is roughly constant in time. The lower-energy particles are more abundant than the higher-energy particles.

    Another source of information about the constancy of the primary cosmic ray beam over time is the observation of the composition of meteorites that have been traveling around our solar system for millions of years or more. Modified by cosmic ray bombardments, they act as if they were cosmic ray dosimeters, showing that the primary galactic cosmic rays have been constant in intensity within a factor of two over a million years, and constant within a factor of three or four over a billion years.

    Where do cosmic rays come from? The most likely sources are supernovae — stars that have reached a stage in their evolution when they become unstable and erupt in a spectacular outburst of energy in the form of light, X-rays, gamma rays, and nuclear particles.

    Supernovae may be visible to the naked eye for months: the Crab Nebula (seen in 1054 A.D.), the Tycho Brahe supernova (seen in 1572), and the Kepler supernova (seen in 1604). Similar spectacular events have been documented in ancient annals and astronomical observations from China and Japan. A supernova flares up in our galaxy every 50 years or so — but there are 100 billion distant galaxies in the universe that contribute their share to the primary beam of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays finding their way to us.

    The relative constancy of cosmic rays in time and space says that these sources of cosmic rays are also distributed uniformly in space and time. Magnetic fields bend the paths of positively charged cosmic rays (mostly protons) so much so that there is no obvious correlation between the directions they arrive from here and the direction they had at their source. Light rays move in a (mostly) straight line-of-sight to us from distant stars. Unlike light rays, cosmic rays move in a sort of random walk, drunkard’s stagger, or pinball’s path before they reach us, disguising their source’s origin and suppressing any variations in space or time. Imagine the Earth bathed in an immense reservoir or rippling sea of cosmic rays.

    Our galaxy looks like a flat pancake (the “disk”), with a scoop of ice cream at its center (the “core”); our solar system is located about halfway out within one of the many spiral arms in the disk. Cosmic rays may be “stored” by bouncing around in our galaxy in the sense that a pinball bouncing from obstacle to obstacle is “stored” in the pinball machine. Some cosmic rays bounce off light nuclear targets and are deflected slightly. Others strike heavy nuclear targets and are deflected a great deal so the original particle source-direction is not preserved.

    How could the cosmic ray particles from exploding stars be accelerated to such incredibly high energies — energies not even remotely available in terrestrial nuclear particle accelerators? An unusual acceleration mechanism was famously suggested by the great physicist Enrico Fermi.

    Imagine a tennis ball bouncing up and down on a flat horizontal surface. Visualize a tennis racket placed above the ball parallel to the horizon moving slowly downward. The vertical bounces of the ball between the two approaching flat surfaces will increase rapidly. Rather, slow motion downward of the tennis racket results in a rather surprising rapid increase in the speed of the bouncing ball, as the frequency rise of the audible bounces would indicate. Imagine the ball represents the cosmic ray particle, and the two approaching flat surfaces represent reflecting “mirrors,” or reflecting walls. A high magnetic field can act as a reflector of charged particles.

    Of course, these are simple analogies, and conditions in interstellar or intergalactic space are what they are.

    The physicist Karl Darrow said that cosmic radiation “is unique in modern physics for the minuteness of the phenomena, the delicacy of the observations, the adventurous excursions of the observers, the subtlety of the analysis . . . and the grandeur of the inferences.”

    The cosmos is extremely generous, showering us with cosmic messages and gifts of grandeur. Happy holidays!

    Stephen Rosen, the author of “Cosmic Ray Origin Theories,” is a former research physicist at the Institut d’Astrophysique in Paris and at the Centre d’Etude Nucleaire de Saclay. He lives in East Hampton and New York.

   The second week of December I was talking with a boy in Guines, Cuba. Guines is about 60 kilometers southeast of Havana. We were standing just outside the Presbyterian Reformed Church, where I was a guest along with Barbara D’Andrea of Wainscott. The boy, Nathaniel, just now 17, asked me, “What day was Jesus Christ born? The date.”

    I was startled by the question, first that he didn’t­ know the date of Christmas, and second that he asked me. I answered him in an adult way, registering no surprise.

    It is helpful to know that a generation of Cubans were born and came of age during 30 years when there were political consequences for religious observance. Nathaniel and his family do not attend church. I do not know the background of that, but I do know his mother was born during that time when religious practice was effectively banned. There was discrimination against religious affirmation, and this extended to job placement in the socialist society.

    My knowledge of Cuba is partial and anecdotal. I have visited 10 times and will return this coming March. I am part of a mission partnership between Presbyterian churches in the U.S. and Presbyterian Reformed churches in Cuba. Presbyterians are a minority religious population in Cuba, though with a history that goes back to 1890. There are 32 Presbyterian Reformed churches in the whole of Cuba.

    In the week before visiting Guines, Barbara and I attended a conference of men and women from our American and Cuban churches. Along with the business of the conference, I heard personal stories. Like the conversation with Nathaniel a few days later, these stories illuminate a history with points of light. I heard a man say at our conference that he had been humiliated in school as a child because his family went to church. He was socially ostracized. When it became acceptable later to attend church, the woman who had been his teacher came back to church and said, “Are you surprised to see me?” He said, “Yes, because you discriminated against me in class when I was a boy.”

    Official religious persecution stopped in 1992, when the Cuban constitution was changed to say it was no longer a Marxist-Leninist state, and a new section was added to say that religious persecution was prohibited. It was then permissible for a Christian or any other religious person to become a member of the Communist Party. That meant a person’s work or career would not be held back because he or she went to church.

    Nonetheless, while in Guines on this visit I heard a young man say that even now, when having papers filled out for a job, the question is asked, “Do you go to church?” And if so, which one? “So they keep track,” this young man said. “They know.”

    To pursue the thought of a delicate and difficult relationship between personal faith and loyalty to the state, I asked Pastor Abel Mirabel of the Guines church if he felt a person could in fact be a practicing Christian and be a member of the party. He said, for him, no, it is practically impossible. I spoke of liberation theology, which I had studied in seminary at Princeton. I had gone to Colombia and the Central American countries the summer of 1960, when I became aware that some Christians were working with Marxists to address poverty and political oppression. My host pastor at Guines did not think well of that. He would agree about poverty and oppression, but he would not ally himself with Marxists.

    At the conference prior to our Guines visit I delivered a paper I had been asked to write. The topic was, “The Current Social Reality in the United States and in the Presbyterian Church.” I thought the topic too vast, but because of my interest in social justice issues as an expression of religious conviction, I took it on. The conference was at Matanzas on the northern coast, where the Presbyterian Reformed seminary is located. I broke my comments into several subjects, each of which I addressed briefly: changing demographics in the U.S., race, immigration, economic disparities, and marriage equality. A translator translated my words for the Cuban participants (into English for us when the Cubans spoke). I also had copies in print in English and Spanish.

    There was discussion afterward, though no one said anything about marriage equality. It was a polite silence from the Cubans, even though gay rights and the more obvious presence of gay men and women in Cuban society, certainly in Havana, is noticeable. For two, maybe three years now there has been a gay pride parade in Havana.

    Everyone at the conference would otherwise be involved in pastoral ministry in the churches, Cuban and American. The common denominator is our humanity and the faith we embody to address spiritual longing and human need.

    Barbara and I went with Pastor Abel on home visits, one time to see a couple who have been married 61 years, Ophelia and Hugo. Their house was modest, as most homes in Guines are. Differences in upkeep and appearance can be attributed in part to whether a person has a family connection in Miami. If so, there is money from the American Cuban family. Ophelia and Hugo’s home was plain — wood frame with high ceilings, a front parlor, back living room and bedrooms, kitchen, bath, on one floor.

    Hugo is a barber and was cutting a man’s hair in the parlor when we called. We visited with Ophelia in the adjoining living room. She speaks pretty good English. I speak limited Spanish. We spoke in both languages. Both Ophelia and Hugo came from church families. They were married in 1951, several years before the revolution. Hugo became a revolutionary. Ophelia did not and continued her affiliation with the church. I could only guess at their conversations in those earlier years of marriage! Hugo fought in the Bay of Pigs against the American invasion. Ophelia said, “I saw him go off to war.”

    Hugo still does not go to church, but on the Sunday we were in church he came to meet her after the service. Perhaps he does each Sunday. We shook hands at the door.

    I had preached that Sunday, in Spanish. I write the sermon before our trip and have it translated correctly here. Then I go over the Spanish, practicing it for ease of delivery. My calling as a minister has always included preaching, and to do so in another language in front of a Spanish-speaking congregation is additionally satisfying to me. Language permits entry into a people and its culture. It’s a rich experience.

    In some of the homes along the streets in Guines there were small Christmas trees. Not fresh ones but those that are saved and brought out each year. The twinkling colored lights shown through a front window, and the Guines church had lights encircling its church bell. Cuba is not a consumer society, so there are no pitches to purchase gifts for Christmas. No advertising. Nonetheless, people give gifts in the spirit of the season.

    I visited Nathaniel twice in his home. I gave him a Christmas card with a snowy New York street scene of a small car with a Christmas tree and lights sticking out from the car. It was either he or his mother who asked what snow feels like. I searched for the word “soft,” not able to come up with it, but Nathaniel’s grandmother said, suave. Yes, I said, “soft.”

    There was no Christmas tree in Nathaniel’s home. That doesn’t mean anything in itself, though it could. It was two days later that Nathaniel and I were talking on the street, and he asked, “What day was Jesus Christ born? The date.”

    The Rev. Robert Stuart is pastor emeritus of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. He lives in Springs.

    Two thousand and twelve has turned out to be a banner year for succession, at least as far as Asia is concerned. The Times recently reported on the politics of the ascent of China’s new leader Xi Jinping, a follower of the former president Jiang Zemin (“How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession,” Dec. 4). Before Xi Jinping’s rise, it had looked like one of the followers of the outgoing president, Hu Jintao, might be in the running, but then with the cover-up of the death of Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of one of Hu Jintao’s close advisers, Ling Jihua, in a Ferrari accident (in which a young woman was killed and another seriously injured), the bottom fellow out of Hu Jintao’s dynastic aspirations.

    North Korea saw a less complex though no less dramatic rise to power of Kim Jong-un, the son of Kim Jong-il who triumphed over his half-brother Kim Jong-nam in 2011 and consolidated his power in 2012. Kim Jong-nam, by the way, didn’t crash any Ferraris or have advisers whose children did. North Korea remains the country cousin to its rich neighbor, and dignitaries still travel around in l970s Lincoln Town Cars (“Deeply Hated, but Present: A U.S. Touch at Kim’s End,” The Times, Dec. 28, 2011), but he ran afoul of the powers that be when he was found to have gone AWOL to Toyko’s Disney World.

    Interestingly, Disney figures seem to be a bit of an obsession for the North Korean elite, as evidenced by the appearance of Kim Jong-un on television in the company of Minnie Mouse (“On North Korean TV, a Dash of (Unapproved) Disney Magic,” The Times, July 9) and the current regime’s Mouse That Roared view of international politics. Along with the Town Cars, the regime also appears to have adopted Avis’s “We Try Harder” campaign going back to l962 (the year of the Cuban missile crisis), as the successful launch of a missile and 200-pound earth-surveillance satellite, after April’s humiliating failure, attests (“After Rocket Launching, a Call for New Sanctions,” The Times, Dec. 12).

    Still, everyone thinks Kim Jong-un is the spitting image of his grandfather Kim Il-sung, who is revered as a deity, and with his stylish new wife, Ri Sol-ju, the current regime is reminiscent of the rise of Camelot described in David Nasaw’s recent “The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.”

    Here at home, of course, Barack Obama succeeded and the Clintons have become the avant-garde of dynastic politics. Yes, we’ve had hereditary lines like the Roosevelts and the Bushes, but in Hillary Clinton we have a possibility of the first husband and wife rulers in the history of the United States. When you think of it, in the history of civilization, only royalty have taken such an enlightened view of women’s role in dynastic building. Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria rose to power when the rights of women were still just a twinkle in democracy’s eye.

    The Kennedys were felled by tragedy, but now with the dawn of another year a new generation of former and incumbent first ladies holds the hope that America too might have its House of Windsor. Michelle Obama’s speech was one of the highlights of the Democratic Convention and perhaps Barack, Malia, Sasha, and their Portuguese water dog, Bo, will be able to stay on, if Michelle challenges Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

    With the Republican Party in complete and hopeless disarray, the chances of the House becoming Democratic and our wobbly democracy becoming a house (like Windsor or Tudor) make anything possible as we move into 2013. Instead of being split down party lines, the next presidential race could very well be like one of those old-fashioned battles among royal lines for the throne, the Obamas versus the Clintons, say. The only question is, would Hillary Clinton accept a vice presidential slot in the event that the House of Obama prevails over the House of Clinton and Michelle wins the Democratic nomination for president?

    Francis Levy, who lives in Manhattan and Wainscott, is the author of the novels “Erotomania: A Romance” and “Seven Days in Rio.” He blogs at TheScreamingPope.com and on The Huffington Post.

    The students enter the building through a side door, where they promptly submit backpacks and any other personal items to the N.Y.P.D. safety agent who greets them at the steps. There’s a male agent for the boys, a female for the girls. Everyone is scanned for weapons, cellphones, and drugs upon entering the building. Some of the more committed students have already hidden items inside a shoe, their underwear, perhaps the lining of a wig. The rest have scattered belongings in various spots throughout the neighborhood. It’s Monday morning at one of New York City’s Level Five yearlong suspension sites. I teach English here.

    I used to remark to friends and relatives that I would gladly teach any kid in the city. Oh, really? When I made this statement, I was already working at a large traditional high school in New York. We had sports teams. We had a band. We sang carols to the kids before the holidays. I signed yearbooks and hugged parents at graduation. Then mayoral control hit our building like an angry little hurricane, declaring the school dangerous and sweeping us all away. So how do I describe this strange new teaching universe I’ve recently entered? For starters, it’s the greatest lesson in human dignity I’ve ever had.

    My new school has a unique and troubled population, but they still have the right to a public education. They earn credits at this suspension site. They take their state exams here. We study the speech patterns and motivations of Holden Caulfield, the original troubled New York teen, as we would at any other school in the city.

    Yet the drama unfolding in their respective neighborhoods often takes precedence over any literature we explore in the classroom. Whenever a friend or acquaintance is killed, someone will wear a T-shirt with the departed’s face staring back at me all day long, rendering the book in my hand useless. If someone needs a pen and I offer one with blue ink, he might not use it because that’s not his gang’s color. Some students compose entire paragraphs without using the letter C. Others shun B as if the consonant had done them wrong.

    Symbols are everywhere, and the neighborhood is all that matters. They resent being here, a completely foreign place, and pine for their home schools all year long. They argue and compete over things I don’t understand. They make remarks in the middle of a lesson that sometimes shake me to the core. So as the student body files into the building kid by kid, and the scanner hums and beeps over every single pocket and curve, I have to find a part of me somewhere that understands the magnitude of being their teacher.

    At 16, I went to work washing dishes in a Long Island restaurant where my mother waited tables. The owner, who would later become the county’s district attorney, ruled his establishment in a strict, Steinbrenner-like dictatorship. It was his place, his rules. I was observed wearing cutoffs during an unofficial kitchen tour and reprimanded for it. Minutes later, I committed the error of making eye contact and the tirade began. I answered back and promptly lost my first job. As the owner marched me through the kitchen and out a back door, he made a remark that stayed with me forever, invaluable words that I would summon repeatedly during an extremely challenging teaching career in New York City. “You just wait,” he began. “We’ll see what becomes of you!”

    It was during my student-teaching experience that I encountered my first unruly student. The kid showed up late, talked incessantly, and pushed all of his assignments onto the floor. Still a student myself, I was completely flustered and dumbfounded. As I bent to retrieve the work he’d dropped, it struck me how easy it was to slip into the role of the district attorney from my dishwashing days. “You just wait,” I thought. “We’ll see what becomes of you.”

    That summer I pulled into a convenience store and there he was, half asleep against the wall, a can of malt liquor the approximate size of his forearm beside him. He was wasted and bleary-eyed but recognized me and said hello. I recalled the prediction I’d made about his future when he was my student and how I couldn’t wait for it to come true. I sat in my car afterward and watched him nod off again, my cheeks completely flushed with shame.

    So perhaps it’s time to recognize that intelligence appears in various forms. Not everyone has to love Salinger as I do. Maybe Holden’s language is getting a bit dated by now, and Jay-Z probably lives in the Caulfields’ gorgeous apartment overlooking Central Park. And when a boy in my class becomes so immersed in the imagery of his time spent at Rikers, the only way to respond is to lay down the books and just listen:

    “Mister, in the showers . . . everyone wears boxers. And if the soap does drop, you just say, ‘Screw it,’ and leave it there.”

    Important Facts to Remember:

    1. There is always plenty of soap to go around at Rikers.

    2. The section reserved for minors segregates itself according to race and gang affiliation, just like the adults.

    3. If another boy selects you to fight, you cannot ask the corrections officer for protection because he’s probably busy securing a back room for the fight to occur.

    4. You cannot back down from confrontation in any way or be dubbed a punk, which may lead to unspeakable teenage horrors that may or may not have something to do with Important Fact #1.

    5. If you hope to last as a teacher in a yearlong suspension site in N.Y.C., the lesson of the day does not always come from you.

    Most people, though, Americans in particular, have programmed themselves through cinema and sports into honoring the art of a good comeback. Thankfully, even the New York City Department of Education believes in redemption, permitting students to apply for early dismissal from their suspensions if they qualify. Much like anything else worthwhile, it does come with an interesting catch to it. The students must write an essay. Not only do they have to include every letter of the alphabet, they must also apologize to their schools for what they did.

    Interestingly enough, every student I’ve ever worked with on an Early Review Essay is completely innocent of any and all charges against him.

    “But Mister, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t even me. That other kid was lying . . . and my school just don’t like me.”

    “Would you like to get out of here early?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Then you need to redo this first paragraph and apologize . . . with feeling.”

    By the end of the week, E. approaches after class to say goodbye. Today is his last day. He’s served his full suspension and will return to his home school next week with a proverbial clean slate. His regular building is five stories tall with a river view of the Midtown skyline. Our place is a single hallway with very small class sizes. In 24 hours the kid’s world will expand tenfold.

    E. makes his way through the building, an actual glimmer to his eyes, shaking hands and saying his goodbyes. As he takes his final strut down the hall, I can feel the entire school holding its breath and rooting for him. The mission statement here is really no different from any other school in the world. As time passes, as it does for us all, we will eventually see what becomes of him.

   JB McGeever is a graduate of Stony Brook Southampton’s M.F.A. program and a former East End resident. His stories and essays have appeared in City Limits, Newsday, Hampton Shorts, Confrontation, The Southampton Review, and Thomas Beller’s “Lost and Found: Stories From New York.”

   I have been a writer of advertising for a little over 44 years. I have won awards, I have been fired. I have worked at the most exalted, the most creative agencies that ever existed. I have spent time freelancing, working a month, or a year, or a week at a place on a brand. I started my career on an industry-changing account at a transformative agency. I worked at places that did nothing more than sell out for a buck. I have been acclaimed and forgotten. I have been given a voice I never dreamed I would have, reached heights, in a tuxedo, in my younger days, accepting trophies from mentors. I have been mired in a depression, taking a leave, wondering if I would ever be able to write another headline again.

    I have spent the last 14 years at an agency that is well known, working on a product from the largest household products company in the universe.

    Some months ago, that agency let me go. I am 64 years old.

    Bitter? A bit. It still feels fairly recent. But I am almost over it. In the end, unemployed, uncertain of the future — no one will feel particularly sorry for me. I was told that once, when I was fired at 35, in an Armani suit, let go for a reason I can’t remember now, then rehired that same afternoon. A week later, I quit for a better job. Two years after that, I got fired again. That time, it stuck. I went to Key West, licked my wounds, came back in a month to another job for more money.

    What is a career? I can’t speak for other careers, I can only speak for an advertising copywriter career. My own. Uniquely my own, but I am sure there are other writers with similar careers though perhaps not as long as mine.

    I never reached the heights of agency partner, name on the door, never higher than senior vice president, never earning more than $300,000 a year (no one will feel sorry for me), never on a board of directors, never a part of an executive meeting with discussions of staffing or strategic shifts or logo design or anything other than a million meetings with a zillion account executives to discuss the next commercial or print ad needed and when it would be due.

    Forty-four years of this. Of sitting in an office with an art director and kicking around ideas and talking about what we did the night before and complaining about management and kicking around ideas some more until someone turns on a computer or opens a pad or looks for a photograph or jots down a phrase, a line, a script. It was the same in 1968 when I first started. It was the same the day before I got let go.

    I love the advertising business.

    I hate the advertising business.

    I have been on lists, optional and expendable. Been discussed and been revered. Been knocked down in negotiating salaries, been handed an unexpected bonus. I don’t know any other career, any other 9-to-5 life, any other way to make a living. I don’t know what it’s like to dress up for work every day; I’ve worn flip-flops and shorts, I’ve chain-smoked in client meetings, had three-martini lunches. I’ve been called down to H.R., considered aggressive, thought to be difficult. I’ve been called into offices, given a fat raise, told how talented and valuable the agency higher-ups thought I was. I’ve sat in an office next to the leaders of the business, watched them write and art-direct campaigns that have made the industry a joy to work in. I have presented work to my bosses — people who were geniuses and giants, hacks and hangers-on. And now, mostly forgotten.

    The best campaigns I’ve been involved in for over four decades — the work that inspired me, made me want to do better, that I’ve been involved with, that I’ve been jealous of, that I hadn’t­ necessarily inaugurated but carried the torch of, the stuff of legend — does anyone really remember? Most of those advertising bigwigs I quaked in front of, if they’re not dead, are over with. A name on LinkedIn, maybe. A consultant. Or in real estate. Also people who have sold their agencies for millions, moved to Palm Beach and East Hampton and Mustique, merged and acquired and shook their heads as they walked out the door remarking how much the business has changed. How the business is no longer fun. How the business is headed by unimaginative clients who are fearful and insistent on focus groups and test results to predict some kind of success in a business in which it is ultimately impossible to predict what works and what doesn’t.

    But, happy to say, I’ve worked for the geniuses. And, sad to say, I’ve also worked for people who merely have a genius for keeping their jobs. No 50-50 split, the odds are now in the camp of the latter. Since the mid-1980s, I saw the shift from great work to something else. Focus groups took over. Research. Holding companies, one even known for making wire hangers, bought agencies, gobbled them up because they seemed like such large profit centers. The upkeep, the overhead, lay solely inside the heads of the employees (expendable all, replaceable all). Plus a few copiers, some fax machines, and, later, laptops. No widgets to sell, no inventory whatsoever to go stale or out of date. Just the minds of the people. Minds that get used, used up, and then tossed out. Like an IBM Selectric typewriter. Like even an Apple computer, those blue-and-orange ones reminiscent of a retro television set, traded in for a sleek MacBook Air. And then, just leased. To be replaced anew when a thinner, sleeker, cheaper model comes on the scene.

    Like copywriters and art directors. Obsolete. “Next!”

    Today’s advertising business is basically run by the men and women who rise to high levels because they play the game, put on the right faces, “global” people who go to the endless meetings in China and London, suck up to the people above them, ignore the people below. The business of advertising has grinded on around me for ages since the creative revolution of the 1960s, the “Mad Men” era when advertising was indeed an art form. Before the M.B.A.s and the B.F.A.s and research and planners and levels and layers of people who found they could be successful just by showing up and pretending to know what they are talking about. The people who give their clients exactly what they think they want. Not creating. Not stretching. Just spewing back. This is how advertising is now.

    But advertising then? Heaven. Filled with people with big ideas and conviction and enthusiasm. Wanting to make a name for themselves, wanting to be proud of the work. Wanting their clients to make a name for themselves and be proud of the work. To be talked about. To succeed. These are the names that hired me and have resounded in my memory throughout my career, made my career happen, gave me a beach house, a wonderfully rich life and a voice and even offered a platform, the confidence for me to build a further career as a writer. Names like Bill Bernbach and Mary Wells and Ed McCabe and Carl Ally and Jerry Della Femina and Jay Chiat. Names like David Ogilvy and Rosser Reeves before them. Like Roy Grace and Helmut Krone after. The people who have made the advertising business the business I wanted to be a part of. The people who have put Volkswagen and Federal Express and Apple and Perdue and Alka-Seltzer and Braniff and Volvo and Hathaway Shirts and American Express and Avis and others on the map. With work that wasn’t tested or dissected or thought to death or rewritten by assistant brand managers or anybody else, but work that was presented with pride as the clients responded enthusiastically: “Let’s run with it!”

    One of my favorite ads, done at Doyle Dane Bernbach in the ’60s, where (and when) I began my career, was done for American Airlines. It was rumored in the industry, a much smaller industry back then, that American Airlines was unhappy and looking to replace the agency. Doyle Dane ran an ad, a full-page ad in The New York Times. A cartoon, much like the ones that ran in The New Yorker by a cartoonist named Saxon.

    The drawing was of the chairman of American Airlines, standing up, fists propped up on his desk, talking to co-workers. The caption/headline read: “We are not looking for another ad agency. We can barely stand the one we have.”

    Is there a client today willing to be this clever and irreverent?

    Is there an ad agency today willing to be this risky and even show an ad like this?

    You watch television. You look at magazines. You tell me.

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

We can imagine . . . that happiness is real and that the sorrows and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imagined, but it has never been seen. It has never been seen.     — Leszek Kolakowski

    I don’t own any firearms. Until last year I had never fired one. Two of my co-workers are enthusiasts who attend gun shows in Virginia and Pennsylvania. They have invited me to join them and I have.

    At the gun shows, sellers offer more than knives, hunting bows, deer rifles, target pistols, and assault weapons. There are vendors of T-shirts, movie posters, jewelry, flags, and survival supplies. There’s plenty to buy, plenty of American cash changing hands.

    I don’t need a driver’s license to buy a poster of “High Noon”; I don’t need one to buy an AR-15 from a fellow gun-show traveler. People talk on the hot dog line, their comments pro-gun, anti-president. They are fearful (I mean as fearful as gun owners can be) of any government regulation of weapons and ammunition.

    Guns and rifles are beautiful, some of them. The craftsmanship of fine weapons involves so many factors: design, engineering, metalwork, woodwork, engraving, calligraphy.

    A terrible beauty is born.

    Months later, my co-worker friends invited me to join them at a gun range in Maryland. We stopped first at a diner for unfair-traded coffee, caged-chicken eggs, Virginia bacon, and to shoot the breeze.

    We drove 40 miles as the eagle flies from the White House to rural Maryland. The men brought their guns, locked and unloaded in the trunk of Lee’s car. Lee had a Glock for me to shoot. We paid at the door. The clerk didn’t ask for anything but cash, no check of age or competency, no check of anything at all.

    “I’m with him,” I said, pointing to my friend.

    Inside, Lee gave me a brief but precise lesson on range etiquette and gun handling. He showed me how to load, how to aim, and which direction to fire.

    He knew the employees of the range were deadly serious about the rules of the place. You must wear ear protection, so as not to hear anything loud enough to punish yourself. You may start and must stop firing at command. You must hear through earmuffs their instructions.

    Each station one shoots from at the range is called a point. Two points from me, a woman was firing what my friend said was the most powerful handheld gun available in America. That gun would slaughter an elephant at a hundred paces. Our friend Dave, 10 points down, was shooting a Czech-made rifle with a Japanese sight at a distant paper target.

    I am thinking of that day of shooting after hearing of the murders of children and teachers in Newtown, Conn.

    I am thinking that I am nothing more than a bullet fired into the sky, my case now empty.

    I believe the point next to me is empty too.

Dan Marsh, a Long Islander, contributes “Guestwords” from Garrett Park, Md.

   The Star welcomes submissions of essays for its “Guestwords” column, of between 700 and 1,200 words, and of short fiction, between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

   Authors can either e-mail their pieces (in text or Word format) to [email protected], with “Fiction” or “Guestwords” in the subject line, or mail them, preferably on disk and saved in a text format, to The Star, Box 5002, East Hampton 11937. A very short biographical note should also be included.

   Submissions will not be returned without the enclosure of a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

    When I heard about the death of former Mayor Ed Koch, I thought about the last time I had seen him, last October at the Hamptons International Film Festival. He had made the trip to the East Hampton Cinema for the screening of his new documentary film, “Koch,” about his life as mayor and all the wonderful things he had accomplished during his reign from 1978 through 1989.

    Although he appeared a bit older and frailer, at age 87 he still had that same indomitable energy and passion when he spoke about New York, the 59th Street Bridge, the many housing projects he had brought forth, the equality issues, and the general cleaning up of the city.

    I really enjoyed the film, which captured his spontaneous, open, and upfront personality as he dealt with people in his office, police and firemen, construction workers, and his fellow politicians. He was real and down to earth. He loved staying around afterward to answer questions from the audience, and he didn’t even mind jokes at his own expense. After reviewing movies for so many years, I guess it was fun and a bit surreal for him to star in one about himself.

    People were posing for photos with him, and he was enjoying all the attention. I walked over and chatted with him about those years when he was mayor, as I so well remembered from living near Gracie Mansion, at 88th Street between York and East End Avenue, for his entire 12-year reign.

    During those years, I would see him around the neighborhood, at the local coffee shops and delis, at public meetings, at the parades, at Carl Schurz Park, on the street, and at some events at Gracie Mansion. He always seemed approachable and easy to talk to. He always had a smile on his face.

    In that decade I saw Mayor Koch turn the city from despair, abandoned buildings, graffiti-covered subways, and crime-ridden, filthy streets into a place with hope, new housing developments, less crime, and cleaner streets and subways.

    Once I told him about my great-great-great-grandfather George Opdyke, who was mayor of New York City from 1862 to 1864, during President Lincoln’s term in office. It was a tough time in New York City, during the reign of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. It was a tough time in the country, with the Civil War and slavery. Mayor Koch suggested I go to City Hall to look Opdyke up, which I did. Koch had a keen interest in anything related to New York City and its history. As busy as he was, he always found the time to talk to the people of his city, and he cared about what they thought, what they had to say.

    I thought about all this as I boarded a Hampton Jitney early Monday morning, not sure if I would be able to get in to his funeral but feeling as though I wanted to pay tribute to this man who did so much for New York that he just seemed like, well, New York itself. I couldn’t imagine a New York City without Ed Koch.

    I walked a few blocks to Temple Emanu-El and met up with another longtime New Yorker, Gloria Kins of the United Nations press corps. We arrived close to 11 a.m., when the funeral was due to start, and we were ushered in by some police who stood by a barricade closing off traffic at 65th and 66th Streets.

    I held my breath to see if there was any room in this largest of New York synagogues, which holds 2,500 people. I had heard that it was invitation only, but once there, it seemed as if this funeral was being held in the spirit of Ed Koch — the public was invited.

    The beautiful synagogue was packed, including the balcony in the back, and there was also a room with TV monitors to house the overflow crowd. Senior Rabbi Dr. David Posner was acknowledging all the political friends and colleagues of Mayor Koch sitting in the front, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former President Bill Clinton, the D’Amatos, the Cuomos, and Senator Charles Schumer. There was an honor guard of New York City police and firemen, and people from many city departments of government.

    We somehow walked as close as we could get and found some seats toward the front, where we could see the many speakers scheduled to talk. Koch’s nephews, grandnephew, and grandniece spoke of his devotion to his family, how he would take an interest in their music performances and chess games.

    Mayor Bloomberg said it was fitting Koch had his funeral service near his 59th Street Bridge, and also not far from his favorite 77th Street subway. “There are 8.4 million people grieving today, but Ed loves all the attention,” he said and smiled, adding that Koch embodied the spirit of New York City more than anyone ever could.

    Bill Clinton read from the many notes and letters he and Koch shared over the years, about the crime bill, the Holocaust Memorial, missile research, and about giving kids a second chance when they get in trouble. “He sent me all his columns,” he said. “No other mayor had an impact on real people they way he did.”

    Ambassador Ido Aharoni, consul general of Israel in New York, praised Koch for his commitment to the Zionist movement. “He became the voice for Israel — what he did for New York and Israel went far beyond his term of office,” he said. “He was a major catalyst for the branding of New York to the free world.”

    But the most moving moment came following the hourlong service, when the pallbearers lifted up Koch’s plain wooden casket and carried it down the aisle to the tune of “New York, New York.” Moved by emotion, everyone rose and gave a last parting standing ovation to this great man.

    Outside the synagogue, crowds gathered to share stories of the mayor and to chat with the many politicians. Bill Clinton was trying to make his way to his waiting limousine while throngs of people stopped to chat with him. Geraldo Rivera and Ed Cox, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law, were in the crowd, as was Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who said she often had lunch with Mayor Koch over the years. “I thought the service was amazing,” she said. “He would have loved it.”

    Mark Green, the New York politician, author, and radio host, noted that all the speakers had the same comments running through their speeches. “What’s really revealing is that they all mentioned Ed’s humor, bluntness, and energy, and especially his big heart, so that says something about him,” he said.

    My friend Gloria and I walked away with a glad feeling we had shared these special moments after witnessing the life of a great leader. Ed Koch was inspiring to the masses, even in his death, and he will surely be missed.

    As I looked around at the tall buildings, the gleaming snow-covered sidewalks, and all the people bustling around on their lunch hours, I thought back to something Mayor Bloomberg had said during the service.

    He said, “It’s not hard to picture Ed asking God, ‘How did I do?’ And God said, ‘Ed, you did great. You did really great.’ ”

    Debbie Tuma is a freelance writer and radio host living in Riverhead.

   In 1976, Marilynn and I found ourselves together as housemates in a large, run-down Victorian just outside Boston, pursuing our careers, she as a nurse and me, a teacher. That year, she taught me to love snow.

    Marilynn was from a small town in upstate New York where cold and white winters last four to six months of the year. Growing up there, she did what people who live in snow do: play, snowshoe, and ski to get around.

    I grew up on Long Island’s East End. We got excited about snow, but it wore off rather quickly. First of all, it took us 20 minutes to pull on the thick woolen leggings, mittens, coats, hats, and scarves. To finish it off, rubber boots had to be cajoled over our shoes. Once outdoors, we could barely move in all the wool. Making snow angels and snowmen was fun, but after about 15 minutes our outerwear was sodden, heavy, and smelled like our black Lab after a swim. We begged to come inside.

    Nineteen seventy-six forged a frigid December in Beantown. My running shoes had been tossed to the back of the closet in late November. The lovely new Raleigh three-speed was stored in the vestibule next to the front door, ready for a warm spring commute to my job at the Radcliffe Child Care Center.

    One very snowy Saturday, after a long week of bundling 16 four-year-olds twice daily into and out of snowsuits, I used this perfect opportunity to hunker down inside. A bowl of fresh popcorn and hot cocoa were just the thing for a cozy morning on the couch in front of the fireplace, perusing Glamour magazine. I was still in my flannel nightgown even though it was noon. Just as my feet, warm in woolly socks, got settled on the footstool, the front door slammed and a draft was followed by heavy boots clumping up to the second-floor apartment. Marilynn appeared decked out in full snowstorm regalia — parka, snow pants, thick hat, and gloves. She was radiant, exuding fresh, freezing air so tangible I hugged my bathrobe around me. Beaming, she took in the scene.

    “What are you doing?” she demanded, her smile disappearing.

    “Uh, um, relaxing,” I replied, slightly suspicious.

    “You are not wasting this gorgeous day on the couch. You are coming cross-country skiing with me.”

    My firm protests and sensible excuses fell on deaf ears as the magazine dropped to the floor. She somehow had extra snow pants and heavy mittens, essential gear I didn’t even own. The next thing I knew, those comfy socks and feet were being stuffed into ski boots at the rental center in Harvard Square. After being fitted with skis, boots, and poles, we headed out. The local trolley carried us along Watertown Street. Everything was covered in white: sidewalks, walkways, front steps, porches, roofs, driveways, and the vacant roadway. Were we the only ones out in this storm? A longing for the couch and popcorn was cut short as Marilynn announced, “This is our stop.”

    At the entrance to the Belmont Country Club, we strapped on our skis. Marilynn demonstrated kicking off with one foot after the other and pushing against the poles to gain momentum. She threw a mischievous smile in my direction and took off. Snow whipped my face. I wrapped my wool scarf tightly against my cheeks and ears.

    Staring ahead at the great hill of whiteness, I could barely make out the clubhouse at the top, flag whipping in the wind. Marilynn was already half up. A love of exercise got me going and a competitive drive pushed me to catch right up. The snow came down hard that day, but I got warm enough to remove my outermost layer. I was sweating as we glided up and down the rolling hills. It was invigorating and beautiful to be outside all afternoon in the storm.

    We skied and tromped through the snow numerous times around New England that cold winter. Then spring came and Marilynn moved to Vermont. A few years later and back on Long Island, I met another snow lover from Boston. The first winter we dated, he taught me to appreciate an adventurous sled run. I taught him to cross-country ski. We got married. Soon after, we bought a house in Southampton with a perfect hill behind it and numerous hiking trails beyond for cross-country skiing.

    When it snows, we wake up early to get right out on the unbroken white blanket. In fact, as our friends contemplate retirement in the Sun Belt, we entertain heading north to play in the snow. Thanks, Marilynn.

    Hilary Herrick Woodward is a previous contributor of “Guestwords.”