Who says you can’t go home again? We may try to relive a time of our lives, but people, places, and experiences evolve, and memory is not always accurate.

    Of course things change, they never stay the same, like the Morgan Library. It’s now called the Morgan Library and Museum. It’s not just a repository of J.P. Morgan’s collection of rare books, like his three Gutenberg Bibles and inspiring original manuscripts with handwritten corrections and plot notes of writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain. It’s more than that.

    The Morgan is a proper museum now, with exhibitions like the one not long ago of drawings from the Louvre and a show of Ingres drawings from the Morgan’s own collection. There are lectures, films, and chamber music concerts held on a regular schedule.

    There are physical changes to the Morgan as well. It has a new glass core addition designed by the world-famous architect Renzo Piano that effortlessly joins the two original mid-1800s brownstones. The addition provides plenty of space for a wall honoring benefactors and corporate donors, an open cafe, a redesigned, more formal restaurant, more exhibition space, as well as climate-controlled storage for rare books and paintings. The gray glass blends seamlessly with the soft Tennessee marble, soldering the new and the old. The glass elevator takes me on a journey to heaven and Hades.

    I took a docent-led tour of an institution I knew very well, having lived a couple of blocks away for many years. I used to drop in at the Morgan on my way home from work for a quick culture fix. The Morgan in those days was never crowded, just a few older people peering into glass cases, admiring the collection of seals from Mesopotamia, reading the titles etched in gold on the leather-bound volumes in the library. The Morgan was the transition from my job as an art director to my role as wife and mother. There was a quiet you could hear in the majestic rooms. I could have a few minutes of contemplative thought among beautiful and rare objects before I dived into dinner preparation and homework supervision.

    The tour lasted an hour and I learned all sorts of new things about the old robber baron. I didn’t know that he had acquired his collection in a short period of time, 20 years, with repeated shopping trips to Europe. He also sold things to other industrialists, like Henry Clay Frick, who bought his Fragonard murals. The library had been recently cleaned and the iconography of the Flemish tapestry depicting the seven deadly sins was explained in detail. The secret pulls that hid the stairs to reach the three-tiered rows of books were pointed out. The multiple levels made the library look like an elaborate wedding cake of knowledge.

    One of my favorites in the museum is the John Singer Sargent portrait of J.P. Morgan’s daughter-in-law. He captured her refined beauty, her perfect posture; she was a flawless lady of her era.

    But it was time for lunch. I entered the jewelbox-like restaurant and was shown to a table for four. I questioned if that was all right since I was alone and didn’t want to take up too much space. I was assured it was. My waiter of Greek and Turkish origin spoiled me with a bean cushion behind my back. Sometimes luxury is being alone with artists, ruminations, and memories.

    Austere portraits in heavy gilt frames contrasted with the bright white walls and modern, lipstick-red Italian chairs. Contemporary lighting hung from the ceiling, a nice punctuation point weaving levels of architectural history. As I sat in the small dining room with plaster icing around the ceiling, I enjoyed my perfectly cooked cod, translucent with a crisp fried zucchini blossom placed artfully on top, a delicious contrast in texture to the fish. I sipped my glass of sauvignon blanc as I took in the drawings by David, Delacroix, and Prud’hon on loan from the Louvre and never seen before in the States. Prud’hon’s drawing of his fiancée, Constance Mayer, was as alive and fresh as if she were having lunch with me. A decaf cappuccino let me linger a while longer. I felt a reluctance to leave.

    Ten years ago we sold the carriage house near the Morgan where we lived for almost 30 years. The person we sold it to called recently to say he had just sold it for an obscene amount of money. I congratulated him.

    He’s never been to the Morgan Library and Museum.

    Joanne Pateman is a regular contributor of “Guestwords.” She has an M.F.A. from Southampton College and lives in Southampton.

    We had spent two days preparing for the storm — getting the lobster house ready for a hurricane is not easy, especially when there is furniture outside on the Lobster Deck.

    Everything we could move out of the lobster house got moved, or relocated to a higher position. I remember thinking that we were being overly cautious, that there was no way water would reach a platform scale four feet above the floor in the retail room, which itself is two feet higher than the lobster house floor — six feet in all. Time and events would prove me wrong.

    Monday, Oct. 29, was spent in final preparations, along with running the emergency generators at the lobster house and at my house. The Monday morning tide ran high, with about a foot of water in the lobster house, but by that time we had braced the door leading to the dock with four-by-fours, and the wind was out of the east, putting us in the lee. At about noon on Monday, two big party boats came into Fort Pond to ride out the storm — not a good sign.

    Monday afternoon the tide never really receded, and at about 4 p.m. the bay breached our sea wall just south of the ice freezers. I was not overly alarmed because this had happened during Hurricane Bob, but I was concerned that the bay was still full of water.

    As evening approached I ran home to grab a bite to eat, and then returned to the lobster house. By this time, Tuthill Road was flooded all the way down to the cottages at the south end, and the wind was really blowing from the northeast. There was considerable water in the lobster house, and the sea continued to come in south of the freezers. I put on my waders, figuring that by high tide at 9 p.m., knee boots would be useless.

    Within one hour, things got really bad. Apart from the strong wind, I heard a prolonged whooshing sound, and a wall of water suddenly surged around the south end of the buildings like a river. I wanted to watch the meter pan for the main electrical feed coming into the business, because if the water got that high, the pan would short out and we would lose all power.

    Yet with every passing minute the swirling water was rising faster around me, and at one point I felt as if I was going to be swept off the parking lot and into the pond.

    By 8 p.m. the situation was critical — I could no longer walk to the south end of the building where the meter pan was, and there was so much water in the lobster house that I could not open the door to get in. The next day, Aida said that the water was over the toilets in the kitchen, a full five to seven feet above normal high tides. I could hear the dock and outer Deck groaning under the force of the surge, but there was no way I could get close enough to take a look.

    At roughly 8:30 p.m. I decided I had to cut the power coming into the business — the water was rising so high that I feared an electrical fire from shorted wires and outlets. I put the main feed switch in the utility room in neutral, and everything went dark.

    I decided I could do no more, and before leaving I walked along the raised porch in front of the shops to look at the meter pan one last time. All I could see under me was black, angry water, and I was shocked to see that the sea had now risen higher than the concrete loading dock. When that loading dock was poured, the mason doing the job asked my dad how high to make it — and my dad said, “Pour it to the high-water mark of the Hurricane of 1938.” Sandy had exceeded that mark before 9 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2012, and water was still coming.

    As I write this early in the morning of Oct. 31, 2012, the whooshing sound of that surge and the pull of the water against my body keep repeating themselves in my mind. We have entered new territory in terms of destruction by the sea, and I can only speculate what would have happened if the wind had come northwest the night of Oct. 29. In all probability, the buildings that have stood here since 1915 would have washed away.

Perry Duryea III runs the Perry B. Duryea and Son wholesale seafood business and restaurant in Montauk.

    We are profoundly saddened by the deaths of 8,000 American, coalition, and NATO soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan during our 10 years at war there. We dwell on the loss of so many young people and feel the despair it brings to the families, friends, and partners with whom they shared their short lives.

    So to help us understand why the day World War I ended, Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice Day, meant so much to my generation, let me go back to just one other day in that war, July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in France. On that day alone, 20,000 British, 10,000 French, and 30,000 German soldiers were killed. Just one day. Sixty thousand men. Dead. Another 120,000 were wounded or missing.

    For such a horrific event to occur, it was necessary for the commanders of these forces to make an abundance of stupid mistakes. The most notable of these men was Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in France. General Haig had ordered his troops to attack the Germans to ease pressure on French forces that were defending Verdun. The general was so confident his preceding artillery barrage would crush German resistance, he told his men they could safely walk across the open ground between the British and German lines carrying 80-pound loads of equipment and supplies.

    General Haig apparently had not learned of or failed to heed intelligence that the Germans had built deep tunnels and dugouts that would enable them to withstand the British artillery.

    Compounding this misjudgment, Haig’s Command ordered junior British officers leading the attack to carry sidearms, perhaps to forestall dereliction among the ranks. The order amounted to a death sentence. The visible pistols immediately identified the officers to the Germans, who made them the first targets.

    When the barrage lifted for the British to attack, the Germans reappeared on the surface of their trenches and with their machine guns slaughtered the officers and overladen, leaderless British soldiers by the thousands as they struggled across the unsheltered, deafening battlefield and became enmeshed in barbed wire Haig had assured them his artillery barrage would eliminate.

    There were similarly horrific events. In this four-year war that ended with the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, armies were decimated, families, villages, and towns rent, and nations deprived of the innovative energy of their young men. Six million of the 8 million Frenchmen mobilized became casualties; 9 million of 12 million Russians; 7 million of 7.8 million Austro-Hungarians; 7 million of 11 million Germans; 500,000 of 750,000 Romanians.

    And on it went. Across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and on the seas. The U.S.A., not spared, suffered 300,000 casualties during its one and a half years in this war.

    In its 1926 resolution encouraging all states to recognize Nov. 11 as a legal holiday, Congress urged that it “be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.” It urged the president to invite “the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches and other suitable places with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.” There was no swagger or triumphalism.

    But in President Eisenhower’s 1954 resolution that changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day, references to peace and understanding were omitted, to be replaced by an emphasis on patriotism and sacrifice.

    I appreciate those who honor my fellow veterans and me for our service in World War II. But I miss the focus on peace and understanding that marked the original Armistice Day and regret the muscular tone that increasingly defines the day’s ceremonies. World War II G.I.s were never very military. Whether marching as trainees in boot camp or through the cities of Europe as liberators, there was always a schlep to our stride and slope to our shoulders.

    The hubris that marked the Battle of the Somme was also present in U.S. forces during World War I and has plagued us since.

    In 1918, General Pershing, commander of American Expeditionary Force, ordered his men to attack the Germans between the time the armistice was signed and was officially to take effect. Soldiers died because of this, right up to the war’s final minutes.

    In 1941, our admirals (and J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I.) ignored evidence that the Japanese intended to attack Pearl Harbor.

    In 1951, Gen. Douglas MacArthur pushed President Truman to drop nuclear bombs on China when their Army made him look amateurish at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. Truman bent, then held firm and refused.

    In 1962, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay persistently pressured President Kennedy to bomb Cuba. We now know this probably would have started a full-scale nuclear war.

    In 1983, a strident interplay of “evil empire” speeches by President Reagan, our insertion of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Germany within five minutes of flying time to Moscow, a Korean passenger plane’s intrusion into sensitive Russian airspace, and seemingly provocative NATO war games led Soviet Prime Minister Yuri Andropov and other Russian leaders to believe the U.S. was within days of launching a nuclear strike on the U.S.S.R.

    At the height of Andropov’s concern, Soviet spy satellites flashed word that the U.S. had launched five nuclear missiles at the U.S.S.R. from our Midwest. They would strike Russian cities within 25 minutes. Despite the tight window of time for the Russians to respond, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet early-warning officer who received the report, was skeptical and decided to be sure we were actually attacking before informing his superiors. Andropov, so nervous about our intentions at the time, might well have ordered an immediate counterstrike.

    Of course, we were not attacking. The Russian satellite equipment had erred. Armageddon was averted and Colonel Petrov, who quite possibly saved a billion lives and the civilizations of two continents, was reprimanded by his superiors for following improper procedures.

    We have been spared by happenstance — the fortunate presence of wise, strong people in the right place at the right time to trump the misjudgments and paranoia of the Andropovs, MacArthurs, and LeMays.

    Our luck could run out.

    This Veterans Day, let’s take a small start in the right direction. Let’s go back to the thoughts that inspired the original Congressional resolution. This year, let’s leave our uniforms in the closet, our medals in their boxes, and go out to work and pray for peace and understanding between people. I shall find a place of worship and do this, this coming Sunday, Nov. 11.

    Richard Rosenthal is a veteran of World War II, his father of World War I. He lives in East Hampton.

   Women lie about their age; men lie about their height. Any man who is 5-foot-11 says he’s 6 feet. There is no such height as 5-11 unless the man is 5-10.

    I’m 5-foot-10 — or at least I was — so I naturally said 5-foot-11. I especially liked saying 5-11 because people thought I was being honest. They thought, here’s a guy who could say he’s 6 feet but he tells us the truth.

    I know you don’t believe that all men lie about their height but it’s true. Unless you’re over 6 feet you automatically add an inch. Guys who are under 5-8 sometimes add two inches.

    I buy suits and sport jackets at Paul Stuart, where they have four lengths: “long” for over 6 feet, “semi-long” for 5-10 to 6 feet, “regular” for about 5-6 to 5-9, and “short” for under 5-6. Nobody wears a short, or at least nobody I’d care to be introduced to. I’ve always worn semi-long, an announcement to the world that I’m taller than average and a considerable boost to my faltering male ego.

The other day the strangest thing happened. I tried on a jacket — semi-long of course — and it seemed a trifle long. Well, who cares? There’s no way I’m wearing a regular like all the average guys. The salesman, who has a good eye for these things, said, “You know, it seems just a bit long. I think you would look better in a regular.” I don’t think he understood how close he was to having his life insurance policy pay off.

    “I’ve been wearing semi-long for decades,” I said.

    The salesman, apparently detecting a serious psychological disorder, retreated. “Of course, but they are cutting the jackets a little differently this year.”

    It was obvious that he was right and so I had a problem. I could buy a semi-long, catering to my ego, but the jacket would not look exactly right. Or, I could purchase the proper length and have to live with becoming a regular. No man can handle a problem like this.

    Women will understand this dilemma. A woman who has been a size 8 all her life is psychologically incapable of trying on a size 10. Forget about whether she’s gained 10 pounds; she’s struggling into a size 8 even if the stitches are cracking. Don’t ask me why this is true. I’m not responsible for the world’s neuroses.

    So there I was in a regular that looked just right, while the salesman took away the semi-long along with my entire sense of confidence and virility. And indeed, I knew what had happened; I had shrunk.

    As men and women age they get shorter; ask any doctor. A man who was 5-10 (telling everybody 5-11) shrinks to 5-9, maybe 5-81/2 when he reaches 65. He doesn’t exactly notice this because all his friends have also lost an inch, so relatively speaking he’s the same height. There is no announcement that he is now 5-9 and he lives happily ever after.

    Unless he goes to Paul Stuart and buys a suit.

    Leonard S. Bernstein is the author of "The Man Who Wanted to Buy a Heart," a collection of stories published this year by the University of New Orleans Press. He runs Candlesticks, a children's wear company, and lives in Westbury and Amagansett.

    One glorious and balmy summer weekend in the late 1990s, I sat in the house my parents built for their retirement, enjoying the spectacular view of Gardiner’s Bay. A flotilla of sailboats lilted in the wind, guided by red buoys that demarcated a channel in the otherwise shallow waters. My gaze shifted southeast, toward Napeague, the spit of land that separates the bay from the ocean. The air was so clear that beyond Napeague I could see cobalt and sapphire streaks of horizon. Giant, precise brushwork heralding the Atlantic.

    I had heard that the land was so low it had flooded during the Hurricane of 1938. An old man who ran the local country store told my mother and me how the water had surged and churned, whipped by 160-mile-per-hour winds. The furious surf washed over Montauk Highway, temporarily splitting Napeague and Montauk from the rest of the South Fork. The man and his neighbors were caught unawares, he said, partly because the storm had rushed up the coast from Florida so fast that the weather service could barely track it. That’s why the hurricane became known as the Long Island Express.

    But there was another reason why they were not forewarned.

    “Before it hit — before the worst — we were glued to our wireless, because they were reporting about Chamberlain and Hitler negotiating,” he recalled, shaking his head and looking down at the worn shop counter. “Yep. And we were so darn scared of another world war, we tuned in only to that station. The storm warnings came in on the other channel. And them seas — they melted those sand hills just like you pour hot water on sugar.”

    “The Sudetenland,” my mother said as we drove home. “Such a betrayal. We were listening to that news, too, in Krakow. We couldn’t believe it — that Chamberlain actually thought Hitler could be appeased.”

    “People already knew there was no stopping him?” I asked.

    “Some. Some did. Not knew, but had a sense. Especially after speech Hitler made at Nazi rally in Nuremburg. That was few weeks earlier.” She was dropping more articles than usual, I thought, as she reached back to her early teens in Poland. “And yet . . . who could imagine . . . what would happen to us. . . .”

    My mother glanced away from the road for a moment toward the wetlands to the left, toward Louse Point, where the cliff our house was on sank toward an isthmus and the bay flowed into Accabonac Harbor. She was checking for a favorite osprey nest on one of the tall poles conservationists had placed in the marshes to help the endangered birds reproduce. She spotted the nest and returned her attention to the winding road, grasping the steering wheel hard.

    “Nah. It never occurred to me that listening to news here could be dangerous,” she said.

    “What, Ma?”

    “Just by choosing one station over another, I mean. So strange. Strange they had no idea such onslaught was coming.”

    When I was growing up, my family quaked when northeasters slammed into the South Fork at high tide. In the late 1960s, my parents had debated whether to buy a small house on the ocean or build one on the bay. Ultimately, they constructed our house on an 80-foot bluff and added a bulkhead and jetty to safeguard our cliff from erosion and the sea.

    To me it seemed mighty, with its tar-impregnated pilings planted six feet into the beach, and the same length sticking up. Joined together by rectangular planks, the seawall offered us only a semblance of security, however. The structure was vulnerable if water rushed over the top and support boards shattered from the force. That happened twice, during the ’70s and during Hurricane Gloria, in 1985. The sand had washed out as if through a sieve, and the angry waves of the usually placid bay carved out a cave where the cliff ought to have met the sand.

    After the deluge Gloria brought, it took months for my mother to get permission from the local environmental agency to rebuild and refill the bulkhead. The fill had to come from the bay floor and that would disturb the mollusks and brooding boulders. The contractor reluctantly accepted the $25,000 job and postponed work again and again, as if to let my mom know he didn’t need the dough, especially from a widow. But we would put up with anything to stanch the recurring vision of our beloved house toppling into the bay because the encroaching edge had to satisfy the appetite of the sea.

    My sisters and I reluctantly sold our parents’ dream house 13 years ago, not long after our mother died. It took me many seasons to stop worrying about our house, northeaster or not.

    But as Hurricane Sandy smashed through the Eastern Seaboard, it blew me back in time. A hurricane churning into a northeaster during a full moon — what would my parents have thought? Two days after the storm struck New York’s coast, I scoured the Web for photos of Gardiner’s Bay. I found a video of whitecaps off Atlantic Avenue Beach, and a shot of Louse Point swamped, muddied, devastated. But I will never know how our seawall fared. And as far as I can tell, this time Napeague was not severed from the mainland.

    Yet there is no escaping the fact of natural or human assault. And seawater will always remind us that sand melts like treacle.

    Karen A. Frenkel is a science and technology journalist, editor, author, and producer. She is a Bloomberg.com and Bloomberg Businessweek contributor and writes regularly for Fast­Company.com. She lives in Manhattan. This essay previously appeared in slightly different form on the Web site Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.

   I once came dangerously close to becoming a cat hoarder, one of those strange individuals featured in reality TV shows whose homes and yards are overrun with cats of all sizes, shapes, and colors. I never thought I had anything in common with those unfortunate people. Why would anyone ever choose to live like that? How could anyone ever get to that point? They must have tremendous psychological issues. They must be deeply disturbed. Well . . .

    The tale begins with a scrawny ginger-colored cat that watched intently from the bushes across the street as we moved into the Amagansett dunes. The surrounding homes were all empty, used by owners and renters only in the summer — in winter, a ghost town. The little creature with its triangular face and big green eyes was huddled against the sliding glass door the next morning: irresistible and very hungry. I set down that first bowl of warm milk and began a rapid descent into the world of cat hoarding.

    The cat was female (of course) and pregnant (of course). Otherwise that would have been the tail end of this sorry tale. She was a summertime cat — or the descendant of one — abandoned at the end of the season by misguided owners who believe cats are perfectly capable of surviving on their own. After a couple of weeks she showed up with a tiny gray-and-white kitten that dove into the food bowl, scrapping for every crumb as though it were his last supper. It was. The sole survivor of an untimely winter litter, he never returned. My heartbroken children dragged me everywhere trying to find him.

    In an attempt to avoid future traumas, I borrowed a Havahart trap from the Animal Rescue Fund in Wainscott, planning to trap Mama Cat and have her fixed. The kids didn’t think she was broken, and thought I was just plain mean. Apparently Mama Cat agreed. She sniffed suspiciously at the cage with the enticing mackerel, gave me a knowing look, and just said no.

    The trap worked though — for raccoons, opossums, and even one angry blue jay that left half his feathers behind. One raccoon became a regular customer. He’d walk right in, enjoy his feast, and then wait calmly for me to release him. With a greasy little mackerel smirk he’d saunter off, already planning to return the next night to his favorite eatery, no reservations required. Others were not as sanguine. Snarls, shrieks, and body slams against metal bars would send me rushing outside in my nightgown to open the excrementally decorated cage and release the terrified artist — a nightmare for us all.

    I tried everything to catch that cat, including stinky mackerel trails leading to a hidden cage with mounds of sardines deep inside. I wrapped the cage in paper yard bags, lined it with newspaper, and buried it in the bushes. Only my loyal raccoon was grateful, enthusiastically joining in the new game and relishing the variety of treats. I even tried not feeding Mama Cat for two days, thinking hunger would make her less cautious. My appalled children sabotaged that plan, sneaking her food when I wasn’t looking.

    Finally I gave up and prayed for impotent males or feline menopause or at the very least some feline self-control. But Mama Cat was too young for menopause (if that even exists in cats), not at all interested in abstinence or birth control, and knew exactly where to locate willing and able paramours. She ate well and continued to enjoy an active Hamptons social life. She lost her big-bellied malnourished look and kept getting rounder and rounder until one evening she arrived with four bright-eyed ginger kittens. The kids were thrilled. Me? Not so much.

    We watched them pounce and tumble on the patio. Even I had to laugh — grudgingly. Mama Cat, ever alert, sounded the alarm whenever we tried to ease open the glass door, and four little tails would scramble to safety, plunging into the bushes then melting into the beach grass and sand. When she gave the signal, they would return. They were delightful baby dune cats — at least the kids thought so. But now there were five.

    How many were females? What if they all were females? I started calculating potential numbers of future dune cats all living in my yard and was horrified. This was not the new life I had envisioned when I fled the New Jersey suburbs for the peace and quiet of Amagansett. Nor had I ever yearned for a career as a cat hoarder.

    So when the kittens were old enough to be fixed and before Mama Cat started dating again, the Mad Trapper sprang into action — this time with a plan. I was going to become the best Havahart hunter on the East End of Long Island. I created an elaborately camouflaged trap — not one piece of metal in sight, scrubbed clean of all human smells, festooned with vines, leaves, and beach grass, hidden deeply in the bushes. The only evidence of its existence was the reek of canned mackerel baking in the summer heat. The neighbors had roses and lilies, lavender and sage. I had dead fish.

    That summer I caught every feral cat in the neighborhood and one pet — a big ginger tom with the same yellow eyes of two of the kittens. His owner was a bit miffed when his macho male returned home somewhat less of the tomcat he used to be and missing a couple of parts. But hey, he had had his fun, was a deadbeat dad, and enough is enough.

    Eleven cats trapped, neutered, and released back into the yard. Eleven. I now had my very own hoard of feral cats. Oh joy. Several of them did leave immediately after their trip to the vet, deciding that although the food was tempting, the hospitality really sucked. My kids mourned each exodus, enjoying the sea of fur roiling around the patio at mealtimes. But I was worried about my neighbors. No one wants to see their million-dollar yard being used as a high-end litter box, or their designer birdfeeders and granite birdbaths as four-star restaurants, or their teak deck furniture as scratching posts. And no one enjoys having their tranquil summer nights interrupted by feline combatants, the hair-raising screeches emanating from just one property: mine. One small stray cat might be acceptable. Eleven? I was sure the complaints would come rolling in.

    No one said a word. Since the cats were all ginger-colored and equally shy, maybe people assumed we had only a couple of cats, not 11. And I sure wasn’t interested in enlightening them.

    But now I can go public. My feline hoard has diminished rapidly over the last few years, and I’ve now reached a socially acceptable number of dune cats: three. Feral cats succumb quickly to disease and infection. They get hit by speeding cars and trapped in sheds and pool houses. In some areas they are killed by dogs, although here in the dunes my cats have at least five pounds on most of the mini-canines leashed securely to their owners.

    The adults are all gone. Three of the four kittens are still with us. Snooky, Mista Sista, and Sissame have never had a bad experience with humans, though they always howl their way to the vet. They have lots of food, lots of love, and their own straw-filled houses. In the summer they lounge on the shady front porch and watch the beach parade go by. In the winter they have their own special cushioned and blanketed chairs on the sunny lower deck. They line up every day to soak up the fresh air and sunshine — a healthy feline “Magic Mountain.”

    Still, every Labor Day I pray that no more summertime cats will be set free to fend for themselves when their families return to their no-pets-allowed apartments or homes where cat fur and litter boxes would clash with the decor.

    Three cats are plenty, because honestly . . . I am really a dog person.

    L.J. Gurney teaches composition at Suffolk Community College.

   Everything about this city, country, and culture is new — the food, the language, the transportation, the smells, the religion, even down to the sweetened condensed milk in every beverage, causing me to learn one of my first Thai phrases, mai wan (not sweet).

    In a city where dogs and cats run rampant, where flower-covered shrines adorn street corners, and where stoplights are merely a suggestion, I am bombarded by Bangkok’s culture in a multitude of ways. I learn through seeing rather than reading and miming more than speaking. In a city where I don’t know the language, simply ordering food proves challenging, and asking for directions nearly impossible.

    Despite the language barrier, I have managed to see some breathtaking sights in Bangkok during my short time here for orientation before leaving for the Thai countryside to teach English on a Fulbright grant. I have seen intricately detailed Buddhist temples, scattered throughout the area, including one with the world’s largest reclining Buddha, complete with mother-of-pearl feet. I’ve boarded a river ferry at maximum capacity only to see a monk, in his orange robes, sitting at peace among the chaos. I’ve realized that being a farang (Westerner) who attempts to speak the teeniest bit of Thai makes the street vendors smile, even though I’m probably pronouncing the words wrong.

    I have experienced Thai hospitality when I spent all afternoon being shown around the city by two locals I’d never met before. I’ve tasted what seems like the world’s spiciest and sweetest foods, and enjoyed many meals from food carts laden with tasty treats. I’ve tried and failed to befriend the local dogs and campus cats — I’m not sure they speak English. I’ve ridden in a tuk-tuk with four other people. (If you’ve ever been in one, you know that’s quite crowded.) I saw a giant monitor lizard swimming in a river in the middle of the city, which both terrified and amazed me, almost as much as the congealed pig’s blood that I ate last week. (I don’t recommend it.)

    Among the most important things that I have learned here are the Thai cultural rules that many farang are unaware of. One of my favorites is that whenever you travel, or just go somewhere for a weekend, you should bring back kanom, or snacks, for your office and other teachers at school. Thailand is also a very hierarchical society in which you refer to your elders as “P” plus their nickname. For example, we call our program director P’Tip. The P signifies that the person is your older brother or sister and relays a sense of a greater Thai family within the country. In the same vein, Nong means younger brother or sister. With this naming also comes the responsibility that the Ps take care of their Nongs, and the Nongs respect their Ps.

    Moving on to other cultural adventures, one of the other Fulbrighters and I decided it would be a fantastic idea to follow instructions from someone’s blog to find a free Muay Thai fight in Bangkok. Now, sketchy idea number one was to follow a stranger’s handwritten instructions, and sketchy idea number two was that said stranger suggested asking around once we got off the train. So we got off a train and found ourselves in a park and thought we knew where we were going, but finally asked for directions and the park policeman didn’t speak English. Next we asked the guys working out in the outdoor gym (which are surprisingly common here) and they pointed us in a direction, then we asked another person and he tried to explain it, pointing a different way. We eventually jumped in a cab, which we should have done from the get-go, because he took us where we wanted to go in a few minutes. Live and learn.

    Anyway, at a TV studio where they were filming the fight, the guard opened this tiny door and we stepped into a loud, dark, crowded, standing-room-only makeshift stadium and didn’t get more than a foot inside. The bright lights were on the ring, and it seemed that we were the only farang in the place. We followed the only other women we saw through the crowd to get closer to the ring, and then were beckoned closer while the Thai men who were screaming at the fighters politely stepped out of the way. After the second fight, we were even invited into the ringside media area by one of the guys who worked for the station — I guess being a farang woman with a big camera lens has its perks.

    We were literally ringside for the last fight, which made it that much more awesome. What seemed like an adventure that was doomed from the start ended up being an incredible cultural experience — seeing the fight, listening to the crowd, feeling the pulse of the live local music. And I’m sure there’s more to come.

    Katie Bimson, who grew up in Montauk, is a recent graduate of Fairfield University in Connecticut, where she studied marine biology. She blogs at tangledupinthailand.blogspot.com. Her mother, Jane Bimson, is an ad sales representative at The Star.

   The architect’s plan was impressive. A three-span suspension bridge connecting island to mainland. A big dream, a multimillion-dollar project when first envisioned, but never to be. At least so far.

    New York State Route 114 connects Greenport and East Hampton on Long Island’s East End, but with the route crossing Shelter Island, the drive requires two ferry rides. Connecting that island with the North and South Forks by bridge was a dream of many influential politicians during the first four decades of the 20th century. But not everyone supported the grand scheme.

    While doing research on Jud Banister, who was East Hampton Village mayor from 1936 to 1954 and the great-uncle of my wife, Carol, I inevitably came across many news stories of various celebrities and prominent members of the so-called summer colony. Jud interacted with many of them over the course of his mayorship, and frequently one would be an elected member of the village board during his tenure. Though not the focus of my research, a few had obvious connections to Jud. Phelan Beale was one.

    Anyone with a fascination for any and all things Hamptons has heard of Grey Gardens and knows the basic story of Big and Little Edie Beale, aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Less has been written about Phelan Beale, Big Edie’s husband, who bought Grey Gardens for her.

    He and his father-in-law, John Bouvier II, were strong supporters of the East Hampton Fire Department. Their storytelling was much sought at the annual department dinner that Jud always attended during his many years as captain of Hook and Ladder Company 1. The Star colorfully described the skits performed and stories told by Phelan and the Major, as his father-in-law was known.

    Phelan cemented his political involvement by joining two prominent Suffolk County gentlemen in a taxpayer petition against the county board of supervisors in the spring of 1931. Among several issues, the petition sought a countywide referendum on a proposal to buy $5,000,000 in bonds, largely to finance construction of two bridges connecting Shelter Island to the North and South Forks. The supervisors, while agreeing that the bridges could not be built without federal permission, nevertheless rejected the request to hold a taxpayer referendum.

    By that summer, The Riverhead News accused Phelan of being a small-time East Hampton taxpayer of questionable residency, an out-of-county Democrat with impure motives trying to join the taxpayer action. Ten days later he responded to the editor, his letter reprinted in full in The Star’s Aug. 21 edition. After summarizing The Riverhead News’ profile of his character, he offered the following clarification:

    “May I say that I regard East Hampton as my bona fide residence and that I keep my wife’s house there (which I gave to her as is the custom of husbands) open the year round and that I pay taxes on two parcels at other places in Suffolk County. I plead guilty to a Southern Democracy rearing and admit that I have been a staunch Democrat in New York for the past 30 years and am now a consistent Suffolk County Democrat.”

    Having cleared away “the chaff,” as he called it, he described his opposition to the county bond issue and specifically its support for the Shelter Island bridges. He believed any dispassionate analysis would show no crying need for them. The supervisors were accused of being cowards for not submitting the bond issue to the voters, and he asserted that their summary action to deny that opportunity was an attempt to “put a fast one over” the voters and, in his opinion, illegal. There is no evidence a vote was ever taken, but another county newspaper reported that two out of three respondents opposed the bridge bond issue in a straw poll of more than 3,000 readers.

    By the end of 1931, the issue was so well known that it became the centerpiece of a satirical debate at the East Hampton Fire Department. “Debate Jury Throws Bridge Case Out Court,” said The Star’s Dec. 11, 1931, edition. Jud Banister, now department chief, was one of the jurymen. Other members served as witnesses for and against the bridges, but as the front-page subtitle declared, “Counselors Forgot to Swear in Witnesses; Refreshments Pacify Everyone.”

    On Friday, Nov. 4, 1932, Phelan placed a prominent ad in The Star addressed “To whom it may concern” and proceeded to suggest that while many politicians and political newspapers were supporting the re-election of President Hoover, he presented a case supporting change. In closing, he took a final shot at the county supervisors, writing, “let us change all down the line, including the political party in Suffolk County that appropriated $5,000,000 of the taxpayers’ money for the needless bridges to Shelter Island, and in so doing refused to allow the taxpayers to vote on the question.”

    The Depression was setting in hard by early 1933, and taxes were a major issue for many on the East End. In early March, The Star covered a meeting of taxpayers attended by more than 600 in the Masonic Hall. “Phelan Beale Holds Interest of Gathering for Over an Hour,” said the subtitle. He was still taking on the entrenched political establishment. The Shelter Island bridges were not mentioned in the article, but they had not gone away.

    Their potential construction loomed again throughout much of 1937. First District Assemblyman Edmund Lupton successfully introduced legislation in the New York State Assembly to support bridge construction. But within a week, a Star headline said, “Lupton Blames Democrats for Bridge Bill Defeat in Senate.” Lupton declared that “the possibility of building the Shelter Island bridges in time for the World’s Fair is practically gone.”

    A month later, however, The Star ran the picture of the architect’s plan for the bridges, and a county engineer said they could be completed in time for the 1939 World’s Fair contingent on receipt of federal money. Hermon Bishop, the county engineer, had filed an application for funding from the Works Progress Administration and explained the complex financing and toll-recovery process. A portion of the funding would be borne by the county through a general obligation bond issue.

    As for Phelan, a small article in The Star announced his death in June of 1956 in Mississippi and described his marriage in 1917 to Edith Bouvier Beale. The short note said she and their three children, Edith, Phelan Jr., and Bouvier, survived him.

    “One way? That’ll be $14, please” is repeated on Shelter Island’s South Ferry when I roll down my window and explain our intentions twice a year to visit East Hampton as we continue our research. The bridge, really bridges, to somewhere, in our case the South Fork, were never built, but as Phelan believed, there has never been a crying need for them. And we really like taking the ferries anyway.

    Steve Rideout regularly contributes “Guestwords” to The Star. He lives in Shutesbury, Mass.

    A heartfelt thanks to East Hampton citizens for supporting our efforts to import coyotes from Maine to the Hamptons. You are right that coyotes will go a long way to cleaning up the present summertime mess that one resident described in a letter to The Star as a climate of “hell.”

    I have lived in the Hamptons for 40 years and watched our town degenerate from paradise to a sweating, ill-mannered, noisy, deer-and-tick-infested traffic jam. Something must be done — but what?

    Our answer: coyotes.

    Let me regress a bit — for years I have followed the controversy over deer (and ticks). Some want shooting, some contraceptives (for the deer), others just surround their houses with 10-foot-high deer fence so that the deer stand on the outside looking in as if we humans are in a zoo and the deer are nonpaying customers. I do not appreciate being caged in a zoo for the amusement of deer. I am a consumer with a genuine lifestyle — not an object of amusement.

    So what has this to do with coyotes? Just this: Because the Hamptons have evolved into such a “hell,” years ago I fled north to Maine for the summer — a peninsula jutting into the sea, a hilltop cabin surrounded by blueberry fields, a view of Acadia National Park’s mountains, sun and moon rising from the water, in fact, an immense leafblowerless, almost scary, and certainly holy silence. That’s summer in my area of Maine.

    Our Maine tourists are mannerly, traffic is modest, and there are few ticks. Why few ticks? Because the deer are controlled by the coyotes. To be a baby deer in Maine is to be eaten — much as we consumers hack up lamb and veal to display in neat packages at the meat counter without further thought. In fact, just to be really far, far out — much as we ate TV dinners while watching George W.’s “shock and awe” campaign, which destroyed, oh, say, 300,000 Iraqi children, give or take a thousand. Coyotes do it better but they aren’t prime-time material.

    There are of course downsides to this miracle cure to the Hamptons hell: Coyotes also attack cats and dogs and have been known to bring down a jogger or two. My neighbor, Jon Swift, almost lost his 85-pound mutt Jack this summer when Jack was surrounded in the twilight by a pack of coyotes.

    Here’s how coyotes do it (clever fellows). They invited Jack — a kin canine — to play with them. “Yip, yip, yip!” dancing about. Jack, a boisterous king of the fields, was interested. Who doesn’t like to play with cousins? But soon Jack noticed that these cousins played rough. In fact, Jack was dinner. My neighbor stopped all this by banging pots and pans and the coyotes retreated.

    After that I kept my dogs in after sunset. In the cabin, they listened to the coyotes in the fields with some worry. The coyotes cackled and yapped like a New England town meeting, especially after they had killed something yummy.

    The point? After we introduce coyotes to the Hamptons to clean up our deer, we must be vigilant with our cats and dogs (cats are a mere appetizer for coyotes).

    Heartless, you say? I love deer. Often while driving I will pull over to the roadside while they graze and within a few feet of them gaze into their eyes. Such innocence. And when they leap no animal, including us — certainly us! — comes close to their grace. Sigh.

    But we must remember we are being destroyed by grace. As consumers we must be practical. We got rid of grace 2,000 years ago, washed our hands of him (although he did have some practical uses). So we can’t let it return in some burst of ill-advised sentimentality.

    Why? So we can get our gardens and shrubs back from the deer and end the plague of tick infestations nurtured by our innocent but deadly cloven-hoofed predators. I’ve had Lyme disease twice and two of my dogs did too, as did my wife. That stuff can kill you. It’s grace or us.

    My Maine neighbor offered a further bit of wisdom for coyote export to the Hamptons. Since coyotes like to gang up and attack whatever looks like lunch — i.e., joggers in shorts — all it will take is for one jogger or skateboarder or roller skater to be terrified by a pack of coyotes and for word to get back to Manhattan, and our tourist industry, guided by our esteemed town board (“the business of America is business”), will collapse. Our sidewalks will be walkable again; the summertime hoo-ha will flee to Nantucket, where it belongs. Ralph Lauren and Tiffany’s and the rest will abandon Main Street. We will have our village back again.

    Think of it. Mom-and-pop stores. Maybe the Pets Painted With Love shop will return. No more real estate offices inflating prices into the many millions for the 1 percent who’ve made the summertime Hamptons the world epicenter for excess.

    Whoops, I just tipped my hand. I hadn’t meant to preach. This is a practical proposal. I didn’t mean to note that one $5,000 sweater purchased in East Hampton Village would save the lives of hundreds of suffering children in poor countries. But I’m getting out of control here. Rage is seeping in. I’m mad, you see, losing it.

    Best turn it all over to the coyotes. After they have done their job, we will have our town back.

    Then we can slaughter the coyotes.

Bill Henderson is founder of Pushcart Press and editor of the annual Pushcart Prize. His latest book is “All My Dogs: A Life.”

    He has a youthful face, a ready smile, is charming and kind, and like many men over the age of 70, he has lived through a trying time brought on by prostate cancer. His name is Steve Patterson, and he is grateful to be a prostate cancer survivor.

    It began in March 2009 when Steve’s prostate-specific antigen reading spiked to 3, then to 4, and then to 6. His internist advised him to make an appointment with a urologist as soon as possible. Steve was at his primary residence in Florida at the time, and one of his neighbors recommended a urologist who subsequently performed a biopsy. It revealed that Steve had cancer in two cores of his prostate with a Gleason score of 6. The higher the Gleason score, the more likely a cancer will grow and spread rapidly. A Gleason score of 6 or lower indicates a less aggressive cancer, while a grade of 7 or more indicates an aggressive cancer.

    Steve was immediately consumed by anxiety, worried that any treatment would leave him impotent and incontinent. Unsure of what to do next, Steve turned to an old friend who had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland. The friend advised Steve to go to Johns Hopkins, praising its urology department and singling out a surgeon named Alan Partin, who is a professor of urology and urologist in chief in the hospital’s department of urology and oncology.

    Steve resigned himself to the inevitability that he would have to undergo serious and risky surgery, but Dr. Partin’s empathy helped him relax. Sitting opposite Dr. Partin, Steve wasn’t sure he heard the words correctly: “You barely have prostate cancer.”

    The cancer was small and not aggressive, and Steve was advised to take part in the Watchful Waiting program at Johns Hopkins. The doctor explained that Steve would have a P.S.A. test every six months and a biopsy once a year. He also gave Steve a packet of information about the Expectant Management program.

    A major emphasis in Expectant Management involves a healthy diet. Steve was urged to make changes to his diet and give up breads and desserts made from white flour, give up red meat, give up white rice, white sugar, and white potatoes. Replace white pasta with whole-wheat pasta. Then add the following anti-cancer foods: turmeric, pomegranate juice, soy milk, fish, fish oil, and extra-virgin olive oil. Steve should also give up drinking alcohol and participate in a daily exercise program, but this part of the program didn’t work so well.

    Like a fading fog, Steve’s anxiety lifted. He felt reassured. He was in the hands of a top doctor who imparted a depth of knowledge and experience. Steve was not out of the woods, but at least there was a path that he could follow, and Dr. Partin had given him a compass.

    After six months, Steve’s P.S.A. had not increased. Good news. After a year, a biopsy revealed no changes in his Gleason score. More good news. It was becoming increasingly easier to smile. The idea of surgery was now an old discarded route on a map that he would not have to consult. He imagined a new route mapped by Dr. Partin. For months, or perhaps even years, he would undergo regular P.S.A. tests and annual biopsies. Chances are the cancer would be contained. He drank his pomegranate juice and soy milk, took his fish oil supplements, and cooked with olive oil.

    Steve felt no anxiety when he went to Johns Hopkins for his third biopsy in June 2011. He had endured the unpleasant procedure before, and the results had always been positive.

    A few days afterward, it was a beautiful summer morning in East Hampton. Steve was on his deck reading a newspaper when his phone rang. Dr. Partin asked to see him. Steve made an appointment for the following week. A new anxiety had entered his life.

    Steve learned that two cores of cancer had grown to four cores. More important, one of the cores was a Gleason 7: a bad rating for an aggressive cancer. Steve felt that his luck had hit a roadblock. He was no longer a member of the Watchful Waiting club. His membership had been revoked. What now?

    Dr. Partin once again outlined the path to follow. He explained Steve’s three treatment options: surgery, external beam radiation, and radioactive seed implantation. Though a highly regarded surgeon, Dr. Partin recommended that Steve undergo external beam radiation. Steve expressed reservations about radiation because he had friends who had serious side effects from the procedure. The doctor indicated that radiation treatment of the prostate had undergone major advancements in the last few years, and he concluded by saying that surgery involved real risks that were not present in noninvasive radiation. And yet, both procedures produced effectively the same results. So why take the risk?

    Like many men in his position, Steve subsequently spoke to several physicians about the efficacy of radiation and about its side effects. One close friend, who was also a doctor, said he would choose external beam radiation. Steve weighed the advice and went that route.

    Now he had to choose where to have the treatment. The facility closest to his home in Florida was 45 miles away. In New York, he could receive state-of-the-art treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. When he learned that he would require 10 weeks of treatment, 5 days a week, he decided it would be necessary to rent an apartment in Manhattan. His niece found him a sublet on the Lower East Side in the same complex where she and her family lived. An express bus that stopped four short blocks away would let him off in front of Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

    By September, Steve had his initial consultation with an oncologist and was scheduled to undergo treatment. The process began with the insertion of three beacon transponders into Steve’s prostate. These markers, which remain in one’s prostate for a lifetime, permit a radiologist to deliver beams of radiation precisely to the targeted area without destroying healthy tissue. A half-body plaster cast was then made to cover the area from Steve’s chest to the middle of his thighs. Tattoos were imprinted on his thighs so that the radiologist could properly align Steve’s body with the radiation machine.

    Placed in his body cast on a table, Steve was ready for the first of 48 treatments. The table was raised about six feet, and the radiation machine circled his body, moving clockwise, issuing brief shots of radiation at 6, 10, 12, 2, and 4 o’clock on an imaginary timepiece. Each zap of radiation took less than 2 minutes, and the entire process took 15 to 20 minutes. The procedure produced neither pain nor discomfort.

    Following the completion of 48 treatments in December 2011, Steve was scheduled to have his P.S.A. tested in June 2012. It was 1.4, a dramatic decrease from the 6.6 it had been prior to his treatment. The grueling experience had come to an end. Steve’s doctors believed that his cancer had been successfully eradicated by radiation. He could once again lead a normal life.

    When I spoke with Steve at his home in East Hampton, he said: “Each person who is diagnosed with nonaggressive prostate cancer should have a serious conversation with his doctor about Watchful Waiting. Watchful Waiting was an important period for me — it gave me the time to examine various possibilities and come to grips with what cancer might mean for me. It wasn’t an end-of-life issue; instead, it was very much a quality-of-life issue. I had heard horror stories of men who could no longer enjoy sexual activity and had to wear diapers to deal with the embarrassment of incontinence. I have been quite fortunate. I have not suffered those consequences, and my life goes on much as it did before. Though I’m 73 years old, I feel relatively youthful and I’m enjoying life. I am a person of faith, and feel very blessed.”

    And I could see the happiness in his face.

    Jeffrey Sussman, the author of 10 nonfiction books, is writing a book about cancer patients, of which this is part of one chapter. He is the president of Jeffrey Sussman, Inc., a marketing and public relations firm that is online at powerpublicity.com. He has a house in East Hampton.