Metaphors don’t come easily to me. Having a limited imagination doesn’t help. But even I couldn’t miss this one.

    My wife, Carol’s, grandfather died almost seven years before she was born, but she heard stories about him, none very flattering. Jeremiah Miller Huntting became a sixth-generation East Hampton Huntting on June 10, 1882. Carol’s grandmother Edith Banister, former Village Mayor Jud Banister’s older sister, took her first teaching job in East Hampton’s Union School in the fall of 1901. Within 18 months, she met Jere, as he was known locally, and they married in October 1903. Beryle Huntting, Jere and Ede’s only child, was born the following year.

    We never knew when the divorce occurred, but it was sometime between 1909 and 1910, when Beryle was 5 or 6. A census search for Jud found the entire family, minus Jere, living in a corner apartment on Newtown Lane and Main Street in 1910. But no Jeremiah Miller Huntting under any reasonable spellings in the federal census. Where was he?

    The Huntting genealogy in Jeanette Edwards Rattray’s “East Hampton History” from 1953 opened the first door to the family history. She reported Jere’s first marriage to Ede and noted the divorce and the subsequent second marriages of both, Jere to Edna Remsen McKay and Ede to Christopher Cordes. Jere’s trail grew cold after 1910, though in time pieces started to come together.

    During the winter of 1905 to 1906, times were fun. The Ladies Village Improvement Society, just 10 years old, was planning a fund-raising home talent drama in Clinton Hall in December 1905. Mrs. Fred Dayton, Mrs. J.M. Huntting (Ede), Mrs. Everett Edwards, and Mrs. Dempsey formed the production committee. The Star, interested in supporting the play, identified the key cast members, Miss Elsie Tillinghast, Mrs. W.B. Robonson (sic), Miss Florence Sherrill, Fred Dayton, Ned Dayton, Charles Stuart, J.M. Huntting, and Harry Hedges, for the comedy-drama “What Became of Parker?”

    “The advance sale of seats for the presentation by home talent of the comedy ‘What Became of Parker?’ began this morning and there was a rush for tickets. The play is being rehearsed now almost nightly and the performance promises to be of high order,” The Star claimed on Feb. 16, 1906. Fred Parker, a dry-goods merchant, was played by Fred V.S. Dayton, and his business partner, William Torrence, by Jeremiah Miller Huntting.

    Finally the big night, Friday, Feb. 23, came, with The Star pronouncing, “The seating chart at Edwards drug store gives evidence that the greater part of the population of the village will be at Clinton Hall this evening to witness the presentation of ‘What Became of Parker?’ ” The following week a lengthy column enthusiastically praised the program, reporting the L.V.I.S. netted $110 from the play. The society lauded the production committee publicly for its efforts. How could Jere and Ede not be happy? So what did become of Parker, er, Jere?

    Baseball played a role that became evident only after more research. Although he initially managed and played right field on the town team, by 1906 he was actively umpiring. Soon he was recognized as one of the best umpires, and not just in East Hampton or on the East End — teams in New York City sought him and routinely asked him to attend annual league meetings to schedule umpires for the semipro games. New York City seemed a favorite place.

    The 1920 federal census and his World War I draft registration card started filling blanks. Jere, going by Jerry at this point, was head of household with his “wife,” Helen, and “their” two daughters, Eleanor and Mary. Except that Helen and Jere were not married. Her married surname was Weber and her husband was still engaged in the plumbing trade in another part of the city! A few years earlier on his draft registration card Jere had listed Helen, a friend, as the person the government should notify in an emergency. The address on the draft card and 1920 census was West 178th Street, Bronx Borough. Ten years before, Helen and Eleanor and Mary were the wife and children of husband and father Charles Weber, who owned a plumbing business.

    Meanwhile, Edna Remsen McKay, daughter of longtime North Hempstead Supervisor Cornelius Remsen, was living alone on West 94th Street as a New York City artist in 1920. And sometime between 1920 and 1926, when Jere and Edna married, he had left Helen. Star news items between 1910 and 1928 mentioned his brief visits back to East Hampton to see his mother after his father died in 1912 and Sam, his brother, died in 1914. Other East Hampton trips included visits with old friends, but New York City was home.

    Edna, previously married to Mahlon McKay, perhaps had a fix on Jere’s personality, because in the spring of 1928 they returned to East Hampton, renting a cottage on McGuirk Street. In 1929 they moved to a new home on Mill Hill Lane. He umpired baseball games in the East End League; he and Edna entertained friends, spent time at Edna’s Adirondack camp, wintered in Florida, and otherwise lived quiet lives. But at the age of 55 in 1937 Jeremiah Miller Huntting died after a long illness and was buried in the David H. Huntting family plot at Cedar Lawn Cemetery.

    Ede survived all her Banister siblings, and when she passed away in 1973 she joined Jud, Stella, and Howard Banister in the family plot at Cedar Lawn. As fate would have it her headstone faces Jeremiah Miller Huntting’s, about a good baseball throw from right field.

    Steve Rideout comes to East Hampton a couple of times every off-season to research family history. He lives in Shutesbury, Mass.

    Aren’t you sick of the lame, violent, and techno-heavy dreck Hollywood’s been dishing out for the past couple of years? I am. With movie attendance at an all-time low, it’s time for drastic measures. Hollywood needs a hit. What Hollywood really needs is a sequel to “Pretty Woman.”

    Let’s demand a meeting, A.S.A.P., with the powers that be: the director, Garry Marshall, the screenwriter, J.F. Lawton, and the silver screen’s most lovable couple, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. If they’re not available, what about Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst?

    Has Hollywood forgotten how it feels to exploit a good thing? “Pretty Woman,” by all accounts, was a very good thing — one of the top-grossing films of all time, with $463 million at the box office, according to the trade mag Variety. Not to mention all those $19.95 DVD sales in discount stores across America.

    A few years ago there was a rumor afloat that another film was in the works. I’d even heard of this plausible plotline: Gere’s character plans a run for the Senate but is worried about how his live-in relationship with an ex-prostitute would affect voters. Hmm, sounds like a winner to me.

    Richard and Julia think the characters have not evolved and grown in mature fashion in the intervening years? Simple — let them sit in on rewrites. Then, before you can say “Mrs. Roberts-Moder,” they’ll be scouting locations for “Pretty Woman III,” IV, and V. It’s what we need. It’s what we want.

    Megabucks talk. At least they’re talking to me. I’m joining the ranks of those Hollywood hopefuls. Today, I’m a screenwriter after a piece of that delectable dollar pie. I’ve just completed several synopses for possible sequels to one of the most moneymaking movies in history. Here’s a glimpse:

    Idea I: In the heat of passion, one steamy night in the sauna, they forgo the practice of safe sex. After some mild symptoms, they visit the doctor. Diagnosis? S.T.D. Seven days of treatment with tetracycline cures both, but he continues to feel betrayed. He moves to the Hilton. She gets the penthouse. It could have been worse.

    Idea II: Lately, he’s gotten bored with walking barefoot through the park with her, along with all those other spontaneous activities she’s prone to. Then, giving in to impulse once more one morning, he punctures his big toe on a rusty nail. A tetanus shot is in order. But wait. Add fear of inoculations to his ever-expanding list of phobias. As jaundice sets in, he lies dying. His last words: “No one ever really changes much. But I tried.”

    Idea III: Anxious to cure his vicious acrophobia, he seeks therapy with a well-known Beverly Hills psychiatrist. After only weeks on the couch, he discovers he suffers from low self-esteem. Hence his attraction to hookers from Hollywood Boulevard. After months of aided and intense self-examination, he is encouraged to attend a few networking functions to ease those feelings of social isolation. As luck would have it, he meets an assistant executive officer and V.P. for Estée Lauder. They run off to Australia for a scuba vacation and fall deeply in love. “I was ready,” he explains.

    Idea IV: Always told she should have been a model, she first, through his connections, secures a contract with the Ford Agency. Next she is chosen for a spot in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition. While on location for the shoot in Curacao, she takes up with ___ (fill in the blank), a member of a rich and famous rock group who is partying nearby. “He may not be as cute,” she says, “but he’s got more money. Plus, he sings.” (Might not ex-hubby Lyle Lovett, “music’s quirkiest and most talented un-hunk,” as Time magazine put it, be cast opposite Roberts in this meaty role?)

    Idea V: Generous to a fault, she asks her best friend from “the Strip” to join them on their next weekend getaway to Aspen. Over a bottle of vintage chardonnay at Pinons, he is simply smitten by this prostitute with a heart of gold. He confesses: “I live life for rescuing.” Back home in Los Angeles, Julia splits and he takes his new love on a spending spree — yep, you guessed it — along Rodeo Drive. She buys nice clothes, too, except this gal eschews the hats.

    Idea VI: Unable to curb her fascination with the low life, she secretly walks the streets in the wee hours of the night. In an attempt to control insomnia, he takes long drives, and gets lost, in the city most evenings. They bump into each other, literally, on Sunset and fall in love all over again.

    Venturing a guess, I see idea number six as a shoo-in. Sap sells. And Hollywood loves a happy ending. Now, if Garry and Julia can discern potential talent when they see it, I’m willing to write up a complete script. For a small percent of the profits. And a bit part.

    Look for me in the credits.

    Dianne Moritz is a regular contributor to “Guestwords” who lives in North Sea. Her second children’s book, “1, 2, 3 by the Sea,” is forthcoming from Kane Miller.

    The first Saturday night of each month, I go contra dancing in Water Mill. The word “contra” always arouses curiosity. Typically, it goes like this:

    “You do what?”

    “I go to contra dances.”

    “Is that some sort of Central American activity?”

    “No, it’s North American country dancing.”

    “Oh, then why contra?”

    “The first New Englanders called it contra, maybe their slang for country.”

    Imagine Paul Revere galloping through town on an average evening, lantern in hand, shouting, “Contra dance tonight!”

    My first dance was, appropriately, on a visit to Massachusetts in 1986. Friends invited my husband, Eric, and me to their regular dance in Concord. The Scout House is a large, rustic community hall in the center of town, and that evening the hall filled with young and old for the Saturday night social. We formed long lines of couples opposite each other, and thus began the first of many dances that night.

    Terror punctuated giddiness as the regulars do-si-doed, swung, and promenaded us up and down the hall until we popped out at the ends of the lines, dazed and exuberant. Bent over in laughter for a few seconds, we were soon pulled back in to repeat the same moves over and over again until the music stopped. Then everyone quite properly thanked each other with a slight bow and prepared for the next dance as the caller urged us to “find someone new and line up.”

    Before we knew it, Eric and I were separated and in the hands of friendly strangers for the next round. The caller took us through the sequence of moves and we were off. All this happened so swiftly that nothing serious could develop — sort of a Puritan wife swap, if you will. The band drove us down the hall with a vigorous tune from Ireland. This was quite a departure from square dancing in sixth grade. By the time the musicians were packing up their instruments late in the evening, we were sure we had met up and danced with everyone from Massachusetts.

    Home and hungry for more contras, the following year we took our young family to a festival sponsored by the Long Island Traditional Music Association. It was held at the 4-H camp on Long Island Sound in Riverhead. Arriving after dark on a rainy Friday evening in mid-October, we set up our pup tent quickly. The sound of a Scottish reel drew us to the main hall. Stepping into the softly lit room holding our sleepy babies, we stood mesmerized as 40 or so people danced before us.

    The caller had dropped out by then, his directives having been absorbed by all present. The musicians led the hall with fiddles and a strong bass player marking the beat. We watched dancers twirl and circle, moving in patterns, skirts flowing, exchanging smiles and nods. Hoots and laughter accompanied the music. It was magical to witness sound and bodies united by rhythm for that moment in time and space.

    Since then, Eric and I have danced with our babies in backpacks, in the heat of midday, and in the coolness of late night. We have joined hands with 20 people and with 300 people, and sashayed in our living room alone. Spacious barns, outdoor tents, fields, gymnasiums, and meeting halls here and across the ocean have felt our soles beat against their floors.

    Once, while visiting the island of Fyn in Denmark, we searched out a contra dance. After driving miles down pitch-dark country roads, we arrived at a school gymnasium full of dancers. Although the caller’s words were foreign to us, language hardly mattered. Once in the line, we understood.

    True to the Danish tradition of evening coffee, everyone stopped dancing midway through the night. Tables stacked against a wall were pulled to the center of the hall and set up in a long rectangle. Colorful tablecloths were spread across them. Pastries, actual ceramic cups, and carafes of tea and coffee taken from baskets were arranged on the tables. Everyone sat down to socialize over the refreshments for about 45 minutes. How civilized it was. After cleanup, the dance continued for another hour.

    Newcomers, especially women, always have an important question. “What should I wear?” Anything goes. Just wear comfortable shoes. An annual formal does take place every winter in Water Mill, however. For a contra dancer this can mean your best jeans, wedding dress, or sequined gown. On the East End, most men prefer a dusty wedding tux or a fancy Hawaiian shirt and shorts. But I have seen all kinds of outfits at other dances. The most inspiring ensemble I ever saw was a husband and wife in matching satin prom gowns at a festival near Albany. What would those proper New England forefathers think?

    Each time Eric and I enter a dance, we are excited by what will unfold that night up and down the hall. The caller gathers us, and our feet wiggle in anticipation of flirty twirls and friendly faces encountered up and down the line. We love being dance partners, and when the caller instructs us to seek another partner, we ask a first-timer, a single, or even an old friend to step onto the floor. After all, it is a contra dance tradition learned that first night in Concord, when strangers took our hands.

    The dancers and the callers who shape each event are at once similar at any venue around the world and yet unique to that place and time. At a contra dance, you become part of a community bonded through the beat of the music, the smile across the line, and the hand of someone new in yours. The dancing is the thing, and no matter how left-footed you are, before or past your prime, large, small, thick, thin, single, or partnered, you are welcomed into the fun.

    Hilary Herrick Woodward lives in Southampton with her husband, Eric Woodward. Contra dances are held at the Water Mill Community House October through May.

   The heralded Obama-Berwick plan to reduce health care infections and errors by 40 percent by 2014 is much too cautious. It falls short of goals already achieved by infection-control advocates in hundreds of hospitals throughout the country and would still leave us with an annual toll of more than 120,000 preventable health care deaths, more than a million preventable illnesses and injuries, and an annual taxpayer cost of $21 billion.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute of Medicine report that about 100,000 Americans die annually from health care errors, e.g., administering patients the wrong medication or a lack of backup oxygen during surgery, and another 100,000 die from health care-acquired infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Clostridium difficile, unsterile catheter insertion, and ventilator-acquired pneumonia.

    All in all, 200,000 deaths a year — a figure that has not changed since the Institute of Medicine first announced it in 1999. Indeed, the real figure is probably higher. Adverse events in hospitals are often unreported. Our health care providers are killing us faster than the Axis did in World War II, when our military fatalities averaged 116,000 per year.

    The East End has not been spared. Betty Fox, a producer at LTV, and the artist Howard Kanovitz died in the past few years from infections acquired in the area’s hospitals. Others have been seriously sickened. I am among them, having nearly died of a staph infection followed by Clostridium difficile, which I acquired after surgery at the Stony Brook University Medical Center in 2009.

    The Obama administration’s low target of a 40-percent reduction reflects reluctance to properly address this carnage in the face of health care industry obstinacy. There is ample proof we can do better. The recently released Veterans Administration study of its 157 hospitals reported a 62-percent drop in cases of MRSA in its intensive-care units and 45 percent in other wards. A five-year study of 10 North Carolina hospitals, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2010, reported that 63 percent of patient harms it identified were preventable. A remedial program in 2006, led by Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins in more than 100 Michigan intensive-care units, reported an 85-percent reduction of central line infections, which are estimated to kill 30,000 Americans a year.

    We are not dealing with complex science here. The solution is low cost, low tech, and has been known for nearly two centuries. Ignaz Semmelweis and Oliver Wendell Holmes preached it in the 1840s. You prevent infections by keeping your patient, yourself, your equipment, and your surroundings clean. You prevent errors by being careful. Some remedial steps are as simple as altering dress codes to prohibit male physicians from wearing neckties, which can transmit germs by draping on patients.

    Another step would be for hospitals to invest a little more money in the most effective infection-control products. Studies reported in The New York Times in January 2010 suggest that hospitals largely reject a superior preoperation swab, chlorhexidine-alcohol, because it costs $8.50 more per patient than povidone-iodine, which hospitals use 75 percent of the time, even though researchers have found that patients receiving it were significantly more likely to develop infections.

    Dr. Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and founder of the effective advocacy group Reduce Infection Deaths, reported that in an Ohio hospital, MRSA, C. difficile, and other lethal germs survived on 78 percent of near-bed surfaces and implements, such as call buttons and TV remotes, even after the areas were vacated and presumably sterilized for incoming patients. A more thorough cleaning with disinfectants reduced the rate to 1 percent.

    A faster, more effective way to reduce this carnage is to disaccredit the most dangerous hospitals so they cannot receive Medicare or Medicaid payments or bill patients for co-pays. They and other hospitals would get the message and snap to. Medicare and Medicaid payments provide health care facilities with 67 percent of their income. The mere threat of disaccreditation by Lyndon Johnson in 1967 integrated Southern hospitals that had declared they would not accept African-American Medicare patients. The hospitals changed their ways, as they would now. Physicians and hospitals know what needs doing. Threaten their wallets and they’ll do it.

    Standing squarely in the way of disaccreditation, however, is a conflict of interest akin to the bond rater to bond broker relationship that gave us the economic calamity of 2008.

    Here’s how it plays out. The Department of Health and Human Services deems that the Joint Commission, a $150 million per annum private nonprofit, can judge the safety, integrity, and efficiency of a hospital or ambulatory surgical center at least as well as H.H.S. can. So if the Joint Commission says that Fixup General Hospital doesn’t cheat the government too much or conspicuously botch too many operations, H.H.S., via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, okays the Medicare and Medicaid payments that keep Fixup afloat.

    The Joint Commission accredits 80 percent of the country’s hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers for these government payments.

    But guess who pays the commission for the inspections required for the accreditations and triennial reaccreditations. Yes, the very hospitals they are accrediting. And guess who pays a subsidiary of the commission for advance instruction on how to pass inspections. Yes, it’s the about-to-be-inspected hospitals. And who do you think sells the hospitals “We Are Accredited” coffee mugs and other PR doodads following their certification of worthiness in the face of such disinterested scrutiny? Right again. The proceeds go to the Joint Commission.

    It is Moody’s AAAing Lehman Brothers all over again, or, if you prefer, Arthur Andersen extolling Enron’s financial purity. Only in this case it kills people rather than their home ownership and life savings.

    In 2008, following the scandal of vermin infestation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which the Joint Commission had recently blessed with a 97-percent approval rating, Health and Human Services pressed the commission to strengthen its accreditation procedures. The commission responded with exhortations and education programs to get hospitals to right themselves but apparently did not exercise its authority to disaccredit dangerous medical facilities.

    In 2010, David Eddinger, who handles accreditation matters at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, affirmed to me that there had been no safety-related disaccreditations for the previous two years. A board member of the Joint Commission later informed me that the commission had not disaccredited a hospital for safety reasons during the previous 10 years. Nevertheless, the government renewed the commission’s deeming authority through 2014.

    The solutions we are proffered for this ghastly human and economic toll reflect Republican free-market theology and Democratic trepidation. Republicans tout removing government from the infection-error scene on the mystical premise that a market free of regulation will enable patients to identify and employ conscientious medical care. Democratic measures, embedded in Title III of the Affordable Care Act and recent proposals, remain tepid and subject to vaporization by industry lobbyists in the rule-making phase.

    The disaccreditation weapon, which H.H.S. can invoke without Congressional approval, is not on the table, and the carnage continues.

    Richard Rosenthal’s local television show, “Access,” won the 2010 Alliance for Community Media’s Jewell Ryan-White Award for the quality of non-mainstream programming. He is the author of “The Dandelion War,” a novel about class warfare in the Hamptons, and lives in East Hampton.

   I love live theater. Musicals, mostly. Sondheim — what’s not to love? I see as much of it as I can.

    I recently read a lot of stuff about a performance by the New York Philharmonic that was held hostage by a ringing cellphone. It stopped the orchestra, stopped the show — the conductor was mortified and embarrassed the guy whose phone disrupted it all. (Surprised he doesn’t have a reality show yet. Suggested title: “The Cell Bells Are Ringing.”)

    Patti LuPone has been known to stop the show and scream out “Louise!” when a cellphone flash goes off mid-“Gypsy.”

    These distractions are decidedly annoying.

    The other night I went to see “Other Desert Cities,” a hit for its writer, Jon Robin Baitz, and still one more hit for its director, Joe Mantello — Hamptonites both. I met Robbie, as Mr. Baitz is known, and had dinner with him and a mutual friend right here at the Meeting House in Amagansett Square not too long ago. Lovely guy. Talented, too.

    “Other Desert Cities” is a serious piece, also filled with humor, about a dysfunctional family. Hello? Is there a family that isn’t? But even me, as a serious writer (if you can call this column serious), I have to take my hat off to Robbie for writing this thing, for mounting this piece, with the help of his ex-boyfriend Mr. Mantello. I’m impressed. Stockard Channing (although she was not at the performance that particular evening; her understudy, Lauren Klein, was on instead), Rachel Griffiths, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, and Justin Kirk are all wonderful in their roles. I’m presuming Ms. Griffiths and Robbie are friends, as she starred in his now-over-but-no-doubt-in-syndication “Brothers and Sisters,” that TV series also starring the “You like me! You really like me!” Sally Field.

    Okay. That’s another story.

    “Other Desert Cities” is a fine show, if slightly overwritten. I’m no critic; I’m just an audience. But this particular audience was overwhelmed by the amount of coughing accompanying the show from the rest of the audience.

    The woman directly behind me coughed, on cue, every 30 seconds. Cacophonous coughs bounced off and down from the mezzanine; coughs resounded from all around. There were sniffles and sneezes, too, and some cellophane rattling. But the coughing!

    After a while, not long into the show, I became transfixed by all the coughing. It was like a soundtrack. The coughs came and came — double coughs, single coughs, phlegmy coughs, dry ones. After a little longer while, I wasn’t paying any attention at all to the clever dialogue. As it accelerated in its seriousness, as Rachel Griffiths (Brooke Wyeth in the play, the writer character) reached her crescendo, the coughs accelerated too. I didn’t hear a word of what was going on onstage. I just waited, practically breathlessly, for the next cough, which did not disappoint. The next cough came on the heels of the previous cough — there wasn’t a 10-second period when the coughing did not come. I can’t imagine how the cast kept it together.

    I saw “West Side Story” when it was recently revived on Broadway. I went with my friend and colleague Tom, whom I share an office with and who, coincidentally, coughs constantly. Tom is a mild-mannered guy, pleasant, well meaning. But behind us in the theater that night was a guy eating a bag of Lay’s potato chips. Noisily. So very noisily that after this guy’s continual crunching of the chips (betcha can’t eat just one!), Tom stepped out of character and turned around to the chipster and grabbed the bag from his hand, crushed it, and threw it on the floor at his feet. Bravo!

    In “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (a Sondheim show), there is in the prologue song this lyric: “So please, don’t cough, it tends to throw the actors off . . .” and then a bit about cellophane unwrapping. It is a fun number, crisp and clever, classic Sondheim, with a lot of truth in it. There are multiple distractions that can occur in a theater where hundreds of people are brought together in a supposed quiet and even austere place, the theater. But the coughing predominates. (And, while we’re, or, rather, I’m, on the subject, can we talk about the coughing on the Jitney?)

    It’s been a mild winter, the winter that wasn’t, with temps primarily in the 50s. But people still get sick. And people, sick and coughing and sneezing and all, come to the theater, entitled with their $100-plus tickets. We are reminded, sometimes more than once, to turn off our cellphones and beepers (does anyone still have a beeper, or wear a hat?). We are asked to unwrap our cellophane-wrapped candies in advance. But no one says anything about coughing. One can cough, anyone and everyone can cough, and can constantly cough, can continually cough, can cough over and over again, coughs just as annoying, if not more so, than a ringing cellphone. Gee, I wonder if one can get a ring tone that sounds like coughing?

    I sit like a mouse in my seat, scrunched up and quiet and attentive to the players, while everyone around me coughs. If I have to clear my throat, I do it silently for fear of stares and glares, while everyone around me coughs away. It’s an involuntary gesture, coughing. It comes on you automatically, without planning or warning. A cough escapes out of one’s mouth without forethought. Coughs just seem to come.

    But no one onstage is coughing unless it is written into the script. How come everyone coughs in the theater? And coughs even louder when there’s a ring of applause, as though people are suddenly set free to let it all hang out while there are loud noises happening? I don’t notice the coughing nearly as much in musicals — I guess because there is often loud music playing.

    Finally, I can’t tell you how “Other Desert Cities” ended exactly. I can tell you it was basically and ultimately and utterly ruined for me by the number of coughs and coughers. Thank God for the intermission! I rushed out into the 55-degree winter air and was able to find a quiet spot for 10 minutes in Shubert Alley before I went back in, ears cocked to the coughing. As if it were a part of the piece.

    Well, maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it isn’t.

    Hy Abady, a creative director at a New York advertising agency, is the author of "Back in The Star Again: True Stories From the East End." He lives part time in Amagansett.

    “I’m sorry, but you have cancer.” There are probably no more frightening words than those. And everyone feels like a potential victim. After all, if one doesn’t die of heart disease or Alzheimer’s or in an accident, then chances are it will be one of the many forms of cancer.

    Brian Craig, a seemingly healthy man, was told he had prostate cancer. His physician recommended surgery to remove his prostate gland. While in a hospital in New York, he underwent a series of tests prior to surgery; he learned that doctors discovered some abnormalities on his liver. An ultrasound examination was called for.

    The good news was that his liver was fine. The bad news was that he had a tumor on his pancreas. The tumor was malignant. Anyone who has read about pancreatic cancer or known someone who has been afflicted with it knows that the survival rates for pancreatic cancer are dismal. At best, treatments are able to prolong life by months; however, it is not unusual for victims to succumb to the disease within weeks of diagnosis, for the cancer is usually discovered after it has advanced to the point of producing symptoms.

    The tumor on Brian’s pancreas, which is next to the liver, had been causing bile to back up into the liver. This was what had alerted Brian’s doctors to the abnormalities in the liver.

    While it has been suspected that excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes, and smoking may be causes of pancreatic cancer, none of those applied to Brian. He neither smokes nor drinks, is neither obese nor diabetic. Look at Brian and you will see a healthy-looking, physically fit man in his middle years.

    A top surgeon judged that Brian’s tumor was resectable (i.e., removable), and so Brian was a good candidate for an operation known as a Whipple. It is an extremely complicated and dangerous surgery. Not only is part of the pancreas removed, but so is the duodenum, gall bladder, part of the jejunum, stomach bile duct, and lymph nodes near the pancreas. Brian was under the surgeon’s knife for seven hours. When he awoke, he felt as if his entire body was permeated with pain; yet, soon thereafter, the pain was controlled by an epidural catheter supplying morphine. Three days later, Brian went home.

    One month after the surgery, Brian had a CT scan and an M.R.I. He had prayed that the cancer was gone, that there were no more tumors. Instead, he learned that he now had four lesions on his liver. Brian said: “My medical team — oncologist, radiologist, and surgeon — thought that these may have been metastasized P.C. and that chemo, rather than more surgery, would be appropriate. This was the most troubling period in my whole experience. The original diagnosis and surgery happened so fast, and with such good results, that the negative possibilities and implications didn’t really have time to set in. This, however, was very bad news.”

    Brian’s doctors were willing to try something that was fully tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration but was not part of the normal protocol of treatment. He was given a cocktail of four different chemotherapy drugs. Over a period of about four months, he had six infusions, which meant eight-hour sessions at a hospital. One chemo drug, however, required a 48-hour delivery period, and so Brian had to wear a portable pump that delivered the drug after its primary infusion. He disliked wearing the pump, but he had no choice.

    Because Brian is not overweight, does not smoke, and is not diabetic, he was able to withstand the highly aggressive levels of chemo. To reduce the likelihood of infection, Brian was given the drug Neulasta, which boosts one’s white blood count. It’s an expensive drug, costing several thousand dollars for each injection. Fortunately for Brian, his medical insurance fully covered the cost.

    In December, Brian underwent another series of CT and M.R.I. scans. To his relief and the delight of his medical team, he was completely free of tumors. In addition to the scans, he was given a blood test to determine if he had any protein markers that would indicate the presence of malignancy. For pancreatic cancer, blood markers are normal from 0 to 35. Above that range suggests the possible presence of pancreatic cancer. Just prior to Brian’s surgery, his markers were about 1,500! His markers that December were 25. A subsequent blood test in January showed markers at 27. Both levels are well within the range of someone without pancreatic cancer.

    I asked Brian how he had dealt with the worst news of his life: that he might die within months of his diagnosis. He said that he had “wonderful support from family and friends, and from my faith. My spouse, Michael, was present throughout and provided tremendous support. I also was lucky enough to have access to some of the best physicians in the world. And, I had faith that God would help me through this, as I do not feel I’ve finished whatever it is I need to get done here on earth.”

    Brian does not need any additional treatments of chemotherapy. He and his doctors believe that he is now entirely free of tumors. He will be checked every six weeks for the next year. If his health remains normal, there will be longer periods between checkups.

    Brian further summarized his future: “I am hopeful that my results will continue to be positive. As you have probably read, pancreatic cancer is very aggressive and spreads; it is statistically likely that it will show up again. If so, I’m sure I will face more chemo — as it worked — and who knows what else. My prognosis is that I very well may be among the very, very few who beat this. There is no evidence of any malignancy. I also believe that incredible progress is being made in the field of oncology, and the longer I stick around, the better chance there is of amazing new treatments.”

    “My life has changed in that I’m far more focused on making good use of the time I have, however long that is. And that is the message I would want to share with people. No matter how long or short your life is expected to be, all we have is one day at a time. Make sure you live during those days, enjoy life, make a difference. Be thankful every day you wake up and see the dawn, and make use of the day. Do not give in to any illness — you must control your own life even if it is from a hospital bed. Recovery from chemo, or surgery or radiation or many other insults we must face, isn’t easy, but you must focus on staying in control of how you spend your days. And remember that your friends and family and faith will help you. Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help — friends and family will want to help you.”

    Brian Craig lives in East Hampton. 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 the New York City marketing and public relations firm Jeffrey Sussman, Inc., and has a house in East Hampton.

    My East Hampton is a small town. It is not “the beach,” “the Hamptons,” or some docu­drama. I raised a son here. I talk politics on Main Street. I wait the winter out with fireside reading. The most important thing to me is living here, not how fast I can get in and out for the season. I like having a small airport. It is an amenity. But ultra-luxury travel is not part of my life.

    Like many residents, I have watched with a mix of anxiety and apathy as our small rural airport morphed into a facility capable of handling jets and helicopters. Airport control seemed to be out of our hands. After all, I knew that the Federal Aviation Administration regulated planes in flight, and I thought there was nothing to be done. I was wrong.

    For months, I have worked with the litigation team challenging the airport environmental review. The case has revealed that the Town of East Hampton will soon have available indisputable powers to control airport access and use, reduce the quantity of traffic, and curtail noise. Yet an organized airport lobby tied to powerful political insiders is pressing for the town to surrender those powers, even before the public understands the issue or the courts can decide the case. It is time to talk clearly about the airport.

    An obvious fact has to be stated. The Town of East Hampton is the owner, or “proprietor,” of its airport. In the absence of F.A.A. funding, a proprietor can control airport access and use to reduce noise. That is the law. Entirely.

    Even though the F.A.A. regulates the flight and safety of aircraft, airport owners still have the power to control airport access and use. Access controls are simple common-sense measures. For example, the town could limit hours of operation, set curfews, and limit weekend use. It could set a percentage goal for the reduction of total airport noise and even ban the noisiest aircraft. These powers are legally indisputable. Unless reversed by the United States Supreme Court, they are the law of the land and applicable to East Hampton.

    Using our owner’s powers to control airport access does not require any F.A.A. approval. We don’t need help from our congressman. We don’t need lawyers or political insiders to lobby the F.A.A. Litigation is not required. We don’t even have to ask permission. These simple airport access controls are perfectly legal and within our reach.

    Another fact is critical. When a municipality takes F.A.A. grants, restrictions apply that cede airport control to the agency. Some time ago, East Hampton accepted F.A.A. grants. Luckily, our grant restrictions will expire in just two years. When they do, East Hampton could impose simple common-sense airport access controls using ordinary local regulation.

    Controlling airport access and use is the only way to reduce the quantity of airport traffic. Aircraft cause noise, which is described in technical jargon as “source noise.” Reducing the quantity of traffic reduces the amount of source noise. The use of local powers to control noise, without having to ask permission, is sensible.

    None of the other types of air traffic controls reduce the source of airport noise. Setting mandatory altitudes, using a seasonal control tower, and altering routes merely rearrange air traffic in the sky. They do nothing to reduce the quantity of air traffic. Therefore, they do not reduce the source of noise.

    An important criticism of the town’s airport environmental impact statement is that it never explained the existence of local powers to control airport access and reduce noise. It never informed the public that when current F.A.A. grant restrictions expire, the town could exercise such powers. The failure to explain this fundamental issue has fueled much of the confusion about airport regulation.

    Instead, the environmental impact statement told a half-truth. It stated only that F.A.A. grant restrictions made it illegal to control airport access and use, omitting any description of proprietor’s powers that become available when restrictions expire. It also claimed that unlimited growth was required by law. Although it described its plan as a “no growth” master plan, in fact it was based on a policy of unlimited airport traffic access.

    Think about that study for a moment. It explicitly stated the exact opposite of what the airport lobby now publicly claims. Their advertisements loudly trumpet that continued F.A.A. control is the best way to reduce airport noise. Meanwhile, the town’s environmental impact statement admitted that F.A.A. control makes it illegal to limit airport traffic or control the source of noise. The truth is that aviation and political insiders don’t want the public to understand the availability of simple local access controls that could effectively reduce the quantity of air traffic and noise.

    Why does the airport lobby oppose local airport control to reduce noise? The group speaks only for aviation interests, not for ordinary residents plagued by noise. Pilot members testifying at the last public hearing paid lip service to the problem of airport noise, but in lockstep they promoted a policy of unlimited airport traffic under F.A.A. control. Does it seem logical or persuasive that pilots would prefer limits on airport access? Does an ultra-luxury traveler really want to be restricted as to when he can land and take off because of concerns over noise? Airport access controls annoy pilots and the ultra-luxury traveler. They protect the rest of us.

    Another fact must be recognized. Airport noise affects thousands of residents in and near East Hampton, across a large geographic area. The town has logged more than 8,000 complaints in a single year, though callers know that absolutely nothing is done in response. Rather than acknowledge these widespread impacts, the airport lobby has disparaged airport opponents as a tiny group of crank property owners near the airport who selfishly want it closed to boost property values. What is the motive to belittle the opposition?

    The spin ostracizes opponents and obscures the truth. Unlimited access serves the convenience of a small group of ultra-luxury travelers while inflicting noise on thousands of ordinary residents. To maintain that policy, the airport lobby touts measures that merely shift noise from place to place. Moving airplanes around in the sky cannot reduce the quantity of air traffic or the source of noise. Only local control of airport access and use can halt the insidious erosion of East Hampton’s tranquil rural character.

    It is clear that F.A.A. control does not reduce airport noise. If it did, we would all be enjoying the summer sounds of crickets instead of helicopters. For some 20 years, we have been subject to F.A.A. control. It has delivered nothing but more traffic and noise. Any longtime resident can understand this fact just by listening.

    In defiance of the facts, airport lobby advertising lauds the benefits of F.A.A. control, as we walk together into the sunset. It is a lullaby. Not long ago, East Hampton tried to impose a sensible nighttime jet curfew and limits on noisy touch-and-go landings. The F.A.A. squelched both measures, citing grant restrictions. If it is so easy to control noise under F.A.A. restrictions, why are our skies noisier than ever? Why is traffic worsening? The truth is that F.A.A. control means a policy of unlimited airport access. It does nothing to reduce the quantity of airport traffic or the source of noise.

    Federal Aviation Administration policy is no secret. In binding court decisions, it has unabashedly stated that airports subject to its restrictions lose the power to control access to curtail noise. When the airport lobby tells us how helpful the F.A.A. will be, I hear Groucho Marx asking, “Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your own lying eyes?” The truth is that the F.A.A. has never consented to local access controls for a grant-funded airport.

    Who benefits when we reject local control in favor of unrestricted traffic access, even by invasive and noisy helicopters? It is no coincidence that powerful political insiders are allied with the well-funded airport lobby. Together, they have obscured the facts and opposed local control. Thousands of ordinary residents long for a return to small-town tranquillity. Their luxuries are quiet skies and summer nights, not opulent private air travel.

    Do we really benefit from the luxury traveler and the jet-and-helicopter-friendly policy of F.A.A. control? Or does it favor those whose only concern for East Hampton is how quickly they can come and go? My vote is for a policy that favors people who stay.

Jeffrey Bragman is an East Hampton attorney. He represents residents who have challenged the airport master plan environmental review. His clients favor strong local controls on airport access and use.

   I’ve always been fascinated by credit card fees. When your bank is already charging you any interest rate they like, why antagonize their customers further with hefty nuisance fees? It doesn’t seem to make marketing sense. (Just bump up that “default” rate to something even more usurious than it was before; most of your customers won’t notice.)

    I’m old enough to remember when a credit card was a simple and honest relationship between you and your bank: You paid an annual fee for the service and they charged you an honest interest rate for the money you borrowed. (They also collected 2 or 3 percent from the vendors.)

    But starting in the 1980s, as credit card regulations imploded, you began to see those extra numbers on your statement. For a long time it was just the late fee: Pay before 5 p.m., you win; pay after 5 p.m. — whoops! (Sorry, Hawaii, we’re on Eastern time.)

    Then a few years ago a consultant by the name of Bill Strunk invented the “over-limit fee.” I thought this was sheer genius! What Strunk realized was that you could take a contractual obligation (the limit on your credit), loosen it unilaterally just a little, make it look like a service, and charge whatever you liked for this “service”!

    Now it looks like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to put a damper on these fees. The banks will need more creative thinking. Here are some suggestions:

    My wife’s credit union charges her a “rush payment” fee if she pays online after 4 p.m. the day before the due date. (It doesn’t matter, of course, that rush payments arrive at the same time as non-rush payments.) This concept has possibilities: Expand the time frame by a day or two and charge for semi-rush payments made less than 24 hours before the due date.

    No-call fee. I’d be happy to pay, say, $9.95 to eliminate dunning phone calls for a month. Better yet, charge me $14.92 for no phone calls, period, or $4.99 for no phone calls from machines, only humans who dial the number themselves.

    Automatic transaction fee. An increasing number of transactions are automatic monthly subscription payments. I haven’t signed a receipt for these; they are risky for the bank. What if I refuse to pay? What if I’m dead? The bank should charge me $12.95 for each of these risky charges.

    Billing fee. A number of banks have offered me $5 (five American dollars!) if I switch to e-mail billing. Time to reverse this: From now on, if I want a paper bill mailed to me each month I should pay for the privilege — $17.76 sounds about right ($24.95 if I still use those quaint old paper checks and require a return envelope).

    Unredeemed fee. If I foolishly neglect to trade in my bonus points for — whatever — the bank has the extra burden of continuing to account for them. I should pay for my lax behavior and the trouble I cause them. Think of all the bits and bytes they have to spend. I’d say $19 per 10,000 unredeemed points per month would sound about right.

    Then again, maybe there is a bank somewhere whose business plan suggests they can thrive collecting 3 percent of each charge transaction from the vendors and, moreover, charging as little as prime plus 8 percent for money borrowed. (How greedy do you have to be not to be satisfied with a 14-plus percent return on the cash flow running through your bank?)

    They can even add a fee if they want: Call it the “no-fee fee.” Charge me almost anything per year so I don’t have to play this shell game with you. That would be a fee I’d welcome!

    Sounds like a lucrative deal to me. If such a bank, say, Bailey Savings and Loan, offered a charge card on those terms I’d jump at it. So would another one hundred million Americans. Bailey would own the market.

    But that would cause another crisis for the banks that are too big to fail. And another trillion-dollar bailout. Bill Strunk, I hope, would find a way to stop that.

    James Monaco is a writer and publisher in Sag Harbor. He offers a spreadsheet template to help you analyze your credit card overcharges at HEPdigital.com/ccanalysis.xls.

    It was a nice morning on the Rhine — warm, hazy, a breeze. I remember it that way and have checked the weather records to make sure I’m not idealizing it after 67 years.

    I was sweeping horse manure from a Bailey bridge that my outfit, the 1251st Combat Engineer Battalion, had built from Neuss to Dusseldorf. A major driving by in a jeep pulled up, leaned toward me across the passenger seat, and said before I could free my hand to salute him, “It’s over, son.”

    I went numb. I’d been expecting it, but couldn’t believe it.

    “Going to celebrate?” he asked.

    “Yes, sir. We’ve saved up some beer and schnapps.”

    He looked at me as if I were young for that and sat back up at the wheel. “Make sure you clear that horse shit first,” he said.

    In 1939, when World War II started, 47 rail and road bridges spanned the Rhine River in Germany. By March 1945, when we reached the river, 46 had been destroyed and the one still standing, at Remagen, was near collapse.

    Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were across the river, fighting 100 miles and more to the east, needing supplies. The solution was a Bailey bridge, the brainstorm of Donald Bailey, a British tinkerer who invented a modular bridge supported by 570-pound, 10-foot-long steel panels that six men could hand carry and set into place without resorting to cranes or special tools. The bridge, about 900 feet long in my memory’s eye, had short spans on either side, with the long central portion resting on pontoons.

    We had the bridge up and operating around the clock in five days, whereupon I was sent to a pontoon with my rifle to shoot at explosives we were warned the Germans would float downstream at us. I shot up empty cartons, toys, rowboats, and corpses, which I poked aside and allowed to continue down the river, but no mines came. The Germans were giving up.

    Behind me on the bridge’s wood planks, supply trucks, tanks, jeeps, and command cars rolled eastward toward the front 22 hours a day. The other two hours, between 5 and 7 in the morning, Germans who had fled east from our advancing armies were returning — to what, they could not know. Every morning, whatever the weather, they came in droves, on foot, aboard carriages drawn by spent, whipped, desperate horses, on the backs of chugging trucks powered by charcoal from burning, stinking old wood. With them were possessions, often surreal and burdensome, they had fled with: rosewood china cupboards and dining tables, oak four-poster beds, even grand pianos — symbols of a culture that was perishing, borne back to homes that probably no longer existed, to share with family and friends that only perhaps were still alive.

    The parade would stagger up the gravel incline on the west bank, some pausing to rest, but we forced them on. Back in April, a 5-year-old boy had graciously accepted a chocolate bar from a corporal from Kentucky, slipped off to eat it, and had a leg blown off by a German mine we had failed to clear. I heard it happen — the mine’s pop, a pause hanging with horror, the mother’s screams, the shouting for the ambulance that was always standing by.

    I stayed on the pontoon, obeying orders. Anyway, there would be no time for sympathy. Back down the road, the tanks were waiting for the bank to clear.

    It is commonly believed we don’t talk much about our war experiences because we want to avoid reliving them or upsetting people. This is so, but there is another reason. We believe that no one who wasn’t there can understand.

    On our first day in basic training, a grizzled first sergeant lined us up under a cold Georgia sun and told us our first job was to forget everything we thought we knew about war, the Army, and ourselves. Now, I feel I must say much the same thing to people who ask me about my service in World War II. The prevailing version is myth. We were not fighting for peace and justice, but to survive and come home. We were not all angels of mercy or the Germans all hard-core killers. We were rarely brave and thought it a fluke when we were. The Army was not a well-oiled, efficient machine, but from top to bottom constantly making ridiculous mistakes.

    The word “snafu,” which started life as an acronym for “situation normal: all fucked up,” was born in World War II. Snafus twice saved me from devastating combat. The first happened in January 1945 when the major commanding our battalion got lost and led us to orchards in Brittany rather than to battle in Belgium; the second a little afterward when higher headquarters couldn’t locate us and sent the 1252nd into battle instead.

    Do I feel guilty? I don’t think I do. So much is chance. Dumb luck, good and bad. In June, after the war, I got a five-day pass to Paris. When I returned, a Polish boy we’d adopted ran up to me weeping and shouting, “Italiano kaput! Italiano kaput!” Johnny Cisco from Brooklyn, who’d taken over my guard duty when I was away, had been killed by a falling tree. He’d just been sitting there, on a low cement wall in front of our billets, his rifle and helmet beside him, and the tree, probably weakened by shrapnel, fell on him.

    But beautiful things happened too, most of all our coming together with the Germans, as individuals. Allied bombing, much of it deliberate terror bombing, killed 500,000 German civilians. The Germans had tried it out at Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, saw the possibilities, and so followed it up at Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London. We upped the ante big and reduced 45 of Germany’s 60 cities to rubble. In the Rhineland, some of our outfits leveled towns that didn’t hang out white sheets fast enough.

    I don’t write this to denigrate us. It will happen again and again until we decide to solve differences without war. I was all for it at the time.

    We expected them to hate us and we gloried and strutted at the prospect of our hating them. Once there it all changed.

    There’s a story that encapsulates the way we looked at things. It tells how Shelly Sanders (name changed to protect the lucky), a fellow private first class, from Pittsburgh, became the first G.I. in the 1251st to go home.

    Shelly was 19, tall, intense, and awkward, as I was. Unlike me, he just had to have a German pistol for a souvenir. He bought a small-caliber Luger from a Polish D.P. (displaced person) who came by every week or so selling them and an ammunition load for five packs of Chesterfields, which we got for 3 cents a pack and sometimes for free.

    Accompanied by his new toy, Shelly, a virgin, went off to lose his cherry to a girl named Ursula. After what, he was to tell me then, and repeat 50 years later, would ever remain the most wonderful experience of his life, he woke up beside her, reached languidly on the bedside table for his watch, and shot his hand.

    Ursula was 17. As they made love, Shelly noticed she wore a locket with a picture of her husband, a German soldier who’d been killed in Russia. She got up, kissed him, cleaned and bandaged his wound, gave him a sausage and a knife to cut it, and sent him off to the nearest American hospital, where they put him in a ward among G.I.s wounded in battle.

    A bit later, a major and a sergeant appeared with a clipboard and a bucket of Purple Hearts, the country’s medal for warriors wounded in combat. They went from bed to bed, the sergeant recording each soldier’s name, rank, serial number, and outfit while the major scooped out a medal, pinned it to the G.I.’s pajamas, saluted, told him his country would be forever grateful, and moved on to the next bed. I can picture Shelly to this day, his eager face with its striving, unauthorized mustache, grinning as he snapped off a return salute.

    It was via this process that Shelly was awarded a Purple Heart, which was worth months in demobilization points and got him home way before the rest of us. No one in the battalion or among the battle-wounded men in his ward, to whom he confessed, blamed him for accepting the medal. On the contrary, they hatched a party for him before he left. The joke of the moment was that Shelly had been mentally unbalanced by bliss fatigue and so couldn’t help shooting himself.

    We couldn’t stop laughing about the Army’s dilemma. Owning up to the real action in which Shelly sustained his wound would expose the utter failure of the policy of nonfraternization with the Germans. They were assuring wives, mothers, and prohibitionists on the home front that the policy was strictly enforced, when it was being thoroughly and blithely violated. An example: Whenever our company sergeant delivered the official shun-the-Hun warning, the company clerk would be nearby, handing out condoms.

    When you think about it, how else could it be? We knew Nazis were still around, fawning and hating, and we wanted them punished. We didn’t forget the death camps or the massacre of G.I. prisoners at Malmedy. And we knew much of the German warmth and welcome was motivated by opportunism. We had food, they were starving. We had real coffee, theirs was ersatz. We had gasoline, tents, towels, booze, sulfa drugs, even toys and nylons, not to mention urban planners to get their water, trains, and electricity running again.

    But something else essential to human survival was present in Neuss and the rest of Germany the U.S. then occupied. Its men and our women weren’t there. Our men and their women were there, tired of hating, exhausted from it. Hated-out, aching to touch one another.

    It was a lot better than revenge.

    Dedicated to Dr. Rheba de Tornyay, whose daily letters during the war kept me going.

    Richard Rosenthal lives in East Hampton.

   As we think about planting our gardens this spring, let us not forget to make a special effort to grow some flowering plants, especially for honeybees. These insects pollinate about 80 percent of the fruits, vegetables, and seed crops in America. You can thank the honeybee for a third of the food you eat every day.

    Honeybees are essential to food production, but populations are almost nonexistent in the wild, and honeybees reared in apiaries are suffering a severe population decline. Colony collapse disorder is sweeping the planet, and honeybees are experiencing an alarming drop-off. A 2010-11 honeybee survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Apiary Inspectors of America reported a 38.4-percent winter honeybee loss. The average yearly loss of honeybees has been about 30 percent, and the decline is steady.

    We now have the fewest honeybees since 1950. A lot of honeybees are missing! They are missing and are not found dead — they are simply vanishing. Can the honeybee withstand this severe annual disappearance? This indicator species may be trying to tell us something. Something is not quite right in the world of the honeybee.

    Many things are not quite right, and there are ways to help. We can propagate the plants that honeybees love and need to survive. Honeybees will travel up to six miles from their hives on foraging trips. They look for a few things on these trips. Like almost all living creatures, honeybees need fresh water to survive. They drink water and store it in their hives for later use. You can help honeybees by placing a birdbath or shallow container with some rocks or seashells in the bottom so honeybees can rest on them while they have a drink. If you see honeybees in your pool filter, this means they are using your chlorinated pool water as their water source. It would be better to provide a supply of fresh water instead.

    The main source of energy for honeybees is nectar, a liquefied natural sugar. Honeybees gather nectar from flowers and make it into honey. Each worker bee makes about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime, which is only about six weeks. Honeybees will travel 55,000 miles and visit almost two million flowers to make just one pound of honey.

    Honeybees also collect pollen, a powdery substance that is their sole source of protein. They feed their young honey and pollen and store it for the winter when food is scarce. They, like us, require a variety of food sources (flowers) to thrive, and they need a steady supply all season long. The brood rearing season is usually between April and September, and honeybees need a continual source of nectar and pollen throughout this time to help expand their hives. A healthy hive can have upward of 50,000 bees in the summer, and they all need to eat.

    Try to combine annual and perennial flowers, herbs and vegetables, and bushes and trees that bloom at different times in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Check the species carefully to make sure the plants you choose are not invasive. Although honeybees are attracted to blue, purple, violet, white, and yellow flowers, it is best to choose an assortment of colors. Use native plants if you can — just be sure to plant a variety of species.

    Besides providing honeybees with food and water, a very important thing you can do for them is to stop using pesticides. Pesticides are poison and do not discriminate; they kill the good bugs and the bad ones. Two newfangled systemic synthetic neonicotinoids, clothianidin and imidacloprid, are highly toxic to bees. Study after study is confirming this, yet these poisons are still widely used. In addition, imidacloprid is now found in our drinking water, and groups across Long Island are calling for its ban. There are pest-control alternatives we should use to help the honeybees and the planet.

    If you cannot spend a lot of time or money, you can keep the flowering plants that are already in your yard. Many plants commonly considered weeds are great for honeybees. Dandelion, clover, goldenrod, and purple vetch are honeybee favorites. Purple vetch is good because it naturally adds nitrogen to the soil and helps plants to grow. Dandelion is a very important early spring wildflower as well. Also, think about planting clover instead of grass. Like purple vetch, it provides a natural source of nitrogen to your soil, and the honeybees love it.

    A cost-effective, simple way to help honeybees is to allow your lawn to go a little wild and mow after the weeds have finished blooming. You can also sprinkle some wildflower seeds on a sunny part of your lawn and wait for the pretty blossoms and honeybees to arrive.

    In early spring, plant buttercups, crocuses, daffodils, deadnettle, and hyacinth so the honeybees will have something to eat when they start foraging. The dogwood tree produces large, early blossoms. Quince, spicebush, and viburnum are bushes that flower in the early spring, too. Impatiens, white deadnettle, and some heather will flower from early spring well into the fall and are great choices.

    From late spring through summer, many fruit trees and berries flower. In addition to the pollen and nectar provided by the flowers, honeybees are attracted to the juice of soft-skinned berries. Butterfly-silkweed, cotoneaster, forget-me-nots, and Oriental poppies also bloom from late spring through summer.

    In early summer, bearded iris, dahlias, and tickseed are in bloom. Sweet pepperbush and inkberry flower through summer and easily attract honeybees. There is a nectar gap during the summer, and a limited amount of food is available for honeybees. Bee balm, black-eyed Susan, cotton lavender, coneflower, and foxglove are summertime honeybee favorites.

    Honeybees need food in the winter, and plants that flower late in the fall give them one last chance to gather food for the cold winter months. Asters, autumn-flowering crocus and clematis, sedum, and Shasta daisies provide a variety of food choices for honeybees in the fall.

    Plant lots of herbs, fruits, and vegetables as they bloom throughout the planting season and the honeybees will enjoy them as much as you will. Many herbs are great for honeybees. Lavender and coriander are especially useful, as their scented oils may also deter the varroa mite — a parasite that harms honeybees.

    Your herbs and vegetables will benefit from honeybees, and the honeybees will thank you for them.

    Deborah Klughers is a Springs resident and mother of four. She is new to beekeeping and is a newly elected East Hampton Town Trustee. She has a degree in environmental studies and will complete her master’s degree in marine conservation and policy next month.