If my New Year’s resolution for 2011 had been “dispel with financial insecurity,” I would have succeeded, but not in the way I planned. I always expected to finally feel monetarily secure when a big bag of money, a la Tex Avery, complete with dollar signs emblazoned on its burlap sides, plopped into my lap with an accompanying appropriate cartoon sound effect.

    But that isn’t what happened. Instead, we declared a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April. I had thought this would be the end of the world, but in many ways it was a new beginning. In the years when my bank account would have been envied by most, I regularly startled awake in the middle of the night, wondering how I would pay my bills and terrified that it would all disappear.

    It disappeared. I survived. Not only survived, but thrived — when the repo guys came for the car this spring, I offered them coffee and took my picture with them. “Why are you so happy?” one of them asked. “Well, what are my other options?” I replied.

    The only thing I have total control over is how I react, or not, to certain situations. Being able to do the proverbial “count to 10” before the reaction comes is one of the gifts I’ve received only recently. I refuse to see this as a permanent state of affairs, but just one that will make me wiser and perhaps able to help someone else who embarks on the same path.

    Although we do not have a savings account, much less college funds or methods of saving for “retirement,” whatever that is, I sleep far better now with a lot less.

    I have settled in at The Star. Although I swore that my desk — which I could actually see way back last winter — would never reach the blaze-inducing capabilities observed in the workspace of my cellmate, Rusty Drumm, I have to admit I would be edgy now if someone were to strike a match near my budding Collyer brothers-style collection of paper.

    But I didn’t fulfill my New Year’s resolutions for 2011. How do I know? Because I’ve had the same resolutions since I was 12: To exercise more and eat less. Although, once again, my physical form fell by the wayside, I feel that I lost a lot of weight from my soul in 2011.

    I’m happy. Not like village-idiot-throwing-flowers-in-the-air kind of happy, but a deep and comfortable happiness that comes from the sweet nectar of Routine. It is based on inner life and growth rather than the sort that is based on external forces like people or situations — “absolute happiness” as opposed to “relative happiness,” the Buddhists say.

    When I lived a big life, there was no room left for growth. There was keeping up with mortgage payments even as we planned an addition, cars that were traded in for shinier models every few years, and a business that looked on paper like more of a hobby (and a ducat-depleting one at that). We lived within our means, but only by a hair — when the means were gone it wasn’t long before destitution set in.

    But now that my life is smaller — getting the kids to school, going to work, a short walk with Eric and the dogs on the beach, a DVD and dinner together, then going to sleep and doing the whole thing again the next day — my soul has had room to expand.

    There may be a time in the next few years when I will once again jump into the fray and spearhead some social cause or chair some huge function or develop a business plan. But if life is a journey, not a destination, then for now I’m glad to simply ride the train, look out the window, and watch the scenery change.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    As the New Year fast approaches — and on the heels of what could perhaps best be called an upbraiding by voters in November — East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his two-member majority on the town board are no doubt taking stock of where they stand and thinking about what they might do differently in 2012.

    The supervisor and his board majority, as a group, do not seem temperamentally inclined to seek the opinions of those who could be seen as adversaries. Still, government, to function at its best, should be a collaborative process in which opposing views are heard and considered. And so, in that spirit, we offer a few thoughts about how the board might more effectively lead us and ease the partisan acrimony in our community.

    Here is our suggested list of resolutions:

    • Wean the town budget off the use of surpluses

    • Halt the sale of irreplaceable town assets

    • Restore the rate of community preservation fund land acquisitions to pre-crisis levels

    • Decline Federal Aviation Administration money and bring all parties together to seek limits to aircraft noise

    • Commit in earnest to the East Hampton Town Trustees’ fight to safeguard public beach access

    • Work with the trustees to provide better storage for nonpolluting watercraft

    • Begin work on a comprehensive strategy to deal with sea-level rise

    • End closed-door, one-party discussions of town issues

    • Slow down decisions on controversial matters

    • End the practice of “walk-on” board resolutions (except in cases of real emergency)

    • End the illegal growth of businesses in residential neighborhoods

    • Eliminate illegal signs and other prohibited eyesores

    • Restore social-service and arts funding

    • Restore recycling collection in town parks and other public places

    • Seek to limit illegal, multiple-family rentals

    • Abandon the general assault on the zoning code

    • Develop additional, dispersed ocean-beach parking

    • Restore the Amagansett Life-Saving Service station and open it to the public

    • Express meaningful support for the Planning and Natural Resources Departments

    • Appoint people to boards and other leadership roles based on their qualifications, not their political stripe

    • Return nonpartisan, nonideological procedures to the Ordinance Enforcement Department

    • Take steps to limit political and outside influence on the town attorney’s office

    • Improve Building Department permitting procedures

    • Manage town employees with support and positive guidance, not browbeatings

    • Create procedures for better communication with the public in hurricanes and other natural disasters

    • Expand and enforce a program to limit septic runoff to local waters

    Certainly, the board also deserves credit, as the year draws to a close, for its accomplishments in 2010 and 2011. These jobs well done include holding the line on town expenses, improving efficiency at Town Hall, helping the Springs School with space for its pre-K, and getting the inlets dredged. Yet so much can be done to improve town government’s relationship with the public and its protection of neighborhoods, quality of life, and the environment — if Mr. Wilkinson and the board only wish it.

    My friend “L,” a New Yorker through and through, has always been a model second-home owner. We’ve been friends for about 40 years.

    I married into a family that had been here since colonial times, a family that cherished its roots and wrote about them. In a sense, L followed suit. At first, I thought New Yorkers who summered here were like her: smart, educated, and fun. Even though I wasn’t long out of the city myself, I didn’t consider myself one of them; I thought of myself as having become local, even if locals thought of me as “from away.”    

    My friend and her husband bought a little old house near a pasture and, although they eventually built a big open adjoining room where family and friends could stay in summer, they did not alter the house’s traditional aspect.

    My immersion in life and lore here was inevitable. L, however, engaged herself in the community purposefully; she found out what the folks were like who had lived here forever, and she admired those among them who were extraordinary. Stuart Vorpahl, for example, a fisherman, local historian, and stalwart advocate of the rights bestowed upon the East Hampton and Southampton Town Trustees. She got to know what the South Fork has to offer almost as well as she knows the cultural life of New York.

    Over the years, L was often up and away. She spent lots of time in France, walked in India and Japan, and went on pilgrimages to this country’s national parks. Last week, she introduced me to a natural wonder right here that had eluded me all these years.

    The mountain laurel, she said, was in full bloom, as it was supposed to be during the second week of June. She and another friend had taken a walk in the woods the day before and she teased me by offering to go back again so I could see it.

    Mountain laurel is a true native species. According to Andrea Wulf’s book “Founding Gardeners,” our founding fathers introduced it to England. I had lived for almost six months at the edge of Northwest Woods when I first came to East Hampton, and, over the years, had come to know where to look for such miraculous flora as trailing arbutus and princess pine. (I’ll have to take L to those places next spring.) I had seen mountain laurel in bloom here and there along the roadsides, but never in profusion.

    L took me and another friend to a loop trail near the Noyac Golf Club that connects with the east-west Paumanok Path. Someone, apparently members of the Southampton Trails Preservation  Society, had traced the trail with sand to keep wanderers on track. Straying would have been easy because, as we walked along, the mountain laurel bushes appeared not only in front of us but on rises to either side in greater and greater numbers. We walked through bowers and under canopies.

    I remembered mountain laurel’s petals as  pinkish, which apparently is characteristic when they first unfold. Now, in the Noyac woods, the flowers were an almost sheer ivory white. The woodland nymphs could not have found more magnificent places to dance, or sing, or marry, if they were so inclined. Thank you, L.

    In the introduction to his book “The South Fork: The Land and the People of Eastern Long Island,” Everett Rattray wrote about new residents: “The South Fork is native now to a relative handful; it could be native to thousands more if they would undertake the necessary naturalization exercises, which include some long looks beneath the surface of things.”

    Down at the beach at about 4:20 on Tuesday morning to fish yet again, I stood at the water’s edge, batting at mosquitoes, just as the eastern sky was getting pink and orange. My wife says that I am obsessed, crazy to be getting up so early, but the way I see it, with three kids and only the shortest breaks between the newspaper and responsibilities around the house, I have to take my relaxation when and where I can find it.

    The striped bass came in right about 4:40, as they have for a couple of weeks. As best I can tell some small species of sand eel appears to rise out of the bottom at about that time, and the bass are there waiting for an easy meal. For 10 or 15 minutes, the quiet of the morning is broken by the sound of the big fish breaking water. From time to time, one will jump clear of the surface for reasons only it can know. As fast as they appear, they move on. A few swirls can be seen here and there, but the real action is over until the next dawn.

    Tuesday, I caught one small bass and two fluke, one big enough to take home for dinner. The bass were all over the place, but, as usual the past week or so, I could not get a decent-size one to pick up the lure.

    A black skimmer came by before there was much light, working the edge just off the beach. It’s interesting to consider how they do it, flying rapidly with their lower beaks dragging in the water, presumably to flip small fish and shrimp swimming near the surface into their gullets.

    Watching this skimmer pass, I wondered how this adaptation came about, it seems out of nowhere, unrelated to the way the rest of the bird world feeds. Once there was a bit more light, a tern arrived to begin dive-bombing on the sand eels in what seemed to me a more sensible bit of evolutionary expression.

    When the bass are feeding heavily, they drive sand eels up onto the beach. The small fish die quickly, and thousands of sand fleas hop up from their burrows to dine on them.

    By 5:15, the beach quiets down. A few bass are flipping out in the bay, but the crazy, pre-dawn urgency is over. All this has been happening here every spring not only in the decades I have lived in this house by the beach, but probably since the end of the last ice age, and until about three weeks ago, I never knew about any of it. This I find the most interesting observation of all, my own ignorance.

I thought as I carried the watering can from its place upended near the coiled hose at the southeast wing of our house to rest it atop the coiled hose at the southwest wing so that I could mow the tall grass that had grown up through it that my entire life had led me to this moment.

    Why had I done it? I’m not sure. One inner voice said, “Pick up the can,” the other, “Forget about the can, Jack, go back to watching ‘SportsCenter.’ ”

    Always there is this interior dialogue between the Fun-Loving Guy and Mr. Responsibility. It amuses me to think that I was once called Mr. Responsibility — with utter contempt, however — by a hallmaster in high school and have responsibly been mindful of his judicious observation ever since.

    “Responsibility leapt upon his shoulders like an angry cat,” I wrote home when I was stationed in Okinawa, though I cannot now recall being particularly burdened at the time. It just seemed like a neat thing to say.

    I’ve said other neat things in the intervening years, but, as Mary reminds from time to time, words are cheap. Deeds are more interesting to her, and that, I think, was why I was impelled to mow the lawn, and thus to pick up the watering can. She had been away, far away, for a few days — a short time for her, I gathered, but a very long and somewhat depressing time for me. The rain, of course, didn’t help. Whenever I saw a silver Prius on our streets, my heart leapt up — and not like an angry cat, but like a puppy who wants to play.

    “She’ll be home soon,” I’d say to Henry on our walks, and he would nod knowingly.

    Meanwhile, we existed, went through the motions, were responsible, as I’ve long learned to be.

    Claude Beudert had promised a night out during Mary’s absence, a reward, I suppose, for my having been Johnny-on-the-spot when the golf team made its grand entrance at the high school during a thunderstorm after having won the Long Island championship.

    When, the day before she left, I told Mary I’d gotten the shot, and replayed the scene for her, showing her how John Nolan had come in holding the trophy over his head, flanked by applauding fans, she asked, “Was there a bolt of lightning in the background. . . ?!”

    “No, I don’t think so,” I said. And not wanting to disappoint, added, “But I’ll get Matt to put one in.”

    Claude left a message on Monday to say he couldn’t make it after all. Actually, it was a relief. I had things to do too, and was spared having to whiten my teeth.

    The next night, just as the Mets-Braves game was ending, Mary arrived, lively despite the coast-to-coast haul and brimming with news.

    I attended to her as I never would to Katie Couric, and told her about the lively chalk drawings by children I’d seen that evening on the pavement in front of a large house around the corner, one of which wished their dad, “Happy Farthers Day!”

    And that got me to thinking how far we’ve come, she and I, but I’ll go no further.

    As I was walking up to the stage at the Heritage Park Amphitheater in Simpsonville, S.C., a few weeks ago, the butterflies started to make some noise in my stomach due to what was about to happen. The singer I play with, Janiva Magness, and I were about to go on right before Buddy Guy and B.B. King — the two bluesmen who have had the greatest influence on my guitar playing since I was a kid.

    The denim-covered “B.B. King Live at Cook County Jail” album was one of my very first records ever and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells’s “It’s My Life, Baby” continues to inspire me. I consider these two records the best urban blues records of all time.

    The hot and humid South Carolina sun was shining down on the stage, making the sweat pour even more, as we wear suits for every show. As I introduced Janiva, I mentioned that the last time these two were onstage together, B.B. was presenting her with the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year award in Memphis at the 2009 Blues Music Awards.

    Our set went well and afterward we went back to the dressing room and got dried off a bit and went right back out behind stage to watch Buddy do his thing. He came backstage walking a little slow, kind of like a 74-year-old man would do.

    Then his guitar tech handed him his guitar, a killer that looked like a Fender custom shop maple neck “Mary Kay” Stratocaster that was plugged into two Victoria 4-by-10 Blues Box amps similar to the Fender Bassman amps of the 1950s that he used to use. He then started walking like a much younger man, and after the first note he played he seemed all of about 30 years old.

    The show was amazing, especially when he brought the dynamics of the band down. Then I could really hear what first blew my mind when I was a kid listening to “It’s My Life, Baby” — those bended notes that are just a little sharp and add to the tension of the show.

    When it was B.B.’s turn, his band came out with a full horn section and all and started playing a couple instrumentals before bringing B.B. up.

    As the band was playing, B.B.’s handler was helping him off the bus and into a wheelchair to get him to the stage.

    I went immediately to the front of the stage to see B. introduced.

    He came walking out and sat down on a chair in front of two lab series amps that he has been using for years. The band started playing a fast jazzy blues shuffle, and it was on!

    B. started playing as only B. could, phrasing like a horn player and making Lucille (his guitar) sustain notes and hold them for what seemed like minutes at a time. I was so moved by the whole scene that I felt my eyes tearing up. But I kept it together and watched the rest of the show.

    It was incredible having this 86-year-old bluesman still make the hair on the back of my neck stand up as he played a slow blues and made every note count.

    It might sound crazy, but when I hear real blues, I still get that same feeling that inspired me in the beginning. I immediately become a kid again, and to think that someone pays me to do this is just as crazy.

—

    Zach Zunis, an advertising sales representative at The Star, is a professional musician who tours nationally and internationally with Janiva Magness.

  It seems to be a reasonable solution to the Springs School’s useable-space crunch that the district would borrow an East Hampton Town-owned building on school property to use for classrooms. However, a deal should not be struck without keeping in mind the needs of the larger Springs community.

    The Springs Youth Association has been holding programs in the small, shingled structure off Ed Hults Lane, and a town homework club has been run from there. The school’s problems have been well documented, and there is a sense that property owners there are nearing the end of their willingness or ability to pay for any more tax increases that might fund an expansion.

    With the hamlet showing tremendous population growth during the last decade, the school has struggled to accommodate all of its students. The youth association building would help relieve some of the pressure, but assurances must be made that it be accessible to the non-school public for meetings and events unrelated to the school.

    With the closing of Fort Pond House in Montauk by the town board and the town’s planned handoff of the Duck Creek Farm alongside Three Mile Harbor to an artists’ group, there are fewer publicly owned buildings available to one and all than there once were. Ashawagh Hall, also in Springs, is privately owned and generally booked, and it and the Presbyterian Church nearby should not be the only venues for gatherings in the hamlet.

    As the town board and Springs district continue to discuss the youth association’s building, its value as a potential meeting place for Springs residents remains a key point of negotiation.

    Banning plastic shopping bags of the sort you get at the food store will solve one problem; specifically, what to do with them when you get them home and unpack the groceries. Southampton Village recently outlawed the bags and now East Hampton Village officials are considering doing the same. From its beginnings in San Francisco and Ireland, a national and international movement to curtail the use of the bags has been spreading.

    Advocates of bans say that the one-time-use petroleum-based bags are a wasteful use of nonrenewable resources and unnecessarily fill up landfills. They can end up in surface waters with harmful effects on marine life. In the environment nonbiodegradable bags and other plastic objects slowly degrade into small particles that can attract toxic chemicals and be consumed by wildlife. Fish in particular that are contaminated in this way can be a pathway by which toxins can enter the food chain, in some cases ending up in humans. Nationwide, only about 5 or 6 percent of them are recycled, according to federal estimates. Paper bags can be made from recycled materials.

    Plastic bag manufacturers have counterattacked, saying that reusable bags can be a source of harmful microbes. Some libertarian-minded people have said that government should not infringe on the rights of the people to bear plastic. Others have questioned whether a patchwork of localities banning the bags would withstand a Constitutional challenge.

    Surprisingly, perhaps, opposition from retailers has been limited, from what we have seen. This may be in part due to many of them seeing an opportunity to cut costs by not buying thousands upon thousands of bags. At the same time, some may see opportunities at the checkout counter to sell reusable bags, particularly those that carry the company’s logo.

    East Hampton Village’s continuing efforts to go “green” should be commended.

    That State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, who represents the very gay-friendly South Fork, as well as the rest of eastern Long Island, has refused to vote yes on a same-sex marriage bill so far this week has, unfortunately, not been a surprise, even if it is deeply disappointing. With the Senate locked in a 31-to-31 stalemate over the issue, Mr. LaValle could have played the hero with a reversal to vote in favor of the measure. That, however, did not appear to be likely as the battle raged on in Albany.

    Mr. LaValle is in his fourth decade as a state senator and has rarely faced any real competition. He has not suffered any apparent political harm from the right for his position in favor of civil unions, kind of a marriage half-step that does not guarantee equal protections under the law.

    Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Sag Harbor resident with an office in Bridgehampton, has been a consistent supporter of same-sex marriage bills and has not had much criticism over his position and is about as popular as ever. Mr. Thiele voted again last week in favor of a measure that is a companion to the one in the State Senate, and angry constituents did not flood his office with complaints.

    Mr. LaValle’s opposition to gay marriage comes from his own apparent principle. But his express support of civil unions for gay couples could be interpreted as a contradiction, or perhaps a glimmer of hope, for same-sex marriage advocates. He is usually a compassionate legislator, with particular interest in matters of importance to disabled people and the First District’s older residents. The limits of his empathy are apparent in this matter.

    We would have hoped Mr. LaValle would have followed the lead of another Republican state senator, James Alesi, who changed his stance earlier this year, saying, “I believe that if you live in America and you expect equality and freedom for yourself, you should extend it to other people.”

    Whether based on his personal belief or not, Mr. LaValle is on the wrong side of this historic debate. We would have hoped that he would reflect the moderate and tolerant views of the majority of people in his district rather than hew to the regrettable line of an era that is rapidly ending.

    Getting ready this week for a trip that will carry me 8,410 miles away, I’ve found myself thinking, incongruously, about flying to Block Island long ago.

    I can’t date it exactly, but the trip had to have been before June 17, 1963, because that was the day my first child was born. (Happy birthday, David!) Ev and I hadn’t been married very long and were able to pick ourselves up and take off when a friend invited us to accompany him there to visit mutual friends.

    As a young bride in what had not yet become the celebrity-filled Hamptons, I was enthralled by the accomplished people I met, people I considered justifiably famous. A.J. Liebling and his wife, Jean Stafford, were among them.

    Joe called one day to say there was room for us on a plane he had hired to take him to Block Island for a day’s visit, because his wife was afraid of small planes. Flying to Block Island was exciting in itself, and visiting the old-fashioned resort for the first time was lots of fun. The friends we went to see were interesting people, although I can’t remember the conversation. When it was time for the return flight, however, fog had rolled in and we had to spend the night. We stayed in one of the island’s rambling old wooden hotels. It wasn’t safe to drink the tap water.

    Joe was a legendary journalist at The New Yorker and author of more than a dozen books, including “The Sweet Science” and “The Earl of Louisiana.” He was short and rotund. I have a distinct memory of his walking up the stairs to his room on the hotel’s second story in front of us.  He had a pair of swimming trunks under one arm and a box of salt-water taffy for Jean under the other.

    That night, I took to drinking Joe’s favorite Scotch — Teacher’s Highland Cream — and I have liked it ever since. You don’t see Teacher’s on many liquor store shelves these Continued from B1

days, but Jacques Franey of East Hampton’s Domaine Wines and Spirits kindly carries it at my request. Its distinct taste and quality is said to come from its blend, which contains 45 percent of a single malt called Ardmore.

     I remain bemused by having come back from Block Island, some 35 miles away (at least as the crow flies) and some 50 years ago, with a taste for Scotch. A wonderful journalist and well-known gourmand had recommended it, and that was good enough for me.

    The trip this week is to Ethiopia in the company of my daughter, who has adopted a second Ethiopian child, a boy, there. On the way, we will spend a night in Dubai, a Never Never Land that is, I am sure, as different from Ethiopia as imaginable. Alcoholic drinks won’t be on our agenda in either place.

    I have no idea what my memories of Ethiopia will be, but I expect the trip to bring home a grandson (not to mention the 30-hour return journey with a confused toddler and a mountain of diapers) will leave me with many.