Columnists

Time for gathering swallows to twitter in the skies, and yet all’s not melancholy; there’s a spring in my step even as winter, inevitably, is coming on.

Before my husband and I made our move to Greenport last spring, we undertook an epic clearing out of closets, pantry, and basement. It went on for weeks, and unearthed many an interesting relic of lives lived on Edwards Lane.

The village police closed North Main Street where it goes under the train trestle on Sunday during a heavy rain. Passing by on my way upstreet, I could see the brown water swirling in the dip beneath the bridge.

Friends met us for dinner at one of our favorite East Hampton restaurants last week, and handed us a surprising small gift: a copy of an outlandish million-dollar bill. The bill — faux, obviously — had skulls in the front upper corners and a red, yellow, and cream nuclear explosion where George Washington is supposed to be. On the other side, along with an image of some children, was the message: “Let us spend this money on a sustainable world for all of our kids.”

All Hallows’ Eve, and if the past is prologue nobody will show up at our door.

When I was a young (ish) bride (1982) and new to the South Fork, one of the things my new husband and I did on weekends was just drive around and look at stuff. He called it shoelacing; I called it zigzagging — we would wend up one road and down the next.

The pleasure of singing, for me, has been greatly magnified over the years by my involvement with choral groups. I sang with the chorus at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue after college, but when I married and moved to East Hampton back in the 1960s, I never imagined I would find a similarly excellent group here.

It’s occurred to me that I’ve met (and written about) one Kurd in my life, 23 years ago, and while the situation of his people, mountain livestock herders, was then dire, squeezed as he said they were by five powers, the United States being one, it could well be even more so now, now that Trump has hung them out to dry — the Kurds, as staunch an ally as one could hope for when it comes to fighting, who did a lot of heavy lifting when it came to defeating ISIS.

Tis the season, as the water cools rapidly, that many minds, around here anyway, turn to scallops. New York State will allow the start of harvesting from its waters on Nov. 4; town waters will open on Nov. 10, a Sunday. How good the take will be remains to be seen. I have my doubts.

The Hamptons International Film Festival got me thinking about the starring role the Rattray family’s Amagansett house played in “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen’s 1977 movie starring Diane Keaton. I haven’t seen “Annie Hall” in a long time, but much of it has stayed with me.

Somewhere in the Midwest, where if you’re anti-Trump you must speak in lowered tones, I had my hair cut — well, so to speak, inasmuch as there isn’t much left — and was at one point during my monologue — for I can’t hear without my hearing aids, and thus feel I must hold forth when in the chair — asked if I read.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ah,” the barber said, “my polling’s holding up! You didn’t vote for Trump, then?”

“For public enemy number-one. . ??”

I have a friend who knows the names of the stars. A few of them, anyway, she says. I do not know what the stars are called; a few constellations, maybe, yes, but individual stars, no.