Guestwords

Even if her life depended on it, my wife cannot tell a joke. In all other ways, she’s brilliant. (Beautiful too.) In fact, the way she ruins a joke is in and of itself amusing and (if I may say so) adorable.

She starts off with the premise of the joke (what professional comics call the setup), then she starts to crack up. You can see by the quirky look on her face that she’s thinking of the punch line (what comics call the payoff). Anticipation clouds her story line. Then she starts laughing, giggling, and breaking up . . . until she can continue telling the joke no longer.

We knew, Alice and I, a bit about Ninevah Beach — that it was founded as a community for well-to-do African-American vacationers, especially families escaping New York City for the summer.

It is special, more upscale by reputation than similar black enclaves such as Val Verde Park, Calif., in the Los Angeles area, Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, Idlewild, Mich., Highland Beach, Md., and Atlantic Beach, S.C.

It’s that time of year, folks, the holidays are over. We spent too much, ate too much, and drank too much. The season of toomuchness has gutted us and is gone. Time now to buckle down and stop having so much fun. Resolutions, anyone?

I was scribbling “Goya painted with a spoon”

when I heard Jane died (Saturn gnawed

his children without a place setting),

I knew enough not to be surprised but I was.

I never got over

the Berliner Ensemble’s Mother Courage,

when she screamed, “I bargained too much” —

for her murdered son’s life.

The actress wore a wooden spoon as a broach.

So tongue tied, I kept “spoon.”

It is not a kind of decoration.

Jane Freilicher painted with a spoon —

potato fields, Water Mill, pink mallow,

Living together is an art, not a mere scientific or mechanical adjustment. All the mechanizations of all the social engineers will not help a heterogeneous people to live together in brotherly, peaceable, happy relationship unless the individuals of society begin early, practice diligently, and learn to delight in the art of living with other peoples and different races.

My wife never saw an owl. She would mention this at odd times, fairly regularly. Not just when she was looking at trees in the woods or trees on the street or trees through the car window. And not just when she was refurbishing birdhouses or rehydrating hummingbird feeders or referencing a book of North American birds. She would mention it when putting on her blue snow boots or scrambling eggs, when waiting in line to send a package to our son or get handed a bag of popcorn without butter.

When my summer tenants in Southampton asked if they could stay two weeks past Labor Day because their kitchen renovation wasn’t finished yet, I said, “Sure.”

“What would you would charge?” the wife asked on the phone. I knew her husband worked for a wine distributor, so I said, “How about a case of wine? White, red, whatever, maybe a bottle of riesling for my husband.” That seemed fair to me.

Long Island from the beginning has had a close relationship with England. On Dec. 24 the United States and Britain celebrated 200 years of unbroken peace.

The peace treaty, the Treaty of Ghent, came after a long period of hostilities. We were on the same side during the French and Indian War, when the wise Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder chased the French out of North America. But as soon as Prime Minister Lord North and George III tried to make the colonies pay for their own protection, the American Revolution was on.

A story published in The East Hampton Star on Nov. 27, “Lawyer’s Death Reveals System Failures,” about emergency medical services in the town following the death of Tom Twomey, illustrates the tip of the iceberg. Such stories have played out in the past and will continue to in the future until we implement better solutions.

Because of the big storm the other day, the howling winds driving sheets of rain, the ocean beach has written a new chapter for itself. The straggly brown ribbons of seaweed mixed with debris have been swept away, the deeply grooved ruts of crisscrossing truck tracks have been smoothed over, and most footprints are gone.

I’m marveling at clearly visible miles of low-tide, hard-packed glistening sand, brand new and shiny as the sun begins to hover over the day’s freshly painted scene before me. But I can see something is wrong up ahead on the shore.

I’m not a gambler, never have been, except for the 2 bucks I lost on the Jets game in ’68 when they lost to the Bills 37-35 and where #12, my idol Joe Namath, threw five interceptions. After that crushing defeat, and after peeling off two worn George Washingtons, I swore I’d never gamble again, ever, and for 40 years that mandate held true.

But recently I discovered the most unlikely of places to alter my anti-gambling vow from “Never again” to “I’m all in,” and it sits in a church on Buell Lane.

For the first two decades of my life, Thanksgiving was our only whole-family gathering of the year. The cousins loved the reunion, laughing and hugging and playing an annual game of hide-and-seek. Grandpa cupped his hands, yelled his familiar if not creative “Come and get it,” and the first wafts of Grandma’s wonderful cooking greeted us as we stumbled up the front steps.

Cruising T.J. Maxx for designer markdowns and admiring ambitious women are two of my non-guilty pleasures. So when I first heard about Coco Chanel and how she started out as the illegitimate child of street peddlers and ended up a fashion icon and one of the most powerful women of the 20th century, I was hooked by my dolman sleeve.

In the locker room each day after I swim, I place my wet swimsuit into a small spin-dryer. Centrifugal force squeezes the water out of my black nylon Speedo.

The sign on the spin-dryer says, “This unit is self-timed and will shut down automatically at the end of its cycle. It will not reset.” This message is an epiphany. An inert spin-dryer sign is communicating not only instructions about a device, but also a decree: After 80 years of being vertical, I Will Not Reset.

It was the fourth year we would be staying at Fleuchary House, a sprawling Edwardian bed-and-breakfast in St. Albans, 20 miles north of London, owned by a Scottish woman, Linda Matheson-Titt. The purpose of the trip was to visit my mother-in-law, Violet. We’ve been returning every year since her 90th, when she hired a jazz band to entertain family and friends. I hope my husband, Mick, has inherited her longevity genes. He certainly has his mother’s sense of humor and calm, patient attitude toward life.

It’s funny to me when I think about it. Me in circulation. Fifteen years ago my circulation stopped and a man had my heart in his hands and had to put my circulation back together.

The last Wednesday before the first day of school, my 14-year-old son, Paul, brandished his $49 two-piece shiny black fishing pole with shocking pink string, rather shocking pink line, while clutching a five-gallon white plastic bucket in his right hand, a small plastic tackle box surprisingly identical to my toolbox in his left, and proudly proclaimed, “I’m gonna catch me a big one today,” and skirted away on his neon yellow 20-inch Tony Hawk signature mountain bike like he was chasing the wobbling green overly friendly alien in “E.T.,” swiveling left to right, right to left, as he pedaled

Beryle Huntting Stanley inscribed “With Nancy, 1947” on the small black-and-white photo. Her daughter, Carol, and a friend, Nancy Parsons, look back at her, their faces in the afternoon sun. Carol’s slightly pained expression, likely similar to that of many 31/2-year-olds, bears that “Mom, do you have to?” look.

“What a great country we have here when it decides to be.” — John Updike

“We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In September 1932, Franklin Roosevelt crossed the country to San Francisco to give a speech that contributed mightily to his landslide election to the presidency six weeks later. I yearn to hear the likes of it today from Hillary Clinton.

The East Hampton Town Board recently proposed a rental registration law that has become the topic of much debate. Ostensibly it is designed to address the problem the town has long had in enforcing the existing laws prohibiting group and transit rentals. Unfortunately, the proposed law does not really solve this problem in a meaningful way, although with a few tweaks it could be a lot more effective.

In 1961 I was 8 years old and Sandy Koufax was the most dominant pitcher in baseball. He was also my favorite player. It wasn’t common in those days for girls to collect baseball cards, but I did. The only card I did not have was Sandy Koufax.

With all of the iPhones, iPads, tablets, laptops, and other devices teens have access to these days, you would think textbooks would be a thing of the past . . . right? Guess again. Carrying around heavy backpacks all day can be very detrimental for growing students, causing stress fractures in the back, inflammation of growth cartilage, and nerve damage in the neck and shoulders. Even with the advancements in technology, the burden of the backpack has not been lifted, in fact it has only increased.

I discovered the eminent economist William Vickrey, a 1996 Nobel laureate, in an odd way. Although I’ve written about Wall Street and money for many years, my academic background was not in economics, but in American literature. So when I was looking for a pungent epigraph for “Up From Gold,” my 2012 book on the development of our modern dollar-based economy, I thought of a quip by Gertrude Stein (the doyenne of American writers in 1920s Paris, famous for “a rose is a rose is a rose”). As I remembered it, she said, “Economics is simple.

Though the wages are low, man, I don’t get the willies actually starting a new and vastly different career at the overripe age of 66. A part-time summer salesman job in Amagansett, to help out during the busy season.

I came to this decision out of sheer boredom. What to do now that I was doing nothing? So I agreed to sell antiques and tabletop accessories and beach bags and candles and whatnot in a lovely “lifestyle” store, as I adapt to my new lifestyle of retirement-slash-unemployment.

“You need to put the sound of a Ferrari, a Porsche, or a McLaren engine in the sound system. When the driver starts the car, he turns a dial and can pick out whatever engine noise he wants that day.” Accosting a board member of a European car maker in a Florida post office, my husband was half-jokingly pitching his brainchild with, atypical for him, enthusiasm.

My 11-year-old self is sitting in a chair from Ebbets Field, drinking from a bottle of Pepsi, checking out the charms of the August 1969 Playboy Playmate. I stop staring into Debbie Hooper’s siren eyes when I hear a shout from John F. Murray Jr. — owner of this deck in Wainscott’s Westwoods, forever Brooklyn Dodger fan, supplier of Pepsis and Playboys to hemi-hormoned boys like me, my honorary uncle, and author of the new novel “The Devil Walks on Water,” my current number-one book. Jake knows I’m curious about writing for a living and he thinks it’s high time for a few tips, Ms.

Late last fall, I abandoned my signature close-cropped hair for a look that I thought would be less severe and more forgiving to a man of a certain age. Outgrowing the modest tonsorial skills of my partner, David, I retired the home clippers and sought the aid of a professional. And so that is how I found myself in Dustin’s chair.

The language of the ocean is vital to anyone who enters. A failure to recognize a rip current or a misreading of the imminent collapse of an approaching large wave can drag any swimmer down in seconds. Comforting thought, I know.

For bodysurfers, timing a wave can make all the difference between a great ride and eating sand the hard way. Before I head into the ocean I take a look around to see how the waves are breaking, and to see if there is a noticeable rip current.

I am led by two extracts of wisdom, both acquired while sitting on porches. From Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” From Charles Baudelaire: “Genius is childhood recovered at will.”

I used to own a home in Amagansett. It was a lovely home, with a pool. A block from the ocean! It was a lifetime ago that I bought it, and a year ago that I sold it.

I move on. Or try to.

I rent now. I rented before I owned — that was a couple of lifetimes ago, and also in Amagansett. A half share, a full share, a couple of thousand dollars, if even that.

Owning has its privileges, but also its expenses. Upkeep, pool maintenance, trees that wither and die. Hurricanes that come and destroy. The roof. The new roof. The new new roof.