Two sides are circling each other in regard to a new, consolidated town shellfish hatchery off Gann Road at Three Mile Harbor. Untangling this will help guide what has been an excessively contentious debate toward an amicable resolution.

It seems somehow crazy that Donald Trump is to arrive on the East End tomorrow for a fund-raiser, after two mass shootings within hours of each other, as if nothing were wrong.

Like many of you, I have been glued to television-news debates about mass shootings and what can, or should be, done to stop them. Gun control is a frequent topic as the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination face the cameras. But my attention is drawn to my desk, where the focus is narrow and a book called “Semicolon” by Cecelia Watson sits alongside one I have mentioned before, Mary Morris’s amusing and astute “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.”

Over dinner on Sunday, the subject turned to sharks. Since it was the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week blitz, this was not surprising.