The death of Devesh Samtani, an 18-year-old summer visitor who had been struck by a car while walking on the side of the road in Amagansett at night last month, was an avoidable tragedy.

This is one of those years when nature has looked with favor on the East End, providing us with a beach plum harvest for the ages.

A three-way conversation that I had by chance over the weekend inadvertently got to the root of something that underlies a lot of conflict here — resistance to change.

Pauline Nathlie Mohan, an East Hampton native and a homemaker, died of cancer on Friday at home in Torrington, Conn. She was 72 and had been ill for eight months.