“Oh yeah, oh yeah / Oh yeah, oh yeah / Imagine. . . .” All the way back in 1963, John Lennon exhorted us to imagine. I’d heard the song — “I’ll Get You,” the B side to “She Loves You” — perhaps a thousand times, but never the way I heard it on Saturday, standing in the subfreezing air with hundreds of others, all of us forming an ever-thickening circle surrounding the mosaic at Strawberry Fields, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. 

Outside of that tiny section of Central Park, people went about their business, that business apparently the holiday-season orgy of materialism or the enthusiastic annihilation of livers and brain cells, Saturday being the annual SantaCon, an event that the late, great Village Voice once described as “a day-long spectacle of public inebriation somewhere between a low-rent Mardi Gras and a drunken fraternity party.” 

Around that mosaic, though, those hundreds, several of them wielding guitars and a handful of other instruments, were remembering Lennon on the 38th anniversary of his murder. The songs flowed, one after the other, one guitarist or another strumming or singing an introduction in an informal, festive sing-along and celebration of Lennon and the Beatles. 

It’s always so nice to see people of all ages and ethnicities come together, forming a sort of microcosmic New York City within the city, a microcosm of humanity itself, in its collective impulses to gather together and express itself. Better still when the expression is uplifting and positive. All you need is love, love is all you need, was Lennon’s message to the world in 1967. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together, he intuited, later that year, with a little help from lysergic acid diethylamide. 

And yet, despite the merry chorus of New Yorkers and visitors to the Capital of the World, where Lennon had persevered, over the strenuous and paranoid protestation of Richard Nixon and his ilk, to become a permanent resident of the city he loved, an overwhelming sadness would not, could not fade away. 

George Harrison, said his widow, Olivia, “was really angry that John didn’t have a chance to leave his body in a better way, because George put so much emphasis and importance on the moment of death, of leaving your body.” 

Lennon was not afforded the luxury of calmly going into the blinding, burning light, mindful that his and the universal mind are one. How could he, with a fan/fanatic squeezing a trigger over and over, shooting holes in his body? 

Nineteen years after Lennon’s murder, the nation was shocked by a mass shooting at a high school in Colorado, two students murdering 12 schoolmates and a teacher. And then, the trickle became a deluge, among the carnage 20 first graders and six adults in Connecticut; 49 killed and 53 wounded inside a nightclub in Orlando, and 58 killed and 851 injured — you read that right — from gunfire and the resulting panic when a gunman opened fire on the crowd at an outdoor country music concert in Las Vegas. 

This year has been a predictably bloody one in the gun-crazy United States of America. Seventeen more students and teachers were killed, on Valentine’s Day, at a high school in Parkland, Fla. It was the year’s deadliest mass shooting — as of Monday, anyway — but far from the only one. On the 311th day of the year, the 307th mass shooting took place, this time inside a crowded bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Twelve were killed — 13 if you count the shooter, who turned the weapon on himself in the end. 

In a sad but sadly foreseeable irony, some of the patrons enjoying country music at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks had survived the mass shooting in Las Vegas one year before. There are now Americans who have personally experienced two mass shootings. 

According to the John Lennon Official account on Instagram, more than 1.4 million people have been killed by guns in the United States since Lennon was shot and killed on Dec. 8, 1980. Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Will we passively bury the bodies, offer our eminently useless thoughts and prayers, and await the next shooting, surely knowing by now that nowhere is safe?

Saturday was so very cold in the park, and I left, after an hour, with Lennon’s words rising from the crowd and into the wintry air. “A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year / Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear.” 

Christopher Walsh is a senior writer at The Star.

A goose for Thanksgiving dinner was a perfect choice for the seven members of the family who were able to be there. During our preliminary arrangements, we had reserved a  free-range turkey of between 14 and 20 pounds from our favorite source: Peter Ludlow of the Mecox Bay Dairy farm in Bridgehampton. But our guest numbers were down by a few this year, and in the week before Turkey Day, we decided to make it Goose Day instead, going for a 12-pound gander.

Goose meat is, well, meaty. It’s all dark, which makes it preferable for those who find turkey breast a bit lacking in flavor. It had been a few — okay, many — years since I roasted a goose, so we consulted quite a few sources to make sure the oven temperature and cooking time were correct. If I do say so myself, it came out exactly right. 

I had forgotten that geese have huge cavities and after recognizing its capaciousness we took on the challenge of making a super stuffing — super in quantity as well as taste. After dinner, when all that was left of the bird were a few stray strands on the platter, we were delighted to have second helpings of stuffing.

Truly, the only argument against goose at Thanksgiving is the lack of leftovers. If we had stuck with tried, true, and traditional turkey, I would have lunched all weekend on turkey sandwiches made with the good rye bread from Goldberg’s, and indulged in a creamy turkey tetrazzini, a divine dish that usually makes an annual appearance at the end of November.

We do have a few leftover servings of a huge Indian pudding, made with cornmeal, as well as some pumpkin pies (which makes a tasty  breakfast). I’m told by my daughter — who, as editor of The Star’s magazine, EAST, is planning a holiday-historical feast at Almond on Tuesday evening — that pumpkin and other squashes, as well as corn meal, venison, and goose or other wild fowl, were indeed likely during the “first Thanksgiving” in 1621. 

The happy-clappy Thanksgiving story taught in grade school — at least back when I was a kid — turns out, in reality, to have been a convenient whitewashing of our real heritage. It’s very pleasant to think of the Wampanoag sharing their knowledge of the land, and their bounty of winter foods, with the English settlers in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, but this cheerful view of this moment is seeing it all from the European perspective. The Wampanoag and other Native Americans today don’t so much celebrate the moment as mark it with a day of mourning.

Today, Americans of European descent are likely at least a bit more aware than I was as a child of the genocide of Native Americans that began in earnest with the Puritans in the Massachusetts colony. I wonder: Will the observance of Thanksgiving decline as a result? I hope not. I hope that we will always gather to enjoy our holiday meals, but that perhaps a bit more national self-reflection will be part of the conversation, before football talk and political bickering kicks in around the festive table.

One of the few positives of being home ill for several days, even with the flu, is that you have time to think. Or not. In my case this week, 30 straight hours of sleep were punctuated by only brief periods of lucidity. During one of them, I realized I was wrong to have made light of my too-late, Thanksgiving-eve vaccination in the paper last week. 

Generally, I believe it is in bad taste to speak publicly about one’s afflictions. It took me years to talk about the red meat allergy that I showed symptoms of in the early 1990s. I believe I was Patient Zero in East Hampton, likely having been exposed to lone star ticks while working as a field archaeologist in backwoods Georgia at the time. I had the allergy so early that one of today’s experts on it dismissed it at the time as impossible. But again, I brag, for which, by the rule on talking about one’s maladies, I will pay a price. Still, it’s nice to be number one in something, no? 

Doubling down, I return to the flu. The first time I had it that I recall was in the mid-1990s. I was working for a television documentary producer. The flu was going around New York City, and one morning I watched a co-worker fall from chatty into stupor in the space of minutes. I have not forgotten the speed with which he went from fine to ill. “It was amazing!” I said. Not so many days later, it took hold of me as well, per the rule.

Last Saturday was a replay of sorts. I was working on my truck in the driveway, close to completing a bumper replacement that had been on my to-do list for months, when it struck. I put my tools in the cab, locked the door, and crept inside to rest. 

It may seem odd, but I realize that since I’ve been older getting sick has sharply increased my interest in the colonial era. When I had pneumonia a few years back, I listened to a novel set Revolutionary Westchester. This time, I borrowed an audiobook online via the East Hampton Library and learned about the Dutch founding of New Amsterdam, then read about 50 pages of a biography of Increase Mather, the father of Cotton Mather, and an early leader of the church and Harvard College in 1600s Boston.

What to make of this is not clear to me. It could be that the timing, around Thanksgiving, with talk of Pilgrims in the air, makes for an obvious lead in. But to my mind, the view is as much of a factor. The limbs of the bare oaks and black tupelo in the swamp outside my window in changing light are like bones, making me think of the long-ago past and my own mortality. 

Soon after the midterms I considered ordering a bumper sticker that would read: “Don’t Blame Me — I’m From East Hampton.”

That variant, of course, derives from the sensationally failed 1972 presidential candidacy of George McGovern, the liberal Democrat who was to carry only one state, Massachusetts, many of whose residents afterward proudly put “Don’t Blame Me — I’m From Massachusetts” bumper stickers on their cars. (The comparison, while admittedly clever, is, I confess, somewhat invidious inasmuch as Perry Gershon gave Lee Zeldin a much better run for his money. Had all 16,000 absentee ballots gone to Gershon, he would have won!)

McGovern’s striking “Getting It All Together” poster, rescued from dusty oblivion at The Star, has hung for years in our bedroom, testimony, I suppose, to the coupling of lofty ideals with dashed hopes. 

“Don’t forget to call on Wednesday,” I said to our eldest daughter, who lives in Ohio, a couple of days before the election. “Mary,” who had knocked on doors for Gershon, “will either be over the moon or under a cloud.”

I’m happy to say my prediction was wrong. While obviously disappointed with the First Congressional District result, her fighting spirit — an inspiration to me, a phlegmatic type — bent but did not break.

That Gershon swept all 19 election districts here, Montauk included, was good news, I argued, testimony to her — and to all of the other Bonac door-knockers’ efforts. So, don’t blame us.

I still remain mystified, though, that an incumbent who, while he voted against the “tax reform” bill, which gores our oxen locally by denying state income tax, property tax, and mortgage interest write-offs, but did nothing really to prevent the deficit-ballooning giveaway; who apparently fails to support extensive gun control laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings — and whose party is seemingly bent on denying insurance coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, and on meddling with Social Security and Medicare, would attract support from somewhat more than half of those, most of them aging middle-class homeowners I suspect, who turned out at the polls. 

As for immigration, I don’t know if Lee Zeldin — as the president does — tends to characterize all immigrants as members of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, or if he is utterly laissez-faire when it comes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, but here too I would think he’d be out of sync with the district’s sizable Latino population.

So, don’t blame us — we’re from East Hampton.

We’ve returned from a Thanksgiving dinner on the Eastern Shore that would have made even Ina Garten envious. And the house, whose core dates to 1876 or so, was beautiful, the most beautiful one I’ve ever been in.  

Fearing that we might wear thin — I mean, our repertoire is not endless — we stayed the first two nights at the Tidewater Inn in Easton, about 20 minutes from my cousin’s house, and while the room was a bit cramped (people must have been smaller and/or less demanding in the 1940s), we stuck it out. And I’m glad we did, for Frederick Douglass, as we learned from flags at every street corner, was a native son. As was Harriet Tubman, the bartender at the Pub told us.

“Of course, he couldn’t wait to get out of Easton,” Mary said, but still it was interesting to know he was from there, and to know that there is a well-reviewed biography of him that has just come out.

Driving around there isn’t the easiest thing: There are deep ditches alongside the roads, bordered by dark, tall pines. Several times in those dark pines we had to back up nervously, trying to find our way to the tree in whose thick bark was implanted their tiny house number.

Mike, my cousin Margot said, rather liked it that way. It reminded me of my late Uncle Louis, who lived up on Waterworks Road, in Sewickley, Pa., and insisted that the rutted dirt road remain untended. Still, everyone descended, or ascended.

Uncle Louis and Aunt Gwenny’s was a gathering place, much like my cousin Margot’s. She welcomes you with open arms as you stare, mouths agape, not knowing that people still ive like this. Many bedrooms, many living rooms, many fireplaces, and many dogs — five black Labs by actual count, all as welcoming as she.

While the setting is rarefied, on the banks of the Tred Avon River, with Oxford just across the way, one feels, once having been given the grand tour, at home.

And, man, can Margot cook, a fact hitherto largely unknown to me. Mary, who’s used to playing hostess to two score on Thanksgiving, wanted — wanted very much — to help, but everything was in order, everything taken care of. She was utterly delighted when told she could wash the dishes. And I, wanting to be useful too, made margaritas — the recipe for which, vouchsafed by East Hampton’s own Alex Silva, you can find in one of Ina Garten’s early cookbooks.

There were 11 of us at dinner, the youngest being 3, and there was affection all around, everyone having a chance to talk, everyone having a chance to listen, and everyone having a chance simply to reflect in silence. It was an exceedingly pleasant feeling, one that I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced in quite the same way before. 

It brought to mind the general’s toast in “Babette’s Feast,” one of my favorites, and its lines from Psalm 85: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

A Star headline on Oct. 11 warned, “The Tiny Springs Library Is In Peril.” The report said that the library and the Springs Historical Society, which operates it, were in all sorts of trouble, both organizational and financial. Word spread that the books on the second floor — some 6,000 of them — had had to be thrown away, rather than sold as intended. 

That was all the people of Springs needed to hear to be spurred to action: More than 100 residents rallied at an Oct. 14 meeting at the Presbyterian Church to set things to rights. 

Legal issues are being sorted out pro bono by a resident lawyer. It was announced that an electronic database would be established to document new books as well as the art and children’s books that had been saved, and that new board members, officers, and a secretary had been put in place. 

Within a couple of weeks, it was clear that Springs would not lose its library and that, indeed, the library would be joining the 21st century.

Have you ever been inside the Springs Library? It is the plainly handsome, modest shingled house opposite Ashawagh Hall that once belonged to Ambrose Parsons. It was willed to East Hampton Town by Elizabeth Parker Anderson in 1975, and it is on the state and national registers of historic places. 

Pretty much everything I know about the Springs Library comes to me via the newsletters I have received for years about the various doings there, courtesy of Heather Anderson, who gathered and compiled the information. Ms. Anderson has stepped down after 40 years as president and librarian of the society; it is unclear whether its new officers will decide it is worth the effort and expense to keep the newsletter going.        

For me, the newsletter has been of invariable interest and has provided unimpeachable evidence that community, and history-keeping, are alive and well in Springs. My fingers are crossed that the newsletter will have a future.

The library is staffed entirely by volunteers, and East Hampton Town maintains the building, which is said to be compromised structurally and to need serious attention.

The community is very lucky that the library is sustained by a $5,000 annual grant from the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation. The Baldwins’ grant has allowed the library to keep its library-card fee a nominal $15 — with a $25 fee for library and society membership — as well as to offer families all the other things (CDs and DVDs and puzzles) we have come to expect in libraries these days. While the library’s new supporters and officers seeks further donations, they have already done a great service for Springs in keeping the library open. Join me in saying, “Hooray!” And perhaps a check might not go amiss?

You’d think that a country wanting to be great again would return to what made it great by welcoming those who, having seen the worst of things, are resolved to better their lives. What more worthy goal? 

And yet the pilgrims, who would a century ago have been met in New York Harbor by the Statue of Liberty, are confronted at our southern border by barbed wire and tear gas.

If you want to make America great again, let them in. (In an orderly fashion, of course.) So the parents can work hard and the children can learn. And, perhaps, in their striving they can teach us, who may have forgot why America has for so long been hope incarnate. 

I hope — sense — that, absent disaster, better things will come, despite the divisiveness so evident now. 

It’s the younger generation I’m pinning my hopes on, a generation less in thrall than its elders to ideology, more amenable to working things out. They, I think, will afford genuine opportunity to all, but will insist that our collective health be as paramount as the achievements of each one of us. In other words, I think that we could become a more equitable society, without going to hell in a handbag.

It’s not either the individual or the group — it’s all of us, together. We’ve got to get back to that. To shaking hands rather than turning our backs — or being shot in the back.

It’s not Communism or Socialism that I’m promoting, but amity, Amityism. Can we not think of the welfare of everyone even as we celebrate an individual’s success? Even as we celebrate, even as we delight in, our own voices? 

It’s not all about the money. And the immigrants, who value family above all, know that. It’s about doing one’s best and in doing so contributing to the whole. That’s what made this country great. There is no better society, no better place. Yes, they’re doing great in China, but at the expense of their souls, I think. There is more joy, more potential joy, anyway, in a country where not only initiative but also the freedom to speak one’s mind is equally valued. I don’t envy the Chinese, though to read of that country’s alchemy of coercion and economic uplift is fascinating. 

In the end, though, it is the free and united spirit that will triumph, or ought to triumph. 

So, don’t tear-gas them, let them in. 

Can you believe, 10 percent of high school students, when questioned, think Judge Judy is a member of the Supreme Court, when, as everyone knows, she’s on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? (Just kidding!)

Actually, we know a judge on that court, a high school classmate of mine who, when asked by the Reagan administration to interview for the job of F.B.I. director, declined, referring them instead to a man he thought highly of, Robert Mueller.

Yes, Virginia, there are principled people who happen to be Republicans. One such was recently laid to rest with heartfelt eulogies that made you yearn — liberals are always yearning, when they’re not hand-wringing — for decency again.

“He was a good guy,” Maureen Dowd said of the late President George H.W. Bush when asked by Judy Woodruff during a Channel 13 “NewsHour” round-table discussion for her final thoughts. High praise indeed from a columnist whose words can flay you alive at 20 paces. Dana Carvey, his chief lampooner, whom the president later befriended, was also of that mind.

My brother-in-law, who had been rendered nostalgic as well, did have one cavil, having distinctly remembered the late 41st president saying we could win a nuclear exchange. Oh well. We’re rid of that fantasy now . . . aren’t we? And there was Willie Horton, and the turkey shoot in the desert, the first shots fired in what became, with his son at the helm, a tragic mission in the Mideast, a “mission” that has, after all these years, yet to be defined.

Taken all in all, though, the late president was an honorable, accomplished man, a Yalie, who, while the most competitive person Jim Baker ever met, had the common touch, and who, while born to privilege, felt the need to serve his fellow citizens, to serve his country. He had a generous spirit, Carvey said, was gracious too. And what’s not to like about a guy who, confined to a wheelchair, celebrates his 90th birthday by jumping out of a plane? 

You do yearn, especially in these self-serving days, for honest public servants like the late president. Was he the last president to raise taxes? Perhaps the last Republican president to do so; anathema to those in his party clinging to the tenet — to the long-discredited fantasy, but no matter — that tax cut tides raise all boats. Tell that to the middle class, whatever’s left of it. And doing the right thing, of course, cost him.

So, we go about, like Diogenes, looking for an honest man, a man of principle, a man of decency, a man of generous spirit, a gracious man. My classmate is one, and by his account, which is good enough for me, so is Robert Mueller. We await his findings with bated breath. 

Just the other night, with nothing better to do, and nothing to interest me at the office, I thought I would drive around a little and see the Christmas lights of the town. I took my leave from friends who I had been visiting on Gould Street, and headed off for a turn around the pond, where a brightly lit tree blazed in the center.

Not all that long ago, East Hampton was greatly riled when an electrician overseeing the illumination of Main Street and Newtown Lane trees unilaterally chose to change the lights from multicolored to blue. A ferocious debate ensued, and the guilty electrician went to ground. Within a few Christmases, once the blue ones had been used up, the trees were set back to rights, at least in the majority view then.

New technology, cheap Chinese LEDs, and changing tastes would make a controversy such as the one concerning the blue lights of the late 1980s unlikely. Depending on one’s taste, almost any color scheme is possible. 

During my recent tour, I was particularly impressed with a tree at the Maidstone Hotel: white strings wound in the branches near the trunk of the tree but with dazzling fuchsia lights around the outer boughs. At the Whitmore’s garden shop in Amagansett, an otherwise bright red tree somehow sparkled white here and there.

Almost anything can be hung. Minimalist green strands rise to the top of a flagpole outside the Huntting Inn on Main Street like a signal to passing alien explorers. Swooping white lights converge on a gazebo at Groundworks Landscaping, druid-like.

The display drawing the most attention around here this Christmas can be seen at the Toilsome Road, Route 114 roundabout. In a small field sits a red tractor, attended by three Santa-hat-wearing half-size plastic human skeletons bedazzled with festive garlands. That no one to my knowledge has complained shows how far we have come since the stringing of blue lights on the official trees set East Hampton into fits.

It’s a few days before Christmas and I should wrap up my thoughts for Mary, with whom I share daily bread and whose company I always look forward to, as does O’en.

We are the two of us smitten, and I always say to him on the way home that we’re drawing near to her. That perks him up. Me too. 

Pretty much all the accoutrements of the season have vanished, now that the kids are gone, though there was, until it fell off, a nice wreath on our door, and now a small tree, a real one in a bucket, sent by Sheila from Southern California, which reminded me that Christmas is celebrated to the nines in the desert.

There was a time, wasn’t there, when an orange or a persimmon or some sweetmeat for the children would do, but it’s all out of proportion now. Surfeit’s the order of the day. I really don’t envy the young all those things.

Perhaps prompted by such contrarian thoughts, we’ve begun divesting ourselves lately of things, thinking, as we sort through all the stuff, what it is we want to save. 

I want to save us, as we are at our ease, talking lightheartedly across the table, about any manner of things — things of the mind, mind, not of things you can stub your toes on.

“I did get you something,” she wrote me once, “but I didn’t have time to tell you my thoughts before they were wrapped. . . . We are the changing seasons. . . .”

Deep transience, I’m thinking.

When at our best, I mean, when not wrenched from the present — her presence being enough of a present for me, she who is beautiful, witty, and true. 

Could you wrap that thought up, please? Yes, with that shiny red paper and white ribbon. I’ll put it under the tree. 

It’s for someone whose days, I hope, will always be merry and bright, though I should add her Christmases needn’t be white.