A large sculpture across the street from my window reminds me of a pork chop, and pork chops remind me of foodstuffs which, while tasty, aren’t necessarily good for me. 

That’s not to say I don’t like the sculpture, mind. It’s evocative, it’s monolithic. It could be South America, for instance . . . or a pork chop. 

Anyway, I’ve become concerned lately about what the doctor says is “a slightly elevated cholesterol reading,” which is no surprise inasmuch as I’ve been eating omnivorously for months (Kitty’s torte, about which I wrote at Thanksgivingtime, being just one of many examples), counting on a small daily dose of pravastatin to rid me of the bad stuff without triggering the shakes.

(I’m never quite sure, by the way, which it is, the HDL or the LDL, but what the L.)

It’s the snacking at The Star, I know. Its rickety small kitchen table is the frequent repository of so many things — berry pies, chocolate chocolate cakes, carrot cakes with that piquant sour cream icing, macadamia-nut cookies, soft, stinky cheeses — that aren’t good for you, but which are tempting nevertheless, and my fingers have tended to stray, toying with their confections, pinching, caressing, fondling as I have passed by. (Cast a cold eye, huntsman, cast a cold eye.) Recently, I publicly acknowledged that I was a preprandial predator, but no one seemed to care, the profile of a weekly journalist not being so prominent as to rate universal opprobrium, I suppose. 

It’s become sort of a game with me, a diversion, if you will, this peaking and valleying of cholesterol counts, as it was with that weird haracter on “The Office.” Like Sisyphus, minus the mountain and the boulder (think Dreesen’s doughnuts) and the physical exertion for all eternity.

Mary always reminds me Camus said concerning Sisyphus that it came down to what he was thinking about on the way down the hill. I’m on the way down the hill now, as it were, and what I’m thinking about is Haagen-Dazs. Cherry vanilla mostly. I got the last pint of it at Round Swamp on their last day. Mary said she’d never tasted anything so good when I held the spoon out to her. 

That was the last spoonful she was to have of it.

I can’t go on, I must go on, but in order to butteress . . . buttress, rather, my will, I’ve made an appointment with a clognitive therapist.

“From your lipids to God’s ears,” I can hear Mary say.

In the early days of the East Hampton settlement, then known as Maidstone, no fence surrounded the South End Burying Ground.

This would not be particularly notable, except that in those days the area on both sides of Town Pond was the main thoroughfare, for people and livestock alike. David Gardiner, who had lived nearby and reflected on this in 1840, found it odd that over the years the graves had been exposed to the intrusions of cattle and to depredations of all kinds, as he put it.

Gardiner published his “Chronicles of the Town of Easthampton” in 1840 in The Sag Harbor Corrector, and the series was assembled into a small book in 1871. The book was reprinted in 1973 at Isabel Gardiner Mairs, one of his descendant’s, expense. Copies of that edition are free for the asking at the Amagansett Library, Nellie’s, an Amagansett antiques shop, and we have a few copies here at The Star office.

That the burying ground was actually in the public highway interested Gardiner greatly, and got him to speculating that it could have been explained as the product of the early residents’ stern religious views.

“What the object could have been in thus locating it, at a time when land was of little value and all equally accessible can only be conjectured,” he wrote.

“Burial grounds are considered holy by the Romish church, and the zeal and bigotry of that day was so intolerant of all papal customs, that the puritans were generally disposed to adopt the reverse of what they considered the superstitions of that church.” Burying their dead in the road, Gardiner supposed, might have been intended as a show of contempt for popish rituals. 

 At some point before 1840, when Gardiner’s account of the early days appeared in The Corrector, the town trustees had decided enough was enough and that the cattle that came to Town Pond to drink or that were being driven past it on their way to the meadows on Montauk were no longer welcome among the graves.

Today, a picket fence surrounds the burying ground with wooden steps at either end, which you have to climb to visit the graves. Small signs indicate that dogs are now not welcome. The cattle that do pass by do so aboard trucks.

They’re always saying everybody dies peacefully or comfortably surrounded by their families. But I don’t believe it. Why? Because if you’re surrounded by your family, there’s precious little air left to breathe.

Mary laughed just now in looking over my shoulder, and then added, “But you’re always talking about dying.”

“But dying is a big part of life,” I said. 

I liked the way our cat did it. He just went off by himself, and when, finally, he dragged himself to our back lawn he had no strength to resist when Mary gathered him up in her arms and gently placed him on our bed. 

We tried not to surround him — we tried to give him room so that he could instruct us, which he did. He reached forth, let it go, leaped into the vastness — as we will someday, I hope, without picking at the coverlet. I’d prefer death to be what happens to me when I’m making other plans. I’ve always liked the way they used to say “death overtook him. . . .” (Actually, in my case it wouldn’t be a great feat.)

But back to life and liveliness and to making plans, which we still do, though we agree we have no goals other than to continue loving, laughing, and, in my case, lifting quotes so this column can continue to move forward, as they also say, and frequently, these days, primarily by people who’ve been caught with their pants down, which makes it difficult to move forward until they’re cinched up.

We were asked specifically what our goals were the other night, in connection with estate planning, and, as I say, other than to continue living, working, and toasting one an other as the sun sets on having made it through yet another day free from sobriety’s icy grip, we couldn’t think of any.

Just keep on sailing, the old lover says to the ferryman — or words to that effect — in “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Just keep on sailing. Mary’s actually flying as I write — on a mission of mercy (as are most of her missions) to Southern California. She is needed there, an accident having happened when our daughter and son-in-law weren’t expecting that they’d have to make other plans. 

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could beam you here?” she said the night before she left to one of our grandsons in Ohio. “Whoosh!”

He agreed that she was being a bit silly, but I like it when she is, when she is lighthearted. 

So she is being beamed to California. Well, not exactly. I think she has to stop in Salt Lake City first, and on the way back, 11 days hence, there are to be two stops — off-putting for one who prefers directness in her dealings. “Whoosh, whoosh.” She’s here, she’s there. . . .

We parted at Mary’s Marvelous (where else?) this morning, she with an avocado sandwich in hand and I with a cup of coffee. A kiss and she was gone, on her way. 

Later, while waiting at the gate, she apologized for the abruptness, but I told her it was just as well, that I was spared the tearing up. 

“I went and drowned my sorrows in tennis balls,” I said, which drew a laugh. 

Later, while walking O’en along Main Street, I saw a silver Prius turning into the parking lot and, for a moment, thought that it might be her. No such luck. That’s life. Death too.

Looking through a box in the Star attic the other day, I noticed a narrow, cloth-bound ledger that looked interesting. A handwritten note tucked inside the front cover identified it as the Montauk Lighthouse visitors’ log from August 1908 to September 1910. Whoever had left the note indicated that the entries included an “auto run” in 1908, complete with the makes of the cars.

Flipping through the pages, I had the vague memory that someone had asked about this log some time ago, that it had belonged to a grandparent who had left it at The Star years ago and whose family had wanted it returned. I asked around; no one could remember who that might have been.

Chas. Wright of Brooklyn’s name is the first entry in the log, written in a big cursive hand on Aug. 22, 1908. The last entry is Mrs. H.C. Hoyt of Bensonhurst, on Sept. 26, 1910.

Local names appear by the plenty. My grandmother, who was called Nettie Edwards in those days, visited the Lighthouse on June 13, 1909, with her aunts Phoebe and Minnie Huntting. 

In July 1909, among the visitors to the Lighthouse signing the book were four members of the Roosevelt family, including John Ellis Roosevelt, a first cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had left office just months earlier.

On Sept. 15, 1910, my great-great-grandmother’s name appears in a steady hand as Mrs. J.B. Edwards, Amagansett L.I. The 1908 N.Y. Automobile Trade Association Long Island Run arrived at Montauk Point on Sept. 17. About 27 people listed their names, alongside the makes of their vehicles. Unlike the other visitors’ signatures, theirs are hard to read, perhaps reflecting the long, hard miles they had traveled in their Rainier Motor Car Co. models, but if I can read one name correctly, a person named Anderson.

It was only after I put a photo of my grandmother’s signature on Instagram that the facts about whose logbook this was became clear. Barbara Borsack noticed the post and phoned to ask where I had found the logbook. Her father had lent it to my grandmother shortly before his death in 1974 of a stroke. Time intervened, and about a decade ago, Barbara inquired about it. I kept a Post-It on my desk for a while on the chance that it might turn up, but that, too, fell victim to time and disappeared.

The log had come into Barbara’s family via her great-great-grandfather James Scott, who was the keeper of the Light until 1910. Barbara’s great-grandmother had grown up in the Lighthouse as a young girl and recalled that visitors could be seen miles off over the treeless plain as they made the journey. There was often time enough to get something cooking so that they could have a hot meal ready by the time the guests arrived.

Now, Barbara plans to stop by the office to collect it. She told me she would look through it for a few days, then find it a secure home where it might in the future be accessible to the public.

Children are taught to control their impulses, to think before they do or say something adults might consider bad. In my case, I certainly have learned over the years not to act as impulsively as I did when I was 3 or 4 — though I have to admit that I never quite got down pat the bit about making sure you really want to say something before you actually say it.

Now let us consider President Trump.

Political commentators, talking heads, and a panoply of professionals in the psychiatric fields have chimed in about his impulse control, or lack thereof. If you and I say something without thinking, it can have any range of effects, from the comedic to the offensive. But when the president of the United States erupts with unchecked expressions of unfiltered emotion — explosions of anger or wounded pride — the results, obviously, are on a much more fearsome scale. 

Recently, President Trump retweeted three videos from an anti-Muslim hate group called Britain First without bothering to find out what the group stood for or what the British people might think of it. Following this, in the words of Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor, “concerns about the behavior and judgment” of the president “consumed a great deal of time in Parliament”; the United States Embassy in London was “bracing for violence because of the president’s impulse-control issues.” 

Steve Schmidt, an adviser to the administration of George W. Bush who was the manager of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, was even more scathing. “Clearly,” Mr. Schmidt was quoted as saying, “we have a 71-year-old president of the United States who has the impulse control of a little child, who feels aggrieved, who’s resentful, who’s a constant victim.” 

The “she said/he said” exchange that followed between President Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May made it clear that the president is content with whatever he blurts out, and that he cannot admit a mistake.

While we’re discussing toddler-stage emotional-development milestones, how about the related concept of delayed gratification? Depending on which source you consult, Mr. Trump has been accused of sexual harassment by 11 or 16 women. Last week, he started calling the “Access Hollywood” audio tape — in which he spoke unforgettably about his free pass, as celebrity, to grab women by the private parts — a fake, even though he had previously admitted it was indeed him on the recording. Children of 3 or 4 typically cannot stop themselves from reaching to grab candy when it comes into view, but what about a grown man who reaches out to grab women he’s never met before but considers attractive? 

Psychology Today says that you can help  youngsters learn to regulate their emotions by certain time-tested strategies, like being a good role model; getting children to talk about their thoughts and connecting them to their feelings; offering them limited but positive choices that allow them to develop a sense of self-confidence as independent decision-makers, and offering consistent discipline with a system of expressed expectations, rewards, and consequences.

President Trump isn’t going to appreciate any attempts at parental-style behavior mentoring from anyone on the Democratic side, but some senior figure in the G.O.P. might get results by taking on the role of stern father, strict mother, or super nanny. I wish Senator McCain were healthy enough to discipline Mr. Trump with the requisite pats on the head and raps on the knuckles. It might just have worked.

Coal was in short supply as 1917 came to an end. I did not know this until recently, when I was reading the front page of a copy of The Star that was scanned and digitized by the East Hampton Library.

L.E. Terry, the local fuel administrator under a federal wartime program, wrote what amounted to the lead article on the Jan. 4, 1918, issue. In it, he outlined the strict questions that coal dealers had been ordered by Washington to ask each customer to determine if anyone might be hoarding coal. Printed cards would soon be distributed for coal buyers to sign, attesting that they were only ordering enough for their immediate needs.

If conditions persisted, East Hampton residents would soon have to burn wood for heat, Terry wrote.  Suffolk County had plenty of that, and wooded areas would benefit from cutting, leaving new growth a chance to spread out. It was, he argued, the patriotic duty of wood-lot owners to cut wood themselves or allow someone else to do so. Owners of wood lots who refused should be reported, he wrote.

Wood lots were an old idea in East Hampton. Most of the families who established footholds here in the 17th century were granted them by the town trustees, acreage not suitable for farming but from which a supply of timber and wood for heat and cooking could be maintained. On old maps, land ownership in Northwest Woods appears in long, narrow blocks; these were the wood lots, though they now are broken up to accommodate houses and driveways, pools, tennis courts, and such.

The 1917-18 coal shortage was the result of a bottleneck in transportation more than a reflection of a drop in mining or soaring demand. Even though coal producers were increasing their output at a remarkable rate, wartime production had placed new demands on the nation’s rail system, making it difficult for all that newly mined coal to get where it had to go. Then, an early season blizzard that brought the Northeast to a standstill crimped the supply further.

Coal and the transportation pinch are thought to be one of the reasons President Wilson decided to nationalize the railroads at the end of December 1917. They would return to private control in 1920.

At the time of the 1917-18 coal crisis, some newspapers speculated that coal’s day would soon end and that a century later, its use would be abandoned. Though that day may still come, and nobody much uses coal to directly heat their house today, coal fuels a large share of the electricity produced today. And most of it is still carried by rail.

Something’s going on with me. The other day I remembered there was a working, but unused, electrical outlet under the living room couch so the first thing I did was move a table and lamp from their perfectly appropriate place next to a wing chair to the couch and plug in the lamp. It didn’t look right, so I moved them back and went looking, in the bedrooms, for a small table that would fit nicely next to the couch. 

With mission accomplished, I found myself removing the best ceramic lamp from a bedside table and placing it on the newly sited one in the living room. That, of course, required juggling things some more; the bedside needed a lamp, too.

Mind you, these objects, although neither antique nor particularly valuable, looked just fine where they were before I got started. What could I have been trying to achieve? No holiday party was about to happen, and the only overnight guests expected for the holidays were close relatives. Besides, newcomers usually find this vintage version of a family house just swell.

Was it the change in the weather? Done with moving furniture about, I checked out the living room coat closet. Several organizations, Town and Country Real Estate on Main Street in the village, for example, are collecting new and slightly worn winter items for those who find nighttime accommodations at this time of year in local churches through Maureen’s Haven. It seemed like time for me to cull. Or is it the coming of a new year that has me trying to set everything to rights?  

Setting things to rights. That’s pretty much what I suppose I do every morning. My husband is likely to have scrubbed the pots after dinner and left them on a counter. First thing in the morning, I put them away. 

As a matter of fact, putting other things where they belong, if and when I find them out of place, is a bit of an obsession. It seems that I need the assurance that things are in their places before I can move onto the day. It’s a householder’s security blanket.

And now, suddenly, I am reminded of the singsong nursery rhyme that goes something like: “Good morning. Good morning to you. We’re all in our places with bright shiny faces. . . .” Heaven forfend. Could it be that I have reached that time of life when folks are, anecdotally at least, known to return to childhood? Nah. It’s just that having objects in their proper places fools me into thinking all’s right with the world. 

O’en, our cream-colored golden retriever who doesn’t retrieve, but who is as handsome as all get-out, has taken great strides forward.

Frankly, we had begun not to take Matty Posnick, ARF’s trainer, all that seriously when he would say not to worry, that O’en, who had until fairly recently treated training sessions as mixers requiring him to work the room, would come around. 

Mary’s thrown her back out a couple of times in trying to restrain him. He loves everyone equally and fervently, and is as strong as an ox.

A half-trained dog would have been all right with me, yet, as I say, he’s made great strides of late, to such an extent that we’re thinking that one day we might be able to put the leash aside, knowing he’ll be responsive to verbal commands. I see Bill Fleming’s golden retriever walking along beside him and, though usually I’m not, I’m envious.

I hadn’t been to training for a while, leaving that (among myriad other things) to Mary, and so even though she’d told me he’d improved markedly in the past couple of weeks, I was unprepared yesterday for what greeted my eyes in the Wainscott Farms greenhouse — an ever-attentive O’en, regal-looking as always, but also, wonderful to tell, utterly undistracted by all the distractions. 

There were at least a dozen dogs in the class, an intermediate one that O’en had had to repeat. One barked incessantly and a couple, German shepherds, were, frankly, a bit scary. But O’en was serene, staying, paws crossed idly in front of him, when he was asked to stay, fixing Mary with soulful stares when asked to “watch,” and coming neatly around to heel when Mary moved her left leg backward before clicking her heels together and lowering a treat.

Matty was right! All of a sudden, it had clicked. O’en knew the drill. 

Mary, who more than once in the past year had thought seriously, the steep fee notwithstanding, of sending him “to the monks,” is beside herself. 

As am I. As is O’en. As are all three of us.

First of all, I want to say thank you, Santa, and all your helpers for fanning out across the globe in these weeks leading up to Christmas to help keep the magic alive. It’s not easy being in so many places at once while also making your list and checking it twice. All those decked-out halls can get pretty noisy when the squeals of excited children are fueled by candy canes and sugar cookies. It’s enough to drive anyone to distraction.

The youngest children, and most ardent believers, can be reluctant to sit for a photo, and the older ones are growing ever more skeptical and less enchanted, doubting your very existence. There’s just a small window of time in which all the elements align and the little ones are filled with wonder and awe at the sight of you. 

It’s a tough racket, the Santa gig, so I don’t want to criticize, but I do have two basic pointers for those of you out there gallant enough to take on this job. 

It’s true that there are divergent opinions about some of the basics. Is Santa Claus a jolly old elf? And, if so, is he an unusually small man? Or is he an elf of human-size proportions? Or is he not an elf at all? While you ponder that one, let’s move on to what he knows and what he doesn’t. 

I think we can agree that he knows when you’ve been bad or good, but how exactly does he know? Does he have a crystal ball? Hidden cameras? Does he get texts from your parents? And if he knows when you’ve been sleeping and when you’re awake, shouldn’t he also know your name? I mean, it makes sense that he should know your name if he knows all those other things. 

So we arrive at tip number one: The real Santa knows the names of the children who visit him to tell him what they’d like for Christmas. The real Santa, and his helpers too, should probably not begin the conversation by asking a child’s name. 

And if he hasn’t been paying close enough attention to pick up the name during regular surveillance, does it really matter that Johnny stole his sister’s candy cane or Jill snuck some extra doughnuts to eat in bed after her parents tucked her in or Annie took their old iPhone to school without asking them? I’d argue it does, so let’s just get the names straight or find a way avoid the subject. 

Another tip, and this one comes from personal experience: While in full dress, Santa should not ask parents if they know who he is. And when they respond in the only prudent way, “You’re Santa,” he should not then press them to guess again and reveal his alternate identity while posing for a picture with their child. 

“Who’s Bob?” (I’m changing the name to protect the guilty.)

“Well, honey, Bob is one of Santa’s helpers, but don’t worry, he’ll get your list to Santa.” 

It’s a tangled web we parents weave at this time of year; we could all use a little magic to keep from getting caught in it. 

Carissa Katz is The Star’s managing editor.

It happens so fast — the dark I mean. One day it’s a bright afternoon and you’re swimming. Then suddenly how silly it seems, the sandy towel still in the car. 

How the curtain has drawn around our days, leaving us snatching at the bright hours, the light already fading at midday. The bare-bones grip of early dark and cold tightening each day until solstice. 

And then — well it’s a long time until time again expands. Always I try to remember the stretching is slow, daily, and accumulates. But there’s a long fallow time, the underground seep. 

The peace of a quiet day in a snow globe of soft and continuous motion and the chittering of birds. And yet — the yearning for light. 

A year ago, half or more of us sat transfixed at the unfolding election results and woke up drenched in dread. We’ve watched a malignancy sow seed since then, a maw open between the dark and the light, between rationality and dogma, a murk of fear color the country in charcoal.

Two years ago I took a small girl’s hand in mine as she waded through chilly water to shore, her baby brother in my arms. The Aegean sucked in her discarded life vest, a knockoff filled with sodden newsprint sold to her parents by smugglers, and deposited it like a bright anemone on the sea floor. Another broken promise.

I repeated, over and over, in bad Arabic to families in the throes, greetings and “Welcome to Greece.” We wrapped space blankets around shoulders, heads, and feet, like flower-surrounds of silver and gold, and sent traumatized people off for tea and dry clothes.

This winter, there are 4,000 refugees still in sagging tents in the mud of one camp, the barbed wire holding them in, immigration policies holding them back. This week one 10-year-old Afghan boy at the center of another overcrowded boat never got up, crushed. 

How at night, over cups of ouzo and wine, the fire in the taverna stove glowing, we loved each other, refilling each other’s ragged-edged hearts with fellowship, readying ourselves to give more, remain compassionate the next day. 

Late November and the last leaves, though still colors, have dulled; the sky is gray, and it’s absolutely still, neither warm nor chill. It’s a day for Led Zeppelin, maybe “Misty Mountain Hop,” “Black Dog,” or “Kashmir.” Something haunting and biting, to scrape the edges of this day. To draw a sharp line to play chicken with. 

It’s so fast, and I go willingly across the veil, leaving practical concerns behind; let them dwell in the twilight for a time. Into the morning gray, into the suspension of this day between seasons, just before my birthday.

Born late in the year, I get confounded sometimes by the math — or maybe it’s deeper than that. All year I’ve been thinking I was 58. And now, after asking the internet to straighten me out, I’ve discovered I’m not yet there. I have a year of grace, the time till 60 expanding. 

Grace — may we all have a little bit. Maybe it’s just one deep breath, some wood smoke in the air. Maybe it’s big or maybe it’s small. Once, for a while, there were just two things I clung to: the sight of a ribbon of ocean blue at the crest of a hill along East Hampton woods, and a hot shower at the end of the day. For the homeless, it’s a warm, safe, and quiet sleep. Or maybe, it’s just the touch of a gentle hand. Reaching out, receiving. 

Joanne Pilgrim is an associate editor at The Star.