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.

There was a traffic jam on Tuesday morning on Main Street. A lone heron had found a happy roost on a Christmas tree stuck in the middle of Town Pond, and several drivers had stopped for a look.

I knew what was up in advance because my sister had phoned while I was getting a cup of coffee and left a voice message about a great blue heron atop the tree that has blue lights and that it would make the ultimate, if cheesy, Christmas photo for the cover of The Star.

By the time I got there about a half-hour later, Main Street was at a stop. Two people had pulled over on the James Lane side as well and were on the pond’s edge taking pictures with their phones.

When I got to the office and described the scene, Jane Bimson, one of our sales representatives and a good photographer, volunteered to get a photo. Taking a real camera with a lens that stood a chance of getting a decent shot, she headed out the door.

There have been plenty of herons around these days, it seems. The other morning, early, I had to slow my truck to give one that had been standing in the middle of Napeague Meadow Road a chance to rise and slowly fly off in a southerly direction, where a second heron launched itself from a tree and winged it off to do the same.

Earlier in the fall, a couple of people and I stood around in stunned awe looking across Folkstone Creek on Three Mile Harbor at several dozen herons that had paused to rest during migration. 

Herons have an interesting way of making a living, it seems to me. They are stone-cold killers, grim reapers of the swamps, whose strategy of stillness gives them an enigmatic air. Think of it: They stand for as long as it takes, knee-deep in water or amid a grassy meadow, then in an instant sweep down and grab a fish or other creature in their beaks.

At my friends Michael and John’s country place outside of San Francisco once, I watched a great blue hunting squirrels on the lawn. To my eastern eyes, accustomed to herons hunting fish, this seemed some kind of abomination. When I pointed it out, Michael told me they do it all the time.

 It’s hard to imagine that Town Pond, where the Christmas heron has taken up residence, has much for it to eat. A short flight away, Hook Pond is loaded with minnows, perch, and carp. Why this particular bird finds Town Pond appealing instead, I can’t say. Could be it’s bored and likes all the action. The view is fine, I’ll give it that. I hope it sticks around.

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.

For some forgotten reason, I receive “1600Daily” emails, which come from the White House and offer a spin on the news that contrasts totally with that of the information sources I more regularly rely on.

According to Tuesday’s “1600Daily,” President Trump wants us Americans to know that we have already gotten an early Christmas present, thanks to recent Republican legislation: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Monday at a record high (24,290), because traders were, the bulletin said, “buoyed by news from over the weekend that Republican senators had voted to pass sweeping tax-reform legislation.”

Another early Christmas present for which we should be happy, as noted by the same “1600Daily” broadside, was the announcement by President Trump, on a visit to Salt Lake City, that he was radically shrinking the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which are home to countless Native-American historic and archaeological sites. Only the “smallest area compatible with the proper care and management” of the archaeological treasures would be preserved; these public lands were being sacrificed in order to “increase economic growth and prosperity, especially in rural communities, by allowing grazing, commercial fishing, logging, and in some cases, mineral development.”

Thank you, Santa! 

For some reason, though, those grinches over at the Sierra Club just won’t get into the holiday spirit. “Trump’s order represents energy interests that wouldn’t hesitate to start logging, drilling, fracking, or mining in these treasured lands,” read a press release from the Sierra Club, which also quoted a spokesman for the Navajo Nation, who put it this way: “They want to go after coal. They want to go after petroleum, uranium, potash. They want to clear all the timber.” 

I guess I am a Scrooge-like ingrate, too, because I cannot muster any feelings of thankfulness for the gift of commercial exploitation of our national monuments. I still love my country, and especially its wild places and wide-open spaces: “I love thy rocks and rills/Thy woods and templed hills,” as we used to sing in “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” back in elementary school.

I have been making my own lists, and checking them twice, and have been pondering what sort of Christmas present we should send to the jolly old man who occupies the White House. What do you think: a tax strike? Or another protest march?

There were no deer fences in sight on the farmland in Northern Delaware, where I was visiting one of the kids at school last weekend. I noticed this as I drove along back roads near Middletown and miles of corn and soybeans. There were no ticks, either, according to several people I talked with.

Linking ticks to deer is heresy among some people here. Similarly, just pointing out that the thick and healthy woodland understory of past decades is now gone, and that deer are probably responsible, can been taken as fighting words. 

At the Middletown Wal-Mart early Saturday morning, where I had gone for a phone charger, I noticed tree stands and big bags of bait corn piled in an aisle. Three men in camouflage loaded a stand into a shopping cart. At the checkout, a couple placed two bags of corn onto the conveyor belt and then got into a conversation with the sales associate about how hunting was going.

Friends who have lived in less, shall we say, suburban parts of the world are often amused by the anti-hunting fervor that answers any public discussion about culling East Hampton’s deer. Up north, they say, there’s no question about what to do. 

Deer have no natural predators here, unless you count the cars that take out at least one every night. We have become used to the morning carnage. I notice that my children no longer seem to notice when we pass a fresh carcass at the side of the road, they, like the adults, have become numb to what once was a disturbing sight. Down in Delaware, you rarely see road kill.

People can argue about the deer population, but there is no question that there are a hell of a lot more of them in East Hampton than when I was younger. Back in the 1970s and ’80s we could go weeks without seeing one; now I might count more than a dozen on an evening ride home between East Hampton and Amagansett.

Time was that North Haven was the only place on the South Fork experiencing a deer explosion. Those who have lived here long enough might remember that village’s vigorous debates about whether to allow the use of a pesticide application station. East Hamptoners went convulsive over a recent village sterilization experiment. Neither worked to reduce the herds to a noticeable degree.

A number of the candidates running for town office this season have been brave enough to say that hunting has to be part of the deer-management program for East Hampton Town. They are correct. It is simply inhumane to continue to allow cars to be just about the deer’s only limiting factor.

Fifty-one years ago this column began to be written. No, no need to genuflect. No, no, please. . . .

(I had thought it was 50 years ago, and was telling everyone I would have my party now, minus the gold watch, of course, when I realized that the time for hosannas and raised glasses had passed!)

The first 20 years or so were on me (I know it’s supposed to take 10 years to hit one’s stride, but my essays were half the normal length). And I remember during that time being overly serious when it came to what it was I wanted to say, and, as a result, not quite getting it right. Then I met Mary, and things began to come to me rather than me coming to them. 

She has been my muse ever since. And often, though more serious and compassionate than I, she’s been my amusing muse. I think if this connection were ever to be broken or frayed I would give it up. Isn’t 2,500 — I’m sorry, 2,600 . . . no, make that 2,599 because Helen Rattray wrote one of them early on — enough anyway? No, don’t, don’t speak.

I may not be very intelligent, but I know that when it comes to column writing if you don’t let the censorious mind go a bit, it won’t happen — at least as well as it would were you simply to let some of what’s down there in the unconscious rise to the surface. “Don’t write, type,” Robert Gottlieb said. 

Don’t even type! Listen. And it will get written. 

Along that line, whenever a co-worker says on being assigned a “Relay” column that he or she can’t think of anything to say, I say, “That’s wonderful! You’ll write something good then.” They look at me askance, but it’s true.

I was assigned this column on arriving here on Oct. 15, 1967, and inherited the name, “Point of View.” Left to my own, I would probably have called it something else, something more clever, but anyway, “Point of View” it has been and is, even though most of what I write is beside the point.

I thank the Rattrays for having given me more than enough rope. There is something joyous about being afforded intellectual freedom, about being afforded the freedom to say whatever it is you want to say even though you have nothing to say. 

And, yes, as I said, it can be daunting, I suppose, if you think about it — Ev Rattray once likened column writing to an indeterminate sentence. I’m embarking on my 51st year and the parole board remains resolute, somehow deaf to my annual insistence that I’ve turned my life around, and, as always, immune to my native charm. 

I’m making no claims (no clams either) for my writing, but when I began not to take it so seriously (around the time Mary enlightened my life) was when it began to go right — as right as it was ever to go.

The admonition that before you judge a man you should “walk a mile in his shoes” was, clearly, quite sorely lacking in Donald J. Trump’s upbringing. Does our president have even a shred of real empathy?

The saying has been attributed to a 1895 poem called “Judge Softly,” although some imagine that it originated with Native Americans and therefore replace the word “shoes” with “moccasins.” Either way, it is an all-American aphorism. 

President Trump indulges in a nonstop stream of invective, mocking the appearance, size, intelligence, and sex-appeal of anyone and everyone he perceives as an opponent or critic — politicians, members of the media, or, especially, any woman who dares call him out on something, no matter how seemingly trivial. Apparently, his fans find it clever (or at the very least no big deal) when the leader of the free world ridicules fellow Americans for having plain looks, small breasts, a few extra pounds, or a physical disability.

Like others, I am reminded these days of the words of Joseph N. Welch, who was an attorney representing the United States Army when it was under investigation for Communist activities by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had reigned over the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee for many years. “At long last,” Mr. Welch asked, “have you left no sense of decency?”

The man in the White House’s decency and, yes, honesty have been widely questioned. Now, too, questions about his ability to muster up even a modicum of compassion have been raised following this fall’s devastating hurricanes. Some observers say he is working on it.

A Fox News poll at the end of the summer showed that only 26 percent of Americans described him as “compassionate,” while 71 percent said that word described him “somewhat” (18 percent) or not at all (53 percent). Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac poll last month showed just 40 percent think he understands the problems of average Americans, compared with 57 percent who don’t. If that is true, is his so-called base eroding?

The polls show that you don’t have to be a Democrat to want those who represent you, regardless of ­at what level, to show empathy, decency, and honesty. The president actually got worse marks for compassion than honesty in the Quinnipiac poll, even though he was caught in more than 1,000 false or misleading claims in his first eight months in office, according to The Washington Post.

As for the question of decorum, his response would likely be a snort of derision. (I’d say that he would laugh if asked about it, but, oddly enough, President Trump never seems to laugh or even smile naturally.) The Trump administration has essentially made basic good manners out-of-date as a standard of social behavior. “Decorum” might be an old-fashioned word, but what it basically boils down to is a sensitivity to and awareness of those around you. A man who hogs the after-dinner ice cream or tosses out paper towels like souvenir T-shirts at a press event following a massively destructive hurricane isn’t just lacking in the politeness department, he’s lacking any clue of what is going on outside his own skin.

Polls also show, however, that regardless of Mr. Trump’s personal failings, his base continues to support him in the belief that his policies are good for the country. The only way I can explain this to myself is to surmise that when they look at Mr. Trump, they are projecting their long-held hopes and wishes upon him, rather than seeing him for what he really is. It’s a tragic situation, but can we blame people for willfully convincing themselves our president is a good man.

Recently, I listened for eight of 11 waking hours, sitting in on a Killer Bee reunion on a Friday night and, the following morning, attending an equally long Hall of Fame induction ceremony at East Hampton High School. 

It was, I thought, a new world record for me. I’ve had a long love affair with my own voice, beginning in grade school when I first began to wave my hands wildly whenever questions were posed — at least in English, history, religion, and foreign language classes. “Teacher, teacher!”

Perhaps that is why I became a journalist, sensing I needed to balance out a proclivity to proselytize and to blurt out answers with some attentiveness to others.

(Speaking of proselytizing, I wonder why it is that this paper has included it among its epistolary no-nos, along with libel, obscenity, and nonexclusivity. Aren’t just about all letter writers proselytizing, inasmuch as they’re trying to persuade others to their point of view?)

You’ll notice that in regard to hand-waving I left out math. I tried to blend in with the woodwork in math class. In math it was the silence of the hams. Begin talking about train A and train B even to this day and I throw up my hands, not as an importunate show-off, but as someone about to be assailed by a swarm of yellow jackets, which actually happened recently and was not pleasant. 

Knowing something more than math’s basics (I can figure out tips in my head and slice budgetary pies with a reasonable degree of accuracy) ought to be on my bucket list, for I do believe in self-improvement, but while I know my days are numbered, I’ll probably go to my grave innumerate. I know math has its delights. In the next lifetime perhaps.

Back to paying attention to others, I’m glad when it comes to the above-cited cases that I did, even though the sessions lasted four hours each. It wasn’t as if I were at a town bored meeting or attending a political forum; however, the Killer Bee alums’ reunion, though born of criticism having to do with the recently premiered “Killer Bees” documentary film, and the Hall of Fame ceremonies were joyous occasions. 

And joy — at least when I’m thinking straight and simply listening — is what it’s all about.

Approaching Indian Wells, I stopped my truck on the beach to look at a flock of small sparrow-like birds. It was about a week ago. I figured I would take a few last casts of the season into the ocean. Big bluefish and a few striped bass remained around, or so I had heard.

Small birds are not my thing. To me, all the sparrows and warblers look pretty much alike. Not that I wouldn’t want to be able to tell the varieties apart, it’s just that I didn’t learn about them as a kid and that there are too many of them that move too fast to truly get to know at this busy point in my life. Seabirds, gulls, raptors, these I take a stab at identifying.

Yet the flock drew my attention. From a distance it looked like the birds were hopping. Once the truck was no longer moving and I peered through binoculars, I could see what they were up to. Each bird would jump onto a stalk of beach grass, its feet clasping around the fat seed heads. The bird and stalk would drop to the ground together, the bird would let go, the stalk would whip up, and the bird would pick at the seeds that had fallen. The process would be repeated.

This was, mind you, on the Amagansett National Wildlife Refuge section of the beach, where there are no snow fences on the natural, sloping fore dunes. Elsewhere, I have noticed lately, snow fence does indeed trap windblown sand, as intended, but also creates a barren microenvironment of little interest to the birds. It crossed my mind to wonder if anyone had ever done a rigorous impact study or really asked whether all the miles of snow fence were, on balance, doing good.

Birds’ adaptations to the Long Island environment never fail to amaze me. Though there were no fish interested in my offerings that day, scoters dove just offshore, picking something, I knew not what, off the bottom. Gulls worked the edges of the bar at low tide, eating small fish or invertebrates exposed by the outrushing water.

The flock of seed eaters moved away to the west before I could get a good enough look at them to try to find later in a bird book. There was plenty more beach for them to comb.

I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving for only about half of my life, as I moved to America some 25 years ago. But already I’ve decided that, like Christmas, Thanksgiving is nothing more than a set of repeats: Its uniqueness is its groundhog nature. Same food, same faces, same tablecloth, same fancy china.

The only thing that breaks the predictability is that if you happen to be a parent, which I am, you get to watch with each passing year the metamorphosis of your offspring, from minor to major. 

My son is 17, on the cusp of going off to college and then who knows what. He and I are close. Well, as close as anyone can be to a teenager. It comes and goes, like cell reception in Northwest Woods. Sometimes I hear his deep, comforting voice, and other times it’s just static and snatches of some indecipherable language. 

As I watched him at the Thanksgiving table, his long limbs spilling around him, chatting effortlessly despite being the only person under 35, I realized that all the received wisdom about teens, about the talking back and the mess, the sulking and the door slamming, is mostly just sitcom clichés. I’m actually pretty astonished at how good humans are at getting through the chrysalis stage.

And that’s the other thing about these festive holidays: Each and every year you get sucker-punched by sentiment. That ability only a select handful of days have to repeatedly overwhelm all sense of judgment and intellect. So by the time the meringue and pumpkin pies, the ice cream and the sweets made it to the table, I was already as wobbly as the cranberry jelly, on the verge of dampening the whole festive thing.

In my lachrymose state, I realized that one of the biggest lessons about being a parent is that until you become one you have no idea of what love is, or like, or even what it’s there for. That urgent, delicious loin-warming feeling that you had understood to be love was really only something to be prefaced with “making” — it’s the tease, the amuse-bouche, the glimpse, a warm bath compared to the riptide of the real thing that arrives with parenthood. Up until then you’ve just been paddling in love. Growing up, nobody ever tells you this, parents never explain this fact to you — that one day you won’t be able to feel the bottom of your loving, that you’ll drown in the stuff.

Parents don’t tell their children this, of course, because by the time they’re adolescents or teenagers, to try to explain the depths of that terrifyingly transcendent fundamental act of nature that is loving your child is too difficult and choking. Most likely if I tried right now, my son would curl up into a skinny, athletic-clothing ball of hellish embarrassment, arms scything the air.

The funny and sad thing is that the time when it’s easiest to express these feelings, when there is the least emotional resistance between parent and child, when all that love is most obvious and free flowing, is the one time your child will never remember. Those first years when he couldn’t blow his own nose, when you picked him up and rocked him and watched him speechlessly as he slept, are simply blank. 

Later, as a child grows up, the relationship is muddied with practicality, with life’s lessons and mistakes, with the dull rigmarole of discipline and bedtimes and homework, inappropriate behavior, soccer games, and tiredness. And that’s the part a child remembers of his childhood. He’ll remember dodging through it. But there were four scant years when all he was immersed in was an ocean of love, and even though we parents will never forget it, a child remembers none of it.

I’ve decided the greatest design flaw of human beings is that we don’t remember our childhoods and can’t recall the moment we uttered our first words or took our first steps, the first time we tasted chocolate or fell asleep on a father’s shoulders. My son doesn’t remember these things. He won’t until well into the future, someday when perhaps he’s a parent, and then, sitting around a Thanksgiving table surrounded by faces and food so familiar that you come to realize they are only there for the transmission of memory and remembrance, it will all come to him.

Judy D’Mello is a reporter at The Star.