Our friend Mary, who spent the weekend visiting for the first time in more than a year, immediately felt something was amiss. “You don’t have a dog,” she said, looking around. 

What Mary didn’t know is that I had been visiting the Animal Rescue Fund’s kennels throughout the winter, hoping to find a new canine companion. A year has passed since the little black rescue from Puerto Rico we adopted from ARF was killed by a car. Before Sookie arrived, we had built what we thought was an escape-proof fence around the back garden; we had just begun getting to know her when she bolted out of a gate that was unfortunately left open by a yard worker. Since then, the gate latch has been replaced, and a gap in the fencing corrected. We are ready. We have no other pets in the house, we have no small children, and we have a lot of attention to give: My dogs have always come to work with me, and almost never are left alone.

Even though I self-identify as a dog person, before the Sookie tragedy, I actually hadn’t owned one in a long time — not during the long life of a querulous cat called White Boots, whom we took in after one of our granddaughters fell in love with her at ARF and became inconsolable when she couldn’t adopt it because a family member was allergic to felines. White Boots, who would not tolerate dogs, and barely tolerated people, went to meet his maker a couple of years ago.

I like cats, too, but dogs have had a big place in my life since I was a child. You know those security questions you get when setting up online accounts of various sorts? I used to always answer “Gypsy” when asked for the name of my first pet. (Yes, concerned readers, I have since changed that security key.) Gypsy was a small, longhaired mutt whose tail was so full it seemed to be the same size as her head. Then there was Mamie, an old black Lab who had been in the Rattray family for years when I got married. The first dog of married life was a marvelous, loving Newfoundland we called Meg. The kids used to tell strangers on the beach that Meg was actually a bear; she was that big. And, then, there came Wickus, and Napeague, and Mookie, and Tanya, and Goodie. . . .  I could tell my life story in dogs.

Getting a dog is more complicated now because the entire family believes it has the right to chime in on the selection. We all agree that if we do get one, my husband and I should adopt a rescue. I have gone to ARF probably a dozen times with my daughter and her two children, and each of us has strong opinions on those we meet. My daughter goes for scruffy-coated dogs, big or small. My grandson likes small, lively ones — especially those with amber-colored coats — who are able to jump over a log when we take them for a walk in the woods behind the kennels. My granddaughter is generally dubious and quickly decides it is more fun to visit the cats and kittens.

Nowadays, of course, not only are we not ready, willing, or able to bring up a puppy (though ARF has had lots of adorable ones), but we are not as agile as we once were. Whatever dog we choose, it will have to be grown-up, calm, and good on a leash. I prefer big dogs, but I concede that our future one probably shouldn’t be large enough to pull us over, either. 

 The last time we visited ARF, we all fell for a big, scruffy, yellow-colored dog who was curious, friendly, and of a perfect age — which is to say, on the elderly side. Unfortunately, we were told, this charming fellow was not on the adoptable list because he had “severe separation anxiety” and, in his last home, had not only destroyed furniture but crashed through a window in an attempt to catch up with his owners when they left the house. He will live out his days in the safety of ARF. 

Now it is spring, and I think our dog is out there somewhere. Perhaps the power of the press will take hold of this situation. If anyone reading this knows of a suitable dog, please let me know.

What passes as a positive sign on the national front is when the headlines in the morning and the terrible thing that led the news when you went to bed are the same. Risk and scandal have seemed to come quickly in the last few months, with a fresh outrage presenting itself at almost every turn of the clock. 

So it was a fine break from all that this week when I drove over to Southampton to speak to the Tuesday Club, a group of about 20 or so retired men who get together to share a meal and talk. For whatever reason, I had not heard about the club until East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. invited me to attend and suggested that I talk about the challenges of communities living with our mostly eroding shorelines.

The tension between fortifying private property for the few and preserving beaches for everyone else was, I told the club as we waited for our salad course, the single biggest issue that will confront local officials in the years ahead. Airport noise, affordable housing, drinking water, the environment are important and have their vocal constituencies, but the beaches here are pretty much the whole deal. Lose them in a significant way, and much of the vacation home economy goes away, too.

The situation in downtown Montauk, I told them, was a taste of trouble to come. Instead of condemning and eliminating the roughly 10 motels and residences along the ocean using money appropriated by Congress for Hurricane Sandy relief, East Hampton Town took the shortsighted course, going along with the Army Corps of Engineers in a project that has already come at the cost of the public beach. The time had come, I said, for a new agency, one less in love with building bulwarks, to replace the Army Corps.

The way the Tuesday Club works is that a guest speaker lays out a topic and the group runs with it. Solutions to the dilemma I posed included one man’s saying that stone or steel fortifications were a good thing, others favoring a tax district to raise money for putting sand where a beach used to be, and another spoke approvingly of offshore barriers he had seen in the Mediterranean to block wave action. 

A notable proportion of the group liked letting houses fall into the drink, telling their owners, too bad, you were stupid to buy there in the first place. The sense was that not shifting the burden to taxpayers to cover the cost of others’ follies would be far less expensive over time. This was the kind of bare-knuckle wisdom one hears from older people, and it made my ride over to Southampton on a busy work day well worth the trip.

Remember the gas crisis of the mid-1970s and the long lines at filling stations? If you aren’t old enough to have been there, you aren’t likely to recall the nationwide energy-conservation effort that followed. 

The United States was already largely reliant on foreign oil, and in particular Saudi Arabia’s. Our own oil production was relatively high, but oil reserves were low. What caused the crisis was that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries slipped us, and a number of other countries, a Mickey Finn in 1974 by embargoing the sale of oil in retaliation for support of Israel in its 1973 war with Arab countries (the Yom Kippur war).

The result was not only unhappy drivers in aggravating queues at gas stations, but inflation, unemployment, and a nationwide 55-mile-an-hour speed limit on the highways. The embargo also had a global impact, with European countries and Japan needing U.S. assistance to secure energy sources.

But this crisis had a positive side, too, sparking a broad energy-conservation movement in the United States. Fuel scarcity prompted the first federal fuel-economy standards for vehicles. Americans were encouraged to conserve energy in every way possible — unplugging electronic devices when not in use, and thinking small when it came to cars. 

As we all know, that long-ago movement didn’t last long. Instead, we went wild in the following decades with no-holds-barred energy wasting. Appliances got bigger, the electronic devices we considered essential to our households grew in type, number, and sophistication, and air-conditioning became near-universal. The S.U.V. became our defining American vehicle, replacing the cute little “economy cars” of the 1970s.

The general public was not concerned about what fossil fuels were doing to the environment, and only a few voices in the wilderness were heard raising the alarm when domestic oil production soared and conservation foundered. Shale oil and natural gas boomed as sources of energy, and we as a culture were satisfied: We could have it all. 

It wasn’t until 1992 that a nationwide program to cut back on the household use of electricity, Energy Star, was adopted, and that was largely promoted as a way for consumers to save money rather than as good for the planet.

Because I thought it the right thing to do, and because, I guess, I haven’t forgotten the first energy-conservation movement, I was for the longest time scrupulous about unplugging my computer and various other devices. I bought cars with good mileage per gallon. My husband went around turning off the house lights (he still does) if no one was in the room. 

But, in general, and like most Americans, I think, we have become complacent. I am writing this in bed at night right now, lights blazing from the TV, two computers, a printer, a clock, and various other household devices whose use has become so routine I can’t think of what they even are.

Something is wrong with this picture.

We now live with an overarching imperative to curb the use of all fossil fuels: Global warming is a five-alarm emergency. But we do almost nothing. We do even less than we did back in the gas crisis of the 1970s, when an individual’s average energy consumption was considerably less than it is today.

Although our reliance on foreign oil has lessened, Saudi Arabia still provides 40 percent of the world’s oil. According to a recent article in The Atlantic, the good news is that in five years, 80 percent of our oil is expected to come from North and South America, and we may be able to loosen the bonds that tie us to a country known for horrendous human rights abuses. On a more local note, we have wind farms in our near future.

What the developed nations will do to preserve their land and protect their people from the effects of climate change, however, remains a giant question mark. In this country, we have a seesaw with global-warming deniers in the Trump administration on one end and private, public, and corporate efforts to fight global warming on the other. My question is: Why are we not, as individuals, in the cocoons of our own homes — in the ember glow of our ever-buzzing electronics — yet panicking? Nobody even seems to talk about gas-guzzlers anymore.

When I said I might write a column about the participation-com­petition debate as it concerns youth sports, Mary said I should stop beating a dead horse.

But it’s not a dead horse — it’s alive and kicking. I’m afraid I’m beyond saving in this regard, admittedly beguiled by winning teams, though I’m aware at the same time that constant blows to the ego can turn one off a sport.

People my age, I think, tend not to champion the present day’s feel-good, trophy-for-everyone philosophy. As Sharon said in our tennis clinic this morning, her 11 or 12-year-old grandson, on receiving one for having, basically, shown up, was not fooled. You’ve got to know how to win and how to lose, she said. If everyone’s a winner, you’ll never know how to lose. You’ll be living, consequently, in a dream world. 

Being able to treat winning and losing as the imposters they are is, I think, the key — to learn how to remain centered and calm in a frenzied, spinning world.

Preening can lead to a fall, and defeatism simply makes things worse. So what is fun, which we all want? Playing as best you can in the moment, uniting as best as you can the mind with the body so that you can be as even-tempered in victory as in defeat. And then, of course, practice, practice, practice, whether a lopsided winner or a lopsided loser on a given day.

Giving a trophy to everyone is a form of patronizing too. One should work for trophies.

As for the matter at hand, youth basketball, perhaps some constraint ought to be imposed, such as requiring each player on a squad to play a certain number of minutes (though leveling rules can smack of patronizing too).

“I’d rather be pummeled than patronized,” I said to Phil Kouffmann following a 6-0 doubles loss the other day, recalling the times pros have toyed with me rather than give me their best shots, as Phil had done. I’ll get him next time.

Meanwhile, buck up, kids. And, by all means, have fun . . . and practice, practice.

Up before dawn, I heard a spade-foot toad calling from the small swamp just west of my house. Spring mornings can be loud down here alongside Gardiner’s Bay, but on Wednesday, after a thunderstorm that came through during the night, the toad and a few birds whose songs I did not recognize were the only voices I heard.

Standing outside for a minute or two with the dogs, I tried to listen closely. The sound of a slow rush of waves pushed by the northwest wind came over the dune. Something in the brush to my right made a repeated sharp chirp. A gull called. There was the distant rumble of the surf on the ocean. A car drove by, its tires hissing over the wet asphalt. The sky was lighter now; the toad had become quiet.

Birds and other creatures can predict the weather to some degree, my father told me when I was small. You can tell when a hurricane is approaching by their silence, he said. Indeed, I remember that before a hurricane in 1976, as we prepared to evacuate to a friend’s house in the village, the world seemed unnaturally still. My father, never the mystic, attributed this to animals’ ability to sense rapid drops in air pressure, and that explanation has been good enough for me.

But the stillness the morning after thunder puzzles me. Could it be that the birds and spring peepers are left exhausted by the rain, confused by the bright flashes that interrupted their nighttime reveries? Certainly the human realm seems slower on mornings like these. Conversations are shorter. The phone doesn’t ring. Drivers seem to have a little less urgency. We reach for a second cup of coffee before getting on with the day.

Before getting up from the table where I am writing to wake the kids and get them ready for school, I open a kitchen window just a bit so I can hear what the birds are doing. Over the sound of the furnace I listen to just one whose name I do not know.

I know every word to just about every song written in the early 1960s. That's not to say I'm not familiar with what came after, but I have a special place in my heart for bubblegum pop. What that special place is is still unclear, as I find myself hardly able to stand some of the annoying, grating sounds.

The words are mostly nonsensical gibberish phrases that eat up time on songs that rarely make it to the three-minute mark, which is also a plus, compared to those six-minute ballads the '80s made so popular. But when the sounds actually form sentences and complete thoughts, I am enamored.

The countless CDs of the songs I have made over the years have hardened them in my memory, prompting a sing-along whenever I turn on the tinny sounds of WLNG or walk into a grocery store where I fill in the words to their lyricless Muzak.

The lyrics, barely able to hold a candle to the sounds of today, according to some, act more as a historical recount and a social mouthpiece of the times.

Although girl bands were at the height of their popularity, something the genre would not see again until the advent of the Spice Girls in the 1990s, women were still largely objectified by men. Even the girls singing about the boys were saying it.

In a line in the song called "Party Girl," the singer tells a young woman, "I'll make you turn your dancing shoes in for apron strings and things." This is after the singer tells her she will marry him. At that point, her dancing and partying will end. After listening to so much of the music, I find it hard to believe that the party girl would object.

That's not to say that being a wife and mother is a bad thing. It's the absolute authority and unwavering determination with which he says it that is stunning.

Singing about very young girls is also typical in these songs. Some could argue it was because much of the music was being written and sung by boys, some only 16, and coincidentally the age of choice in many songs. But I'm not completely satisfied with that. How then, do you explain songs like "Young Girl," wherein a man complains to the young woman that she has fooled him into thinking she was older, and now she should go back to her mother who "must be wondering where you are." He then instructs her to "get out of here before I have the time to change my mind."

Groups like Tommy James and the Shondells, who sang "I Think We're Alone Now," popularized again in the 1980s when Tiffany brought it to the malls of America and The Turtles' "Happy Together," a song also brought back in the 1980s, but in a breakfast cereal commercial that noted the close bond of honey to graham crackers, may have come the closest to realizing the necessity of a man and a woman's interaction during a relationship. It doesn't seem that hard. General Mills figured it out.

But women were as much to blame, singing about how much they love a man who does not love them back. In The Supremes' song "Band of Gold," Diana Ross sings about her wedding night, where "we stayed in separate rooms." She waits at night for him to come home and "love me, like you did before." Sounds like a typical song of lament for lost love, but I suspect it was doomed from the start.

Although that is a particularly painful song, there are others much more upbeat, but with themes that I imagine set those other women up for the same defeat. Girls who wear bikinis and get suntans so the boys on the beach notice them, women who wait for a man to be through with another woman before offering themselves up as the next and women who are on the receiving end of a letter from their husband's secretary.

"Take a letter Maria, a message to my wife, tell her I won't be coming back, gonna start a new life." All the while, a selection of brass instruments are laughing in the background.

Somehow, I don't think things have changed much. Women still sing about the same things, they just appear to be self-riotous.

Somewhere in me, I long for the days in music when Sippie Wallace, the singer of songs such as "Murder Will Be My Crime," "Lazy Man Blues," and "Dead Drunk Blues," would make her husband kidney stew and give him a good whack in the head. Now that's good music.

Leigh Goodstein is a reporter at The Star.

A few weeks back, I stopped at the Village Cheese Shop after a doctor’s appointment in Southampton. As I walked in, I noticed an older woman with silver hair and a flattering red suit sitting at a table with a group of other women her age, maybe a little younger. She was the kind of woman you knew instantly had style and great taste. She must have been quite stunning in her youth. I decided she was in her 80s now. She was still quite beautiful. 

It was busy for a Thursday. I waited in a long line for a sandwich, impatiently looking at my iPhone and thinking about all the work piling up in my inbox, how I needed more pills for our dog’s stiff joints, and about how my doctor’s visit did not go so well. Another long line at the cashier, and then I bounded out the door for my car, parked in front of the shop. 

That lovely older woman, a walker steadying her, was making her way toward a car waiting for her out on Main Street. As I got behind her as she slowly made her way near my driver’s-side door, I realized her driver, a middle-aged woman, took notice of the situation, as did the lady with the walker, and both began to apologize. 

Their concern for me made me disappointed in myself that even for a sliver of a second I had been frustrated by such an inconsequential delay. I placed my food in the car and walked over to the pair and offered a hand. The driver took the walker and I took the lady by the arm. 

As I went to open the passenger door, I noticed a little dog, and I asked her if he would like to jump out — so many can be escape artists. She assured me her dog would never do that. She had rescued it, and they developed such a strong attachment that the pup would not dare leave her side. 

The dog, named Peanut, or something similar, I can’t recall, sat down on the center console, wagging its little tail and ready to jump onto a lap. I told the woman I, too, had a rescue dog and how wonderful they are. She agreed.

As she settled into her seat and I helped swing her legs into position, she looked up at me, very matter-of-factly, and said, “What beautiful hair you have.” This surprised me because I had worn my hair in its untamed, natural state — a combination of curls and waves. I had not had time to carefully blow-dry and straighten it. She must have sensed my confusion, and told me again. 

I wondered if with age you really do tend to appreciate everything just a little bit more. Perhaps I should not worry about such things as straightening my hair, covering the strands of gray, the inbox getting full, and waiting. Perhaps I should enjoy the process. 

I remember my mother saying that her father used to caution, “Where I am now, you too shall be.” I would add — if we are lucky. I hope to grow to that lovely lady’s age, and be as graceful and kind as she seemed, all while rocking a head of beautiful gray hair and a stylin’ outfit, and that there’s a cuddly dog happy to see me. 

I pray, too, some young woman in a rush doesn’t sigh when I get in front of her with my walker. 

By the way, I’ve been wearing my hair curly a lot more lately.

Our Medicare broker suggested that I might try a supplemental plan that would cost me nothing.

Nothing? Yes, nothing, for the federal government in cases such as mine subsidized the insurer $14,000 annually, he said. All I had to do, it seemed, to avoid the dreck of in-network, out-of-network, inexplanatory explanations of benefits, co-pays, referrals, deductibles, and such was to stay healthy, as, for the moment, I am, I think.

I admit I was beguiled. After paying $220 a week for I don’t know how long so that Mary could be protected to some extent from the slings and arrows of misfortune, paying zero for a supplemental plan (in addition, of course, to the $134-per-month Medicare excisions from our Social Security checks) was tempting. 

I could do what I wanted to do, Mary said (an invitation to act that carried with it, I thought, a vague hint of impending catastrophe were I actually to do what I wanted to do). 

I could do what I wanted to do, she continued, but only if I were unambiguously, incontrovertibly aware that she would no longer, no longer, act as my administrative assistant, personal secretary, drudge, slave, or whatever. Unless, of course, I were certifiably up against it and not merely feigning utter incompetence.  

And then — because she’d actually read the brochure, something I rarely stoop to do — she recited a long list of pointed questions that I should ask before plunging in.

As for her, she was opting for peace of mind. In other words, she was willing to ante up more for an AARP supplemental plan that did not include bills, co-payments, lists of in-network hospitals, doctors, and pharmacies, et cetera — one that would obviate all the annoying phone calls, all the reviews of itemized charges (“Five dollars for an aspirin?!”) . . . all the dreck, in short.

“What if you’re on the operating table and the anesthesiologist is out-of-network,” she posited — an example that struck a chord with me, for that sort of news has been imparted a couple of times in my explanations of benefits. “I’d ask him for a few slugs of Jameson’s then.”

Seriously, it didn’t take me long to decide to side with her. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

There was a visible and audible sigh. 

I had done the right thing.

New hearing aids are coming soon! And now when the I.R.S. calls I won’t have to hand the phone to her.

In the weeks since a dead tree outside my office window was taken down I have become aware of how many near-misses there are on Main Street on any given day. 

Until Kevin Savastano came with his saws and bucket truck one cold Friday, the beech, with its silvery bark like an old elephant’s hide, had blocked nearly completely the sight line to where Buell and Dunemere Lanes come face to face. Now, if I glance away from my computer, within moments, it seems, some driver has dashed across another’s path. 

Staring out the window from my second-floor perch late last week, I watched a truck hauling a double-deck trailer that had just delivered golf carts to the Maidstone Club nearly collide with a big diesel from Mickey’s Carting hauling a roll-off container filled with what looked like half a torn-down house. Somehow, they managed to miss each other, the Mickey’s driver braking hard, the golf cart guy sailing through at full speed.

On Tuesday evening as I wrote this, an older man in a Prius avoided an oncoming sedan only by inches as he made a hasty left from Buell Lane.

During the summer, the village cops block off the approach to Main Street from Dunemere with a row of orange cones. For some time, there has been talk that the state (Main Street is a state road) might put in a roundabout there or stop left turns from Buell Lane altogether. If drivers continue to take chances, that may soon come to pass.

In truth, my perspective had been limited to the sounds of actual contact, so I had no idea how bad it was out there. The tree had given me one sense of things; its absence gave me another. 

Kevin Savastano said it was a good thing that we had taken it down, as it was in bad shape and going to fall one way or the other.

Woodchips alone mark the spot in the Star driveway where the beech stood. I miss it and am, if anything, more aware of it now that it is gone. I thought it was just a tree, not a shade pulled over what turned out to be a whole other view.

Can it be true that this column has appeared in The Star more than 2,000 times?

Apparently, that is the case, at least approximately. And if the number is really thereabouts, how have I come up with something different to say every week? 

Well, to be frank, I haven’t. 

I would be the first to admit that I have touched on my favorite subjects more than once over the decades — from inherited antique kitchen implements (a prehistoric popcorn-maker has made more than one cameo appearance here in print) to family pets (my various searches for succeeding generations of canine companions) to gardening glories and mishaps (the deer, oh dear, have become a near-obsession).

This morning, as the deadline looms, the best subject I can come up with is to boast retroactively about how I took to computerized word-processing way back when my colleagues were still using the proverbial blue pencils. I probably have bragged about this in print before, and I offer my apologies to any oldtime readers who might remember that. . . . But what interests me about it now is that I have come to realize that my own private limit for new-technology adaptation has been met. 

Once I was at the forefront of it all, getting the staff at the Star office onboard with an early program called XyWrite, but these days I have taken an aversion to new electronic devices and the fuss and bother of learning to use them.

I realize this kind of talk makes me sound ike a curmudgeon, but take my cellphone, for example. It is definitely antiquated. It’s not exactly a flip-phone — it doesn’t have a cover that flips, 2001-style — but I don’t know what to call it other than an un-smart wireless device. I bought it in 2011 (!)  but have never bothered to explore all the apps on it; I didn’t recognize the term “apps” in 2011. Nor did I pay attention to the fact that you could use it to browse the web. Although I did take a few photos with it, at first, I quickly decided they weren’t good enough to bother about. Give me my old point-and-shoot any day.

Having an old phone is a lifestyle choice for me. I’m something of a Luddite, I suppose.

From time to time, I have considered buying an iPhone and asking one of the grandchildren to tutor me in its mysteries, but I haven’t succumbed. I even rejected my husband’s offer to give me his old iPhone when he upgraded to the latest (gigantic) version a short while ago. (He’s not a Luddite.) Instead, I continue to look around more with dismay than amazement when I encounter hordes of people with their heads down and their fingers at work on those little rectangles. Am I just an old fogey, unwilling to try anything new — or am I taking a stand for life in the real world?

Passover, the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, has just passed. The story told at traditional seders ends with the song “Dayenu.” The Hebrew word means “it would have been sufficient.” God is said to have bestowed many things upon the people. The most telling perhaps is if He had led the people out of Egypt but not given them the Ten Commandments, it would have been sufficient. 

The food, family, and fun of Passover seders were highlights of my childhood, and I seem to have embedded what was a religious concept into my everyday secular life. If I have a wireless phone that connects me to whomever or whatever I need to reach, it is sufficient.

And if I have said this same thing here before, I hope you have forgotten it — as I obviously have.