East Hampton has 1,000 tons of compost it can’t get rid of.   A couple of weeks back, officials sent out a notice announcing the town had a large amount unscreened compost to unload. The stuff had accumulated at the recycling center, the end product of all the lawn clippings, leaves, and brush that flow into the place, which are run through a giant grinder and left to mulch. Visitors to the so-called dump can see it for themselves — a long, tall mound of steaming dark-brown, almost black soil. 

Homeowners and landscapers know all about the town’s compost. Though it is thought not to be all that good for growing edible crops, it is terrific for sweetening up portions of a tired lawn or ornamental plantings. For a modest fee, workers at the recycling center will put a load in the back of a pickup truck for commercial landscapers or gardeners; permit-holders with a few bins to fill can do so at no charge, as I understand it.

However, when the supply reaches the hundreds or thousands of tons, the town has a problem. No one responded to its request for bids to buy the stuff, and earlier this month the Purchasing Department had the matter tabled during a town board meeting.

Compost is not the town’s only recycling headache. Because market prices for the products it collects have gone up and down over the years, it sometimes costs more for the town to deal with the material than it can receive from buyers.

That said, it is better in dollar terms for the town to hold down the volume of solid waste of any sort that it collects and has to haul away. Yard waste and tree trimmings ground into compost represent that much less that has to be sent to a distant landfill or incinerator.

Even if difficult to get rid of when the supply piles up, the composting program is a net benefit for taxpayers. And while we might not be able to take care of that 1,000 tons all on our own, a bucket-load here and there that any of us can take and use at home helps out.

Amid the serious implications of this week’s terror attacks in Brussels, the pronounced lack of seriousness that the Republican presidential front-runner has brought to the race became all the more glaring.

Donald Trump is not normally a name that would turn up in The Star, though he has been on my mind a lot lately. What has been puzzling me is how a number of people around the South Fork whom I know and respect, and think of as reasonable, can like him.

From all appearances there is little to merit his wide support other than that the other candidates in the Republican nomination hunt have been uninspiring. Mr. Trump’s negatives are many, and in a foreign policy context made urgent after the Brussels horror, his ignorance is clear. And yet his poll numbers continue to be solid.

Among all the analyses of this phenomenon — that a hate-filled, misogynistic, and woefully underprepared narcissist could be the Grand Old Party’s nominee — something I read on Vox.com about political authoritarianism has rung true. Citing the work of several academics, Amanda Taub reported that a tendency to favor authoritarian leaders among Republicans polled was the best single predictor of Mr. Trump’s support.

The voters cited by the researchers in Ms. Taub’s article were individuals who express dislike of minorities coupled with a desire for a strongman leader. This is perhaps why those voters who have not lost their jobs, or otherwise do not fit into the dubious narrative about so-called dispossessed voters, might find Mr. Trump appealing.

Forceful action against perceived threats is attractive to those with hard-edged leanings. As Ms. Taub put it, “If you were to read every word these theorists ever wrote on authoritarians, and then try to design a hypothetical candidate to match their predictions of what would appeal to authoritarian voters, the result would look a lot like Donald Trump.”

Maybe that explains it.

Despite the howler monkeys in the trees and 84-degree ocean, Playa Guiones, Costa Rica, seems a whole lot like a tropical version of Montauk. This thought struck Lisa and me early during our vacation at this up-and-coming Pacific Coast resort town.

The similarities are both superficial and serious. There are surfers and a yoga crowd in Playa Guiones who have made a commitment to spending months upon months chasing their dreams. There are short-term visitors like us, grabbing hotel rooms for a week or two. And, to longer-lasting effect, the area has resident expats and an active investor and developer scene. Indeed, it seems that every other conversation I have heard in our week here has been about real estate or the opening of some new business.

The only locals a visitor generally encounters work in the visitor trade, the beach town itself appearing to be almost entirely a gringo creation. Which is not to say that Playa Guiones is bad — nor Montauk — but that the idealized version of the place presented through its creature comfort-centric commerce can be misleading.

There is an English-language newspaper here and its recent coverage has included stories about the region’s water supplies. As new businesses open and vacation houses, most with swimming pools, are built, demand has increased rapidly. Between an extra-dry dry season and extra consumption, Playa Guiones and the neighboring villages have had to endure nightly water interruptions to allow the system to refill. At a recent community meeting a mostly expat audience debated whether and how to add a new public well to improve the supply.

Bolinas, a Northern California surf town I visited not long ago, responded to a similar challenge decades ago by permanently capping the number of water meters. Long Island, where all the drinking water comes out of the ground, probably should have done something similar, but policymakers have tended to act as if the supply were infinite. A new state study, announced by the governor last month, might clarify the situation — if we’re lucky.

It’s hard to say whether Playa Guiones is overrun with visitors the way Montauk can be on certain summer weekends. Yet all the real estate signs, Airbnb rentals, surfing lessons, overpriced food, and various other for-profit schemes seem the same, and they are on a worrisome trajectory. Too much really can be too much, and I hope that whatever passes for a power structure here at least takes it slow.

I have my doubts, though. The Times Travel section did one of its breathless takes on Playa Guiones on Sunday, which can only mean one thing: More is ahead, and it’s not necessarily going to be good.

When I read this winter that a town UpIsland had voted to prohibit solicitors from going door to door, I thought, send them out here. I’d have invited them in, served them coffee, asked about the family, and sent them home with a bundt cake. Of course, I would later cancel the very big order I placed, because, really, how many vacuums or cleaning fluids does a woman need? 

Yes, it was that dull out here this winter. More businesses were closed, and it seemed that fewer people were out and about over all. But this weekend brings out the green in all of us, and I’ll soon be eating my words.

I’m always a bit baffled when locals tell me they stay home instead of going to the Montauk Friends of Erin parade. When I spoke last week to Capt. Paul Forsberg, who is this year’s grand marshal, he told me he thought it was amazing that this little hamlet without one traffic light could hold such an elaborate parade, and I agreed with him. The parade attracts thousands of people, most of whom wear silly hats, makeup, or other green bits of clothing, all great for people-watching.

And, of course, there are always salespeople out and about, whether they be Girl Scouts selling cookies or others promoting store sales. I think I empathize with salespeople because my father was one. I’m sure it wasn’t his life plan to be a salesperson, but he didn’t have much choice after the incident with the police department.

After he left the Army, he became a mounted police officer in New York City, meaning he rode a horse rather than sit in a squad car. One night while on duty he tied his horse to a post and went into a shop for a doughnut and coffee. The horse got loose and somehow managed to get into a movie theater, where he scared the poor moviegoers to death. My father was fired and became a salesperson.

He sold Wyler drink products, which were similar to Kool-Aid, to supermarkets and smaller grocery stores. But Kool-Aid had already drenched the markets and had the bigger name, so when my father came home with his drunk face on, we knew sales weren’t too good. There was never a shortage of lemonade or cherry juice in our house.

There were times when I was a little girl when he took me to work with him, probably when I was faking illness to stay home from school. My mother always worked and someone had to watch me, so they piled blankets, pillows, and coloring books in the car for our ride up to Westchester County, which was his territory. 

I used to feel so sorry for him when I saw the managers shake their heads, no, no Wyler here. But then my father got smart and realized when I was with him the store managers were much friendlier and even placed bigger orders than usual. I must have had bedhead and been dressed in rags for them to have that type of reaction. My bedhead is pretty scary, so maybe they just wanted to get rid of us.

Anyway, we’ll all be drinking the Kool-Aid this weekend, no matter what shape or color it comes in. Green beer will be flowing, the bands will be drumming, silly floats will draw a laugh, and Montauk will wake up for the season. I, for one, can’t wait!

Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The East Hampton Star.

One of the myths I’ve entertained over the years is that athletes are somehow immune when it comes to what can drag you down. 

Wasn’t it I who once said, “While my athletic days are pretty much over, I take comfort in the company of athletes, men and women, boys and girls, and like taking photos of them, deriving joy from the at times sublime headiness of sport, a headiness I’ve known running and playing, of being in the moment, when all within the realm of consciousness seemed, however briefly, perfect.”

And yet . . . and yet the list of athletes I’ve known or have known of, who’ve died before their time — by no means all because of depression, but a few of them — is steadily lengthening. John Villaplana, Brandon Hayes, Kendall Madison, Chris Schiaffino, Chris Cosich, Annette MacNiven, Andrew MacNiven, Steve Tarpinian, and now Mike Semkus come immediately to mind. So I am finally disabused of thinking that all athletes are forever blessed.

Jean Mellano, who lived more than 30 years with one of these outwardly buoyant souls assailed within by demons, has in a memoir of Steve Tarpinian called “Slipped Away” celebrated his successes (he was among triathlon’s founders on Long Island, in the early 1980s) and his kind spirit, while at the same time drawing attention to a painful disease, clinical depression, that if it is ever discussed is done so in lowered tones.

Knowing someone who is clinically depressed myself, I told her it was extraordinary, and a great testimony to his strength, that Steve, who took his life a year ago, at the age of 54, had in spite of his suffering accomplished so much. 

Having made a vocation of his avocation — something his friend Chuck Sperazza, a top amateur triathlete who’s won many times out here, said he envied — Steve Tarpinian joyously competed, in Hawaii, Lake Placid, and on Long Island, with his peers (just about always, as I recall, coming out of the water first, or very close to it), and vigorously promoted the multidisciplinary sport under the Event Power and Team Total Training banners, setting numerous students, many of whom at first didn’t think they had it in them, on their way to triathletic careers. He himself had 18 Ironmans (in Hawaii and Lake Placid) and 17 Xterra championships to his credit. 

“Slipped Away” abounds in testimonials from peers, Dave Scott, John Howard, and Scott Tinley among them, and from students.

“Steve encouraged, motivated, and helped people to realize their own dreams,” Jen Gatz said in thanking him “for passing on your enthusiasm and positivity. I can’t help but notice that those touched by you continue to spread that message.”

“He left a legacy and set a standard for us all to live up to, of giving, sharing, smiling, hoping, believing, and then giving again,” said Al Lyman.

“I always wanted to do my best for him,” said Nancy Burpee, a U.S. Paralympics pool racer. “Everyone did. He brought that out of you.”

“You’ve inspired me, intimidated me, encouraged me, drafted me, beaten me, congratulated me, and handed me trophies — all the time making me feel better about me,” said Ric Stott on learning of Steve Tarpinian’s death. “After lifting so many spirits, it’s so confusing to hear that you struggled with yours.”

The memoir is available through SlippedAway.org. Most of the profits, Ms. Mellano has said, are to go to a Long Island veterans organization, Project Nine Line, perhaps toward the development of a program that helps returning veterans overcome post-traumatic stress disorder, or to help an individual know that he or she is not alone in confronting depression and suicidal thoughts.

It is time — long past time — that the subject come out of hiding and into the open.

Oh man, that was fun. Though it went by in a flash, as I’ve been telling people since Sunday, it was well worth it. Well worth the 57-mile after-work drive to and from the rehearsal studio in Bohemia. Well worth the hours holed up in the tiny and cluttered studio/writing room at home, learning new songs. And well worth all of Saturday’s downtime as the hours ticked away and the butterflies took flight. 

It had been exactly one year since anything resembling a formal performance — a short-lived band that gave exactly one performance before falling apart, as these ventures usually do — and in the ensuing months I’d wavered between a mild enthusiasm to soldier on and, more often, fervent cynicism and negativity. When time allowed, I’d hole up in that tiny room in what seems a futile effort to attain even passable dexterity on the piano. The guitars weren’t played at all, silently gathering dust as they hung from the walls. 

Is anyone even listening? Does anyone care? In my observation, live music is received as background noise. Don’t the kids prefer a D.J. these days?

Maybe, but the audience that packed Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday, at least, showed a pronounced preference for the real thing. The crowd definitely skewed older, shall we say, and when queried at the top of the show, many testified to personal experience with the Fillmore East, a downtown Manhattan rock ’n’ roll venue that closed when I was 4 and to which this event paid tribute. 

A few months ago, Randolph Hudson III, a guitarist and wonderful guy, asked if I owned a 12-string guitar. As it happened, I had bought one, on a whim, just a few months earlier when an offer I thought insultingly low was unexpectedly accepted. Randy kindly referred me to Joe Lauro, of the HooDoo Loungers and the Historic Films archive, who has helped to conceive and organize many similar musical events at Bay Street in the last few years. 

Joe and I had a short conversation, and I was invited to play with a group that would perform music of Jefferson Airplane, a group I’d always liked yet wasn’t especially familiar with beyond a spellbinding scene in “Gimme Shelter,” the Maysles brothers’ document of a 1969 festival at which a young man was stabbed and kicked to death by members of the Hells Angels as the Rolling Stones played on. 

Paul Kantner, who died in January, played the 12-string, an integral component of the psychedelic band’s sound. The “Airplane” would play between groups performing music of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two other icons of rock ’n’ roll’s long-ago golden age. 

In Bohemia — what a suitable name for these hippie revivalists’ rehearsal site — it was immediately apparent that Joe had assembled a fantastic crew, perhaps none more than the vocalists, George Feaster and Carolyn Droscoski, who would be our Marty Balin and Grace Slick. George, I later learned, is also an accomplished actor; as a frontman he is one of the best I’ve ever seen. When Carolyn belts out “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” it is, as Joe said, as though Ms. Slick is standing before you. 

Time and logistics allowed for just two group rehearsals before the big day, and by Saturday we just about knew what we were doing. When it was time, we proceeded to the stage in darkness, the last minutes of the original “King Kong” playing on the screen overhead, as Jefferson Airplane had done at a Fillmore East concert. 

“Well, Denham,” the police lieutenant said, “the airplanes got him.”

“Oh no,” Denham replied, the orchestral score swelling to its climax. “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” 

And then we were off, “3/5 Mile in 10 Seconds” and “The Other Side of This Life” and “White Rabbit” and more, ending with our own climactic “Volunteers” (“Got a revolution, got to revolution!”). It went by in a flash. 

I hope those veterans of the Fillmore East were able to relive a moment in their lives, and I wish I could relive the moment I hope they relived, if that makes any sense. Can we all do that again? 

Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.

Maybe it’s a good thing that interest in the presidential election has been revved up by one candidate who denigrates so many people — targeting them by place of origin, religion, and sex — while another foments revolution (albeit a peaceful one). Everyone I know keeps talking about the primaries.

I cannot believe disrespect and name-calling are good for democracy, but if more of the electorate turns out in November as a result, we might be able to say that this cloud of national humiliation has had a silver lining.

A report on voter turnout in national elections between 2000 and 2012, from an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center, showed it “dipped from 62.3 percent of eligible citizens voting in 2008 to an estimated 57.5 in 2012. That figure was also below the 60.4 level of the 2004 election but higher than the 54.2 percent turnout in the 2000 election.” So it seems that somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of voters were the decision-makers in those years. 

Of course, a simple majority hasn’t always assured national election. In 2000, Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, lost in the Electoral College after Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush in a 5-to-4 Su­preme Court decision. That then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted with the majority was considered the deciding factor. Mr. Gore had won the popular vote, although by only a very small percentage; Ralph Nader had won almost 3 percent of the vote and was probably the spoiler rather than Justice O’Connor. In addition to talking about the primaries, friends and relatives who admit to being surprised by the size of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s support have found it amusing to take something called the Bubble Quiz. According to their score on 25 questions, they were able to find out if they lived “cloistered together . . . with little to no exposure to American culture at large.” 

The quiz was devised by Charles Murray, a well-known political scientist and author who describes himself as a libertarian. He was recently interviewed about it by Paul Solman on the PBS NewsHour.

The Bubble Quiz questions range from “Have you ever walked on a factory floor?” and “Have you ever had a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?” to whether you have seen certain popular movies or eaten in certain chain restaurants. If you are interested in finding out where you score, it’s easy to find on the NewsHour website.

I myself took the quiz earlier today, but didn’t find it particularly enlightening. I guess I’m already aware that I live in a bubble of privilege. Also, I am not entirely sure that Mr. Murray is an oracle on what constitutes “American culture at large.” Still, if those who took the quiz were a fair sample of the voting public, and if their answers were carefully analyzed, perhaps it might serve as a barometer of the next election.

What we all know for sure is that the electorate is deeply divided, and that the societal culture gap is real. Trump and Sanders are only making that division so obvious we cannot ignore it any longer.

It would be going too far to say that my husband and I are cutthroat when it comes to the online challenge called Trivia Today. Intense would be more like it. 

Okay, maybe just a little . . . bloodthirsty.

Every morning and afternoon we check our computers for the day’s two questions. Before the sun goes down, one of us is sure to ask the other — always off-handedly, though a smirk or a scowl is riding on the answer — “So, how’d you do on Trivia Today?”

We’ve been competing in this maddening game — which is sort of like “Jeopardy,” only you get four possible answers to choose from — for about two years now. The enigmatic scoring chart, with 100 tops, has had us since January at 62 and 65, which is better than it sounds; the average score out there in virtual gameland is 49. Sidney had a long string of right answers recently, but it takes forever to gain a point and his number never budged, which has not improved dinnertime. “I don’t understand it,” he grouses. “Why aren’t I moving up?”

Most of the relationships of the long-married couples I know, and we are talking golden anniversary-plus here, seem to me to tilt almost soppily solicitous or — not so much. I met one woman in Florida this winter who was playing this same trivia game with her husband and confided that she was deliberately giving the wrong dumb answers to make him happy, and another who cuts the Times crossword puzzle out of the paper every morning and makes a copy of it for her husband before he wakes up. Then they have a battle over coffee to see who finishes first. They’ve been keeping score forever.

“Who’s ahead?” I asked her.

“Oh, I am. And you can tell him I told you.”

The best thing about Trivia Today is that you learn a lot of stuff that seems useless at the moment but that might come in handy sometime. The first job I ever had, as assistant humor editor of a long-defunct magazine called Coronet, was like that. Coronet was the Avis of the day to the Reader’s Digest’s Hertz. We ran a column like the Digest’s “Life in These United States” where people would write in with funny things that had really happened, only we paid $25 and they paid $100.

Nine out of 10 submissions were handwritten, often in pencil. My job was mainly to decipher the chicken scratches, but also to pick out candidates for publication, and then the humor editor (a beyond-crabby woman who never cracked a smile) would decide who’d win.

Within a few months of starting work, it occurred to me that I didn’t need to plow through the whole letter, just skip to the punchline at the end. “No, 40 children are enough.” Yup, we’ve run that one already. It was as if there were only a finite number of comical things happening in America. By 11 a.m. the day’s work was done. 

Pretty soon I had hundreds of funny stories by heart, and oh boy, what that job did for me. “That reminds me of a joke,” I’d say. All of a sudden I was the life of the party.

But I digress. You know what I’ve really learned from playing Trivia Today? That a lot of us never listened to anything we were told in school. 

How else could you miss a question like the one we had on March 15: “Who was famously killed on the Ides of March?” 

Remember, you get four choices. Seventy percent of respondents got Julius Caesar. Four percent guessed John F. Kennedy. Thirteen percent picked Joan of Arc. 

Trumpists.

Irene Silverman is The Star’s editor at large.

From where I sit, the world is getting narrower. It’s a given that the longer you live the longer your list becomes of colleagues, friends, and relatives who are gone. My sister-in-law is at the top of that list this week, having died on Monday.

Memorials and mementos are not salves, but they are nice and often meaningful. I want to remember what was said and written by or about someone who has died and to be able to look at their photographs. I’m proud of the way The Star has handled and written obituaries over the years, have edited hundreds, and written many. I’ve learned that the closer you were the harder the task.

Will the words and pictures we’ve always saved be lost to the digital revolution? Or will they remain somewhere in the ether forever? Will the next generation reject what we still hold onto physically as they wander in cyberspace?

My brother died more than five years ago, and his children — my niece and nephew — have posted many pictures of him and members of their extended family (including a young me) on Facebook; they have also unearthed what my nephew described as reel-to-reel audiotapes, which in the ’60s and ’70s the family used to mail back and forth between the East and West Coasts. My tech-savvy nephew must have had them digitized, because last week he sent a number of us a batch of these exchanges: conversations, poems, songs, stories. 

They arrived through Dropbox, an Internet file-sharing service, and even a somewhat computer-phobic person like me was able to figure out how to access one of the files. Imagine what a surprise it was to hear my niece, as a child in the early 1960s, saying she had just lost a tooth! She’s a grown woman now — and a grandmother. 

My brother and his wife were in the habit of storing lots of things, so it wasn’t surprising that the tapes were there to be found when their house was emptied after its sale. We are lucky to have them.

Which brings me back home to the myriad cartons and cabinets my husband and I have stowed away in the Rattray family house, but, thank goodness, not in the oldest part of the barn, which the East Hampton Historical Society is going to move to the Mulford Farm and restore. The historians call it the Hedges barn because a Hedges had it built in the mid-18th century, and it was later moved by my late mother-in-law’s father to its present site.

I’ve watched as friends have aged and begun to divest themselves of possessions (from souvenirs gathered on travels to furnishings and treasured mementos, not to mention real estate). Listening to my niece on that audiotape this week makes me realize that maybe, just maybe, the technology of the 21st century is making it possible to retain those words and mementos in a way that better values the past than putting them away in a box in some dark corner.

Almost every time I go out these days, someone I run into wants to talk about our pet pig, Leo, who has been the subject of a disturbing number of columns in these pages. Leo, the height of indifference except at mealtime, could care less, but he has become a bit of a subject of interest, from appearances.

To refresh: The pig came to us, as most bad things do these days, via the Internet. My wife, Lisa, and eldest child had (quote-unquote) researched the subject for months, settling on a breeder in Texas who specialized in (again, quote-unquote) tea-cup pigs that would not grow tusks or exceed 10 pounds. I said it was bunk.

Four years later and hitting the 100-pound mark on the bathroom scale easily, and with sharp curving tusks poking from his mouth, Leo is a living, grunting reminder that Daddy is always right. Or at least that’s what I wish the takeaway was.

Leo doesn’t do much. This is one reason why I think it is amusing that my columns about him get the most attention. His days begin at 5 a.m., with shuffling around the kitchen, hoping to be fed. This wakes the dogs, the largest of which comes down from his bed on the second-floor landing, which in turn vexes the pig, who whines and wails to great effect. By effect I mean that I get up, and before doing anything else give him a bowl of feed on the porch.

Lisa says I baby him and that when I am out of town Leo sleeps in. Truth is, I think, she throws a sneaker at him when he tries to rally her at 5 and tells him to get back to bed. Yeah, I don’t mess with Lisa at that hour either.

After that, Leo might go outside for his morning constitutional or, if he is feeling lazy, go back to his bed and sleep till noon. For the amount of water he drinks, I think he must be part camel. 

Then, around 5 p.m., it’s feeding time again. Then bed. When the weather’s warm, Leo varies the plan by doing his daytime sleeping in a sunny spot in the yard. Other than that, his is the model of contented life, all but oblivious to the varied dramas that surround him. 

It is perhaps this lack of activity that makes him fascinating. Maybe readers — and I — are just a little bit jealous.