Since the crash that killed two Sag Harbor men on April 9, I have driven past the accident site on Brick Kiln Road several times. It has had relevance for me, if at a remove, because my older daughter was in another vehicle that happened to come on the scene just seconds after the apparently speeding Mustang struck a tree.

    Adelia had been riding with a friend and the friend’s aunt, westbound on Brick Kiln, the same direction that Thomas Wheeler and Manuel Cunha had been traveling. She said that a tire from the wreck was still rolling as they passed, then it came to a stop and flopped over. Smoke, she said, was rising from the twisted metal; the flames that quickly engulfed the car had not yet erupted.

    She saw the driver’s head slumped to the side. She saw the passenger’s air bag suddenly and belatedly inflate. It was a lot for a 9-year-old to have to see.

    Unofficially, police sources have said that the Mustang must have been going close to 100 miles an hour when Mr. Cunha, who was at its wheel, lost control. The car went into the oncoming traffic lane, then shot back, striking the tree. As a father, my mind plays the what-if scenarios: What if the car my daughter was in had been going the other way? What if the Mustang had come up behind them on the twisting, up-and-down road?

    In my work for the paper, I have been to plenty of accident scenes. Many of the worst have been, as this one was, on sunny weekend afternoons — often in the “shoulder season,” before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. In most, it is very difficult to know what really happened. Had the drivers been drinking? Were they just caught up in the exuberance of a day off? Is it all random — just chance?

    So, finally, I went to the Brick Kiln site for a closer look. Fresh flowers, a heart-shape wreath, had been left for the victims. Aside from a gentle curve a hundred yards or so up the way and a dip in the pavement, the road was straight.

    A man was sitting in a small car parked opposite the memorial smoking a cigarette, the window down. I thought about Mr. Cunha’s and Mr. Wheeler’s families, and wondered what had happened. There were not, and there never will be, real answers.

    Life peaked for me at the age of 9. It didn’t go downhill too much after that, but stayed at a plateau for quite some time. Class president and author of a handful of books, I was at the top of my game.

    Most of the credit has to go to my third-grade teacher, Queen Davis-Parks, who I learned passed away this month.

    Before I opened the envelope with the school’s insignia emblazoned on it the summer before I was to enter third grade, I knew that she was the teacher I wanted. I had no good reason for wanting Mrs. Davis-Parks except that my sister had had her two years earlier.

    When I saw her name on the paper before me, something that I would not identify as anxiety until many years later rushed over me. While I knew she was the teacher for me, I also knew that Mrs. Davis-Parks had a reputation for being tough. I was not so sure that I was up for the challenge.

    She stumped me right off the bat when she assigned an acrostic poem based on my first name, then a story using that

poem as the title. Too bad for me, I didn’t have an easy name to work with, but Mrs. Davis-Parks took the reins and even illustrated my book, “Lonnie Eats Incredible Green Houses,” about a monster with periodontal disease.

    She gave the book to my father that year, and it sat in his dental office until he retired several years ago.

    I learned what collard greens were when Mrs. Davis-Parks hosted a soul food lunch for our class that February. Not only was the history of each of the mountains of trays of food explained carefully to the class, but Mrs. Davis-Parks also had cooked every one of the dishes.

    For a woman with a stern reputation, her class had more parties than any other. Every holiday a celebration, every day an adventure.

    Mrs. Davis-Parks would tote a clunky record player into the classroom and play Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For.” She knew all the words and wrote them down, copying them for each of us. We were to learn the words and then sing the song in the school’s playground after our class election that year. All of us did, and we were surprised to hear the tune again during our eighth-grade graduation, when Mrs. Davis-Parks’s husband, Leon Parks, our social studies teacher, produced a video montage of all of us growing up. He played the song in the background.

    Even the students — by then newly minted but nonetheless jaded teenagers — cried openly.

    Mrs. Davis-Parks perfected my penmanship, as I was able to copy her flawless handwriting from the blackboard, and taught me how to write in cursive.

    The most priceless gift of all from the teacher I loved so much was the gift of understanding what was important. In fact, Mrs. Davis-Parks was my first editor — striking more than a handful of pages from a 20-page run-on sentence I had written about a horse.

    There were few waves in my third-grade career. But I have a keen memory of a day I forgot to complete a homework assignment. This was unusual for me, and as I stood in a line leading to Mrs. Davis-Parks’s desk to have her review my work, I panicked. Sweating, near tears, and thinking of how I would survive her wrath, she gave me a warm smile, put her hand over mine, and said it was okay.

    Turns out being a student of Mrs. Davis-Parks’s was not as much of a challenge as I expected. Even though she was every bit as tough as she was known to be, she was also one of the most inspirational and special teachers that I ever had the luck to spend a year with.

    After my big elementary school graduation, I received my first report card from my fourth-grade teacher. I can honestly say that Mrs. Davis-Parks had everything to do with my new teacher’s assessment of me when she wrote, “Wow. Leigh is ready for NASA.”

—

    Leigh Goodstein is a reporter at The Star.

Many of today’s leaders, ranging from Donald Trump of the United States to Theresa May of Britain, Viktor Orban of Hungary, and Vladimir Putin of Russia, liken those who oppose their nation-centric views to “losers” and those who support them to patriotic “winners.” This harks back to the comforts of the zero-sum game, where for every winner, there is a commensurate loser, or in mathematical terms, 1-1=0. Put more succinctly, “to the extent I win, you lose.”

This comforting dichotomy describes a finite two-player game/conflict in which a victor, clutching a trophy, places an unwelcome boot on the neck of his opponent.

If only disputes were this simple. In the world we live in, aptly described by complexity theory, political movements and institutions emerge in interdependent networked forms that cannot be disentangled. Much as Donald Trump would like to reimagine the United States of the 1940s and 1950s as an entity that can be duplicated today and erect a moat around American commerce, and, in similar fashion, Theresa May would like to excise Britain from the European Union while enjoying all the benefits of Continental trade, these feats cannot be accomplished.

Just as you can’t disassemble a brain into its component neurons and then reconstruct it, you can’t substitute 19th-century nationalism for 21st-century globalization. Once networked forms emerge, they can’t be deconstructed, no matter how powerful the instrument used to destroy them. The sum is already greater than the parts. In mathematical terms, 1+1=3.

What is complexity theory and why does it matter? Drawing from many disciplines ranging from computer science to sociology, from engineering to earth science, complexity theory seeks to describe nonlinear (noncausal) relationships between parts of a system that perform a collective function. The interaction of the interconnected, yet independent, elements of the system produce “emergent properties.” An example of an emergent property includes human consciousness, which emerged through the evolutionary process that led to Homo sapiens.

Complex systems, because they are so heterogeneous, are extremely delicate. Think of the effects of one errant cancerous cell in a body or a hate-filled meme on social media. This effect, called the butterfly effect when describing the devastating impact of tiny perturbations on global weather patterns, demonstrates the harm that can be perpetrated on terrifyingly complex systems, whether physical or social.

But conversely, great good can also come about.  Consider the nascent resistance that led to social movements such as the civil rights movement in the United States, or, in a biological context, the remarkable coordination of the human body’s immune system.

How can an understanding of complexity theory come to the aid of today’s leaders? As Americans watch the complete paralysis of the federal government and British citizens consider the possibilities of food shortages and the future loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland in a worst-case no-deal Brexit, it is clear that tampering with the body politic must be approached with surgical sensitivity.

A great focus must be placed on achieving desirable outcomes by observing the actual functioning of the body politic. These systems are “black boxes” that can be understood only by monitoring how they behave. 

Toxic assumptions, largely fear-based, must be avoided. An assumption of scarcity leads to the hoarding of global resources and scapegoating of people deemed “other.” An adversarial presumption creates distortions when applied systemically — witness the disruption of global trade brought about by tariffs or the fraying of diplomatic relations between former allies. 

Political relationships are just that, relationships, and it trivializes them to deem them a game with a finite binary outcome. Just as a prospective spouse would object to entering a marriage characterized as a game, so politicians must endeavor to treat their constituents and their global neighbors as stakeholders in the complex system that is the world.

Celia Josephson is an attorney who also teaches E.S.L. and high school equivalence classes at the East Hampton Library. She studied quantitative methods at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Last year during the drought in South Africa I had to fly to the oldest desert in the world, the Namib, to have a shower. This year my hometown, Cape Town, was reborn — green. Dams filled with unseasonable, welcome rains. This may have been tough on vacationers, but it was cause for celebration among the locals. In the shower we could kick the bucket placed there to catch every drop, at least for a minute, until guilt made us put it back.

Rain has changed the picture of a place the BBC once named “the world’s first city to run out of water.” Unlike in Britain, people here now talk about weather in joyful terms. Other pictures, however, have not changed. 

Twenty-nine years have passed since Nelson Mandela completed his “long walk to freedom.” But the long rash of shantytowns remains unhealed. That’s not changed.

Sure, you may have left those sad clusters of corrugated iron as you exited the airport and headed into one of the world’s loveliest cities. But did you drive to Hout Bay, where ChapmansPeak Hotel would have offered you the best calamari in the world? On the way, you would have passed Imizamo Yethu. “Imi” is a shanty­town (excuse me, “informal settlement”) where 35,000 souls eke out a living. That’s not changed. 

Or drive over a hill from suburban Glencairn to the tiny seaside dorp of Scarborough. As you crest the ascent, to your right you’ll see a fresh rash of shacks — perhaps 200 — that house the poor. Now some may tell you that the “previously underprivileged” prefer to live in shacks rather than bricks and mortar. Why? Because they don’t have to pay property taxes or any of the encumbrances of home ownership. Huh?

Twenty-nine years after seismic political change, black men are still building handsome homes for white men. That’s not changed. Construction workers are always black people, always men; their average wage is 20 rands ($1.40) per hour. The crews I saw were supervised by people of mixed-race origin — some of them women — many of them holding clipboards. While it’s odd to see black men in overalls scrolling their cellphones as they clomp about in work boots, you can be sure they’re not making a booking on OpenTable; you will never see them chowing down a T-bone steak at 200 rands ($14). That’s not changed.

Strangers come to your door begging for money or food. At almost every traffic light, three or four beggars — even a sprinkling of whites — will ask you for coins. That’s not changed, but it has increased.

“Jo’burg is different,” I’m told by people who live there. “Hell, boet, there’s a ton of social change in Joeys.”

Why doesn’t that surprise me? Because politicians and their hangers-on, like tick birds pecking a rhino, cluster around the watering holes of Egoli, the “city of gold.” That’s where the pols, if they’re not already in prison or facing indictment by a lazy Prosecuting Authority (itself under suspicion of corruption), will be found jolling around in their Mercs and BMWs — in Johannesburg and its satellite city, Pretoria (the legislative capital). 

Here there are rich pickings for politicians. Any time the words “tender” or “procurement” or “contract” are in play, these men and women, like the mafia, are eager to dip their beaks or collect the vig. And afterward, they’ll dine on T-bones and the best red wine. That’s not changed.

After my two months in the exquisite Cape of Good Hope, here’s what has changed: People of all colors are at ease with one another. At a concert at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, a visitor from England told me, the vibe of friendship in an audience that was 80 percent black and 20 percent white was potent. In stores and cafes, loose service is always rescued by apologetic, unflagging smiles. 

My own behavior changed earlier this month when I did something I never would have done before. I gave a lift to a large black guy. He told me he was from Johannesburg and had come south in search of work; so far, nothing had come up. 

“Where do you live?” I asked. 

“Clifton, sir.”

I was impressed, as Clifton is one fancy suburb. Then he added, “In a cave.”

The guy had a broken foot, was on crutches, and lived in a cave about half a mile from my apartment. I gave him something, knowing that anything I could do for the guy would be inadequate. 

Point is, if I hadn’t felt the new spirit of this city, this rainbow nation, I would have driven by. That has changed. (I know, “Big deal,” you may be thinking. Hey, it’s a start.)

Optimism is, literally, made concrete by buildings that are being hammered out all over the city and its sprawling suburbs. Traffic is horrendous. I used to call Cape Town “the 10-minute town” when I was a teenager here, learning to drive. No more. A commute from a fancy suburb either south or west of the city bowl can take 90 minutes each way. That has changed.

For the half million whites in this city of nearly four million, much is the same. The sun sets as gloriously as ever across the stoeps of the $2 million homes at Clifton. The food at five-star restaurants can’t be bettered in any world capital, and yet is relished here at a fraction of the price. (Last week I tried to make a reservation at a top restaurant, Chefs Warehouse, and they are booked solid through the end of March.) 

Are more changes afoot? Many whites worry that younger blacks, frustrated at the pace of social change and the corruption of politicians by businesspeople, will force dramatic change on the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa. The man himself has spoken of “land expropriation without compensation.” Chilling to hear if you own a thousand-acre wine farm.

Meanwhile, the government has accelerated “white flight,” particularly by young professionals, via a policy of appointing blacks to critical positions, at times regardless of qualifications. 

Some say that “reverse discrimination” in South Africa is “when karma comes and bites you in the ass.” But be it black or white ass, 29 years on, karma doesn’t discriminate.

Brian Clewly Johnson is the author of “A Cape Town Boy: A Memoir of Growing Up, 1940 to 1959.” He lives in Amagansett.

On Jan. 2, my wife, Ellen, and I drove to the Sussex County Jail in New Jersey. We hugged outside the entrance. Then I entered and began serving a 20-day sentence for civil disobedience at the state’s black bear hunt.

I had served jail time during the previous two Januaries, but I hadn’t expected to return. Gov. Phil Murphy had made a campaign pledge to halt the hunts. But once elected, he stopped them only on state-owned land. He allowed the hunts to continue on county and private land, where most of the bears are usually killed. 

I dreaded going to jail again. But I felt I had to demonstrate how seriously I regarded the killing. 

For the first three days I was in medical lock-in. This is the standard practice. The jail holds new inmates in a cell until they receive a medical exam and the staff determines their permanent placements. During the lock-in, inmates spend only a few minutes a day outside their cells. 

In the past, I had spent the lock-in alone. This time I had a roommate, a young man arrested for drug possession. It would have been great to pass some of the time in conversation, but my roommate wasn’t up to it. He was withdrawing from drugs and mainly moaned and expressed hopelessness. My efforts to cheer him up failed. 

After medical lock-in, my roommate was placed in a large, minimum-security section of the general population. I requested the same placement, but I was kept in a small, special housing area. The area housed up to six men, two to a cell, with each cell opening to a common dayroom. While I was in the area, two inmates left and two came, but the area was always full. 

The jail used this special area to separate men from the general population. Some men had gotten into too many arguments or fights in other units, or had been harassed. Others had been charged with or convicted of sex crimes against minors. These inmates are generally despised by the others, and the jail kept these men in special housing to protect them from attack.

During my stay, there were three such inmates. All anticipated long sentences in state prisons. In addition, they all took pride in being tough fighters. When I asked them if they feared attacks in the state prisons, they said no. As one told me, “If they jump me, there better be 10 of them or they’ll all end up in the hospital.” 

I didn’t entirely understand why I was placed in this area, but a corrections officer told me that one reason was the publicity surrounding my case. Apparently the jail believed that it could keep a closer eye on me in a small area and help prevent bad press.

My fellow inmates had read about me in a local newspaper. They knew I was a 75-year-old college professor who owned a farm sanctuary and was in jail to protest the bear hunts. Several told me they didn’t necessarily agree with me about the bear hunts but respected me for acting on my convictions. 

The other inmates and I had numerous personal conversations. We were quite open about our lives. The men also got into some heated arguments, often during card games, and they played practical jokes that could be upsetting.  

The chief prankster was a tall man who liked to tell everyone he was bisexual. One afternoon when I was resting in my bunk, he pretended to be sneaking into my cell. I found this unnerving and told him never to do it again. He agreed.

On another occasion, some inmates hid a man’s razor. Because razors can be used as weapons, the jail gave them to us only twice a week and required us to promptly return them. When the man couldn’t find his razor, he became frantic. He searched his cell over and over. All the others laughed. I could understand the humor, but after a couple of minutes I asked those who had hidden it to give it back. They then moved it to a place where the man readily found it.

When a corrections officer came into our area to pick up the razors, a young inmate asked him what would happen if a man’s razor were missing. “A rectal search,” the officer replied. “And it wouldn’t be just him. Everyone in here would have it.” That statement produced a nervous silence.

During my jail terms I learned about the inmates’ values. Many of the men, especially those charged with sex offenses against minors, valued power over others. When I asked one man why he didn’t seek sexual relationships with females his own age, he said. “I can’t mold them.” Another man said he would like to be a dictator or a tyrant.

All the men had a low opinion of those who try to steal from other inmates. But they saw nothing wrong with deceiving others in the course of selling and buying. They told me about state prisoners who sold cigarettes filled with tea leaves instead of tobacco. They also told me about prisoners who misled others into thinking they were getting great bargains. Whenever I asked my fellow inmates if they approved of such practices, they replied with statements like, “Yeah, that’s business.”   

I had always assumed that criminal values are different from the values of our mainstream society. But as I thought about what the inmates said, I began to wonder. Doesn’t our mainstream society also promote, at least to some extent, the quest for power? Doesn’t our society frequently accept deception as part of doing business? 

In some respects, jail was easier this time. The building wasn’t as cold, and the kitchen staff tried to accommodate my vegan diet — an effort I appreciated.

But on the whole, this January was more difficult. For one thing, my area was more crowded, noisier, and more boisterous. When the men pulled pranks and got into heated arguments, I didn’t always know whether to intervene, and this uncertainty was an added stress. 

This time, in addition, we had less freedom to move from our cells to the dayroom and back. We frequently had to go to an intercom to ask an officer for permission. 

And this jail stay was more difficult simply because it was longer. In the past two years, I served eight and 12 days, after my sentences were reduced for good behavior. This year, I was in jail for 16 days, receiving four days off for good behavior.  

Sixteen days is shorter than what most inmates must endure. Even so, on two occasions I felt quite downhearted. At those times, brief phone conversations with my wife helped immensely. Ellen reminded me that I was in jail “for the bears.” Focusing on my purpose gave me strength. 

When I was released, my first steps outside the jail felt wonderful. I felt so free! But I hadn’t completely left the jail in my mind. Night after night I dreamt I was lying on my back in my bunk, wondering if I would ever be released. This same dream occurred for seven straight nights. Then it went away. 

Bill Crain is a professor of psychology at the City College of New York and a part-time Montauk resident. 

Subtitles. For years, the mention of the word sparked one of two emotions in my fellow filmgoers: curiosity or hesitation. I first became curious about films with subtitles because they were from foreign countries and in different languages, but many people are hesitant for the same reason. 

Reading the subtitles of a film or a television series sounds as if it betrays the essence of the medium itself. Film and television should show their stories through visuals, not tell them through dialogue. When we read subtitles, it can feel as if they are telling us how the narrative unfolds. 

On a practical note, it can be hard to read while trying to watch at the same time. In the past, when I have read subtitles, I have sometimes missed key moments onscreen that confuse me when that element of the plot comes up again. 

On the other hand, people can struggle with subtitles because of the speed at which they appear. This can sometimes relate to the language or dialect spoken at a fast pace. Out of all the non-English films I have seen, the two languages I find the most difficult to keep up with are Italian and Mandarin. 

The Chinese crime-thriller “Drug War” from the director Johnnie To, for example, is easy to follow when you pay close attention. That is, if you can read the dialogue fast enough. Mandarin can sound fast to Western ears, and this means the subtitles have to change as quickly in order to match up with the characters’ dialogue. After a while, I had to skim the film’s subtitles to get the gist of what the characters said. Although not much talking happens by the film’s end in a fantastical shootout to rival Michael Mann’s “Heat.” 

The issue is the same in regard to Italian cinema. Whether it is Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” or Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” Italian films require fast readers as much as avid viewers. Even if hard to follow, both films are worth experiencing, subtitles or no. 

With these subtitle challenges, why do I watch as many foreign films as I do Hollywood blockbusters? The answer is simple. I want to have different experiences onscreen.

When I turned 14, my love of film and television grew and my expectations became more demanding. At a certain point, I wanted something different. While on a search for that new experience, I came across the South Korean thriller “Oldboy” from Park Chan-wook. I discovered a DVD copy of it at my public library. To this day, I have no idea how the librarian allowed me to check it out, given its R rating, but to this day I thank her for doing so. 

When I first watched “Oldboy,” it was dubbed into English. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t know any better, so what can you do? 

Based on that terrible experience, since then I have never watched another foreign film dubbed into English. My problem with dubbing is that it takes away from the original actors’ performances. English voices can overshadow the hard work the actors put into their roles. It can also be a distraction when the English voices do not synchronize well with the actors’ lips. To be honest, it baffles me that there is still an audience for dubbed films. 

When I say I hate dubbing, I refer only to live-action films. Animated features and shows are better suited for different voice-overs. When it comes to anime, however, I prefer to watch it in the original Japanese for authenticity. (Unless it is “Cowboy Bebop.”) 

Every once in a while, you find a film that touches you, a film that changes your life. For me, it was “Oldboy.” It not only made me want to become a filmmaker, it also made me appreciate what the rest of the world had to offer in storytelling. 

So, the next time you’re watching a foreign film on Netflix, maybe you’ll be able to read the subtitles and enjoy the film at the same time. If not, I hope you at least get a glimpse of the cinematic offerings from the rest of the world and learn something about new places and their cultures. If the subtitles still bother you, however, I suppose you could watch it dubbed.

Or, better still, you could learn the language.

Patrick Harford has a master’s degree in screenwriting. He spends summers at his family’s house in Springs.

What better name for the daughter of the middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano than Roxee? Her parents obviously thought she was a champ too.

What kind of father was the tough guy who had one of the hardest-hitting right crosses in boxing? According to Roxee, her dad was kind, sweet, thoughtful, and a bit old-fashioned, leaving the raising of his daughters to their mother, Norma. 

And what kind of woman was Norma? Roxee said she was unlike the retiring, nearly shy character portrayed by Pier Angeli in the Rocky Graziano biopic “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Norma was tough, smart, and knew where to find answers to any questions she had. She guided the Graziano finances, never letting her husband invest in the many schemes that were brought to him. In fact, he once commented that the reason he hung around with millionaires was because they never asked to borrow money. Though knowing what a soft touch Rocky was, the schemers — no doubt — felt he would dig some money out of his wallet for them, and he often did. 

There is an anecdote about Rocky sitting around Stillman’s Gym following his retirement from boxing and observing the up-and-coming fighters. Off in a corner, he noticed a former boxer who had gone blind. The man was nearly destitute, living a crummy fleabag of a hotel. Rocky went around to everyone in the gym, collecting 20 dollars here, 10 dollars there. He put in some money of his own, folded it all together, and inserted it in the blind boxer’s breast pocket. He told the man to come back every month, for he would get the same thing. Because of such acts of generosity, Rocky’s manager, Irving Cohen, suggested that Norma put Rocky on an allowance so that he wouldn’t give all of his money to needy cases.

When I asked about the Graziano marriage, Roxee told me that her parents were madly, passionately in love with each other. And what attracted her mother to Rocky when he was just starting out and his future looked grim? “She thought he was sweet and innocent and positively gorgeous.” And photos of the young Rocky show a young man who was indeed movie-star handsome. Boxing, of course, leaves one with a face that’s a history of one’s bouts, and Rocky was no exception.

I asked Roxee, who survives her older sister, Audrey, how it felt to be the daughter of a celebrity. And Rocky’s celebrity increased exponentially through the years of Roxee’s life, as she went from being a little girl to a teenager. As a boxer, Rocky was admired for this athletic prowess. But as an entertainer seen regularly on television, he became known to millions of viewers who may not have been interested in boxing. Rocky’s career as an entertainer began when he co-starred in the TV series “The Henny and Rocky Show” with Henny Youngman. That was followed by another co-starring role opposite the great rubber-faced comedian and singer Martha Raye in her eponymous TV show. The show ran for three years, and Rocky was in every episode. 

Martha became a good friend of the family, and Roxee said she regarded her as Aunt Martha. 

Before the show went into production, its producer and creator, Nat Hiken, was sitting around with the director and advertising agency people, and they decided that Martha needed a boyfriend. They agreed that it should be a warmhearted, inarticulate guy. Someone suggested a guy like Rocky Graziano. Another said why not get Rocky, and so Nat Hiken went to Stillman’s Gym and offered Rocky the part of Martha’s Goombah. Off screen and on, Martha and Rocky were true pals. 

And Nat Hiken also became a lifelong pal of Rocky’s. He went on to create numerous hit TV sitcoms, including “The Phil Silvers Show” and “Car 54, Where Are You?” 

But they weren’t the only show business people to light up the Graziano household: There was Paul Newman, who played Rocky in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” which catapulted Newman up into the stratosphere of stardom. He spent months with Rocky, learning to walk like him, to talk like him, to punch like him. And then there was Frank Sinatra, who had not only befriended Rocky at Stillman’s Gym in the early 1940s, but also cast him as his sidekick, Packy, in the movie “Tony Rome.” The Grazianos became quite friendly with the singer Tom Jones, whom they met through the owner of El Morocco, one of the premier New York nightclubs and watering holes for celebrities from the 1930s to the 1960s.  

I asked if the Grazianos were friends with any former fighters. The one who came around most often was Jake LaMotta, and Norma Graziano disliked him. She did not think he was a nice man, and one could certainly see that from his portrayal by Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull.” Nevertheless, Rocky went out of his way to find work for Jake, including parts in movies and TV programs. There is a photo of Jake and Rocky with Martha Raye, and another of Jake and Rocky relaxing with their wives poolside in Miami Beach.

Though those were pals of her parents, Roxee had her own celebrity friend, Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland. In addition to hanging out at El Morocco, Lorna and Roxee, who were the same age, often went to Broadway and Off Broadway shows together.

Surrounded by entertainers, it was no wonder that Roxee embarked on a career to become a stage actress after graduating from Forest Hills High School in Queens. As many aspiring actors have discovered, the road to success is decorated with potholes, and there are many side streets and detours that are dead ends. She eventually gave up her dream of acting and attended college at C.W. Post and Adelphi, earning a master’s degree in education. For 20 years, she was an elementary school teacher, as was her present husband, John Lore.

I asked Roxee to sum up her father, a man who was brutal in the ring and a warmhearted charmer out of it. Roxee said he was a regular guy, never bragged about his careers as a boxer and actor. He had many friends who thought the world of him. 

I can certainly attest to that, for I attended Rocky’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. There must have been 1,000 mourners in attendance. And when his coffin left the church, cops cleared a path for the hearse and the limos that followed, not just on Fifth Avenue, but all the way out to a cemetery on Long Island. (Norma, who died years later at age 83, is buried beside her husband.) 

Rocky was the last of the great fighters from the golden age of boxing. And his daughter remains his biggest fan.

Jeffrey Sussman is the author of “Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune,” among other books about boxers and boxing. He lives part time in East Hampton.

I thought I was up on things when I learned to text. And though my aging thumbs refused to fly across the keypad of my cellphone — trek was more like it — once I got the hang of using the tiny microphone to record, it took only minutes to send a message. Easy as pie. And quick! 

Not so quick, come to think of it. Truth to tell, I found it a bit drawn out and annoying, accustomed, as I was, to one short and sweet phone chat. 

“Friday, 1 o’clock, the diner?” was how my texting went. And went and went, a simple sentence taking three separate texts from my end alone, and I was still bashing thumbs. 

#1: How about lunch on Friday?

“Friday is good. What time?”

#2: One is good for me. 

“Where?” 

#3: The diner?

“Nah. I’m meeting Ellie there today.”

If one picture is worth a thousand words, one text is worth bupkis.

Then there’s the shorthand — or short-finger, as it is — of chat-speak, the requisite LOL to let a receiver know that what you just said — typed really, no one actually says anymore — was funny. After all, how would anyone know something was yuk-yuk if you didn’t tell them? 

But I couldn’t claim my salt in the cellphone stew till I mastered the fine points of emojis, sprung free by tapping the smiley face at the bottom of my cell’s texting page. It was then I called forth happy, sad, and angry faces, a veritable mood menu including party hats and clapping hands standing for good times, airplanes and cars denoting travel, puckered lips — “Love ya, babe” — a treasure trove of symbols with which to punctuate my missives when mere words just would not do, laying claim to my expertise in the chapel of the mighty text and banishing thoughts that I was behind the times, uncool, or, heaven forbid, not fly.

But alas, my triumph was short-lived, when in came a text from a friend who signed off with not a simple anyone-can-have-it emoji, but her cartoon likeness, happy-faced and popping out of a side-of-the-road, flap-down mailbox, exclaiming in a colorful, fun font, “Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” It was her all right, but younger, thinner, and cuter than she was in real life — sorry, girlfriend. 

That was for me: An iteration of my real self, yet a new and improved version, giving my lame texts punch and personality. And for a free Bitmoji download a new me was mine to have. Well, that and the help of my daughter, Leslie, a technical genius as far as I’m concerned. 

Shape of face, eye color, hairstyle — doesn’t need a cut every six weeks. Dressed in my look: tights, long cardigan, and scarf. No cellulite or wrinkles, thank you very much. It was all there in my avatar, and I was good to go, ending my texts with hands to hips, my head cocked just so — a bit oversized, but on me it looked good. I’m so cute I can hardly stand it. 

Open-armed and smiling, I give morning hugs and nighttime kisses: “Muah!” Someone gets my angst up, I get a little frown on, and the colorful font exclaims “Bummer!” I’m still adorable me. 

Who then is the grouch in the mirror giving me the stare? The one with the under-eye pouches and bleeding lipstick, and why so pale? My Bitmoji always has a healthy blush to her cheeks. And what’s that pooch of belly fat? Don’t tell me muffin top! Argh! What’s a girlfriend to do? Call up that old cutup, Dr. Shiv? Not a chance. This old face and bod are going down with me; it’s my darling double I worry about. 

To my eye, a change of late has come over my little one-inch imp. A smiling-on-the-outside, crying-on-the-inside kind of vibe from my outstanding other. Maybe it’s something only a BFF would spot, but methinks something is getting her down. A “wine time” pick-me-up, anyone? Nah. Been there, done that. Girls’ night out? Uh-uh. Enough with the girls already, it’s time to bring on the boys. But who? How? 

I know, what she needs is a beau, a Bitmoji beau. There’s an app whose time has come. And I know just how I’d set him up. 

I’ll give this one dimples, brown eyes, a beautiful smile, and gray hair — distinguished on an older man, don’t you think? I’ll turn him out in a tracksuit and big white sneakers. Passé, you say? Wanna step outside? 

They’ll “meet-cute” in a Stop and Shop, where there’s only one copy of The Sunday Times. 

He: “You take it.”

She: “No, you.” Bitmojis don’t waste time with idle chitchat. 

He: “Share it, then.” The dimples deepen. “Coffee?” Gestures toward an empty table.

What’s she got to lose? They’re in a public place; he seems nice enough. 

He likes the business section, she Arts & Leisure. They both take their coffee black, no sugar. They chat. He still works part time. (Good, a man who has interests.) He likes to drive. Why don’t they take a trip together? Fast worker he, but for all her sass, our Bitmoji babe is still old school. They just met!

He: “How about a movie, then? I hear ‘The Wife’ is good.”

Game on. 

Rita Plush is the author of the novels “Lily Steps Out” and “Feminine Products.” She had a house in East Hampton for many years.

At 63 years old, my child-rearing days are long over. And I haven’t missed them. My husband and I started very young, had four rambunctious rascals a couple of years apart, and then threw ourselves into the ring with earnest and blind ambition to raise perfect specimens. Thank God, they were less than perfect, just like us. 

When the last one went to college, leaving us empty nesters, we didn’t shed a tear. Well, I didn’t. My husband cried with joy. I did have a moment in the kitchen the morning after my last little cowboy left the ranch, staring into the backyard, sipping coffee and contemplating what I should cook for dinner. It hit me hard that it didn’t matter anymore what we ate for dinner. We had only ourselves to please from that point forward. My husband and I were free to eat Spam on toast at 9 p.m. with a Guinness if we felt like it. 

Admittedly, we had stumbled and bumbled our way through Parenting 101, with mixed results. I say mixed because we weren’t super parents. We started out strong with drug-free, natural childbirth, breast-fed all for at least a year, and kept a bushel of new-age parenting primers on hand for how-to tips to tackle temper tantrums, finicky eaters, potty training, puberty, and rebelliousness without turning them into sociopaths. But, little by little, we began to waver and adopted our own philosophy of coping with four different personalities ranging from Mother Teresa to, dare I say, Donald J. Trump. 

It was a hit-or-miss strategy. We weren’t strong on discipline, relying more on reverse child psychology and behavior manipulation. We implemented the team approach. Stick together and don’t cave. Problem was, I was a sucker for tears, and my husband traveled a lot. You see where I’m going — when you can’t beat them, join them. I spent a lot of time on the floor with them reliving my childhood.

We got through it. With the help of “Sesame Street,” Slurpees, Super Mario, McDonald’s French fries, Eggo waffles, pagers, and anything else we could bribe them with, we managed to function on a high level with pretty good results.

Fourteen years ago, our first grandchild was born, and we were beside ourselves with utter wonder and heart-crushing love, as if we had never laid eyes on a baby before. Often when I held her I had no words, and my heart pumped with joy. We had been given another chance to do it all over again, to get it right, but without the mess of conflicting emotions. Oh, you don’t want to eat, obey, do your homework, brush your teeth, or get dressed? No problem. We’re okay with that because Mommy and Daddy will be picking you up soon and can deal with you. Here, have another bowl of ice cream. We just love smelling and holding you. 

Recently, our son and his wife asked us to watch our long-distance, 16-month-old granddaughter for a few days while they went away for the first time since her birth. She last saw us around her first birthday. I immediately agreed, but as the time approached I wondered if my husband and I were up to the task of very early mornings and nonstop activity. We had done the same for our two eldest granddaughters over the years, but this was different — we were older now, and this one didn’t really know us.  

How would she react to strange, wrinkled people she might have some recall of but likely not, dressing, bathing, playing, and feeding her? Upsetting her entire universe that was entirely made up of her mommy and daddy? I wondered if I still had it in me — the knack to win over a small child and gain her trust to take your hand in hers and lead you to a toy, to wrap her arms around your neck in a bear hug, to reach up to be held, to see a pucker of rosebud lips and return a kiss? 

I couldn’t bear to see her cry or miss her parents miserably. I wasn’t cut from that kind of cloth. Yet I had to accept it might happen. Would we fail? Collapse from exhaustion? Would she ever adjust to us and not scream in fright every time we lifted her from her crib? Where had my confidence gone, I worried.

When my son and daughter-in-law returned three days later, I admit we were a bit bug-eyed and sore. They bounded in the door from the airport murmuring her name, blowing kisses; arms wide open for her running embrace as if they’d been in solitary confinement, locked away from her for months. She looked up from her Duplo blocks and waved at them casually from a full squat I hadn’t been able to do in 50 years. And went right back to knocking down the pink-and-purple architectural wonder we had built together, belting out a high-octave shriek and breaking into a giggle of supreme pleasure, clapping her pudgy hands in glee.

“How did you do it, Mom, with four of us?” my son asked later after our granddaughter had kicked and screamed her way through a rough patch of being drawn out of the bathtub when she wanted to linger longer. Wrestling a toddler through a tantrum takes a certain resolve and strength. But he managed it so firmly, lovingly, and patiently that I was taken aback. I couldn’t have handled it better myself.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and wondered. Chaos reigned often in our spirited family, I remembered. He wasn’t the first of my children who asked the question, but, in all fairness, this time, running out of time, I gave it more thought.

“Raising children is a lot like marriage,” I confided. “One day you wake up and decide how you’re going to make it work. The answer is you have to be 100 percent committed. You can’t be absent or fake it, and you can’t seek perfection from your child or yourself. You have to put the time in, though. You have to pay attention. The rest mostly takes care of itself.”

On the return trip home a few days later, our baby granddaughter’s sweet baby scent of Dreft detergent and milky breath lingered on my clothing, and I closed my eyes with a nagging ache in my heart. I missed her already and longed to live closer to her. At the same time I felt renewed, younger than I had in a very long time.

My husband reached over and hooked my arm under his as the airplane lifted off the tarmac, grateful one leg of the high-altitude journey was out of the way.

“What’s on your mind?” he whispered with our heads touching, staring at the closed tray tables of the seats in front of us.

I couldn’t put into words what I was really thinking, so I smiled seductively. “Let’s make a baby,” I whispered back.

He understood, and we laughed behind cupped hands. Once back in the trenches, we had taken up where we had left off like old master yogis. But now on our way home, I pined for my orthotic slippers and the leisurely draining of a morning pot of coffee.

There is a lot to be said about aging and staying vibrant. Hanging with a child doesn’t hurt. I am growing old, but I think I still got it.

Carol Dray, a previous Star contributor, lives in Bridgehampton.

Speaking of the proposed offshore South Fork Wind Farm, I’d like to suggest a couple of basic principles that I’d hope most people of good will could accept:

First, we have a moral obligation to reduce our carbon emissions. Second, if that entails costs, no particular group of Long Islanders should bear an unreasonable share of the burden.

The first principle is one of worldwide fairness. We want the energy and the benefits it provides, but we don’t want any of the risks that energy production entails. So we continue to burn fossil fuels, exporting dangers to people far away who do not benefit from the energy we use and who have no say in the matter. This is just plain wrong.

The second principle is one of local fairness. Once we recognize that reducing our carbon emissions is going to involve some adjustments, we ought not to expect a small group of us to bear most of the burden. 

To put a human face on this, consider two families. One lives in Montauk and earns its livelihood through fishing. This family is very concerned that the wind farm would impose limitations on its ability to make ends meet. These concerns need to be addressed.

There’s another family, though, that also earns its livelihood by fishing and farming. They live in Bangladesh. They are being driven from their freshwater fishing grounds and farm fields by the incursion of salt water from rising seas caused by global warming. Our carbon emissions are contributing to their plight. Their children are just as dear to them as ours are to us. We need to own that.

Both of these families deserve our consideration. The principle that no local group should bear an unreasonable burden doesn’t mean that no one should bear any burden, however. We have an obligation to minimize the problems faced by the fishing community here as much as possible, but we also have an obligation toward that Bangladeshi family.

Unfortunately, besides these legitimate concerns, there’s an awful lot of fake environmentalism that opposes anything that will have any negative environmental effects, even though it means we’ll continue with business as usual, with much worse impacts. 

When we rejected the Shoreham nuclear plant, people said, “We’ll do wind power instead.” Now that wind power is a live option, some of the same people are opposing it too. Before they will accept any form of carbon-free energy, it must have no environmental impacts whatsoever. It must be perfect. Anything short of perfection is unacceptable. Any imperfection gives them talking points to make people think it must be bad.

Of course, that means no form of alternative energy is acceptable. Even solar panels have an environmental cost in terms of the toxic metals, such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, generated in their production. Does that mean we shouldn’t go solar? Of course not. The pollutants generated just have to be dealt with responsibly. My point is that not even solar is perfectly clean. 

So don’t ask “Is it perfect?” Instead, ask if it is better than the alternative of continuing to burn fossil fuels. And don’t make the mistake of saying we should do solar instead of wind. We should do all the solar we can, regardless of whether the wind farm is built or not. The two are not either-or propositions. Compare the wind farm with the fossil fuels we’ll save.

The wind farm would reduce Long Island’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 200,000 tons. By itself that won’t solve the global climate problem, but if every locality rejects carbon-free energy projects, the lost opportunities to reduce carbon emissions will add up to something tragic.

Don’t forget that what goes around comes around. It won’t be long until we, too, suffer from the effects of the world’s increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Even today the fossil fuels we burn on Long Island degrade our air quality and respiratory health. Long Island’s air looks cleaner than it is, though, and so we ignore that aspect.

I’m convinced that people of good will could figure out how to do offshore wind power and also preserve the local fisheries. It’s only when we make an emotional issue out of it and demonize anyone who disagrees with our own entrenched position that solutions become impossible. 

Or, we can just keep on burning fossil fuels as if there’s no tomorrow. If the whole world does that, maybe there won’t be a tomorrow.

John Andrews is co-group leader of the Long Island East chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. He lives in Sag Harbor.