I’ve always been fascinated by credit card fees. When your bank is already charging you any interest rate they like, why antagonize their customers further with hefty nuisance fees? It doesn’t seem to make marketing sense. (Just bump up that “default” rate to something even more usurious than it was before; most of your customers won’t notice.)

    I’m old enough to remember when a credit card was a simple and honest relationship between you and your bank: You paid an annual fee for the service and they charged you an honest interest rate for the money you borrowed. (They also collected 2 or 3 percent from the vendors.)

    But starting in the 1980s, as credit card regulations imploded, you began to see those extra numbers on your statement. For a long time it was just the late fee: Pay before 5 p.m., you win; pay after 5 p.m. — whoops! (Sorry, Hawaii, we’re on Eastern time.)

    Then a few years ago a consultant by the name of Bill Strunk invented the “over-limit fee.” I thought this was sheer genius! What Strunk realized was that you could take a contractual obligation (the limit on your credit), loosen it unilaterally just a little, make it look like a service, and charge whatever you liked for this “service”!

    Now it looks like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is going to put a damper on these fees. The banks will need more creative thinking. Here are some suggestions:

    My wife’s credit union charges her a “rush payment” fee if she pays online after 4 p.m. the day before the due date. (It doesn’t matter, of course, that rush payments arrive at the same time as non-rush payments.) This concept has possibilities: Expand the time frame by a day or two and charge for semi-rush payments made less than 24 hours before the due date.

    No-call fee. I’d be happy to pay, say, $9.95 to eliminate dunning phone calls for a month. Better yet, charge me $14.92 for no phone calls, period, or $4.99 for no phone calls from machines, only humans who dial the number themselves.

    Automatic transaction fee. An increasing number of transactions are automatic monthly subscription payments. I haven’t signed a receipt for these; they are risky for the bank. What if I refuse to pay? What if I’m dead? The bank should charge me $12.95 for each of these risky charges.

    Billing fee. A number of banks have offered me $5 (five American dollars!) if I switch to e-mail billing. Time to reverse this: From now on, if I want a paper bill mailed to me each month I should pay for the privilege — $17.76 sounds about right ($24.95 if I still use those quaint old paper checks and require a return envelope).

    Unredeemed fee. If I foolishly neglect to trade in my bonus points for — whatever — the bank has the extra burden of continuing to account for them. I should pay for my lax behavior and the trouble I cause them. Think of all the bits and bytes they have to spend. I’d say $19 per 10,000 unredeemed points per month would sound about right.

    Then again, maybe there is a bank somewhere whose business plan suggests they can thrive collecting 3 percent of each charge transaction from the vendors and, moreover, charging as little as prime plus 8 percent for money borrowed. (How greedy do you have to be not to be satisfied with a 14-plus percent return on the cash flow running through your bank?)

    They can even add a fee if they want: Call it the “no-fee fee.” Charge me almost anything per year so I don’t have to play this shell game with you. That would be a fee I’d welcome!

    Sounds like a lucrative deal to me. If such a bank, say, Bailey Savings and Loan, offered a charge card on those terms I’d jump at it. So would another one hundred million Americans. Bailey would own the market.

    But that would cause another crisis for the banks that are too big to fail. And another trillion-dollar bailout. Bill Strunk, I hope, would find a way to stop that.

    James Monaco is a writer and publisher in Sag Harbor. He offers a spreadsheet template to help you analyze your credit card overcharges at HEPdigital.com/ccanalysis.xls.

    “I’m sorry, but you have cancer.” There are probably no more frightening words than those. And everyone feels like a potential victim. After all, if one doesn’t die of heart disease or Alzheimer’s or in an accident, then chances are it will be one of the many forms of cancer.

    Brian Craig, a seemingly healthy man, was told he had prostate cancer. His physician recommended surgery to remove his prostate gland. While in a hospital in New York, he underwent a series of tests prior to surgery; he learned that doctors discovered some abnormalities on his liver. An ultrasound examination was called for.

    The good news was that his liver was fine. The bad news was that he had a tumor on his pancreas. The tumor was malignant. Anyone who has read about pancreatic cancer or known someone who has been afflicted with it knows that the survival rates for pancreatic cancer are dismal. At best, treatments are able to prolong life by months; however, it is not unusual for victims to succumb to the disease within weeks of diagnosis, for the cancer is usually discovered after it has advanced to the point of producing symptoms.

    The tumor on Brian’s pancreas, which is next to the liver, had been causing bile to back up into the liver. This was what had alerted Brian’s doctors to the abnormalities in the liver.

    While it has been suspected that excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes, and smoking may be causes of pancreatic cancer, none of those applied to Brian. He neither smokes nor drinks, is neither obese nor diabetic. Look at Brian and you will see a healthy-looking, physically fit man in his middle years.

    A top surgeon judged that Brian’s tumor was resectable (i.e., removable), and so Brian was a good candidate for an operation known as a Whipple. It is an extremely complicated and dangerous surgery. Not only is part of the pancreas removed, but so is the duodenum, gall bladder, part of the jejunum, stomach bile duct, and lymph nodes near the pancreas. Brian was under the surgeon’s knife for seven hours. When he awoke, he felt as if his entire body was permeated with pain; yet, soon thereafter, the pain was controlled by an epidural catheter supplying morphine. Three days later, Brian went home.

    One month after the surgery, Brian had a CT scan and an M.R.I. He had prayed that the cancer was gone, that there were no more tumors. Instead, he learned that he now had four lesions on his liver. Brian said: “My medical team — oncologist, radiologist, and surgeon — thought that these may have been metastasized P.C. and that chemo, rather than more surgery, would be appropriate. This was the most troubling period in my whole experience. The original diagnosis and surgery happened so fast, and with such good results, that the negative possibilities and implications didn’t really have time to set in. This, however, was very bad news.”

    Brian’s doctors were willing to try something that was fully tested and approved by the Food and Drug Administration but was not part of the normal protocol of treatment. He was given a cocktail of four different chemotherapy drugs. Over a period of about four months, he had six infusions, which meant eight-hour sessions at a hospital. One chemo drug, however, required a 48-hour delivery period, and so Brian had to wear a portable pump that delivered the drug after its primary infusion. He disliked wearing the pump, but he had no choice.

    Because Brian is not overweight, does not smoke, and is not diabetic, he was able to withstand the highly aggressive levels of chemo. To reduce the likelihood of infection, Brian was given the drug Neulasta, which boosts one’s white blood count. It’s an expensive drug, costing several thousand dollars for each injection. Fortunately for Brian, his medical insurance fully covered the cost.

    In December, Brian underwent another series of CT and M.R.I. scans. To his relief and the delight of his medical team, he was completely free of tumors. In addition to the scans, he was given a blood test to determine if he had any protein markers that would indicate the presence of malignancy. For pancreatic cancer, blood markers are normal from 0 to 35. Above that range suggests the possible presence of pancreatic cancer. Just prior to Brian’s surgery, his markers were about 1,500! His markers that December were 25. A subsequent blood test in January showed markers at 27. Both levels are well within the range of someone without pancreatic cancer.

    I asked Brian how he had dealt with the worst news of his life: that he might die within months of his diagnosis. He said that he had “wonderful support from family and friends, and from my faith. My spouse, Michael, was present throughout and provided tremendous support. I also was lucky enough to have access to some of the best physicians in the world. And, I had faith that God would help me through this, as I do not feel I’ve finished whatever it is I need to get done here on earth.”

    Brian does not need any additional treatments of chemotherapy. He and his doctors believe that he is now entirely free of tumors. He will be checked every six weeks for the next year. If his health remains normal, there will be longer periods between checkups.

    Brian further summarized his future: “I am hopeful that my results will continue to be positive. As you have probably read, pancreatic cancer is very aggressive and spreads; it is statistically likely that it will show up again. If so, I’m sure I will face more chemo — as it worked — and who knows what else. My prognosis is that I very well may be among the very, very few who beat this. There is no evidence of any malignancy. I also believe that incredible progress is being made in the field of oncology, and the longer I stick around, the better chance there is of amazing new treatments.”

    “My life has changed in that I’m far more focused on making good use of the time I have, however long that is. And that is the message I would want to share with people. No matter how long or short your life is expected to be, all we have is one day at a time. Make sure you live during those days, enjoy life, make a difference. Be thankful every day you wake up and see the dawn, and make use of the day. Do not give in to any illness — you must control your own life even if it is from a hospital bed. Recovery from chemo, or surgery or radiation or many other insults we must face, isn’t easy, but you must focus on staying in control of how you spend your days. And remember that your friends and family and faith will help you. Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to ask for help — friends and family will want to help you.”

    Brian Craig lives in East Hampton. Jeffrey Sussman, the author of 10 nonfiction books, is writing a book about cancer patients, of which this is part of one chapter. He is the president of the New York City marketing and public relations firm Jeffrey Sussman, Inc., and has a house in East Hampton.

    My East Hampton is a small town. It is not “the beach,” “the Hamptons,” or some docu­drama. I raised a son here. I talk politics on Main Street. I wait the winter out with fireside reading. The most important thing to me is living here, not how fast I can get in and out for the season. I like having a small airport. It is an amenity. But ultra-luxury travel is not part of my life.

    Like many residents, I have watched with a mix of anxiety and apathy as our small rural airport morphed into a facility capable of handling jets and helicopters. Airport control seemed to be out of our hands. After all, I knew that the Federal Aviation Administration regulated planes in flight, and I thought there was nothing to be done. I was wrong.

    For months, I have worked with the litigation team challenging the airport environmental review. The case has revealed that the Town of East Hampton will soon have available indisputable powers to control airport access and use, reduce the quantity of traffic, and curtail noise. Yet an organized airport lobby tied to powerful political insiders is pressing for the town to surrender those powers, even before the public understands the issue or the courts can decide the case. It is time to talk clearly about the airport.

    An obvious fact has to be stated. The Town of East Hampton is the owner, or “proprietor,” of its airport. In the absence of F.A.A. funding, a proprietor can control airport access and use to reduce noise. That is the law. Entirely.

    Even though the F.A.A. regulates the flight and safety of aircraft, airport owners still have the power to control airport access and use. Access controls are simple common-sense measures. For example, the town could limit hours of operation, set curfews, and limit weekend use. It could set a percentage goal for the reduction of total airport noise and even ban the noisiest aircraft. These powers are legally indisputable. Unless reversed by the United States Supreme Court, they are the law of the land and applicable to East Hampton.

    Using our owner’s powers to control airport access does not require any F.A.A. approval. We don’t need help from our congressman. We don’t need lawyers or political insiders to lobby the F.A.A. Litigation is not required. We don’t even have to ask permission. These simple airport access controls are perfectly legal and within our reach.

    Another fact is critical. When a municipality takes F.A.A. grants, restrictions apply that cede airport control to the agency. Some time ago, East Hampton accepted F.A.A. grants. Luckily, our grant restrictions will expire in just two years. When they do, East Hampton could impose simple common-sense airport access controls using ordinary local regulation.

    Controlling airport access and use is the only way to reduce the quantity of airport traffic. Aircraft cause noise, which is described in technical jargon as “source noise.” Reducing the quantity of traffic reduces the amount of source noise. The use of local powers to control noise, without having to ask permission, is sensible.

    None of the other types of air traffic controls reduce the source of airport noise. Setting mandatory altitudes, using a seasonal control tower, and altering routes merely rearrange air traffic in the sky. They do nothing to reduce the quantity of air traffic. Therefore, they do not reduce the source of noise.

    An important criticism of the town’s airport environmental impact statement is that it never explained the existence of local powers to control airport access and reduce noise. It never informed the public that when current F.A.A. grant restrictions expire, the town could exercise such powers. The failure to explain this fundamental issue has fueled much of the confusion about airport regulation.

    Instead, the environmental impact statement told a half-truth. It stated only that F.A.A. grant restrictions made it illegal to control airport access and use, omitting any description of proprietor’s powers that become available when restrictions expire. It also claimed that unlimited growth was required by law. Although it described its plan as a “no growth” master plan, in fact it was based on a policy of unlimited airport traffic access.

    Think about that study for a moment. It explicitly stated the exact opposite of what the airport lobby now publicly claims. Their advertisements loudly trumpet that continued F.A.A. control is the best way to reduce airport noise. Meanwhile, the town’s environmental impact statement admitted that F.A.A. control makes it illegal to limit airport traffic or control the source of noise. The truth is that aviation and political insiders don’t want the public to understand the availability of simple local access controls that could effectively reduce the quantity of air traffic and noise.

    Why does the airport lobby oppose local airport control to reduce noise? The group speaks only for aviation interests, not for ordinary residents plagued by noise. Pilot members testifying at the last public hearing paid lip service to the problem of airport noise, but in lockstep they promoted a policy of unlimited airport traffic under F.A.A. control. Does it seem logical or persuasive that pilots would prefer limits on airport access? Does an ultra-luxury traveler really want to be restricted as to when he can land and take off because of concerns over noise? Airport access controls annoy pilots and the ultra-luxury traveler. They protect the rest of us.

    Another fact must be recognized. Airport noise affects thousands of residents in and near East Hampton, across a large geographic area. The town has logged more than 8,000 complaints in a single year, though callers know that absolutely nothing is done in response. Rather than acknowledge these widespread impacts, the airport lobby has disparaged airport opponents as a tiny group of crank property owners near the airport who selfishly want it closed to boost property values. What is the motive to belittle the opposition?

    The spin ostracizes opponents and obscures the truth. Unlimited access serves the convenience of a small group of ultra-luxury travelers while inflicting noise on thousands of ordinary residents. To maintain that policy, the airport lobby touts measures that merely shift noise from place to place. Moving airplanes around in the sky cannot reduce the quantity of air traffic or the source of noise. Only local control of airport access and use can halt the insidious erosion of East Hampton’s tranquil rural character.

    It is clear that F.A.A. control does not reduce airport noise. If it did, we would all be enjoying the summer sounds of crickets instead of helicopters. For some 20 years, we have been subject to F.A.A. control. It has delivered nothing but more traffic and noise. Any longtime resident can understand this fact just by listening.

    In defiance of the facts, airport lobby advertising lauds the benefits of F.A.A. control, as we walk together into the sunset. It is a lullaby. Not long ago, East Hampton tried to impose a sensible nighttime jet curfew and limits on noisy touch-and-go landings. The F.A.A. squelched both measures, citing grant restrictions. If it is so easy to control noise under F.A.A. restrictions, why are our skies noisier than ever? Why is traffic worsening? The truth is that F.A.A. control means a policy of unlimited airport access. It does nothing to reduce the quantity of airport traffic or the source of noise.

    Federal Aviation Administration policy is no secret. In binding court decisions, it has unabashedly stated that airports subject to its restrictions lose the power to control access to curtail noise. When the airport lobby tells us how helpful the F.A.A. will be, I hear Groucho Marx asking, “Who are you going to believe? Me? Or your own lying eyes?” The truth is that the F.A.A. has never consented to local access controls for a grant-funded airport.

    Who benefits when we reject local control in favor of unrestricted traffic access, even by invasive and noisy helicopters? It is no coincidence that powerful political insiders are allied with the well-funded airport lobby. Together, they have obscured the facts and opposed local control. Thousands of ordinary residents long for a return to small-town tranquillity. Their luxuries are quiet skies and summer nights, not opulent private air travel.

    Do we really benefit from the luxury traveler and the jet-and-helicopter-friendly policy of F.A.A. control? Or does it favor those whose only concern for East Hampton is how quickly they can come and go? My vote is for a policy that favors people who stay.

Jeffrey Bragman is an East Hampton attorney. He represents residents who have challenged the airport master plan environmental review. His clients favor strong local controls on airport access and use.

If my New Year’s resolution for 2011 had been “dispel with financial insecurity,” I would have succeeded, but not in the way I planned. I always expected to finally feel monetarily secure when a big bag of money, a la Tex Avery, complete with dollar signs emblazoned on its burlap sides, plopped into my lap with an accompanying appropriate cartoon sound effect.

    But that isn’t what happened. Instead, we declared a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April. I had thought this would be the end of the world, but in many ways it was a new beginning. In the years when my bank account would have been envied by most, I regularly startled awake in the middle of the night, wondering how I would pay my bills and terrified that it would all disappear.

    It disappeared. I survived. Not only survived, but thrived — when the repo guys came for the car this spring, I offered them coffee and took my picture with them. “Why are you so happy?” one of them asked. “Well, what are my other options?” I replied.

    The only thing I have total control over is how I react, or not, to certain situations. Being able to do the proverbial “count to 10” before the reaction comes is one of the gifts I’ve received only recently. I refuse to see this as a permanent state of affairs, but just one that will make me wiser and perhaps able to help someone else who embarks on the same path.

    Although we do not have a savings account, much less college funds or methods of saving for “retirement,” whatever that is, I sleep far better now with a lot less.

    I have settled in at The Star. Although I swore that my desk — which I could actually see way back last winter — would never reach the blaze-inducing capabilities observed in the workspace of my cellmate, Rusty Drumm, I have to admit I would be edgy now if someone were to strike a match near my budding Collyer brothers-style collection of paper.

    But I didn’t fulfill my New Year’s resolutions for 2011. How do I know? Because I’ve had the same resolutions since I was 12: To exercise more and eat less. Although, once again, my physical form fell by the wayside, I feel that I lost a lot of weight from my soul in 2011.

    I’m happy. Not like village-idiot-throwing-flowers-in-the-air kind of happy, but a deep and comfortable happiness that comes from the sweet nectar of Routine. It is based on inner life and growth rather than the sort that is based on external forces like people or situations — “absolute happiness” as opposed to “relative happiness,” the Buddhists say.

    When I lived a big life, there was no room left for growth. There was keeping up with mortgage payments even as we planned an addition, cars that were traded in for shinier models every few years, and a business that looked on paper like more of a hobby (and a ducat-depleting one at that). We lived within our means, but only by a hair — when the means were gone it wasn’t long before destitution set in.

    But now that my life is smaller — getting the kids to school, going to work, a short walk with Eric and the dogs on the beach, a DVD and dinner together, then going to sleep and doing the whole thing again the next day — my soul has had room to expand.

    There may be a time in the next few years when I will once again jump into the fray and spearhead some social cause or chair some huge function or develop a business plan. But if life is a journey, not a destination, then for now I’m glad to simply ride the train, look out the window, and watch the scenery change.

—

    Bridget LeRoy is a reporter at The Star.

    As the New Year fast approaches — and on the heels of what could perhaps best be called an upbraiding by voters in November — East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his two-member majority on the town board are no doubt taking stock of where they stand and thinking about what they might do differently in 2012.

    The supervisor and his board majority, as a group, do not seem temperamentally inclined to seek the opinions of those who could be seen as adversaries. Still, government, to function at its best, should be a collaborative process in which opposing views are heard and considered. And so, in that spirit, we offer a few thoughts about how the board might more effectively lead us and ease the partisan acrimony in our community.

    Here is our suggested list of resolutions:

    • Wean the town budget off the use of surpluses

    • Halt the sale of irreplaceable town assets

    • Restore the rate of community preservation fund land acquisitions to pre-crisis levels

    • Decline Federal Aviation Administration money and bring all parties together to seek limits to aircraft noise

    • Commit in earnest to the East Hampton Town Trustees’ fight to safeguard public beach access

    • Work with the trustees to provide better storage for nonpolluting watercraft

    • Begin work on a comprehensive strategy to deal with sea-level rise

    • End closed-door, one-party discussions of town issues

    • Slow down decisions on controversial matters

    • End the practice of “walk-on” board resolutions (except in cases of real emergency)

    • End the illegal growth of businesses in residential neighborhoods

    • Eliminate illegal signs and other prohibited eyesores

    • Restore social-service and arts funding

    • Restore recycling collection in town parks and other public places

    • Seek to limit illegal, multiple-family rentals

    • Abandon the general assault on the zoning code

    • Develop additional, dispersed ocean-beach parking

    • Restore the Amagansett Life-Saving Service station and open it to the public

    • Express meaningful support for the Planning and Natural Resources Departments

    • Appoint people to boards and other leadership roles based on their qualifications, not their political stripe

    • Return nonpartisan, nonideological procedures to the Ordinance Enforcement Department

    • Take steps to limit political and outside influence on the town attorney’s office

    • Improve Building Department permitting procedures

    • Manage town employees with support and positive guidance, not browbeatings

    • Create procedures for better communication with the public in hurricanes and other natural disasters

    • Expand and enforce a program to limit septic runoff to local waters

    Certainly, the board also deserves credit, as the year draws to a close, for its accomplishments in 2010 and 2011. These jobs well done include holding the line on town expenses, improving efficiency at Town Hall, helping the Springs School with space for its pre-K, and getting the inlets dredged. Yet so much can be done to improve town government’s relationship with the public and its protection of neighborhoods, quality of life, and the environment — if Mr. Wilkinson and the board only wish it.

    My friend “L,” a New Yorker through and through, has always been a model second-home owner. We’ve been friends for about 40 years.

    I married into a family that had been here since colonial times, a family that cherished its roots and wrote about them. In a sense, L followed suit. At first, I thought New Yorkers who summered here were like her: smart, educated, and fun. Even though I wasn’t long out of the city myself, I didn’t consider myself one of them; I thought of myself as having become local, even if locals thought of me as “from away.”    

    My friend and her husband bought a little old house near a pasture and, although they eventually built a big open adjoining room where family and friends could stay in summer, they did not alter the house’s traditional aspect.

    My immersion in life and lore here was inevitable. L, however, engaged herself in the community purposefully; she found out what the folks were like who had lived here forever, and she admired those among them who were extraordinary. Stuart Vorpahl, for example, a fisherman, local historian, and stalwart advocate of the rights bestowed upon the East Hampton and Southampton Town Trustees. She got to know what the South Fork has to offer almost as well as she knows the cultural life of New York.

    Over the years, L was often up and away. She spent lots of time in France, walked in India and Japan, and went on pilgrimages to this country’s national parks. Last week, she introduced me to a natural wonder right here that had eluded me all these years.

    The mountain laurel, she said, was in full bloom, as it was supposed to be during the second week of June. She and another friend had taken a walk in the woods the day before and she teased me by offering to go back again so I could see it.

    Mountain laurel is a true native species. According to Andrea Wulf’s book “Founding Gardeners,” our founding fathers introduced it to England. I had lived for almost six months at the edge of Northwest Woods when I first came to East Hampton, and, over the years, had come to know where to look for such miraculous flora as trailing arbutus and princess pine. (I’ll have to take L to those places next spring.) I had seen mountain laurel in bloom here and there along the roadsides, but never in profusion.

    L took me and another friend to a loop trail near the Noyac Golf Club that connects with the east-west Paumanok Path. Someone, apparently members of the Southampton Trails Preservation  Society, had traced the trail with sand to keep wanderers on track. Straying would have been easy because, as we walked along, the mountain laurel bushes appeared not only in front of us but on rises to either side in greater and greater numbers. We walked through bowers and under canopies.

    I remembered mountain laurel’s petals as  pinkish, which apparently is characteristic when they first unfold. Now, in the Noyac woods, the flowers were an almost sheer ivory white. The woodland nymphs could not have found more magnificent places to dance, or sing, or marry, if they were so inclined. Thank you, L.

    In the introduction to his book “The South Fork: The Land and the People of Eastern Long Island,” Everett Rattray wrote about new residents: “The South Fork is native now to a relative handful; it could be native to thousands more if they would undertake the necessary naturalization exercises, which include some long looks beneath the surface of things.”

    We live on an island. A long one, if you take into account the entire landmass from the Brooklyn Promenade all the way east past Money Pond in Montauk. The North and South Forks, surrounded nearly entirely by water, can be thought of as islands of a sort, too, connected as they are to the mainland west of Riverhead by the narrowest of threads. East Hampton has always had an exceptionalist, island mentality.

     In this, we have a lot in common with Martha’s Vineyard, an island seven miles off the New England coast that shares our insular nature as well as our fate as a destination for wealthy summer visitors. When it comes to development, the embrace of the sea and bays limits what we can do, and where. There really isn’t much room here for sprawl; what our neighbors make of their property really matters in most cases.

     As we read in the Vineyard Gazette earlier this month, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission may soon regulate the construction of what they call mega-mansions up thataway. These groaning piles — testaments to vanity, excess, and greed — have disturbed many Vineyard residents and are considered a drain on resources. The commission is responsible for land-use planning in all of the island’s six towns, and could soon begin to have jurisdiction over giant houses through its review of “developments of regional impact,” or DRIs. A debate is under way on the island now, about whether to add mega-mansions to the list of developments that come under the DRI purview.

     According to the commission, examples of DRIs include projects that could increase nitrogen pollution in coastal ponds or seriously worsen traffic, as well as those that will have a notable impact on the Vineyard’s scenery as viewed from highly traveled roads or bodies of water. “Out-of-scale trophy houses,” as the Gazette argued recently, are in desperate need of additional regulation. One member of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission said that the most frequent complaints she hears are about large houses that do not fit in with the landscape or with island traditions, what she said are the very things that draw visitors and new residents in the first place.

     Predictably, opposition has been strong to the possibility of regional regulation of giant vacation houses. One island architect, for example, begged the commission not to get involved in matters of aesthetics.

     We can only imagine the howls that would ring out if a similar effort were undertaken here on the East End. A decision on Martha’s Vineyard is expected in the spring. We’ll be watching with fascination.

We are cleaning our windows today, or rather they are being cleaned on the outside by professionals, and, inside, Mary is standing on the sink counter with folded newspaper — pages that presumably aren’t worth reading — doing the Palladian window that gives out onto the bare ruined choirs of the spindly white oaks in our backyard.

    “Don’t you think it’s much better?” she says, standing back and looking at her handiwork. She’s right. I can see more clearly now, and clarity, after all, is what we want, or are supposed to want. I would prefer, of course, that everything were green, but dun will have to do for the moment, and the grayness of the day. Can Christmas be far behind? Friends asked if we were ready for it the other day, and I said that, after all these years, we still had not managed to escape it.

    As I say this I’ve been nibbling at a hangnail. They say the nails are the first to go, chipping and all that. If so, I’m well on my way. But enough of the maudlin. It’s just that this book she had me read this week, the one by Julian Barnes, about how shit can happen, and about how history can be found at the intersection between imperfect memory and inadequate documentation, has put me, the Class of 1962’s Pollyanna, into an unaccustomed reflective mood.

    Meanwhile, calling me back to the present, Mary has just said, arms akimbo, that the Palladian window “looks so much better now,” and that, further, “we hadn’t noticed how disgusting it was.”

    Ah, that’s it. I had been blissfully unaware, content, perhaps in keeping with the dreariness of the season, not to demand sparkling clarity, but to accept rather a hazier version of things. And yet, even for one who’d rather paint a rosy picture of life, keeping his heart rate up by circulating from one lively sport to another, rather than delve into life’s inherent tragedy — as Barnes certainly does — I’ve got to admit that the windows, with all the film off, are pleasingly crystal clear. In fact, I think that’s the name of the company that did them.

    “I hear Santa’s being brought up on charges,” I call back to Mary, who’s gone on to other things. “For unrealistically inflating expectations when an orange or some pudding would do. The greed that’s so rampant these days is born of this. The issuers of credit default swaps and derivatives derived from derivatives and the sellers of subprime mortgages were indulged at Christmastime when they were 2-year-olds. Santa’s a capitalist tool. . . . Do you think if I asked him nicely, though, that he’d put a few more fanciful anecdotes in my stocking. . . ? Anecdotes of an amusing and self-justifying kind?”

    Meanwhile, I’d like to wish you a happy and clear — as clear as you can take it at any rate — New Year.

   How do we measure the value of a life? For some of us it’s by the wealth and fame amassed, for others it’s by the good works done.

    Last weekend we lost an icon. Even those who are not sports enthusiasts have come to know the name Joe Paterno, but I am not sure they have come to know the man and the value of his life. Born in Brooklyn in 1926 to a good Catholic family, he excelled in sports and was intelligent, attending Brown University. When he graduated, his parents wanted him to go on to law school, but he followed his former coach to Penn State to be his assistant. There his life would forever change. For the next 61 years Paterno devoted his life to the university he came to know and love.

    The events that unfolded this past fall, the alleged sexual molestation of young boys by a former Penn State football coach on Paterno’s staff, sent shock waves throughout the country. The press lambasted Paterno for a crime he did not commit. They judged him guilty by association, and all the naysayers became Monday morning quarterbacks, offering advice about what he should have and could have done. Few came to his defense. Few spoke about his life’s work.

    Tragically, this man who had done so much for so many students’ lives over the last six decades was cast aside by the university he worked so tirelessly to help build. He accepted his fate with respect and dignity because he knew the institution he helped lead was more important than one person.

    Penn State alumni and students were devastated by the events. They, too, became victims by association for a crime they had no part in. They were angry and upset that their beloved head coach was being maliciously attacked by the press and that public sentiment was crucifying him. Some students rioted when the 85-year-old was fired by telephone for a crime he did not commit.

    And now he has passed on. The official diagnosis was lung cancer, which had been found just two months before, but those of us who have grown up with him suspect that he died of a broken heart.

    As you might surmise, I am a Penn State graduate. My P.S.U. family is in mourning. As the head coach of the football program, Paterno was in reality the face of the university — a father figure and our leader. During an exemplary career as a coach, he played by the rules and encouraged players to put education first. He and his wife, Sue, lived in the same modest house they raised their family in. They donated millions to the Pattee Library on campus. His core values were ours, and we respected and valued his dedication.

    It was ironic over the weekend how anyone who is anyone in the sports world was touting his virtues. Where were all these notables in the fall? Paterno not only did not commit any crime, he, too, was a victim. A member of his staff took advantage of his own power and position and allegedly victimized young boys (and I use that word “allegedly” not because I don’t believe crimes were committed but because I graduated with a degree in journalism and live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law).

    My dad is almost Paterno’s age. He also grew up Catholic in Brooklyn in the 1930s. Topics dealing with our bodies, sex, and any deviant behavior were never discussed; even now those subjects are not something my dad is comfortable with. I am not condoning anyone’s actions. Paterno realized that he should have done more to follow up, but I can understand how he had a hard time wrapping his head around the events that were brought to his attention. He did not try to cover up what had taken place; he called his boss to report it. JoePa would never do anything to intentionally hurt a child. He devoted all of his adult life to helping young adults.

    I wasn’t born a Nittany Lion (the name comes from nearby Nittany Mountain). I did not grow up in Pennsylvania. But as a 17-year-old I arrived on campus in the fall of 1978, and I spent four of the most magical years of my life there. I got a terrific education, and, more important, I grew up.

    I met wonderful people. People in central Pennsylvania are grounded. They work hard and are happy with the things their hard work affords them. They don’t look at what others have, jealously searching for more. It’s no wonder that many of my lifelong friends are those I met at Penn State. Almost every year since I graduated I go back to my alma mater for homecoming. When I drive onto the University Park campus, a calm comes over me. I am home.

    I believe Joe Paterno felt the same way about State College, so much so that what was supposed to be a temporary move ended up becoming home for the rest of his life. Over the years he had many lucrative offers to coach in the pros, but he turned them all down. His heart was in Penn State.

    In the 30 years since I graduated and moved back to New York, I have had the chance to travel quite frequently. It pretty much never fails that during one of these trips I will strike up a conversation at an airport or a convention and meet a fellow Penn State graduate. The university has the largest alumni association in the world. What makes being a Penn Stater different is that immediately there is a bond. I have many friends who went to other big universities with rah-rah athletic programs. When they hear my college stories and meet my P.S.U. friends, they tell me how their college years were not like mine. They enjoyed college and made friends, but when they left they moved on with life.

    Penn Staters don’t want to move on. We leave the campus to build careers, marry, and have families, but we always come back. Yes, football was huge there; it was the rallying event each fall weekend that brought so many groups together. But there was so much more to the place.

    Philanthropy and charity were encouraged. My freshman year I danced in a 48-hour dance marathon to raise money for the Hershey Children’s Cancer Hospital, then still in its early stages. Now the largest yearly collegiate fund-raiser in the world, it was just one of many such events I participated in. To this day my friends here applaud my fund-raising efforts and ability to host charity functions.

    That is the face of a Penn Stater. In the aftermath of the awful headlines this fall, we didn’t just pray for the victims and their families, we began fund-raising for organizations associated with the prevention of child abuse.

    We now grieve for those victims of the alleged crimes, their families, and our coach. We know down deep in our hearts that Penn State will be stronger because of this. Though the naysayers insist that the events will define Coach Paterno and Penn State, we know better. The university is not the buildings or the athletic fields or the football team. Penn State is made up of the hearts and souls of its students and alumni, and we are a strong force.

--

    Mary A. Lownes, Penn State class of '82, lives in Amagansett. 

   Howard Miller, from an old family in Springs, was elected the first president of the East Hampton Baymen’s Association in March 1960. His involvement in community life did not begin with this election, however.

    By the mid-1950s, many local people had recognized that the building boom after World War II was not an unmixed blessing. In July of 1955, a civic group calling itself the East Hampton Inland Waterways Association was formed, with Miller as vice president. It sought betterment of the town’s harbors and creeks, The East Hampton Star reported, expressly for the purpose of the “preservation and increase of East Hampton’s only free natural resource, the shellfish industry.” That was Miller’s way of talking, but the group also announced it would seek “dredging of inlets . . . reclamation of land, and the increase of boating.”

    Miller supported improving the channels of the town’s waterways by dredging, but he did not favor “reclamation of land” (that is, the filling of wetlands to create marketable real estate), and he strongly believed that too much “boating” caused pollution. But he knew that taking hard and fast stands on issues could make enemies. Among real estate dealers in town, some certainly favored filling in wetlands to make home sites (with canals for private docking). Among the Inland Waterways Association’s early members, though, there were marina owners for whom building lots of private docking in the town’s harbors was not an idea to be supported.

    The Inland Waterways Association took its time getting organized — about three years, in fact — but finally, on April 14, 1958, the group held a public meeting at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, overlooking Pussy’s Pond. Although The Star of April 10 carries on the front page separate announcements for three different club meetings and a piano recital at Guild Hall, no mention is made of the Inland Waterways’ public meeting. (There was still about a year to go before Jeannette Edwards Rattray, who was quite attuned to the social life of the town, would turn over editorship of The Star to her son Everett, who was an early environmentalist.) The group nevertheless collected $1 in dues from 102 people and compiled a membership list of 95 names, including at least 20 baymen.

    The minutes, neatly typed by the group’s secretary, Joseph Dreesen, state that Steve Palmer, a marina owner, asked the town supervisor, Richard Gilmartin (who was in attendance along with other members of the town board), “if there couldn’t be a way of setting up a program such as Southampton has for taking care of the waterways.” But the group’s real focus was on Accabonac Harbor, which one man said was “in very bad need of having the channel opened.”

    This had been a concern of small-boat owners for some time, and the president of the Inland Waterways Association, William Daub, thereupon appointed a six-man committee, including Howard Miller, to work with the town board to that end. The result was that eight months later Supervisor Gilmartin was able to invite the public to his office to examine “large aerial photos, with transparent overlays showing several possible plans” for the future of Accabonac Harbor, The Star reported. The plans were the work of a private consulting engineer named H. Lee Dennison.

    Dennison had begun work as an engineer in 1927 for Suffolk County and must have been among those who watched in amazement during the late 1920s and early 1930s as Robert Moses’s grand scheme for parks and parkways on Long Island became a reality. That was engineering on a truly monumental scale. In 1951, after writing a scathing report on the planning operations of the Republican-controlled county government, Dennison was fired and entered private business.

    Dennison’s plans for Bonac Creek, The Star reported, “went beyond the mere dredging and stabilization of an inlet.” In fact, they included establishing four town parks with marina areas, extensive private marina facilities at the southern end of the creek, digging a system of canals in the wetlands to create home sites that would have private docking, and dredging two permanent channels to the bay — one at or near the existing inlet and one in the northern part of the harbor.

    Cutting these two inlets would, of course, leave many small summer houses stranded on a new man-made island. So the plan called for construction of “a causeway with a wooden trestle bridge” across the creek, connecting the mainland to the new island. In other words, a causeway would be built starting from Fireplace Road and crossing the wetlands to connect with a bridge that would span the open waters of the harbor. It was reasoned that such a causeway and bridge “would be safer in northeast storms than a bridge across one of the inlets.”

    To its credit, the town board announced a month later that the plan “was too ambitious for the present.” In a Star article titled “Town Scales Down Bonac Creek Plan,” Supervisor Gilmar­tin was reported to say: “For the present, we think that a stabilized channel, with enough dredging inside the creek for a small anchorage, would be enough. . . . There are some doubts about the effect on shellfish of large-scale dredging and two inlets.”

    The town trustees, who had met with the town board to discuss the proposals, believed “the immediate need was for better water circulation inside the creek,” and this could be provided simply by deepening and stabilizing a channel, which would also facilitate boat traffic.

    Miller and Daub continued to work with the town on the project and were instrumental in convincing everyone that a new channel should be dredged somewhat north of the existing one, which should be left to fill in naturally with drifting sand.

    It was necessary to obtain permission to dredge not only from the town but also from the county, state, and federal governments, but somehow the town felt empowered to cut a preliminary shallow channel through the beach at the new site before the federal permit was obtained from the Army Corps of Engineers. The town began work on May 8, 1959, using a bulldozer and a crane equipped with a scoop. The new channel, which was to run 2,300 feet from the bay straight into the harbor, with a width of 100 feet and a depth at low tide of 12 feet, did finally receive the Army Corps permit on July 6, and a month later the long-awaited county dredge Shinnecock appeared on the scene to finish the job.

    The site of the new inlet had been selected in a belief that a centrally located channel, cut westward deep into the interior of the harbor, would improve tidal circulation in all areas, including the northern portion. However, the great dredge, which pumped bottom sand through pipes to places on nearby beach that the town wished to enlarge, ran into trouble. “Hardpan Forces Bonac Dredge Change,” The Star announced on Aug. 20, reporting that town and county officials had “decided to run the channel south . . . rather than continue straight west through the rock and gravel bed, which was forcing the dredge crew to tear down their pump as often as 30 times a day. . . . The dredge will also cut a channel to the north of the new entrance, to fill out their quota of work at Accabonac.”

    And so the new channel assumed a sort of drunken Y shape, which exists to this day.

    The work took about three weeks, the Shinnecock departed for a project in Lake Montauk, and the town board made application to the Army Engineers for permission to close the old inlet. Rather than wait for nature to take its course, it was decided to fill in the old channel so that roadway could be constructed over it in order to reach the beach next to the new inlet. This new tip of land is still called Louse Point, although the original point was over 1,200 feet to the south, now buried under sand fill.

    The point of land on the other side of the new channel, once 1,200 feet longer than it is now and called Cape Gardiner, somehow lost its original name and today the tip of the shortened peninsula is almost always referred to as Gerard Point, since it is at the end of Gerard Drive.

    This time the town waited for the Army Corps permit, and the old inlet was finally closed by East Hampton Town Highway Department bulldozers on Feb. 16, 1960. Two days later, on the night of Feb. 18, with high tide three feet above normal, winds 40 to 60 miles an hour beat against the new barrier. In Miller’s notes is an entry from that night: “The causeway across [old] Accabonac channel was severely put to a test. The sea washed across the causeway [which] was fortified with tree stumps, and it held.”

    Miller, who two weeks later was elected president of the Baymen’s Association, was a strong advocate of the Accabonac project. It was an engineering solution that would benefit everyone, and if it had cost taxpayers something to get it, he reasoned, it would be nearly maintenance-free in the future. Closing the old channel, he believed, would “help keep the new channel open” because now all tidal currents would go through the new inlet, and he figured that this “flow of the tides through the new entrance should keep it scoured.”

    The problem was that nature did not want the channel in its new location; she wanted it in its original site, shallow as that was. Prevailing tidal currents strive constantly to this day to plug up the new inlet. As a result, the town must fairly often go through the lengthy process of application to arrange for the county dredge to remove the shifting sands that continually fill in the channel. In between visits from the Shinnecock, the town sends the Highway Department to scoop out whatever sand can be reached from the shore by a crane with a swinging bucket, a nearly annual event.

    But Miller never knew this; he became ill and passed away in August 1962.

    Arnold Leo, recently elected secretary of the East Hampton Baymen's Association for the 34th year, lives in Springs and has worked as a book editor, bayman, and caretaker. He was the town's fisheries consultant from 2007 through 2010.