Columnists

If a parking ticket in Southampton Town isn’t a first-world problem, then I don’t know what is.

This week, amid juggling pre-election stories, it has been project time in the Rattray household. Evvy, our sixth grader, volunteered to make one of the party games for a school Halloween party, and so, after spending Tuesday trying to make sense of campaign finance reports, I raced home with a slab of builder’s blue foam.

I ’ve been all a-twitter as the dismantling of the early-19th-century Hedges barn on our property — soon to be moved and reconstructed across Main Street, on the Mulford Farm — draws near.

A woman overtaking me as I walked up — or is it down? — Main Street the other day said in passing that it was a wonderful day.

Putter, a male cat who may not have made it, and Summer, Putter’s sister, a shy, small, not-much-of-a-cat’s cat, have both blossomed into Disney movie-like caricatures — possibly, someday, attaining cat-legend status in the Cats Hall of Fame, East Hampton, N.Y.

It had been some time since we last thought about the Montauk Monster around the office. But on Tuesday, our memories were refreshed by a query from a National Geographic television program producer looking for images for an upcoming program.

Trying to explain why I like the film festival so much, I came up with a backstory: The Star was among the first public voices to welcome its arrival in East Hampton in 1993. Many year-round residents were wary that first year, fearing the festival would bring traf- fic snarls and unwelcome crowds of gawkers, possibly even harming lo- cal businesses.

Well, I’m finished with the Pirates — for awhile anyway. I had called on Zeus to strike down Jake Arrieta with a thunderbolt, but the best he could do was hit him in the butt with a pitch by Tony Watson in the seventh inning.

The closing of Waldbaum’s was a long time coming. The company had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for a while, and the growing neglect that comes with that may account for why so many of us out here were left wondering why Waldbaum’s hated us so much.

Lisa said it would get worse before it got better and she was right. There is a rule of etiquette that says that it is impolite to talk about one’s health, but if describing the cold that has been working its way through our household will convince one person to go scrub their hands, it will have been worth it.

Whenever th season changes, I think of a woman who worked at The Star some years back who arrived every day more than impeccably dressed. To be sure, she was fashionable, but every outfit also seemed brand new.

When the Republican candidates began to talk the other night about sending in the Sixth Fleet, strangling Putin, strong-arming China, and bringing Mexico’s bordercrossing legions to heel, I walked down the hall to see on our other TV the Pirates-Cubs game.

Most of us who live and work out here often find ourselves in close proximity to celebrities. They dine in our restaurants, shop in our stores, and even run lemonade stands with their children.

The film festival opens here tonight with a screening and party. Lenny Gail, an old college friend, and his family will arrive tomorrow to take in an impressive number of films with a little lunch and dinner squeezed in somehow.

Salem witch trials. During the dark days of the Red Scare, in the 1950s, Arthur Miller wrote his fictionalized account, “The Crucible,” about them, and the city of Salem, in Massachusetts, recounts the terrible story in museums and in a “Witch Village.” The Salem trials took place in 1692. Nineteen people were hanged, one pressed to death, and four died in prison. You can’t visit Salem without being confronted by what the law-abiding citizens thought and did.

“‘Rose, pure contradiction,joy...’”I began as Mary looked up from her porch chair on the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 15.

When an electronic thing breaks — hair drier, waterpick, fridge, or dish- washer — unplug it. How do you unplug a dishwasher? I have no idea, but I won’t ever leave a broken one plugged in for six weeks, that’s for sure.

About a year ago I briefly had  an idea that I would like to lease a new Volkswagen TDI, one of the models now at the center of a massive fraud scandal. I decided against it, opting instead for a Chevrolet Volt.

Volt drivers, the dealer told me when I was first looking at the car, are a kind of cult. Nearly 12 months into the three-year lease I signed, I know what he meant and might add that we are a smug cult now that Volkswagen has been found cheating on emissions tests.

A thick wool outdoorsman’s sweater made by Barbour of England — a gift from a family member who visited Great Britain a lot around the year 2000 and 2001 — has been my husband’s favorite for years. So as his birthday approached a few weeks ago, I decided to buy him another in a different color. A simple task given the simplicity of Internet shopping, right?

I don’t know if it’s that I’m finally getting it, but I’ve begun to feel more akin to nature, which, yes, includes rats and bats, and, of course, those wonderful languorous slugs about whose lovemaking I wrote a few weeks past.

The fashion police are making a steady exit from the Village of East Hampton, New York, this September 2015. Also: The National Guard is being considered as a remedy for the poor post-11 p.m. behavior that took place in open view on the streets and beaches of Montauk, New York, this past summer 2015. A group of National Guardsmen may station on Montauk for the summer of 2016 as a deterrent to bad behavior.

Abby Jane Brody, The Star’s gardening columnist, came into the upstairs office this week and told us about a horde of beetles that had descended on the milkweed in the native plant garden at Clinton Academy, next door.

At a time of year when everything — the lack of crowds, the halcyon weather, the start of school — coalesces to underscore how good the life we lead is, we might tend to take it all for granted. But despite manifestations of extreme inequality (some members of our community depend on food pantries to eat, while others invest in second — or third, or fourth — homes that are far beyond anything we might have considered reasonable in size and cost only a few years ago), we share so many privileges here on the South Fork.

Several outstanding young athletes have decamped recently, preventing me from recounting in florid language their triumphs every week, but Godspeed, I say, for, as has been shown in the past, mileage generally must be logged if great athletic ambitions are to be realized by East Enders.

The first photograph of mine that was published in this paper was, I believe, in 1979. It was on the cover, and it was of Pete Kromer, a haul-seiner and a friend, kneeling on the ocean beach at the end of a giant bag of weakfish while simultaneously tossing two in the air to his truck.

Ellis, our 5-year-old, started kindergarten last week. And, since he attends school where, and in the same building, I did when I was about his age, a lot of memories are being stirred.

For year-rounders, summer is not generally the time for relaxation. Beaches and outdoor pursuits beckon, but for us working stiffs, the nonstop revelry of July and August feels like an endurance test.

I was thinking of calling the Hampton Jitney to see if I couldn’t get them to wrap one of their buses with a photo of me and fellow septuagenarian Gary Bowen, winners this past Sunday of East Hampton Indoor’s men’s B doubles championship, but modesty prevailed.

He is Jamaican. He is a big man, tall and broad. He gets on in Montauk with me at 7 a.m. We both sit down in front, where there is more legroom. We are riding the 10C.

It would be best if I spared our eldest child my emotional confessions, but the house is now very different with her packed off to school in Delaware.