Columnists

I feel like I spent most of the month of April in Tom Field’s basement. This may sound like an odd statement, I realize, but if you have any connection to the network of emergency medical providers on the South Fork, you get it.

It was surprising at the beginning of the week to find myself in an art gallery in a small town in Northern California looking at photographs calling attention to that community’s housing crisis.

Although the jokey nickname is often used, calling Montauk “The End” doesn’t really catch the spirit of the buzzing community at the tip of Long Island. It has always felt like a place apart —

My brother-in-law, presider over an annual Kentucky Derby party, couldn’t pronounce the horse’s name, and so, of course, I went for it — Mubtaahij.

One of the first questions I’m always asked is, “How can you stand the smell?” I invariably answer, “What smell?”

My own collecting has no particular form, unlike, say, people who scour the markets for cast-iron tractor seats or frog figurines. Still, I am fascinated by those who develop passions for whatever it is and pursue them.

This old house, pardon me, I mean office building, is full of surprises; you never know what will be unearthed in the archives, or a filing cabinet, or an old desk. What we need here is a resident historian.

My son said recently he thought I’d live to 100, submitting an article that found a link between longevity and vigorous exercise, though if there’s a danger point beyond which you shouldn’t go they haven’t ascertained it yet, nor have I.

Since my son is working on Sunday and one of my daughters lives quite far away, I don’t expect much for Mother’s Day. So I’ve given myself a gift — the gift of meditation.

Had I known that scones were relatively easy to make, I would have begun baking them years ago. I like to cook and consider myself pretty good in the kitchen, but that said, like almost any simple art, scones take work to get right.

Constant readers, especially those with a flair for gardening, would have seen and I hope enjoyed The Star’s gardening supplement, which was part of last Thursday’s edition.

I’ve seen my wife worshipful, utterly transported, a few times in my life. Once in the cathedral at Chartres, and now, many years later, again, at the Baltimore Aquarium, where, beckoned by her hands, which she’d pressed against the glass, a dolphin gliding by faced around and came ever so slowly toward her, smiling, her eyes seeming to say, “I know you.”

The phone rang from home early Tuesday morning. I was at the office, and Lisa was home getting Ellis, our 5-year-old, ready for school. The subject of breakfast had come up, and Ellis was adamant.

Everyone loses things. Right? So why was I in such a tizzy when my purse, containing a wallet and the usual appurtenances, disappeared last week?

Sometime during this winter past, quizzical surfers considered a long-asked question: If the saltwater in the Atlantic Ocean is close to freezing temperature, technically partially frozen, can one still surf?

The last time I looked, I was getting 100 miles to the gallon. This is not entirely fair to the purely internal combustion vehicles on the road, though, since we are talking about my Chevy Volt.

Robert Frost would, I think, find it ironic that the most often repeated line from his poem “Mending Wall” is his neighbor’s insistence that “good fences make good neighbors.” The poet, you see, doesn’t really seem to agree. He says:

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder    

If I could put a notion in his head: 

Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows.

It seemed reading the paper the other morning that all was chaos, and yet . . . and yet the baseball season had begun!

And, somehow — for that moment at any rate — everything seemed all right, everything seemed natural, and fitting, and harmonious — just as it should be.

And, what’s this, the Mets won!

And what’s this, the Yankees lost!

On opening day. The lowly raised up and the mighty fallen — just as it should be.

Nearing the end of a hard winter with little in the budget for luxuries, my husband and I decided to take the family on a day-and-a-half side trip to Disney World while visiting my grandmother in Florida.

I was leery of it and practically begged my husband to put it out of his mind until another time, and then I caved. Ever budget-conscious, I figured we’d just have to bite the bullet, get out the plastic, and nurse the spending hangover later.

To be fair, Leo the pig did not actually try to burn down the house. I was not there at the time, but the evidence suggests that it was an unintentional act born of utter need.

What I remember most about going to see Frank Sinatra perform in New York City is the smell of lily of the valley perfume. I must have been at least 14 because if I had been younger my parents would not have let me go, joining a batch of girls who took a bus from Bayonne to Jersey City’s Journal Square and then the Hudson Tubes to the city.

“You’re quite the tennis player,” my younger opponent said the other night.

Well, I would like to think so, but there’s much to do. Several times recently I’ve felt I was on the brink of mastering my serve, only to be disabused. Tim Ross says he has that got-it-nailed feeling with his golf swing at times only to have it vanish the next time out.

I visited the Wainscott School last Monday, and just like its 19 students do there every day, I learned something new.

Columbia Journalism Review’s lengthy analysis of “A Rape on Campus,” a 2014 Rolling Stone article that was largely based on allegations that could not be verified, is an education for everyone who works in the news business as well as for readers.

Although we all know that language is constantly changing, that the English we use today is quite different from what it was in Shakespeare’s time, I can’t help wondering where certain words and phrases come from and how they become ubiquitous. Like others who write or edit, I keep my eyes and ears open, and I am not always happy about what I read or hear.

In the predawn hours before the boys basketball state final last week, I began thinking of possible headlines, assuming, of course, that the eight-time-champion Killer Bees would win a ninth title. Which they did, in fine fashion.

“Bees on Cloud Nine”

“Bees Swarm to the Task”

“Beeline Made to Title”

“Bees Awake and Sting”

“How the Once Mighty Are Pollen”

“Apidi, Apidae . . . How the Rout Goes On”

“Fab Hive Comes Alive”

“Bee-fense! Bee-fense!”

“Back in the Honey”

Since my children are grown and moved out of the house, the Easter Bunny will not be visiting this year. But that’s okay because my dog, Brodie, is as soft and cuddly as any bunny rabbit. When he stands on his hind legs, as he tends to do when he’s feeling nosey, and looks out our front window to see what’s going on in the neighborhood, he’s as tall as the real Easter Bunny that visited the Montauk Firehouse on Sunday.

Yes, to school. Our son, Ellis, and his prekindergarten classmates have been studying animals, with the usual parade of bunnies, a service dog, a lizard, and a small fuzzy creature of a sort Ellis could not quite identify. Leo would fit right in, his teachers said, and I could not refuse.

Getting Leo ready for his big outing was no small task. First there was the matter of finding a harness that would fit his un-canine-like proportions. Then there was the issue of making him presentable.

It takes courage and tremendous power of persuasion to convince the electorate, and the powers-that-be, that the general consensus on a matter of public policy is wrong. Kevin McAllister and Mike Bottini showed that courage when they filed a lawsuit last week to try to stop the construction by the Army Corps of Engineers of a 3,100-foot-long and 50-foot-wide revetment along the ocean beach at Montauk. I’m not so sure about their powers of persuasion.

We were sitting on a narrow, pleasantly crowded fine-sand beach in Naples, Fla., the other day, reading our books under an umbrella as walkers paraded by, one of whom caught my eye, wearing as he was black shorts and his long black hair tied back.

What made him come up to us I forget, though it seemed apt. I told him I was reading a book on Zen Buddhism, and he said that that was good, and that — according to Mary’s recall — he liked to propound too much to be a Buddhist.