Columnists

Talking to my sister-in-law Linda the other day the subject turned to trip-planning.

For the past week or so, I’ve been hard at work taping and spackling my entryway, which was taken down to the studs way back in June when we had a new front door installed. It’s a 6-by-3-foot room, but it took me six months of stolen minutes and late-night hours just to hang the drywall.

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

Throughout the drawn out 2016 election season I found myself puzzled about why candidates asked potential supporters for small contributions — $3 for various senatorial candidates, $1 for Hillary Clinton. Then it became evident. As Bernie Sanders has proved, it adds up.

At a gathering at Ashawagh Hall that followed a service in Green River Cemetery for Ralph Carpentier, who I always remember said the tranquillity of the terrain here informed our psyches, Elena Prohaska exclaimed that she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Caught in Providence,” as I learned, is something of a local phenomenon, the brainchild of Frank Caprio, the chief udge of the city’s municipal court. A search on YouTube is worth it.

On my way through Saga­ponack on an errand Monday afternoon, I noticed that the plastic coyote that had been placed in the middle of a field south of the highway was gone. Thus ended what had been one of the area’s all-too-few solid public pranks.

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

After congratulating me on my 76th birthday and hearing that I still played tennis in mad dog fashion, Matt Charron, who does our photos, said, “I hear you’ve got some titanium in you. . . .”

The war on leaves throughout the Town of East Hampton, New York, has been won. Victory has also been declared in the Village of East Hampton, a village within the township’s boundaries. East Hampton is a small community by United States standards, located along the Northeast coastline. Somewhere in its lengthy history dating to the 17th century tree leaves got a very bad name.

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

The graceful rituals of a Greek Orthodox wedding took us UpIsland last weekend, when one my husband’s sons and the woman of his dreams were married on Saturday at the exquisite St. Demetrios Church in Jamaica, Queens.

“You’re gonna love it. I’m going to get the best business minds in the country together and we’re going to say no to China and no to Mexico — and build a wall there, by the way, it’s easy — and no to Bernie Sanders, who wants to give this country away. I’ll be the greatest creator of jobs that the Creator ever created. You can count on it. We’re going to make America grandiose again.”

You can bicycle in the snow, you know. It depends, of course, on the type of bike, and the tires. Me, I have a Giant-make mountain bike with broad tires with a deep tread. Bought it about 20 years ago from Chris Pfund’s bike shop in Montauk. Still going strong.

My thinking was that if I couldn’t manage to clean up my office in February, there was no way I was going to be able to do it at all. So, while Lisa and the kids were in the city to see a Broadway show recently, I began what amounted to paperwork excavation.

Don’t shoot the messenger: It’s a cliché worth remembering. We are, all of us, too liable to cast blame on whoever or whatever delivers unpleasant information.

Goethe thought solipsism was the worst sin, and while I think he may have a point there, it is my birthday, and what else can I do but revel in the fact.

My husband and I have been married for 43 years and have spent 44 years celebrating Valentine’s Day. Over the years it has become less of a celebration and more of an acknowledgment. We really don’t eat much candy, but I always get a store-bought bouquet of flowers and a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and always scratch-off lottery tickets. Because, just like Bruno Mars sings in the song that probably made him one, “I wanna be a billionaire so freaking bad.”

So I was in New York City briefly last Thursday for an opening at my friend Eric Firestone’s gallery loft on Great Jones Street. New York is a big place, and the chance of bumping into someone I know from Amagansett is pretty low.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission threw campaign finance reform out the window.

It is Mozart’s birthday as I write this, and that reminds me of what the late Steve Sigler said in an interview I did with him in March 1996, to wit, that Mozart was “all about reconciliation, total reconciliation — no wonder he died at 35.”

The two women hurried south, coats pressed to bodies as the wind picked up on Third Avenue. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just. . . .”

There’s nothing better than soup when you’re snowed in for two days — or when you expect to be. The weather forecasts were dire on Saturday morning, but the larder was full and I was ready to cook.

It is a simple entry in the 1780 town trustee records: “Ned negro to ring the bel for 30/,” and yet it says so much.

“Teach me a kick serve,” I said to Lisa Jones, “and it will be the last piece in the jeweled crown that is my doubles tennis game.”

Kind words offered from a genuine place are the best type of words. They are a walking stick on uneven terrain. They are a ladder up from somewhere dark and undesirable.

Long ago, when I was about to marry into The East Hampton Star family, I took a course at Columbia University's School of Continuing Education on how to write obituaries. It was prophetic.

The president has asked that we act more in harmony with each other, that we step up to the plate insofar as citizenship goes, that we not give in to antipathy and fear, and that we retain our native optimism.

On the one hand, I enjoyed it when Stuart Vorpahl phoned the office. On the other, there was usually a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the front office said he was on the line because he almost never called when he agreed with something we had written.

How lucky we were that the surf drew Rusty Drumm to Montauk and then to us. His loss leaves The Star diminished, and it is also deeply personal. Even after he decided to give semiretirement a try, he was out there, part of the human landscape we could count on for knowledge, sharp opinion, and advice. He had rare acuity, the capacity to see what struck his eye in profound detail, which made him a superb reporter and writer. Perhaps most of all, he was a passionate and compassionate man who shared the joy he had in life. H.S.R.