Columnists

   Waiting in the San Francisco Airport departure lounge late Sunday into Monday morning for a delayed flight home, I noticed that of the couple hundred people hanging around only a handful were reading a good, old-fashioned book. Oh, folks were reading, of course, or looking at something or other, but the majority were using some kind of handheld device or computer. I saw no one reading an actual, hard-copy, dead-tree magazine or newspaper at all.

   As any habitual reader of this column already knows, my neighborhood — or, anyway, the property surrounding my house — was, last fall and winter, home to a resident family of deer. Five would appear at once, and two were fawns. For the most part, they ambled, rather than ran, across the lawn or down the lane; they seem to enjoy visits to the adjacent East Hampton Library grounds, too. I never could figure out where they bedded down. But while other members of our household railed against them, I took a benevolent, maternal attitude.

   Elizabeth Kotz recently put me on to Electro Mix, little packets of minerals — heavy metals, her husband, Steve, told me — that I have found to be quite effective when playing tennis in humid heat.

   Last month a friend gave me, unsolicited, a copy of a book called “Wheat Belly.” What was she trying to tell me?

    It hadn’t escaped me that, having reached a certain age, my middle had begun to expand. I eat very healthfully, and exercise regularly, but still the old spare tire clung to me like an embedded tick.

   No one in our household, nor at Russell and Fiona Bennett’s place up the way, heard the sirens Saturday night.

    It was a little after 10 p.m. when, according to a police report, a drunken driver flipped his BMW convertible, injuring himself and two passengers. We did not know about it until much later, when my sister sent us an e-mail saying she had heard of it on Facebook.

   Perhaps it can be said that I have a handicap where computers are concerned. After all, I started using them in what might, depending on the actuarial tables, be considered the second half of life. No matter. I keep trying to catch up, to learn more and get better at it. But I am not sure I am getting a passing grade.

   I know it’s after the fact and thus irrelevant to the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen whom Mr. Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, had pursued while the youth was returning to the condo his father’s fiancée rented in a gated Florida community, but one wonders why on earth a neighborhood watch volunteer was carrying a gun in the first place.

    Thinking on that reminded me that armed “auxiliaries” were once proposed here.

   When workers get off the job, one might think that they would kick back and relax after a hard day’s labor. That they would at least go home, take a shower, and maybe collapse into bed. But on weekend evenings, as soon as work is out at around 5 or 6, Latin American men of various nationalities head to the barren fields and dense woods of the community center at Stephen Hand’s Path in East Hampton.

   We have met the enemy and it is us. That is the conclusion I reached this week as summer 2013 began to reach full fever pitch.

    Here’s my epiphany: Those of us who consider ourselves local like to think it is folks from away who need a little attitude adjustment. Perhaps they do, what with their expressions of entitlement, boorishness, and piled-on demands, but frankly, it is those of us who should know better by dint of living here year round who really have no excuse.

   Protesters holding  signs reading “Trayvon Martin Lynch­ed” marched down University Place in New York, where I happened to be, on Monday. From across the street, the marchers seemed outnumbered by police. A long line of officers walked in tandem with them, another line of police on motorcycles edged the street, and other officers, apparently of higher rank, stood nearby, along with several vans. I had no idea what to expect and wondered if the police were sent out in high numbers only to keep order or because violence was feared.

   Sartre was right: Hell is other people, I think,s as I try to navigate as calmly as possible through the throbbing, siren-wailing traffic here.

    Well, perhaps not other people, but other drivers, for sure. In the aggregate, they and I could pass for a pretty fair approximation of hell, which if by hell you mean torment.

    Yes, it’s pretty safe to say that we who drive here in the summertime are tormented — a fact music, however serene, or talk radio, however demented, will not allay.

   My iPhone 4 fell out of my back pocket and into the toilet.

    Three things raced through my mind when I heard the splash: Get it out! Dry it off! I can’t believe this is happening!

    I grabbed a towel and rubbed, and then I did what you are never, ever supposed to do when your cellphone gets wet: turned it on.

    A flicker of life! The little Apple silhouette — glowing, otherwordly — appeared . . . and vanished.

   Unfortunately perhaps, East Hampton Bowl was just the kind of place you did not think about much — or miss until it was gone. This dawned on me as I was driving west on an errand early Sunday. One word on the classic road sign said it all: Closed.

    East Hampton Bowl had been shuttered at the end of June after 54 years. My first thought was of my son, Ellis, who is 3. He had been there a few times but would in all likelihood never be there again. It was a melancholy moment.

   I am not a believer in astrology, but could someone please tell me if Mercury is in retrograde? What a mixed-up jumble of a week I have been having.

   My brother-in-law said as I mumbled something about having to go to the U.S. Women’s Open this past week that there was, after all, nothing else to write about.

    “What nonsense,” I said. “There’s Little League!” And, indeed, our 9 and 10-year-olds were not to disappoint on the evening of July 1 as they took the wind out of Westhampton’s sails, by a score of 10-0, a merciless rout that was ended mercifully after four innings instead of the customary six.

   If you were to sit in the back seat of my car or hitch a ride in my pocket, you would hear me composing rules like Gibbs does on “NCIS.” Naturally, because they are mine, they are less terse than his. Maybe they are suggestions and disgruntlements rather than rules, but I like “NCIS,” and if I can channel Gibbs, why not? Another favorite, Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC, reads (on air) a letter to someone to whom she would like to make a point. She also inspires me. Herewith:

Dear people:

   We were two weeks without a functioning washing machine, and not one of the local repair companies with which I had left messages had called me back about service. It seemed odd.

    We had been going to the in-laws to use their washer. For us, a family of five, plus beach towels at this time of year, that made for a lot of trips, missing items, and an all-around headache. Something had to be done.

   Usually, by this time of summer, I would have become bored with the hostas that always grew around the foundation of the house and around the barn. Seemingly eternal, they were full and old — many decades old — and mostly variegated, deep green streaked with white. By July, too, I would find myself complaining that the irrepressible orange tiger lilies were taking over the circular bed in the middle of my back yard. A few years ago, I even dug up a clump of tiger lilies and had them transplanted at my daughter’s place, thinking I really needed to thin them out.

   Ah, Independence Day. The heady air of freedom!      

   Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, freedom from self-censorship, freedom from toeing the line, freedom from zeal, freedom from banality, freedom from filling out forms, freedom from conforming, freedom from filling out more forms, freedom from drudgery, freedom from helicopter noise.

    Freedom from trembling, freedom from dissembling, freedom from idee fixes, freedom from margarita mixes, freedom from hand-wringing, freedom from barbershop singing, freedom from gas, freedom from race and class.

   Now that our visitors have settled in a bit and fallen in love with our beautiful beaches, lakes, ponds, and woodland areas, I think it’s time to introduce them to some of Montauk’s more colorful characters, hopefully without scaring them away, although that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

    In every small town in every city in every state, people who frequent the same gin joints tend to get nicknamed. Sometimes they’re simple, like Smiley (been there), or insulting, like Thunder Thighs (done that, still there), or Scoop (over it).

   The other day as I was explaining a cliché about boats to our oldest child, Adelia, I became acutely aware of the gap between us. The old saw, “A boat is a hole in the water that you pour money into,” meant nothing to her, she made clear as I tried to put it several different ways.

   When Anna Mirabai Lytton, a 14-year-old from Springs, was struck by a car and killed in East Hampton on June 15, it was as if the community-at-large were bereaved. As a parent and grandparent, I can think of nothing so horrible as the loss of a child.

   At the dump the other day, I reached into the paper bin to retrieve a slim volume of what I thought might be racy medieval lyrics — in Latin, as it turned out — and a fat “History of the World” by Toynbee, though abridged.

    The inscription referred to Santayana’s opinion that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, though the tome, while moldy (presumably the reason for it having been discarded, along with quite a few other books), didn’t look as if it had been read.

   It’s quite common to see deer while driving around East Hampton. Every time I drive by the open field on Apaquogue Road there are at least 40 standing there, grazing like cattle. They have practically been domesticated, and thus we are immune to their presence.       

    We smirk as they munch on our neighbors’ flowers and vegetable gardens. But most of the time, we simply see them as part of the landscape and move on.

   There is no way to say for certain, but it sure looked like a village traffic control officer was sleeping on the beach the other morning. Like I said, it was hard to know.

    About a week ago, I was out for an early surf at the first Georgica jetty. The waves were small, but with only one other lone person to share them, it was a good way to start the day.

   Having attended a batch of end-of-year school and dance programs in the last few weeks, I have become acutely aware of just how segregated the world is that my grandchildren inhabit. This is a topic that can make even the most open-minded citizens squirm; no one wants the world to be like this, but somehow we still shy away from talking about it. So let’s talk.

    Call it de facto segregation, if you will: With only a few exceptions, my grandchildren live and play in near-isolation from those children who are so-called visible minorities.

The attention of metadata miners in a bunker somewhere in the godless West was drawn to the following intriguing telephonic transcript (for which a court order had been obtained, of course).

    “Hi, Sarah, this rain has been of biblical proportions, hasn’t it? I’m treating myself to some apple pie a la mode.”

    “A la . . . [crackling sound]? Ruth, I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.”

    “A la mode, I said.”

    “Oh, a la [more crackling] is great!”

    “Reading any interesting books these days?”

   Given the tantalizing headline, I couldn’t wait until Thursday to read “Here Comes the Sun,” Carrie Ann Salvi’s “Relay” in the May 16 edition of The Star, so I snuck back to the production department on Tuesday afternoon. (Tuesday afternoon is never ending, as Paul McCartney sang in “Lady Madonna,” so I had time to spare.)

   An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen of my cellphone shortly after 7 on Monday night. I was waiting at home for my wife to get back from a quick trip in and out of New York City and thinking about how to get the kids to go to bed.

   I’m not alone, obviously, in being reluctant to submit to a party on my birthday. I haven’t had a real one since the year I turned 49 and threw one for myself, with a packed house and the kids helping prepare the food — a barbecued leg of lamb, if I remember correctly. That was the 1980s, when parties usually ended up with lots of noise and friends drinking to the music of early Frank Sinatra.