Guestwords

    “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.” Harvey Shapiro did repeat himself (when he was reading his poetry), and unless I missed something, he did not rhyme.

    I met Harvey 30 years ago at a memorial service for a friend of Harvey’s, a poet, who was also my uncle. When I met Harvey again years later at a dinner party in East Hampton, he said that it was the funniest memorial service he ever attended.

    Let us say that my brother is married to a woman from Yemen. Let us say that they are good people (whatever you think that means). Let us say that she and my brother have become estranged, but share custody of their children. Let us say that they are good parents. Let us say that their son learned Latin at Boston College, their daughter Arabic at the University of Maryland. Let us say my sister-in-law once worked as an actuary for the I.R.S.

    You line up like a captive on a pirate ship, steeling yourself for the final walk off the plank. Common sense reminds you that air travel is one of the safest modes of transportation. And yet just to be on the safe side, you surreptitiously glance at the other passengers to catch a sign of any instability that might have been overlooked during check-in.

   My mother just sent me a birthday card with the five volumes of “Origins of the Past,” the series on local history that recently had its latest installment published. Her note on the card: “I think that your heritage can influence your whole life.”

   My partner, David, and I had dinner recently at Nick and Toni’s. We eat at bars; the drinks seem to come more quickly and you get the check faster and you can dine alone at a bar if you like with a magazine or a book and not be bothered by other solo diners looking to meet, or converse, or just feel less lonely.

    For better or worse, with or without reading material, you often wind up talking to people to the left and right of you, whether you’re attracted to them or not. It’s kind of like airplane seating when you fly alone, without the turbulence. Or the meals.

    Daisy, Violet, and Gladiola are flowers, but they’re also people who happen to have charming floral names popular in England when they were born. These three blossoms are known among family and friends as the Three Flowers. Perennials who are getting past their prime, first bloom long gone, but they remain vital, engaged, and reasonably healthy for their 96, 93, and 88 years.

    As a resident of greater Philadelphia, a summer resident of Montauk, I sat in horror as I watched the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. It was my wake-up call and I knew I had to do something, so I headed to Staten Island.

    People who study suicide scientifically, like me, have long recognized how society stigmatizes those who complete suicide and their remaining relatives. Historical records show that during the Middle Ages suicide corpses were regularly mutilated to prevent the unleashing of evil spirits. Suicides were denied burial in church cemeteries. Afterward, the property of their surviving kin was usually confiscated, and families were excommunicated for failing to pay the heavy tithes expected by the church.

   In the end it really boiled down to Nelson Osborne declaring it wasn’t a good idea. The proposal to consider a name change for the Incorporated Village of East Hampton developed at a village board meeting and ended with reader feedback through The East Hampton Star. Jud Banister, well into his third term as village mayor, surfaced the suggested name change at the board’s regular March 21, 1941, meeting. The minutes reflect that the board members C. Louis Edwards, Charles O. Gould, Chester M. Cloud, and Willard B. Livingston, and the clerk, J.

    Are you grouchy, grumpy, or gloomy at this time of year? Irritable? Depressed, drowsy, tired? Maybe a headache? Your spirits sag? Or you suffer silently, your mind wanders, ideas elude you?

    If so, you may have a case of spring fever, like Dorothy Parker, who kvetched: “Every year, back comes spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up. . . .”

    Does spring fever really exist, or is it an imaginary ailment? Does your body change its chemistry and rhythms?

   First love and first time at the theater should be joyful experiences, and when artfully combined, as in the Springs Community Theater production of “Peter Pan” at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater, they are simply a blast.

    The theater was packed for the Sunday matinee, and the energy of the little ones in the audience, with an occasional mommy or daddy thrown in, was palpable at the curtain.

    After his triumphant election in November 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to wait five months to address the desperate condition of the nation’s banking system, while exiting President Hoover rained down appeals to F.D.R. to endorse a continued gold standard.

    Roosevelt was interested in restoring confidence in the American financial system. To that end, he recruited a non-banker, a pillar of New York City and East Hampton, William H. Woodin.

   A diagnosis of cancer leads to many complex and life-altering decisions for the patient and family. Treatment choices, family role disruption, and quality-of-life issues are among the challenges faced by the patient almost immediately. They come at a time when the psychological trauma of accepting the knowledge of a chronic, life-threatening disease is faced — usually unexpectedly and in addition to the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and coping with growing old.

    We of a certain age and perhaps a certain degree of affluence may not have a huge store of old photographs. Certainly nowhere near as many as are being accumulated in this digital age. But, thank God for the ones we have! They capture past moments of a reality, for the most part, a reality that had a gala edge. One can almost enter an old scene and re-experience the moment. Sometimes that step-in even will allow you to supply your own soundtrack.

   When you need the fat, you need the fat. Jud Banister’s laundry machinery used a particular type of beef fat, and the East Hampton Village mayor routinely filled his need from the local butcher. But times in World War II’s 19th month were different, and suddenly government regulations threw a wrench into things.

    The second connection between me and Whitey Bulger, the star monster of the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list, never came to light until two years ago when, after some 16 years of searching, they found him hiding out as another harmless-looking, white-bearded retiree in sunny Santa Monica, Calif.

   Whatever the task, I prefer to do it on my own. Most people with a disability do.

    Is it Presidents’ Day or President’s Day, a question that seems to have divided the nation in the great punctuation war being waged last week in the media. I will leave it to grammarians to settle where the apostrophe properly belongs.

    Either way, as a historian, I think it an outrage the way we are now forced to celebrate George Washington’s birthday (so-called President’s or Presidents’ Day).

   The very French movie called “Amour” has created a tsunami of universal acclaim: a beautiful, but tragic, love story of a lifelong romantic couple, now elderly, made even more real by the actors, themselves an aging movie hero and heroine. However, there may be a tragic misunderstanding involved in this universal appeal. The movie seems to tap into a perverse, pervasive, and profound misunderstanding of how we die of chronic, debilitating diseases, and of the critical role of doctors and medical knowledge at the end of life.

    Our proposal began like a dream, with two lovers gazing into each other’s eyes over a candlelight dinner, but quickly morphed into a Greek tragedy starring Italian actors.

    Getting married in an Italian family is not only an event between the bride and bridegroom but also an occasion for them to establish relationships with each other’s families. The success of many Italian marriages often depends on whether the family accepts the proposed mate.

    When I heard about the death of former Mayor Ed Koch, I thought about the last time I had seen him, last October at the Hamptons International Film Festival. He had made the trip to the East Hampton Cinema for the screening of his new documentary film, “Koch,” about his life as mayor and all the wonderful things he had accomplished during his reign from 1978 through 1989.

   In 1976, Marilynn and I found ourselves together as housemates in a large, run-down Victorian just outside Boston, pursuing our careers, she as a nurse and me, a teacher. That year, she taught me to love snow.

    Marilynn was from a small town in upstate New York where cold and white winters last four to six months of the year. Growing up there, she did what people who live in snow do: play, snowshoe, and ski to get around.

    The students enter the building through a side door, where they promptly submit backpacks and any other personal items to the N.Y.P.D. safety agent who greets them at the steps. There’s a male agent for the boys, a female for the girls. Everyone is scanned for weapons, cellphones, and drugs upon entering the building. Some of the more committed students have already hidden items inside a shoe, their underwear, perhaps the lining of a wig. The rest have scattered belongings in various spots throughout the neighborhood.

I have been a writer of advertising for a little over 44 years. I have won awards, I have been fired. I have worked at the most exalted, the most creative agencies that ever existed. I have spent time freelancing, working a month, or a year, or a week at a place on a brand. I started my career on an industry-changing account at a transformative agency. I worked at places that did nothing more than sell out for a buck. I have been acclaimed and forgotten.

   While you don’t have to be a woman to enjoy “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” it certainly helps. The smattering of men in the audience at the Southampton Cultural Center on Thursday night seemed to be enjoying themselves at this frothy pink cocktail of a production, but it was the women who laughed the most and the longest.

We can imagine . . . that happiness is real and that the sorrows and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imagined, but it has never been seen. It has never been seen.     — Leszek Kolakowski

    I don’t own any firearms. Until last year I had never fired one. Two of my co-workers are enthusiasts who attend gun shows in Virginia and Pennsylvania. They have invited me to join them and I have.

   The second week of December I was talking with a boy in Guines, Cuba. Guines is about 60 kilometers southeast of Havana. We were standing just outside the Presbyterian Reformed Church, where I was a guest along with Barbara D’Andrea of Wainscott. The boy, Nathaniel, just now 17, asked me, “What day was Jesus Christ born? The date.”

    I was startled by the question, first that he didn’t­ know the date of Christmas, and second that he asked me. I answered him in an adult way, registering no surprise.

    Two thousand and twelve has turned out to be a banner year for succession, at least as far as Asia is concerned. The Times recently reported on the politics of the ascent of China’s new leader Xi Jinping, a follower of the former president Jiang Zemin (“How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession,” Dec. 4).

    Yes, Virginia, Santa’s North Pole is covered with snow and ice. But this just in: Trillions of tons of ice really exist at the North Pole of Mercury, our Sun’s hottest companion.

   Women lie about their age; men lie about their height. Any man who is 5-foot-11 says he’s 6 feet. There is no such height as 5-11 unless the man is 5-10.

    I’m 5-foot-10 — or at least I was — so I naturally said 5-foot-11. I especially liked saying 5-11 because people thought I was being honest. They thought, here’s a guy who could say he’s 6 feet but he tells us the truth.

    I know you don’t believe that all men lie about their height but it’s true. Unless you’re over 6 feet you automatically add an inch. Guys who are under 5-8 sometimes add two inches.