Musk, Dog Dock Diving & More East End Fun

I really miss Elon Musk. He was cute, charming and full of good humor, and for a long time talked to me whether I liked it or not whenever I opened my cell phone. He’d tell me how to get the important things in life. He’d done it. He was so rich. The richest man in the world. He’d say something like “A penny saved is a penny earned,” or “People who throw stones shouldn’t be treated unkindly.”

His voice was calming, assured. And the sweet, friendly tone of it included a slight hesitation or stutter when his brain got ahead of his mouth and he had to catch up, proving that indeed, he was just a human after all.

And now he’s gone. The Trump train dumped him. Gave him the worst possible job to do. Didn’t tell him the tens of thousands of government workers he fired would get angry, and together with their neighbors, refuse to buy his cars, shoot bullets through the showroom windows, paint slogans on Tesla side doors, and cause his Tesla stock to tank. In one week, his stock lost $100 billion, which is almost as much as the gross domestic product of Ecuador.

Will Amazon’s Jeff Bezos become the world’s richest man? I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I just want Elon back.

DOG DOCK DIVING

The North Fork Dog Dock Diving Competition takes place this weekend — June 7 and 8. Go to the Greenport Polo Grounds on Moore’s Lane, and watch dogs, on command, belly flop into water to retrieve things.

Prizes are awarded. You can enter. Got a junkyard dog? Bring him. Got a toy poodle? Have the chauffeur bring him. For tickets go to lifeisgruff.com.

This is not a joke. It’s real. An annual event. The dogs and owners love it, and maybe there’ll be a protester or two from a cruelty to animal group that doesn’t know fun when they see it.

JACKSON POLLOCK

One of the most famous Abstract Expressionists who came to live out here was drip painter Jackson Pollock.

Today, his home in Springs is a study center and museum. Another home preserved is that of Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck in Sag Harbor. Both are open to the public by appointment.

Signage will lead you to Steinbeck’s house. But the signage to Jackson Pollocks says it’s the “Pollock-Krasner House.” Lee Krasner was Pollock’s wife. She was also a painter but not considered very important with those in the art world at that time.

I think that the name of that place should be changed to “Jackson Pollock’s House” for clarity’s sake.

I think that when it was considered who should be honored there back in the 1990s, with Lee Krasner painting upstairs in a bedroom and Pollock considered to be a difficult person, she, his long suffering wife, should be honored, too.

I think that there is another woman whose home should be preserved if Lee Krasner gets banished. It’s Betty Friedan’s house. Her sensational book The Feminine Mystique sparked the women’s movement. She lived in a cottage on Garden Street in Sag Harbor with her husband Carl. Five years after her book appeared, he divorced her. But you wouldn’t call the house the Betty and Carl Friedan House. And I’m not sure but I think he was also suffering a long suffering.

And then there is Albert Einstein. He lived in a cottage on the beach at Nassau Point in Southold in the summers of 1938 and 1939, while his Princeton affiliated institute was closed. The cottage is not yet preserved. But if it were, it would not be the Albert and Elsa Einstein house. Anyway, Elsa died several years earlier. The fact is, Einstein was out there with his long-suffering secretary Helen Dukas. Well, well.

THAT GIFT CERTIFICATE

The Amagansett School is trying to return to normal after a great scandal erupted when a secretary accused the principal of stealing a $25 Amazon gift certificate intended for a teacher. The supposed theft took place on Dec. 17, 2023, and the accusation resulted in courtroom hearings that lasted 15 months, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees the school district has to pay.

“We don’t agree with the arbitrator’s decision in declaring the principal not guilty, but we have to move on,” said one of the school officials. The principal was, of course, restored to her former post.

Which made me wonder what might have happened if the gift certificate was one of those that expire after a time. Lots of gift certificates do that. A year goes by. It’s over. Here it was 15 months gone.

With the gift certificate going poof, would the crime have gone poof too?

THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Here in June in the Hamptons, the sun rises earlier and earlier. Yesterday it rose at 5 a.m. No good reason for it to do that. Beginning on June 22, it will start rising later and later until December, when the earth wobbles another way and it will rise around 7:30 a.m.

Why is the Earth wobbling? I have no idea. Perhaps it was skittering along correctly until a million years ago when something went boom and the earth went topsy-turvy. Now we have changes in the atmosphere sending the earth topsy-turvy another way. It’s just one damn thing after another.

HARVARD

In an article I read about my alma mater’s fight with Trump, the author wrote there’s both the good and bad at Harvard. For example, attorney Ron Sullivan, who’s also a Harvard professor, was appointed faculty dean at Winthrop House, a men’s dorm. Later, he got hired to defend Harvey Weinstein. This caused the university to remove him as dean. Several students living in Winthrop House said it made them uncomfortable that Sullivan was there.

It reminded me of when I was 11 and was arguing with my sister, age 4. She stood at the far end of the bedroom and sobbing, called in our mom.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

“He’s looking at me,” my sister said, pointing.

It was a family joke for many years.

But today? Being looked at funny is a right. Everything is right. It’s America. Not getting touched is a right. Not getting sunburned is a right. Whatever anybody says is a right should result in a lawsuit and subsequent damages paid.

Even at Harvard.