Letters

Saturday night, I moved out (shopping cart full of clothes bags, suitcase, ski clothes — season is definitely over! — ski brace bag, etc., etc.) and am all happily settled in our Village of Southampton. Not that we don’t have or will certainly get the bug, but here I can walk on the beach, loaf, work in my house or garden.

But here’s something we should organize. I just left telephone messages for neighbors not at home, or talked to those who are, to offer the following:

1. I am going to Costco in Riverhead either tomorrow (Tuesday) or on Wednesday. What do you need? What can I buy for you?

2. It’s true that we don’t need to rely on public transportation here, but we can develop “neighborhood co-ops” for shopping, informing each other, picking up medications, and doing otherwise neighborly services that we did not require in the past.

The virtue is threefold:

1. Save on gas and energy.

2. Help avoid duplicative efforts.

3. Establish needed human contact, without personal physical contact, but where it counts: neighborliness.

So, let’s be neighbors! Let’s do small chores and favors for each other! It makes us feel less isolated, and neighbors mostly like being cared about.

The person who does the shopping for someone else, alert the person getting the shopping that it is being left, in a grocery bag, at the edge of the recipient’s driveway. And agree before the shopping on a non-personal contact payment in return for store receipt.

Evelyn Konrad

Attorney at law

Southampton Village