The day. It was a relatively quiet Monday in New York, especially for the end of November. By which I mean there were taxis available on Madison Avenue in mid-afternoon. There wasn’t gridlock on the midtown streets I traveled on, and there wasn’t traffic last night. That seems odd when you think of it, but comforting at the time.

It was also a warm day for the end of November. Jacket, no overcoat, no scarf required. However, JH got that photo of the squirrels in a packin-um-away mode, storing up for the cold winter. At least that’s what it looked like to him; he said he never saw so many squirrels going at the acorns, etc. So maybe Mother Nature will be sending us some winter storms.

I had lunch at Michael’s with an old friend. Barbara Walters was there with Elizabeth Rohatyn. Heather Cohane was lunching with Vicky Ward. Vicky Ward writes for Vanity Fair (she did the recent piece on the dilemma of Brooke Astor as a centenarian). She’s British and blonde and very pretty and very gentle mannered and has an uncanny nose for a charming whiff of scandal. Mrs. Cohane was my first employer here in New York and she too has a similar nose. Both women are British. Maybe that’s what does it.

My luncheon friend and I talked about the pond in Southampton, called Lake Agawam which is situated right in the town and stretches out to the beach and the Southampton Bathing Corporation, also known as “the beach club.” The houses whose property run right to the edge of Lake Agawam are some of the biggest and most expensive on all of Long Island, and they are owned by some of the richest people in America. There must be about twenty in all bordering the water. One of them was recently put on the market for $45 million, or something in that financial stratosphere. The beach club whose location presides at the southern most end of the lake, is where the society the world knows as Soutthampton goes for their exquisite comfort food lunches on lazy summer days and weekends, where kids go for swims in the ocean and the pool and people go to see and be seen.

I mention these general details because they don’t come without a touch of horrendous irony when it comes to Lake Agawam. The lake itself is a deluding puddle of poisonous chemicals and all kinds of detritus from the over-fertilized lawns but even more so from the town which for decades has casually and quietly allowed all kinds of disposal from the salt of the roads in the winter to the decomposed garbage from the local taverns that bordered it.

There have been numerous times when the lake has been without oxygen so that the fish all died. Like other ponds on the outer parts of Long Island, there is a run-off connection to the Atlantic. Lake Agawam has one down by the Bathing Corporation so that the water sluices to the sea when the lake gets too high.

Polluted lakes or ponds aren’t uncommon in our world, unfortunately. But they are sickening. Poisons poison. I’ve heard the case for Lake Agawam is not only not being addressed but the pollution is getting more rampant. Nobody’s fault; just what happens. In some places it's called waste management.

Now there is concern that sewage of sorts might find its way into the lake with plans to pump it out into the Atlantic. Which makes sense, I suppose. Although it doesn’t make all that much sense for the swell folks who belong to the Bathing Corporation, where their kids like to swim in the ocean in summertime; where they can sit on the patio, lunch with pals and look out at the Mother Atlantic. Sweeping away all our detritus. But not our cares.

It’s a pretty lake, Lake Agawam, polluted as it is. You can even identify it from 10,000 feet as you’re flying into JFK because it’s got its very own shade of green. A kind of translucent pea green. Although on the ground it just looks like dark water from the lakeside. And in summertime the view of it is so serene at twilight, as the Sun sets and the lights from the billionaires’ great old mansions’ begin to glow upon the waters. A little bit of heaven on the eye. Lethally filthy though they may be. Proving, if nothing else, that there’s no escaping the environment wherever you go.

Meanwhile, Michael’s was filed yet a little on the quiet side, like the town. Not regular weekday pandemonium. Afterwards I walked up by Bergdorf’s to look at their holiday windows which are always brilliant and diverting. The Bergdorf windows and the Barney’s windows are at this time the most intriguing, catch-yer-eye store windows in New York. They celebrate the New York that still lures the great talent from all over America and the world. I don’t know if these windows are the final holiday windows because Bergdorf’s changes their windows frequently, always diverting your attention, delighting and often astonishing.

I had no commitments last night. Or if I did, I screwed up because there was nothing on my calendar. This comes as a pleasant surprise although if I don’t have something I’m suppose to do or see in the evening, I feel the way you feel when you’ve left the house know you’ve forgotten something and can’t remember what.

That’s how I felt last night. So after I’d finished some work I decided to take my new Casio Digital 7.2 megapixels out for a walk over by Lincoln Center where they had lit the tree just a few hours before.

They didn’t just “light the tree.” Between 5:30 and 6 o’clock on the Josie Robertson Plaza surrounded by the New York State Theater, the Metropolitan Opera house and the Avery Fisher Hall, there was the 17th Annual Holiday Tree Lighting. That meant a program featuring excerpts from the new holiday family production of the Magic Flute, a set from members of Jazz at Lincoln Center including Wynton Marsalis and the New York City Ballet and students from the School of American Ballet performed a selection from George Balanchine’sThe Nutcracker; as well as the fire juggling Gizmo Guys from the Big Apple Circus and holiday favorites sung by the SRC All-City Gospel Chorale and special guest Alvin Slaughter. So they didn’t just “light the tree.” They “lit the town."