I took a ferry out of New London to the far end of Long Island, the end that is not Brooklyn, this week, which is a big deal for a Midwesterner, the ocean breeze, the big bass honk of the ship’s horn, the expanse of the Sound. It was an easy choice between that and four hours on the Long Island Expressway. I am done with freeways insofar as possible.

My late brother Philip grew up in Minnesota, same as I, but he came to love the sea by reading Horatio Hornblower novels, and after he took a wrong turn into corporate life in a suit and tie, he got straightened out and took a job studying shoreline erosion and thermal pollution on Lake Michigan, much of the time aboard a boat, wearing a windbreaker. He never regretted leaving the office cubicle.

I don’t share his love of the sea and ships. I’m leery of the Sound after reading a story about sharks attacking swimmers. I don’t want my obituary to refer to my having been eaten by a fish. I prefer to die in a dim room, sedated, while telling the joke about the couple killed in a crash who arrive in heaven and find a beautiful golf course where the man tees up and hits a hole-in-one and turns to his wife and says, “If you hadn’t made me stop smoking, I could’ve been here years ago.”