LOOKING BACK ON A STORIED CAREER

Wearing black velvet slippers adorned with palmetto trees, Edward Kosner looked like the master of the house as he celebrated the publication of his book “It’s News to Me: The Making and Unmaking of an Editor” (Thunder’s Mouth Press). In fact, he was merely a weekend houseguest at the East Hampton home of Judy Licht and Jerry Della Femina. “I have a standing agreement with every friend I have,” Mr. Della Femina told me. “If they write a book, I have a party.”

Mr. Kosner, a former editor for Newsweek, Esquire, and New York magazine, was full of praise for his host. “Jerry has never said a dumb thing in his life,” Mr. Kosner said.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Della Femina said when I repeated the remark. “Ed is one of the smartest people I know.”

At least Mr. Kosner has a razor-sharp memory. Although he’d saved boxes and boxes of notes, diaries, and correspondence, he didn’t consult any of it when he wrote the book, he told me.

“If I needed to look up something, I used the Internet,” he said, mentioning that he’d located images of the covers of Time and Newsweek the week they both featured Bruce Springsteen on their covers.

What era of his editing career did he enjoy remembering the most? “I consider Newsweek the most important thing I did.”

And his favorite story in the book? It’s the first anecdote, where he recounts how Katharine Graham fired him from the position.

MANY MELODIES AT JONES BEACH

“Welcome to the best and longest running beach party in the New York area,” a gentle male voice boomed over the loudspeakers. It was Wednesday night, and the sun was shining but only after a day of rain, a day when the clock counting down the end of my summer was ticking loudly. But the man had spoken. I would throw myself into this party. It seemed easy enough from his instructions: “Please have fun, dance, relax, meet friends, and most importantly, smile,” he said.

The setting helped. I was at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, overlooking the waterways, the boats, and a cloudless sky that darkened to a royal blue as night fell. But it was Sheryl Crow’s performance that got the party started.

Ms. Crow looked like an ideal spokeswoman for summer, a sun-drenched blonde dressed in white pants and a tank. And she has some great summer anthems, too, such as “Soak Up the Sun.” But she wasn’t all fluff, as when she performed “The First Cut is the Deepest.” The performance captured the mood of this time of year, when vacations are ending and school and busy falls are around the corner: playful and ruminative.

In this context, Ms. Crow’s last song was an appropriate send-off: “Everyday is a Winding Road.”

CALM BEFORE FALL’S MUSIC STORM

Pianist Craig Rutenberg likes to vacation in the Black Forest in late summer, but the increased security precautions on airlines kept him closer to New York this year. Before he started his new job as director of music administration of the Metropolitan Opera (a job he last held 14 years ago), Mr. Rutenberg took a holiday in East Hampton, reading Günter Grass’s autobiography, “Peeling the Onion,” in German, and staying away from the whirl of local parties. The calm was welcome since the fall will be busy, with all eyes on the Met’s first season under its new general manager, Peter Gelb, not to mention Mr. Rutenberg’s own international schedule of concerts. He will be in New York on October 12, accompanying tenor Ben Heppner and soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer at the Morgan Library and Museum’s Gilder Lehrman Hall.