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Columnists

Gristmill: Blowhards

Hard time as a captive to talk radio.

Jan 23, 2025
The Mast-Head: Knit on Demand

The first hat I produced after weeks of work was a bit of a disaster, looking like something a “Game of Thrones” extra would have worn before getting his head chopped off

Jan 23, 2025
The Shipwreck Rose: The Pashmina Years

The pashmina, with its many petal colors like varieties of April flowers, was the late-20th-century version of the Tulip Mania of the Dutch golden age.

Jan 23, 2025
Gristmill: In Wintry Climes

A mild cold snap here conjures a real cold snap way up north.

Jan 16, 2025
The Mast-Head: Industrial Days

Along the eastward shore of Napeague Harbor a length of rusted pipe pokes out of a dune. This pipe has an interesting history.

Jan 16, 2025
The Shipwreck Rose: My Narcissus

I don’t quite know how it came to be that my parents’ culinary habits were on the advanced side for the 1970s and its sesame-seed buns and Fresca.

Jan 16, 2025
Gristmill: Drivin’ and Cryin’

How can I give up on my 17-year-old workhorse of a car with 287,000 miles on it? It’s like a member of the family, gamely limping on to its final reward.

Jan 9, 2025
The Mast-Head: Bull’s Head to Sag Harbor

Last week, this column described a railroad line that once connected Bridgehampton to Sag Harbor. Part of what I left out was an explanation of why the road that now is the most direct route between the two is to this day called a turnpike.

Jan 9, 2025
The Shipwreck Rose: Marshmallow World

I wonder if any climate scientists today are tabulating an increase in the number of citizens slipping and falling in the snow and ice and cracking their skulls open now that we so seldom have snow and ice.

Jan 9, 2025
Gristmill: Stan Was Not the Man

Obsessive online analysis shows just how bad Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics writing was. Jack Kirby, though, remains “the King.”

Jan 2, 2025
The Mast-Head: The Sag Harbor Train

East Hampton was something of a backwater until nearly the dawn of the 20th century as compared to Sag Harbor, which the Long Island Rail Road linked to the rest of the world starting in 1870.

Jan 2, 2025
The Shipwreck Rose: New Year, New You

No one in my house likes change, and I am the Empress of Retrograde.

Jan 2, 2025
Gristmill: Coffee and Doughnuts

Notes on a new/old favorite, “Homicide: Life on the Street,” now streaming on Peacock.

Dec 19, 2024
The Mast-Head: The Fin in the Pond

One tradition that I have always been a sucker for is the tree in Town Pond, of which the best part is seeing the village crew setting it out from their tippy aluminum rowboat.

Dec 19, 2024
The Shipwreck Rose: Cybernating

My son and I have been down for the count with influenza and quickly reached the Very Boring Stage of convalescence. Bring on Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson in “Red One,” the Christmas-themed action movie.

Dec 19, 2024
Gristmill: Monktini Dreaming

A divine stay at a monastery turned hotel in Pittsburgh.

Dec 12, 2024
Relay: Six Months in the Newsroom

Coming full circle in a job that’s as important as ever.

Dec 12, 2024
The Mast-Head: Kings of the Bay

Boating season came to an end with a whimper, though in my imagination the year was not going to be like this.

Dec 12, 2024
The Shipwreck Rose: Epiphany

The music room in my house is what “the parlor” was to Americans in the mid-20th century: the room that time forgot.

Dec 12, 2024
Gristmill: A Fan’s Notes

Thoughts on team loyalty formation after the Thanksgiving football smorgasbord.

Dec 5, 2024
The Mast-Head: A Tariffs Christmas

The era of cheap goods made in China exchanged during the holiday gift season could be ending.

Dec 5, 2024
The Shipwreck Rose: Evergreen

Christmas tree follies.

Dec 5, 2024
Gristmill: Cross-Country Town, U.S.A.

Coming to you from the D-III national championships in Terre Haute, Indiana . . .

Nov 27, 2024
The Mast-Head: The First Land Flip

At Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to think about eastern Long Island’s very first land flip, which began 383 years ago when the Manhanset Indians were robbed of the place we know today as Shelter Island.

Nov 27, 2024
The Shipwreck Rose: Wicked

Dinner at Sam’s Bar and Restaurant with both my children followed by a brand-new Ridley Scott movie: Life probably won’t get much better than that.

Nov 27, 2024
Gristmill: Backyard Bestiary

May all your feeders be full.

Nov 21, 2024
The Mast-Head: The Resilience

I heard a liberal podcaster the other day lamenting the corniness of the term “the Resistance,” which brings to mind some dystopian movie.

Nov 21, 2024
The Shipwreck Rose: Window Shopping

We are swimming upstream against the mighty current of all-consuming consumerism as Black Friday approaches.

Nov 21, 2024
Gristmill: A Yankee Repast

It was as welcome as it was toothsome when Brian Collins, pitmaster, served up a colonial meal, history lesson on the side, at the Nathaniel Rogers House.

Nov 14, 2024
The Mast-Head: Ghost in the House

Recalling then-Representative Lee Zeldin’s strange town hall in Amagansett.

Nov 14, 2024