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Columnists

The Mast-Head: Summer’s End

Signs of the coming change of season come too soon for my taste.

Aug 12, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: Carnival Barking

Either you love carnivals and fairs or you loathe them.

Aug 12, 2021
Gristmill: Olympics on the Cheap

My current obsession with the Tokyo Olympics prompts memories of a low-budget trip to Montreal for the ’76 Games.

Aug 5, 2021
Point of View: Two Furry Preceptors

The traffic is godawful, but maybe as a result of the snail's pace everyone's driving too slowly to inflict much damage.

Aug 5, 2021
The Mast-Head: Worth It All

I have been spending a lot of time aboard Cerberus this summer, though not as much of it sailing as I would have liked.

Aug 5, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: The Glass Slipper

Among the brilliant things I never did was an art project I conceived of in my late teens, in which I was going to take Polaroid photographs of my feet clad in favorite pairs of shoes. An autobiography in footwear.

Aug 5, 2021
Gristmill: Hail the Road Test

A Monday afternoon in the D.M.V. road test queue in Patchogue.

Jul 29, 2021
Point of View: Plant Them and They Will Come

As I was leaving Wittendale’s the other day holding a tall milkweed plant on the way to check out, a monarch butterfly flitted about me — a good sign.

Jul 29, 2021
The Mast-Head: Deer vs. Me

There is a rhythm emerging in the struggle between me and the deer over who rules the garden.

Jul 29, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: Ferry Tale

Does it astonish you that there is a ferry in service today on the Long Island Sound that landed in France on D-Day?

Jul 29, 2021
Gristmill: Down Among the Skells

What began as a simple college website search sends a dad into a tech tailspin.

Jul 22, 2021
Point of View: Not a Fan of Olympic Ban

Research does not support the idea that marijuana is performance-diminishing.

Jul 22, 2021
The Mast-Head: Signs of Hope

Sharks have arrived here, and not just the sort able to think that parking among the dead is okay.

Jul 22, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: Asparagus Is Burning

If I think about it, I’m at my happiest around a bonfire, on the beach.

Jul 22, 2021
Gristmill: Deep in Long Beach

Here in Noyac, for some reason I’ve been overlooking nearby Long Beach, and was surprised it took me till the second weekend in July to appreciate it in a way I haven’t since the days of the Oasis.

Jul 15, 2021
Point of View: Unuplifting Lifted Words

If I were sermonizing, I’d write one on the folly of self-abasement, self-doubt, self-mortification, self-flagellation, and self-loathing.

Jul 15, 2021
The Mast-Head: Drusilla and Rachel

Shortly after Lyman Beecher’s wife, Roxana, bore their first child, Drusilla Crook was brought to the household to take care of the baby — she was 5 years old, “a colored girl,” Beecher wrote in his autobiography.

Jul 15, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: I Want Candy

I believe nothing is more depressing than the “festival” of “fun” that goes on at Hershey’s Chocolatetown in Pennsylvania.

Jul 15, 2021
Gristmill: Traffiqistan

Never mind the backups, jam-ups, and clogged (traffic) arteries, the quality of driving itself has taken a nosedive.

Jul 8, 2021
Point of View: The Spirit Embodied

The goose that lays the golden egg is on life support.

Jul 8, 2021
The Mast-Head: A New Trade Parade

Decades ago, a movement to build a bypass skirting the hamlets and villages on Montauk Highway was beaten back. I wonder what the naysayers would think if they could see 2021.

Jul 8, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: Loafers Unite

Did you see the New York Times piece this weekend about a pro-laziness movement led by a factory dropout from Zhejiang Province, China?

Jul 8, 2021
Gristmill: Fred Thiele for President

A good time was had by all at Pierson High School's graduation ceremony — Fred Thiele in particular. 

Jul 1, 2021
Point of View: You’ve Got to Laugh

On Father’s Day my daughter said I was a happy person, and that that fact was probably the greatest gift I could have bestowed upon my children.

Jul 1, 2021
The Mast-Head: Saturated Roads

With some unknown number of those who live here put out at the idea that anyone would try to make a left turn onto Main Street at this time of year, we are perhaps overly unsympathetic to the folks who try. 

Jul 1, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: The River of Time

It’s been a year since I began writing “The Shipwreck Rose.” This column is number 52. Only 49 more years — not columns, years! — to go before I match the record set by my grandmother Jeannette, from whom I seem to have inherited my typographical verbosity.

Jul 1, 2021
Gristmill: Running on Empty

What happens when you compete in a 10K when you’re not ready to compete in a 10K?

Jun 23, 2021
Point of View: Our Universe Is Expanding

The father of two young boys who are very good swimmers said at a family gathering the other day that he far preferred youth sports, such as swimming, golf, and tennis, in which incremental self-improvement was the chief goal rather than winning.

Jun 23, 2021
The Mast-Head: In the Wake of Yachts

Aboard Cerberus, my 1979 Cape Dory, even a minute or two’s inattention could have put me in the path of one of the many very expensive pleasure boats roaring east or west across the bay.

Jun 23, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: The Anchor Society

It’s become popular in recent years to complain about the State of Main Street, but many local people have been harping on this subject for 30 and more. We have a solution to offer. Or, if not a solution, a mitigation strategy. Introducing, the Anchor Society of East Hampton Inc., whose mission is to raise money to buy a building that will serve as a general store in the Village of East Hampton.

Jun 23, 2021