Columnists

Families’ captive straits paired with their desperate hopes for their children had one professor comparing the cost of college to Big Pharma’s gouging of the ill.

I think we need to talk about the depressing lack of a bar here in East Hampton.

I keep thinking about what that sensibly unaffiliated Down Easterner in the Senate, Angus King, said on “60 Minutes” the other night, about how those who raged at the Capitol have to be listened to, that they aren’t going away.

Can we pause for a second to consider the fact that robots telephone us regularly to try to fleece us of our hard-earned cash?

Oh well, forget about getting vaccinated. I called my doctor’s office the first day I was eligible, at 9 a.m. sharp, and they knew nothing. Then I called Southampton Hospital, and they too knew nothing.

Letting pets move around freely is a thing of the past, traffic being what it is and even the odd dog thief about.

Nettie and I took a flying drive to Delaware this week to inspect the campus of a boarding school. Pandemic ennui makes even the shortest jaunt seem like a grand holiday.

As Trump’s thugs vandalized the Capitol, hacking their way through windows and doors, and flooding in, it occurred to me that we ought to watch “Lincoln” that night, that night of all nights.

Like many Americans, I have struggled to come to any kind of understanding of the violence and destruction taken to Washington just over a week ago. But one thing is clear to me as a late-coming student of slavery in the Colonial and early Republic North: Mob violence is no aberration in our history.

The riot at the Capitol may have overshadowed the Georgia special election that elevated Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, but it’s too bad it did, because that unlikely turn of events nudged the federal government closer to the ability to actually do something.

Two strong guys took our two long, heavy couches to the dump the other day as part of a purging effort of Mary’s that I’ve warmed up to, though at times I fear I may be the next to go.

There probably were better moments than this for me to take up knitting. Yet here I am.

Cable-less, I broke down and signed on for a streaming service solely so I could watch the N.F.L. playoffs and Super Bowl, which, after all, has practically become an extension of the holidays for the average American. And just in time.

I’ve never understood why patience is a virtue. Patience makes life easier, sure (especially if you are a parent). But a virtue? Why?

Here was television at its best: a short documentary in the CBSN “Originals” series following asylum seekers coming up from Colombia into Panama through the Darien Gap. And then they take their chances at the U.S. border.

The foot and automobile traffic was considerable when we set out for a ramble at Barcelona Neck just before sunset on Boxing Day.

Howard Lebwith, who died recently, embodies the Christmas spirit for me inasmuch as he genuinely cared for and celebrated others, acted on their behalf, and always marveled at the beauty of life.

This week, for the first time, The Star has given over its news section to taking note of the people in the area’s hamlets and villages who have gone above and beyond during a time of crisis.

I would not be surprised to learn that there is a run on puppies this December, and a shortage, as there has been a run on and shortage of Christmas trees here on Long Island.

They say that in ancient times conjunctions such as Saturn and Jupiter’s were considered ill omens — the gods, people thought, were conspiring.

We could learn something about how to handle a pandemic from 17th-century England.

The drive-through Smith Point Light Show in Shirley is holiday entertainment, corona-style.

The bad-luck schooner Alice May Davenport spent the two weeks following Thanksgiving up on the sand near Smith Point.

I never quite got over hearing how Silicon Valley developers and programmers who worked ingeniously to hook kids on social media would turn around and send their own kids to no-tech Waldorf schools.

In the spirit of New Year’s accounting, and things we want to remember, I present you here with 10 flashbacks from lockdown — a collage of moving images, in impressionistic order.

Even James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was in favor of a popular vote, and here we are more than 200 years later with the albatross still about our necks.

We, the Rattray family, have a tendency to get lost in time, to misplace ourselves in its flow.

Presumably I have returned to work now, and am thus to some extent re-engaged in East Hampton’s life, and am feeling once again at least somewhat useful.

A revealing trip through an old Dominy weather diary.

A brief snowfall triggers memories of Vermont and an uncle’s life there as a potter.