Columnists

A trip to the sporting goods store turns into a moment of reflection.

The deer I was prepared for. The rabbits I was not.

When I was very small I had a conception of the calendar year as a wheel, with different hues in sections at the end of spokes — a wagon wheel, a View Master card, a color wheel.

Every American should have the experience of complete, untethered freedom, if only for a while.

My mom’s ability to reach out, give you the spotlight, kill at cocktail hour, and, by God, hold up a conversation, is a source of endless luxury for my dad, sister, and me.

You have to wonder how friendships will survive the pandemic.

My own favorite moment of 2020 was circling deck seven aboard the Queen Mary II in high seas, tilting into the high winds, as we crossed the North Atlantic back in January.

Let's pause a moment to reflect on the passing of Joe Sinnott, artist and inker instrumental in shaping the look of the Marvel Comics universe in its 1960s heyday.

On this, the first day of summer, I thought it would be fit to fetch the snow shovel from its place beside the front door and take it to the shed out back. “I guess we won’t be needing this for a while,” I said to Mary, before recalling that given the winter that wasn’t, we hadn’t needed it at all.

There have been a lot of strange nights around the Fourth of July at our place. This year might turn out to be one of the strangest.

A self-imposed race against the clock to give blood as the pandemic drags on.

When Mary said we were already in heaven, our backyard providing ample evidence that it exists, I said Emily Dickinson had said something similar in some of her poems.

Exactly six years, eight months, and one day have elapsed since the last time I played the cello.

Dinnertime for black-backed gulls more or less coincides with people dinner around here, or so it seems to me. 

The Bridgehampton racetrack was brought back to life Saturday for a simulated racing competition watchable on YouTube.

“It gets easier,” someone said recently in referring to long marriages and looking my way for confirmation.

How can I ever thank you? You have been there from the beginning, in the soaring chorus of “Good Day Sunshine” through the car’s tinny radio so many summers ago, and even now you are here, the infectious — in the best way — “Home Tonight.”

As such things go, early on during the pandemic I passed on a piece of good advice I had heard — about learning a new skill during the lockdown — then did not really heed that thought myself.

I pulled the plug on cable television at precisely the wrong time — as two national crises descended upon us.

A real estate broker once told us that we didn’t want to live in “The Corridor,” but now, with all the beautifying work going on at practically every house in the neighborhood save ours, I feel blessed to be living within it.

In the 19th century, as many as a quarter of cowboys were black.

A report by Facebook from the George Floyd war zone.

All about us there’s suffering, and yet this neighborhood in which we live in Springs is beautiful, in full bloom and serene. It doesn’t get any better than this — here, that is.

The obvious enthusiasm of some American police officers for violence amid peaceful protests may be among the most indelible images to come out of the nationwide demonstrations that have followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Before the coronavirus became a round-the-clock night­mare, mine were confined to night­time.

Who would have thought when a pandemic hit the United States that instead of stocking up on guns, Americans went grocery shopping?

Memorial Day seems an appropriate time to bid farewell to a longtime pursuit — in this case, this: my weekly column, “Connections,” which has appeared in The East Hampton Star, come rain or come shine, come hell or come high water, since 1977.

I’m playing tennis in the morning,
Ding, dong, the balls all will be signed,
Pull out the hopper, let’s do it
proper,
But get me to the courts on time.

Learn something new. Of all the thoughts I have heard or read on enduring the pandemic lockdown, this has been the best advice.

I am proud of The Star's literary standards when it comes to language, proud of our effort to represent the lives and interests of not just the wealthy and the grand but of the working people who make up the fabric of our community.