Columnists

Ulf Nilsson, the Swedish Paralympics’ sled hockey team’s 53-year-old goalie, said, when questioned by a Times sportswriter, Ben Shpigel, that “the best would be to combine the speed I had when I was young and the knowledge I have now . . . that’s the problem with everything.”

Midafternoon on Tuesday, as the snow seemed to be tapering off in East Hampton, I headed out from the Star office to have a look around.

Not long ago, during an idyll in Palm Desert, Calif., I was doing the crossword puzzle and the first clue I came across was: “ ‘Serial’ podcast host Sarah.”

We were expecting guests for dinner the other night when I decided the spread needed a little something more: bread, in particular. Carissa’s Breads, a first-rate bakery off Newtown Lane in the village, was closed, and I wasn’t confident about the choices I was likely to find in a hurry at Stop & Shop (although Nature’s Promise Jewish rye is darn good). So I headed over to Citarella.

I am old enough and have lived in the same spot long enough to have a sense of how things should and should not be. The bay has been at odds with what should be, but scientists tell us this is the new normal.

It was strange, walking around an upscale Bangkok shopping mall, to happen upon the horrifying images captured by Nick Ut.

Copies of The Star’s 100th anniversary edition were dug out recently for the edification of several new staff members, and we found ourselves reminiscing about people who worked here over the years.

“It’s sooo nice,” the young woman behind the counter at Trish Franey’s liquor store said last Wednesday evening.

An Idaho lawmaker uncomfortable with climate change being taught in the state’s schools — or perhaps simply uncomfortable with education itself — said kids ought to be able to determine on their own, for instance, whether the globe upon which we live is flat or spherical.

As far as I recall, our little ARFan is the first dog I’ve ever taken on walks. In the old days, whether we were living in Amagansett or here in the village, we simply opened the door and let our dogs roam free. This was the common practice well into the 1990s.

Thirty-two years after the fact, they’ve come up with a name for what I have been doing since the winter of 1986: Digital Nomading.

I am old enough to remember going to the cinema to watch the 1945 movie musical “State Fair,” starring Jeanne Crain, whom my mother adored. With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, how could it be anything less than terrific?

The animals and birds at the Living Desert Zoo/Gardens in Palm Desert were not all that lively the day we went to see them. Aside from the birds, who drew our greatest sympathy, they didn’t appear to be cramped, they had some room, though you wondered if they wouldn’t be happier freed from us.

One of the big surprises about the woods on the East End is that they are full of nearly invisible life among the leaf litter despite so much development and other changes. The deer have opened up the understory vegetation, sending certain birds species elsewhere, but the amphibians persist.

The other night on the “NewsHour,” our source for horror on weeknights, they showed the light that could not until recently be seen in what was heretofore thought to be vast outer blackness.

It would be great publicity for all involved, if anyone reads it. That was part of my thinking this week on a story about a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis whose ownership is disputed in a federal lawsuit.

“You have to write the piece that goes with this rap: ‘No Conca, no movie theater, no diner, no Black Buoy. (Variety Store? You’re right, it’s still there.)’ ”

Even though I don’t consider myself particularly susceptible to trends in the kitchen — I never did get into sriracha, for example — I am, like all of us, susceptible to flavor fads. I’ve cooked my way through the great goat cheese glut of the 1980s, and the mania for sun-dried tomatoes. I can remember the days before balsamic vinegar, and the decades when we all called it just plain old coriander instead of cilantro.

Lost long ago, a high school ID found on the beach in Montauk and still legible will be returned to the woman who owned it, now 63.

One cold winter’s night about 26 years ago, two friends and I shivered on West Third Street, craning our necks and peering in the large window of the Blue Note Jazz Club, straining for a glimpse of Ray Charles. We were barely employed musicians then, sharing a small apartment in Hoboken and busking in the subway when times were especially tough (they usually were).

I’ve been known to complain that those who bought second homes here in the last few years are not like those who arrived earlier, in, say, the 20th century — who, I liked to insist, made an effort to learn East Hampton history, meet remarkable locals, and discover native flora and sometimes even fauna. Lately, however, I’m beginning to think I’ve been wrong.

I recently read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s little book on astrophysics, probably the smallest book ever written about such a vast and ever-fascinating subject.

I am always looking for cool stuff. I have what you call the acquisition gene. To spin on the Latin: Veni, vidi, Visa. Lucky for me, my acquisition gene is nurtured through an additional kind of “shopping”: taking pictures for The Star. Veni, vidi . . . voro? It’s not the same kind of shopping, but it’s easier on the pocketbook and that hungry gene can be fooled.

I gather there are some dogs — huskies and Newfoundlands and such — who love nothing better than a good romp in the snow, but my dog, Sweet Pea, who came to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons after the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, clearly isn’t a fan of ice and blizzards. I would be curious to hear if other ARF dogs who come from warmer climes are as indignant about the snow as mine is.

Isabel was talking about the Donner party and I said that it was our family’s only claim to fame, according to my father, who, when I once told him I had no ambition, said I was upholding the family tradition, which made me feel better.

Weekday mornings, after I drop off my son, Ellis, at school, I stop by the coffee shop in Bridgehampton. It’s more of a habit, I guess, than a ritual, but it has become part of my routine. So, too, is it for a handful of other morning regulars who linger, sitting and talking across the floor with one another about politics as customers in more of a hurry come and go.

The president says he doesn’t want anyone from “shithole countries,” and then I thought about the people I’ve most admired: Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Tutu, Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Shithole countries can produce some great men.

Sorry to say, I did not get the name of the reader who stopped by The Star last week with a small skein of darning thread.

It’s a cliché of personal-essay writing to complain about how everyday items disappear from the home — socks, for instance, and the bizarre frequency with which they are eaten by washing machines. Well, let me begin by assuring you that I never lose socks in the washing machine. Never! And I’ll tell you why. A woman named Susie gave my husband a helpful tip: All you have to do is safety pin the pairs together. We actually do this.

It’s all the same eff-in day, man, Janis Joplin used to say, though some, as Mary would readily agree, are colder than others, such as this week’s were, but I could hardly contain myself this morning as I read that in the coming week the temperature will soar into the 30s, and perhaps even flirt with 40!