Columnists

With apology to Daniel Webster, it is a small thing but there are those who hate it. And, as another saying goes, all politics are local. So, with that in mind, I believe it is time to address what is for me one of the most local of all matters: the Route 114 roundabout.

The heart of Riverhead — and by that I do not mean its nearby shopping centers — has a lot of culture and history going for it.

My father used to say all I did was watch balls go back and forth, and so it has been — volleyballs, basketballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, baseballs, rugby balls, footballs . . . though, come to think of it, not so many footballs anymore.

I think I have just escaped being victimized by a new scam, which popped down the chimney, so to speak, right in time for the flue season.

There were two messages on my voice mail when I got to the office last Thursday morning. Both were in response to an editorial on Republican voter suppression in advance of the midterm elections.

This is not a ghost story, per se, but let’s say if I believed in ghosts, I would most certainly think the big house was haunted.

This week, we learned it was likely that Jamal Khashoggi, a 59-year-old journalist for The Washington Post and a Saudi dissident who lived in the United States, was not only murdered by the Saudi government, but, according to Turkish authorities, tortured first, his fingers cut off while he was alive, his body dismembered entirely — with a bone saw — once he was dead. A bone saw. Dismembered.

Now that Brett Kavanaugh no longer has to defend himself against Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault, he can get on with screwing us.

You might remember a radical reimagining of East Hampton Village that was put forward last year by a group of architects lead by Maziar Behrooz. It was called “Restoring Forward: A Vision for East Hampton Village,” and among the other revitalization ideas it proposed — which included adding walking and biking paths and greenways, and creating park space where there is now parking space in the Reutershan lot — was the creation of a cultural zone at the west end of Newtown Lane.

I read recently a column by an 88-year-old who had discovered it was contentment that kept his peers going. What happened to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”?

There is a political divide in East Hampton but it’s not the one you might think. Instead, on lawn signs and in letters to the editor, local candidates are said to be running for the “town council.” Though the East Hampton Town Board has forever been called “town board,” “East Hampton Town Council” is becoming more common unfortunately, even though it has no basis in law or history.

I love the movies and saw every film I could get tickets for during the Hamptons International Film Festival last weekend, but one movie in particular left me with something of an emotional hangover.

When a woman with whom we were talking one night at Cittanuova said she had never felt she was any better or any less than anyone else, I said, “That’s it.”

You know what they look like. You have passed through them countless times, mostly in the middle but sometimes side by side with another car, holding your breath and your car’s breath hoping you get through unscathed.

A close friend called on Tuesday to say he had been in the hospital emergency room overnight for treatment for an allergic reaction to meat.

The word “community” came to life under sunny skies on Sunday afternoon at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum, where a large party of locals gathered around outdoor tables for a turkey dinner

A month from now we’ll know if there will be a course correction politically, as many hope, though how many will back up that hope by voting — presumably for a more evenhanded, more thoughtful, less lacerating society — remains to be seen. I hope there’ll be a record midterm turnout.

If you are looking for a break from the bustle of the film festival this weekend, one of the more untrammeled options is the modest farm museum on North Main Street in East Hampton.

The busy season was over, or so we thought, when two events proved otherwise.

They say “The Bookshop” is boring, which, of course, quickened my pulse. I have loved boring movies for years, and, in fact, once suggested that a new studio, M.B.M. (More Boring Movies), be formed to market them.

A dead whale washed up at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett on Monday. Another hit the beach east of the Maidstone Club yesterday. Predictably much of the response was downcast. “Sad,” some said, implying that human activity in the sea was to blame.

Hurricane Esther had weakened into a tropical storm by the time its winds doubled back on eastern Long Island in September of 1961, and as a newcomer to East Hampton with no experience of the effects of heavy weather in coastal regions, I was excited and looking forward to the storm.

“Welcome to ‘Friday Night Lights,’ Dad,” our daughter Emily said as we walked — she with easy confidence, and I with mouth agape, stunned at the sight of so many, thousands upon thousands — toward Perrysburg High School’s football field, where the Yellowjackets (“Once a Jacket, Always a Jacket”) were playing the Panthers of Toledo’s Whitmer High School, whose quarterback was said to be Ben Roethlisberger’s nephew, a sophomore already being courted, so I was also told, by the University of Michigan.

I am an admitted clotheshorse. I remember what I was wearing for most of the momentous and semi-momentous occasions in my life. I have already written about my two wedding dresses (for one wedding), but I also remember exactly the bridesmaid dress I wore to my friend Jane’s wedding when I was 17 and home from college for the occasion.

Digging opened Saturday for the East Hampton Town Trustees 2018 Largest Clam Contest. I should say officially opened, since it is my well-nursed suspicion that somecompetitors prospect for potential prizewinners all summer long, reserving the heftiest quahogs in deep hidey-holes for a shot at September glory.

It was 6:30 on Tuesday morning, the time I usually get up, but I wasn’t ready. Although the cold snap was ending, I grabbed the thick New Zealand blanket, a long-ago present, and made myself quite comfortable on a living room couch. The next thing I knew it was after 8 — to be exact, 8:03 by my watch. For me, that counts as a lazy morning.

“My head is swimming,” I said during some recent long-distance swims in Sag Harbor, referring not just to that early morning’s hyperactivity, but to the summer here in general, which found me either up and out at dawn or during the cocktail hour at a baseball, soccer, or slow-pitch game.

So you think your operation was bizarre? Let me tell you about mine.

Ellis came home with ticks the other day. He had been on a nature walk with his thirdgrade science class when someone bolted from the path into the leaf litter to inspect something interesting. Accounts vary about who led the charge, but several reliable sources pointed to my son.

For reasons that I think require explanation, I have never registered as a member of a political party. To put it simply, I was the editor of this paper for more than 20 years and thought it quite enough to have an opportunity to express opinions large and small in print, including who should be elected or re-elected to local or national office.