Columnists

So I was in New York City briefly last Thursday for an opening at my friend Eric Firestone’s gallery loft on Great Jones Street. New York is a big place, and the chance of bumping into someone I know from Amagansett is pretty low.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission threw campaign finance reform out the window.

It is Mozart’s birthday as I write this, and that reminds me of what the late Steve Sigler said in an interview I did with him in March 1996, to wit, that Mozart was “all about reconciliation, total reconciliation — no wonder he died at 35.”

The two women hurried south, coats pressed to bodies as the wind picked up on Third Avenue. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just. . . .”

There’s nothing better than soup when you’re snowed in for two days — or when you expect to be. The weather forecasts were dire on Saturday morning, but the larder was full and I was ready to cook.

It is a simple entry in the 1780 town trustee records: “Ned negro to ring the bel for 30/,” and yet it says so much.

“Teach me a kick serve,” I said to Lisa Jones, “and it will be the last piece in the jeweled crown that is my doubles tennis game.”

Kind words offered from a genuine place are the best type of words. They are a walking stick on uneven terrain. They are a ladder up from somewhere dark and undesirable.

Long ago, when I was about to marry into The East Hampton Star family, I took a course at Columbia University's School of Continuing Education on how to write obituaries. It was prophetic.

The president has asked that we act more in harmony with each other, that we step up to the plate insofar as citizenship goes, that we not give in to antipathy and fear, and that we retain our native optimism.

On the one hand, I enjoyed it when Stuart Vorpahl phoned the office. On the other, there was usually a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the front office said he was on the line because he almost never called when he agreed with something we had written.

How lucky we were that the surf drew Rusty Drumm to Montauk and then to us. His loss leaves The Star diminished, and it is also deeply personal. Even after he decided to give semiretirement a try, he was out there, part of the human landscape we could count on for knowledge, sharp opinion, and advice. He had rare acuity, the capacity to see what struck his eye in profound detail, which made him a superb reporter and writer. Perhaps most of all, he was a passionate and compassionate man who shared the joy he had in life. H.S.R.

Although I have a good primary-care physician here at home, I am under the care of two other doctors, a podiatrist and an endocrinologist, in New York City. They are as different as different can be and, from my point of view, represent the best that can be found with or without insurance coverage.

Near the end of an interview about the Killer Bees, during which I rhapsodized at great length about the school that’s out-Hoosiered the Hoosiers for more than a generation in the old sense of the word, for 30-plus years in short, I was asked if I’d ever seen any of the players cop an attitude on the court, and I said, on reflection, that I never ever had.

The other day it was the teddy bear backpack that did me in, aqua blue and sodden with seawater on the shore. “Teddy bear backpacks should not be washing up on beaches,” the caption said.

The wind woke me up early Wednesday, which was a good thing. I had gone to sleep the night before setting the alarm on my phone in order to get up and get some work done before the house stirred, but things being what they are, it had run out of battery life sometime during the night.

Local note for Dec. 29: On this date, two East Hamptoners were featured in a New York Times story — with photographs — about how they “exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes.”

“We’re going to Emily’s for Thanksgiving next year,” Mary said.

The Star’s 130th anniversary, although a milestone, passed almost unnoticed here last week. It was on Dec. 26, 1885, that George Burling first printed 500 copies of what he called The Easthampton Star, only later deciding to separate the East and the Hampton, in keeping with local tradition. Mr. Burling can be forgiven for the error, given that he had started The Southampton Press only the year before.

We often say our house is full of too many things, that we are going to get at sorting and deciding what to do with them some day soon, but that day never seems to arrive.

Mary continues to accuse me of cheating in back­gammon, and I tell her, eyes widened, that I simply can’t count as well as she can, and that, moreover, I’m not intelligent enough to cheat.

But none of that will wash. “You’re a cheater, I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it,” she concludes, as I hang my head, mimicking, as best I can, shamefacedness.

“OMG, I never heard of that,” a 40-something guy says to a lady friend at Starbucks on Main Street in East Hampton. The coffee in question is labeled New Christmas Blend . . . infused with cinnamon and ginger. New items pop up in the Village of East Hampton as never before. Chestnut Praline, Vanilla Bean Crème, Café Misto.

It’s difficult to say yet whether the electric do-dad that was among the highlights of our middle child’s Christmas and Hanukkah haul was total junk or something really cool. What was clear was that when she lost a tiny and critical metal part at bedtime on Monday, crisis ensued.

The combined Rattray and Heilbrunn families are celebrating Hanukkah late this year, so late in fact that the festivities will be the day after Christmas, also known as Boxing Day (at least in Great Britain).

Ah, I see it’s that time again. I had suggested to Mary the other day that maybe we ought to become Jehovah’s Witnesses to free us from the bondage of mandatory holiday cheer.

I finally found myself with a little free time and thought I’d let all our friends and family know what we’ve been up to out here in Montauk.

Forget about the last-minute gift shopping and wrapping and decorating the tree, the fact that our not-so-small pet house-pig now has nowhere appropriate to sleep is a very big deal.

Understanding that men and women may have different sexual orientations and that gender identification is not always known at birth are tenets of the revolutionary changes taking place in American culture. Lesbians and gays are long since out of the closet, and same-sex marriage is now accepted by a majority of Americans.

As I said last week, I immediately dialed up the Round­about Theatre’s box office when I read a rave review of “The Humans” in The Times — a moment or so before Mary said she’d been wanting to see “Hamilton.”

It was Lisa’s idea on a day that the kids were able to go to school late that I get them up at the usual time and take them out to breakfast someplace. That was fine with me, since feeding them in the morning almost simultaneously with reminding them to put on their shoes and brush their hair and teeth is often a challenge. Thing is, I had no idea how much it would cost.