Columnists

As you franticly dash around this Memorial Day weekend, or hide out away from the crowd, you might take a moment to reflect on the longest-term visitors to the East End — horseshoe crabs.

A month ago, I wrote in this space about having come within three steps of falling for a nasty scam involving our grandson, who was in jail (so he said, or so said his very own frightened voice on the landline) and needed $3,000 (“Please don’t tell my parents”) for bail.

“Physically, I’m in decent shape, it’s my mental condition that worries me,” I said to my doubles partner the other day, and she, concurring, said that tennis was indeed “a mental game.”

Although I have been known to carry on about how wonderful it is to live in a house that has been in the family for generations, and to answer proudly that “it came with the house” when someone asks about the provenance of some object or other, the other side of this seeming attachment to history and old things is, simply put, a deep-seated resistance to change.

There are many more dandelions in flower around East Hampton Village this spring than I can remember. This may be in part due to Village Hall’s decision to switch to no-toxin landscaping. But I also like to think it is in part the legacy of Matthew Lester, a young man who died way too soon, who loved nature and in particular, bees.

With slightly warmer days, I have made it back into the woodshop after a long hiatus from sawdust and my tools.

From a fishing perspective, it was as quiet a season as I could ever recall.

Among American Jews, Passover has emerged as not just the most celebrated holiday, but I would argue that it also evokes the most spiritual meaning and stirs the identity of its participants.

Last year at this time we were preparing to host Thanksgiving for 37. It was our first Thanksgiving at the Mashomack Preserve and we wanted to make it a holiday to remember. Family, friends, food, and fire, all the hallmarks of, well, a Hallmark Thanksgiving.