Opinion

A letter writer this week floated the idea that this newspaper sponsor a contest for the best business district holiday decorations next December.

Much of what ails the world today is a result of Western governments arbitrarily dividing foreign lands that they have colonized or occupied with no consideration of national sovereignty or demographics.

I tend to refer to cocktails of various kinds, but that’s not so much because I’m a drinker, as that I like the idea of a well-stocked bar cart of shiny bottles.

Among all of the fund-raisers that go on here, not one makes so much money in so little time as the Jan. 1 “polar” plunges.

Aside from world peace, what else am I wishing in vain for in the new year, immortality apparently being out of the question? I’m just hoping to stay connected.

My grandmother was born in the house that makes up the core of town offices on Pantigo Road. With a new supervisor taking the corner office there, it seemed a good time to offer up a bit of its history.

Anyone seeking an antidote to pervasive fear may find it in focusing on the good that might be coming our way right now — that way we can receive it, spread it around, and give it life.

I’m not a Christian, exactly, but I do believe in the winter solstice celebration of lights. The older I get, the closer I feel to ancestral rituals involving trees and bonfires.

The language-learning app Babbel this month released its annual list of the most-mispronounced words of 2023.

Vermont’s aging population is pleading for help up there, and people who want to work in this country are being beaten back at the Rio Grande. Go figure.

American men start to pick up books on Rome or dial in the History Channel for its endless depictions of gladiators and battle strategy almost the minute they turn 50.

Another lame-ass winter brings thoughts of cabin life up north. Way up north.

Non-standard motorized vehicles have been a big problem in resort locations for a long time.

If Greece and Turkey could reach a rapprochement it would not be too far-fetched to imagine that other ancient antipathies could be similarly dealt with. One can hope.

My parents’ generation had a pretty good idea of how to have a good time.

Who says it’s passé? Good news and fine times in a YouTube music search.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul did something of huge importance this week when she signed a bill that could lead the way for the state to make reparation payments to the descendants of the state’s enslaved people.

A nod to the hard-working, industrious folk slogging through the infamous East End traffic to keep the place functioning.

It’s important to “be of good cheer,” as the old folks used to say, not just during the winter holiday weeks but all year long.

Sometimes all you want in life is a little something that makes you happy, tiny tweaks to public spaces that would make your life better. Are you listening, State Highway Department or Department of Public Works?

When holiday protocol is violated.

The town restrooms are a big problem.

To live a protected life is to know too little. It’s a segregation of the mind bounded by proscribed language.

You may have been a teenager in the 1980s if . . .

With the estimated costs of the plans for a new senior citizens center in Amagansett made public for the first time recently, it’s hard not to question whether the chosen design is the best one for the money.

I have vowed while breath is still in me not to be such an a-hole on the tennis court, to be charitable when it comes to my partners and opponents.

Early darkness and the bell music from the Presbyterian Church make me think of my grandmother, who lived just up the driveway from the Star office.

Present-day ideas about land rights on the East End can be traced back to the English, who set out their plantations on the Island in the middle of the 17th century, and it is illuminating to see what laws came first.

The incoming East Hampton Town Board has a opportunity to make local government better in the form of filling a vacancy created by Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez moving to the supervisor’s post.

I had a photo of myself smiling and holding a can of Spam at an otherwise unoccupied candlelit dining table sent to our eldest daughter’s house in Perrysburg, Ohio, where most everyone in our family had gathered for Thanksgiving.