Opinion

The commentary of Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith — the last vestiges of a watchable N.B.A.

Lack of proof has not stopped Republicn legislatures from attempting to pass all sorts of mostly race-based exclusions. Congress is wrestling now with the For the People Act, a massive, 800-page voting rights bill that would make it more difficult for states to cheat.

When a country lane becomes an infernal, rushing, nonstop artery.

As the availability of Covid-19 vaccines improves, we should take a moment to acknowledge the volunteers who have so generously helped get shots into so many arms. This comes at a risky time because the dual effects of pandemic fatigue and a sense, rightly or wrongly, that its end is in sight have led to many people letting down their guard.

Whenever my daughters complain about lugging an extra bag of groceries, climbing an extra flight of stairs, or enduring yet another Covid-related frustration, I remind them to “think about Shackleton.”

In my salad days in Manhattan, my friends and I would play a barroom game in which we judged people by their footwear: a sort of reverse fortune telling in which you observed the sartorial selection and made a Gypsy-like pronouncement about who the wearer was. This was the 1990s. An adult male sporting unscuffed Top-Siders with no socks was judged to be a recent grad of Cornell or Duke — possibly Dartmouth — lately arrived on Wall Street, who still kept a poster of Pamela Anderson from “Baywatch” on his wall.

Climate change is a fact. Science tells us that atmospheric conditions known as greenhouse gases from human activity are the cause. Electricity production generates about a quarter of emissions, trailing only transportation. This is why last week’s Public Service Commission approval of a key component of the planned South Fork Wind farm is so important. The project would be the first large-scale offshore wind power source in the United States (up to three times the size of Block Island Wind, which came online in 2016), paving the way for more and larger turbine installations.

I had to say I wasn’t breastfeeding in order for my CVS questionnaire to be accepted, but, what the hell, I’ll say anything to get a shot.

The one I’m to have Sunday, at Mattituck’s CVS, will be my second, and then, two weeks hence, I presume I’ll be home free. Mary is to have hers at the same place the day after mine. Why they couldn’t do us both at the same time I don’t know, but we consider ourselves lucky to get them.

We’ll continue to wear masks and to wash our hands more often than we would have in the past, of course, wanting, as ever, to be good citizens.

There are better ways to keep records than writing in pencil on an exposed two-by-four in the basement, yet it works. For almost 20 years I have been noting the date when the first spring peepers sing out from the swamps alongside Cranberry Hole Road. And, for almost as long, I have marked the arrival dates of the earliest osprey.

For the second time in less than a week a man with a gun engaged in a mass shooting. Flags lowered in memory of eight victims in Atlanta had not yet been raised when news broke of the newest outrage, 10 dead in Colorado. Tragedies like this have become so frequent that they cause scarcely a pause as America goes about its day. “Did you hear there was another shooting?” someone asks. Think about that for a moment: another shooting.

The rate of new cases of Covid-19 has slowed on the East End since the end of January, but that does not mean that the public can be any less cautious. Only about a tenth of the Suffolk County population had been fully vaccinated as of this week, well below the number that would begin to stop the spread.

In light of the generous pandemic aid bill passed this week, legislation designed to lighten burdens, perhaps this country can be said at last to have seen the light.