Opinion

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.

’Tis the season to be jolly, whether you like it or not, and East Hampton’s overheated (and occasionally silly) civic discourse on holiday lights has arrived right on time. 

Bring the mini excavator. Throw a bone to put-upon pedestrians. Noyac Road needs a sidewalk.

A case is made for the 1973 Bonac football team’s inclusion in East Hampton High’s Hall of Fame — and memories are triggered.

One of the surprises coming out of the ongoing controversy over the Maidstone Gun Club land lease from East Hampton Town is what else has gone on there other than shooting and gun education.

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.

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.

Turned off by the N.F.L.’s enthusiasm for calling ever more penalties, a football fan finds solace in Patriot League collegiate games.

What should Jews do about the rise in antisemitism? Here are a few modest proposals.

In praise of sortition.

For the first time in more than a decade, the official map of plant growing zones has changed — and it affects Long Island.

The brawl over the black paint job at Rowdy Hall reminded us this week how aesthetic taste isn't just totally subjective, but shifts with the passing of years.

The Asian longhorned tick, which apparently arrived in the United States by hitching a ride on a New Zealand sheep in 2017, has been found on Long Island. 

Read on for the variety of evening amusements that kept East Hampton entertained the week of Dec. 20, 1934, at the height of the Great Depression.

For many of us, the holidays can be a time of shortened tempers, sadness, or feeling like not getting out of bed. But there are ways to brighten up the days, if only a little.

A quite noticeable fashion statement at Saturday’s N.C.A.A. Division III national cross-country championships was worn on the face. The mustache is back.

The South Fork traffic mess is worse than ever, and it’s driving everyone nuts. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s veto of a bill that would have jump-started an overdue effort to right a wrong done to the Montaukett people was disappointing and part of a long string of similar rejections coming from successive New York governors.

The classics teacher in “The Holdovers” says it was always thus, that it was no different in ancient times, that there’s always been the horrific and the sublime. Yet thinking about how to get beyond it seems to be the only thing that keeps us sane.

The prevailing narrative on Representative George Santos’s rise and imminent fall has bothered me from the start.

I’ve stood on a ladder pointing a hose through the window of a house ablaze in the boondocks of Nova Scotia, and you can’t take that away from me.

The mission of any chamber of commerce is to promote and strengthen local business, but how can the chamber here do that at a time when locally owned businesses are fewer and farther between?

From the comic stage to the world stage.

Playwright, lyricist, actor, debtor, here is John Howard Payne on the 200th anniversary of the unveiling of his song “Home Sweet Home.”

With lots of Thanksgiving cooking about to take over kitchens, it is a good time to take another look at gas stoves, for health reasons and for the environment.

Money can’t buy you love, no, nor can it buy you peace of mind, engaged as you might well be in the constant pursuit of it.

There are no understory plants any more. No saplings coming up. The Quercus alba acorns I may manage to grow into small trees could help preserve the species.

Don’t name your business Hampton-whatever. It just sounds generic.

It is time to ask whether the daily responsibilities of town board members may serve to maintain the status quo and prevent adequate forward thinking.

L.A. story: eternal gratitude to that West Hollywood art house cinema for an introduction to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Dekalog.”