Opinion

Science can’t prove or disprove God, but I nevertheless believe that its findings can contribute greatly to our quest for meaning.

Early on in an effort begun by a Star intern to document the history of slavery in East Hampton, one of the project’s advisers said he could draw a direct line from omission of enslaved people of African heritage from the American founding story to police killings of Black men today.

And so, we too have acceded — inevitably, it would seem — to the fact that Afghanistan is “the graveyard of empires.”

For the first time, there is a baseline on nitrogen levels from which the several mandates can be evaluated. Before now, sampling for nitrogen was inadequate, when it took place at all. This created a situation in which policy got out ahead of science.

The Montauk Hammerhead Building team trounced the Amagansett Fire Department in Little League action on Monday. I should know; I was among the spectators at Lions Field trying to keep warm as a chilly westerly wind blew in off the ocean. In an email to parents earlier in the day, the Amagansett coaches had told us to dress warmly. No one dressed warmly enough, especially on the visitors’ side of the field.

Linguists and writers of a certain pompousness (ahem, me) like to debate the relative euphoniousness of words at dinner parties. Have you heard this thing about the most beautiful phrase in the English language being “cellar door”? What about "defenestration" or "lollygag," "twilight" or "jubilee"?

Not a lot seems to be scheduled here for Earth Day, which comes next Thursday and marks the 51st anniversary of the first Earth Day. It is the pandemic no doubt that has prevented organized activities, but that does not mean that individuals cannot step outside to pick up litter, support an environmental group, or cut back on fossil-fuel use and nonrecyclables.

Some thoughts on the coming gentrification of Sag Harbor’s mini strip mall, the Water Street Shops.

Lessons from a tumble down a flight of stairs, a hospital stay during the height of Covid, and 90 isolating days in a less-than-desirable care center.

On Long Island, Covid-19 numbers have fallen since their peak, but they remain surprisingly and stubbornly high. Deaths from the virus have also declined, but even so lives are lost that should not have been. The 3,300th person in Suffolk County died from the disease between Monday and Tuesday this week. More than 41,000 New Yorkers across the state have died from Covid-19, which is still taking the lives of more people of color and Spanish speakers, by population, than whites.

Recently, I was asked to retrieve from The Star’s attic contacts and negatives of Troy Bowe, the former Killer Bees’ point guard, in action. The request set my head to spinning like a leptoquark, for, as I told Carl Johnson, who had made the request, “It’s a black hole up there, a bottomless pit from which it has been said nothing escapes.”

At the risk of offending my friends from Sag Harbor, what is up with those people? Most of the time that I run into someone I know in that village, the first thing they say is, “What are you doing over here?” with the emphasis on “you.”

“I wanted to go to Persan’s for a clam knife,” I protest. They tilt their head ever so slightly, suspicious

My rubber-band ball, made entirely from rubber bands, grew bigger every day. It was bigger than a softball, bigger than a  grapefruit. It was heavy and perfectly round. I liked to bounce it, like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” off the wall of my first office at Vogue magazine, when I got my start in 1998. Everyone loved Steve McQueen, the 1970s tough guy with cruel lips, in the summer of 1998.

Bam. Pause. Bam.

People often ask me about what life was like at Vogue, back in the Gilded Age before the Millennium, before 9/11, before the collapse of print media.

It was perhaps inevitable that New York’s First Congressional District’s seditious representative, Lee Zeldin, would try a run for governor. But it is truly an ironic spectacle for him to rage against Andrew Cuomo’s treatment of women after he spent the last five years brushing off that of the former occupant of the White House.

There are several troubling aspects in a recent State Commission on Judicial Ethics determination that East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana violated New York Judiciary Law and the State Constitution’s Article 6 in assisting David Gruber’s 2019 campaign for town supervisor. First of all, it was a dumb thing to do, and second, when caught, Ms. Rana and Mr. Gruber vigorously insisted that they had done nothing wrong, when in, fact, they had already discussed that it would be bad news for them if they were found out. Making the episode seem even stupider, Ms.

The dull warehouse has come in for reconsideration in light of Amazon’s exponential growth and the drive for unionization.

Some variation of your life partner getting on your last nerve is inevitable. This was especially true in 2020, the year we rolled back the clock to 1918.

Soon, I’m told, we’ll be able to grow six marijuana plants (or is it 12 per couple filing jointly?), which, as I said to Mary, may impel me to get back to gardening again.

I once was avid in that regard, my steering wheel turning of its own accord when I’d be driving by Hren’s (now Groundworks). But the deer feasted on just about everything I grew, and if it wasn’t the deer, it was the voles.

I can remember quite clearly the conversation with a friend who knew a thing or two about town politics. At least a dozen years ago, he and I got into it about if anyone really wanted to close the East Hampton Airport. I said no; he said I was wrong. Cut to, as they say, today, and it is clear that my friend was onto something.

I’m never happier than when the power goes out, and all the humming machines, low-buzzing appliances, furnaces, and neighborhood pool heaters shut down, and the house goes quiet. Partly I feel this relief because, like Greta Garbo, I just want to be left alone . . .

Covid-19 deaths among Black and Latino New Yorkers far outpaced the rate at which members of the white population died. But people of color in the state are getting vaccinated far less than their Caucasian counterparts. Having been hit hardest by the pandemic, they are now not getting the help they need to stay healthy.

With the release of an architect’s rendering of a new Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, interest and enthusiasm for the project is sure to build. Also notable is that Friends of Bay Street, a nonprofit, announced this week that it hoped to buy a nearby eyesore building, tear it down, and replace it with open space. But there are questions, too.

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

How a slotted space for newspapers in an old Main Street store’s cabinetry came to symbolize something more — an arrival.

As more women go public with accounts of harassment by New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the other big scandal — nursing home deaths from Covid-19 — risks becoming overshadowed.

The Town Board ruled today that, once the coronavirus pandemic has run its course, all of our schools, aside from those for toddlers, be turned into affordable housing units, thus going far to solve that problem, and, further, that henceforth a new without-walls system of education be created wherein students, through visits to mentors living here, whether engaged in the trades, the professions, or arts, will participate in hands-on learning.

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.

Regular readers of The Star’s editorial pages might have noticed that our official position with regard to the ecological importance of Hook Pond and its tributaries, notably the present mud bog known as Town Pond, is that it would be nice to restore them, but there are far higher priorities.

My mother, who wrote a column called “Connections” in this space for more than 40 years, has only made one remark on “The Shipwreck Rose” since I began my own column last July: “I see you are styling the dog’s name as one word, Sweetpea,” she says, with the sideways gaze and slightly arched eyebrows of a disdainful veteran copy editor, “rather than two.”

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