Opinion

The members of our Sag Harbor Women’s Golf League were happy to be out playing again but at the same time aware that unseen microbes could be emanating from flagpoles, cups, balls, and other people.

All about us there’s suffering, and yet this neighborhood in which we live in Springs is beautiful, in full bloom and serene. It doesn’t get any better than this — here, that is.

Though delayed and being conducted by absentee ballot, school board elections have arrived at last. The ballots are due back in district offices by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, so the time is now to mark them and get them in the mail.

Who would have thought when a pandemic hit the United States that instead of stocking up on guns, Americans went grocery shopping?

Amid generally good compliance with the New York State Pause order, the Memorial Day holiday excesses were at a minimum.

George W. Bush and Barack Obama both made use of a White House office to prepare for public health disasters. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the office was no longer functional, and valuable time was unnecessarily lost.

Only in government would it make sense to take a working public service and place it completely on hold while developing a new one.

Before the coronavirus became a round-the-clock night­mare, mine were confined to night­time.

One remarkable success story in our response to the pandemic has been how swiftly and effectively eastern Long Island medical systems scaled up to meet the challenge.

Learn something new. Of all the thoughts I have heard or read on enduring the pandemic lockdown, this has been the best advice.

Given the challenges East Hampton Village will encounter between now and the election, it made sense to name someone to fill the open position. But process matters.

To some, spring means cleaning, courtship, or crocuses. To the baseball addict, though, spring is the end of that dark, languid void of silent suffering between October and April. Not this year.

Memorial Day seems an appropriate time to bid farewell to a longtime pursuit — in this case, this: my weekly column, “Connections,” which has appeared in The East Hampton Star, come rain or come shine, come hell or come high water, since 1977.

I’m playing tennis in the morning,
Ding, dong, the balls all will be signed,
Pull out the hopper, let’s do it
proper,
But get me to the courts on time.

The fact that we as a community have to contend with far more people than we can comfortably carry on our shoulders was made amply clear last week when the East Hampton Town Board dispatched a panicked letter begging the state to shut the door on tourist stays.

When the pope suggested that the coronavirus might be the Earth’s response to the man-made climate crisis, was it magical thinking? Or was it a sound, even useful, metaphor.

This is a thank-you to the readers, our friends. Newspaper people like to think we are doing important work. Sometimes, though, we might feel as if the rest of the world does not see it the same way. Not so now.

It hit me yesterday, when one of the kids pointed out that she was going to be done with school in two weeks, what the heck are we doing to do with them this summer with camps not opening and movement still restricted?

We talked with a potential financial adviser by phone one recent morning, he in Charlotte and we here, and were told that the resultant plan was positing a life span of 100, which I thought was a little on the rosy side given what’s been going on.

I am proud of The Star's literary standards when it comes to language, proud of our effort to represent the lives and interests of not just the wealthy and the grand but of the working people who make up the fabric of our community.

Golfers can golf, and have been able to for most of the past two agonizing months, but tennis players, unless they have private courts, have been waiting around wondering if they’ll ever be able to play again.

When the coronavirus refugees began arriving about the middle of March, I wondered what the ospreys would think.

Popular culture has appropriated the traditional philosophical term “existential,” and the new, fashionable usage clouds philosophers’ contributions.

It’s not just fear of Covid-19, but how the pandemic has affected the grocery-store supply chain that commands my attention these days.

Don’t we want this to be a happy place? A friendly place? And isn’t how we feel often self-created? Friendliness is intentional, driven partly by the idea that our own friendliness might brighten the community around us.

I would like to say a word about my former landlady, Barbara Johnson, without whom I would not have been able to stay in East Hampton.

Leafing through old issues of The Star from the time of the so-called Spanish influenza, its effects here could be told from the number of dead and ill.

As Americans, we don’t consider “holidays” a given, but if there is any one idea that unites us, it is our shared experience of summer’s pull. We anticipate summer with the hunger that precedes a much-needed meal.

Given my insistence that time has come to sign off on “Connections” — at least as a weekly obligation — various family members have started sending suggestions for special, quirky, or interesting columns.

Talk of a return of baseball this summer, sans fans, sends our faithful correspondent tripping down memory lane and stumbling into the N.F.L. draft, quarantine-style.