Opinion

“Anne of Green Gables” is the book that influenced me most in my life — not Tolstoy or Nabokov or Bruce Chatwin.

Efforts to improve water quality in Montauk are moving ahead with the centerpiece: a $129,000 study for a sewage treatment plant to serve the downtown area with possible tie-ins to other neighborhoods.

What if Americans were not as divided as we believe them to be? Indulge us for a moment to lay this out.

It might be time for Democrats to revisit the candidate selection process in the First Congressional District.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first big job was filling his cabinet, and this year’s large Democratic field of candidates offers Joe Biden a chance to emulate him.

I thought Joe Biden’s victory speech was just right, reminding us to listen to our better angels.

For months, the number of Covid-19 cases among East End residents held steady. Then, as the season turned and more people remained indoors, trouble began.

With reports from Peconic Bay poor, there was a sense that the scallop crop in town waters would be bad as well.

Peak 2020 was reached at 3 p.m. last Thursday with a phone call from a young woman in the office at the John M. Marshall Elementary School informing me that my son, Teddy, had been determined to be a true contact of a positive Covid-19 case in the fifth grade.

Suffolk voters may be divided when it comes to which political party’s candidates they align with, but they nearly spoke with a single voice on Tuesday in rejecting a ballot proposal to change the length of county legislators’ terms.

Good for a hundred years, why in the world were New York’s old voting machines ever put out to pasture?

Every week I hike a Pennsylvania nature trail named for my late friend Jere Knight. It’s my thank-you to her for trusting me to write the first biography of her late husband Eric Knight, the English-American author of the novel “Lassie Come-Home.”

With results uncertain as Tuesday rolled into Wednesday, many thoughts turned to the Electoral College.

This has not been a banner year for land buys using money from the community preservation fund in East Hampton.

The schools have done a good job dealing with virus cases and preventing wider outbreaks by strictly managing their internal practices. But once outside of the school buildings, the risk of uncontrolled transmission increases.

Insomnia is how I personally discovered the philosophical truth that “I think therefore I am,” a  couple of years before I heard the name Descartes and “Cogito, ergo sum” at boarding school.

Huge lines of mostly Democratic voters have been waiting for hours for their turn at the polls across the country, and even here in New York State. Why?

We interrupt the leadup to the Election for the Ages to bring you an update on one man’s vehicular travails.

I had received an upgrade to ride the Hampton Jitney’s Ambassador coach, and was looking forward to a snack and some relaxation to the old-school music of my iTunes playlist. No such luck.

Nancy Goroff should be the East End of Long Island’s next representative in Congress.

During last Thursday’s editorial meeting, one of the editors, Irene Silverman, asked why it was that I had named my sailboat after a three-headed dog.

Have you been to Fairview Farm at Mecox?

With the coming retirement of State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, eastern Long Island voters have a renewed opportunity to gain a more active and responsive representative in the New York Legislature’s upper chamber.

Can we talk? About, oh, the pointlessness of Supreme Court confirmation hearings?

The New York governor’s persona intrigues me, and I draw on my love for Italian cinema to explore my fascination with him.

Two matters for voters to decide in the form of propositions are included on the Nov. 3 ballots for most Suffolk residents. The first would lengthen the term of office for county legislators. The second would allow the county to avoid repaying money it borrowed from a sewer-tax reserve fund. We recommend “no” votes on both propositions.

It is about 30 miles in a more or less straight line from Point Judith, R.I., to the Montauk Inlet. My friend Jameson and I made the crossing Saturday, sailing Cerberus to its new home.

I am only too happy to revisit Midtown. I will never see another youthful dawn in Alphabet City, but there will always be Macy’s.

Streaming television is supposed to be sleek and high-tech, but its nether reaches remind me of the old UHF channels.

This year I finally planted my victory garden. My coronavirus home farm, inspired by the victory gardens of World War II.