Columnists

The last five-speed Nissan manual transmission just rolled off an assembly line in Mexico. 

A chat with a teen who wants to be a Main Beach lifeguard reminds me of my own brief and unremarkable lifeguarding career. 

The phrase “baggage train” kept popping into my head this weekend as we packed up the contents of my daughter’s dorm room in New Hampshire and stuffed it all into the crevices of the car.

Once more unto a storied eatery at a Catskills crossroads.

June is birthday month for the Rattrays. Chalk it up to the first chill nights of late summer and early fall putting people in the mood around here.

I tend to see the creatures who live in my immediate domestic orbit through a semi-comical anthropomorphized lens.

Arcades and mini golf and open-air alcohol. ’Twas ever thus.

Cerberus, my 1979 Cape Dory sloop, is progressing toward a July Fourth launch.

It’s been an interesting spring in family newspapering.

If you’re worried about whether society will hold together, a SUNY college commencement just might be a cure for what ails you.

Scuffs where horseshoe crabs had made love during night covered the sand at Lazy Point. Their fevered trails crisscrossed the beach. Plovers and turnstones probed for eggs along the edge of the water.

One of the recurring themes of this column that I keep returning to — like a dog that annoys its master by wearing holes in the living room rug by habitually turning circles and clawing at the carpet with its paws before lying down — is the incontrovertible truth that people used to have more fun.

Ticks have never been worse. Science to the rescue?

Getting reacquainted with Cerberus, my 1979 Cape Dory sloop.

I didn’t really enjoy the 1970s when I was in them. But how we miss that decade now that it’s gone.

A homily for parlous times.

Slavery and the debt owed to Black Americans are among the subjects the Trumpist thought police are seeking to erase from their telling of United States history.

I’m glad Gardiner’s Island has remained in private hands. Is that wrong?

What’s yours? Ross Macdonald or John D. MacDonald? How about both . . .

For Helen S. Rattray, a “testimony and witness to more than a half-century of community life.”

I’ve had this idea for a few years now that requires some artistic assistance. Does anyone know a mapmaker?

Close and not-so-close encounters with bears.

The ospreys are back for the season, and I’ve spent more time than usual watching the show.

We’re having a potluck lunch on Sunday at Ashawagh Hall, following the 11 a.m. memorial gathering there for my mother, Helen S. Rattray.

Willie’s Roadhouse has a new fan.

A feisty young Jewish woman from New Jersey, Helen S. Rattray became the editor and publisher of The Star after her first husband, Everett Rattray, died in 1980 at the age of 47.

A tale of intense culture shock, of seeing America anew.

The mysterious pull of a struggling Southern Tier downtown and its one-of-a-kind hotel.

I have always been a do-it-yourselfer, even about food.

Pondering this week where I’d stash my cash, apropos of the possibly pending global financial collapse, the strategy of parking money in companies that manufacture small indulgences seems about right.