Columnists

This week, for the first time, The Star has given over its news section to taking note of the people in the area’s hamlets and villages who have gone above and beyond during a time of crisis.

The foot and automobile traffic was considerable when we set out for a ramble at Barcelona Neck just before sunset on Boxing Day.

Here was television at its best: a short documentary in the CBSN “Originals” series following asylum seekers coming up from Colombia into Panama through the Darien Gap. And then they take their chances at the U.S. border.

Howard Lebwith, who died recently, embodies the Christmas spirit for me inasmuch as he genuinely cared for and celebrated others, acted on their behalf, and always marveled at the beauty of life.

We could learn something about how to handle a pandemic from 17th-century England.

I would not be surprised to learn that there is a run on puppies this December, and a shortage, as there has been a run on and shortage of Christmas trees here on Long Island.

The drive-through Smith Point Light Show in Shirley is holiday entertainment, corona-style.

They say that in ancient times conjunctions such as Saturn and Jupiter’s were considered ill omens — the gods, people thought, were conspiring.

The bad-luck schooner Alice May Davenport spent the two weeks following Thanksgiving up on the sand near Smith Point.

In the spirit of New Year’s accounting, and things we want to remember, I present you here with 10 flashbacks from lockdown — a collage of moving images, in impressionistic order.

I never quite got over hearing how Silicon Valley developers and programmers who worked ingeniously to hook kids on social media would turn around and send their own kids to no-tech Waldorf schools.

Even James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, was in favor of a popular vote, and here we are more than 200 years later with the albatross still about our necks.