Columnists

Profundity and solace from an unlikely source.

Honeysuckle, lilac, Coppertone, and secondhand smoke: These are a few of my favorite things. I sidle up to strangers at parties when they strike a match, just for nostalgic proximity. days of youth when I smell tobacco wafting on the breeze.

To be of a place, and to be part of a worthy tradition to boot, is to be really blessed.

In the spring of 2001, I watched the clean-living-Americans-go-to-outer-space movie “The Right Stuff” and decided what I needed was to learn how to pilot a plane.

Emily Dickinson said you’ll know it’s poetry if it knocks your socks off, or words to that effect, and that was how Mary and I felt as we were watching the documentary “Viva Maestro” at the Sag Harbor Cinema the other day.

I drove by the Pantigo fields as a group was getting set for a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Southampton Hospital adjunct. It made me sad, and then angry.

At the 2019 Comic Con in New York, before Covid cramped its style, I walked right by a booth set up by a legend among comic-book artists, Neal Adams.

In just one day last week I was inspected and boosted, and soon I’ll be implanted as well.

The East Hampton Town Trustees eventually had to take on the question of a scholarship named for William J. Rysam, an enslaver of other human beings.

John Steinbeck and Cannery Row East.

I never liked the happy-clappy bright yellow of spring’s early buds.

This year the fun was bled right out of TurboTax.