Columnists

Christmas tree follies.

Coming to you from the D-III national championships in Terre Haute, Indiana . . .

At Thanksgiving it seems appropriate to think about eastern Long Island’s very first land flip, which began 383 years ago when the Manhanset Indians were robbed of the place we know today as Shelter Island.

Dinner at Sam’s Bar and Restaurant with both my children followed by a brand-new Ridley Scott movie: Life probably won’t get much better than that.

May all your feeders be full.

I heard a liberal podcaster the other day lamenting the corniness of the term “the Resistance,” which brings to mind some dystopian movie.

We are swimming upstream against the mighty current of all-consuming consumerism as Black Friday approaches.

It was as welcome as it was toothsome when Brian Collins, pitmaster, served up a colonial meal, history lesson on the side, at the Nathaniel Rogers House.

Recalling then-Representative Lee Zeldin’s strange town hall in Amagansett.

The movies are my lexicon.

Casting an early ballot in the old Southampton College gym brings on the hoop dreams.

A number of people I’ve run into in the past couple of weeks have asked about my sailboat and what the status of its motor retrofit is. Perhaps it was because of the unseasonably mild weather that some minds turned to sailing.

Many, many years — and many shattered illusions — ago, during the presidential election year of 2004, when I was a magazine editor in Manhattan, I volunteered during the Republican National Convention as an “election observer.”

Paging George Costanza? My college-age son has a wallet beyond his years.

I have a problem with genius jerks who have a great idea in a garage somewhere and then see themselves as gods.

I am overawed by previous generations of Rattray women who managed to file their weekly Star columns without a break over the span of four and five decades.

The National Warplane Museum in Geneseo triggers (in a good way) one non-pilot.

Deer are rapidly adapting to their new reality and doing things they never did before.

I’m a believer in the veil of distraction. It seems to me blatantly obvious that Karl Marx was correct on that score, anyway.

That’s funny, he doesn’t seem like a Nobel winner. (A trip to John Steinbeck’s water-encircled Sag Harbor compound.)

The phrase “fifth column” came into common use during the Spanish Civil War.

Is the vocabulary of the average American contracting?

Adventures in scrap metal.

Thoughts on the popularity of e-bikes.

I’ve never owned a car I truly loved.

A straight father of three sings the praises of Judy Garland.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of what looked like little tropical fish-tank fish were swimming near the surface.

Emails from colleges drift in and pile up in my daughter’s email inbox — and my own email inbox — like the falling leaves of the sugar maple and the red oak.

Feeding the beast: On the 800-pound gorilla that is the National Football League.

An office goldfish heads to the great fish pond in the sky.