To be of a place, and to be part of a worthy tradition to boot, is to be really blessed.
To be of a place, and to be part of a worthy tradition to boot, is to be really blessed.
The brutal reality here is that reasonably priced year-round or even seasonal rooms are essentially nonexistent.
 The Shipwreck Rose: Up in Smoke
The Shipwreck Rose: Up in SmokeHoneysuckle, 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.
 Gristmill: A Master of the Art Form
Gristmill: A Master of the Art FormAt 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.
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.
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.
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.
 The Shipwreck Rose: Build Me Up, Buttercup
The Shipwreck Rose: Build Me Up, ButtercupI never liked the happy-clappy bright yellow of spring’s early buds.
Thomas Piketty thinks we’re heading toward more equality should the wealth be spread around a bit more.
I had a realization, of sorts, swimming in the warm water off Puerto Rico last week.
 The Shipwreck Rose: My Vanity
The Shipwreck Rose: My VanityEven when I was a punk-rock teenager of 15 and 16, I kept a carefully curated vanity table, my bottles of drugstore body lotion and mail-order pins and badges displayed like a still life, like a Joseph Cornell assemblage.
It is depressing to think that war, nuclear weaponry, and oceans clogged with plastic will be our legacy to coming generations.
I’m glad my daughter is finally getting into thrifting.
A cable TV search for something to watch. Something other than ads.
Of late, I have gotten interested in a psychological aspect of cleaning.
 The Shipwreck Rose: In the Dark
The Shipwreck Rose: In the DarkIt was at Theater 80 that I received my education in Barbara Stanwyck and Greer Garson.
Word from sunny Florida raises hopes for a revived piano circuit.
I was delighted to tell Mary the other day what I’d learned, to wit, that the Gaelic word saoirse “means freedom . . . the freedom to be and to express yourself.”
 The Shipwreck Rose: Mariupol, 1922
The Shipwreck Rose: Mariupol, 1922Recollections of an ancestor's relief work in Mariupol, Ukraine, a century ago.
When expressions of thanks are unfailingly met with more thanks . . .
Asked by an interviewer recently if I could describe the two Covid years in one word, I replied, “Constraint.”
It was one of those little moments when something someone casually says can change your trajectory for good.
 The Shipwreck Rose: Twinkies and Trix
The Shipwreck Rose: Twinkies and TrixThe world of 1970s snackitude was fully encompassing, a total sensory experience of taste, texture, aroma, sound, and vision.
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