Columnists

As I was leaving Wittendale’s the other day holding a tall milkweed plant on the way to check out, a monarch butterfly flitted about me — a good sign.

There is a rhythm emerging in the struggle between me and the deer over who rules the garden.

Does it astonish you that there is a ferry in service today on the Long Island Sound that landed in France on D-Day?

What began as a simple college website search sends a dad into a tech tailspin.

Research does not support the idea that marijuana is performance-diminishing.

Sharks have arrived here, and not just the sort able to think that parking among the dead is okay.

If I think about it, I’m at my happiest around a bonfire, on the beach.

Here in Noyac, for some reason I’ve been overlooking nearby Long Beach, and was surprised it took me till the second weekend in July to appreciate it in a way I haven’t since the days of the Oasis.

If I were sermonizing, I’d write one on the folly of self-abasement, self-doubt, self-mortification, self-flagellation, and self-loathing.

Shortly after Lyman Beecher’s wife, Roxana, bore their first child, Drusilla Crook was brought to the household to take care of the baby — she was 5 years old, “a colored girl,” Beecher wrote in his autobiography.

I believe nothing is more depressing than the “festival” of “fun” that goes on at Hershey’s Chocolatetown in Pennsylvania.

Never mind the backups, jam-ups, and clogged (traffic) arteries, the quality of driving itself has taken a nosedive.

The goose that lays the golden egg is on life support.

Decades ago, a movement to build a bypass skirting the hamlets and villages on Montauk Highway was beaten back. I wonder what the naysayers would think if they could see 2021.

Did you see the New York Times piece this weekend about a pro-laziness movement led by a factory dropout from Zhejiang Province, China?

A good time was had by all at Pierson High School's graduation ceremony — Fred Thiele in particular. 

On Father’s Day my daughter said I was a happy person, and that that fact was probably the greatest gift I could have bestowed upon my children.

With some unknown number of those who live here put out at the idea that anyone would try to make a left turn onto Main Street at this time of year, we are perhaps overly unsympathetic to the folks who try. 

It’s been a year since I began writing “The Shipwreck Rose.” This column is number 52. Only 49 more years — not columns, years! — to go before I match the record set by my grandmother Jeannette, from whom I seem to have inherited my typographical verbosity.

What happens when you compete in a 10K when you’re not ready to compete in a 10K?

The father of two young boys who are very good swimmers said at a family gathering the other day that he far preferred youth sports, such as swimming, golf, and tennis, in which incremental self-improvement was the chief goal rather than winning.

Aboard Cerberus, my 1979 Cape Dory, even a minute or two’s inattention could have put me in the path of one of the many very expensive pleasure boats roaring east or west across the bay.

It’s become popular in recent years to complain about the State of Main Street, but many local people have been harping on this subject for 30 and more. We have a solution to offer. Or, if not a solution, a mitigation strategy. Introducing, the Anchor Society of East Hampton Inc., whose mission is to raise money to buy a building that will serve as a general store in the Village of East Hampton.

A father’s work is never done.

Kathy said she was beginning to get depressed by the news. I asked her what she was reading, and she said, “The New York Times, The Guardian U.S.A., The Guardian U.K., The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, Politico, Axios, Raw Story, The Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta Constitution, the Miami Herald, the Austin Statesman, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Alaska Daily News, The Boston Globe, The Portland (Me.) Press Herald, Corriere della Sera, Salon, Slate, and Vanity Fair.”

And this all before 6 a.m.

Monday, which was a bit of a surprise. The boat mover let me know the evening before that he had a spot in his schedule to take it from behind the office to Three Mile Harbor. What I expected was that there would be space in the boatyard to put it up on stands for a few days or a week before it could be launched.

My friend Antonia once said that she loved riding around with me in the white Chevy van that The Star used to use for newspaper deliveries. I would borrow the van on weekends in the 1990s, when I lived in the city and didn’t own a car of my own, barreling around to late-night beach skinny-dip sessions or afternoon Bargain Box runs with WLNG blaring. These were the days when the newspaper van had a Star logo, “Shines for All,” in mid-blue on either side panel. “In this van,” Antonia said, “I feel like you get to be both super-local but also respected by the city people.

“My, how you’ve aged . . .”

Usually I can sleep forever, but not lately. There’s an ache in there, around the gluteus medius, that builds until there’s nothing to be done but get up.

It is hard to know how well the point got across Tuesday evening after work, when I tried to explain — in Spanish — East Hampton Village’s leaf blower law to a nice young man using one to tidy up the driveway behind The Star.