Columnists

We, the Rattray family, have a tendency to get lost in time, to misplace ourselves in its flow.

Fallen leaves. Is there anything in the world less satisfying to deal with?

After Edmund Spenser

After eight months of social distance, I think isolation is getting to me.

Leafing back through five months’ worth of “Shipwreck Roses,” I chuckle at myself as I realize exactly how much of my brain space is filled by thoughts of handsome movie actors.

Somebody once believed that gathering in offices was a grand idea. Now, post-pandemic, we may never go back.

We’ve made cardboard cutouts of family members so that Mary and I can be infused with the familial glow that has been so much a part of this holiday over the years.

Southampton's Dr. George Schenck returned to his practice Thanksgiving week in 1918 after being ill with influenza for nearly a month. A 25-year-old whose parents lived in North Sea died at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. 

The unknown previous owner of my secondhand copy of “How to Marry a Multimillionaire: The Ultimate Guide to High Net Worth Dating” (2005) left penciled-in checkmarks next to the self-help points she found most salient and helpful.

My favorite state park might be the only one in existence with more parking lots than greenways.

There has always been in this country somewhat of a disconnect between its ideals and reality.

Construction and landscaping have been a backdrop here for a long time, but over the past few years it has become ceaseless and everywhere.

“Anne of Green Gables” is the book that influenced me most in my life — not Tolstoy or Nabokov or Bruce Chatwin.

It might be time for Democrats to revisit the candidate selection process in the First Congressional District.

I thought Joe Biden’s victory speech was just right, reminding us to listen to our better angels.

With reports from Peconic Bay poor, there was a sense that the scallop crop in town waters would be bad as well.

Peak 2020 was reached at 3 p.m. last Thursday with a phone call from a young woman in the office at the John M. Marshall Elementary School informing me that my son, Teddy, had been determined to be a true contact of a positive Covid-19 case in the fifth grade.

Good for a hundred years, why in the world were New York’s old voting machines ever put out to pasture?

The schools have done a good job dealing with virus cases and preventing wider outbreaks by strictly managing their internal practices. But once outside of the school buildings, the risk of uncontrolled transmission increases.

Insomnia is how I personally discovered the philosophical truth that “I think therefore I am,” a  couple of years before I heard the name Descartes and “Cogito, ergo sum” at boarding school.

We interrupt the leadup to the Election for the Ages to bring you an update on one man’s vehicular travails.

During last Thursday’s editorial meeting, one of the editors, Irene Silverman, asked why it was that I had named my sailboat after a three-headed dog.

Have you been to Fairview Farm at Mecox?

Can we talk? About, oh, the pointlessness of Supreme Court confirmation hearings?

It is about 30 miles in a more or less straight line from Point Judith, R.I., to the Montauk Inlet. My friend Jameson and I made the crossing Saturday, sailing Cerberus to its new home.

I am only too happy to revisit Midtown. I will never see another youthful dawn in Alphabet City, but there will always be Macy’s.

Streaming television is supposed to be sleek and high-tech, but its nether reaches remind me of the old UHF channels.

I know my social media apps and Google search history are tracked, but now I am starting to think that Duolingo is spying on me, too.

One of the many things that struck me on my recent and ongoing sail from Marblehead, Mass., to East Hampton is how accommodating the communities on the other side of the water are to passing boaters, especially as compared to Long Island.

Last week, a production crew from a PBS show called “Legacy List” landed on Edwards Lane to film an episode — starring my house, my family, and the contents of my attic, basement, and barn.