Columnists

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.

What exactly does it mean when you can’t finish a book — not once, but over and over again?

This column is being written toward sunset from the harbor at Plymouth, Mass. Alone time, something so many of us say we want, is elusive, but I have had time to think this week.

“Cancel” is the word of the year, and not just in the social-shunning sense.

The airline industry may be on the verge of collapse, but once upon a time pilots were celebrities, dating movie stars, driving fancy cars — hold the autopilot, thank you very much.

Since we are all still feeling our way around remote work and online meetings, I thought that I would ask my high school junior for a few tips.

A creeping dread — of finding ourselves homebound again, wearing fuzzy slippers and harassed expressions around the kitchen table, bickering about who ate the last Klondike Bar — has driven me to wallow in as much outdoor time as I possibly can before the temperature falls.

I was limited to 20-minute segments of highlights over a small laptop screen, but even that couldn’t diminish the pleasures of the Tour de France.

This is a column about poop trucks.

I am extremely bent out of shape about the apparent near-future extinction of the Atlantic right whale.

What happens when your children go back to school after six months of family time at home?

If I could only get to Abraham’s Path and make it across the railroad tracks without the tire rim shattering, I would be okay.

There was a fair bit more activity in front of the Star office when the Methodist Lane United States Postal Service mailboxes were inaccessible during work on the railroad trestles nearby.

I’ve just come from chasing my son as he set off double-quick for his first day in Mr. Tupper’s fifth-grade class at the John M. Marshall Elementary School.

It took a global pandemic lockdown for me to finally appreciate my father’s lifelong predilection for napping.

First cellphone service, next the U.S. mail. It’s no wonder Americans’ trust in public institutions is not stronger.

Some people have “sensitivities” to particular sounds or to the fabric content of sweaters. I myself have a pretentious sensitivity to trendy words.