Columnists

Do you ever dream of being in a car that’s heading backward at a great rate of speed as, with one hand on the wheel, you crane your neck around so you can steer correctly while madly pumping the brakes to no avail? 

You don’t? That’s good. I think it’s because I’m fretting too much about the direction this country’s heading in. Happily, I can weather such phantasms; they don’t keep me up long.

A month ago, I wrote in this space about having come within three steps of falling for a nasty scam involving our grandson, who was in jail (so he said, or so said his very own frightened voice on the landline) and needed $3,000 (“Please don’t tell my parents”) for bail.

As you franticly dash around this Memorial Day weekend, or hide out away from the crowd, you might take a moment to reflect on the longest-term visitors to the East End — horseshoe crabs.

Although I have been known to carry on about how wonderful it is to live in a house that has been in the family for generations, and to answer proudly that “it came with the house” when someone asks about the provenance of some object or other, the other side of this seeming attachment to history and old things is, simply put, a deep-seated resistance to change.

“Physically, I’m in decent shape, it’s my mental condition that worries me,” I said to my doubles partner the other day, and she, concurring, said that tennis was indeed “a mental game.”

There are many more dandelions in flower around East Hampton Village this spring than I can remember. This may be in part due to Village Hall’s decision to switch to no-toxin landscaping. But I also like to think it is in part the legacy of Matthew Lester, a young man who died way too soon, who loved nature and in particular, bees.

Shelter Islanders seem to somehow carry with them a sense of place that sets them apart. Have you noticed that?

I’ve finally gotten to the Bible my mother gave me at long last, but as yet have found no salvation in it, perhaps because I’ve not advanced far beyond the psalmist’s prayers to the jealous Old Testament God to smite his enemies.

There’s no eelgrass to speak of anymore. Baymen and researchers have been saying this for some time, but it is nonetheless strange to think about.

From a fishing perspective, it was as quiet a season as I could ever recall.

With slightly warmer days, I have made it back into the woodshop after a long hiatus from sawdust and my tools.

Among American Jews, Passover has emerged as not just the most celebrated holiday, but I would argue that it also evokes the most spiritual meaning and stirs the identity of its participants.

At this time of the year, my yard is awash in yellow flowers. I’ve never known exactly what they are — or if someone once did identify them for me, I’ve forgotten — but they look a bit like hardy buttercups. They create a bright, sunny carpet that covers the entire lawn, on all sides of our old house in East Hampton Village.

As constant readers, those of a certain age at any rate, undoubtedly noticed, when I wrote two weeks ago that I was paying $65 a week to rent a one-room apartment in Alphabet City in 1965, I was wrong.

Readers this week will notice a fresh focus on travel in The Star. Two projects, a culinary tour of Greece with Florence Fabricant in September and a brand-new Travel quarterly are in this week’s issue. How and why we are taking this new tack here is worth explaining.

A funeral service last weekend, and the reception afterward, seemed the embodiment of community.

The other night, as we talked of Joe Biden’s predicament, it occurred to me that I, a diffident WASP not programmed to show much emotion, was at first bemused when men began hugging men in America — about 40 or so years ago, I think. 

“Did you say that you were ‘uncomfortable?’ ” asked Mary, who has wondered why the women now accusing Biden of unwanted attention in the past didn’t say so if they felt so at the time.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Anyway, perhaps because I’m a WASP, I’m uncomfortable using the word ‘uncomfortable.’ Nor was I reaching out in those days.”

How could I possibly have fallen for it — me, of all people, who’s been editing the Star’s police reports for more years than I care to remember?

The word is out about a pair of eagles nesting near the water in Springs.

Does anyone still chant this nursery rhyme? Once upon a time, I think, everyone knew which child they were:

Monday’s child is fair of face

Tuesday’s child is full of grace

Wednesday’s child is full of woe

Thursday’s child has far to go

Friday’s child is loving and giving

Saturday’s child works hard for his living

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

During a blackout in Fort Lauderdale one dark and stormy night last week, while we were having the best Italian food this side of Firenze at Noodles Panini on Las Olas Boulevard, I thought of New York City and the first blackout there, in 1965, a night in which a communal spirit famously reigned.

There was in the air that night 54 years ago a palpable feeling of good will. Everybody remarked on it and has continued to since. 

Before the wineberry vines behind the barn leafed out this spring and became difficult to remove, I thought I might take a shot at clearing them out. The side yard once was useful for storing boats and kids fooling around, but it had become thick with spiny growth in recent years. 

A quote from Thomas Jefferson, which has been pinned to the bulletin board over my computer at The Star for as long as I can remember, defines journalism as essential to the well-being of the American citizenry. Here are Jefferson’s words:

There is a spring in my step this spring for it seems as if sports-wise all will be well, to wit, that while the teams I cover may not win out, they promise to be beguiling, which is all one can hope for if one is a local sportswriter — that and balmy weather.

With slightly warmer days, I have made it back into the woodshop after a long hiatus from sawdust and my tools.

Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren are my kind of candidates.

It is indeed a fat country in which we live, and, fittingly, our president, obesity’s poster child, showers more money on fellow fat cats through tax cuts and yawns whenever anyone reminds him of the ballooning trade and budget deficits.

Spring might have arrived, or so the calendar says, but I have yet to see an osprey.

We are in a funny place right now, having moved back home to East Hampton after a medical sojourn in Massachusetts, but not quite able to properly settle into our old ways, because while we were away much of the house was painted, and things are still at sixes and sevens, boxes piled on the sunroom table, furniture askew.

They say that if you’re not worrying about the outcome, things go better in sports, thus enabling you to remain in the moment, and I suppose you could say the same about life, whose outcome, while still a dark glass in my view, is nonetheless definitive.

My tennis partners and I sometimes banter about the Great Chair Umpire in the sky. “ ‘When I don’t see candles and don’t smell flowers, I know it’s time to get up and greet the day,’ Red Skelton used to say,” said Gino during a recent break in our doubles game.