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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.  

Happy 3rd birthday, Evelyn Osborn. You may forget this particular birthday, but I shan’t forget it or you, your dad, Elisha Osborn, or Jason Petty and Aubrey Peterson.

There are to-do lists, and then there are want-to-do lists. For many people on Long Island, mid-March means keeping an eye and ear out for the arrival of certain birds.

Suffolk County, as part of its Adopt-a-Highway program, marred the vista on the west side of East Hampton Town Pond last year by sticking up an eye-scorching sky-blue-and-fuchsia sign, exactly at the most-photographed postcard view in the village.

We were watching the red carpet effusions preceding the Oscars when “Roma,” which we liked very much, came up, Susan wondering what the fuss was about inasmuch as she had found the movie to be “boring.”

The shirt was a “deceitful product,” according to one Amazon reviewer, who complained that it “looks blah and cheap.”

“No way. Tell them to call you when the price drops below $1 million.”

The panel at Sunday’s fifth annual Black History Month program at Bay Street Theater on the history of slavery on the East End was illuminating.

At sea in the Mexico City airport the other day, following a nine-day idyll in Zihuatanejo, I was reminded of the Bonacker, who, in Penn Station, said that he certainly knew New York City was big but he hadn’t known it had a roof over it.

The feel-good movie “Green Book” winning the Best Picture Oscar on Sunday night drew immediate protest. Most notable, perhaps, was the filmmaker Spike Lee’s comments and fast walk out of the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. But more measured, if no less passionate, responses came from all corners. 

I’ve been living without kitchen appliances — really, without a kitchen at all — while our walls and shelves undergo their first thorough sanding and painting in, well, decades.

Presidents Day was celebrated earlier this week, and, of course, we at The Star were working rather than reflecting on how far the country has come, or regressed, since George Washington and Abraham Lincoln led it.

Thinking about President Trump and his southern border wall the other day, and realizing that it somehow seemed to ring an ancient bell, I understood that growing up here, my friends and I often talked about a barrier of our own — at the Shinnecock Canal.

Leaving the hospital for rehabilitation was anything but simple. We do not have a plethora of “acute rehab” options here on eastern Long Island, so it was evident quite soon after we began our search that Chris would be extending his stay in the greater Boston area, and that I would be clocking a lot of time on the Cross Sound Ferry.

“Have you noticed we’ve been watching a lot of movies about old people?” Mary said as we were viewing “The Last Laugh” with Chevy Chase and Richard Dreyfuss on TV. She paused a moment. “How did they get so old?!”

We all know it’s been cold, and we all know how to procrastinate. What do I avoid doing? Paying bills, sorting through the junk drawer(s), going through old papers and magazines. You know the drill.

The wind has been out of character this winter here by the beach. Normally, by now we would have had a couple of classic northeasters; instead, there have been just a few easterly blows followed by hard wind from the west or northwest.