Columnists

Naomi Osaka first said that she’d be absenting herself from media interviews at the French Open, and then promptly passed on the whole shebang. Wringing of hands ensued.

I was telling Mary that I’d dreamed of a former boss dressed in a Santa suit, and she asked if I’d asked for a raise. Dream on, I said.

East Hampton Village officials have been exceedingly busy in sprucing up the business district. But to what end?

I was surprised, when I lived in rural Canada, to discover that not everyone in the Western world owns as much stuff as Americans do.

Patchogue: Good for more than just thrift stores.

Spring was in the air, and so, evidently, was my head, for I had no idea until the middle of the following day that I had left my camera behind at Mashashimuet Park’s diamond.

The second round of dandelions has begun. Their bright yellow heads are close to the ground for the moment, as the seed puffs bob, waiting for a gust of wind.

It’s hard to remember what it felt like to walk around light and airy, believing that the world was getting better every passing year — rather than walking around as I do these days, with the chronic, sciatic understanding that everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

May 17: Maybe that can be another “new normal.” It’d be good to get Tax Day a bit away from a risen Christ and the Easter Bunny.

I probably should buy “Computers for Dummies,” but, given all the advances, it might be antiquated already.

I had a feeling that Tuesday morning was going to be weird. When Weasel, the Lab mix, rousted me around 4:30 to go outside, the peeper frogs in the swamp were especially worked up and a whippoorwill sang from a tree in the driveway so close that I could hear a clicking he made between choruses. Click. Whip-poor-will. Click. I went back upstairs and put my head down on a pillow.

Have you seen the commercial for Extra sugar-free gum, set “sometime in the not too distant future,” in which — as Celine Dion sings “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” — citizens freed from lockdown rush giddily into the streets, pop a spearmint slice into their mouth, and leap into the arms of strangers to make out?