Columnists

Learn something new. Of all the thoughts I have heard or read on enduring the pandemic lockdown, this has been the best advice.

I’m playing tennis in the morning,
Ding, dong, the balls all will be signed,
Pull out the hopper, let’s do it
proper,
But get me to the courts on time.

I am proud of The Star's literary standards when it comes to language, proud of our effort to represent the lives and interests of not just the wealthy and the grand but of the working people who make up the fabric of our community.

It hit me yesterday, when one of the kids pointed out that she was going to be done with school in two weeks, what the heck are we doing to do with them this summer with camps not opening and movement still restricted?

We talked with a potential financial adviser by phone one recent morning, he in Charlotte and we here, and were told that the resultant plan was positing a life span of 100, which I thought was a little on the rosy side given what’s been going on.

It’s not just fear of Covid-19, but how the pandemic has affected the grocery-store supply chain that commands my attention these days.

When the coronavirus refugees began arriving about the middle of March, I wondered what the ospreys would think.

Don’t we want this to be a happy place? A friendly place? And isn’t how we feel often self-created? Friendliness is intentional, driven partly by the idea that our own friendliness might brighten the community around us.

Golfers can golf, and have been able to for most of the past two agonizing months, but tennis players, unless they have private courts, have been waiting around wondering if they’ll ever be able to play again.

Given my insistence that time has come to sign off on “Connections” — at least as a weekly obligation — various family members have started sending suggestions for special, quirky, or interesting columns.

Leafing through old issues of The Star from the time of the so-called Spanish influenza, its effects here could be told from the number of dead and ill.

Talk of a return of baseball this summer, sans fans, sends our faithful correspondent tripping down memory lane and stumbling into the N.F.L. draft, quarantine-style.