Columnists

Scuffs where horseshoe crabs had made love during night covered the sand at Lazy Point. Their fevered trails crisscrossed the beach. Plovers and turnstones probed for eggs along the edge of the water.

One of the recurring themes of this column that I keep returning to — like a dog that annoys its master by wearing holes in the living room rug by habitually turning circles and clawing at the carpet with its paws before lying down — is the incontrovertible truth that people used to have more fun.

Ticks have never been worse. Science to the rescue?

Getting reacquainted with Cerberus, my 1979 Cape Dory sloop.

I didn’t really enjoy the 1970s when I was in them. But how we miss that decade now that it’s gone.

A homily for parlous times.

Slavery and the debt owed to Black Americans are among the subjects the Trumpist thought police are seeking to erase from their telling of United States history.

I’m glad Gardiner’s Island has remained in private hands. Is that wrong?

What’s yours? Ross Macdonald or John D. MacDonald? How about both . . .

For Helen S. Rattray, a “testimony and witness to more than a half-century of community life.”

I’ve had this idea for a few years now that requires some artistic assistance. Does anyone know a mapmaker?

Close and not-so-close encounters with bears.

The ospreys are back for the season, and I’ve spent more time than usual watching the show.

We’re having a potluck lunch on Sunday at Ashawagh Hall, following the 11 a.m. memorial gathering there for my mother, Helen S. Rattray.

Willie’s Roadhouse has a new fan.

A feisty young Jewish woman from New Jersey, Helen S. Rattray became the editor and publisher of The Star after her first husband, Everett Rattray, died in 1980 at the age of 47.

A tale of intense culture shock, of seeing America anew.

The mysterious pull of a struggling Southern Tier downtown and its one-of-a-kind hotel.

I have always been a do-it-yourselfer, even about food.

Pondering this week where I’d stash my cash, apropos of the possibly pending global financial collapse, the strategy of parking money in companies that manufacture small indulgences seems about right.

The pleasure and practicality of a loaner.

Zaire had attracted me for what I perceived as its perch on the knife edge between order and chaos. I had sought a challenge.

All the way to Florida and back it was my daughter, Nettie, who led me in the right direction, not the other way around.

At the Byron Young Fish Passage.

The Washington dipsticks who discussed apparently classified United States military planning on an unsecure chat app before a March 15 attack on Yemen’s Houthi militants must not have been familiar with teenagers.

One of the superstitions I have acquired with age is that I do believe houses and belongings acquire something from the generations who have been there before.

Behold gastronomic glory — the Rochester garbage plate.

At long last, the East Hampton Town Board is expected to reduce the cap on houses relative to the size of a given piece of land.

The Bouvier Beales of Grey Gardens had raccoons in the parlor but they also had certain pretentions. They floated in time in a rather detached fashion, losing track of its passing days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries, and I understand and sympathize, especially when it comes to yard maintenance.

Thoughts from someone who hated daylight saving time. Until suddenly he didn't.