Columnists

It’s a welcome change that TV has of late become a unifier of families — at least for Marvel fans.

­ ‘Water, in some respects, is like the Gospel, free, but he who diverts it from its accustomed channels will, in the end, find it expensive.”

These words of excellent wisdom were penned in 1920 by a graybeard named Samuel H. Miller, who grew up in what is now the Baker House, and printed as a letter to the editor in the March 2 edition of this newspaper.

Economically, now is the time to prime the pump, as F.D.R. said. “Do something,” as he also said.

In my youth, the presence of rats — the four-legged kind — in the best zip codes was a source of high humor.

“So, what is your weakness?” my foot doctor asked. Aside from not being able to move, I couldn’t think of any.

Frost took the twitter from the dawn songbirds yesterday, which made me pay attention to something that had been at the back of my mind: When does spring start?

There is something humorous about having launched a newspaper column of personal musings during the doldrums of a pandemic: Shall I write about how I procured a can of dolmas (stuffed Greek grape leaves) without going inside the grocery store, or shall I thrill the reader with the antics of the lone-ranger raccoon who frequents my backdoor trash bin?

I told O’en on our walk the other night that I thought winter was finally over, but he was too preoccupied with the evening’s effluvia to give the matter much thought.

Unlike us, it seems all the same to him whether the weather is fair or foul. He is just as happy to roll splayed out on the snow as he is upon the leaves or grass. He is the most temperate soul in our menage, an avatar of amity, a friend to all, regardless of race, class, creed, gender, age, or political affiliation. We who tend to compare and contrast would do well to learn from him.

It has been some years since I pulled the iceboats out of the barn. The last time there was enough ice to sail was an early March, the third, I think. Late in the day, a friend and I took the old batwing boat out as heavy clumps of snow came down. It was as if we were sailing among stars.

Budd Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?” does more than hold up well, its heel of a hero reflects a changing America.

A shovel brigade was summoned to East Hampton High last Saturday to clear snow from the track, the turf field, and from the baseball field and tennis courts, too, for the new sports season.

The America we live in today did not begin in 1776; it grew out of Anglo-European colonization in which the exclusion of the land’s indigenous people was from the start routine.