Columnists

Because I learned to play Monopoly in Atlantic City, and to a lesser degree because I grew up in New Jersey, recent news about the city’s financial crisis and the fight between its mayor and Gov. Chris Christie over what to do about it drew my attention. Bankruptcy looms.

Each morning at the hotel we stayed at in Mexico, a question appears on the daily calendar screen, and, serendipitously, the question the first morning was, “How old is the earth?”

The conversation quickly turned to cats at the East Hampton Library as the winter came to a close.

There are people selling ghosts on eBay, I have heard. Well, actually, I checked, and, yes, this week you can bid on a "ghost in a bottle" from a seller in New Jersey. But that's not the only thing I was surprised about recently on the Web site - you can buy raw coffee beans there and original photographic prints from the heyday of The Village Voice.

In the last few weeks, the old house we live in has been crawling with roofers and repairmen. I guess it’s a case of extreme spring housekeeping, but we are finally facing some of the overdue renovations we’ve ignored for too long: The place needs re-shingling, at least on the south side, as well as new roofing over the flat ceiling of the master bedroom; some of the window trim and soffits have gone soft, and we need to add insulation where the foam that was blown in years ago has gone.

One of the myths I’ve entertained over the years is that athletes are somehow immune when it comes to what can drag you down.

Oh man, that was fun. Though it went by in a flash, as I’ve been telling people since Sunday, it was well worth it. Well worth the 57-mile after-work drive to and from the rehearsal studio in Bohemia. Well worth the hours holed up in the tiny and cluttered studio/writing room at home, learning new songs. And well worth all of Saturday’s downtime as the hours ticked away and the butterflies took flight.

Leo has an Instagram account. He launched it after learning that a pig in Canada had 200,000 followers, and a book deal. Or at least that’s what I’ve been telling people.

Maybe it’s a good thing that interest in the presidential election has been revved up by one candidate who denigrates so many people — targeting them by place of origin, religion, and sex — while another foments revolution (albeit a peaceful one). Everyone I know keeps talking about the primaries.

“Estoy feliz que Mexico no ha construido un muro contra noso­tros!” I said to the taxi driver as we arrived at the Las Brisas hotel outside Zihuatenejo.

It would be going too far to say that my husband and I are cutthroat when it comes to the online challenge called Trivia Today. Intense would be more like it.

East Hampton has 1,000 tons of compost it can’t get rid of. A couple of weeks back, officials sent out a notice announcing the town had a large amount unscreened compost to unload.

From time to time, when someone asks why, given my age, I haven’t retired, I explain that I really enjoy editing what others write. The truth, though, is that the pleasure waxes and wanes. If a story is good enough to require very little editing, my work is easy but not much fun. If a narrative is jammed full of extraneous words and ideas — or if the most compelling information is left for the bitter end — editing can be tough.

A shout-out to one of Representative Lee Zeldin’s assistants, Terri Malloy, who, in paving the way with Connecticut’s passport agency recently, got me out of the doghouse and onto a plane bound for Mexico.

So it is March, and I really need to organize my tax stuff because this year it is going to be a bit complicated. Well, this year it’s going to be really complicated. So I have to go get to it, but it’s Sunday and there are so many things to do on my honey-do list:

Amid the serious implications of this week’s terror attacks in Brussels, the pronounced lack of seriousness that the Republican presidential front-runner has brought to the race became all the more glaring.

One of the traditional, and rather old-fashioned, features in The Star, “The Way It Was,” is a look back at what people here were saying and doing 25, 50, 75, 100, and, yes, 125 years ago — or at least what the editors in those times took note of, because they expected readers to be interested. I never miss it

Before the Mexicans build a wall to keep us out, Mary and I are seizing the opportunity to visit Zihuatenejo once more — only for a week, but it promises to be restorative.

When I read this winter that a town UpIsland had voted to prohibit solicitors from going door to door, I thought, send them out here. I’d have invited them in, served them coffee, asked about the family, and sent them home with a bundt cake. Of course, I would later cancel the very big order I placed, because, really, how many vacuums or cleaning fluids does a woman need?

One of the real puzzles as our children get older and our tastes in reading change is what to do about all the books we have outgrown.

Nothing upsets me more about the nastiness coming from Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz, the presumptive front-runners for the Republican nomination for president, than their idea that Muslims should be barred from entering the country. Jews were virtually barred once, too, and it wasn’t all that long ago.

Talking to my sister-in-law Linda the other day the subject turned to trip-planning.

For the past week or so, I’ve been hard at work taping and spackling my entryway, which was taken down to the studs way back in June when we had a new front door installed. It’s a 6-by-3-foot room, but it took me six months of stolen minutes and late-night hours just to hang the drywall.

Despite the howler monkeys in the trees and 84-degree ocean, Playa Guiones, Costa Rica, seems a whole lot like a tropical version of Montauk. This thought struck Lisa and me early during our vacation at this up-and-coming Pacific Coast resort town.

Throughout the drawn out 2016 election season I found myself puzzled about why candidates asked potential supporters for small contributions — $3 for various senatorial candidates, $1 for Hillary Clinton. Then it became evident. As Bernie Sanders has proved, it adds up.

At a gathering at Ashawagh Hall that followed a service in Green River Cemetery for Ralph Carpentier, who I always remember said the tranquillity of the terrain here informed our psyches, Elena Prohaska exclaimed that she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Caught in Providence,” as I learned, is something of a local phenomenon, the brainchild of Frank Caprio, the chief udge of the city’s municipal court. A search on YouTube is worth it.

On my way through Saga­ponack on an errand Monday afternoon, I noticed that the plastic coyote that had been placed in the middle of a field south of the highway was gone. Thus ended what had been one of the area’s all-too-few solid public pranks.

From where I sit, the world is getting narrower. It’s a given that the longer you live the longer your list becomes of colleagues, friends, and relatives who are gone. My sister-in-law is at the top of that list this week, having died on Monday.

After congratulating me on my 76th birthday and hearing that I still played tennis in mad dog fashion, Matt Charron, who does our photos, said, “I hear you’ve got some titanium in you. . . .”