Columnists

As one Trump acolyte in Iowa said, “It’s good not to be liked — being strong is better.”

After a few days when the ponds were frozen enough to skate on, we might as well start looking forward to the boating season.

Our family has an overdeveloped muscle for nostalgia, and the kitchen is the epicenter where we exercise it.

The pain of planned obsolescence.

I wrote my own obituary not long ago, and when I showed it to a co-worker, she broke out in uncontrollable laughter.

Grade schoolers here woke up unhappy on Tuesday. There had been a bit of snow, but not enough for a delayed start, let alone a day off.

The funniest scene in the funniest television program was the moment in the old “Andy Griffith Show” when Gomer Pyle makes a citizen’s arrest of Barney Fife on the Main Street of Mayberry. And does the idea ever have staying power.

As if all its billions weren’t enough, the N.F.L. gets into bed with DraftKings.

The New Year’s Day plunges here were communal convocations as reassuring as any you’d find at a church or at any other gathering.

I am continually struck by how few attempts there have been at real-world data collection regarding the beaches here.

Has the zeitgeist ever felt so apocalyptic?

The efficacy, benefits, and weirdness of hypnosis.

Aside from world peace, what else am I wishing in vain for in the new year, immortality apparently being out of the question? I’m just hoping to stay connected.

My grandmother was born in the house that makes up the core of town offices on Pantigo Road. With a new supervisor taking the corner office there, it seemed a good time to offer up a bit of its history.

I tend to refer to cocktails of various kinds, but that’s not so much because I’m a drinker, as that I like the idea of a well-stocked bar cart of shiny bottles.

Another lame-ass winter brings thoughts of cabin life up north. Way up north.

Vermont’s aging population is pleading for help up there, and people who want to work in this country are being beaten back at the Rio Grande. Go figure.

American men start to pick up books on Rome or dial in the History Channel for its endless depictions of gladiators and battle strategy almost the minute they turn 50.

I’m not a Christian, exactly, but I do believe in the winter solstice celebration of lights. The older I get, the closer I feel to ancestral rituals involving trees and bonfires.

Who says it’s passé? Good news and fine times in a YouTube music search.

If Greece and Turkey could reach a rapprochement it would not be too far-fetched to imagine that other ancient antipathies could be similarly dealt with. One can hope.

My parents’ generation had a pretty good idea of how to have a good time.

It’s important to “be of good cheer,” as the old folks used to say, not just during the winter holiday weeks but all year long.

When holiday protocol is violated.

I have vowed while breath is still in me not to be such an a-hole on the tennis court, to be charitable when it comes to my partners and opponents.

Early darkness and the bell music from the Presbyterian Church make me think of my grandmother, who lived just up the driveway from the Star office.

You may have been a teenager in the 1980s if . . .

Bring the mini excavator. Throw a bone to put-upon pedestrians. Noyac Road needs a sidewalk.

I had a photo of myself smiling and holding a can of Spam at an otherwise unoccupied candlelit dining table sent to our eldest daughter’s house in Perrysburg, Ohio, where most everyone in our family had gathered for Thanksgiving.

Present-day ideas about land rights on the East End can be traced back to the English, who set out their plantations on the Island in the middle of the 17th century, and it is illuminating to see what laws came first.