Columnists

So, what did I learn this week? That Audubon “more than once described birds that almost certainly never existed,” and that the L.V.I.S. didn’t have any pants with a 35-inch waist.

Among the plant-related projects that I have gotten into, none is as challenging as grafting apples. Now, in the second year, I have one survivor out of a dozen attempts, a scion cut from a Quail Hill tree.

How Yondr pouches remade one school’s lunchtime.

I wonder if it’s all right to wear warmup pants and a Bonac hoodie to the Press Club of Long Island’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Think what we may about the yearly climate cycle on the East End, some kind of seasonal calendar is needed to anticipate when to take the dahlia and tomato seedlings outside.

It’s been a long time since I owned any shoes that felt worthy of a Polaroid or that seemed to reflect anything in particular about my character or my autobiography.

John Edgar Wideman. A fan’s notes.

If it weren’t for the moon, we wouldn’t be here.

Cold spells, baseballs, and pesky small birds notwithstanding, an osprey’s life seems a good one.

Under the heading of “Anything worth doing at all will take at least a tiny modicum of effort” I categorize most of life’s pleasures.

Non-adventures with a sofa-loving rescue pup.

When I wake from dreams, I feel quite peaceful, like the way I felt after my last colonoscopy.

I am happily a morning person, but birds tend to get annoying as the day goes on.

If I were a car, what kind of car would I be?

When ubiquitous smartphones put a crimp in important proceedings.

Two columns in one: from Palm Springs to NPR’s Uri Berliner.

Here on the narrow end of Long Island between the bays and the ocean, the chill lingers longer than elsewhere. Plant carefully.

What we did in April 1985 at Columbia University was righteous. 

“Government do take a bite, don’t she.”

To have order imposed on one who hasn’t been used to it, one who does not feel whole unless stacks of sports pages past surround him, can be traumatic.

This late winter and spring have been wet and wild.

Everything I understand about social class in America I learned at a farmers market summer job.

Getting hip to women’s college hoops at just the right time.

“You threw out my picture?” Mary asked when I told her my office’s walls were now bare, the floors were bare, the desk was bare.

There was plenty of screaming during my short trip to Nashville last weekend. I had not understood how Music City U.S.A. had become Partytown U.S.A.

The eclipse on Monday brought back memories of an eclipse in the 1970s, when I was at “hippie school,” the Hampton Day School in the potato fields of Bridgehampton.

Just one more Dunkin’ Donuts franchise here would make it right.

One person’s detritus is another’s precious possession.

Seeing a photograph of a rusted car frame tumbling from a dune recently reminded me of a devastating northeaster 62 years ago.

Is it sacrilegious to nose-poke at church on Easter Sunday?