Guestwords

Lessons in humanity from the Blackout of 2003.

Freud equated understanding the mind with an archeological dig. The sites are sometimes real places.

The patron saint of Sag Harbor’s 1970s turnaround.

The idea of a men’s book club, but for films, ticked a lot of boxes: manageable time commitment for a perfectly masculine activity in which plot structure and technique were front and center. Thus was born the GODAWFUL Film Society.

My crash course introduction to my mother’s imaginary world began with a home visit to plan her surprise 90th birthday party.

Memorializing the former Swamp disco and Annex restaurant site on a 1.1-acre highway parcel in Wainscott is a misguided idea.

America’s most intense crucible was, of course, the Civil War. Now we have been plunged into another period of national testing, and it is by no means certain that our political system will survive.

I have found that the biggest challenge of all is to make sense of what it means to find myself in the midst of middle-old age.

When we hear governments complain about violations of sovereignty, we must ask whose sovereignty is really being defended — and whose interests.

Saying goodbye to the painter Connie Fox, who died in East Hampton in 2023.

A Christmas prayer for when our feelings of joy are mixed with grief and loss.

It’s hard to believe a little house, with a little store and studios, run by a kindly, helpful team of devoted community members, could do so much for the making of art here.

Most young people believe that political leaders have shirked their responsibilities when it comes to climate change. They need to be listened to.

In retirement I have discovered a way to make my cherished old blue jeans new again.

I think of it as “the day when I had to choose between being a Jew or being a parent.”

Hiking the Paumanok Path is a wonderful experience, as you set foot in places you never would have gone otherwise.

What’s different now is what happened to photovoltaics — the steady decline in the price of panels.

It can happen here: Increasing concern over the growing suppression of Georgia’s independent media.

A leading feminist artist transitions beyond shame to helping others with their own.

An unexpected hiccup in getting a pampered nine-pound terrier from L.A. to the East End of Long Island.

An artist on her working-class upbringing in Minnesota, the Beatles, and a life through the prism of magical realism.

I knew this would be no ordinary house. As a neighborhood kid, I saw Julian and Barbara Neski’s 1964 modernist masterpiece on Terbell Lane develop, and got to know the owners, Sy and Ronnie Chalif.

A lifelong Red Sox fan says the enemy Yankees made him a better loser. You might say even a good-will ambassador.

Afflicted by tennis elbow, tennis shoulder, and tennis groin, I didn't know from physical therapy. I always hated gyms and their scary steel machines. Not anymore.

What the sorcerer Simon Magus’s cynical and self-aggrandizing quest for power can teach us today.

The best kind of beach day.

My friends and I never said “the Hamptons” growing up. That label refers to a resort for summer people and weekend warriors, not a place where you go to high school. But is “out east” any better?

Standing in a fish market, a valued 31-year customer gets a credit card company on the horn, and, oh boy.

This fall a Horseshoe Crab Protection Act will land on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. It would ban harvesting these ancient creatures in New York rather than merely setting quotas, and this is vital to safeguard a species whose extinction would have far-reaching implications.

History is never an objective description of How Things Really Were. History is a human science and art, conveying the values of the historian.