Guestwords

About half of the nation’s distressingly high number of suicides each year are accomplished with all too easily available firearms.

What is it about a banjo that invites such popular enthusiasm, musical intimacy, and political engagement? Béla Fleck has some answers.

One of the great but unknown authors of recent times will be celebrated at Guild Hall by actors including Bruce Willis.

In their grandest form, paid obituaries in The New York Times can occupy entire columns of pricey newspaper real estate, as loving family members or well-compensated publicity agents recount every instance back to that fifth-grade service award.

Prominent Montaukers of long tenure recall Richard Nixon’s fondness for the place, as “Frost/Nixon” successfully conjures the ex-president onstage at Bay Street Theater.

In 1987 I became the keeper of the Montauk Light Station when the Coast Guard left, and for 31 years I’ve ridden out every squall, hurricane, blizzard, and even Superstorm Sandy alone at the light.

The Star welcomes submissions of essays for its “Guestwords” column of between 700 and 1,200 words. Submissions can be sent for review by email, in text or Word format, to [email protected].

A local group has come together for a Walk for Interdependence, to keep families together, at the windmill in Sag Harbor on the Fourth of July at 11 a.m.

The Shinnecocks take no glee in the public disasters that have befallen Shinnecock Hills since the tribe was excommunicated, the indigenous people removed as caretakers of their own land. But you could call it karma.

If the essence of the church meant being a field hospital, reaching the margins, loving the poor in spirit — as Pope Francis had told his flock — then there was the promise of compassion, understanding, and justice.

In the current political environment, I am frightened enough to feel that I have to be more involved. But how? Deciding isn’t easy, and neither is choosing among Representative Lee Zeldin's primary challengers.

If you had confronted me, I would have told you I wasn’t a battered wife. I was a strong, smart woman in love with a troubled man.

I was aware that Airbnb and HomeAway had obstacles, and I had heard the horror stories, renters partying and charging admission, or subdividing rooms with Sheetrock then subletting to other tenants.

Thank you, Mr. President, for strengthening the bonds of my nuclear family. “We’ll get through this, boys,” I told my discombobulated sons, “the family that panics together takes Xanax together.”

With college acceptance letters there comes a dilemma: not only which to choose, but whether you should search your soul for what you love or just flip a coin.

Charlie Miner would learn of the toll of anti-aircraft fire only after a bombing run. “We all paid our respects. But after that, we didn’t talk a whole lot about the ones who were gone. It was just the risk you took.”

Disabilities access improves self-reliance, reduces tax expenditures, and is good for business.

Forget hard structures and dumping offshore sand on the Montauk beach, it's time for coastal retreat.

(Op-Ed by Perry Gershon) Representative Zeldin calls Trump “the ultimate dealmaker,” but both seem indifferent to the damage even a successful deal with the Chinese would do to American consumers.

Both young and old experience a heightened push-pull between the desire to stand on our own and our need to rely on others.

Not only is life better when we live to chase the question mark, questions drive us to be creative.

I have the teaching experience, the education, and the dedication, but I have no gun. So why do I want a gun? Let me count the ways . . .

With sensible legislation, the gun violence afflicting too many of our neighborhoods and schools doesn't have to be routine. Kids don't have to keep dying. (Guestwords by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.)

In his hard-knocks early years, Rocky Graziano was headed for a life of nothing but crime and incarceration, but the legendary puncher turned it around, winning the middleweight crown in 1947, earning a parade and a telegram from President Truman.

In the mountains there is no doubt as to global warming’s effects: Glaciers that were once tourist attractions have disappeared and famous peaks like Eiger and Matterhorn are coming apart.

In January I was sentenced for protesting the black bear hunt in New Jersey. I hope my experience proves useful.

I don’t need to be reminded I’m getting old when I’m on a pleasant afternoon jaunt shopping for dinner with friends in blissful, if temporary, obliviousness to the passage of time and the nearness of death.

Ah, the largely independent joys of this thing they call an apartnership.

If you knew what’s really in those detergents and softeners, you might change your laundry routine forever.

In hindsight, the Beatles were as Nobel worthy as Bob Dylan or Albert Einstein. Original, thoughtful, creative rebels, they rejected what came before them.