Guestwords

A two-mile stretch of road between two ponds in East Hampton has provided Treasury secretaries for F.D.R. and four Republican presidents in the 20th century, and now a secretary of state for Joe Biden.

It is easy enough to absent myself for apartment showings. Would that I could take the furniture with me. Since it must remain in all its dated glory, a stager will come in to “freshen it up.” But there are consequences.

The newest strain of MAGA, the one that was evidenced at the Capitol, seems not only more contagious, but also immune to the vaccine of coalition that President Biden is attempting to inject into the body politic.

A market-based strategy to mitigate climate change is embodied in a bill now before Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The expiring Congress did not pass it, but it will be reintroduced in the new one, where it may have better prospects.

While poring over The Star, just as I was breathing a sigh of relief that the year was finally ending, I spied a piece of news that felt like the final slap in the face after a year of low blows: Scoop du Jour on Newtown Lane was closing for good.

The lily of the valley I planted after my husband died took me back to a time and place when my mother and her brood were happiest, and in particular back to a Christmastime shopping trip to the city.

When East Hampton resident Philip Whitley Churchill-Down, age 63, died last month in a freak clam-shucking accident, America lost its foremost oenological bibliophile and I lost a dear friend.

One of the ways that a human being can be traumatized is to have their reality doubted, and now more than 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden are being told at least once a day that what they’ve seen and done is a fiction.

Offer me coffee and I feel special. A chance to shine, to be heard. Inevitably, all eyes turn to me when I announce, “No thanks, never had a cup in my life.”

Tired. So tired . . . I want to lay my head down. So heavy. 

It’s 1947, a hot, late-summer afternoon in Bethesda, Md., where I’m in first grade at Bradley Elementary (named for Omar, the World War II general). I’ve walked my bike home on the path through the woods, past the spot where we kids hunt and eat wild strawberries at recess. Too weak to pedal. I’ve made it home by holding on to the handlebars and lying across the seat. A few steps. A few more. Another.

Every year about this time, I would go through the same litany of worries. That gosh-darned turkey gave me no end of heartburn. But this year is something else entirely.

My father was pretty good-looking, with sharp blue eyes and a wash of curly hair that held high on his head throughout his life. What my father wasn’t was a sharp dresser.