Guestwords

    As I was walking up to the stage at the Heritage Park Amphitheater in Simpsonville, S.C., a few weeks ago, the butterflies started to make some noise in my stomach due to what was about to happen. The singer I play with, Janiva Magness, and I were about to go on right before Buddy Guy and B.B. King — the two bluesmen who have had the greatest influence on my guitar playing since I was a kid.

  It seems to be a reasonable solution to the Springs School’s useable-space crunch that the district would borrow an East Hampton Town-owned building on school property to use for classrooms. However, a deal should not be struck without keeping in mind the needs of the larger Springs community.

    Down at the beach at about 4:20 on Tuesday morning to fish yet again, I stood at the water’s edge, batting at mosquitoes, just as the eastern sky was getting pink and orange. My wife says that I am obsessed, crazy to be getting up so early, but the way I see it, with three kids and only the shortest breaks between the newspaper and responsibilities around the house, I have to take my relaxation when and where I can find it.

Getting ready this week for a trip that will carry me 8,410 miles away, I’ve found myself thinking, incongruously, about flying to Block Island long ago.

Since last summer, he has made cherry, apricot, mango, strawberry, raspberry, gooseberry, peach, plum, blackberry, and beach plum.

New York State Senators were expected this week to approve a bill that would legalize same-sex marriages.

I flailed about trying to work in sync with a group of women whose cores are iron and who bend like reeds in the wind at Carolyn Giacalone’s cues as I strain in the general direction of my toes wherever they may be.

A lot of people are described as larger than life. Dad was larger than life, and he lived that life large.

Ray Gualtieri had a stormy tenure, mostly of his own creation, but finding a replacement will not be easy, despite the position’s hefty salary.

Celebrities have never been the stock in trade of The East Hampton Star, so it was not all that surprising that we first learned Liza Minelli had sold a truckload of stuff at a yard sale here last weekend from an item on Page Six.

There is a hearing at East Hampton Town Hall this evening on an update to the overarching policy document that guides land buys using money from the community preservation fund.

Last weekend, we cleaned the barn. Nearly 200 years old, it is a ramshackle, dusty old edifice that is literally packed to the rafters with junk and treasures.

The name Dominic Baranello no longer rings a bell among many in Southampton, or anywhere for that matter, but he once ruled the Demo­cratic Party of Suffolk County as the last of the old-time political bosses.

A friend of mine was ready to go to Italy not long ago, to hike along the Amalfi Coast by day and drink wine by night, but then his mother-in-law injured herself in a fall and his wife took sick, and the vacation had to be postponed.

I’ve always been concerned about what I eat,Even when I don’t follow through with my better intentions, which is often, they’re on my mind. Now that I have kids, I spend an amazing amount of time and energy thinking, talking, and worrying about what goes into them.

If there is anything redeeming about a backyard flock that wakes you well before dawn, it is that they can get you out of bed at an hour you might not otherwise be up and about.

In the end, it was a routine affair — a real estate closing last week that from outward appearances was like...

Yes, I know. The English language is constantly changing. But some changes that creep into common use are, well, obnoxious habits that ...

I recently returned from Pakistan, a sentimental journey to Lahore, the place I was born and which I...

Proudly Marched

    Montauk

    May 30, 2011

To the Editor,

    They are Dead. I’m alive.

    It has been 43 years since serving in Vietnam with the First Air Cavalry Division, Air Mobile, 2nd Battalion 12th Cavalry. On Sunday I marched in the first Montauk Memorial Day parade. My marching was in recognition of the ultimate sacrifice made by three people who lost their lives while conducting aerial recognizance during an engagement with the enemy on Jan. 7, 1968.

    I was supposed to go on that chopper.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals heard a potentially precedent-setting request Tuesday from an...

The other day, staring out the window at a gray sky (there hasn’t been much else sky-wise to stare at recently), I began to...

The Music to Know festival coming to the East End this August, featuring some of the bigger names in indie rock out there as well as...

I think my wife would agree that the birth of our son, Ellis, 16 months ago yesterday was the easy part. Having babies is a...

Walking into the garage and dusting off our box of Christmas decorations moved me, unexpectedly, to tears.

Monday is Memorial Day, a time when East Hampton’s Main Street stops for a brief half-hour as veterans and others ...

The Facebook revolution, writ small, hit East Hampton Town last week in advance of a deal to award beach...

East Hampton Town’s elected officials have the misfortune of finding themselves in power as a potentially devastating lawsuit over beach access nears a trial...

In all, nearly a mile of East Hampton’s oceanfront shoreline could become off limits to the public if parallel lawsuits brought by a group of property owners prevail. There is a great risk that stretches of beach in Amagansett and on Napeague would be, in effect, privatized after centuries of being open to all who wished to pass. The property owners are claiming that a 19th-century sale by the East Hampton Town Trustees reserved for them alone the use of the area above the high-tide line. If they win in court, everything from beach driving to birdwatching could be blocked when the tide is up.

There are 35 Middle and Near East countries on a map offered as a free test on the Internet by Rethinking Schools, an organization dedicated to progressive education that publishes a magazine of that name, as well as books designed for, in the organization’s words, “educators who want to enlist students in thinking deeply and critically about the world today.”