Guestwords

A chance encounter with Dick Cavett on an East Hampton beach leads to a long-term friendship. And to Groucho.

Just imagine how much more peaceful the world would be if difficult and/or coldhearted people were walloped with a million daily currents of kindness and love.

Trump’s actions with respect to losing the election, while extreme, is hardly new. Winning is a supreme value in American culture.

With its wide legs, its shapeless backside, its expanding waistline, the sweatpant is the official garment of the borderless, post-pandemic world.

Pictures of Pelé flashing on TV as FIFA World Cup fever spreads from Qatar to Queens bring back memories of a writer’s sort-of date with him.

Was it a quirk of history or the hand of God that brought Squanto and William Bradford together?

The Nov. 3 vote in the Sag Harbor School District to approve buying five lots near the high school with C.P.F. help was significant. It forces all of us to rethink what preservation means for the East End.

As New York magazine’s pioneering “Insatiable Critic” and the first foodie, a term she coined, Gael Greene made dining out a sensual experience to be savored.

The Group of 7 has decided to cap the price it will pay for Russian oil. There may be lessons for that challenge in U.S. history, from World War I to the coal wars of 1922.

Last year a group of us decided to tackle our ecological despair with action in a landscape we love — East Hampton and eastern Long Island. We started in our own yards.

Oct. 22, 1962: I was ordained to ministry in the Presbyterian Church, and President Kennedy addressed the nation on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I have a gripe with people who pin appellations on inanimate objects, or on almost anything and everything. I draw the line at labeling automobiles, apartment complexes, houses . . .

I suspect that I haven’t given enough credit to my feet for what they’ve done for me. It’s time to correct that.

Memories of picking beach plums in Shinnecock Hills, and how they were lovingly jarred in a grandmother’s sweet-smelling kitchen.

I hereby pay my respects to this woman who so impressively embodied Britain’s history and spirit.

A road trip to a pioneering surfer’s favorite East End haunts brings a family together.

For years my grandson had been writing in the brown leather visitors’ book after every summer stay at our beach house. Then one day he stopped.

I got to know Simon Perchik — prolific poet, friend, disputator, World War II vet — when he was barechested and in boxer shorts.

I've had some amusing experiences while passing stones. Have you?

It was the summer my family discovered “the Black Hamptons.”

A close-up look at Abraham Lincoln’s presidency offers possibilities for our own political polarization.

For me Pig Latin is a little like Swedish. Everyone who speaks it reminds me of the characters in a Bergman film who have lost their faith in God.

This year our little church by Accabonac Creek, the Springs Community Presbyterian Church, celebrates its 140th year. I call it one of the great cathedrals of the world.

All our decades of planning were working to create the family we’d always wanted. Until, late in my pregnancy with our fourth child, a nurse called.

Vietnam was my war, even though I never served there. It framed my youth and I longed to see the country. I finally got there at age 69, in early 2020, just before Covid hit.

A family tradition of clamming and an everlasting appreciation for the chowder of Mary Emma Bunn of the Shinnecocks.

The summer of 1977, the summer of Son of Sam, brought trauma and fear, and the poison of trauma doesn’t just go away.

Again today, the world is witness to invasion, resistance, and the need to escape repression.

We are seeing a resurgence of attitudes antagonistic to correcting systemic racism. After two years of listening, there is not only fatigue around these conversations, but also significant pushback. So we must act.

Nature on Earth is in a man-made death spiral, but imagine how much faster we would be killing life as we know it if everyone on this fragile orb followed the lead of America’s most “successful.”