Skip to main content

Guestwords

Guestwords: White Whale Memories

I remember vividly the first Moby-Dick Marathon reading at my bookshop in Sag Harbor. Some 38 years ago — June 16, 1983, to be exact.

Aug 26, 2021
Guestwords: Covid Time

Time is the priceless container of all we have, and, after all, it will get used up eventually. For those of us who are not young, it feels like a cheat — a blank in what is left of our time.

Aug 18, 2021
Guestwords: In Praise of Pickup Games

Ah, the competition and camaraderie of hoops.

Aug 12, 2021
Guestwords: Going Home

I am 74 and diagnosed with end-stage heart and kidney disease. The doctors said there was not much more they could do. Go live life.

Aug 5, 2021
Guestwords: When the Living Is Easy

Memories of funky, beautiful, artistic Springs in the summer of ’64.

Jul 29, 2021
Guestwords: The Way We Were

The release of the Netflix mini-series “Halston” coincided with my discovery of a letter I’d written to a friend in Europe in early 1978 and never sent, containing my firsthand account of a busy Friday night when the designer played a starring role.

Jul 22, 2021
Guestwords: To Potato and Privet

Thoughts on “The Potato Book,” a droll, tongue-in-cheek time capsule of a book with a 1970s warning in Truman Capote’s foreword.

Jul 15, 2021
Guestwords: Where Man Was Born

Throughout this past year, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I have returned again and again to the lyrical prose of Peter Matthiessen’s “The Tree Where Man Was Born.”

Jul 8, 2021
Guestwords: The Seven Ages of One Man

July Fourth is a celebration of independence, and these are the reflections of an alumnus of the ’60s, the era of freedom.

Jul 1, 2021
Guestwords: A Year in Springs

Every March fills me with a false hope that spring is right around the corner. The inevitable rebirth of the new season is always painfully incremental. Glacial. The coldest winter I ever spent was a spring in Springs.

Jun 23, 2021
Guestwords: So, Whose Daughter Am I?

When I was 40 I began the previously forbidden search for my birth father.

Jun 16, 2021
Guestwords: Overcoming Sports Anxiety

June is L.G.B.T.Q. Pride Month, presenting an opportunity to celebrate and reflect, causing me to ponder if my awkwardness playing team sports was intensified because I was a gay kid.

Jun 10, 2021
Guestwords: The High Way of History

I read the sign’s words out loud: “Grand Army of the Republic Highway,” adding, “I love that about America. You’re never far from our history, and we’re still fighting the Civil War.”

Jun 2, 2021
Guestwords: A Question for Gardeners

Why do so many men of a certain age suddenly take up gardening?

May 27, 2021
Guestwords: The Lone Ranger Faces Life

One summer evening in 1943 I ran to Dad with a big request: It was time for a Daisy air rifle.

May 19, 2021
Guestwords: She Ordered Pistachio

Memories of heavenly dates at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor in Queens trigger thoughts of the recent loss of Scoop du Jour here in East Hampton.

May 12, 2021
Guestwords: A Glimpse of Adulthood

Time spent on the beach with a father, and the details a daughter remembers.

May 6, 2021
Guestwords: Coming of Age

I think my interest in history, as in the history of the Presbyterian churches in Springs and Amagansett, is an extension of looking into my history. Who am I?

Apr 29, 2021
Guestwords: Science and God

Science can’t prove or disprove God, but I nevertheless believe that its findings can contribute greatly to our quest for meaning.

Apr 21, 2021
Guestwords: A No Good, Very Bad Year

Lessons from a tumble down a flight of stairs, a hospital stay during the height of Covid, and 90 isolating days in a less-than-desirable care center.

Apr 14, 2021
Guestwords: Pass the Wine, Please

Some variation of your life partner getting on your last nerve is inevitable. This was especially true in 2020, the year we rolled back the clock to 1918.

Apr 7, 2021
Guestwords: Once at the News Co.

How a slotted space for newspapers in an old Main Street store’s cabinetry came to symbolize something more — an arrival.

Mar 31, 2021
Guestwords: Our Impossible Journey

Whenever my daughters complain about lugging an extra bag of groceries, climbing an extra flight of stairs, or enduring yet another Covid-related frustration, I remind them to “think about Shackleton.”

Mar 24, 2021
Guestwords: Aging Energy Infrastructure

Long Island is in a precarious situation in terms of meeting growing energy demands. So how will the construction of offshore wind farms affect the grid?

Mar 17, 2021
Guestwords: A Reason to Protect Nature

What childhood traits and experiences promote an adulthood commitment to the natural world? A sense of wonder.

Mar 10, 2021
Guestwords: Good Ground

I’ve roamed 23 South Fork graveyards, from Southampton to Sag Harbor. I dig surprises, and what has more surprises per square foot than a cemetery?

Mar 4, 2021
Guestwords: The Funk I’m In

We have a new president. The virus cases are receding, hospitalizations and deaths, too. What is keeping me from yodeling in the streets? Could it be Post-Traumatic Virus Reprogramming Syndrome?

Feb 25, 2021
Guestwords: The Perfect Storm

Though alone since my husband passed away this year, I don’t feel lonely inside this lovely snow globe.

Feb 17, 2021
Guestwords: Dear Prudence

My introduction to the art of Prudence Punderson came in 1976 in Connecticut, when I took up embroidery and checked out a book on the subject that contained an example of her work. But an East Hampton connection? That came as a surprise.

Feb 10, 2021
Guestwords: The Lily Pond Connection

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.

Feb 3, 2021