State officials were right to close some parks as thousands of visitors swarmed over Montauk on Sunday. The drastic step came after the previous weekend, when thousands came to enjoy the sunshine.

Something about students’ laptops that came up at a phone-in school board meeting this week struck us as important and worth a closer look.

Despite the fact that I had been a resident of East Hampton for nearly two decades at that point, my first column definitely reads today like the words of a young woman “from away.”

The isolation is balanced. Phone calls seem a little longer. Even routine conversations with someone in the outside world leave time for a few empathetic words.