Throughout Candace Ceslow’s work, there’s a central presence: the water. Through Candace Ceslow’s eyes, it contains multitudes — vast stretches of shifting emotion that push her to keep putting it down on canvas. The rhythm of the waves can be calming and meditative, as she notes in an artist’s statement on her website, or it can be fearsome. “The waves are ready to be worshiped. They are deities ready to crash and pull you under as sacrifice.”

On this Fourth of July, we need to say clearly that the American flag belongs to us all, not one political party, not just one person.

The tug-of-war boys, here, didn’t come to play; they were really putting their back into it. This is the sandy strip beside the windmill, at the foot of Sag Harbor’s Long Wharf. It’s still there, 48 years later, but the wharf itself certainly looks different, doesn’t it? No mega-yachts in sight, no landscaping, no mood lighting. Would you go back and pull, if you could?