During the Second World War, East Hampton boys in the services communicated with one another across the far-flung fields of battle using a method that is astonishing today and yet worked remarkably well: They wrote letters home to the editor of The Star; the Star collated and printed snippets of their news in a column titled “Army, Navy, and Marines” that ran each week on Page Four, and then the service members read all about one another’s escapades and heroics a couple weeks later when their copy of the newspaper reached them.

We’re navigating weird days, are we not, friends? In this context of topsy-turvy, we thought it might help to provide East readers with an early glossary of 2026’s hard-working words and phrases, so, if nothing else, you can join the conversation and talk about it all.

Long Island’s East End shares a cherished coastal-winter pastime, iceboating, with its neighbors across the sound in Connecticut — which is where this month’s East magazine cover artist, John Ford Clymer, lived while producing an unequivocally American collection of artwork that today sings nostalgia in every brushstroke.

The South Fork has been a magnet for fashion people for a long time. See: Ralph Lauren, and his love affair with the old houses of East Hampton (and his charitable support of its historical society); Halston hanging out at Eothen, Andy Warhol’s place in Montauk, or Cheryl Tiegs shacked up with Peter Beard on a high bluff nearby. There’s Tom Ford, who bought Lasata, the childhood home of Jacqueline Kennedy on Further Lane. Helmut Lang on Tyson Lane. And Calvin Klein, who has owned sprawling estates both on Georgica Pond and Meadow Way in Southampton.