Opinion

It was perhaps inevitable that New York’s First Congressional District’s seditious representative, Lee Zeldin, would try a run for governor. But it is truly an ironic spectacle for him to rage against Andrew Cuomo’s treatment of women after he spent the last five years brushing off that of the former occupant of the White House.

On Long Island, Covid-19 numbers have fallen since their peak, but they remain surprisingly and stubbornly high. Deaths from the virus have also declined, but even so lives are lost that should not have been. The 3,300th person in Suffolk County died from the disease between Monday and Tuesday this week. More than 41,000 New Yorkers across the state have died from Covid-19, which is still taking the lives of more people of color and Spanish speakers, by population, than whites.

Not a lot seems to be scheduled here for Earth Day, which comes next Thursday and marks the 51st anniversary of the first Earth Day. It is the pandemic no doubt that has prevented organized activities, but that does not mean that individuals cannot step outside to pick up litter, support an environmental group, or cut back on fossil-fuel use and nonrecyclables.

At the risk of offending my friends from Sag Harbor, what is up with those people? Most of the time that I run into someone I know in that village, the first thing they say is, “What are you doing over here?” with the emphasis on “you.”

“I wanted to go to Persan’s for a clam knife,” I protest. They tilt their head ever so slightly, suspicious

My rubber-band ball, made entirely from rubber bands, grew bigger every day. It was bigger than a softball, bigger than a  grapefruit. It was heavy and perfectly round. I liked to bounce it, like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” off the wall of my first office at Vogue magazine, when I got my start in 1998. Everyone loved Steve McQueen, the 1970s tough guy with cruel lips, in the summer of 1998.

Bam. Pause. Bam.

People often ask me about what life was like at Vogue, back in the Gilded Age before the Millennium, before 9/11, before the collapse of print media.

Some thoughts on the coming gentrification of Sag Harbor’s mini strip mall, the Water Street Shops.

Recently, I was asked to retrieve from The Star’s attic contacts and negatives of Troy Bowe, the former Killer Bees’ point guard, in action. The request set my head to spinning like a leptoquark, for, as I told Carl Johnson, who had made the request, “It’s a black hole up there, a bottomless pit from which it has been said nothing escapes.”

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.

There are several troubling aspects in a recent State Commission on Judicial Ethics determination that East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana violated New York Judiciary Law and the State Constitution’s Article 6 in assisting David Gruber’s 2019 campaign for town supervisor. First of all, it was a dumb thing to do, and second, when caught, Ms. Rana and Mr. Gruber vigorously insisted that they had done nothing wrong, when in, fact, they had already discussed that it would be bad news for them if they were found out. Making the episode seem even stupider, Ms.

Covid-19 deaths among Black and Latino New Yorkers far outpaced the rate at which members of the white population died. But people of color in the state are getting vaccinated far less than their Caucasian counterparts. Having been hit hardest by the pandemic, they are now not getting the help they need to stay healthy.

With the release of an architect’s rendering of a new Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, interest and enthusiasm for the project is sure to build. Also notable is that Friends of Bay Street, a nonprofit, announced this week that it hoped to buy a nearby eyesore building, tear it down, and replace it with open space. But there are questions, too.

I can remember quite clearly the conversation with a friend who knew a thing or two about town politics. At least a dozen years ago, he and I got into it about if anyone really wanted to close the East Hampton Airport. I said no; he said I was wrong. Cut to, as they say, today, and it is clear that my friend was onto something.