Opinion

Amid all the fluster about several schemes floated for changing the downtown East Hampton Village parking rules one important thing is missing — any sense of what the issue is in the first place.

Oh well, forget about getting vaccinated. I called my doctor’s office the first day I was eligible, at 9 a.m. sharp, and they knew nothing. Then I called Southampton Hospital, and they too knew nothing.

Can we pause for a second to consider the fact that robots telephone us regularly to try to fleece us of our hard-earned cash?

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Kamala Harris becoming the first woman vice president in United States history is that it does not feel all that remarkable that a woman should occupy such a position. It is, of course.

A market-based strategy to mitigate climate change is embodied in a bill now before Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The expiring Congress did not pass it, but it will be reintroduced in the new one, where it may have better prospects.

Nettie and I took a flying drive to Delaware this week to inspect the campus of a boarding school. Pandemic ennui makes even the shortest jaunt seem like a grand holiday.

There are perhaps as many ways to look at the rampage at the Capitol as there were participants, but one thing is indisputable: It was a planned attempt for one branch of federal government to take over another.

As Trump’s thugs vandalized the Capitol, hacking their way through windows and doors, and flooding in, it occurred to me that we ought to watch “Lincoln” that night, that night of all nights.

Like many Americans, I have struggled to come to any kind of understanding of the violence and destruction taken to Washington just over a week ago. But one thing is clear to me as a late-coming student of slavery in the Colonial and early Republic North: Mob violence is no aberration in our history.

The riot at the Capitol may have overshadowed the Georgia special election that elevated Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, but it’s too bad it did, because that unlikely turn of events nudged the federal government closer to the ability to actually do something.

By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

Cable-less, I broke down and signed on for a streaming service solely so I could watch the N.F.L. playoffs and Super Bowl, which, after all, has practically become an extension of the holidays for the average American. And just in time.