Opinion

Writing a memoir was not something that came naturally. It was more like building my first treehouse and my second marriage. I had to struggle to learn how to “measure twice, cut once.”

When I was a young (ish) bride (1982) and new to the South Fork, one of the things my new husband and I did on weekends was just drive around and look at stuff. He called it shoelacing; I called it zigzagging — we would wend up one road and down the next.

Somewhere in the Midwest, where if you’re anti-Trump you must speak in lowered tones, I had my hair cut — well, so to speak, inasmuch as there isn’t much left — and was at one point during my monologue — for I can’t hear without my hearing aids, and thus feel I must hold forth when in the chair — asked if I read.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ah,” the barber said, “my polling’s holding up! You didn’t vote for Trump, then?”

“For public enemy number-one. . ??”

I have a friend who knows the names of the stars. A few of them, anyway, she says. I do not know what the stars are called; a few constellations, maybe, yes, but individual stars, no.

The Hamptons International Film Festival got me thinking about the starring role the Rattray family’s Amagansett house played in “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen’s 1977 movie starring Diane Keaton. I haven’t seen “Annie Hall” in a long time, but much of it has stayed with me.

A survey by the Pew Research Center observed that 63 percent of Jews say they’re either “fairly certain they believe in God” or are in some place of nonbelief or questioning. Unless we have an honest an conversation about spirituality, this “God gap” will continue to widen.

For some time, we have observed that the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals operates in what seems to be a universe unto itself.

North Main Street was blocked this week as a crew hired by the Long Island Rail Road worked on raising two trestles about three feet above their current grade. The project had been a long time coming. For years, trucks too tall to make it through the underpass there and at Accabonac Road have done damage to the trestle. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the L.I.R.R., had had enough.

As a legal standoff between East Hampton Town and the Springs Fire District over a disputed radio and cellphone tower drags on toward a fourth year, emergency communications — as well as mobile phone service — in the populous hamlet remains poor to nonexistent.

I’m getting near the end of the Old Testament now, and it surely has been a test.

Ketchup was a kitchen staple when I was growing up in the 1940s, as it still is in most American households. You know the saying, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”? I think we might better be able to chart the zeitgeist of the United States by keeping an eye not on auto production but on our national condiment.

It has often been said that if you weren’t for impeachment already, you were not paying attention, but nothing has been quite enough.