Opinion

In praise of sortition.

For the first time in more than a decade, the official map of plant growing zones has changed — and it affects Long Island.

The brawl over the black paint job at Rowdy Hall reminded us this week how aesthetic taste isn't just totally subjective, but shifts with the passing of years.

The Asian longhorned tick, which apparently arrived in the United States by hitching a ride on a New Zealand sheep in 2017, has been found on Long Island. 

Read on for the variety of evening amusements that kept East Hampton entertained the week of Dec. 20, 1934, at the height of the Great Depression.

For many of us, the holidays can be a time of shortened tempers, sadness, or feeling like not getting out of bed. But there are ways to brighten up the days, if only a little.

A quite noticeable fashion statement at Saturday’s N.C.A.A. Division III national cross-country championships was worn on the face. The mustache is back.

The South Fork traffic mess is worse than ever, and it’s driving everyone nuts. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s veto of a bill that would have jump-started an overdue effort to right a wrong done to the Montaukett people was disappointing and part of a long string of similar rejections coming from successive New York governors.

The classics teacher in “The Holdovers” says it was always thus, that it was no different in ancient times, that there’s always been the horrific and the sublime. Yet thinking about how to get beyond it seems to be the only thing that keeps us sane.

The prevailing narrative on Representative George Santos’s rise and imminent fall has bothered me from the start.

I’ve stood on a ladder pointing a hose through the window of a house ablaze in the boondocks of Nova Scotia, and you can’t take that away from me.

The mission of any chamber of commerce is to promote and strengthen local business, but how can the chamber here do that at a time when locally owned businesses are fewer and farther between?

From the comic stage to the world stage.

Playwright, lyricist, actor, debtor, here is John Howard Payne on the 200th anniversary of the unveiling of his song “Home Sweet Home.”

With lots of Thanksgiving cooking about to take over kitchens, it is a good time to take another look at gas stoves, for health reasons and for the environment.

Money can’t buy you love, no, nor can it buy you peace of mind, engaged as you might well be in the constant pursuit of it.

There are no understory plants any more. No saplings coming up. The Quercus alba acorns I may manage to grow into small trees could help preserve the species.

Don’t name your business Hampton-whatever. It just sounds generic.

It is time to ask whether the daily responsibilities of town board members may serve to maintain the status quo and prevent adequate forward thinking.

L.A. story: eternal gratitude to that West Hollywood art house cinema for an introduction to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Dekalog.”

Dr. Robert Marshall’s metaphor of the fractals within a tree is useful in explaining the infinite patterns, and from there it’s a short leap to fractals in the arts.

Builders seem driven by an investment mind-set, one that dismisses any sense of continuity and community scale in favor of more bedrooms, more square footage, and more amenities. Now a cross-section of East Hampton residents is demanding new limits.

On the Day of the Dead, I think about them, my immediate forebears.

Only about a month remains in the village’s leaf-pickup program, and at this rate there will be nothing much to suck up.

My children definitely don’t feel the sense of excitement we felt as children at the holidays. They’re quite blasé.

We are always pleased to see women in greater roles in government, and Tuesday night’s results on the East End bode well for where the country may be headed.

Ann Welker for County Legislature has been a strong advocate for the environment. For county executive, Ed Romaine should be a steady hand.

David Filer can help guide Town Justice Court over the next four years as the community continues to change. For town trustee, two new faces in particular, Celia Josephson and Patrice Dalton, deserve election.

The adventures, follies, and disequilibrium of running on a treadmill.