Opinion

It’s hard to remember what it felt like to walk around light and airy, believing that the world was getting better every passing year — rather than walking around as I do these days, with the chronic, sciatic understanding that everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

May 17: Maybe that can be another “new normal.” It’d be good to get Tax Day a bit away from a risen Christ and the Easter Bunny.

I probably should buy “Computers for Dummies,” but, given all the advances, it might be antiquated already.

One summer evening in 1943 I ran to Dad with a big request: It was time for a Daisy air rifle.

Even in a slow year, there were 12,500 flights in or out of the airport — an astonishing number in itself that should tell you that our kind-of quiet skies are about to get a whole lot louder as Covid-19 restrictions ease.

School district elections are Tuesday, and we encourage residents to take part. While there is a dearth of contested school board races, important ballot measures are proposed in Springs, Sagaponack, Sag Harbor, Montauk, and Amagansett.

I had a feeling that Tuesday morning was going to be weird. When Weasel, the Lab mix, rousted me around 4:30 to go outside, the peeper frogs in the swamp were especially worked up and a whippoorwill sang from a tree in the driveway so close that I could hear a clicking he made between choruses. Click. Whip-poor-will. Click. I went back upstairs and put my head down on a pillow.

Have you seen the commercial for Extra sugar-free gum, set “sometime in the not too distant future,” in which — as Celine Dion sings “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” — citizens freed from lockdown rush giddily into the streets, pop a spearmint slice into their mouth, and leap into the arms of strangers to make out?

The high school prom: fun or fraught?

While it would be nice to write off all state income and property taxes, as we used to, I’m willing to stand the gaff if it means that President Biden’s broad spending plan will pass. The New York legislators who have said they won’t vote for the bill if our state income and property tax write-offs remain capped at $10,000, should abandon that stand in favor of the greater good.

Memories of heavenly dates at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor in Queens trigger thoughts of the recent loss of Scoop du Jour here in East Hampton.

We can only hope that the more than 1,200 people who signed a petition demanding fast action for the eroded Montauk ocean beaches now begin to understand the folly in waiting for the federal government to save the day.