Opinion

Unlike Dante, we began our trip in Purgatory at the federal building on the city’s Lower West Side.

Members of the East Hampton Town Board are correct in asking the question once again about the commercial use of beaches. A conversation they had recently about capping the number of guests at some events may not have gone far enough.

There was a time when I paid close attention to what it said on the backs of seed envelopes. Now I know enough to make my own decisions about the timing of when to plant.

This week’s column is the personal-essay equivalent of a very bad odor. Prepare yourself, reader!

The surprising end result of all that construction work at La Guardia.

How did we get to this precarious situation with Montauk’s water quality? The problem, in a word, is overdevelopment.

Since ex-police chief and current East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen first started his campaign against the Village Ambulance Association, the main public reaction has been if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

The East Hampton Village Board again seems intent on handing over its modest Sea Spray Cottages at Main Beach to a for-profit hospitality management company. This is a bad idea. The land should be open to the public, if anything.

Is heaven some sort of club, a fraternity? If so, its population may be sparse.

Foul weather is just the way it is here in the month of March.

My somewhat critical attitude toward cats — my less than all-embracing affection for all pets, all the time — is a character flaw, I’m aware.

When the basements of about six shops, a cafe, and a gallery in East Hampton Village flooded on Feb. 26, it was bad news at the toughest time of the year.

It is no coincidence that just as damaging and embarrassing revelations from a lawsuit by a voting machine maker against the Fox television corporation are released, the network’s Tucker Carlson has gone all in on a false retelling of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

At last, the legendary Washington Heights home of the Millrose Games, “the fastest track in the world.”

As Jimmy Carter is now in hospice care, I wonder what might have happened had his prescient words on conservation and self-sacrifice been heeded.

I am interested in the mixing and remixing of ourselves, and there’s no better feeling than when we’re in tune.

There is not so much to do in March, other than plan and perhaps go on walks.

For ordinary gun owners, the safety protocols stressed at the Maidstone Gun Club and places like it are in the public interest.

John Irving swings for the fences.

Thoughts on that road sign that says: Last Exit Before the End of Your Usefulness as a Person.

What’s it to be? Torpor and dictators? Or an educated, enlivened, engaged populace debating how best to proceed?

With elections every two years, it has been said that the main job of members of the House of Representatives who want to remain in office is fund-raising. This puts them at a great distance from actual voters.

One of the things that has struck me about the rash of dead whales on beaches in the Northeast is that it has been going on for years, millenniums, in fact.

I’m one of those people who has extraordinarily intense dreams and who always wants to talk about them.

The people running for town board seem steady and competent, but there is a lackluster quality to them at a time of unprecedented change for the town as a whole.

When, exactly, did Patch­ogue get cool?

The passing of Burt Bacharach on Feb. 8 frees me to reveal that he was my first love.

“Tennis players live nine years longer,” I said to the guys I was playing doubles with the other day.

One of our favorite things that libraries are doing these days as they expand their roles in their communities is providing flower, vegetable, and herb seeds, as well as the know-how to sow them.

This year for Black History Month I have been occupied by preparing for an exhibit at the Sag Harbor Cinema, intended to reach a broad audience.