Opinion

The best part of Christmas is the run-up.

Restaurants like John Papas Cafe carry something of a place’s soul.

Thoughts on a 13-year-old mouth liberated from braces.

A public education debate has been raging between cursive and printing enthusiasts for several decades now.

When the Cuban missile crisis had everyone on tenterhooks, I, a collegian then, was pretty much oblivious.

What happens now that East Hampton Airport is under local control remains unclear despite years of talk. This is a sharp disappointment.

Cerberus’s sailing season came to a formal end this week when the crew at Three Mile Harbor Marina lifted the sloop from the water and placed it on the boat-mover’s trailer for the short trip into town.

The older I get, the less happy I am about the dark afternoons. Sunset brings us down. We have to fight, fight against the dying of the light.

It was predictable that just as the first Tesla electric car-charging station appeared in East Hampton Village people would grumble.

Funny that it took my daughter heading up and over to college in western New York for me to at last appreciate the state I grew up in.

Walking the dog was fine. Tennis was fine. Life was fine. Until Labor Day, when my knee blew up like a balloon. So what do you recommend, doc?

There were 18 here the other night, and now, as is the case most of the year, just the two of us and O’en.

In one of the more heavily debated purchases of its kind in recent years, East Hampton Town will soon close on the purchase of less than two wooded acres off Green Hollow and Buckskill Roads.

Trouble this year within the web of suppliers that bring goods from manufacturers to retailers has made holiday buying fraught.

Eighty years ago this month, the mayor of the Village of East Hampton issued an urgent plea: An important piece of early American history was in danger of being lost.

Every morning is a double espresso kind of morning around this ranch — the Double-Bar-E Crazy Ranch on Edwards Lane.

Other than everyone in masks on the plane, there was nothing much out of the ordinary about Alaska Air Flight 458. It seemed strange to travel again, being the first time that I had been aboard an aircraft since 2019. For the most part, passengers followed the rules, but there were a few people in the section around seat 18D who needed repeated reminders from the flight attendants to “Cover your nose.”

The New York State Assembly’s damning report following an eight-month investigation of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s behavior while in office should serve as a cautionary tale for government at all levels.

Fresh or frozen, brined or spatchcocked, roasting a turkey with all the trimmings can be a fairly expensive and labor-intensive holiday undertaking. For those who may find them too expensive, there’s help available in various forms. Food pantries, school groups, religious institutions, community-minded businesses, and even the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office have been distributing turkeys to those in need.

Hard-hitting college football action — a cure for the late-night-Wednesday-in-November blues.

On Nov. 25 and every day before and after, I will thank God, Destiny, Fate, Chance, and the prejudice of white descendants of European immigrants for my good fortune. But is that something I should celebrate?

A change to the ways East Hampton Town ordinances are prosecuted would be a significant improvement over the antiquated procedure in use now, which requires a mountain of paperwork and takes officers out of the field. Under the present rules, only parking and other very minor tickets can be handled by mail or online; everything else has to be handled in town court. This leads to a sizable backlog, particularly as violations pile up in the summer and can take well into the fall to be dealt with.

The desert is hardly deserted, at least the one that is rimmed by the San Jacinto mountains in Southern California, where two of our grandchildren, unbridledly joyous 4 and 6-year-old girls, live. Untrammeled joy, however, was not our lot last week inasmuch as an 11-year-old grandson who lives in northwestern Ohio underwent at the same time a severe Covid-caused trial ultimately overcome only by astute medical intervention and his characteristic bravery.

I’m not supposed to say this — visualize me right now muttering “Knock on wood” as I rap smartly on the top of my head — but I am the lucky dame who always wins the raffle: I win things much more frequently than chance says I ought to. If there is a door prize or basket of cheer, I expect to soon be carrying the basket home, strapped with a seatbelt into the front passenger seat beside me, softly chuckling to myself like a thief.

Adventures in a deserted Kmart.

Thanksgiving last year was just weird. Now I’m once again looking to escape P.T.S.D. (Post Turkey Stress Disorder).

My granddaughter stroked the ball well in a middle school tennis match at Sportime the other day, but it was her composure that struck me.

My teen years here in the 1970s, in retrospect, seems a halcyon time.

When I was a teenager, the doomed trajectory of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life story caught my attention.

A proposed revision to the East Hampton Town ethics law discussed this week goes too far.