Opinion

This has been an extremely gratifying week for a team of us doing work to learn about the history of slavery on the East End and share our research with others.

I’m that person who cannot see the rare bird on the branch, no matter how hard someone points.

All along, it has been difficult to accept at face value that the motive to carve out a new Wainscott village was the wind farm cable alone.

Families’ captive straits paired with their desperate hopes for their children had one professor comparing the cost of college to Big Pharma’s gouging of the ill.

It is easy enough to absent myself for apartment showings. Would that I could take the furniture with me. Since it must remain in all its dated glory, a stager will come in to “freshen it up.” But there are consequences.

This week, federal health officials may have confirmed something that has become increasingly clear as the pandemic drags on: Kids should be in classrooms.

Sag Harbor Village appears ready to hand Main Street and Long Wharf over to a private corporation to manage paid parking during the summer months in a major change taken without a trial run or enough public input before the contract stage.

The 1776 Commission’s “patriotic education” report apparently thinks we’ve been making too much of the country’s sins and too little of its virtues in our history courses.

A television news producer called the other day to ask about the Plain Sight Project, a joint effort to identify and document the enslaved people who lived on the East End from 1640 to 1830.

I think we need to talk about the depressing lack of a bar here in East Hampton.

I keep thinking about what that sensibly unaffiliated Down Easterner in the Senate, Angus King, said on “60 Minutes” the other night, about how those who raged at the Capitol have to be listened to, that they aren’t going away.

The newest strain of MAGA, the one that was evidenced at the Capitol, seems not only more contagious, but also immune to the vaccine of coalition that President Biden is attempting to inject into the body politic.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Kamala Harris becoming the first woman vice president in United States history is that it does not feel all that remarkable that a woman should occupy such a position. It is, of course.

More than two weeks have passed since the murderous insurrection at the United States Capitol, and, if anything, the events of Jan. 6 have grown more horrifying with the passage of time. The seditious co-conspirators must be expelled from Congress.

Oh well, forget about getting vaccinated. I called my doctor’s office the first day I was eligible, at 9 a.m. sharp, and they knew nothing. Then I called Southampton Hospital, and they too knew nothing.

Letting pets move around freely is a thing of the past, traffic being what it is and even the odd dog thief about.

Can we pause for a second to consider the fact that robots telephone us regularly to try to fleece us of our hard-earned cash?

Amid all the fluster about several schemes floated for changing the downtown East Hampton Village parking rules one important thing is missing — any sense of what the issue is in the first place.

The riot at the Capitol may have overshadowed the Georgia special election that elevated Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, but it’s too bad it did, because that unlikely turn of events nudged the federal government closer to the ability to actually do something.

A market-based strategy to mitigate climate change is embodied in a bill now before Congress called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The expiring Congress did not pass it, but it will be reintroduced in the new one, where it may have better prospects.

By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

There are perhaps as many ways to look at the rampage at the Capitol as there were participants, but one thing is indisputable: It was a planned attempt for one branch of federal government to take over another.

As Trump’s thugs vandalized the Capitol, hacking their way through windows and doors, and flooding in, it occurred to me that we ought to watch “Lincoln” that night, that night of all nights.

Like many Americans, I have struggled to come to any kind of understanding of the violence and destruction taken to Washington just over a week ago. But one thing is clear to me as a late-coming student of slavery in the Colonial and early Republic North: Mob violence is no aberration in our history.

Nettie and I took a flying drive to Delaware this week to inspect the campus of a boarding school. Pandemic ennui makes even the shortest jaunt seem like a grand holiday.

Cable-less, I broke down and signed on for a streaming service solely so I could watch the N.F.L. playoffs and Super Bowl, which, after all, has practically become an extension of the holidays for the average American. And just in time.

While poring over The Star, just as I was breathing a sigh of relief that the year was finally ending, I spied a piece of news that felt like the final slap in the face after a year of low blows: Scoop du Jour on Newtown Lane was closing for good.

Two strong guys took our two long, heavy couches to the dump the other day as part of a purging effort of Mary’s that I’ve warmed up to, though at times I fear I may be the next to go.

There probably were better moments than this for me to take up knitting. Yet here I am.

I’ve never understood why patience is a virtue. Patience makes life easier, sure (especially if you are a parent). But a virtue? Why?