Opinion

Southampton Town officials had stars in their eyes when they granted permission for a giant pop concert held in Bridgehampton on Saturday, attended by an estimated 3,000 guests.

I don’t believe there are any secret spots anymore. That was certainly the case on Saturday, when the middle child and I went to a normally empty place along the ocean for a late-afternoon swim.

I have an unhealthy relationship with large home appliances.

If there was ever a moment for the myriad school districts on Long Island to cooperate, this is it. By working together across district lines, schools can help reduce the risk of a renewed Covid-19 outbreak.

I’ll be goddamned if all those cassettes I lost to a flooded basement didn’t help catalog a life.

I have a question about the plans for a new park in Wainscott, at the site of the memorable, irreplaceable Club Swamp.

As the Black Lives Matter movement focuses attention on the legacy of slavery and racism in the United States, there is a sense that the assessment is incomplete

It’s gratifying to have memories of a youth ill-spent.

The death of Jeffrey Gantt by apparent drowning in Montauk’s Fort Pond on Sunday is a tragedy for his friends, families, and business acquaintances, and is a reminder how quickly things can go wrong on the water, even in the most seemingly benign places.

Wainscott might be headed toward incorporation for all the wrong reasons. But if in doing so it can avoid the worst of what has happened elsewhere in East Hampton, forming its own village might just be the best thing that could happen to it.

For a long time, this newspaper has called for bike lanes on county, town, and village roads in a general sense. Instead of just keeping to that, we now suggest that several specific roads should be considered for widening to accommodate bicycles.

A trip to the sporting goods store turns into a moment of reflection.

The passing of Carl Reiner reminds us of an era when perhaps 80 percent of leading comics were Jewish. The passing of a style of humor we might call earthy, clever, slapstick, and/or Jewish.

The deer I was prepared for. The rabbits I was not.

From early in the pandemic, it was clear that resort communities were different. Ski areas, which attract visitors and seasonal workers from across the United States and other countries, became hot spots for virus outbreaks. In Colorado, while the rest of the country was just becoming aware of the danger in March, numbers were already beginning to appear in places like Vail and Aspen.

When I was very small I had a conception of the calendar year as a wheel, with different hues in sections at the end of spokes — a wagon wheel, a View Master card, a color wheel.

Every American should have the experience of complete, untethered freedom, if only for a while.

In recent years, while I migrated to South America, a multinational Latin American community has established roots here, and as I drive around town, I find myself becoming reacquainted with a new East Hampton.

With mounting evidence about a Russian plot to pay bounties to fighters in Afghanistan to target United States and coalition troops, one might have thought an Army veteran like Lee Zeldin would sympathize with the American military personnel who may have come under attack, but that would be wrong.

My mom’s ability to reach out, give you the spotlight, kill at cocktail hour, and, by God, hold up a conversation, is a source of endless luxury for my dad, sister, and me.

As summer began, Covid-19 prevention on the East End looked dangerously inadequate.

You have to wonder how friendships will survive the pandemic.

My own favorite moment of 2020 was circling deck seven aboard the Queen Mary II in high seas, tilting into the high winds, as we crossed the North Atlantic back in January.

There is a sense on South Fork streets and on the beaches that we may somehow have defeated the virus. There is no evidence this is true.

Let's pause a moment to reflect on the passing of Joe Sinnott, artist and inker instrumental in shaping the look of the Marvel Comics universe in its 1960s heyday.

It’s a rough job. The entire time driving the pumpout boat the operator is thinking, Once I get done pumping out this boat, I am going to tie this stinkpot up and offer my resignation.

On this, the first day of summer, I thought it would be fit to fetch the snow shovel from its place beside the front door and take it to the shed out back. “I guess we won’t be needing this for a while,” I said to Mary, before recalling that given the winter that wasn’t, we hadn’t needed it at all.

The question is if — not when — schools will welcome back students. And the question also is how teachers and administrators are preparing.

There have been a lot of strange nights around the Fourth of July at our place. This year might turn out to be one of the strangest.

Reactions have been negative to a $60,000, six-month contract between the Town of East Hampton and a New York City-based communications firm hired to help get the word out about Covid-19 issues and to redesign the town website.