Skip to main content

Opinion

The Mast-Head: Notes From the Ball Field

The Montauk Hammerhead Building team trounced the Amagansett Fire Department in Little League action on Monday. I should know; I was among the spectators at Lions Field trying to keep warm as a chilly westerly wind blew in off the ocean. In an email to parents earlier in the day, the Amagansett coaches had told us to dress warmly. No one dressed warmly enough, especially on the visitors’ side of the field.

Apr 21, 2021
Gristmill: Return of the Moviegoer

Once more unto the darkened theater — for escape or togetherness?

Apr 21, 2021
Saving Our Waters: Time to Get Smart

For the first time, there is a baseline on nitrogen levels from which the several mandates can be evaluated. Before now, sampling for nitrogen was inadequate, when it took place at all. This created a situation in which policy got out ahead of science.

Apr 21, 2021
Guestwords: A No Good, Very Bad Year

Lessons from a tumble down a flight of stairs, a hospital stay during the height of Covid, and 90 isolating days in a less-than-desirable care center.

Apr 14, 2021
The Shipwreck Rose: Out of Fashion

My rubber-band ball, made entirely from rubber bands, grew bigger every day. It was bigger than a softball, bigger than a  grapefruit. It was heavy and perfectly round. I liked to bounce it, like Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape,” off the wall of my first office at Vogue magazine, when I got my start in 1998. Everyone loved Steve McQueen, the 1970s tough guy with cruel lips, in the summer of 1998.

Bam. Pause. Bam.

People often ask me about what life was like at Vogue, back in the Gilded Age before the Millennium, before 9/11, before the collapse of print media.

Apr 14, 2021
Not Acceptable

On Long Island, Covid-19 numbers have fallen since their peak, but they remain surprisingly and stubbornly high. Deaths from the virus have also declined, but even so lives are lost that should not have been. The 3,300th person in Suffolk County died from the disease between Monday and Tuesday this week. More than 41,000 New Yorkers across the state have died from Covid-19, which is still taking the lives of more people of color and Spanish speakers, by population, than whites.

Apr 14, 2021
Point of View: A Eureka Moment

Recently, I was asked to retrieve from The Star’s attic contacts and negatives of Troy Bowe, the former Killer Bees’ point guard, in action. The request set my head to spinning like a leptoquark, for, as I told Carl Johnson, who had made the request, “It’s a black hole up there, a bottomless pit from which it has been said nothing escapes.”

Apr 14, 2021
The Mast-Head: ‘What Are You Doing Here?’

At the risk of offending my friends from Sag Harbor, what is up with those people? Most of the time that I run into someone I know in that village, the first thing they say is, “What are you doing over here?” with the emphasis on “you.”

“I wanted to go to Persan’s for a clam knife,” I protest. They tilt their head ever so slightly, suspicious

Apr 14, 2021
Zeldin on Cuomo: Hypocrisy in the Extreme

It was perhaps inevitable that New York’s First Congressional District’s seditious representative, Lee Zeldin, would try a run for governor. But it is truly an ironic spectacle for him to rage against Andrew Cuomo’s treatment of women after he spent the last five years brushing off that of the former occupant of the White House.

Apr 14, 2021
Gristmill: Dirtbags ‘R’ Us

Some thoughts on the coming gentrification of Sag Harbor’s mini strip mall, the Water Street Shops.

Apr 14, 2021
Earth Day Just the Beginning

Not a lot seems to be scheduled here for Earth Day, which comes next Thursday and marks the 51st anniversary of the first Earth Day. It is the pandemic no doubt that has prevented organized activities, but that does not mean that individuals cannot step outside to pick up litter, support an environmental group, or cut back on fossil-fuel use and nonrecyclables.

Apr 14, 2021
Gristmill: Woe to the Warehouse

The dull warehouse has come in for reconsideration in light of Amazon’s exponential growth and the drive for unionization.

Apr 7, 2021