Did you know the word “nostalgia” means homesick, or, more specifically, the misery of missing home? It was coined by a Swiss medical student documenting the symptoms among soldiers fighting in far-off places. He combined the Greek words nostos and algos, “homecoming” and “suffering.”
— The Express News Group (The Southampton, Sag Harbor, and East Hampton newspapers), August 2026
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Am I, a U.S. citizen and a lifelong believer in our national aspiration, doing this wrong? Am I required to love America in some way that I don’t, to be part of the political conversation? What does “loving America” mean, anyway?
— The Express News Group (The Southampton Press, The East Hampton Press, The Sag Harbor Express, July 4, 2026
Read More…Pete Cabrinha’s Hawaiian roots are complex, wide and deep. He is descendant on both his mother and father’s side from Portuguese immigrants who came to the islands—settling on the Big Island on his father’s side, and on Kauai on his mother’s side—in the 1800s mostly from Madeira and the Azores, drawn by the promise of work in the sugarcane fields….
…It’s impossible not to sense this history in the moody, wistful nostalgia in many of Cabrinha’s paintings. “I have such a sense of reverence and pride in this place,” he says, “especially from the time I grew up here, during the 1960s, before so much changed.”
— The Surfer’s Journal, August 2026
Read More“We have to surround ourselves with others who may carry hope for us on days when it is too much to ask of ourselves…”
— Founder and host of On Being, Krista Tippett (click on photo to watch and/or listen to the full conversation)
Hope takes courage, vulnerability, imagination... I had to prepare for this crackling, wonderful hour with this bright star of humanity I have admired and listened to and read for decades. I was nervous as hell, but it was fun, illuminating, valuable, beautiful. To listen or watch the full talk find the link to the talk in my bio.
Read MoreThere’s no beating the ocean, but I discovered I could meet its challenge—I could find its trapdoors. I reveled in that conceit. I remember feeling alone and vulnerable, and how good that was, to be on my own and in control in that wild and limitless place. On the distant beach, people without fathers like mine watched and worried, even as I thrilled in the arrogance of my fun. Dad must have had one eye on me, but he left me to sort it out by myself. I’d joined his invincible ranks. Afterward, there was no acknowledgement. Just the pleasure of it.
— The Surfer’s Journal, August 2025
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Sketches for the eventual hit cartoon, SpongeBob Squarepants
One night at our campsite, Steve produced a sketchbook of ideas for a cartoon he wanted to create. We passed it around, a collection of dozens of drawings of a square kitchen sponge in shorts and a funny hat, and a variety of other sea-creature caricatures. He explained that his cartoon would take place entirely in a single tidepool, a tiny undersea universe. The sponge would be the lead character.
The Surfer’s Journal
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Stephen Hillenburg at Nickelodeon’s offices, in Burbank, California, in 2002. Hillenburg died, of Lou Gehrig’s disease, on November 26th.
We knew Steve as immensely industrious and creative. He’d made an ingenious comic book about marine life in a tidepool, as an educational aid, when he taught at the Ocean Institute, at Dana Point. He’d won festival awards for two films that he’d made as a grad student at CalArts. His drawings were loose, evocative, fun. He had a quick, easy, uncynical sense of humor. But it’s fair to say that the group around that campfire was generally confident that while Steve, then thirty-two, would likely have a successful career as a cartoonist and filmmaker, his sponge would remain in the pages of that sketchbook.
The New Yorker — December 2018
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John Avlon
To succeed as a nation, President Lincoln urged citizens “by birth or by choice” to unite. He called for religious pluralism. He argued for public education as a democratic keystone. Lincoln, of course, famously saved the nation from fracturing by fighting in the belief that there is more that unites Americans than divides us. That remains an open question. To succeed as a nation, George Washington urged citizens “by birth or by choice” to unite. He called for religious pluralism. He argued for public education as a democratic keystone. Much of this sounds like John Avlon (pictured) on the stump… But can humility, prudence, honesty and calls for unity prevail against vengeful greed, hypocrisy and dishonesty?
The Express News Group — May 2025
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Tony Duke was a decorated and proud veteran who saw brutal combat, a businessman, a father, a leader of our extended family. But his overriding mission in life would be giving young people with seemingly everything against them the kind of shot at life that every person deserves.
The Southampton Press, The East Hampton Press, and The Sag Harbor Express — May 2025
Read MoreAnd there it was, a great thunderclap of irony: At last, after a half millennia of almost totally, deliberately exterminating Indigenous people on this continent, we are now asking for guidance from their very descendants.
The Express News Group — June 2025
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Biddle Duke and his mother Robin Duke, Lake Placid, 1984
Some years ago I began to write down stories perhaps for an eventual book about growing up with two remarkable parents. About them, about me, about us. This is one of those stories.
The Stowe Guide — Winter 2023-24
Read MoreOn a freezing December day in 1988, Frank Ganley pulled a Bonac school buddy — unconscious and sinking fast — from the icy underwater of Gardiner’s Bay after he fell overboard from a lobster boat called the Captain Kidd. Little did Ganley know that the near-death experience would define the course of his life.
EAST magazine July 2024
Read MoreOver thirty years of documenting the woods, the marshes, the people, and the surf of Long Island's East End, photographer Andrew Blauschild has witnessed the jarring upheaval of his adopted home. "The dream is older now... But it's still all here."
The Surfer’s Journal, October 2023
Read MoreAmid turmoil and grief, photographer Priscilla Rattazzi turned to three lindens trees for their legendary beauty and comfort to bid farewell to a life on Georgica Pond.
EAST magazine, July 2023
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The late painter Manoucher Yektai of Sagaponack was widely recognized as having all the towering talent — and unabashed hubris — requisite in a great artist. So why has he not been recognized among the legends of his generation?
EAST Magazine — The East Hampton Star and Karma Books
Read MoreThe story of Nose Dive is the story of American skiing itself. How the sport took hold here in the last century and sparked exploration, development, and business. Nose Dive launched careers, growth, and innovation in the sport. Its evolution mirrors the evolution of skiing, from an inexpensive wilderness experience for enthusiasts on rudimentary equipment to a glamour sport drawing the masses, open to anyone with enough money and skill to learn and excel—on all sorts of gear.
The Stowe Guide & Magazine
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Several years ago I began to hear stories that sounded hard to believe — that I could find excellent skiing on the island of Crete. The spring snow conditions were said to be dependable, the scenery stunning, and you could make long descents within sight of the sea, while spending your nights at picturesque Mediterranean seaside towns.
An afternoon descent in the Lefka Ori range. Photo: Constantine Papanicoleau
Several years ago I began to hear stories that sounded hard to believe — that I could find excellent skiing on the island of Crete. The spring snow conditions were said to be dependable, the scenery stunning, and you could make long descents within sight of the sea, while spending your nights at picturesque Mediterranean seaside towns.
The New York Times
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Anyone who’s been seized by a sport or a pastime, especially one so beholden to the powers of nature, has pivotal, formative moments etched into their memories. Here, in his short story “The Waterman,” Biddle Duke shares some life lessons he learned in the seas of Southampton.
The Purist Online
Read MoreIn reflecting on my years as a ski-race parent I went looking for answers, and the kind of perspective I wished I’d sought when I was starting out.
The Stowe Reporter
Read MoreJust as winter was about to start, the state instituted a stricter quarantine and test requirement for visitors, and the snow-sports economy is bracing for the impact.
The New York Times.
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