Why Only a Few Fly to the Hamptons

If in 2023 we are commemorating notable anniversaries in the preservation of Long Island’s East End—the 40th of the Peconic Land Trust and the 30th of Southampton Town’s wetlands building restrictions—it may be time to look farther back, 75 years, to another pivotal sequence of events. These speak to why there is no commercial jetport

A Korean-American Crossing

Nostalgia is a powerful draw in photography–witness the many Facebook and other social-media groups centered on vintage pictures of this or that place. So it is with a compact new exhibit at the Korea Society on Madison Avenue in New York. “Koreatown LA/NY,” running through Aug. 17, features work by Emanuel Hahn (from midtown Los

Is Modi Chasing Away His Brightest?

Pundits are pointing to new trade potential with India as the U.S. works to disengage with much of the Communist Party-linked economy in China, but one American “export” opportunity isn’t getting enough attention: enrollment in post-secondary education. U.S. universities, for all their widely discussed flaws, nonetheless have long been a draw to talented or wealthy

40 Years Later in $alt Lake City

The snow in Park City, Utah, was the best in decades for an end-of-January ski trip that also inspires these observations: *Utah was a cheaper and sleepier alternative to Colorado mountain resorts when I started going there 40 years ago. It has ceased to be that, for the most part.  And not just at luxurious

Money Master of the Virtues, RIP

The life and times of the Hon. John Train

Another Supply Factor in Home Sales: Who Can Broker the Deal?

America’s latest bout of realty mania may finally be dying down, as home prices and particularly sales volumes decline after a rise of interest rates. With mortgage payments more costly, and expectations of equity appreciation diminishing, the fees charged by brokers may become a rub again. Five percent off the top, a typical full transaction

On the Trail of Hamptons Preservation

The year 2022 is triggering public anniversary memories on the East End of Long Island, some of which go back  50 years to significant developments that changed Suffolk County such as the abrupt completion of the Long Island Expressway and the birth of the resource-preservationist outfit known back then as the Group for America’s South

Hamptons Traffic and the Road Not Taken

My interest in land-use policy 50 years ago on Long Island was piqued when I learned offhand*  of a state highway that was to have been built back then, not far from where our home now sits in Water Mill. How could that have been the case, over a route that today features much larger

Big Media’s Mere Cameo in a Tale of Conservatism’s Shift

Matthew Continetti’s book, “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism,” is getting much respectful attention from mainstream media. It is deservedly praised for an encyclopedic narrative of what has evolved into a greatly populist—disparaged as Trumpian–force in American politics. My beef with the work is that it largely misses a key element in

The Beijing Consensus Meets 2022

 A broad notion that the People’s Republic of China represented an alternative and quite possibly superior model of social and economic organization has held sway in many quarters for two decades. Are we now to be done with that?  What is sometimes called the Beijing Consensus was the subject—or object—of so many thought pieces and