Baylis Greene

Riverhead

Associate Editor and Books Editor at The East Hampton Star

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Articles

Gristmill: Over or Under?

1 week ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

“What, did you grow up in a barn?” More teasing than mean, these were among the last words I heard from my grandfather, a former high school football coach, athletic director at Rockland County Community College, and combat veteran of the Pacific theater. He was visiting from the Florida Panhandle maybe two dozen years ago, and the offense was my failure to remove my beat-up old baseball cap as we sat down to eat at the Fairway restaurant at Poxabogue. It was one of those welcome rebukes.
Gristmill: So Long to the Standard

2 weeks ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

Word comes from a friend more hip to the digital news churn than I'll ever be that the last five-speed Nissan manual transmission just rolled off an assembly line in Mexico. The south-of-the-border part is important because of the company's 25-percent hit from the Trump tariffs.
Gristmill: Diner Bound

3 weeks ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

The timing couldn't have been better. Up Saturday to Geneseo and back Sunday, with both midday meals and breaks from behind the wheel aligning perfectly with the appearance through the windshield of one of the Empire State's great roadside attractions: the Roscoe Diner. Trout Town, U.S.A. The Gateway to the Catskills. Many a time has the beauteous sight of fishermen dotted along the Beaver Kill, casting into the slow-rolling water, presented itself to this Route 17 driver.
Gristmill: A Real Resort

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

Maybe it’s time for Montauk to adopt the beachy vacation-spot practice of golf cart as primary transportation option. They’re a jaunty sight, puttering up and down the main drag, kids or fur-blown family dog along for the doorless ride. They offer more room to maneuver and park and, whether electric or gas-powered, less environmental stress, no? We arrived in Geneva on the Lake, Ohio, just in time for the first golf carts of the season to hit the streets.
Gristmill: An Ending, a Beginning

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

If you’re worried about whether the country will last as a constitutional representative republic, if you’re stocking up on Hormel Chunky Beef Chili in a can in preparation for the coming economic collapse, a SUNY college commencement just might be a cure for what ails you. The commencement speaker Saturday in Geneseo was the institution’s president, Denise Battles, a sensible choice, as her address doubled as her own valedictory; she’s retiring after 10 years on the job.
Gristmill: King of Pests

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

Save us, Jennifer Doudna. Well done with your invention of the CRISPR gene-editing tool. Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to biologically engineer the blood-sucking tick out of existence. Makes sense to me, especially if you consider, as many apparently do, that Lyme disease was hatched in a Plum Island laboratory. Let’s start small — my front yard in Noyac. “Scalability” can come later.
Gristmill: Tending Sheep

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

I was in the neighborhood, so what the hell, on Sunday I stopped in at the most beautiful granite pile east of the outer boroughs, the Sacred Hearts Basilica in Southampton Village. Inside, the dark-wood arches and ceiling panels, the glowing Austrian stained glass, the series of wrought-iron chandeliers, and the 400-year-old French pulpit may well leave you pondering the sinfulness of attending a house of worship from which you draw inordinate visual and atmospheric pleasure.
Jill Bialosky, for Mother’s Day

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

Jill Bialosky is renowned as much for her memoirs of family (“History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life”) as for her confessional poetry (“Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections”). Now the W.W. Norton executive editor and part-time Bridgehampton resident will be at The Church in Sag Harbor to read from her latest, “The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother,” out this week from Washington Square Press.
Gristmill: Hard and Harder Boiled

1 month ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

When Kenneth Millar went to pick a pen name, couldn’t it have been something other than Ross Macdonald? He apparently first went for John Macdonald, then John Ross Macdonald, before, given the existence of a fellow master of the crime novel named John D. MacDonald, just Ross Macdonald. Maybe John Ross would’ve made more sense? What with my fandom for both, this is what the kids today would call a “me problem.”Ross, the Bay Area-born Canadian who later turned Southern Californian.
Gristmill: Into the Wild

2 months ago | easthamptonstar.com | Baylis Greene

There’s good ecological news in the continued resurgence of the North American black bear, even if that’s partly related to copious trash as an abundant food source. Good news, yet enough to give you pause should you see bear tracks near your campsite. This happened to my son over Easter break, a second, shorter spring vacation of sorts courtesy of his Jesuit-run institution of higher learning.