Villages

Steven Cohen, an expert on sustainability and public policy who is the executive director of the Columbia University Earth Institute, will speak at the Ross School next Thursday on topics ranging from global economics to the effects of climate change on New York’s coastal areas.

The radioactive sands in the area found to be widespread and naturally occurring.

The clown doctors will be on call in East Hampton on Sunday when performers from the Big Apple Circus demonstrate why laughter can be some of the best medicine.

The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals has asked that Mark Schryver reduce his request to exceed the allowable floor area of his house at 35 Sherrill Road by 19 percent.

While many of her peers were taking care of last-minute dorm shopping and picking their first college classes, Zoe Vatash was getting ready to join the Israeli Army.

The International Solar Energy Society and the Global 100% Renewable Energy Campaign are presenting the webinar, participation in which is free.

Mark Ripolone of Ditch Plains Taxi is raising money for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center by donating all of his fares on Wednesday.

The East End Women’s Alliance has no real organizational structure and no formal positions, although a couple of its members call Lilia Melani “captain” for her ability to coordinate events. Mostly, its members gather to talk and discuss reproductive and women’s rights, which since 1971 they turned to action each year in the form of their Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates women’s suffrage in 1920.

Plastic cups are fixtures at bars, beaches, and at pool parties, part of the 33 million tons of plastic waste that Americans generate annually.

As part of a fund-raising effort this year for the village’s flower baskets, Christmas wreaths, and other projects, the Ladies Village Improvement Society of Sag Harbor has created a contest inspired by last summer’s A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge.

It wasn’t even a year after the end of Prohibition when boxes of grain alcohol that had mysteriously appeared on a Promised Land beach caused a near frenzy of scavenging. Then there was the question of what to do with it all as federal agents circled.

On Tuesday night, one month into a temporary moratorium on construction of most new single-family houses and major improvements on existing ones, the Sag Harbor Village Board heard some complaints, as well as four requests for exemptions.

An olive branch extended by two members of the East Hampton Village Board was met with a combative reply at an East Hampton Town Trustees meeting on Tuesday.

A dense bloom of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, has developed in Georgica Pond for the second consecutive year, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is warning about the dangers of exposure.

What do you do when you’re selling your Hamptons house and downsizing? Have a yard sale, of course.

Meeting on Friday at the close of its fiscal year, the East Hampton Village Board authorized money to improve the quality of two highly visible and important bodies of water, Hook Pond and Town Pond.

Two Hedges Lane residents fight square-footage limits that the village board adopted in June.

The Springs Fisherman’s Fair, a tradition that traces its origins back over eight decades, happens on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall.

As the climate changes, the salt from rising sea levels is killing vegetation that grows near the coast.

The top guns of East Hampton Town government appeared Monday before the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee and a large group of residents to let them know what they are doing to combat the rowdiness that has taken over the hamlet since the Fourth of July weekend.

The administration of the John M. Marshall Elementary School is changing the way its students in grades two to five will be dismissed at the end of the school day.

In response to concerns that the system was too time-consuming, too chaotic for the kids, and too much of a burden on teachers, Beth Doyle, the principal, and Dennis Sullivan, the assistant principal, devised a plan they unveiled during Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton School Board. It will be implemented beginning on the first day of school, Sept. 8.

Vicki Littman, the proprietor of the Vicki’s Veggies farm stand in Amagansett, will launch this year’s “apple” fund-raiser to benefit the East Hampton Food Pantry on Saturday.

The Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s annual summer gala will be held on Saturday under a lighted tent on the playhouse grounds.

Visitors to the Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s 102nd summer fair on Saturday may be surprised at the progress made in the rebuilding of the church’s Scoville Hall, which was destroyed by fire in 2011.

While the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals announced favorable determinations on nine applications at its meeting on Friday, it delayed until its next meeting a decision on an application from Michael Ostin.

The Montauk Chamber of Commerce has released a short video highlighting the traditional pleasures of the hamlet, even as party-hearty summer hordes continue to provide fodder for tabloid.

Montaukers’ unhappiness about the crowds, noisy parties, and illegal behavior overwashing their once-quiet hamlet this season has become prime summertime fodder for the metropolitan news media.

On Saturday, the ladies will don their white dresses and sun hats to host the 119th fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., as always on the last Saturday of July.

Celebrate the ongoing restoration of the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station with a lobster bake on Saturday evening.

Newer boats with bigger outboard motors are causing some changes down at the docks in the Village of Sag Harbor.