Villages

    With death threats a part of her weekly routine at the clinic she runs in New York City, Merle Hoffman has been fighting a passionate, perilous battle since the early 1970s. “The only woman who owns a licensed ambulatory surgery center specializing in abortion and reproductive care in New York State” — as she has described herself — will share stories from her book, “Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion From the Back Alley to the Boardroom,” at BookHampton on East Hampton’s Main Street on Saturday evening at 5.

    The Suffolk County Legislature approved the licensing of a trial Sag Harbor to Greenport passenger ferry service on Tuesday. It was the final hurdle to clear for Geoffrey Lynch of Hampton Jitney and Jim Ryan of Response Marine in Greenport to initiate the pilot program. Trips by the 53-passenger boat are expected to begin just prior to the July Fourth weekend and run through Labor Day weekend.

    He was definitely in Montauk and definitely visited the Montauk Lighthouse, where he signed a logbook, and may have even had an office at Third House, but Theodore Roosevelt never slept at Third House, said Dick White, a member of the Montauk Historical Society’s board of directors. He did, however, sleep in a house on Ditch Plain road, and his men, the Rough Riders, camped nearby, Mr. White said.

    A pair of ospreys that live high above the salt flats of Napeague State Park have been keeping a wary eye for about a week now on a loop of loose cable that swings only a few feet above their hatchlings.

    The fish hawks live midway up the 300-foot-tall Mackay Radio Tower, originally erected in 1927 to transmit messages to ships at sea.

    A section of heavy wire has fallen, a loop of it  catching up three or four feet above the osprey nest. When the wind blows, the loop swings, like a threatening pendulum.

    As the clock neared 8 p.m. and Rona Klopman’s call for a leash law met with polite silence, it looked as if Monday’s meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee would be ending an hour earlier than usual.

    Proceedings that night had been brisk. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited, the May minutes were approved, and John Ryan, chief of the town lifeguards, gave an informative rundown on water safety and the new numbered-beach system, all within 15 minutes.

    Mare Dianora said on Tuesday morning that she wanted chickens to be “available to everybody” in the Village of Sag Harbor, which is why she helped write an amendment to the Sag Harbor Village Code that took effect on July 12 of last year allowing the keeping of chickens as a “special exception accessory use.”

    Before the amendment, village code specified that “the keeping of any horses, farm animals, or fowl shall not be permitted as accessory uses.”

Pranksters placed a tall, plastic giraffe deep in Napeague State Park at some point in the past weeks.

    An ongoing difference of opinion between Sag Harbor Village and the Sag Harbor Yacht Club over ownership of a boat ramp on Bay Street came to the fore again last month when Mayor Brian Gilbride called village police after a locked chain was strung across the floating dock adjacent to the ramp.

Weekends are drawing huge crowds to Ruschmeyer’s Inn on Second House Road. Some guests have reportedly been urinating on neighbors’ lawns.

    Although minuscule, and a complete failure by comparison, the landing of four Nazi saboteurs at Atlantic Avenue Beach, Amagansett, from a U-boat in the predawn of June 13, 1942, was — like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the events of Sept. 11, 2001 — an “invasion.”

    It was part of a plan to cripple industry and instill fear that included the invasion of a second group of saboteurs in Florida.

    Antiques, collectibles, and estate pieces will go on the block in a benefit auction for the Old Whalers Church Community House Fund on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the church on Union Street.

    More than 300 lots will be available for bidding and put up by Paul Bailey, a certified auctioneer. A preview of the items will begin at 8 a.m. the day of the sale. The lots will include furniture, lighting, rugs, glassware, vintage toys, and other unique items. Objects offered will date from the late 19th century through the 1960s.

    The Ross School will mark its 20th anniversary on Saturday evening with its annual Live at Club Starlight gala, this year featuring a musical performance by Roberta Flack, a multiple Grammy-winning recording artist.

    The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals is sending a clear message to those who would seek to expand beyond the prescribed gross floor area regulations or to edge over the allowable setbacks: Not on our watch.

    On Monday, the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons will conduct a program in the Bridgehampton Library meeting room assessing the state of recycling efforts in East Hampton and Southampton Towns.

    A 7 p.m. screening of “Bag It: Is Your Life too Plastic” will be followed by a round-table discussion. Taking part are East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby; Christine Fetten, who is Southampton’s director of municipal works, and Skip Norsic of Emil Norsic and Sons Sanitation Service. The event is open to the public, and admission is free.

    Sharon McCobb, a coach with I-Tri, an organization for at-risk adolescent girls, will lead a free triathlon-training event for those 17 and up on Sunday at Maidstone Park in Springs, beginning at 2 p.m. Ms. McCobb will provide tips and techniques for runners, particularly those planning to participate in I-Tri’s upcoming Turbo Tri race.

    Sunday service on two Suffolk County Transit bus lines on the East End will begin this week and run through Columbus Day weekend. County Legislator Jay Schneiderman sponsored the pilot program with County Legislator Ed Romaine.|

    The program, which affects the S92 and 10C lines, was approved by the County Legislature last year and implemented in July. The level of use last summer demonstrated a clear need for public transportation on Sundays, the legislators said.

    A full weekend of activities will commemorate Memorial Day in Montauk, starting on Saturday with a veteran’s fish and chips dinner at the Montauk Coast Guard Station on Star Island.

    The Montauk Memorial Committee has dedicated the weekend as one of remembrance in honor of all veterans, and has worked through the winter to make the event respectful and fitting to the occasion.

    Saturday night’s dinner will start at 5:30. Veterans will dine for free. Their guests are being asked for a donation of $20 per person and $14 for children 10 and under.

    The Concerned Citizens of Montauk has not only appointed Jeremy Samuelson as its new — and first — executive director of the 40-year-old environmental advocacy organization, but has also rented space for a walk-in office on South Elmwood Avenue, where the group hopes to establish a stronger presence in the hamlet. C.C.O.M.’s monthly meetings will now be held in the new space, whose walls will soon be hung with framed photo collages of days gone by and other artifacts.

    The East Hampton Village Board rolled out some recognition on Friday, starting with a certificate of appreciation for the Garden Club of East Hampton. There to accept the acknowledgment were Diane Paton, Calista Washburn, and Mary Clarke.

    Memorial Day, although specifically a day to honor those who died in battle, has become a time to wax nostalgic about those who have gone before.

    The East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society, which keeps up the approximately 3,800 trees that grace the streets of the village, offers an opportunity to pay homage to a loved one while helping to defray the nonprofit group’s tree maintenance expenses. A plaque can be placed by an existing tree, or accompany the planting of a new tree, for $750. 

    In May, libraries celebrate National Flower Month, National Latino Book Month, National Family Wellness Month, National Backyard Games Month, and National Get Caught Reading Month, all of which are keeping Julie Anne Korpi, the Montauk Library’s new children’s librarian, very busy.

    “There are a lot of national months that people don’t know about,” Ms. Korpi said.

The East Hampton Village Board will conduct a public hearing tomorrow on a proposed law banning empty store windows.

“The Board of Trustees has fielded a number of complaints over the past several years about the unappealing appearance of papered-over or dark storefronts, particularly during the off-season,” says a section of the proposed local law.

Those interested can attend and be heard at the meeting, to be held at 11 a.m. at the Emergency Services Building, 1 Cedar Street.

    The prospect of a change in the town code that would allow veterinary clinics to locate in central business districts gave the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee some jitters on Monday night.

    “This is only the second meeting in what I anticipate will be a somewhat lengthy process,” Andrew Goldstein, chairman of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, said when Friday’s meeting turned to a new irrigation system planned for the Maidstone Club’s 27-hole golf course.

     Some Montauk residents say the dim lighting in the hamlet’s business district is unsafe, and they want the town to turn up the lights downtown.

    The East Hampton Village Board voted at its April meeting to pierce the 2-percent tax cap if necessary, but it needn’t have bothered. At last week’s work session the board unveiled the 2012-13 budget, which came in a hair’s breadth under the allowable amount.

    The new budget of just over $19 million is an increase of $626,574, or 3.4 percent, over this year’s spending, and reflects a rate increase of 2.9 percent, $15,176 less than the tax cap’s ceiling.

    The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs will share in nearly $3.66 million raised from the Stars of Stony Brook Gala held on April 25 at Chelsea Piers in New York City. The money the benefit raised includes funds for student scholarships at the State University at Stony Brook.

    The center on Springs-Fireplace Road, which was the house and studio of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, is in the process of a capital campaign to build an endowment, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Pollock’s birth.

    The Montauk Playhouse Community Center is kicking off the fund-raising season with a new slate of officers on its board of directors — Lisa DeVeglio as president, Carol Nye as vice president, Rori Finazzo Butterfield as secretary, and Kathy Beckmann as treasurer.

    Last Thursday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation closed approximately 490 acres of bottomland in Southampton Town to shellfishing due to detection of a marine biotoxin associated with paralytic shellfish poisoning.

    Spring on eastern Long Island “has been changing slowly during the last 75 years,” Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton, wrote in his monthly report for April.

    In the springs of his youth, when his family had milk cows and chickens, hatching 1,500 baby chicks a week, he recalls once having to shovel the door free of snow so he could tend to the coal stove keeping 350 baby chicks warm and toasty.

    “We had to keep more than an eye on the weather every day and night,” he wrote.