Villages

    Alfredo Corchado, the prizewinning Dallas Morning News journalist, whose beat is the dangerous border between the United States and Mexico, returned to the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton recently to suggest, along with Shannon K. O’Neil, a senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, that Mexico and the United States each stand to gain appreciably if the relations between the two “distant neighbors” are strengthened.

    Invasive species are a growing problem in East Hampton and the rest of Long Island. The remaining untouched land here — woods, marshes, beaches, and grassy fields — are being taken over by non-native plant varieties.

    Invasive species pose not just ecological threats, but economic and health threats as well. One of the worst invasive species affecting the Town of East Hampton is the mile-a-minute weed, also known by its scientific name, Persicaria perfoliata.

    A loan taken out several years ago to pay for repairs and renovations to Ashawagh Hall, a Springs community building, has been paid off thanks to a $60,000 donation from the Alec Baldwin Foundation and Capital One Bank.

    Johnson Nordlinger of Montauk has been working since April as the assistant site manager of the Montauk Lighthouse, a spot that has long been special to her.

    Raised in Montauk, she remembers playing there as a girl with her good friend Caroline Driscoll, whose father, Paul Driscoll, was the officer in charge of the Lighthouse from 1979 to 1983. And as an adult, she said, she drove there almost daily to walk the wooded trails and ocean beach.

On a Saturday smack in the height of a hot, hectic, summer season, traffic will come to a halt to make way for a bicycle brigade of more than 50 wounded soldiers from the United States and United Kingdom along with hundreds of their supporters.

    The Summer Institute of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, a series of performances, lectures, and other programs, gets under way tomorrow when Adam Mintz, a Modern Orthodox rabbi and faculty member at City and Queens Colleges, speaks at 2:30 p.m. Rabbi Mintz will also lead Torah study on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

    Sharon Mintz, the rabbi’s wife, is the curator of Jewish Art at the Jewish Seminary in Manhattan and a senior consultant on Judaica for Sotheby’s.

    She will speak about her work during Sunday’s “Bagels and . . . ,” beginning at 10:30 a.m.

    Frank Newbold, a member of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals since 2004, was appointed its chairman with a one-year term when the village board held its annual organizational meeting on Monday. Mr. Newbold, who had been the board’s vice chairman, replaces Andrew Goldstein, who will no longer be on the panel. The open seat will be filled by Craig Humphrey, who was an alternate member, for a three-year term. Ray Harden was appointed to a five-year term as an alternate. Lysbeth Marigold, a member of the board, was appointed to a one-year term as vice chairwoman.

       A new predator is in town.

    What looked to be a coyote was spotted last week, early on the morning of June 24, by a farmer in Water Mill. The farmer noticed the animal in one of his potato fields and took a photo on his cellphone. The picture was passed on to the State Department of Environmental Conservation in Stony Brook, where the animal was confirmed to be the first known coyote in Suffolk County.

    Noise related to aircraft going to and from East Hampton Airport is an environmental intrusion and should be addressed as such, the chairman of the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton’s airport noise committee told the East Hampton Village board at its regular meeting last Friday.

    It seems that every weekend since the weather turned warmer in May there have been bike races, motorcycle events, and triathlons clogging the roads in Montauk. Residents have complained that sometimes they can’t even get out of their driveways.

    The Sag Harbor Village Planning Board approved and expedited an application on Tuesday evening to allow Madison and Main, a new restaurant, tables for dining outside on Main Street. A restaurant across the street, however, Page at 63 Main, was not as fortunate. Its application for a permit to allow outdoor dining behind it was tabled until the next meeting, and the prospects aren’t good.

    If you have walked around downtown Montauk in recent days and seen men on ladders working on and around its 19th century-style street lamps, no, the men are not lamplighters removing the wires and fueling the lamps with whale oil for the sake of authenticity.

    East Hampton Bowl, where local residents and visitors to the South Fork have bowled competitively and recreationally for the last 54 years, will close next week.

    “We are definitely going to close the doors,” Craig Patterson, who has owned the establishment for 36 years, confirmed to The Star. Reopening under new management is a possibility Mr. Patterson called “very remote,” as is its reopening as another business.

    With a difference of only one vote, Jeff Sander and Jim Laspesa were elected to serve two-year terms on the North Haven Village Board. The candidates received 173 and 172 votes.

    Mr. Sander was elected to his fourth term. Mr. Laspesa is the chairman and a longtime member of the village’s planning board. Mary Whelan, an attorney, was defeated, receiving 74 votes.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center is expecting an extremely active hurricane season this summer and fall.

    The center has indicated that between the months of June and November it is likely that 13 to 20 storms will hit the East Coast. Seven to 11 of those could become hurricanes, and 3 to 6 could become major hurricanes, classified as Category 3, 4, or 5, with winds of 111 miles per hour or higher. There is a 70-percent chance of above-normal hurricane activity.

    Michele Herger, Ms. New York America 2013, will compete in the Ms. America pageant on Sunday night in Costa Mesa, Calif. The competition, for women between 26 and 60, will see contestants judged on the evening gown and sportswear they wear, as well as an interview and on-stage question.

    At the conclusion of an otherwise uneventful meeting on Friday, Andrew Goldstein, chairman of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals, announced that the meeting would be his last.

    The Town of East Hampton should authorize a hamlet study for Amagansett, the attendees at Monday night’s Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee’s meeting agreed after discussing a number of issues that they believe are receiving insufficient attention and adversely affecting residents’ quality of life.

    Nine members voted in favor of requesting a hamlet study, with none opposed or abstaining.

Eight candidates weigh in on police and waterfront

    How to make the Village of East Hampton safer for bicyclists and pedestrians was the primary topic at a village board work session last Thursday, when Paul Fiondella and Howard Lebwith, who had made a presentation  at the board’s April 4 work session, returned to make the case for bike-friendly streets.

    The Hamptons Institute, a symposium on some of the most pressing issues of our time, will be back in East Hampton on Saturday, featuring three panel discussions during the course of the day on education, the economy, and the environment. The free event, organized by the Roosevelt Institute and held at Guild Hall, will provide intellectual perspectives and debate by experts in the given fields.

    “I am disappointed that he shot down federal money that could have saved or helped maintain the 11th position,” Kevin Duchemin, a Sag Harbor Village board member, said on Tuesday of Mayor Brian Gilbride’s announcement last week that the village would not apply for a grant that the police chief, Tom Fabiano, had suggested as a means to help hold onto an officer whose job was eliminated last month.

    “It is most unusual that we have gone through May and at this writing on June 1 there was very little rainfall. Agriculturally it is dry, but I am sure, as long-term records show, rainfall will be here soon.” So wrote Richard G. Hendrickson, the United States Cooperative weather observer in Bridgehampton, in his monthly report for May.

    There was light rain on seven days last month, the heaviest — just over half an inch — coming on May 28. The total for the month was 2.13 inches, as compared to a long-term average of 3.5 to 4 inches, Mr. Hendrickson said.

Willie Nelson is coming to Montauk’s Surf Lodge for a concert on Sunday and a representative of the popular night spot tried to assure members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday night that everything would be under control.

Four candidates make a bid for village mayor

    Despite the ravages of Hurricane Sandy and a northeaster that followed, East Hampton’s Main Beach has been named the best beach in the United States on the 23rd annual Top 10 Beach list, as ranked Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman of Florida International University.

    East Hampton veterans, volunteer firefighters and ambulance personnel, and the East Hampton High School marching band took part in a Memorial Day parade Monday on Main Street under a cloudless blue sky.

     The parade drew a strong turnout of flag-waving observers along its route from near Guild Hall to the Hook Mill green.

    East Hampton Town Clerk Fred Overton presided over a ceremony at a war memorial on the green following the end of the parade, where approximately 300 people had gathered, including a group of local elected officials.

    While beachgoers can still pay by the day to park at Two Mile Hollow Beach this season, there will be no parking attendant on duty at the parking lot there. Those without a village beach permit who wish to park in the lot between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. will have to purchase a daily permit from the office at the Main Beach pavilion before heading to Two Mile Hollow.

    Good news was the order of the day at the 91st annual meeting of the East Hampton Historical Society, held recently at Clinton Academy.

     Arthur Graham, president of the board of trustees, reported that between fund-raising, memberships, and events such as house tours and parties, the society raised $560,000 in 2012 and now has net assets of $2.5 million. The money helps to fund its school programs, collections, exhibitions, and the upkeep of various buildings — in particular last year, the Mulford farmhouse and the Town Marine Museum in Amagansett.

    Memorial Day observances begin Monday morning at 9 with a ceremony at Main Beach in East Hampton for those members of the United States armed forces who were lost at sea.

    At 10 a.m. veterans and others will begin to gather near Guild Hall for a 10:30 parade along Main Street. Traffic will be diverted onto Dunemere and Further Lanes for the duration.