Villages

After discovering their employees had tested positive for Covid-19, a handful of restaurants in Montauk temporarily closed up shop late last month and early this month to deep clean and retest employees before reopening for business.

East Hampton Library item of the week: On July 12, 1765, Thomas Dering (1720-1785) created this inventory of his personal effects, along with their value, listed as £700.48.

The village plans to develop an affordable housing program that will be overseen by East Hampton Housing Authority, the village board announced at a meeting last Thursday.

The course of true love never did run smooth: Book lovers with devoted book clubs are doing everything in their power, even mastering new technology, to keep up with meetings in the age of coronavirus. What Zoom lacks in dimension, dimensional conversation makes up for.

I hope that if any of you know anyone who may be struggling with addiction during the pandemic, you might find a quiet moment to offer encouragement, to ask if there's anything you can do to help. Sometimes that's all it takes to get someone headed in the right direction.

Padma Borrego and her son, Mateo, started a new life in California in 2018 after leaving the East End, where Ms. Borrego had been a yoga teacher and bodywork practitioner and Mateo was a student at the Hayground School. Just as they were getting on their feet in a new home, life threw a wrench in their plans in the form of a raging wildfire that claimed their home and their possessions.

"We're okay. It's up and down," Ms. Borrego said in an interview last week. "It's challenging. We're safe; we have good friends. But it's definitely intense."

With an influx of vacationers, migrant Manhattanites, and day trippers who ventured east this summer, restaurateurs worked tirelessly to apply the state's health guidelines in ways that could fit their new business models, but even the most prepared in the restaurant industry sometimes struggled to keep up.

This has been a summer of consternation and intense debate for Jewish communities worldwide. How to bring people together for the High Holy Days, which begin on the evening of Friday, Sept. 18, while keeping them safely apart in the midst of a pandemic? On the South Fork, with a single exception, the answer, in the main, was Zoom.

The Montauk Fire Department has been awarded $106,371 in Federal Emergency Management Agency Assistance to Firefighters grants that will be used for power-assisted stretchers.

The Y.M.C.A. of Long Island has announced that it will open the doors of the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter on Tuesday.

Kilian Ruckriegel, 12, and Sophia Cosmina Ruckriegel, 14, brother and sister surfers from Springs, made waves as organizers of a paddle-out held on Aug. 26 at from the beach at Napeague Lane in Amagansett in support of inclusion and solidarity in surfing and the Black Lives Matter movement. "Bring your voice! Bring positive vibes. Spread the word," an Instagram post said. "Let's come together as a community."

Fifty years ago this month, the Free Life balloon took off from George Sid Miller's field in Springs to attempt the first trans-Atlantic balloon voyage. The balloon appears in the photograph seen here, from the collection of the Springs Library. Pamela Brown and her husband, Rodney Anderson, hired a balloon pilot, Malcolm Brighton, to navigate the 52-foot-diameter balloon.