Villages

Flu season doesn’t start until after Thanksgiving, right? Wrong. Dr. George Dempsey, the medical director of East Hampton Family Medicine on Pantigo Road, wrote last week to say he’s already had a handful of patients test positive in the office. “Never before last year did we see so many this early,” said Dr. Nadia Persheff, a pediatrician in Southampton.

On Sept. 24, 1815, Abraham M. Smith of East Hampton wrote Henry Packer Dering (1762-1822), Sag Harbor’s customs collector, with news of a shipwreck the day before at Montauk, a brig from Russia carrying hemp and iron.

Mike and Liz McCarron of Montauk have announced the engagement of their son Benjamin Knute McCarron to Colleen Elizabeth Sherlock, whose parents are Kevin and Debbie Sherlock of Montauk and Delray Beach, Fla.

UPDATE: Those wishing to put their rakes to the test for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest will have to wait a bit longer to dig for the winners in Lake Montauk, Napeague Harbor, Accabonac Harbor, Hog Creek, and Three Mile Harbor, as heavy rains have closed many areas to shellfishing and forced a second rescheduling of the annual event.

A 60-ton, combat-ready tank that occupied a prominent location at the Everit Albert Herter V.F.W. Post 550 at the entrance to East Hampton Village was removed last week after a nearly 30-year residence. 

Behold, the Edison Projectoscope! And much more from the Star of yore.

When it arrives at the Bridgehampton Museum on Sunday for display, one particular car, a Lola T70 Eagle, will have come full circle, as race cars tend to do. Fifty-seven years ago, the legendary driver Dan Gurney drove it to win the 1966 Can Am race in Bridgehampton. On Sunday, the historically significant car will be on view for the public for two hours only — 9 to 11 a.m. — during the museum’s annual Cars and Coffee event.

Other than the occasional loud talker in the quiet area, the John Jermain Memorial Library is a pretty chill place. Next Thursday, however, from 2 to 8 p.m., registered voters in the Sag Harbor School District can show up to vote in a contested library board race, in which three candidates are vying for two spots, and weigh in on the budget proposal.

South Fork residents were among an estimated 75,000 people who participated in Sunday’s March to End Fossil Fuels in Manhattan, at the conclusion of the hottest summer since global record-keeping of temperatures began and amid multiple signals around the world that climate change is happening now and getting worse. “I’m here personally because my granddaughter is also here, and I want a livable planet for her and her generation, and, in fact, all living beings,” said Francesca Rheannon of Springs, who is on East Hampton Town’s Energy and Sustainability Advisory Committee.

In this photo, the artists Lee Krasner (1908-1984), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) chat in front of one of de Kooning’s paintings at the Fourth Annual Invitational Exhibition at Guild Hall.

On Tuesday, it was decided to postpone the East Hampton Town Trustees’ 33rd annual Largest Clam Contest until Oct. 8 because of a forecast of inclement weather on Sunday. Until then, clams beware! The contest is both a celebration of the town’s maritime heritage and a means for the trustees, who have jurisdiction over many of the town’s beaches, waterways, and bottomlands, to inform the public as to their role in the town’s governing.

How busy was the summer of 2023 on the South Fork? There are some interesting metrics out there. Wastewater is one: The amount treated in Sag Harbor during June, July, and August was up roughly six percent over 2022 levels. On East Hampton Village beaches, lifeguards recorded 376 saves. But summer rentals were down on the real estate market, and certain restaurants experienced less traffic than they'd hoped.

Smoke from distant fires, meditation with a yogi, celebs in Montauk, and giant, ugly houses in the dunes — some things never change.

Gov. Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers last week to get the new Covid vaccine when it is available, and this week the latest vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, tailored to target the dominant Covid-19 variant, are being delivered to pharmacies and physicians’ offices. The federal Food and Drug Administration approved the new vaccine last week, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone 6 months and older receive it.

If the giant blue globe full of gas were still there, someone would paint a smile on it. Just in time for HarborFest, the so-called "gas ball lot," where the globe once sat, but which has since become a 93-space parking lot of importance, will remain open after the village and Adam Potter, the developer who is to gain control of the lot on Saturday, came to an agreement Thursday evening.

Voters in the East Hampton Library District will cast ballots on the library's $3.725 million spending plan for 2024 on Sept. 23. 

September calls to mind the beginning of the academic year. This East Hampton High School Handbook from 1960 reveals how much has changed in just over 60 years.

HarborFest will take over Sag Harbor Village this weekend, with entertainment on Long Wharf, Windmill Beach, and in Steinbeck Park on Saturday and Sunday.

Back in 2016, the owners of the Wharf Shop in Sag Harbor Village, frustrated by a lack of jigsaw puzzles with a Sag Harbor theme, decided to come up with their own. Eventually, the first puzzle sold out and a second came and went too, which has now led to a third, being offered just in time for HarborFest, a thousand-piecer for $22.95.

For East Hampton Town Litter Cleanup Day on Saturday, efforts to pick up trash will take place from Wainscott to Montauk. “Study after study shows the highest indicator that someone will pick up litter is witnessing someone else picking up litter,” Christine Ganitsch of the town’s litter action committee said.

Take a read down Memory Lane with The Star . . .

Developers of the South Fork Wind farm have completed the offshore installation of the project’s advanced foundation components, which were prefabricated in western New York and assembled in Rhode Island, on the wind farm’s 12 turbine foundations.

In East Hampton, residents knew Frazer Dougherty as the charismatic and dogged force behind the founding of Local TV, the town’s nonprofit public access television station, which began broadcasting out of his garage in the early 1980s and has since documented all aspects of Bonacker life. Mr. Dougherty died on Aug. 29 at home in Aventura, Fla., where he had been living since 2009, after “a long and illustrious life,” his family said. He was 101.

The first Hamptons Hispanic Parade on Saturday at 11 a.m., organized by the nonprofit Peru to the World Expo Foundation, will kick off a daylong celebration of Peruvian culture and food that will culminate with a culinary extravaganza at Herrick Park from 2 to 7 p.m.

On Sept. 6, 1838, Joanna Livingston Van Wyck (1812-1903) wrote to Margaret Gardiner (1822-1857), her cousin on Gardiner’s Island, as part of an ongoing correspondence, here having to do with family news and a summer church camp.

The musician Jimmy Buffett, who lived on North Haven for many years, was remembered on the South Fork this week as a generous, gracious, and down-to-earth neighbor, his worldwide fame and considerable wealth notwithstanding.

The Food and Drug Administration has declared Narcan, a nasally administered drug that counteracts opioid overdoses, safe for over-the-counter access at pharmacies nationwide, prompting positive reactions this week from local health experts and public safety officials. “In the future, you’ll probably see Narcan in every public place and building. From a public safety perspective, the more tools we can put out there into the community, the better off we are,” said East Hampton Town Sgt. Ken Alversa.

From The East Hampton Star, September 10, 1998 — East Hampton Village has staked its claim to 25 percent of East Hampton Town’s annual transfer tax revenues — what its Mayor terms an “equitable” portion of monies a proposed 2-percent levy on property sales is expected to generate if voters here approve implementation of the state land bank bill on Nov. 3, Election Day.

The spotted lanternfly, a "planthopper" pest now common in New York City, has made its way to the East End, where it is a threat to wineries and native trees like the black walnut, silver maple, willow, and oak.

On any given morning, vehicles bump forward slowly through trade-parade traffic on Montauk Highway, at least half of them service trucks and vans. This is how the army of tradespeople who uphold the facade of the Hamptons arrives to build and service huge houses and maintain pristine pools and landscaping.