Villages

If Norman Rockwell were alive today, his iconic Saturday Evening Post illustrations might star not Mother and Father with their children, but rather blended families featuring step-parents and step-siblings. “The so-called ‘blended family’ is no longer an aberration in American society: It’s a norm,” the American Psychological Association wrote in 2019. How, then, can blended families navigate holiday celebrations most smoothly? An expert from Sag Harbor weighs in.

This seasonal article published in This Week, a magazine that ran from 1935 to 1969 as a supplement for newspapers across the country, highlighted recipes East Hampton’s founding families.

The confluence of Covid, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) is causing people to break out their masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant just ahead of the holidays. “And we’re just at the beginning of what is typically the season for upper respiratory illnesses,” said Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, chief medical officer at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

Cold and wind greeted the 45 participants of the 93rd Montauk Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, but the rough conditions didn’t stop them from tallying 131 different species, the highest total for the count in the last 10 years.

Among the highlights from The Star of yore: At a 1922 meeting, the Bridgehampton Spud Lifters Pedro Club claps back at the “East Hampton cracker barrel team,” vowing to reclaim the card game’s championship cup.

Antisemitism has been amplified lately by celebrities who use social media to perpetuate hateful speech, and hate crimes against Jews are again on the rise. On the South Fork, antisemitism is being met head-on with action by religious leaders and lay people alike.

The parents of Carrie Sullivan embarked on a journey a year ago that no parent should ever have to endure. On Nov. 6, 2021, their 29-year-old daughter, a graduate of East Hampton High School, was in a horrific car accident in Brooklyn that left her paralyzed, and left the family needing help as she begins rehabilitation.

This photo, taken by Cal Norris on Dec. 16, 1979, shows Rabbi Albert Silverman with a group of children at a Hanukkah party at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.

Elizabeth Rome Mallory and Christopher Robert Stonerook of Brooklyn were married at the Maidstone Club in East Hampton on Nov. 5.

Among 11 other properties scattered across New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated the Van Scoy Burying Ground in Northwest Woods for both the State and National Registers of Historic Places on Monday.

The South Fork’s L.G.B.T.Q.+ community is celebrating President Biden’s signing on Tuesday of the Respect for Marriage Act, a new, bipartisan law that protects the marriages of same-sex couples across the country.

“It’s time to finish this up,” Susan Mead, co-president of the Sag Harbor Partnership, said about raising money for a potential writers retreat at the John Steinbeck property on Bluff Point Lane in Sag Harbor Village. Efforts to preserve the house have been underway since February 2021, when the 1.8-acre parcel hit the market for the first time in six decades.

From an 1897 issue of The Star: “Who says this is a slow town?”

Elizabeth Heppenheimer and Colin Worby of Medford, Mass., were married on Nov. 5 at Hampshire House in Boston, the bar that inspired the “Cheers” TV series. Justice Roseanne Pope officiated.

A dead humpback whale, originally spotted off Southampton Village beaches on Dec. 3, finally washed up near Indian Wells beach in Amagansett last Tuesday. The 31-foot female did not appear to have been the victim of a vessel strike or entanglement.

Recently scanned from a glass-plate negative in The East Hampton Star’s photo archive, this highly detailed image of the Montauk Point Lighthouse was probably taken near today’s upper parking lot.

Happenstances comical and contentious, ripped from the pages of Ye Olde Star.

Soccer: the beautiful game. In the last two weeks, the World Cup settled over the East End like a butter pat on an English muffin, filling every nook and cranny. Stressed-out referees, solely responsible for maintaining order amid complete emotion and chaos, tatted-up players (not Morocco!), and grass (yes, grass, not turf!) have become a fixture on screens from Southampton to Montauk.

It has been quite a few years since East Hampton had a robust lineup of adult programs, such as bookkeeping and computer classes, defensive driving, a notary-certification course, and even a class on building one’s own fishing rod. Now, the East Hampton School Board has given the district superintendent the green light to explore bringing back adult education programs — with one caveat.

Volunteer pilots, including East Hampton’s own Dr. George Dempsey, recently came to the rescue of nine puppies and their mother who had been found as strays in a rural town in New Mexico — leading to the puppies’ successful adoption by families here in the weeks since their arrival.

Is that Poseidon’s triton reaching from the littoral shallows, or are you just trying to build a 132-megawatt wind farm? Troy Patton of Orsted, which is building the South Fork Wind farm 35 miles off Montauk, was on the scene last week to give an update on the project.

“There is Christmas spirit,” said Rick White, president of the East Hampton Kiwanis Club, after he received 40 trees deemed too small by East Hampton Village to offer as part of the club's Christmas tree sale, which helps fund scholarships for local high school seniors, a holiday toy drive, and a donation to Katy’s Courage, among other causes.

A year ago, Natalie Massa couldn't have guessed that she'd be the chairwoman of a nonprofit organization, iloveukraine.org, donating money to orphanages in Kyiv. But the world changed when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and for many who grew up there, and whose families remain, watching events unfold without helping was impossible.

In this photo, Christopher Cuffee (1862-1939), a tribal council member of the Eastville Montauks, takes a break under his delivery wagon’s canopy on a summer day.

You don’t need to go deep into the woods to find a red-bellied woodpecker, but if you're looking for a distinctive red belly, you won't find it. Instead, its head is red, which explains why people often misidentify it as the red-headed woodpecker, which hardly shows up on Long Island.

Praise the mozzarella sticks and pass the pool cue! The Sail Inn in Montauk’s dock area has been sold to the mother-son team of Colleen Croft and Luca Guaitolini, who also own the upscale Upper East Side restaurant Elio’s, but the new owners say they are not planning to go luxe on the longtime locals’ joint on West Lake Drive when it reopens in the spring.

From a 1922 plea to stop dumping in the woods to a hunting-hiking tension back in 1972, read all about it.

The Hampton Ballet Theatre School has put on a performance of the classic holiday ballet “The Nutcracker” nearly every year since 2009 — the one exception a byproduct of Covid in 2020 — but this year’s production is the first time in school history that the annual production will feature a pair of real-life siblings in the roles of Clara and her brother Fritz.

Demonstrating a supply issue that dates back to 2008, Canadian grower’s first shipment to Fowler’s Garden Center had no larger trees, so it offered East Hampton Village smaller ones at a discount. Now it will provide larger trees of a more expensive variety for the same price. “We don’t do this to make money,” said Rick Fowler. “This is our way to give back to the community.”

East Hampton Village has big plans for the holiday season, including a tree-lighting at the Hook Mill sponsored by Prada and Santa arriving by helicopter in Herrick Park, but those tiny trees that went up last week? Not planned.