Villages

Notes from the Summer Colony, and more from the days of yore.

With many members of their family and friends looking on, the brothers Joe and Sal LaCarrubba unveiled a plaque at the Main Street, Amagansett, building that once served as the hamlet’s U.S. Life-Saving Station on Monday.

With a careful, calculated touch, Robert Greene, a renowned decoy carver who lives in Springs, creates pieces so realistic they could easily be mistaken for taxidermy. “You gotta know the wood, you gotta be a halfway decent carver, you gotta be a decent painter. . . and you gotta be an artist,” he said.

A daylong program at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Friday, Aug. 11, will explore nature as a balm for healing and rejuvenation.

A benefit softball game between the staff and members of the South Fork Country Club last month raised $30,000 for the East Hampton, Springs, and Montauk food pantries.

Samuel Carll Hedges (1870-1952) appears here dressed as the Rev. Samuel Buell for a Founders Day celebration, probably in 1940, probably at Clinton Academy.

Industrial Road, because of its geography and development, has long been a dangerous area for birds. One woman has found 11 dead gulls near the PSEG electrical substation there since late June, and it's not just gulls that are dying.

Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow, co-owners of Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, started the farm during 2008 financial crisis. “Our friends who had taken more conventional paths were losing their jobs,” Ms. Merrow said. "It felt risky starting a business, but it feels like life is risky, and it was less risky for us to be in control of our destiny. We thought, ‘The world is a weird place, maybe we should grow our own food.’ ”

If you’ve walked by the Ladies Village Improvement Society headquarters on East Hampton Main Street or waited at the Hampton Jitney stop in front of it, you may have noticed an elm with its bark cut away in a neat strip around the tree’s circumference. “Won’t that kill the tree?” one curious walker asked The Star two weeks ago after spotting it. The answer is yes, but it may also help save others nearby from Dutch elm disease

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s new aquatic center is scheduled for Wednesday. Having raised the needed money, the Montauk Playhouse Foundation “is now prepared to continue the rebirth of this landmark building into a community resource that welcomes and serves all.”

Our coastal zones have hit an all-time low in water quality, with impairments that violate New York State and federal guidelines ubiquitous, according to a report released last week. East Hampton Town waterways, while benefiting from ocean tidal flushing, are not immune from such impairments.

An uncomfortable evening of entertainment dramatizing life in the old South from 1898, and more from East Hampton’s yesteryear.