Villages

April Fools’ Day may be an unofficial holiday traditionally observed with pranks, jokes, and hoaxes every April 1, but this broadside for the “Fantastic, Grand Barbaric, and Cavalric Parade of April Fools” came from a Sag Harbor parade marking the occasion on April 3, 1871.

Stony Brook Medicine’s three hospitals, including two on the East End, have once again been named LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leaders by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The Sag Harbor Cinema and the Plain Sight Project, an initiative that aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America, have together received a $200,000 federal grant sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

Rabbi Joshua Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons will travel to the Polish-Ukrainian border on April 9, along with a delegation of about 25 American and Israeli rabbis who will partner with organizations that are actively assisting Ukrainian Jews and others who have fled Russia’s invasion of their country.

An awful lot of people are getting sick with one thing or another in the weeks since New York State's mask mandate was lifted. “In prior years, this is when flu season is just ending, but right now, it’s just starting,” said Dr. Gail Schonfeld, whose East End Pediatrics practice in East Hampton has seen an average of five cases of flu each day over the past two weeks.

An 1897 ice house gets its fill of “excellent quality” frozen blocks from Down East, and Governor Dewey crowns the Potato Queen of 1947 in Riverhead.

As Long Island Collection staffers were digitizing East Hampton High School’s Bonac Beachcomber newspaper, we had some laughs over the Nov. 19, 1947, issue, which covered the junior prom.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have asked the federal Food and Drug Administration for authorization of a fourth (or second booster) dose of their respective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. Should this be approved, how much extra protection would it provide and who would benefit?

In the last two weeks, ospreys have started to return to the East End from their wintering grounds in Central and South America. They’re a sign of spring, and a constant visual reminder that our actions directly affect birds.

Spring comes to Mrs. Payne’s yard 125 years ago, Miss Alice White has a party on Main Street for St. Patrick’s Day, 1922, and in 1972 Montauk saw a Save Our Stripers movement.

Regular customers of Fierro’s Pizza in East Hampton Village will surely have noticed by now that there are new faces behind the counter this week, and that those new faces are actually familiar ones from the pizzeria’s earlier days. Randy Kendall and Joe Page, who worked on and off at Fierro’s for decades — Mr. Kendall for some 18 years, Mr. Page for 12 or 13 — took over as its new owners on March 14.

The operators of the Beach Hut concession at East Hampton's Main Beach pavilion have applied to the state recently for a "summer tavern wine license," which allows the sale of beer and wine for on-premises consumption, and they're also hoping to add dinner service this summer.

Kristofer Kalas, a trained pastry chef and owner of the tiny market Hello Oma in East Hampton, is in Ukraine helping women and children to get out of the country.

This photograph by Robert Hefner shows Broadview, the main house of the Bell Estate in Amagansett, on April 29, 1988, not long after Reginald and Loida Lewis bought it.

A donor known only by the name Eric recently brought smiles to the faces of 25 patients at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with surprise bouquets of flowers in honor of his mother, who died in 2021.

The American woodcock knows a thing or two about a good display. No bird on the East End of Long Island comes close to rivaling its spring show.

It was a good night for the combined school bands of Bridgehampton and East Hampton 75 years ago. A 1972 question over the use of chemicals by farmers here. And the day Tick Hall burned to the ground.

“The dishes in my dish rack rattle,” said Andy Rosenthal, a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the president of Stop the Chop, an organization seeking to end nonessential helicopter flights, including air shuttles to and from the Hamptons and tourist flights over the five boroughs.

As construction of the onshore portion of the South Fork Wind farm proceeds in Wainscott, a lawsuit filed in United States District Court last week seeks to halt that work, claiming its potential to spread the perfluorinated chemicals, known as PFAS, that were detected in nearby groundwater.

A man who says he’s still recovering from a years-long struggle with opioid addiction is suing an East Hampton doctor and a local pharmacy, alleging that they were negligent in his care by overprescribing and overfilling highly addictive drugs.

The account books of the Amagansett Mill Company, kept by John Baker from 1829 through 1841, are featured this week.

Earlier this month state and local authorities began to roll back mask mandates in a variety of settings including schools and public spaces like restaurants. After two years of such mandates, these changes have given many a feeling that the end of the Covid-19 pandemic may finally be upon us. But is it soon to set aside our masks?

While the great blue heron, the largest heron in North America, is not our only winter heron (black-crowned night herons roost locally all winter), it’s the only one you’re likely to see.

Coming together for a vigil at Hook Mill in East Hampton last Thursday, local clergy spoke about the need to support the people of Ukraine, two million of whom have fled the country since Russia began bombing it last week. “What affects one, affects us all as human beings, which demands that we stand in support of the freedom and rights of every nation,” said the Rev. Walter Thompson Jr. of Calvary Baptist Church.

From an 1897 call for a first-class inn here to a 1997 plan for a drive-in movie complex in Wainscott.

Early last month the Center for Therapeutic Riding of the East End in Bridgehampton threw a retirement party for Pumpkin and Rocket, two of the much loved horses who work there.

Nearly a million refugees have already left Ukraine. They often left quickly and took only what they could easily carry. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, the European Union expects anywhere from three to six million more to flee. Many local schools, churches, and government offices are putting donation programs together to help the people in Ukraine.

This photograph, taken in the spring of 1900 at Second House, shows Ulysses Tillinghast Payne with his wife, Nellie, and their children, Betsy, Edward, Elias, and Mildred. Built in 1746, Second House is the oldest structure in Montauk.

Pigeons are extremely sensitive to low frequency sounds; they can see into the ultraviolet range of light, and they are able to detect minute changes in air pressure. They don’t keep the tidiest of homes, allowing feces, and even dead nestlings, to remain in the nest, and since they reuse their nests, they get bigger and nastier as time goes on.