Villages

Back in March, Peter Zegler and Bob Beck, metal detectorists, saw an opportunity to uncover some East Hampton Village history after learning of plans to renovate the fields at Herrick Park, and they requested permission from the village board to get to work. The basketball court had been laid over an expanse of undisturbed soil, and soon their metal detectors were beeping with excitement.

This is the best time of year to observe chimney swifts locally as they burst through the skies over our villages. You’ll never see a chimney swift land, or even come close to street level. In their daily circuits, they can fly 500 miles a day in pursuit of something like 12,000 flying insects.

From a shotgun-wielding skirmish in the Prohibition wars of 1923 to the momentous day in 1998 when Suffolk County banned smoking in bars, it happened here.

You read it here first. Make that second, as these entries are reprinted from past Stars for your pleasure and edification.

The Bokalift 2, an approximately 750-foot-long vessel that will be used to install foundations for the South Fork Wind farm, arrived off Newport, R.I., last week and is now at the wind farm’s site, in a federal lease area around 35 miles off Montauk Point. 

The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles has unveiled a new $60 custom license plate featuring the Montauk Lighthouse. Only, there is one problem.

“It was only June 2021 when we first saw a scattering of symptomatic foliage in a client’s garden, and two years later, most beech trees have been impacted at some level,” one master arborist said of beech leaf disease, which is threatening the survival of beech trees from forests to estates.

The Last Gasp, published by East Hampton High School’s class of 1912 as part of its graduation festivities, is one of the earliest student publications in the Long Island Collection.

Residents of the East End awoke Saturday morning to a hazy sky and the distinct smell of something burning, which got stronger through the week as a result of the wildfires raging in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia. The smoke resulted in air quality alerts that canceled outdoor activities of all sorts.

A large crowd watches a baseball game in this glass-plate image. Most likely the players are part of the East Hampton Baseball Club, first mentioned in The Star in 1895.

“There was a real focus on domestic violence and other important social causes during Covid,” Francesca Odell, co-president of the Retreat’s board of directors said at the All Against Abuse benefit Saturday. “And, now that we’re coming out of that, I think there’s a tendency to think that those issues aren’t as crucial. But when you look at the root causes of domestic violence, they’re all still present.”

Rabbi Aizik Baumgarten of Chabad of the Hamptons in East Hampton donated one of his kidneys to Terri Levin Davgin, a longtime congregant who was suffering from kidney failure. “When there’s an opportunity to help, we help. I thanked God for the opportunity for the chance to save a life,” he said.