Villages

It was lockup for a “knight of the road” 125 years ago, while 75 years ago the Suffolk County Farm Bureau tackled the problem of housing for migrant labor on the South Fork.

The dearth of medical care here was one of the most serious issues facing the community, said Henry Murray, who recently announced his retirement as chairman of the foundation that runs the East Hampton Healthcare Center. The facility is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Revel, “a community of women fully embracing the next chapter, and creating a fresh approach to our 40s, 50s, and beyond,” according to its website (hellorevel.com), launched Hamptons Revelers last week. It’s a group within the platform specifically for female East Enders of a certain age, to connect and participate in events such as ice skating at the Bucksill Winter Club, or a walk along Gerard Drive.

Because of a significant decline in demand for Covid-19 testing, East Hampton Town’s test site at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons on Stephen Hand’s Path, operated by CareONE Concierge, has reduced its hours of operation.

Our new Digital Long Island website gives us better keyword-searching capability, and as part of this we have uploaded all the East Hampton High School yearbooks in the Long Island Collection’s holdings, beginning with The ’51, which is featured here.

A reader asked, is a third dose recommended after receiving an mRNA booster vaccine (such as Moderna or Pfizer) following the Johnson and Johnson single dose? Dr. Potter looked into it.

The East Hampton Library has a new video series, “Covid Hamptons: How the Pandemic Reshaped an Iconic Community," documenting current historical events as they unfold. It includes firsthand accounts from people such as police officers, musicians, farmers, and barbers as they talk about the once-in-a-century, one hopes, event that has transformed life in the town and across the globe.

Back 125 years ago, all the trains were snow-blockaded, in 1947 a sperm whale washed up in Montauk, a rare occurrence, and in 1972 a Grants department store landed in Bridgehampton.

The South Fork was spared widespread power outages and flooding over the weekend as Long Island’s first official blizzard since 2018 dropped nearly two feet of drifting snow in some parts of the region. East Hampton Town employed some 50 plow drivers, ranging from its 12 full-time employees to private contractors, who worked almost 24 hours straight starting on Friday night.

“We’re really in a crisis and we don’t have time to wait for others to take action. . . . We need to get as many people engaged in this industry as possible,” said Tela Troge of the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers.

East Hampton and Southampton Towns both declared states of emergency in advance of the winter storm that began pounding the East End late Friday night and continued through the day Saturday. A blizzard warning remained in effect for the area until 7 p.m.

Hunting with guns in East Hampton Town is a tradition that dates back to the middle 1600s. Back then, it was a means of survival. Now, it’s a sport, and a popular one, but also a tool for wildlife management.

The East Hampton Village Board has approved a lease agreement with the East Hampton Historical Society for the Dominy Shops at 73 North Main Street, effective Feb. 1, 2023. A museum is the goal.

The Springs Historical Society held the first Great Bonac Canoe Race on Saturday, Aug. 15, 1981, and the item shown here is that year’s map for the race’s route.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released data evaluating the effectiveness of a third dose of an mRNA vaccine in preventing Covid-19. There have been clear indications since before third doses, or “booster” doses, were authorized that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time. This has become particularly relevant as SARS CoV-2 has continued to mutate and multiply, allowing for the rise of variants such as Delta and Omicron.

The first and most important thing to know about the purple sandpiper is that it’s not purple. It’s not even close. For the beginner, the best way to see this bird — the only sandpiper we tend to see here in winter months — is to know where it hangs out, because it absolutely doesn’t stand out.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the icemen were busy here. Twenty-five years ago, the district’s congressman and a U.S. senator expressed disgust at Brookhaven National Lab contamination.

Winter can often be the deadliest time of the year, but there are ways to protect yourself and your home from cold-related accidents.

One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, on Jan. 21, 1854, Capt. Jared Wade Jr. (1811-1889) wrote to his wife, Harriett Bushnell Wade (1831-1911), from St. Helena Island. This British island in the South Atlantic served as an important stopping-off port for the whaling and shipping industry.

The screech owl is about the size of a brick, with big eyes, and ear tufts, but this adorable little owl is an efficient killer. Its howl represents pure death to a variety of critters. Nothing is safe, even other screech owls. It even takes bats on the wing.

When a man with a gun took a rabbi and three members of his congregation as hostages at the Beth Israel Congregation in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday — a situation that the hostages survived, but the gunman did not — ripples of resolve ran through Jewish houses of worship here.

While the pandemic’s trajectory remains uncertain, the Omicron variant’s tendency to cause milder sickness, combined with the sheer number of those with a degree of protection through prior infection or vaccination, signal a period of transition for the virus that has upended life for the past two years.

From memories of whalemen to postwar bouts of card playing.

Within a year after a 1978 fire that burned the Sea Spray Inn in East Hampton to the ground, village residents voted to buy the 16-acre property and to add the land and its 10 cottages to the village’s roster of parks and recreational sites. In recent weeks, there's been talk of changes at property, including whether it would be advantageous to turn their management over to a private company, which would then be responsible for their upkeep.

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 continues to surge through Suffolk County, but there may be signs of a coming decline in cases, which reached an all time high last week.

This photograph from the C. Frank Dayton Photograph Collection shows the exterior of the blacksmith shop of Charles Silas Parsons (1858-1926) before its relocation and restoration.

More and more people are visiting health professionals to discuss anxiety and depression, and what's striking is not the new onset of these symptoms and conditions or the severity with which they are presenting but instead that so many people are almost apologetic when they bring up these concerns.

Why isn’t the long-tailed duck more celebrated? It’s crazy looking, gregarious, easily seen, cackles like a stuttering kazoo, hilariously belly-flops when it lands, and hangs out in bad little duck posses. It’s even controversial.

“We’ve been a community center since 1908 and have never had a proper bathroom,” said Hilary Osborn Malecki, president of the Wainscott Sewing Society, which maintains the Wainscott Chapel. The chapel has existed all this time with only an outhouse, but that is about to change.

Deep into The Star’s past . . .