Villages

As Henri heads toward Long Island, East Hampton Fire Department Chief Gerard Turza Jr. on Saturday announced the Main Beach fireworks show, originally slated for Saturday night, has been postponed "in the interest of public safety."

With Henri forecast to be "at or near hurricane strength" when it makes landfall on Long Island on Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center, state of emergency declarations have been issued in East Hampton Town, East Hampton Village, Southampton Village, and Southampton Town.

Winds and heavy seas from Hurricane Henri are expected to reach Long Island late Saturday, well before the storm itself makes landfall sometime on Sunday. The National Hurricane Center said that storm conditions on eastern Long Island were possible as early as 8 p.m. on Saturday with Henri's eye passing just east of Montauk Point at about 8 p.m. Sunday.

With the start of the Hampton Classic Horse Show just nine days out and a city of 58 large tents already set up on the showgrounds in Bridgehampton in preparation for the show, organizers announced on Friday that they are taking down all the tents and horse stables as Hurricane Henri barrels toward the East End. 

Tropical Storm Henri is expected to strengthen Saturday to hurricane force and begin affecting eastern Long Island late Saturday or early Sunday.

Tom House, who tended bar at the Swamp and its successor, the Star Room, for 20 years, is the founder of Hamptons Pride, a new nonprofit  that wants to celebrate this significant piece of local L.G.B.T.Q. history by establishing a living monument on the site where the Swamp once stood.

In light of the massive 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the southwest region of Haiti on Saturday, killing roughly 1,300 people and climbing, two local organizations are encouraging people to donate money to relief efforts and medical support.

When the Ellen Hermanson Foundation holds its Back in Black summer benefit on Aug. 28, it will honor Tovah Feldshuh, a Broadway actress, singer, and playwright, and John Graham, the executive director of the Hampton Racquet Club, where the outdoor event will be held.

A recent surge in Covid-19 infections on the East End is predominantly among those who are unvaccinated, and the Delta variant of the virus is the cause of more than 90 percent of cases, according to Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, the chief medical officer at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, who described the variant as a "survival of the fittest" version of Covid-19.

In honor of last weekend's Authors Night event, which returned to the East Hampton Library's lawn, this postcard shows the rear view of the library. This view is undated, but it shows the library as it appeared between the building's initial 1912 construction and the 1930 expansion, which created the Bendheim Room for library board meetings and the Long Island Collection. Authors Night attendees on Saturday could see the Bendheim Room and children's wing from the tent; however, this postcard shows how the building looked before the addition of those sections.

A panel discussion on restoring East End bays to the productive habitats they once were will happen next Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. at LTV Studios in Wainscott.

The East Hampton Library will offer a virtual presentation called L.G.B.T. 101, an anti-bullying and awareness initiative from the L.G.B.T. Network, tomorrow at 5 p.m. 

While water consumption in Suffolk County has been decreasing over the past five years, consumption in the Suffolk County Water Authority's East Hampton water district has consistently grown. In fact, water pumpage for each month in 2021 has surpassed consumption during the same month in 2020, according to the water authority.

For more than 100 years, St. Luke's Episcopal Church has had a tradition of hosting a summer fair on the church grounds. On Saturday it returns from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 18 James Lane in East Hampton Village.

Vaccines are now widely available for those 12 and up, with physicians' offices and pharmacies offering them and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital operating a Pfizer vaccine clinic three days a week. In addition, Organizacion Latino-American is partnering with a number of other organizations to offer the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Domenic Papa, the owner of a Connecticut car dealership, has bought the Amagansett and Bellport I.G.A.s, also known as Cirillo's Markets, from Fran Cirillo. 

With Covid-19 infections on the rise again in Suffolk County, South Fork business owners are reinstituting mask mandates and other safety protocols. "We got to a point where we realized we had to take a stand," said one, Eric Lemonides, a co-owner of Almond in Bridgehampton, where patrons 12 and over are being asked to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test.

"Cousin Belle," presumably 15-year-old Caroline Isabella Homan (1846-1923), daughter of Egbert Homan (1812-1888) and the former Caroline Conklin (1821-1898), wrote this detailed letter to Joshua B. Edwards (1830-1915) in October of 1861.

A new public pool and cultural arts center at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center has been a long time coming, and representatives of the nonprofit Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation said it will take as long as three more years to secure the $13 million it needs to finish the building and establish programs there.

In collaboration with New York Natural Heritage Program and Cornell Cooperative Extension, Save the Sound's private donors sponsored a first-of-its-kind dive: five days underwater to survey biodiversity where the Long Island Sound and Peconic Estuary empty around 822-acre Plum Island.

A proposal to extend a moratorium on waterfront development in Sag Harbor Village to Feb. 1 was approved by the village board on Tuesday.

Waterborne bacteria counts have surged at ponds, beaches, and bays this summer, including at Fort Pond Bay in Montauk.

Sugar Loaf, a burial ground sacred to the Shinnecock Indian Nation, has been returned to the tribe. Late last month, the Shinnecock Nation Graves Protection Warrior Society announced that the 4.5-acre piece of land in Shinnecock Hills had been purchased for $5.6 million with the help of the Peconic Land Trust.

With the price of housing on the South Fork exorbitant and affordable places to live sadly lacking, two grassroots organizations, Solidarity Sundays and East End Yimby, have joined together to take action. Their first order of business: busting the myths surrounding municipally managed and public-private housing partnerships, fears of which include more traffic, more crime, poor construction, negative environmental impact, higher taxes, and lower property values for neighbors.

Lovers of the oceans and the life within them have just a few days left to experience "Science and the Sea," an exhibition of photographs by the marine scientist and explorer Gaelin Rosenwaks at the Montauk Lighthouse Oceans Institute that is but a glimpse into the life of an inveterate adventurer, an academic scientist turned storyteller whose career on a given day may see her swimming with blue sharks off Montauk, or hammerheads in the Bahamas, or 45-ton sperm whales off the island of Dominica.

This newspaper clipping from the Aug. 4, 1977, East Hampton Star advertises the upcoming Fisherman's Fair at Ashawagh Hall, benefiting the Springs Improvement Society. The ad is from the Springs Historical Society Archive.

A law that will require East Hampton Village residents to install low-nitrogen septic systems when conventional systems fail was passed by the village board at a meeting on Friday. The law will take effect in a few weeks, after being filed with New York's secretary of state.

When Juliana Lester, a rising East Hampton High School senior, noticed that "a lot of the locals have been moving away and . . . our story is kind of slipping through our fingers," the 16-year-old decided to do her part to teach people about the village's history.

A proposal that would permit two-bedroom accessory dwellings with kitchens on East Hampton Village properties of 40,000 square feet or more, for use by family, friends, or employees of the primary residents, received unanimous support at a village board meeting on Friday.

This photograph from the Amagansett Historical Association's Carleton Kelsey Collection shows Lodowick H. King (1844-1904), a native of Amagansett, seated for a portrait. He wears his Union Army Civil War uniform with his hat, which features his regiment number within a cross, set on a table next to him.