Businesses will no longer be allowed to distribute single-use plastic straws unless specifically requested, the East Hampton Village Board resolved on Friday. The board also passed a law banning smoking or vaping on public property, including beaches, streets, sidewalks, and parking lots. Both laws will take effect in mid-October, 30 days from passage.

A public hearing on a proposed law to regulate the distribution of magazines and other “handbills” was left open. Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. requested the extension, until 4 p.m. Monday, to allow residents to weigh in on the issue. Kirby Marcantonio, the publisher of Montauk Life magazine, had expressed concerns about the law’s effect on local businesses.  

 The handbill law seeks to bring order to the printed materials that often clutter the doorways of shops in the commercial district by requiring that a storeowner or other person of authority agrees to accept them, that they are hand-delivered, and that they are secured in a way that prevents them from becoming litter or a public hazard.

Mr. Marcantonio said he agreed with the law’s intent, but said the village should instead create kiosks or designate specific places where magazines can be safely deposited. That would protect businesses like his, he said, as well as their clients who buy ads in free magazines. “Having people receive that message is important to their businesses, and those businesses are important to the vitality of each community,” Mr. Marcantonio said. He also suggested that the law include the wording of an agreement between a distributor and a storeowner that would establish who is responsible for the materials. 

Steven Ringel, executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, endorsed the law as proposed, saying that the owners of businesses such as the Golden Pear restaurant, the movie theater, and Petit Blue children’s store have been unable to stop unwanted magazines from arriving on their stoops. They look forward, he said, to having enforceable regulations. 

The ban on plastic straws was passed unanimously. Prior to the vote, Arthur Graham, a trustee, suggested expanding it to include the kind of vegetable-based straws that do not biodegrade in the ocean. Barbara Borsack said a discussion of the environmentally detrimental effect of plastic balloons was warranted as well. Ultimately, the trustees decided to take the advice of Linda Riley, the village attorney, and adopt the plastic straw law as is, making amendments later.

The law banning smoking on village property passed with Richard Lawler as the sole dissenting vote. He described the law as being “too broad,” and said he was not in favor of including streets and sidewalks in the prohibition.

Representatives of Bigbelly, a company that manufactures technologically enhanced solar-powered trash compactors for public spaces, presented the latest iteration of their product to the board. In 2012, the company installed one such container in front of the Scoop du Jour ice cream shop on Newtown Lane, where it remains.

The trashcan uses photocell sensors to monitor the amount of garbage within, to gauge when to deploy a compaction mechanism, and when to send an alert to the Department of Public Works that the container is nearing capacity and requires emptying. Franklin Cruz, a distributor, said the compactor can hold five times as much trash as a traditional receptacle. That would mean “fewer bag-change trips, fewer bags used, fewer bags going to the landfill prematurely,” he said. 

The container can also house a router to provide Wi-Fi reception at locations with spotty cellular coverage, such as the village beaches. 

Alexander Gamota, a senior vice president at Bigbelly, discussed a companion product to the trashcan, the Telebelly, a cabinet containing equipment that boosts cell signals. An attached antenna that extends upward 20 feet would be needed, he said, to prevent signal disruption.  

Although Mayor Rickenbach expressed skepticism that the 20-foot attachment would pass muster in a village sensitive to aesthetics, he and the board were impressed by the innovative technology. “We’re very receptive to the concept,” the mayor said, and asked Mr. Gamota to see if a pilot program could be put in place for the latest versions of both Bellies.

In other business, the board accepted Mario Zeledon as a new member of Fire Department Hose Company 3, and approved proposals from South Fork Asphalt for pavement repair at 17 Crossways and 41 Lily Pond Lane, and to install new drainage at 26 and 7 Meadow Way. A proposal from Rosemar Contracting for milling and paving work to be done at Wiborg Beach was also approved.

The East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, an early-autumn tradition that celebrates the bounty of the town’s waterways, drew a crowd to the grounds of the trustees’ offices at the Lamb Building in Amagansett on Sunday. 

Under mostly gray skies, those attending eagerly slurped Round Swamp Farm’s clam chowder, the pots empty some 40 minutes after the event’s noon start. Ten minutes later, the raw bar was devoid of all but shells. Both had been offered free to the public.  

An official from the town’s shellfish hatchery, based at Fort Pond Bay in Montauk, displayed live marine life and described the hatchery’s efforts to seed waterways with juvenile shellfish. The East End Classic Boat Society displayed and sold tickets for its 2018 raffle boat, a 12-foot rowing and sailing dinghy called Ellen, constructed by the society’s members. The winning raffle ticket will be drawn at the society’s holiday open house on Dec. 8 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Community Boat Shop. 

The trustees also sold T-shirts, including one depicting the “balloon fish” designed by Susan McGraw Keber of the trustees to raise awareness about the danger balloons pose to marine life. Proceeds are allocated to the trustees’ William T. Rysam scholarship fund. 

A team of judges sampled the nine clam chowders entered in this year’s contest. “I think we have some very talented cooks in East Hampton,” one judge, Charlotte Sasso of Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett, said as the tasting got underway. Entries, she said, featured “a lot of fresh ingredients, some with a spin” on traditional chowders, like the inclusion of corn or mushrooms. 

“It’s a tough challenge,” Ms. Sasso said, perhaps hoping to alleviate the concerns of any contestant who might cast a skeptical eye on the judges’ acumen. “I’m happy to rise to the challenge.” 

Even greater excitement, and more objective mediating, was at the clam contest, however, as behemoth quahogs lined up for their moment in the spotlight, seated one by one on a scale for their formal weigh-in. At this, the trustees’ 28th annual contest, the afternoon’s climactic moment came when winners were announced. 

In the ages 4-to-14 division, Patrick O’Donnell took the prize for Accabonac/Hog Creek with his six-ounce clam. Tyler Persan took the largest clam from Lake Montauk, at 10.7 ounces. The prize for largest clam from Napeague Harbor, junior division, went to Hailey Lagarenne, who harvested a 1-pound-10-ounce specimen. And Ellis Rattray took honors for Three Mile Harbor with his 1-pound-4.3-ounce clam. 

Among the adults, William Solimeno’s 1-pound-7-ounce entry was the largest to come from Accabonac/Hog Creek. Clint Bennett was a two-time winner this year, his 1-pound-8-ounce behemoth taking honors for Three Mile Harbor and a 1-pound-6.4-ounce clam winning for Lake Montauk. 

Finally, the man behind the largest overall clam was revealed to be Edward Hoff Jr., whose 2-pound-4.8-ounce monster harvested from Napeague Harbor dwarfed all rivals. 

Ellis’s cousin Teddy Rattray won the “smallest clam contest” with his estimate of 1,000 juvenile “seed” clams in a jar. The 1,076 babies were all to be seeded into local waters. 

The chowder was not about to be upstaged, however. “Everyone did a superb chowder,” Ms. McGraw Keber said of the nine entries. When the judges’ expertly rendered opinions had been compared, contrasted, and reconciled like so much minced clam, potato, celery, butter, onion, clam juice, bacon, salt, and pepper, Spencer Guptill’s winsome red chowder was deemed best. Asked to describe his vision and divulge the secret to his success, Mr. Guptill was succinct. “It started out as white,” he said. 

“It was quite tasty,” Ms. McGraw Keber told her colleagues at the trustees’ meeting on Monday. “I wish he’d make some more.”

Seeking to honor the work being done to restore local historical buildings, the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton handed out its inaugural preservation awards during its annual meeting on Saturday. The trustees of the Moran Trust, who oversaw the rebirth of the Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran Studio, and Elizabeth and Patrick Gerschel, who relocated and restored the Mulford-Baker residence, were the recipients.  

The Moran studio, a Queen Anne-style structure dating from 1884, was  the first artist’s studio to be built on the East End. Thomas Moran, a painter of the Hudson River School, was known for his depictions of the Western landscape; his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, was also a landscape painter, and became recognized as a master of the etching medium. 

Their home, a National Historic Landmark, had been battered by Superstorm Sandy in 2013 and was on the brink of collapse when the board members determined to begin a restoration. The studio, now managed by the East Hampton Historical Society, was opened to the public in July.

 “When it was being renovated, it was like an archaeological dig,” said Michael Clifford, the vice chairman and vice president of the Moran Trust, who accepted the award on behalf of the board. “They would find these time capsules, like Mason jars with notes in them and cigar box covers.” Mr. Clifford attributed the success of the restoration to those who supported it financially and to the craftsmen who did the work. 

The Mulford-Baker House, which dates from the early 1800s, was originally built on Pantigo Road by Edward Mulford, the son of Capt. Ezekiel Mulford, a Revolutionary War hero. In the 1980s, the Gerschels moved the house to Hither Lane and began restoring it. “We’ve been living there ever since,” said Ms. Gerschel. Although living in a historical home has its challenges, including, she said, a severe lack of closet space, “the important thing is not to tear something down, but to work with it. We love living there.”

Kathleen Cunningham, executive director of the preservation society, said both recipients of the awards embodied the society’s credo that restoration work is a civic responsibility. “It places a high value on our unique character and history, and that’s what makes East Hampton so special.”

The document, Thomas Dongan’s authorization for the settlement of debts of the Thomas Squire estate in East Hampton, is interesting for a number of reasons, depending on what appeals to the viewer. Aside from appearing antiquated on the surface, the 1686 document itself seems to be very official with its red wax seal and curlicue handwriting. Certainly the phrase “By the Governour” emblazoned across the top cannot be ignored. On deeper investigation, one realizes that this is a probate record. For those unfamiliar, probate records are essentially court records created after a person’s death regarding a court’s decision pertaining to the distribution of property to heirs or creditors and the care of dependents, which might include widows, children, etc.

However, this colonial-era document is a little different (though certainly not out of the ordinary). As indicated, “Thomas Squire, Late Inhabitant of Easthampton in the County of Suffolk upon Long Island Dyed Intestate, and left no visible heir to enjoy his Estate.” The term “intestate” means he passed away without having written a will and, as mentioned, had no evident family to subsequently bequeath his land to.

During the colonial period, the colonies adopted English inheritance law, which largely mirrored the way property and wealth were transmitted in England. Set forth by the English Statute of Wills in 1540, this allowed land to be distributed by a will. In the absence of a will, the court was obligated to appoint someone to administer the estate. In this case, the Governor of the Province of New York, Thomas Dongan, appointed Capt. Josiah Hobart, High Sherriff of Suffolk County, as administrator. His role would have been to inventory and assess the value of the estate in order to pay off outstanding debts and ultimately distribute what remained to possible heirs. It is not known if an heir, in this case, was ever located. If not, Thomas Squire’s estate would have become the property of the crown.

—

Gina Piastuck is the department head of the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.

The seed of the idea for the Shed — a new, shared workspace run by women, for women, which launches Tuesday in Sag Harbor — began serendipitously.

Sarah Cohen, a Sag Harbor resident, was scrolling down her Facebook page last winter when she saw a San Francisco Chronicle article that a friend, Amanda Fairbanks, had written. It described a shared business networking and cooperative workspace in Mill Valley, Calif., where Ms. Fairbanks, her husband, and two children were living. 

“Sarah reached out to me and said, ‘Oh! This is exactly my life!’ ” Ms. Fairbanks said Tuesday. “I was describing this sort of frenzied working woman dropping her young child off at school, needing a place to work but not having Wi-Fi, not having a desk, living this mobile existence, trying to download a Google spreadsheet in her car, not having a place to print it. All these things. And Sarah said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had something like this on the East End?’ ”

And that’s how it came to be that next week, with the help of a third co-founder, Liza Tremblay, and their social media guru Christina Martin, the Shed will launch, providing the first of its 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday sessions at Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor, which will close to food customers for the day. 

The co-founders say the mission driving the Shed is straightforward: There’s a need. According to the latest census, there are more than 1,000 self-employed women on the East End. The co-founders say many of them can’t afford commercial rents and so they work in coffee shops, at home, or in isolation, and sometimes even on the run behind the dashboards of their cars. 

At Estia’s, the Shed will provide work tables, Wi-Fi, and a printer and scanner, along with an environment where working women can not only work, but gather to talk, think, brainstorm, network, support, and empower one another. Coffee, tea, and water will be free.

“There have been men’s-only places since the dawn of time, but this idea of women coming together,  and not having it be a social club, but having it be a place where women are working, is sort of a 21st-century phenomenon,” Ms. Fairbanks said. 

The launch day on Tuesday is free. Going forward, memberships will cost $75 a month or $25 for a single, drop-in day. Unlike some other co-workspace or business networking groups, there will be no vetting. All women are welcomed. The Shed’s founders hope to add events as the group grows, perhaps expanding with speakers on Mondays or occasional Tuesdays. Someday the founders hope the Shed will own its own space.

“We want it to be accessible, af­fordable, and community-driven,” Ms. Tremblay said. “That’s very important to us.”

Ms. Fairbanks, 38, is a journalist who is writing a nonfiction book called “The Lost Boys of Montauk” about four local men. Ms. Tremblay, 38, and her husband, Joe, recently announced the closing of their restaurant, Bay Burger, after 12 years, as well as their Joe and Liza’s ice cream business. 

Ms. Cohen, 43, who has a doctorate in physical therapy and works as an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, most recently designed and launched Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Center for Parkinson’s Disease. Like Ms. Fairbanks and Ms. Tremblay, she is the mother of two young children. She said she had already experienced firsthand the Shed’s potential as a meaningful place in women’s lives, albeit for an unanticipated reason. In March, as she was helping plan the Shed, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“It’s been an incredibly intense personal journey for me,” Ms. Cohen said, “and it has been such a source of strength for me, too, that’s kept me engaged and strong and optimistic and moving forward with this idea that I believe so strongly in, with my partners. I’ve been very grateful for them.”

This is how it began: “This guy’s coming from the city to play piano.” 

That was the message from Paul Harrison, the manager of the Silver Seahorse on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, to Brad Beyer, said Mr. Beyer’s brother, Bruce. 

“This guy” was Fred Goodman, a musician and journalist who was performing a solo rock ’n’ roll act in New York. A publicist friend was close to Mr. Harrison’s wife, and by 1978 he was performing regularly at the Silver Seahorse, later known as the Sea Wolf. 

“The owner wanted to have big Sunday brunches on the patio,” Mr. Goodman said, “and thought one piano wasn’t going to make it.” 

“That gig was getting so popular, the owner asked if he knew anybody else to get a band together,” said Bucky Silipo of Springs. He and Bruce Beyer had met a year earlier, contracted to back a husband-and-wife duo on bass and drums, and quickly discovered a musical kinship. 

“Brad rented the piano to the Silver Seahorse, and the owner called him to see if anybody could accompany a pianist,” Mr. Silipo said. “Brad recommended his brother and, because our bond was strong, he and I went and played with Freddy.” 

“One night I showed up at the Silver Seahorse, and all of a sudden there’s a drummer and bass player,” said Mr. Goodman, who lives in Seal Beach, Calif. “I said ‘Okay, I’m fine with that’ — I was going to make the same $50, or whatever it was. We started jamming that night, and all I had to say was the key the song was in. They knew just about everything.”

“Fred sat down at the piano, started rocking,” Mr. Beyer said, the hastily assembled trio effortlessly gelling on  songs like “The Way You Do the Things You Do” and “Drift Away.” “We fit like three amigos. At the end of the night, it was, ‘Come back next week.’ We did, every Tuesday from July 20 to Labor Day, and then Fred went back. We thought we’d never see him again.” 

But they did see him again, and again, and again. With disco’s sterile beats and tacky clothes still ruling the music scene in 1978, the old-time rock ’n’ roll served up by this new band was exactly what South Fork clubgoers craved, and Hot Wax, as the group would soon call itself, was an instant hit. 

On Saturday, 40 years after that first serendipitous pairing, the classic lineup of Hot Wax will plug in their instruments and get the crowd dancing once again. Mr. Beyer, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Silipo, and Bruce Macarthy, a guitarist who joined soon after the band’s formation, will perform at the Breakwater Yacht Club in Sag Harbor, where Pierson High School’s Class of 1968, which includes Mr. Beyer, will celebrate its 50th reunion. 

The name, said Mr. Beyer, a lifelong resident of Sag Harbor, came from the pioneering disc jockey Alan Freed, who reportedly coined the phrase rock ’n’ roll and in the genre’s early days announced “the new hot wax” — 45 r.p.m. singles — that he was about to play. (The 1978 film “American Hot Wax” is loosely based on Mr. Freed.) 

“We played all these rock ’n’ roll favorites,” Mr. Beyer said. “We were intoxicated with the sound. It was so real; there was nothing phony about it. The people picked up on it.”

“From the first note, the whole was bigger than the sum of the parts,” said Mr. Silipo, who returned to his native Long Island in the early 1970s after college and soon came to Montauk. “It must have been okay, because back in August of ’78, the phone kept ringing for Hot Wax.”

“Bruce, since he was from Sag Harbor, and Bucky, who lived in Montauk, got us gigs at places like the Corner Bar and the Sandbar,” in Sag Harbor, “and Christman’s,” in Montauk, said Mr. Goodman. “We became regulars.” 

At the Corner, “the place just lit up, electric, packed, everybody dancing,” Mr. Beyer said, remembering Russell (Jim) Smyth, the bar’s late owner, “dancing on the pinball machine with his shirt off.” 

“Next thing, we’re playing Christman’s almost every week,” he said. “It kept going from there.” At Christman’s, “Bucky called Bruce [Macarthy] up. He came down with this old Mosrite guitar and a Fender amp, and we started playing with a guitar player.” 

“There was nothing going on” in Ghent, N.Y., Mr. Macarthy said of his hometown. “The Donahues were from Babylon, but their dad was originally from up there. They moved up there and I became friends with them. A couple of them moved to Montauk, called me, and said, ‘Come on down, there’s plenty of work.’ I started bartending at Shagwong in, like, ’74. Jimmy [Hewitt] found out I played guitar, and said, ‘Do you want to play here? Thirty-five dollars a night and all you can drink.’ ” 

“You’d go on at 10, end at 2, then load out, have breakfast at 4 at the diner,” Mr. Goodman said. “You’d stay up all night.” After gigs at Christman’s, “Half the band would get eggs at Salivar’s,” Mr. Macarthy said, “and the other half would get cheeseburgers.” 

Hot Wax remained a top-drawing band on the South Fork, performing at bars, weddings, and parties for many years. “Since those guys lived out there, they kept getting gigs in the winter, so I would take the train out or drive,” Mr. Goodman said. “We became a thing.” 

But nothing lasts forever. A songwriter, Mr. Goodman’s “Hideaway” and “We Belong to the Night” were recorded by Ellen Foley, best known for her vocals on Meatloaf’s epic song “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” “We Belong to the Night” hit No. 1 in Holland and Belgium, and Mr. Goodman moved to Florida for several years. He returned to New York in the mid-1980s and rejoined the band for a few years before moving again. Hot Wax persevered through personnel changes well into the new century. 

For several years, Mr. Silipo and Mr. Macarthy also performed as a duo, and in recent years formed the 3B’s with Brandon Neff of Montauk. But Hot Wax still plays at the Devon Yacht Club in Amagansett, as it has every year since 1978. “I can’t explain the feeling of looking out and seeing three generations of people we’ve played to” at Dev­on, Mr. Silipo said. “It’s such a gift.” For that matter, “I can’t believe that I still get to do this. I feel very blessed. I appreciate every moment of playing.” 

“It’s been an amazing ride,” Mr. Beyer echoed. “It was fun, man. I loved every minute of it.”

“We used to rock Sag Harbor!” Mr. Macarthy said. “It was fun. We definitely had a good time.” 

“The music is not difficult in the sense of technique,” Mr. Silipo said. “We’ve always relied on the energy and the love we have for the songs.” 

“I never thought we were great musicians,” Mr. Goodman said, “but the energy was there, and that’s what people wanted at parties and things, to go nuts. It was a high for us because we liked watching people have a good time, jumping on tables, and for them it was a fun Saturday night. We got a bit of a reputation as a good-time rock ’n’ roll bar band.”

On Saturday, Pierson’s Class of ’68, whose coming of age coincided with rock ’n’ roll’s own flowering, will relive that magic time with a little help from their friend and classmate, Mr. Beyer, and his friends in Hot Wax, performing the soundtrack to their lives. “This ought to be fun,” Mr. Macarthy said. “I can’t wait.”

David John Cataletto and Elizabeth Catherine Marchisella of East Hampton were married on June 30 at Sacred Hearts Basilica in Southampton, with a large reception and dancing under the stars following at the Castle Barn at Nova’s Ark Project in Bridgehampton. 

Mr. Cataletto proposed in December on a snowy day in the woods at the exact spot where the two had met during a snowfall the previous year. “They knew shortly after that they would marry,” they wrote. 

The groom designed the engagement ring using heirloom diamonds; the bride designed her wedding dress. 

Mr. Cataletto is the son of Pamela and John Cataletto of East Hampton. The bride’s parents are Suzanne and Carmine Marchisella of Sag Harbor.

The Rev. Michael A. Vetrano officiated at their ceremony. Mr. Cataletto’s cousin Mathew David Collins Pizzorno was the best man. The bride’s sisters, Stace Karl and Melissa Lynch, were her maids of honor. The groom’s sister, Margaret Cerce, and the bride’s niece, Ava Lynch, did readings. Bagpipes played as the newlyweds left the church. They drove a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle convertible to the reception, where the groom’s father’s eight-piece jazz band played.

Mr. Cataletto is an elementary school teacher in East Hampton, while his wife is an art teacher at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. A graduate of Pierson, she earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts at Hofstra University and went on to earn her master’s in art education there. He graduated from East Hampton High School, majored in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and received his master’s degree in education from City College of New York. 

After the wedding, with the summer off from teaching, the couple took a six-week honeymoon on their 30-foot sailboat, traveling 1,000 miles all told to Mount Desert Island, Me., and back. 

The couple will have settled back into “their house in the woods on Swamp Road with their two dogs, Storm and Curly Bear, and will live happily ever after,” they wrote.

The Town of East Hampton’s push to meet 100 percent of its energy needs through renewable sources will get a ­publicity boost on Saturday, when TEDxShinnecockHills, the South Fork’s first public TEDx event, happens from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center. It will feature a number of talks broadly focusing on sustainability and environmentalism. 

With the theme of “Stasis: Conjecture-Meaning-Solemnity-Action,” the half-day gathering will feature East Hampton residents including Gordian Raacke, the executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, Edwina von Gal, founder of the Perfect Earth Project, and Bill Chaleff, an architect specializing in “green” building. 

TEDx events are independently organized versions of the talks and conferences by the TED nonprofit organization, which began in 1984 as a conference at which technology, entertainment, and design converged. More than 11 million people subscribe to TED’s YouTube channel, where more than 2,800 videos can be seen. 

Mr. Raacke, who attended the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco last weekend, will deliver “100 Percent Renewable Energy — You Can Do It,” a talk about the climate crisis, its urgency, and civilization’s ability to solve it if immediate action commensurate with that urgency is taken. 

“I’m really focusing on the fact that we’ve waited far too long, we have done things too small so far, but the good news is we still have a small window of opportunity to start working on things that are big and can be deployed rapidly,” he said on Monday. “If we do that, we can still make it — at least that’s my take on it. To make that happen, we need all hands on deck, everybody to participate in that transition.”

While the Trump administration is dismissive of climate change and has moved to roll back environmental regulations, states and municipalities are forging a path to a clean-energy future. The Global Climate Action Summit was held days after Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed a bill requiring his state to acquire its electricity exclusively from carbon-free sources by 2045. Hawaii has set a similar goal. According to the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign, 82 cities in the United States have also set goals for meeting 100 percent of their electricity needs from renewable sources. 

“It was really encouraging to see we’re not alone here on the South Fork,” Mr. Raacke said of the summit and East Hampton’s commitment to renewable energy. “This is a movement now, a national and even global movement.” Those attending the summit discussed “how we can bring this all about, how we can reach our 100-percent goal.” 

Councilwoman Sylvia Overby of the East Hampton Town Board also referred to the summit at the board’s meeting on Tuesday. “We were one of the first,” she said of East Hampton’s aspiration to achieve the 100-percent goal by 2020. At the time, the town was one of 20 municipalities to set such a goal, she said. “Big towns, small towns, they’re all looking forward to 100-percent renewable energy,” she said. 

The hour is late, but with everyone’s cooperation, catastrophic climate change can be averted, Mr. Raacke said. “We can all be heroes, climate heroes,” he said. “We want to step up now before it’s too late.” 

Other speakers on Saturday include Nicholas Palumbo, a Southampton resident who is the executive director of sustainability programs at Suffolk Community College; Mary Beth Pfeiffer, an investigative reporter who has written extensively about Lyme disease; Himanshu Ragtah, co-founder of Profillic, a start-up that aims to revolutionize research and development through artificial intelligence, and Emily Atkin, a staff writer at The New Republic magazine. 

Tickets for TEDxShinnecockHills are $100, $80 for Southampton Arts Center members. A $250 ticket includes a cocktail dinner with the speakers tomorrow and preferential seating on Saturday. They are available at tedxshinnecockhills.org.

A special events law to take effect in East Hampton Village on Oct. 1 will require permits for gatherings of 50 or more people at a private residence and prevent pre-existing businesses in residential neighborhoods, such as the Hedges Inn, from having events outdoors or in tents. 

Ever since the law was introduced, the question of whether the Hedges Inn, which is on the south side of Main Street, should be allowed to have large tented events on its property has been a matter of debate. Although the village had approved permits for such events there in recent years, it reversed course in March and denied permits for four weddings scheduled to take place in 2018.

At a meeting of the zoning board of appeals on Friday, Christopher Kelley, a lawyer for the inn, asserted special events were a reasonable and legitimate accessory use for the inn, and sought to have the denials overturned.

Anthony Pasca, a lawyer representing Peter and Patricia Handal, the inn’s neighbors who have decried it as a noise-generating party center, argued that the zoning board had, in a 2004 determination, already prohibited any expansion of the inn’s pre-existing use, including special events.  

In the 2004 ruling, the Z.B.A. annulled the use of the Hedges Inn patio for outdoor dining because Palm Management Corp., the inn’s owner at the time, failed to demonstrate it was a pre-existing use. Palm Management sued, but the zoning board’s decision was upheld in State Supreme Court and then by the Court of Appeals. Mr. Kelley said the village administrator and building inspector had incorrectly applied the ruling about the patio as the basis for the denial of tent permits. “I’m here to tell you that that is an entirely false reading of that case,” Mr. Kelley said at Friday’s Z.B.A. meeting. The 2004 decision, he said, was solely targeted at prohibiting dining on the patio and did not outlaw tents. “It did not say the property cannot have outdoor dining. It did not say the property could not have special events,” he said. 

To bolster his argument, Mr. Kelley read a statement from Andrew Goldstein, who was chairman of the Z.B.A. in 2004. Mr. Goldstein said that, to the best of his recollection, the determination “did not deal with outdoor dining generally at the Hedges Inn.” 

The zoning code limits the use of tents for special events to 21 days a year in residential districts. “It would be ironic indeed,” said Mr. Kelley, “if we were — being the only legal restaurant and inn and having a catering component — the only property that could not have multiple special events on our property, where all the residents could.” 

After being denied tent permits in March, the Hedges Inn held tented events at a neighboring residential property.

Making his case against the inn’s holding special events, Mr. Pasca said the business was trying to “stealthily 

expand” its non-conforming use. He showed an image, which he said he had downloaded from the inn’s website, of what he described as a “circus tent” where weddings are held. The tent can hold well over 200 people, he said, and the inn’s certificate of occupancy allows for only 113 people at indoor events.

In the 2004 decision, Mr. Pasca said, the Z.B.A. had been prescient about what it was staving off by prohibiting dining on the inn’s patio. He read a passage from the earlier  determination, which concluded that the outdoor dining would “enable the owner to operate a different kind of facility altogether, a restaurant facility capable of hosting and catering large special events.”

“A precedent’s a precedent,” Mr. Pasca said. “I was here. I handled the litigation back then. I’m asking you to enforce the code, enforce your own precedent, stop the creeping expansion of nonconforming uses that you’ve been told to stop by the legislative board.”

The hearing will continue at the Oct. 12 meeting of the zoning board.

Sept. 25, 9:15 p.m.: A break in the rainy weather on Tuesday allowed a team from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society to perform a necropsy on the dead minke whale that washed ashore at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett Monday. 

The minke whale was found to be 18.7 feet in length. "The animal was fairly decomposed and missing many internal organs, including the reproductive organs, therefore the sex could not be determined," the conservation society said in a statement Tuesday evening. 

"Stranding investigations on all marine mammals and sea turtles are an important part of our conservation work as it provides valuable insight into the health of various species and what threats they face in our waters,” said Kimberly Durham, the society's necropsy program director. "Though a definitive cause of death could not be determined during the necropsy our team conducted for this animal today, samples were taken and sent to a pathologist."

Pathology results may take several months to come back.

The Town of East Hampton removed the whale's carcass from the beach.

The organization also said it was proud to support the Shinnecock Nation as its members honored their heritage Monday evening after the whale washed up. Shane Weeks of the Shinnecock Nation performed a traditional ceremony for the whale, which is called podtap in Shinnecock. Mr. Weeks has been to nearly every whale beaching on Long Island for the last several years to perform a ceremony, the conservation society said.

"These events hold great cultural value to my people,” Mr. Weeks said in the organization's statement. "The whales were also one of the staple foods for the indigenous people in the New England area historically. Our whaling canoes could hold almost 100 people. This connection is still acknowledged to this day."

This was the 10th large whale and second minke whale that the organization responded to in New York this year. There is an "unusual mortality event" for minke and humpback whales along the Atlantic coast, it said. 

The organization continues to ask that the public report live and dead marine mammal and sea turtle strandings immediately by calling the New York State Stranding Hotline at 631-369-9829. The public can also report sightings by emailing [email protected].

Sept. 24, 10:24 p.m.: A dead minke whale washed up on Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett Monday afternoon. 

The Atlantic Marine Conservation Society was called to the beach for the 12-to-14-foot whale at around 4:30 p.m.

The conservation society is working with East Hampton Town Marine Patrol and the East Hampton Town Highway Department to figure out how to remove the whale from the beach.

"This is currently all of the information available," the organization said in a statement Monday evening. After the team arrives onsite and is able to conduct a necropsy, more information will be made available. 

A severely decomposed humpback whale washed up on Napeague in July. A cause of death was not immediately determined.