“Our defense was good enough for us to win,” Dan White, East Hampton’s coach, said after a 45-30 loss to Eastport-South Manor here, but when it came to offense there wasn’t much to write home about.

Southampton Town has more than 60 freshwater ponds. Most of these ponds are contaminated to this or that degree, but the most contaminated are given a label by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that speaks to their fragility.

Alastair Gordon shares memories of Doug Thompson, a longtime friend and noted architect who died in November.

The Amagansett streetscape will soon suffer a significant loss with the closing of Ille Arts, which has been a vital source of culture and visual art in that hamlet at two different locations since March 2012.

This is a story that could be sad, but it is not. It is more of a silver-lining story that brings us to family, food, and the holidays.

The new Pushcart Prize table of contents lets us know that authors are thinking about drug overdoses, racism, cultural appropriation, caring for elderly family members, and the complicated political divide.

“Viewpoints,” the Watermill Center’s conversation series devoted to creative themes, begins Wednesday with a talk by Andrina Wekontash Smith, a member of the Shinnecock Nation.