Grind

It's not too early to stock up on treats for the December holidays, right? Right. The Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons will kick off its annual bake sale and holiday market on Saturday, featuring traditional pastries and gifts.

Two local institutions have begun collecting toys for children in need — the first of what are sure to be many to come this holiday season.

The Amagansett Library is hosting a toy drive through Dec. 7. New toys, games, puzzles, and art supplies for children can be taken to the library, with all donations given to Hamptons Community Outreach for distribution. More information can be had by emailing [email protected]. 

Charity-minded residents have an opportunity over the next month to contribute to the Retreat's annual Adopt-a-Family program, which collects gifts and gift cards for families in need during the holiday season.

Starting Monday, the Southampton Town Police Department and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital will be collecting donations of winter coats, gloves, hats, and scarves to help provide warmth to those in need.

The Bridgehampton Museum will host a reading called "Ocean Road: The Story of the Circassian," involving new research by Peter Walsh, a museum trustee, on Saturday at 4 p.m.

The Springs Presbyterian Church's annual Chowdah Chowdown, a fund-raiser for the Springs Food Pantry, will happen at the church on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Each $40 ticket feeds two people and includes two 16-ounce portions of hot chowder selected from a offerings made by long roster of local chefs, a 16-ounce beer from Springs Brewery, and crackers, utensils, and napkins.

The Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt will be taking a full frost moon hike through the field behind the South Fork Natural History Museum on Wednesday at 5:20 p.m.

The first of five free community dinners at the East Hampton Firehouse will be held Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Volunteers are needed by the East Hampton Library to help transcribe old, scanned East Hampton Town records and other documents, its director, Dennis Fabiszak, asked us to announce.

A community effort to revive Montauk's Boy Scout programs is underway, with a meeting planned for Thursday, Nov. 3, at 7:15 p.m. for interested parents of kids in sixth grade and up.

Saturday is National Drug Take Back Day, an initiative to help people safely dispose of unneeded medications, with collection sites planned in East Hampton and Southampton Towns.

The Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter has asked its members who happen to be veterans to share photos of themselves while on active duty with the Y. The photos will be displayed in the lobby in recognition of Veterans Day, which falls on Friday, Nov. 11, this year.

East Hampton Village's Main Street and Newtown Lane, as well as the roads off the western part of Newtown, will be Halloween central for hundreds of trick-or-treaters on Monday.

Fans of fright and things that go bump in the night may want to pick up their wooden stakes, put on their garlic necklaces, and make their way to the East Hampton Library on Saturday evening.

Little Lucy's annual Halloween pet parade — the 21st sponsored by Little Lucy's Canine Boutique — will take place on Saturday afternoon starting from Agawam Park.

Amber Waves Farm will host a community dig at which guests have been invited to dig and harvest dahlia tubers from its farm fields on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.

Just in time for the start of NaNoWriMo — that's "National Novel Writing Month," celebrated every November — the East Hampton Library has launched a new weekly group for creative writers.

As the Suffolk County malware crisis approaches the two-month mark — and since October is, after all, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced this week that his office has rolled out a series of cybersecurity training webinars for local governments.

Eager to cast your ballot in the Nov. 8 general election? Early voting begins on Saturday, Oct. 29, and runs through Sunday, Nov. 6, in New York State.

The arrival of relatively cool, dry weather translated into generally low levels of enterococcus bacteria at water-quality test sites around East Hampton Town for the week beginning Oct. 17, said Jaime LeDuc, program manager with Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which monitors for the harmful entero bacteria at nearly three dozen sites in Amagansett, East Hampton, Springs, and Montauk.

The Hamptons International Film Festival showed it still had the ability to surprise its guests on Sunday when Hugh Jackman made an unannounced appearance at the screening of his new film, Florian Zeller's "The Son." After the film, he sat down for a chat with David Nugent, the festival's artistic director.

Saturday was a busy day for film viewing all across the South Fork with Hamptons International Film Festival screenings in East Hampton at the cinema and middle school, at the Sag Harbor Cinema, and at the Southampton Arts Center.

Some of the films shown in East Hampton included the Venice and Toronto film festival award-winning "The Whale,"  "The Good Nurse," the Cannes Palme d'Or winning "Triangle of Sadness," and the crowd pleaser and locally based film, "Who Invited Charlie?" 

Allison McGovern, an archaeologist and anthropology lecturer at Columbia University, will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8, at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum about the origins of East Hampton's Freetown neighborhood, which Black and Indigenous people have called home for more than 200 years. Ms. McGovern has gathered oral histories from Freetown residents to document the neighborhood's beginnings and evolution.

Long Island Metro Business Action will host a roundtable discussion of  East End Town supervisors Thursday at noon, at the Southampton Inn, 91 Hill Street.  

Supervisors Yvette Aguiar of Riverhead, Jay Schneiderman of Southampton, Scott Russell of Southold, and Gerry Siller of Shelter Island will be on hand for the midday event. It kicks off with lunch and will be followed by a panel discussion focused on interrelated East End hot-button issues -- affordable housing, tourism, the environment, water quality, and economic development among them. 

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele is looking for nominations of high school seniors for the prestigious Presidential Scholars Program, founded by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

A History Festival and a Harvest Festival set to take place on Saturday in East Hampton Village have both been canceled due to weather. 

Heavy rains brought high bacteria levels across Montauk last week, with the Surfside Place outfall pipe downtown leading the way with an off-the-chart enterococcus reading of greater than 24,196. 

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital have partnered with the Cancer Hope Network to pair adult cancer patients and family members who need support with trained volunteer cancer survivors.

Tom Clavin of Sag Harbor, the author of 18 books, will be the next guest in the free Meet the Author series at Ashawagh Hall on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

The Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s regular monitoring of area waters for the bacteria enterococcus found only one test site, out of 32 sites, with elevated levels of the potentially harmful bacteria. The probable cause? A dead bird.