On social media, Mark Smith has shared only a few of the pictures he’s taken of these ordinary moments at a refugee center in southeast Poland, just a couple of miles from the Ukraine border, yet there is something about them that serves to make the everyday consequences of the war in Ukraine very palpable for people an ocean away who can easily push it out of their thoughts.

Eleven days ago, on April 3, the northern gannets invaded Sag Harbor. A friend sent a video of several hundred crowding the waters surrounding Long Wharf. Above them, the sky teemed with more. In 20 years of birding around Sag Harbor, I had never seen more than a handful from the wharf.

An engineering project to alleviate chronic flooding on Stephen Hand’s Path near its intersection with Route 114 in East Hampton is projected to begin this fall and be completed in the spring of 2023.

Covid-19 pandemic-era exceptions to New York State’s Open Meetings Law, which allowed meetings to be held, and the public to participate, via video conference, can be made permanent, thanks to changes adopted with the state’s 2022-2023 budget.