Villages

“A steep rise in wage theft cases” since July is impacting East Enders working in the construction and housekeeping industries, Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island said this week.

If the Anchor Society of East Hampton has its way, the current reality of wintertime East Hampton Village, plagued by 55 seasonally closed storefronts, will change by next year as its “winter shops” program gains traction. The idea is “to help fill empty storefronts in the off-season with affordable retail, much-needed services, and other popular pop-ups residents desire.”

For Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights celebrated by Jews every winter, eight days of menorah lightings and other festivities are planned from Bridgehampton to Montauk beginning Thursday night.

With most first-responder courses taking place in Sag Harbor and Southampton in recent years, a rare chance is coming up that allows prospective emergency medical technicians living farther east to enroll in a state-approved E.M.T.-training program closer to home

For anyone looking for a recipe for an upcoming get-together or meal, the 75-year-old “East Hampton Ladies’ Village Improvement Society Cook Book” is filled with inspiring traditional favorites.   

A spicy-sweet gingerbread theme has emerged around East Hampton Village, with candy-decked houses and icing “snow” bringing to life sugarplum scenes for raffle and for charity in the lead-up to the Santa parade. The Jolly Old Elf will arrive by helicopter, plus there's a market on the Village Hall lawn, skating at the Huntting Inn, and a big-name guest at a tree lighting that evening.

The much-fought-over former gas ball lot at 5 Bridge Street in Sag Harbor may not be much to look at, but it contains 93 parking spaces valuable both to the village and to Adam Potter, a developer who outbid the village to win the lease on the lot from National Grid earlier this year. 

The day in 1948 when the Bonacker captain Dead-Eye Dick Flach opened up on the basketball court for 20 points in the first half alone, blowing out Hampton Bays. And more from East Hampton’s colorful past.

Margie Ruddick of the landscape planning and designing firm that bears her name has drawn the proverbial line in the sand, choosing to stop taking on projects that involve new construction, except for well-scaled additions. 

In 1923, from the White House lawn, President Harding introduced a “modern adaptation” of John Howard Payne’s “Home, Sweet Home” home on the 100th anniversary of the song. Then at the Own Your Home Exposition in New York, a full-size duplicate was built for Americans to check out various products of the trades. And more from yesteryear.

East Hampton Village is getting an appraisal for the strip of village-owned land that runs along the south side of Herrick Park. Michael Bebon, a village resident whose house is accessed via an easement along that driveway, wondered during a public-comment period Friday why the board would spend money to appraise the strip unless they were considering selling it to the L.V.I.S.

Abigail Halsey (1878-1946) begins this 44-page book by describing the setting, the Mulford Farmhouse, and the teller of the snowbound tales, Abigail’s 89-year-old friend, Mary Esther Mulford Miller (1849-1938).