Villages

Notes from the Summer Colony, and more from the days of yore.

“There’s maybe been some hurricanes where we’ve had similar debris, but I would say this is right up there with the best of them,” said Tim Treadwell, senior harbormaster for East Hampton Town Marine Patrol. “It’s kind of interesting how much stuff came from New England and how it found its way here.” The debris is a particular issue for boaters at night.

A benefit softball game between the staff and members of the South Fork Country Club last month raised $30,000 for the East Hampton, Springs, and Montauk food pantries.

A daylong program at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on Friday, Aug. 11, will explore nature as a balm for healing and rejuvenation.

A champagne cork, seven packets of condiments, balloons, straws, and more: The Star talks trash after spending two hours collecting garbage at Ditch Plain on Saturday.

Industrial Road, because of its geography and development, has long been a dangerous area for birds. One woman has found 11 dead gulls near the PSEG electrical substation there since late June, and it's not just gulls that are dying.

Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow, co-owners of Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, started the farm during 2008 financial crisis. “Our friends who had taken more conventional paths were losing their jobs,” Ms. Merrow said. "It felt risky starting a business, but it feels like life is risky, and it was less risky for us to be in control of our destiny. We thought, ‘The world is a weird place, maybe we should grow our own food.’ ”

If you’ve walked by the Ladies Village Improvement Society headquarters on East Hampton Main Street or waited at the Hampton Jitney stop in front of it, you may have noticed an elm with its bark cut away in a neat strip around the tree’s circumference. “Won’t that kill the tree?” one curious walker asked The Star two weeks ago after spotting it. The answer is yes, but it may also help save others nearby from Dutch elm disease

Samuel Carll Hedges (1870-1952) appears here dressed as the Rev. Samuel Buell for a Founders Day celebration, probably in 1940, probably at Clinton Academy.

Our coastal zones have hit an all-time low in water quality, with impairments that violate New York State and federal guidelines ubiquitous, according to a report released last week. East Hampton Town waterways, while benefiting from ocean tidal flushing, are not immune from such impairments.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s new aquatic center is scheduled for Wednesday. Having raised the needed money, the Montauk Playhouse Foundation “is now prepared to continue the rebirth of this landmark building into a community resource that welcomes and serves all.”

An uncomfortable evening of entertainment dramatizing life in the old South from 1898, and more from East Hampton’s yesteryear.

The developers of the South Fork Wind farm are at present installing the 12-turbine, 132-megawatt wind farm’s offshore substation at the site, around 35 miles off Montauk Point.

Edison I. Bolivar and Maria Camila Alvarez Franco were married on April 30 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. Town Justice Steven Tekulsky officiated.

Lily Singer and Evan Schumann met in their freshman year at East Hampton High School in 1999, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2019 “that they had their first date after reconnecting during a surf session at Georgica Beach’s first jetty,” Ms. Singer wrote. “They bonded over a shared love of the ocean and a recently piqued interest in birding on Lily’s part (Evan was already an avid and accomplished birder).”

In a split 5-to-2 vote on Thursday, the Public Service Commission awarded the roughly 100-space parking area known as the gas ball lot, which the village has leased from KeySpan Energy since 2016, to Adam Potter's 11 Bridge Street LLC. The transfer of control will happen in December.

East Hampton is downright lucky to have a population of saltmarsh sparrows, birds that are vulnerable because of their dependence on a habitat that shrinks with every centimeter in sea level rise: the salt marsh. The sparrows themselves are not so lucky: they've lost 75 percent of their population since 1990. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is assessing whether the bird should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“Six months into the pandemic, I said that in three years we are going to have a complete dearth of the sort of entry-level people in medicine . . . which is exactly what we’ve seen,” said Dr. N. Patrick Hennessey, a dermatologist who has had to staff his Wainscott practice with employees from his Manhattan office. Health care professionals across the South Fork can relate.

Abandoned cars, flooded basements, muddy pools, sodden festivals, panicked antiques dealers — those were the scenes on Sunday as the flooding that has overwhelmed parts of New York State’s Hudson Valley, Vermont, and many other parts of the world was visited on a South Fork packed with summer visitors. The East Hampton Town Highway Department estimated that nearly seven inches of rain fell over a sustained period of perhaps unprecedented intensity, while the Suffolk County Water Authority cited a rain gauge in Sag Harbor that put the rain total at 2.67 inches.

Tripp Tuff, a 25-year-old Bridgehampton resident, has launched himself into a leadership role with Wings Over Haiti, the East End-based charity that has built two schools in Haiti, a country of grinding poverty where humanitarian work is one of the few lifelines for children and their families. A benefit party for Wings Over Haiti will take place on July 29 at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton to help the organization continue its work.

This book, from the East Hampton Town Historic Records, recorded each unique livestock earmark in East Hampton and to whom the mark was registered.

When Shep Frood scored from second for the local nine, and more from the good old days.

A Mercedes, a BMW, a Mitsubishi, and a Toyota all became stranded on Gardiner’s Avenue in Springs on Sunday. Officers responded at about 8:30 p.m. and called in tow trucks when the drivers’ own attempts to contact private towing companies went unanswered. Police reports documented similar stories unfolding across the South Fork as rain and wind pummeled the area.

Saturday will mark the 50th anniversary of a performance by Richie Havens on the outdoor stage at Gosman's Dock. Coming four years after Havens opened the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, it was a concert that none who were there are likely to forget.

Fourteen people including Abigail Disney, a great-niece of Walt Disney and an activist who supports raising taxes on the wealthy, were arrested at East Hampton Town Airport on Friday after blocking vehicles from entering or exiting the airport's parking lot for about 90 minutes. One activist described the demonstration as intending to call out "the very grotesque, reckless consumption of the 1 percent" and its impact on climate change.

The Clamshell Foundation's annual Grucci fireworks show will light up the skies over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night, Sunday if it rains, and the harbor will be closed to shellfishing that day and for four days afterward.

Jimmy Buffett took his legendary island-music vibes to Sag Harbor’s WLNG radio station on Sunday, dropping by to premiere a new song, “My Gummy Just Kicked In,” on the local airwaves.

The New York State Liquor Authority has conditionally approved a beer and wine license for the East Hampton Cinema, but neither East Hampton Village nor cinema staff were aware of plans to serve adult beverages there anytime soon.

This photo from The East Hampton Star’s archive shows Juan Terry Trippe (1899-1981), the founder of Pan Am, receiving an award from the Brazilian government for his contributions to international travel.

Harvested for bait and their blood, horseshoe crabs, which have endured on earth for over nearly 500 million years, are in a state of decline in the New York area.