Villages

East Hampton Town is closing in on a statewide project, funded in large part by the New York Power Authority, to replace the bulbs in more than 700 streetlights from Wainscott to Montauk, with pedestrian safety cited as the guiding principle. Amagansett some have questions about the plan, with one member of the hamlet's citizens advisory committee saying that new poles are needed, too.

This is the last weekend of the year that East Hampton Town beaches will have lifeguards. Lifeguards will protect East Hampton Village beaches during weekends until Columbus Day, Oct. 10.

The food critic and writer Florence Fabricant will serve as a judge of clam chowder entries at the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, which happens on Oct. 9 at noon on the grounds of the Lamb Building on Bluff Road in Amagansett. Those residents entering clams or chowders have been asked to arrive a little before noon.

With the summer season now in the past, the developers of the South Fork Wind farm are set to accelerate on and offshore construction of its 12 turbines, beginning next month and lasting through April, officials said in a virtual open house on Monday.

American oystercatchers, which congregate in the marshes of our barrier beaches before flying south, are about the size of crows, and stout, with heavy white bellies, chocolate-colored wings, and pale pinkish legs. They wear a black executioner’s hood and have a long blood-orange oyster knife of a bill and yellow eyes circled by red eye rings.

The East Hampton Village Board will dedicate the gardens at Home, Sweet Home to Loretta Orion, who died in July.

The cocktails will have to wait, but the boat slips are back in business. The Montauk mecca formerly known as Liars’ Saloon, which also was home to the Offshore Sports Marina, has a new sign out front from its new owner, Sam Gershowitz, signaling a new chapter is indeed afoot at 408 West Lake Drive in Montauk.

Samantha Whitmore and James Leakos celebrated their marriage on Aug. 13 at the Chateau Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. The bride is the daughter of Alice and Wayne Whitmore of Amagansett. Mr. Leakos is the son of Mark Leakos of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and the late Wanda Leakos.

The updated Covid-19 booster shots — which protect against both the original strain of the virus and the now-dominant Omicron subvariants — are already becoming available at pharmacies, physicians’ offices, and other sites.

The destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, was deeply felt in Montauk for many months after the attacks, as people sought to get away from the smoldering hellscape of Lower Manhattan and find some comfort and solace at sea.

In this undated photograph, Ettie Hedges Pennypacker (1879-1970) stands in a farmyard in a long pale dress. The dress is anachronistic, a simple Empire style popular into the 1820s but out of fashion during her lifetime. Perhaps she is in costume for a party, such as the ones she attended at Home, Sweet Home or the state historians conference.

Jolie Parcher, the owner of the Mandala Yoga Center for Healing Arts, believes that those in the business of giving, such as first responders, nonprofit workers, and caregivers of the elderly and sick, are depleting themselves, a concern that led to a partnership with the Clamshell Foundation of East Hampton to offer free yoga classes for local E.M.S. personnel, domestic violence survivors, those suffering from Parkinson’s disease, senior citizens, and even the weary farmers.

“It’s like giant scratch-off. You don’t know what’s underground until you dig the hole,” Keith Douglas, a history-obsessed Bridgehamptoner, said of metal detecting. Detectorists explore old cart paths, long-gone colonial home sites, farm fields, and even some parkland digging up small relics that help tell the history of the East End.

East Hampton had “the biggest Labor Day in its history” in 1922, visitor-wise. Fifty years later, the departure of the Miller clan was chronicled. All in The Star of yore.

With a new phase of construction for the South Fork Wind farm to begin early next month, its developers will issue updates during a virtual open house on Monday at 6 p.m.

Last Thursday was a thrilling day for Laura Hayward of Sagaponack, a hypo-birthing doula and practitioner of reiki. She helped deliver a baby, then she competed in the Hampton Classic for the first time. Here's how it all went down.

An informational meeting about emergency and personal wireless communications in Springs is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Springs Firehouse.

East End Presbyterians are facing a unique challenge this year as six churches here are without a full-time pastor — and everyone’s trying to find one.

The crowd of children and adults early on Friday afternoon, hours before its official reopening, were a clear indication that the renovated Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is a hit. "What happened was a very organic process of people just building enthusiasm, community coming together . . . until we ended up with something that is world class," said a member of the Montauk Skatepark Coalition.

Many people know by now that Southampton Town has “opted in” to open cannabis dispensaries and consumption lounges one of these days, but less known is that the town is now hosting the East End’s only psychedelic healing center.

When David Plotkin collapsed while biking on Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett, bystanders and lifeguards jumped into action, helping to perform CPR for 15 minutes as they waited for an ambulance. That Mr. Plotkin survived is thanks to their quick action.

In this photograph, 12-year-old Mary Huntting Rattray (1927-2016) appears just past her ankles in the surf as she enters the ocean at Napeague in 1939.

Forget the gold rush, in 1897 an East Hamptoner went north with hens to make money selling eggs in the Yukon. Fifty years later, T.W.A.’s Juan Trippe dressed up as Carmen Miranda at a Maidstone Club costume ball. And much more.

On Aug. 22, Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force tested the water off Windmill Beach in Sag Harbor and recorded its highest level of enterococcus, a “fecal indicator,” in a year. It was 150 times the number used by the Suffolk Health Department to close a beach, but the beach remained open, with no signs alerting parents or casual tourists that the water should be avoided.

There is no vaccine to help prevent Lyme disease, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected deer tick, but that may soon change. In early August, the drug company Pfizer announced that it was seeking 6,000 people ages 5 and older to enroll in its phase 3 trial for a new Lyme vaccine. Separately, there's work underway using MRNA vaccine technology to make bites quickly itchy and red, so that they are easily noticed and the ticks can be removed before the transmit disease.

The Chair of Hope Project, an art installation at St. Michael's Lutheran Church in Amagansett, is a cry against gun violence, featuring a chair for each child and teacher who died in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., plus one more to represent hope.

Ripped from the somewhat exciting pages of old issues of The Star . . .

Sophie Chahinian, founder of the Artist Profile Archive, and Robert Longo, an artist, filmmaker, and musician, were joined by 100 guests on May 21 for a traditional Armenian wedding ceremony followed by a reception and seated dinner at the Sunset Tower Hotel in Los Angeles.  

While much of the South Fork of Long Island is now in a severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, many East End residents have not changed their watering habits despite warnings from the Suffolk County Water Authority. Not so for East End farmers. For them, water is a factor in every decision they make about which crops to plant, and which to forgo.

The Lars Simenson Skatepark, on South Essex Street in Montauk, will reopen Friday after an extensive renovation made possible through a public-private partnership.