Villages

From tears shed over catastrophic traffic to the day Governor Pataki visited Havens Beach, it happened here.

This letter, written on July 7, 1803, by John Lyon Gardiner (1770-1816), proprietor of Gardiner’s Island, was sent to his younger brother, David Gardiner (1772-1815), a lawyer and farmer in Flushing, Queens.

The Rev. Alexander Karloutsos, the pastor at Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons in Shinnecock Hills, is to be awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom by Joe Biden Thursday at a White House ceremony honoring this year’s recipients.

The nonprofit that flies aging veterans and their companions to visit the war memorials in Washington free of charge will benefit from a July 16 gala at the Sagaponack Distillery.

Thanks to a wide base of community support that its leaders say has allowed it to grow into a strong local nonprofit, Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island is marking its 20th anniversary this year.

While it is less than a 15-minute drive from the hustle and bustle of East Hampton's Main Street in July, Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton's Northwest Woods feels a world away, which makes it both special and surprising. This year, Doug and Lee Biviano, who also operate concessions at the Fire Island National Seashore, have reopened the camp store and brought glamping back to the park.

Moira and Robert Booth of New Hyde Park and Southold have announced the engagement of their daughter, Katelyn Barbara Booth, to David Charles McGinnis Boak, a son of Kathleen and Charles Boak of Amagansett and New York City.

At the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on June 17, Acacia L.L.C., the owner of 8 Marina Lane, asked to reopen its application for a sunken tennis court.

East Hampton Village Fire Chief Duane Forrester has a message for would-be Independence Day celebrants with a sackful of illicit fireworks at the ready: “Leave the fireworks to the professionals, so everyone can have a safe and happy Fourth of July.” True, true — and there are plenty of fireworks shows coming up over the holiday weekend and through the summer to enjoy the rockets’ red glare without, you know, losing your thumb to an M-80.

The Montauk Airport will remain open as an airport, its new director and general manager, Neil Blainey, said this week, and there are no plans to change that status.

After disbanding as the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee last October, former members of the group met at the Bridgehampton School Monday afternoon with a laundry list of housekeeping items, freshly minted articles of incorporation from the State of New York, and a set of land-use priorities that they will focus on in coming months as the independent nonprofit Bridgehampton Civic Association.

This photograph shows members of Dayton Hedges’s (1884-1957) family attending a tea ceremony on Aug. 21, 1953, in the East Hampton Library’s courtyard as part of the dedication of the library’s Hedges Room.

The scientific name of the whip-poor-will, Antrostomus vociferus, is spot-on. According to “Birds of America,” edited by T. Gilbert Pearson, “the first word . . . means ‘cave mouth’ and the second . . . ‘strong voice.’ ”

Flag etiquette is an especially big deal around the Fourth of July, in a country where nearly 70 percent of Americans own or fly the flag and spend an estimated $5 million annually on Fourth of July flags. Whether they display the flag with a sort of purist fidelity to the Flag Code is another thing — and given the highly detailed protocols, it’s a high bar indeed.

The Springs General Store is the unofficial center of the hamlet, a place where people flock for breakfast on weekends or coffee and camaraderie on weekday mornings, and where children head after school for a bag of candy or three cookies for $3. "For me the biggest gift is that I was able to be an active part of the community in a way that one person cannot always be," said the business's owner, Kristi Hood.

In honor of the June 23rd birthday of Alan Turing, the “father of modern computer science,” this week we feature a portrait of Thomas L. Collins (1921-2011), East Hampton’s own code-breaking computer specialist.

Love has no age limit. Neither does Match.com, which is how Robert Marshall, 93, and Anne Marshall, 88, found each other.

“It sucks,” a mason said of the trade parade back in 1997, and other entertaining tidbits ripped from the pages of your beloved hometown newspaper.

East Hampton Village’s Tuesday night Main Beach concerts, an instant hit in their inaugural season last year, will be back for the summer this week, with reggae by Winston Irie kicking off the series.

The Little Free Food Pantries maintained by the Neo-Political Cowgirls in Montauk, Amagansett, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor have been used steadily “from the get-go,” said Kate Mueth, founder of the not-for-profit dance theater company, “but we can’t keep them filled.”

Not unlike a Little Free Library, a Little Free Food Pantry is a place where people can give or take canned goods and other nonperishable food as needed.

James V. Wright of Montauk and Ralph Gibson of East Hampton were married on June 15 in a small ceremony at East Hampton Village Hall. Theirs was the first same-sex marriage conducted by Mayor Jerry Larsen.

“Oh, hi! We’re the people who rented your place.” That’s what the owner of a Springs property, who asked not to be named, said she heard about 20 times, almost daily, over the past three weeks. She believes she has been the victim of a summer house rental scam.

Montauk Airport, the small, privately owned airport that has taken on an outsized role in the controversy over the planned privatization of the larger East Hampton Town Airport, has been sold, an owner confirmed on Tuesday. 

When a plaque honoring Lt. Lee A. Hayes, a World War II Tuskegee airman, was unveiled on Saturday at the youth park now named for him in Amagansett, the event was both a celebration of an East Hampton hero and the centerpiece of a Hayes family reunion of epic proportions.

More than 40 Pierson High School seniors are facing disciplinary action after pulling off a "prank" on Monday night, Sag Harbor School District's chief school administrator confirmed this week.

The Southampton African American Museum will celebrate Juneteenth with a talk by the writer A'Lelia Bundles about the holiday, her remarkable female ancestors, and the Harlem Renaissance.

Juan T. Trippe of Pan-American Airways takes a 1947 trip on the airline’s giant plane The America, I.F. Stone stumps for George McGovern in 1972, and other tidbits from deep in the Star’s past.

In celebration of East Hampton High School’s graduation, this week’s “Item of the Week” features the 1959 East Hampton High School yearbook, Sand ‘n’ Surf. On June 21, 1959, 60 seniors received their diplomas during graduation ceremonies on the front lawn of the high school.

As long ago as 1936, when T. Gilbert Pearson published “Birds of America,” purple martins were almost exclusively dependent on man-made housing. Here on the East End, they arrive in early April to the houses waiting for them and by Labor Day they're gone.

In the last week, dozens of pelagic seabirds that that seldom come to land have washed up on East End beaches either dead or in very poor condition.