Villages

While the song is the sparkling characteristic of the hermit thrush, I also appreciate its muted appearance. We can’t all be cardinals.

“We are going to continue to be open for the foreseeable future,” said Dr. Jason Cavolina of CareONE Concierge, which provides Covid-19 testing for East Hampton Town at the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons. The decision reflects yet another uptick in transmission of the virus.

A panel discussion on sustainable land care will happen on Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at The Church at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor.

As the seasons shift and we head into the fullness of spring, many people take the opportunity to spend more time outdoors and be more physically active. To avoid injury or discouragement, it's generally best to start small and slowly build up to a fuller exercise routine, rather than start aggressively and then become overwhelmed.

In February, when a 5-month-old puppy went missing at Edward V. Ecker Sr. County Park in Montauk, it seemed as if every pet lover in the hamlet was on the case. In the end, however, it was Kelly Brach and two of her trained tracking dogs that reunited the missing dog, Lucy, with her family.

This image shows visitors lining up outside to experience Joe Gangler’s Pink Lemonade Circus, performing on July 8, 1954, in Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater.

The modern multiplicity of teenage troubles: anxiety, depression, learning disabilities, overstuffed schedules, social media, self-medication, drugs, alcohol, all of that. So said a father, resolved and knowing, about his son who had struggled with many of the above, but who came through on the other side, ready to alter the bumpy course of his short life. Then, sober for about a year, living independently, about to return to college, a diabolical twist of fate: He experienced a major epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest in his sleep.

East Hampton Town's senior citizens center, on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, has been temporarily shuttered following several cases of Covid-19 among program attendees and staff.

Neighbors of a potential two-story brewery and restaurant at 17 Toilsome Lane had argued that the village had misinterpreted the zoning code. Their appeal was denied.

Eleven months after a public groundbreaking ceremony and eight months after the actual breaking of ground, substantial progress has been made on “Forever Home,” a significant re-envisioning and renovation of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons campus in Wainscott.

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.

While much discussion about the renovation of Guild Hall has centered around interior issues, specifically the John Drew Theater, at last week’s East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, at which Guild Hall sought a special permit and variances needed to make the changes, the board strove early on to focus comments only on the exterior of the building and grounds. “There’s a lot of callers on the line, and a lot of the callers are calling about the inside of Guild Hall, over which we have no jurisdiction,” Phil O’Connell, chairing the meeting, said.

The local jail passes muster in 1922, the county pushes smallpox vaccinations in 1947, and the day in 1972 when the sloop the Sojourn came aground at Montauk.

After months of tinkering with a very challenging project, the Sag Harbor Village Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to set a public hearing on proposed changes to the village code that will allow for affordable housing development in the village.

Irwin Levy led a successful hike through the studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park connecting nature and art, and then thought, why not nature and history?

This cyanotype shows Grace Binney Winkley Wilson (1862-1952), who spent summers in East Hampton between 1891 and 1895, posing with a racket on a grass court, a tennis net directly behind her.

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.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, churches here allowed parishioners to rent or buy pews, often charging more for those closest to the pulpit. Pew deeds or titles could be passed down to heirs as families grew, but during the 20th century the practice disappeared.

Despite the feeling of calm that has settled in after mask mandates were lifted, despite the significantly lower case numbers and deaths across the United States, Covid is not finished with us — or we with it.

The waters surrounding Plum Island are teeming with abundant life, not unlike the Long Island Sound, Peconic Estuary, and other nearby waterways. But a series of scientific dives below the surface last summer revealed something that sets Plum Island's marine environment apart from the rest. "There wasn't any trash," said Dr. Matthew Schlesinger, chief zoologist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, which completed the survey along with InnerSpace Scientific Diving.

The wrecking ball is swinging, and the $1.4 million renovation and expansion project for the Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is underway. The hope is that it can be finished by mid to late-summer.

The Amagansett Library has launched a free seed "catalog" with vegetable, herb, and flower seeds available for library users to take and grow at home. The project is in partnership with Amber Waves Farm, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and home gardeners and will provide resources and programs this summer about gardening for food and fun.

The peanut craze of 1897, the telephone strike of 1947, and the day in 1997 that the G&T Dairy Chicken House closed for good.

"I've always loved Montauk," said Jennifer Fowkes, the new executive director of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce.

The Breakwater Sailing Center, a.k.a. the Breakwater Yacht Club, in Sag Harbor, will host an open house on Tuesday to introduce a women's sailing initiative and new programs for the summer. "Historically, women are pretty much underrepresented as adult sailors," explained Joan Butler, a sailor, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, and a Breakwater member.

A strain of avian flu that state officials have deemed "highly pathogenic" has arrived on the South Fork, where a farm in Sag Harbor lost a flock of about 6,000 game birds on March 23 due to the infection and its potential to spread. The outbreak has poultry farms here on high alert.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

Rabbi Joshua Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons will travel to the Polish-Ukrainian border on April 9, along with a delegation of about 25 American and Israeli rabbis who will partner with organizations that are actively assisting Ukrainian Jews and others who have fled Russia’s invasion of their country.

An awful lot of people are getting sick with one thing or another in the weeks since New York State's mask mandate was lifted. “In prior years, this is when flu season is just ending, but right now, it’s just starting,” said Dr. Gail Schonfeld, whose East End Pediatrics practice in East Hampton has seen an average of five cases of flu each day over the past two weeks.

The Sag Harbor Cinema and the Plain Sight Project, an initiative that aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America, have together received a $200,000 federal grant sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.