Villages

Two fishermen chasing Spanish mackerel were in the right place at the right time for Bill Biebel, after a major mechanical failure blew a hole in the hull of the boat he was captaining.

The East Hampton Town Trustees’ 32nd annual Largest Clam Contest, set for Sunday, will take place in a modified form after heavy rains over several days prompted the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to close some harbors to shellfishing this week. 

Offshore construction of the South Fork Wind farm commenced this week. Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind, a developer of the project, issued a mariners briefing on seabed preparation for the 12-turbine installation on Sept. 23. Included is the start of the clearing of boulders where the wind farm’s turbine foundations will be situated and along cable routes, which must happen before the laying of the wind farm’s export cable and other connecting cables.

Bicycle racing goes awry in 1897, and 125 years later the Sag Harbor mayor had to crack down on drunkenness and rowdy behavior.

Residents of Wainscott continued to press for changes at the Maidstone Gun Club this week, including shutting it down, citing numerous instances of bullets hitting houses and the potential for a tragedy.

Bluetongue, a serious virus, has been detected for the first time in New York State deer. A cousin of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, it is spread by the bite from a midge, or no-see-um, and incubates in a deer for seven days before the animal begins to show symptoms. There is no treatment for the virus, which typically kills an adult deer within 36 hours.

The Montauk Village Association faces an uncertain post-Covid future after the old guard nonprofit saw its fund-raising plummet during the pandemic.

John Custis Lawrence (1867-1944), a Montauk-born architect, appears in this photograph participating in Forefathers’ Day, demonstrating how to grind corn to make samp, a mashed cornmeal porridge dish of Indigenous origin.

From an 1897 crackdown on truancy to the death throes of the Peconic County effort a hundred years later, it happened here.

A development on Handy Lane that has riled neighbors is a familiar story in East Hampton Town and across the South Fork: along with teardowns and rebuilds, spec houses that, with seemingly few exceptions, take allowable lot coverage and floor area to their absolute limit.

According to swellinfo.com, Friday East End beaches will begin to see the impacts from Hurricane Fiona, which is forecast to be just past Bermuda later this evening. A long period south-southeast swell, with wave heights peaking at nine feet, should keep swimmers on shore.

Two residents of Merchants Path in Wainscott told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday about multiple instances in which their houses were hit by bullets, for which they blamed the Maidstone Gun Club, about one mile away.

From the library’s Old Whalers Collection comes the story of the Amistad, a ship seized off Montauk carrying enslaved people who revolted against their captors, ultimately regaining their freedom.

Emily Lagler Schade of East Hampton and McNally Severn Lee of Manhattan were married on Sept. 10 at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor.

A large group of tree swallows is called a gulp, which proves ornithologists are not without humor. Before the leaves change, gulps of swallows crowd our beaches. At Mecox Inlet, Sagaponack Pond, and the dunes that circle Napeague Harbor, hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tree swallows collect.

Working toward the goals of cleaner waters and stable shorelines, the South Fork Sea Farmers engaged students from the Springs School and East Hampton High School to help construct a new oyster reef in Accabonac Harbor this week.

Under a hot mid-September sun, the Burying Ground Preservation Group, a nonprofit organization formed in 2018, was at work last Thursday at the Hog Creek Cemetery, a small parcel on Hog Creek Road in Springs where members of the Parsons family are buried.

“Pleasure is our birthright. And it’s great to experience who you are as a person and as a sexual being without being shamed,” said Dr. Lee Phillips, a psychotherapist, sex therapist, and substance abuse counselor with practices in New York City and Virginia, and now Water Mill.

The outdoor stage at the Southampton Arts Center will be the setting for the first interactive public festival, the Create Fair, hosted by the the East End Special Players’ Explorers Program, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Theatrical performances are only part of the fun lined up for Saturday’s family-friendly event. There will also be a photography project, drumming, painting, food, mural drawing, and more — all based on skills and activities that the Explorers have been, well, exploring.

One hundred years ago, Thomas Moran, eminent painter, prepared to leave East Hampton. Seventy-five years ago, deep-sea fishing enthusiasts hailed the Shinnecock Inlet, “that priceless gift of the hurricane of 1938 to Long Island.” And more.

On Sept. 17, 1943, in a time of wartime rationing, Norma Edwards (born 1924) married James A. Corwin (1921-1944) in a small ceremony at the home of Norma’s cousin Mary Louise Dodge. The Rev. Francis Kinsler of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church did the honors.

“It’s all about creating an experience that they can go home with and remember and always want to do again,” said Steven Lippman, who co-founded A Walk on Water 10 years ago to give special needs children a healing encounter with the waves. For the past seven years, the organization has been coming to Montauk to for a two-day event where everybody gets a neat wooden trophy and an "amazing day."

Take a trip into The Star’s storied past, won’t you?

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.

Long Island’s Car Free Day is next Thursday, with people encouraged to get around without cars, instead traveling by train, bus, bicycle, subway, on foot, or by car-pooling.

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.

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.

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

In a move that complicates things for doctors and their patients at the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation facility, radiology services offered at the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital offices there will be halved, and the hospital’s blood lab there will close for a month.

“The same costs that a lot of people have at home,” such as electricity, fuel, and insurance, have also gone up for the East Hampton Library, Dennis Fabiszak, its director, said this week ahead of the library’s annual budget on Saturday.