Villages

Not many people can say they have been to Antarctica, but can you imagine sailing there on a wooden ship with cloth sails, navigating by compass and stars?

There are few, if any, absolutes in medicine. For example, the medical establishment spent years telling people that low-fat diets would lower their risk of dying, particularly by lowering high cholesterol and decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.

This is the second year the Ellen Hermanson Foundation is holding a benefit virtually, because of the pandemic. This year's event, at 6 p.m. on Saturday, will feature a knockout lineup of female comedians, singers, and other performers. As always, the foundation will honor women in the community who have made a difference.

For those who need help coping with pandemic-related losses and other issues, a number of organizations and medical facilities continue to offer resources. Here are a few.

From the parking lot in the mall to the emergency room in the hospital, community members are showing how kindness — any time, any place, to anyone — can be a real shot in the arm during the pandemic.

All too often, it seems, the story of Covid-19 is told through statistics and trends. Beyond those numbers are hundreds of thousands of human beings — real people — who lost their lives to the pandemic across the world. As told to The Star by their families, here are some of their stories from the East End.

It's hard to find any sector of society that wasn't impacted by Covid-19 in the year since the county's first virus case was reported, and first-person experiences and expert opinions, documented here, suggest that the pandemic may leave its mark for years to come.

The Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons organization informed Mayor Jerry Larsen on Saturday that the group had recently spotted turtles in the pond. They asked to have the dredging delayed so that other turtles, including hatchlings, could be safely removed.

This postcard shows the residence of Samuel A. Beardsley (1856-1932), a prominent New York lawyer. Designed by William Strom, it stood on Lee Avenue in East Hampton.

A senior Stony Brook Southampton Hospital official said this week that the post-holiday surge of Covid-19 patients is over, and now it's a matter of public vigilance until vaccinations yield widespread immunity to the virus.

More than 250 people from communities of color received Covid-19 vaccinations at a pop-up clinic in East Hampton organized by the Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, part of a state effort to make sure minority communities receive access to the vaccine.

Despite the frustrating nature of wearing a mask, multiple studies have shown over the past year that doing so can significantly decrease the transmission of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 by more than 70 percent.

Covid-19 continues to disrupt local tradition, with the Montauk Friends of Erin's St. Patrick's Day parade, gala, and grand marshal's lunch the latest victims of the pandemic. The Friends had announced plans to hold the parade on March 28, a Sunday, but yesterday, about five weeks out, word came of its cancellation. The 2020 parade had met the same fate.

A public hearing on a petition for the incorporation of Wainscott will resume on Thursday at 11 a.m., following its initial airing on Feb. 5. The hearing’s purpose is to determine the legality of the petition, which was submitted to East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc on Dec. 30, and to present comments on it, for or against.

After a months-long search to find someone to fill the newly created position of executive director, the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, a women's organization founded in 1895 with an all-female board of directors, has announced the hiring of "the most qualified candidate," a man.

With a winter weather advisory in effect until Friday night, East Hampton and Southampton Towns closed all town facilities early on Thursday and East Enders were being warned to stay off the roads. 

People have rushed and raided shelves for the obvious during Covid — hand sanitizer, disinfectant, paper towels, yeast for all those burgeoning home bakers — but they've also rushed to buy up unexpected things like dumbbells, balloons, Krud Kutter, tiki torches, and zinc.

This photograph shows John Horton (1852-1940) and his wife, Julia A. Montgomery Horton (1868-1915), outside their home in the Freetown section of East Hampton around 1900. The couple married in December 1885 and brought up two boys, Morgan Raymond (1890-1958) and William H. Horton (b. 1887).

The Shinnecock Indian Nation formally announced its plan to build a casino on its territory on Wednesday, saying such a facility would bring with it enough financial opportunity "to lift our members from adversity."

In an effort to make sure communities of color have equal access to Covid-19 vaccinations, New York State and Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long will open a pop-up vaccination site at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton on Friday.

Plans will be announced on Wednesday for a new casino on an 800-acre area of Shinnecock Indian Nation land, a spokesman for the nation confirmed Tuesday.

Bars, restaurants, and other businesses licensed by the New York State Liquor Authority can now remain open until 11 p.m., giving them an extra hour to do business. More New Yorkers with certain conditions now qualify to get the vaccine, and East Hampton Town vaccinated 300 people at its own distribution site on Saturday.

John Howard Payne (1791-1852) of “Home, Sweet Home” fame wrote letters from Washington, D.C., to Joann Miller (1816-1852) of East Hampton, and one, from 1834, is shown here.

Having read and written about the vaccines and their safety, efficacy, and side-effects profile, I knew that more significant side effects were possible when I went back to the hospital four weeks later for my second dose. And they definitely happened. 

Residents of Amagansett, one of the only communities on the South Fork without residential mail delivery, may soon see notices in their post office boxes asking whether they would prefer to get mail at home or are happy with the status quo.

The Village Preservation Society of East Hampton has awarded a $1,500 grant to the Plain Sight Project, a collaboration between The East Hampton Star and the East Hampton Library that is in its fourth year researching the history of slavery here.

Connecticut? Fuhgeddaboutit. Frustrated by an inability to get a Covid-19 vaccination close to home, South Fork residents have been traveling by road and sea to try their luck elsewhere, with some having far more success than others.

For the next season of his show "What Made America Great," which began airing this week on the Fox Nation streaming service, Brian Kilmeade was tasked with finding a local story with national appeal. Covid-19 made traveling tough, so it had to be close to home in New York for Mr. Kilmeade, one of the anchors of Fox and Friends.

The East Hampton Fire Department put recent ice rescue training into action on Monday when a dog fell through the ice at Hook Pond.

East End real estate sales hit historic highs in the final months of 2020 according to fourth quarter reports from several agencies. Across the region, from Montauk to Westhampton, a "massive increase" in home buying resulted in more than $1.6 billion in sales during the quarter, an "unprecedented" 124-percent increase over the same period in 2019, according to one real estate agency.