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   A nonstop 4:07 p.m. Friday Cannonball train from Manhattan’s Penn Station to the South Fork will begin tomorrow. The train, making a 76-mile trip, is scheduled to arrive in Westhampton Beach at 5:41 p.m., followed by stops in Southampton at 6:03, Bridgehampton at 6:13, East Hampton at 6:25, and Montauk at 6:48. The service will continue through Labor Day weekend.

   “It feels like years since it’s been here,” sang George Harrison in the Beatles’ soul-soothing song “Here Comes the Sun.” Yes, “It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter” but “smiles [are] returning to the faces.” The 60-degree weather and returning greenery and blossoms are visible in every direction I turn, and I caught myself smiling ear to ear when my iPhone camera turned its lens on me instead of the cherry blossom tree I was aiming to capture during a recent walk.

Although recycling has been reported as declining on Long Island in recent years, officials in East Hampton, Southampton, and Shelter Island report their towns are doing a good job. Just what happens to the garbage collected by commercial carters is, however, less understood.

   Words of wisdom from Margaret Mead warned to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
    Save Sag Harbor, founded in 2007, has taken those words to heart, making it its mission “to safeguard the scale and fabric of a historic village,” effecting positive change while preventing what it sees as negative, and backing the village’s commercial code, which the group helped push for.