Villages

Alex Miller was heading home thinking about dinner on the evening of May 14 when he decided to stop at Stuart’s Seafood Market, an Amagansett fa-vorite. He bought some cedar plank salmon and coleslaw. As an afterthought, he said, “Why don’t you give me a dozen littleneck clams — medium-sized little-necks?” 

At home in Springs, he shucked them — half the quahogs were from the shell-fish hatchery and the other half from the wild (he could tell by the striped pattern on the shell). On the 11th wild clam, something he thought was a marble fell out.

Item of the Week from the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection

The East Hampton Village Board, which is seeking to hire a firm to help tackle challenges in the village’s commercial district, discussed the details last week.

The Hedges-Edwards Barn, dating from around 1770, was originally located on the west side of Main Street in East Hampton, where the library now stands. E.J. Edwards first moved it around 1910 to his nearby property on Edwards Lane.

They gathered shortly after noon Sunday at their meeting place at the Chase Bank on Main Street in East Hampton, and for the next 45 minutes as they made their way to Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church, neither the rain nor sleet nor gray skies dampened their enthusiasm.

There is almost never a time when Fierro’s isn’t busy, and if you’ve been there, you can understand why. The pizzeria, which celebrates its 35th anniversary in East Hampton this week, has survived and thrived not only on the strength of its popular pies — served 362 days a year — but on the amicability of its owners, John and Al Fierro.

Plant fanciers interested in unusual flora will want to stop by Wittendale's Florist in East Hampton, where the rare large bloom of a corpse flower is currently filling the greenhouse with its distinctively pungent odor.

The Montauk Monster is missing. The putrescent carcass of the creature whose image has captivated millions around the globe and spawned nearly as many identities was taken from two Montaukers. They said they planned to supply the beast’s bones to an artist who had already found a buyer for signed monster art.

Ever since Jenna Hewitt, Rachel Goldberg, and Courtney Fruin found the thing in front of the Surfside restaurant, the electronic clones of the creature have invaded computers — by way of Ms. Hewitt’s snapshot — until the Internet itself is threatened.

Spend just an hour with Eleanor Whitmore and you know you have met someone extraordinary. Not that she would ever say so. She focuses not on what she has done, but on what she has gotten from the doing. 

The rugged canyons and sprawling ranches around Penjamo in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato are haunted with stories of hidden treasure, Catholics fleeing persecution by the Spanish crown, and of revolutionaries like Pancho Villa, who rode through this territory in the early 20th century. Along with these tales, which straddle the line between the historic and the fantastic, are the extraordinary stories of ordinary people who went “al otro lado,” as the people in Penjamo say — to the other side, the United States. 

It is too big, too awful, too otherworldly to comprehend without being surrounded by it. Standing at Ground Zero, breathing the mingled rot of burning chemicals, cooked plastics, and the unspeakable, I realize why it will take months if not years before we can begin to rebuild.