Villages

If you’ve walked by the Ladies Village Improvement Society headquarters on East Hampton Main Street or waited at the Hampton Jitney stop in front of it, you may have noticed an elm with its bark cut away in a neat strip around the tree’s circumference. “Won’t that kill the tree?” one curious walker asked The Star two weeks ago after spotting it. The answer is yes, but it may also help save others nearby from Dutch elm disease

Samuel Carll Hedges (1870-1952) appears here dressed as the Rev. Samuel Buell for a Founders Day celebration, probably in 1940, probably at Clinton Academy.

Our coastal zones have hit an all-time low in water quality, with impairments that violate New York State and federal guidelines ubiquitous, according to a report released last week. East Hampton Town waterways, while benefiting from ocean tidal flushing, are not immune from such impairments.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s new aquatic center is scheduled for Wednesday. Having raised the needed money, the Montauk Playhouse Foundation “is now prepared to continue the rebirth of this landmark building into a community resource that welcomes and serves all.”

An uncomfortable evening of entertainment dramatizing life in the old South from 1898, and more from East Hampton’s yesteryear.

The developers of the South Fork Wind farm are at present installing the 12-turbine, 132-megawatt wind farm’s offshore substation at the site, around 35 miles off Montauk Point.

Edison I. Bolivar and Maria Camila Alvarez Franco were married on April 30 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. Town Justice Steven Tekulsky officiated.

Lily Singer and Evan Schumann met in their freshman year at East Hampton High School in 1999, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2019 “that they had their first date after reconnecting during a surf session at Georgica Beach’s first jetty,” Ms. Singer wrote. “They bonded over a shared love of the ocean and a recently piqued interest in birding on Lily’s part (Evan was already an avid and accomplished birder).”

In a split 5-to-2 vote on Thursday, the Public Service Commission awarded the roughly 100-space parking area known as the gas ball lot, which the village has leased from KeySpan Energy since 2016, to Adam Potter's 11 Bridge Street LLC. The transfer of control will happen in December.

East Hampton is downright lucky to have a population of saltmarsh sparrows, birds that are vulnerable because of their dependence on a habitat that shrinks with every centimeter in sea level rise: the salt marsh. The sparrows themselves are not so lucky: they've lost 75 percent of their population since 1990. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is assessing whether the bird should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“Six months into the pandemic, I said that in three years we are going to have a complete dearth of the sort of entry-level people in medicine . . . which is exactly what we’ve seen,” said Dr. N. Patrick Hennessey, a dermatologist who has had to staff his Wainscott practice with employees from his Manhattan office. Health care professionals across the South Fork can relate.

Abandoned cars, flooded basements, muddy pools, sodden festivals, panicked antiques dealers — those were the scenes on Sunday as the flooding that has overwhelmed parts of New York State’s Hudson Valley, Vermont, and many other parts of the world was visited on a South Fork packed with summer visitors. The East Hampton Town Highway Department estimated that nearly seven inches of rain fell over a sustained period of perhaps unprecedented intensity, while the Suffolk County Water Authority cited a rain gauge in Sag Harbor that put the rain total at 2.67 inches.

Tripp Tuff, a 25-year-old Bridgehampton resident, has launched himself into a leadership role with Wings Over Haiti, the East End-based charity that has built two schools in Haiti, a country of grinding poverty where humanitarian work is one of the few lifelines for children and their families. A benefit party for Wings Over Haiti will take place on July 29 at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton to help the organization continue its work.

This book, from the East Hampton Town Historic Records, recorded each unique livestock earmark in East Hampton and to whom the mark was registered.

When Shep Frood scored from second for the local nine, and more from the good old days.

A Mercedes, a BMW, a Mitsubishi, and a Toyota all became stranded on Gardiner’s Avenue in Springs on Sunday. Officers responded at about 8:30 p.m. and called in tow trucks when the drivers’ own attempts to contact private towing companies went unanswered. Police reports documented similar stories unfolding across the South Fork as rain and wind pummeled the area.

Saturday will mark the 50th anniversary of a performance by Richie Havens on the outdoor stage at Gosman's Dock. Coming four years after Havens opened the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, it was a concert that none who were there are likely to forget.

Fourteen people including Abigail Disney, a great-niece of Walt Disney and an activist who supports raising taxes on the wealthy, were arrested at East Hampton Town Airport on Friday after blocking vehicles from entering or exiting the airport's parking lot for about 90 minutes. One activist described the demonstration as intending to call out "the very grotesque, reckless consumption of the 1 percent" and its impact on climate change.

The Clamshell Foundation's annual Grucci fireworks show will light up the skies over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night, Sunday if it rains, and the harbor will be closed to shellfishing that day and for four days afterward.

Jimmy Buffett took his legendary island-music vibes to Sag Harbor’s WLNG radio station on Sunday, dropping by to premiere a new song, “My Gummy Just Kicked In,” on the local airwaves.

The New York State Liquor Authority has conditionally approved a beer and wine license for the East Hampton Cinema, but neither East Hampton Village nor cinema staff were aware of plans to serve adult beverages there anytime soon.

This photo from The East Hampton Star’s archive shows Juan Terry Trippe (1899-1981), the founder of Pan Am, receiving an award from the Brazilian government for his contributions to international travel.

Harvested for bait and their blood, horseshoe crabs, which have endured on earth for over nearly 500 million years, are in a state of decline in the New York area.

Rip currents kept East Hampton Town and Village lifeguards busy over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but this week the story was less red flags and more “elevated marine life”: Some 20 sharks, mostly spinner sharks but also threshers, were spotted off Main Beach on Saturday and farther off town beaches as well.

The day in 1948 when 40 people ignored the voting public and got together to save Mulford Farm. And more from The Star of yore.

The beloved firefly, or lightning bug, has suffered steep declines in recent years. The three biggest threats to lightning bugs, listed on firefly.org, are habitat loss, landscape lighting, and pesticide use. In New York State there are about 15 species of fireflies that are commonly observed, but on Long Island, we now see only five.

This page is from the newly digitized Village of East Hampton Board of Trustees meeting minutes for March 17, 1925. During the meeting, the board resolved to lobby against the Montauk Steamboat Company’s schedule reduction.

How to say goodbye to a family house that has seen almost eight decades’ worth of life and love? Some might spend this melancholy time wandering through empty rooms, lost in thoughts. Ellie Duke had another idea, inviting the world to Tough Porch, her brainchild of a weekend held as a last hurrah at her family’s grand old summer “cottage” on Georgica Beach.

“Soldier Ride,” said Peter Honerkamp, an owner of the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, where Soldier Ride was conceived, “became a rehabilitative tool so the wounded could get out of their hospital beds, empowering themselves and their fellow wounded, setting an example for the incoming wounded, and going out into the communities they sacrificed so much for.” This year's ride returns on July 15 with a 24-mile cycle taking participants from the Amagansett Firehouse to East Hampton and Sag Harbor before returning to its starting point.

Despite the constant threat of rain and some brief sprinkles, the United States Drought Monitor confirmed last week that “moderate drought” has hit the South Fork, a step up in classification from “abnormally dry.” The next step is “severe drought.”