Villages

While it’s definitely fun for the little ones, the Bridgehampton Lions Club’s annual Carving Contest is really a family affair, because jack-o’-lanterns as good as these shouldn’t be just for kids.

A nightmare on Sherrill Road: Billy Field, one of the most creative, enthusiastic, scarily talented Halloween decorators, will not be decking out his East Hampton home this Oct. 31 — or ever after. He's selling and moving to North Carolina, but will act as Demon of Décor for Guild Hall's Community Social and Spooky Silent Dance Party on Saturday at LTV studios in Wainscott

“Witchcraft in East Hampton: A Short Play” by Virginia H. Page (1926-2021), a page of which is seen here, focuses on East Hampton’s 1657 witchcraft trial, known as the Goody Garlick trial.

The search for the largest clam in Three Mile Harbor, Hog Creek, and Accabonac Harbor has resumed after heavy rains kept those water bodies closed in advance of the East Hampton Trustees Largest Clam Contest on Oct. 9. Weigh-ins for mammoth specimens from those spots happens Friday at the trustee offices in Amagansett.

The day in 1922 when Alfred E. Smith came in for some praise, a 1972 effort to organize South Fork farm workers, and more ripped from the pages of The Star.

While there were winners at the East Hampton Town Trustees’ 32nd annual Largest Clam Contest — for clam chowder and for the largest clams harvested from Lake Montauk and Napeague Harbor — the day also ended with a cliffhanger because three of the five water bodies from which clams could be harvested were closed to shellfishing after heavy rains.

This 1998 write-up is from a 2008 booklet from the Springs Historical Society Collection that details the history of many notable residents of Green River Cemetery in Springs.

“Probably the most alarming . . . finding was the severity of the mental health needs and experiences of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts among the L.G.B.T.Q.+ population,” Jennifer Mesiano Higham of Stony Brook University Hospital said of the results of a Stony Brook Medicine survey on the health care experiences and challenges of the L.G.B.T.Q.+ population on Long Island.

First light in Sag Harbor during autumn and the place belongs to the fish crows. They show up all at once, 100 landing in the big tree at M&T bank. As the day brightens, they spread out across the village into smaller groups. For a bird whose diet ranges from piping plover eggs to candy bars, Sag Harbor is a perfect foraging ground.

The day the East Hampton Town Board held “an unmomentous meeting,” and much more from The Star of yore.

Build.In.Kind/East Hampton and the Wainscott Heritage Project will host a screening of “One Big Home,” a 2016 documentary by Thomas Bena, at LTV Studios in Wainscott on Saturday at 4 p.m.

Starting this week, East Hampton Town’s Covid-19 testing site at 110 Stephen Hand’s Path in Wainscott, operated by CareONE Concierge, will only be open on Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Imagine a world without wine. That’s the devastation that could be wrought by the spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect from Asia that’s reached Ronkonkoma and is headed east, posing a serious threat to vineyards.

This amusing image shows Bertha Edwards Finch of Springs sitting atop a horned bovine with one foot on a stepstool. The photograph is a part of the Springs Historical Society Collection.

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.