Villages

In this letter, Thomas Jefferson seeks the help of the Bridgehampton-born David Gelston, who had been appointed by Jefferson as collector of customs for New York in 1801.

Looking for a walk and a challenge, I went to the Mulvihill Preserve in Noyac to hunt for wild chickadees. Hard? No. A unique reason to be in the woods? Yes. A winter activity for a winter bird.

In praise of pork liver from 1948, and other gems from The Star’s past.

This photo of skating on a frozen Town Pond in East Hampton by Eunice Telfer Juckett Meeker dates from 1954 to 1961.

While Dr. King’s example was one of peaceful but powerful advocacy, “we still have a long way to go,” said James Banks, a social worker, college professor, and social justice advocate who was the keynote speaker at Calvary Baptist Church’s annual Martin Luther King’s Birthday service on Monday.

It’s a cold and still January afternoon as the commercial fishing vessel Kimberly makes its way through the inlet at Lake Montauk, which is scheduled to be dredged in October, from 12 to 17 feet, by the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s great news for captains and crew alike, but there’s a catch. The dredging, according to the Montauk attorney Andy Hammer, could make a bad situation worse at the bustling commercial-fishing boat basin attached to Inlet Seafood.

The Sag Harbor Village Board announced on Jan. 10 its intention to extend the village’s paid parking program for 2023. The board would like to extend the season by approximately six weeks, so it would run from May 1 until Nov. 30. In 2022, Long Wharf was converted to paid parking from May 17 until Oct. 10. The board voted to hold a public hearing on the matter at the next meeting, on Feb. 14.

A boy’s fear for the fate of a goat back in 1898 is one of the lighter touches from The Star of yore.

On Saturday, teams of birders spread out across New York State to count freshwater ducks, saltwater ducks, and geese for the annual New York State Ornithological Association waterfowl count. Locally, from Shinnecock Inlet to Montauk Point, seven groups of birders faced winds and temperatures that were stubbornly in the mid-30s to peer into our ponds, bays, and coves. They located 31 species of waterfowl for a total of 10,451 birds. More than half that number, 5,303, were the familiar Canada goose.

The property on Long Island Avenue in Sag Harbor where Friends of Bay Street had planned to build a new Bay Street Theater is instead being put on the market, The Star learned this week.

This December 1989 photo from The East Hampton Star’s archive depicts Percy Heath, Montauker, sportfisherman, artist, and bassist who co-founded the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Last week housing for a feral cat colony living under the pavilion at Sagg Main Beach was dismantled and the colony was dispersed. After being sent photos of cat prints in the sand near a piping plover colony, the American Bird Conservancy had threatened to sue the Southampton Town trustees for not doing enough to protect the plovers, which are considered endangered in New York State.

Ripped from the pages of The Star of yore.

Barnes & Noble announced Thursday that it will open a new bookstore in the Bridgehampton Commons this summer, taking over two storefronts previously occupied by Collette and Collette Annex. It will be the company's first foray into the South Fork bookselling world.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation's Tribal Council voted unanimously on Dec. 22 to pass an ordinance allowing sales of recreational, adult-use cannabis products at established and future smoke shops on Shinnecock territory along Montauk Highway, and since then has been distributing applications to eligible businesses.

Before the 1830s, public schools were not freely available in America, and schools required tuition. Seen here, an itemized receipt for tuition payments from Jonathan Mulford (1770-1840), with his children’s names.

Gentle reader, it happened here . . .

Every week, Andrew Visconti assigns his students — English-learning adults from mostly Spanish-speaking countries, but with a Polish immigrant in the mix — to find an article that they’re interested in and take notes on what they’ve read. Then they come to class and tell one another about the article and why it stood out for them. The Star’s nationally-renowned crime pages are a big and repeat hit for the students.

Written in the 1819 diary of Eliza Packer Gardiner (1788-1863) is a poem by Jerusha Buell (circa 1788-1829) titled “The Grave of the Year,” in which time itself considers what’s been lost.

During this Christmas/New Year’s interlude, I offer a fun challenge: Take a walk in the woods at night. Try it. You may hear a great-horned owl, who, despite the cold, is starting its courtship ritual. Its classic hooting call — offered in the cadence of “Who is awake? Me too!” — can be heard for miles, the song of the blue winter night.

A mixed retail and affordable housing development proposed by Adam Potter, the founder of the Friends of Bay Street, for the office district in Sag Harbor Village hit a speedbump recently, as news got out that the developer he was working with, Conifer, had dropped out of the project. The Smith & Henzy Advisory Group, a real estate development firm brought in by Conifer and specializing in funding large-scale housing developments through tax credits, also departed.

What’s on the horizon for Montauk in 2023? The December meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee laid out some markers for what residents of the hamlet might expect in the new year.

“The young folks of the town enjoyed two days of good skating this week” back in 1897. Not earth-shattering, but good to hear.

If Norman Rockwell were alive today, his iconic Saturday Evening Post illustrations might star not Mother and Father with their children, but rather blended families featuring step-parents and step-siblings. “The so-called ‘blended family’ is no longer an aberration in American society: It’s a norm,” the American Psychological Association wrote in 2019. How, then, can blended families navigate holiday celebrations most smoothly? An expert from Sag Harbor weighs in.

This seasonal article published in This Week, a magazine that ran from 1935 to 1969 as a supplement for newspapers across the country, highlighted recipes East Hampton’s founding families.

The confluence of Covid, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) is causing people to break out their masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant just ahead of the holidays. “And we’re just at the beginning of what is typically the season for upper respiratory illnesses,” said Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, chief medical officer at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

Cold and wind greeted the 45 participants of the 93rd Montauk Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, but the rough conditions didn’t stop them from tallying 131 different species, the highest total for the count in the last 10 years.

Among the highlights from The Star of yore: At a 1922 meeting, the Bridgehampton Spud Lifters Pedro Club claps back at the “East Hampton cracker barrel team,” vowing to reclaim the card game’s championship cup.

Antisemitism has been amplified lately by celebrities who use social media to perpetuate hateful speech, and hate crimes against Jews are again on the rise. On the South Fork, antisemitism is being met head-on with action by religious leaders and lay people alike.

The parents of Carrie Sullivan embarked on a journey a year ago that no parent should ever have to endure. On Nov. 6, 2021, their 29-year-old daughter, a graduate of East Hampton High School, was in a horrific car accident in Brooklyn that left her paralyzed, and left the family needing help as she begins rehabilitation.