Villages

The South Fork was spared widespread power outages and flooding over the weekend as Long Island’s first official blizzard since 2018 dropped nearly two feet of drifting snow in some parts of the region. East Hampton Town employed some 50 plow drivers, ranging from its 12 full-time employees to private contractors, who worked almost 24 hours straight starting on Friday night.

“We’re really in a crisis and we don’t have time to wait for others to take action. . . . We need to get as many people engaged in this industry as possible,” said Tela Troge of the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers.

East Hampton and Southampton Towns both declared states of emergency in advance of the winter storm that began pounding the East End late Friday night and continued through the day Saturday. A blizzard warning remained in effect for the area until 7 p.m.

Hunting with guns in East Hampton Town is a tradition that dates back to the middle 1600s. Back then, it was a means of survival. Now, it’s a sport, and a popular one, but also a tool for wildlife management.

The East Hampton Village Board has approved a lease agreement with the East Hampton Historical Society for the Dominy Shops at 73 North Main Street, effective Feb. 1, 2023. A museum is the goal.

The Springs Historical Society held the first Great Bonac Canoe Race on Saturday, Aug. 15, 1981, and the item shown here is that year’s map for the race’s route.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released data evaluating the effectiveness of a third dose of an mRNA vaccine in preventing Covid-19. There have been clear indications since before third doses, or “booster” doses, were authorized that vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time. This has become particularly relevant as SARS CoV-2 has continued to mutate and multiply, allowing for the rise of variants such as Delta and Omicron.

The first and most important thing to know about the purple sandpiper is that it’s not purple. It’s not even close. For the beginner, the best way to see this bird — the only sandpiper we tend to see here in winter months — is to know where it hangs out, because it absolutely doesn’t stand out.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the icemen were busy here. Twenty-five years ago, the district’s congressman and a U.S. senator expressed disgust at Brookhaven National Lab contamination.

Winter can often be the deadliest time of the year, but there are ways to protect yourself and your home from cold-related accidents.

One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, on Jan. 21, 1854, Capt. Jared Wade Jr. (1811-1889) wrote to his wife, Harriett Bushnell Wade (1831-1911), from St. Helena Island. This British island in the South Atlantic served as an important stopping-off port for the whaling and shipping industry.

The screech owl is about the size of a brick, with big eyes, and ear tufts, but this adorable little owl is an efficient killer. Its howl represents pure death to a variety of critters. Nothing is safe, even other screech owls. It even takes bats on the wing.

When a man with a gun took a rabbi and three members of his congregation as hostages at the Beth Israel Congregation in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday — a situation that the hostages survived, but the gunman did not — ripples of resolve ran through Jewish houses of worship here.

While the pandemic’s trajectory remains uncertain, the Omicron variant’s tendency to cause milder sickness, combined with the sheer number of those with a degree of protection through prior infection or vaccination, signal a period of transition for the virus that has upended life for the past two years.

From memories of whalemen to postwar bouts of card playing.

Within a year after a 1978 fire that burned the Sea Spray Inn in East Hampton to the ground, village residents voted to buy the 16-acre property and to add the land and its 10 cottages to the village’s roster of parks and recreational sites. In recent weeks, there's been talk of changes at property, including whether it would be advantageous to turn their management over to a private company, which would then be responsible for their upkeep.

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 continues to surge through Suffolk County, but there may be signs of a coming decline in cases, which reached an all time high last week.

This photograph from the C. Frank Dayton Photograph Collection shows the exterior of the blacksmith shop of Charles Silas Parsons (1858-1926) before its relocation and restoration.

More and more people are visiting health professionals to discuss anxiety and depression, and what's striking is not the new onset of these symptoms and conditions or the severity with which they are presenting but instead that so many people are almost apologetic when they bring up these concerns.

Why isn’t the long-tailed duck more celebrated? It’s crazy looking, gregarious, easily seen, cackles like a stuttering kazoo, hilariously belly-flops when it lands, and hangs out in bad little duck posses. It’s even controversial.

“We’ve been a community center since 1908 and have never had a proper bathroom,” said Hilary Osborn Malecki, president of the Wainscott Sewing Society, which maintains the Wainscott Chapel. The chapel has existed all this time with only an outhouse, but that is about to change.

Deep into The Star’s past . . .

This photograph, taken by Leonard L. Lester, shows the East Hampton Presbyterian Church covered in a thick blanket of snow. There’s no date, but the photo technology clearly indicates that it was taken after 1920, most likely between 1930 and 1960, when a remodeling was started.

As we enter a new year and come upon the second anniversary of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is time once again to review the most current guidelines for testing, quarantine after exposure, and isolation while infected with Covid-19. This is particularly necessary as the Centers for Disease Control recently updated their guidelines to reflect the latest known data about the rising Omicron variant, which has spread at an incredible pace.

Starting Monday, anyone traveling through the heart of Sag Harbor Village might experience traffic snarls, as National Grid begins replacing the gas main underneath Main Street. Workers will be on site between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Spurred by an avalanche of positive Covid-19 cases over the holiday season among families, kids, and teachers, virus-related impacts have been fast and furious in coming to South Fork schools.

Ripped from the storied pages of The Star . . .

The push to expand access to Covid-19 vaccines continues on the South Fork, with East Hampton Town adding five additional vaccination clinics in February and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital moving its clinics to the Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons to accommodate more appointments.

Founded in 2005 by Douglas Mercer, the Wellness Foundation announced its closing just before Christmas. The organization worked closely with local school districts, helping to make healthy food a priority, and ran Wellness Challenges for adults that encouraged a holistic approach toward a healthier lifestyle.

The first day of the new year was drizzly and drab, and, to some, depressing, though you wouldn’t have known it had you been at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach or at the Beach Lane road end in Wainscott for the New Year’s Day plunges that afternoon.