Denise DiPaolo started working as the director of the Montauk Library on Jan. 2. On Tuesday, amid a flurry of activity — shelves were being rearranged, a computer was acting up — she was already the calm in a storm.

A resident of Sag Harbor, Ms. DiPaolo worked for the Shelter Island Library for seven years before she accepted the position in Montauk to replace Karen Rade, who retired at the end of last year. When the news that she was leaving circulated through the tiny island, this newspaper received a letter from a patron there telling Montauk residents how lucky they were to be getting her.

Ms. DiPaolo believes her experience working in an isolated area was the key to her hiring. “I think the board during the interview process was comforted by the fact that I get it; I was prepared for isolation. You can’t get any more remote than that,” she said of Shelter Island.

Surrounded by water, Montauk, she said, emits good energy. “It’s magical. I love it,” she said, adding that the people she has met since working in the hamlet are also impressive. She said people have been extremely welcoming, even visiting her office to say hello and introduce themselves.

And she has high praise for the Friends of the Montauk Library, a group that holds fund-raisers to supplement the state funding the library receives, allowing it to offer a wider range of programs and training.

The director’s position is full time with flexible hours, which she plans on using to attend the many programs the library offers outside of its regular business hours. So far, she has even managed to power through three audiobooks during her commute.

Before she worked on Shelter Island, she was the librarian supervisor at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. She majored in English at the State University at Albany and double-minored in business administration and rhetoric and communications, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1988. She received her master’s degree in library and information science from Long Island University in 1991 and was certified in supervisory skills for managers through Stony Brook University in 2002.

As the director, Ms. DiPaolo looks forward to getting more involved with local organizations, such as the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, the Montauk Lions Club, and the Montauk School. She also attends various meetings with other library directors throughout New York State to share and learn about new trends and technology. “You’re a perpetual student in the library business,” she said.

“It’s a dynamic industry; there’s always something new. A library director wears many hats,” she said. Even when she is not working, library functions are a major part of her life. Indeed, her partner is Dennis Fabiszak, the director of the East Hampton Public Library.

The Amagansett Chamber of Commerce has named Dell Cullum, a photographer and wildlife removal specialist, as its first Person of the Year. Mr. Cullum, who was given the award at the chamber’s holiday open house at the 434 on Main guest house last Thursday, was recognized for outstanding service to the community.

This year, Mr. Cullum organized several trash pickups in the hamlet, including those of the shoreline, the Napeague stretch, and the Long Island Rail Road station, as well as the Gansett Trash Bash, a weekly event through the month of August in which volunteers picked up litter from the streets. He also encouraged participation in the Town of East Hampton’s Adopt-a-Road project.

“Through his Hampton Wildlife Removal and Rescue, Dell has humanely rescued many of our four-legged friends,” said Joi Jackson Perle, the chamber’s executive director. “And finally, through his camera and website, Imagination Nature, Dell has captured the natural beauty of our town, our beaches, and all points in between. He has become the recorder of both everyday life and important milestones in the lives of those that make up the fabric of Amagansett and the surrounding towns, quietly photographing ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

At a celebration of the Gansett Trash Bash volunteers’ accomplishment held on the grounds of the Amagansett Historical Association in September, David Trotta, a musician and the general manager of Jack’s Stir-Brew, gave the gift of a free concert to Mr. Cullum. Mr. Cullum opted to incorporate the gift into a larger event. At the East Hampton Methodist Church on Friday, Mr. Trotta and Mr. Cullum prepared and served a holiday dinner to over 35 guests from Maureen’s Haven, which provides shelter and services to the homeless on eastern Long Island. Mr. Trotta then sat at the piano and delivered a solo performance of Christmas favorites.

Maria Suzanne Dayton and Nicholas Richard Nemecek of Washington, D.C., were married on Sept. 21 at East Hampton Point. Barbara Hansen officiated the ceremony, and a reception followed at the restaurant.

The bride, whose parents are Jonathan and Suzanne Dayton of East Hampton, is a marketing coordinator and in international sales at EDVOTEK. She has a Bachelor of Arts from Mary Washington College, where she graduated in 2004, and earned a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. She graduated from East Hampton High School in 2000.

The groom is a senior management consultant at Mercuri Urval Global Client Services. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Miami University in 2002, and earned an M.B.A. from Ohio State University in 2009. His parents are Richard and Pauline Nemecek of Worthington, Ohio.

The bride wore an ivory strapless Modern Trousseau A-line gown with a topaz necklace and earrings. She carried blue hydrangeas, white roses, and Dusty Miller. Mary Aufrecht of Greenwich, Conn., a friend of Ms. Dayton’s since high school, was her maid of honor. Sara Miller Archie of Brooklyn and Steph?anie Talmage Forsberg of East Hampton, both friends from high school, Lauren Hren of Denver, her cousin, and Monica Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, the sister of the groom, were attendants. They wore shadow gray Jenny Yoo dresses.

Ross Paolino of Washington, D.C., was the best man. The groomsmen were Dave Lamp of Columbus, Ohio, and Steve O’Neill of Chicago, both friends from high school, his brother-in-law Patrick Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, and William Dayton of East Hampton, the bride’s brother.

Hadley Tyler and Graham Tyler of Dublin, Ohio, the niece and nephew of the groom, were the flower girl and ringbearer.

The couple, who met in Washington, D.C., in 2009, took a wedding trip for three weeks to Borneo, Bali, and Lombok. They live in Washington, D.C., with their greyhound, Toastie.

The Village of East Hampton is in sound fiscal order, the village board was told on Friday.

In delivering an annual summary to the board at its meeting on Friday, Michael Tomicich of the accounting firm Satty, Levine, and Ciacco gave an upbeat report on both the village’s budget and compliance with reporting standards.

The auditor was able to deliver an unqualified, or clean, opinion, Mr. ?Tom?icich told the board, meaning that the village’s fiscal statements give a true and fair view in accordance with the reporting framework used in the preparation and presentation of statements. “The results of our tests disclosed no instances of noncompliance or other matters that are required to be reported under government auditing standards,” he said. “So the village is in very good shape financially. The books and records, the internal controls — everything is fine.”

In the fiscal year that ended on July 31, revenues were higher than expenditures by $790,000, Mr. Tomicich said, mostly due to license and permit fees, as well as state and federal aid received during the year. Expenditures, he said, were lower than anticipated on various line items, as were employee benefits. Consequently, he said, the village was able to appropriate more money to its capital projects fund to cover current and future expenditures.

The village’s balance sheet shows a total fund balance of $4.2 million, which represents an increase of $901,000 over last year. In addition, he said, “The village has very strong cash of over $4.8 million.” Within that figure, he said, is $100,000 in reserve for capital projects and $93,000 for insurance. Capital assets put in service for infrastructure, vehicles, and other equipment totaled $331,000.

A lower interest rate on new bonds issued led to a reduction in debt service payments of $280,000 over the next nine years, Mr. Tomicich said. “Principal payments on the existing serial bonds in the current year were about $823,000, which reduced your current debt,” he told the board.

Health insurance payments to retired employees totaled $528,000 last year, with the village’s total liability for post-employment benefits totaling $2.9 million at the fiscal year’s end. 

A.I.A. Peconic, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, last month released the winners of its 2014 Daniel J. Rowen Design Awards. The top Honor Awards went to Maziar Behrooz, who has offices in East Hampton and Manhattan, and Roger Ferris, based in Bridgehampton, Manhattan, and Westport, Conn.

Mr. Behrooz won Merit Awards for two separate projects. Other Merit Awards went to Paul Masi of Bates Masi + Architects in Sag Harbor and Stelle, Lomont, and Rouhani of Bridgehampton, whose partners are Frederick Stelle, Michael Lomont, and Viola Rouhani.

A.I.A. Peconic’s 2014 Juror Awards were given to Mr. Masi, Erica Broberg Smith, who has an East Hampton office, and Siamak Samii, whose firm is in Southampton.

President Obama recently announced the United States would relax restrictions on travel and commerce with Cuba, look to open an embassy there, and explore the possibility of removing Cuba from the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Though it will take an act of Congress to lift the full trade embargo, it is only a matter of time, a short time, before we do.

Those who oppose this policy argue that this action ignores the gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Cuban government. They further assert this will prop up a totalitarian regime on the verge of economic collapse and that there is no correlation between economic freedom and personal liberty. They are wrong. Freedom is coming to Cuba.

I have traveled to Cuba 30 times between 1998 and 2006 on a variety of cultural exchanges and humanitarian exchanges. The only reason I stopped going is I was warned I might be arrested and used as a hostage to obtain the release of Cuban spies held in the United States (like Alan Gross, the American just released). I believe Cuba is poised for real political freedom.

The first crack in the wall Castro built around Cuba came in the late 1990s when the Clinton administration eased travel restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba. Once it became clear Americans were not going to be prosecuted or fined for visiting there was a flood of American tourists. The Cuban government didn’t welcome that. Though it loved the tourist dollars, it viewed the influx of Americans as a threat. Instead of taking tourists on their orchestrated pro-Communist tours where visitors were meticulously insulated from the misery of the Cuban people and the repressive nature of the regime, Americans were mingling with Cubans, hiring locals as tour guides, eating and sleeping in their homes, and letting Cubans know America was not the bogeyman Fidel and Raul and their corrupt cronies told them we were.

The Cuban government even allowed some Cubans to rent rooms in their homes or serve food to foreigners, while taking the lion’s share of the profits. But soon it feared it had gone too far. It had lost too much control of the interaction between tourists, especially Americans, and its people. Cubans were obtaining cellphones and learning about the Internet.

The threat of the embargo was called Track One. The threat from American tourists was called Track Two, and the Cuban government used the U.S. invasion of Iraq to counter it. The limited freedoms it had allowed some Cubans to exercise were sharply curtailed. Cubans were arrested for talking to Americans in tourist hotels. In 2004 the government changed the currency from our dollar to its peso, but kept 20 percent of one’s money in the exchange, thereby making more money but limiting the desirability of a tourist coming. Odd that those claiming that more tourism will not result in undermining the regime do not recognize this historical fact.

There was another reason the government could afford the crackdown. Hugo Chavez became its ally and propped up its economy by shipping 100,000 barrels of subsidized oil to Cuba every day.

But the failed Cuban system still failed. The second crack came a few years after Fidel gave power to Raul. They eased the restrictions on the average Cuban having a business. Currently there are over 300,000 private enterprises operating in Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans now work in the private sector. When I first went to Cuba in 1998 I did not know anyone who worked legally in the private sector.

The frauds who used a failed utopian ideology to stay in power finally owned up that they had failed. As Fidel famously told The Atlantic in 2010, “the Cuban Model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Raul publicly encouraged Cubans to criticize the government. Wow, the dictators in fatigues admitted they were the emperors with no clothes. How many millions had to suffer before those criminals understood this?

Political repression and the harassment of dissidents continues. However, as The New York Times editorial page pointed out last week, there are independent bloggers and journalists operating in Cuba, and the government recently pledged to open up Internet access. This was unthinkable 10 years ago. For several years the government has improved relations with both Catholic and Protestant churches, which in turn have achieved greater and greater influence with the people. Ask the 53 dissidents whom Cuba will release as part of this opening if they are freer now than they were in jail.

When I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s dictatorships ruled in almost every country in Latin America, as well as in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, and Portugal. Yet today, these countries and most of those regions have vibrant democracies. Economic freedom empowered their people to attain political freedom. When people open their own businesses and make money, they empower themselves. When people in Cuba obtain access to technology, their government loses control of the storyline. When the embargo is lifted, they can no longer blame us. The more the Cuban people know, the more they will want to know.

For over 50 years this embargo has done nothing to enhance political freedom in Cuba. It has succeeded in hurting the average Cuban and provided a propaganda tool for the Castro dictatorship. It is in the playbook of every thug in power to justify the deprivations they inflict on their subjects, to have their scapegoats. Hitler had the Jews and Communists; Milosovic, the Croats and Bosnians; Hugo Chavez, the U.S.A.; ISIS, anyone who isn’t ISIS. We gave the Castros us, gift-wrapped. They made us the bogeyman responsible for Cuba’s travails.

Every year the embargo is denounced by every country in the world except Israel and the United States. It is a major issue, opposed by everyone, especially in Latin America. Even the majority, albeit a narrow one, of Cubans in our country oppose it. And every year that majority grows as members of the aged Cuban exile community in Miami die. For over 50 years they had the Cuban government collaborating in maintaining our estrangement, each side parroting the dead slogans of their youth. But the Cuban government just opted out.

The Cuban government knows it is risking a loss of power now. It will play this as a public relations coup to its people and hope it can figure out how to keep the lid on, because it knows this can lift the lid off. It will try to become like China, opening the economy but retaining sole political power (though China is less repressive now than 25 years ago — see the reaction to the Hong Kong demonstrators versus Tiananmen Square). By the way, please note we trade with China, a country still displaying photos of Mao, the biggest murderer in history.

The government is least popular in Havana. That’s because there the people can interact with tourists. In Havana, the underground market in satellite TVs, cellphones, and Internet access is far more prolific than in other parts of the country. Those who say more contact will not effect a change in Cuba are oblivious to the fact that when Cubans talk to Americans it advances the cause of freedom. That is the fact, no less than it was in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s when Ronald Reagan let American students study in the Soviet Union.

I cannot quantify how much greater freedom this will instantaneously translate into for Cubans, but 50-odd years ago we blundered into a policy that hurt the Cuban people, helped the Cuban power elite subjugate people, failed to dislodge a government that simply suffocated its people to survive, and left us ridiculed by the world. Does any intelligent person really believe less contact will help the Cuban people better their lives or achieve more freedom? More contact will enhance, not retard, our influence.

This is the third crack in the wall, accelerated by the collapse of oil prices, which has reduced Venezuela’s economic support. A few years ago, in an article I wrote for The Star, I said, “Years ago, I visited the sleepy town of Bayamo, renowned for the fact its 19th-century residents had burned it to the ground rather than let it be captured by their Spanish colonial masters. There is (or was) an enormous digital clock that overlooks the town square. It flashes the same time, though most of the bulbs don’t work so it is hard to know what time it was when it broke. My guide told me it was a gift from the Soviets in the 1960s. ‘How long has it been broken?’ I asked. ‘I never remember when it worked,’ he responded. My guide was in his 30s. The long-discredited Revolution still holds sway over this island frozen in time. All of Cuba anxiously waits for President Obama to start the clock.”

Mr. Obama has done just that.

A few years ago, my friend Amado was able to get out of Cuba. He had spent six weeks in a tiny jail cell for having my cellphone. His father got 18 months in jail for having $2 in U.S. currency. His grandfather got seven years for possession of two joints of marijuana. When a cop at J.F.K. Airport told him he could now say whatever he wanted, he shouted, “I hate Fidel Castro.”

Like most Cubans, he loved America. He died last May, but somewhere out there he is smiling.

Sag Harbor Village has much to offer, but one area it has been lacking in is the medical one, according to Dr. Ilona Polak, who will open a walk-in practice there sometime next month.

Sag Harbor Medical Walk-In will be at 34 Bay Street, in the building housing GeekHampton and the Sag Harbor Cycle Company.

“I love the village,” said Dr. Polak, who is leaving Wainscott Walk-In Medical Care to venture out on her own. “I do have a lot of people who come and see me from Sag Harbor in Wainscott, and they really don’t have a doctor, or a walk-in, in the village.”

Dr. Polak, who is board certified in family medicine, has been in practice for more than 10 years and spent the past five in Wainscott after having left the Port Jefferson area. A native of Poland, she began medical school in Europe and then moved to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and later Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She finished her residency at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J.

“You have to grow, so to speak, and develop,” she said of her decision to go into a private practice. She said she is thankful for her time at Wainscott Walk-In. “I really enjoyed working with Dr. [Blake] Kerr, and I will miss very much my supportive staff. They were always there to help me.”

Dr. Polak hopes to move in to her new space by the end of January, but doing so depends on the progress of the renovation now under way. She is excited to open her doors.

“Thank you to everyone — first of all to the Sag Harbor community for a very warm welcome; it means a lot,” she said.

In the wake of highly publicized police shootings of young African-American men, and the subsequent refusal of grand juries to indict the officers involved, a silent vigil for racial justice will happen tomorrow from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Bridgehampton war memorial. Those in attendance plan to hold placards with the name of a victim of such incidents.

Erling Hope of Sag Harbor is an organizer of the vigil. In a message announcing the vigil that was posted on Facebook, he asked the public to attend, writing that one goal was to “humanize the victims of an unjust system, to remind us of the reality behind statistics and news stories, to make it known that black lives matter.”

Yesterday, Mr. Hope decried the “oversimplification of complex human realities.” “It’s of a piece with the racism we’re trying to change. I’m trying to keep this a simple thing about the victims of these crimes, to humanize them.”

While he acknowledged that police officers have a very difficult job, he cited the grand jury testimony of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August, in which he likened Mr. Brown to a “demon” in the moments before the shooting. “There is clearly some kind of dehumanizing happening between law enforcement and communities of brown and black skin,” Mr. Hope said.

Mr. Hope is approaching the event from the Quaker tradition, he said, in which being a witness to injustice and human tragedy is done through silent vigil. “To my mind, the silence will speak louder than the words will,” he said. “There’s also an engagement with a 30-year history, now, of the association of names with war memorials, which may be subtle reference.”

Leftheri T. Syrianos, a son of Eleni Prieston of Sag Harbor, was awarded the Eagle Scout rank at a Court of Honor ceremony on Nov. 29 at the Breakwater Yacht Club. Mr. Syrianos joined the Cub Scouts at age 9 and now has achieved his Eagle Scout rank at 23. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which makes communication difficult, he reached his goal through hard work, discipline, and the encouragement and support of family and friends.

During the ceremony, Patrick Witty, his scoutmaster, and Doug Alnwick, his Eagle mentor and a Pierson High School shop teacher, praised Mr. Syrianos’s perseverance. He was “a kid who just kept coming back and coming back, until he was finished,” Mr. Alnwick said.

Mr. Syrianos’s project was the construction of three large planters placed outside the Senior Nutrition Center in Bridgehampton. He designed the planters so that they were approachable by wheelchair, to help provide the residents with “something to do instead of just something to look at,” in his words.

More than 60 people attended the ceremony, at which Mr. Syrianos thanked his mother and his brother, Damian.

An environmental engineering firm tasked with developing a water-quality management plan for the Hook Pond watershed area should be selected by next month. 

Becky Molinaro, the East Hampton Village administrator, delivered an update on the Hook Pond Water Quality Improvement Project to the village board at a brief work session last Thursday. The initiative is a collaboration with the town, the East Hampton Town Trustees, and community organizations.

The village, which appropriated $35,000 in its 2014-15 budget for the project, issued a request for qualifications in October. Ms. Molinaro told the board five replies were received. A selection committee including trustees, pond-front homeowners, representatives of the Nature Conservancy and the Group for the East End, and officials from the town’s natural resources department chose two of them as finalists. They are Nelson, Pope, and Voorhis, LLC, based in Melville, and Lombardo Associates of Newton, Mass. The latter firm recently drafted a comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town.

A third firm may also be named a finalist, Diane McNally, clerk of the trustees, said Tuesday.

Interviews with officials of those firms will be scheduled “within a week or two, hopefully,” Ms. Molinaro said, so that the committee can discuss and make a recommendation. “Hopefully, the village will decide by January,” she said.

Tests performed since 1981 have detected a range of conditions in the watershed area, which includes the central commercial district, the North Main Street commercial area, residential areas, and the Maidstone Club. In general, the village’s request for qualifications stated, nitrogen concentrations in Hook Pond exceed the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s eco-regional criteria, meaning that the pond contains an excessive richness of nutrients. Animals, primarily waterfowl, are cited as a significant source of nitrogen in the pond, though septic systems are also blamed for water-quality degradation. Excessive nitrogen depletes oxygen in the water, which can kill marine life.

The chosen engineering firm’s tasks will include the compilation and analysis of existing water quality and flow data to diagnose and identify data gaps; identification and analysis of the sources of problems; development, implementation, and analysis of a water-quality sampling plan, and a final report including an updated diagnosis of problems and recommendations for actions to protect and improve the pond’s water quality. Future funding mechanisms must also be identified, and the firm will have to conduct two community outreach meetings after the plan is developed to obtain feedback and refine its recommendations.

At its Nov. 21 meeting, the board approved a proposal from the FPM Group, an engineering and environmental science firm, to sample groundwater at the Emergency Services Building. That testing was performed on Dec. 3, a result of the discovery of pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative, in water from a basement sump in the building. Results of the testing are expected in a few weeks.

The utility poles that PSEG Long Island erected this year as part of an upgrade to its transmission infrastructure are treated with the preservative, commonly known as penta, which is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the E.P.A. The Emergency Services Building, on Cedar Street, is along the transmission route.