Every once in a while a bird shows up that takes the South Fork by storm. In the past, it’s been eagles, snowy owls, pelicans, Lapland longspurs, Ross’s gulls, puffins, painted buntings, and scissor-tail flycatchers, to name but a few. Birdwatchers come from all over the United States, even from as far west as California, to see some of those rare birds.

Another has shown up recently. This one stands up to four feet tall, has a long pointy bill and a red patch on the back of its head. Its wingspan can be six feet from tip to tip when fully extended. It soars like a vulture for hours on end and is often confused with herons and egrets. You probably guessed it: It is the sandhill crane, Grus Canadensis. “Grus” because of the growling trumpet-like calls it makes, “canadensis” because the majority of the migrating ones breed on the sand hill prairies of western and central Canada.

It is not the first one to be seen on the South Fork or the rest of Long Island. Several decades ago, one was spotted by a boy in Bridgehampton. Because he was a young, novice bird watcher, his sighting had to be confirmed by a senior bird watcher, one with more experience and authority.

That boy, Alex Van Boer, is now grown and married and does professionally what he used to do for fun: He works for Colorado’s Bird Conservancy. He is the son of the late landscape photographer and portraitist Diane Gorodnitzki. Diane was a longtime ecological contributor to various South Fork conservation groups including the Group for America’s South Fork (now Group for the East End) and the Peconic Land Trust. She died in 2010, a great loss to eastern Long Island, its pastoral fields, and its fauna and flora. His father, Kenton Van Boer, is an architect who practiced his art here, but now resides in Maine.

I don’t get around as much as I used to and I would never have heard about the crane if it were not for a call from Elizabeth Sarfaty, who in turn got a call from a friend who had seen it in Wainscott, south of Main Street, across from the Wainscott Chapel. Elizabeth then put Terry Sullivan on to it and Terry went down and took several photos. In documenting a rare bird, a photo is as valuable as a page-long description. Photos usually do not lie.

Sandhill cranes are not nearly as rare as their larger North American cousin, the gravely endangered whooping crane. There are more than 400,000 of the migratory ones that breed on the upper prairies of the western United State and Canada. Separate non-migratory subspecies can be found in Florida, coastal Mississippi, and Cuba. By far the rarest of the three are those in Cuba, which number about 300 at last count.

Unlike herons and egrets, they don’t fly with their neck crooked, but with their necks straight out ahead and legs straight out behind. They walk or run in the matter of the flightless ratites — ostriches, emus, and such. The migratory ones are mostly herbivorous, stopping to feed in the grain fields of the Southwest, including California, but other populations have more cosmopolitan tastes, even taking mice, frogs, and lizards.

They in turn are prey for a variety of carnivores, including bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, and even eagles and the larger hawks. Adults defend themselves by running or remaining and fighting, striking with their sharp beaks or kicking with their long sturdy legs in the manner of roosters.

Courtship consists of male and female standing close to each other, facing each other, and making those growling bugle calls back and forth, the male uttering one, the female two back during each round. Hmm, not so different from Homo sapiens couples’ exchange of calls. Males share in the housekeeping with their mates, helping to construct and guard the nest, even sharing the incubation duties. The female lays mostly two-egg clutches. The young, after fledging, stay with their parents until the next brood, after which they hang around in teenage gangs. 

Migratory sandhill cranes all occupy eastern Siberia. When they are migrating, cranes mostly ride with the wind and on uplifting currents the way vultures do. These cranes have a very well described fossil record, with ones in North America almost identical to contemporary ones and those dating back two million years or more. No variation of a human has been around that long, so maybe we can learn something from a bipedal bird that is almost as tall as we are, is as monogamous as many of us are, and has a much longer earthly existence.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

Clean water, both to drink and in ponds and bays, is high on the 2017 agenda for local and state lawmakers.

As East Hampton officials work on a plan to offer property owners in key sensitive areas an incentive to upgrade the substandard septic systems that contribute to nitrogen pollution, New York State Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has announced the Clean Water Infrastructure Act of 2017, a plan to invest $2 billion in water projects across the state, and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has separately introduced legislation that would place a $5 billion bond act referendum on the ballot in November, with $4 billion to be earmarked for water quality improvement projects, and $1 billion for open space preservation.

The governor’s plan would provide capital funds to upgrade municipal drinking water and wastewater systems, and to protect surface and drinking water through efforts such as open space conservation, wetland protection, and the containment of contaminated road runoff. The state Superfund would also be increased to expedite the cleanup of hazardous waste sites in order to protect drinking water.

Last year, the governor launched a “water quality rapid response team” to identify and address drinking water quality issues, and in September, he signed legislation that requires school districts to test for lead in drinking water.

“There is no place in the state that will benefit more than Long Island from this funding,” Assemblyman Thiele said in a press release regarding the state funding. “We are surrounded by water and draw our drinking water from under our feet. With the development of the Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan (LINAP), the development of new technology from the New York State Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook, and the recent approval of water quality funding as part of the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund, eastern Long Island is well positioned to take full advantage of state water quality capital funds.”

Assemblyman Thiele said that his proposed state bond act would make money available for “green infrastructure” that will safeguard water and bolster jobs and the economy. 

“Many industries, including tourism, fishing, and agriculture depend on clean water. We will never reverse the continued degradation of our water resources without a major influx of capital funding to address our crumbling green infrastructure,” he said in a press release last week.

He expects New York voters will support his proposed bond act to finance environmental initiatives, as they have approved seven similar referendums since 1960. The last was the 1996 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act fostered by then-governor George Pataki.

“ I am hopeful that this idea will get serious consideration during the 2017 [legislative] session,” he said.

A longtime resident was accused last Thursday night of sodomizing a Springs woman at her home. East Hampton Town police charged Mauro Pacheco of East Hampton, 42, with committing a criminal sex act in the first degree, a felony that carries a minimum sentence of five years in state prison upon conviction.

Mr. Pacheco’s attorney, Colin Astarita, claimed during Mr. Pacheco’s arraignment Saturday in East Hampton Town Justice Court that the woman, who he said had known his client for three years, had seduced him, and that whatever happened was consensual. The identity of the alleged victim is sealed under New York State law covering sex crimes.

Armed with her description of Mr. Pacheco’s car, a 2011 Ford, an officer made a traffic stop on Montauk Highway, noting in the report that Mr. Pacheco had “left the scene of a domestic incident.” At headquarters in Wainscott, the driver’s breath test reportedly produced a reading of .09, just above the level that defines intoxication, and police added a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving to the Class B felony count, as well as a seatbelt violation.

“I had two glasses of wine,” Mr. Pacheco is said to have told the arresting officer. “I wanted to just have a fun night with my girlfriend . . . she bit me. I shoved her off.”

Mr. Pacheco’s clothes were confiscated and he was given a physical examination. He was in a police-issued jumpsuit at the arraignment. His lawyer said the defendant would submit a DNA sample to police in coming days.

According to Mr. Astarita, Mr. Pacheco owns a construction company based in East Hampton and a house in Hampton Bays, where his ex-wife and three children are living. He sold his East Hampton house recently, the lawyer said, and is living temporarily in Riverhead while looking for a new one. He has a post office box in Amagansett.

Mr. Pacheco’s brother was in the courtroom for his arraignment, with two other men and a woman, who wept throughout the proceedings. The district attorney’s office had phoned the court to request that bail be set at $50,000. Mr. Astarita told Justice Rana that his client had significant ties to the area and no criminal record, adding that the complainant had “psych” issues. “We’re not having a trial about the complaining witness right now,” Justice Rana responded. She issued an order of protection for the alleged victim, requiring that Mr. Pacheco have no contact with her whatsoever, and set bail at $25,000, which was posted that same day.

Mr. Astarita said Tuesday that his client had been “assaulted” by a jealous woman. “We are confident that justice will prevail, and he will be cleared of any wrongdoing,” he said.

Elementary school students should continue to develop strong mathematics skills despite computers’ superior ability to calculate, the Amagansett School District’s superintendent told the school board on Tuesday.

Eleanor Tritt referred to an interview in District Administration magazine in which Marc Prensky, the author of “Education to Better Their World: Unleashing the Power of 21st-Century Kids,” suggested discarding an approach to education that “we just impose on people for historical reasons.”

Using arithmetic as an example, Mr. Prensky said, “Yes, kids should be able to do some kinds of arithmetic. Not much above that is really needed except conceptually. We devote most of our learning to calculation — which is something computers do very well and humans don’t — but we spend very little time helping people understand where something in the world is actually mathematical.”

Mr. Prensky is an authority on technology, Ms. Tritt said, but “he’s recommending that we spend less time on mathematics skills because computers can compute more effectively than humans. I disagree with that. I strongly believe that students should have very strong mathematics and arithmetic skills in order to be able to manage and evaluate and develop the critical thinking that they need to have . . . and in addition develop concepts, but certainly not to allow computers to take over skill-building in children. We will continue to focus on the skills.”

Hank Muchnic, a school board member, agreed. “He really wants to organize things around what students have a passion for, what they’re interested in, which is fantastic,” he said, “but how do you then teach the skill of reading a book that you’re not interested in? That’s a concentration, a discipline that is warranted.”

And, Ms. Tritt said, students “may become interested in something that they had not before. They are exposed to more things. . . . That’s why we continue to focus on a very well-rounded education for our children, and then let them go off in different areas in the future.”

Also at the meeting, the board formally accepted a donation from the East Hampton Library of a complete, six-volume set of the East Hampton Historical Collection Series, as well as a DVD called “East Hampton: From the Ice Age to the Year 1998 A.D.,” which is the official video commemorating the town’s 350th anniversary.

Students will attend the Mad Heart Ball at the East Hampton Middle School on Feb. 10. The board authorized a $500 payment to East End Entertainment Corp. for D.J. services to be provided at the event.

“I was texting, and crashed,” Conrad F. Kabbaz is reported to have told East Hampton Town police after his 2002 Chevrolet hit a telephone pole on Town Lane in Amagansett around midnight Jan. 4. The 20-year-old, who lives not far from the scene, was later charged with misdemeanor driving while intoxicated.

The arresting officer said that Mr. Kabbaz had handed over a forged Ohio driver’s license, though at his arraignment the next morning his attorney, Brian J. Lester, told East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky that the young man does have a legitimate license.

Justice Tekulsky did not weigh in on that question, but did agree with Mr. Lester that his client, in view of his ties to the community, was not a flight risk, and released him without bail. However, because Mr. Kabbaz had refused to take a breath test at police headquarters, the court suspended his driving privileges, pending a hearing next week at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Late Friday night, in the hazy aftermath of a major snowstorm, Sag Harbor Village police stopped a 1997 Chevrolet driven by Refugio Mendez Saldivar, 25, as it headed south on Main Street, saying it had run a stop sign and swerved into the oncoming lane. The officer who followed the car into a parking lot reported that the driver appeared extremely intoxicated. With the winter conditions being what they were, the usual roadside sobriety tests were instead administered at Division Street headquarters.

The tests produced a .17 reading, police said, just below the .18 number that would have raised the misdemeanor charge to a more serious level. Justice Lisa R. Rana, presiding on Saturday in the Sag Harbor court, took note of the defendant’s community ties and freed him without bail.

Town police reported finding Manuel C. Quezada of East Hampton, 41, slumped over the wheel of a 1997 Chevrolet van on Malone Street in Springs on the night of Jan. 3. The car was in park but the engine was running and Mr. Quezada’s foot was on the accelerator, officers said, adding that he had failed a field sobriety test.

Back at Wainscott headquarters, the Breathalyzer test reportedly produced a reading of .15, almost double the .08 number defining intoxication. “I had four shots at my friend’s house,” the arresting officer reported him saying. “I am on my way home.”

The trip was interrupted by a night in a holding cell at police headquarters. Mr. Quezada was released the next morning without bail, but with a future date on Justice Tekulsky’s criminal calendar.

Chief Gerard Larsen of the East Hampton Village Police Department, who announced his retirement last month, was honored for his long service to the village at the board’s work session last Thursday. Expressions of appreciation, both to him and from him, were heard.

Before reading a formal proclamation thanking the chief, Richard Lawler, a member of the village board for more than eight years who is its police commissioner, said, “During his tenure, he presided over new technologies for the Police Department. He was also very, very involved in getting the department New York State accreditation, which is very important. He also supervised the emergency village dispatch, and also the newly created paid first-responder program. He handled all his duties in a professional manner, and I think he served this village very well. . . . We appreciate his service, and congratulations.”

Mr. Larsen began his career with the Police Department as a traffic control officer in 1983. He became a part-time member of the force the following year and accepted a full-time position two years later. He was promoted to detective in 1990, to sergeant in 1994, and to lieutenant in 2001. He was named chief in 2003.

“I’ve had such an enjoyable career with the village,” Mr. Larsen said, “but as chief of police I think I’ve been the most successful.” When he took over as chief, the department was in turmoil and morale was low, he said. “We were able to turn that around and today the department is well run. We’re New York State accredited. We have no union issues. We have no employees out injured. We have no one out long-term sick. The finances are good, and the morale is very high.”

Although Mr. Larsen’s retirement is not official until July 31, the end of the village’s fiscal year, he left office at the end of last month, using remaining vacation time. He told The Star last month that he had taken a position as director of security for a private company and that he was interested in running for town board.

He thanked Capt. Mike Tracey, who was appointed acting chief later in the meeting, calling him “my right-hand man for the last 20 years and a great friend for the last 34,” as well as Lt. Anthony Long, “who gets everything piled on him and spends endless hours making sure everything runs smoothly.” Mr. Larsen also thanked his secretary, the board, and the residents of the village.

 “The last person I’d like to thank is Mayor Paul Rickenbach. The mayor gave me this opportunity and it’s been a very rewarding experience. Thank you so much, and it’s an honor to call you my friend,” he said.

“We wish you well. We compliment you for your service, and may you have a continued successful career in whatever you decide to do,” the mayor replied.

It is unknown if Captain Tracey is a candidate to replace the chief, but Mr. Lawler spoke highly of him as well. “I have every confidence he’s going to perform his duties in a professional and very able manner. I want to stress that he has the full support of the board in this new appointment,” he said.

Workers on a $24.7 million expansion of the Bridgehampton School could break ground a year from March, John A. Grillo, the project’s architect, told the school board at a meeting on Tuesday.

Provided all went well, Mr. Grillo said, students would walk into the almost 35,000-square-foot addition on the first day of school in the fall of 2019. The project would more than double the building’s size when completed.

Discussion at Tuesday’s board meeting largely concerned whether the project should be expanded to include an energy-saving geothermal heating and cooling system, money for which was not in the proposal that voters approved on Dec. 13.

Mr. Grillo attended the specially called board meeting to outline what had taken place so far and what the next steps would be. A survey has been completed, and soil tests and utility mapping have also been done. During the Christmas and New Year’s break, members of Mr. Grillo’s team measured the building carefully and began updating their drawings of the existing classrooms and other facilities.

A new gym, locker rooms, fitness center, cafeteria, and science, technology, and music rooms are planned. A portion of the existing gym may be converted into an auditorium, with the balance becoming the new school library. There would be space for two new social studies rooms and a sixth-grade classroom. Planned conversions would create two new English rooms and one for math instruction.

At present, students must cross an outdoor courtyard, skirting a parking lot, to reach aging portable classrooms for music, prekindergarten, science, special education, and home economics.

According to the State Education Department, enrollment from kindergarten through 12th grade was 182 students in the 2015-16 school year. This is up sharply from 138 students in 2012-13. The official figure for the 2016-17 school year is estimated at 211 students.

As the architecture firm moves into the design phase, it would meet with everyone from cafeteria staff to teachers to get ideas about how the additional space should be configured. Conversations might include, for example, whether science room tables should be moveable or fixed. “We get very particular: Should there be places for globe storage?” Mr. Grillo said.

“The fun stuff, the learning environment, doesn’t need to be finalized right now,” he said.

The goal is to send a preliminary design to New York State for Education Department approval by the beginning of June, he said.

The bidding process for selecting a contractor to build the addition would wait until after the state signed off on the structural and mechanical plan. Mr. Grillo estimated that might take about five months from the date that Bridgehampton School completed its required documents. A search for a construction management company could begin after the next school board meeting, which will be Wednesday at 4 p.m.

Bids for the construction itself could be sought by December. Homeowners’ annual school taxes on a property valued at $1 million could rise by as much as $241 once the bond payback period begins.

As the discussion turned to energy use, Mr. Grillo said that he would need to know soon if the board wanted the expansion to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards or a geothermal system.

“It is safe to say that the community spoke in asking us to look at LEED and geothermal,” Ron White, the board president said.

Mr. Grillo said that a closed-loop geothermal system would cost between $500,000 and $600,000. State rebates for as much as half the cost could be available, with a 15-year estimated payback on energy savings. Solar photovoltaic panels are planned for above the addition. Mr. Grillo said that they might not be appropriate to place on the existing school building’s 1930s slate roof.

Geothermal cooling would allow central air-conditioning throughout the school, something it does not now have. It would also make summer programs much more comfortable. “This may give you an opportunity to open the building to the community,” Mr. Grillo said.

 Seeking LEED certification would add about $100,000 to the nearly $25 million project, he said.

Money for adding a geothermal system could come from the school’s several reserve funds, Robert Hauser, the assistant superintendent for finance and facilities, said. A portion of that would have to be approved by residents, hypothetically in the May budget vote.

“If we say it’s a reduction in fossil fuels, everybody’s hand is going to go up,” Mr. Grillo speculated.

Noah Nadelson of Munistat, the district’s bond advisor, attended Tuesday’s meeting and described how the borrowing to pay for the project would go. He complimented the board on the district’s Aa1 bond rating, which he called “an incredible coup.” There are only two triple-A school districts on Long Island with higher ratings, Great Neck and Southampton. “You can see you are in rarified air there,” he said.

Mr. Nadelson said that he estimated the interest rate on a $24.7 million, 20-year bond offering would come in around 3 percent.

In past bond issues, Bridgehampton National Bank had offered the district what he described as very supportive rates and might be interested in doing so again, he said.

While bare, leafless trees are the norm during cold winter months, the state of East Hampton’s oak trees, which are subject to a spreading and untreatable fatal disease called oak wilt, remains to be seen until spring, when sampling and aerial examinations will be done.

Oak wilt, a fungus that blocks the flow of water and nutrients from the roots to the crown of the tree and causes leaves to wilt and drop off, has been found upstate and now across Long Island, from Brooklyn to areas in the towns of Babylon, Islip, Riverhead, and Southold. The disease has been killing thousands of oak trees in the eastern United States each year. Because it is unlikely to have spread from town to town without infecting trees along the way, it is expected that widespread disease will be found throughout Suffolk County, including in East Hampton. Infected trees will be cut down.

To try to contain the spread of the disease, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation plans to issue an emergency order creating a “protective zone” encompassing the entire county. Under the order, moving oak wood — or firewood logs of any species, as it is difficult to determine whether cut logs are oak or not — out of the quarantined area will be forbidden.

  The emergency order, similar to those already in effect for other locations, will prohibit the removal of “any living, dead, standing, cut, or fallen oak trees or any portion thereof, including branches, logs, stumps, or roots, and green oak lumber and firewood (of any species) out of the protective zones unless it has been chipped to less than one inch in two dimensions.” Transported wood can harbor the fungus or the beetles that can spread it, according to the D.E.C.

Beginning in the spring, when the oak wilt fungus is active, the D.E.C. will remove and destroy trees that have tested positive for the disease. Intensive sampling will take place across Suffolk as well as in Nassau and Kings Counties, and aerial surveys will be conducted in July, when the fungus is most apparent, to determine the extent of the disease.

All oaks are susceptible, but red oaks often die much faster than white oaks — within a few weeks to six months — and they spread the disease far more quickly. White oaks have a lower risk of spreading the disease, according to the D.E.C., and can take years to die.

Oak wilt was initially discovered in Wisconsin in 1944 and spread throughout the Midwest and Texas. A protective zone was established last year around areas of Islip where infected trees were found.

Below ground, the fungus spreads through tree roots, and above ground by beetles that feed on tree sap and bark. Beetles can spread oak wilt spores throughout an area of several miles.

  Symptoms of oak wilt infection include a brown coloration that develops on leaves, starting at the outer edges and progressing inward. The leaves suddenly wilt, and, during spring and summer, may fall. Tree branches die back, starting at the top of the tree canopy and progressing downward, and mats of fungal spores may develop under the bark, which can raise and split it.

The D.E.C. has encouraged people to report possible instances of oak wilt to its forest health office, by phone at 866-640-0652 or by email to [email protected]. Photographs of the symptoms should be included.

Pruning or wounding oak trees should be avoided in spring and summer, when spore mats may be present and beetles are most active. The D.E.C. advises that if a wound occurs, it should be dressed immediately with latex paint to deter beetles from landing there.

The D.E.C. is also leading the fight against southern pine beetles, another spreading scourge to trees, in Long Island’s Central Pine Barrens. A total of $513,000 in grants will be awarded to Suffolk County agencies and towns working to address the problem, including the Town of Southampton.

Following a high-speed chase in Springs on New Year’s Day, Jefferson Davis Eames of that hamlet was charged with resisting arrest, reckless driving, and unlicensed driving. The arrest added to Mr. Eames’s legal entanglements, among which is a lawsuit brought by him against the East Hampton Town Police Department.

According to police, Mr. Eames’s 2004 Mini-Cooper was speeding north on Springs-Fireplace Road, near where he was arrested recently on a charge of driving while high on drugs, when an officer in a patrol car spotted him and turned on her emergency lights. He accelerated, according to the report, pulling into the oncoming lane, forcing others cars off the road and just missing a crash. Moving at up to 90 miles an hour, he allegedly made a series of left turns, first onto Teak Lane, then Norfolk Drive, and finally onto Underwood Road, where, losing control of the Mini-Cooper, he sideswiped a telephone pole and struck a mailbox before veering across the road and into the woods. He then took off on foot, police said, eluding capture.

At least one police vehicle appears to have been damaged in the pursuit, according to the incident log for that day. “No one got hurt. That’s the main thing,” Det. Sgt. Greg Schaefer said yesterday.

Mr. Eames turned himself in last Thursday with an attorney, Carl Irace, at his side, after police contacted him, and was charged with the three misdemeanors. He also faces 21 moving violations in connection with the incident, a list so long that each one had to be listed on the inside of the case’s court file.

Mr. Irace entered a not guilty plea on his client’s behalf to all the charges during that afternoon’s arraignment. “The situation is complicated. Mr. Eames looks forward to defending himself against these allegations,” Mr. Irace said yesterday.

Another of Mr. Eames’s attorneys, Michael Griffiths, said yesterday that his client was under constant surveillance by town police and that he “gets stopped all the time.”

At Mr. Eames’s arraignment in November on the driving-on-drugs charge, which has not yet been adjudicated, Justice Steven Tekulsky called him a “persistent violator” of New York State’s vehicle and traffic laws, and set bail of $750, which was posted. Last Thursday, Justice Tekulsky required an additional $1,250 bail before Mr. Eames was freed.

Mr. Griffiths claimed that the charge of unlicensed driving was in error, saying that Mr. Eames’s driving privileges had been restored by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Mr. Eames has a history of run-ins with town police officers. A 2012 arrest following an alleged road-rage incident was dismissed, but another road-rage charge from 2013 remains open in the Riverhead courtroom of Justice Allen M. Smith. That charge stems from an altercation outside Mr. Eames’s Neck Path house involving the wife of a town police officer, as well as Mr. Eames’s wife, Melissa, who was tried separately after ward on a simple harassment charge and found guilty, though her sentence did not involve jail time.

Both cases were moved to Riverhead after Justice Tekulsky and Justice Lisa R. Rana, as well as several other East End justices, recused themselves.

Justice Smith is deciding whether a statement allegedly made by Mr. Eames after the 2013 arrest is admissible as evidence. That ruling is expected on March 27, though Mr. Griffiths said the court had delayed it several times. “Once again, we are waiting for a decision,” Mr. Griffiths said.

In 2015, Mr. Eames brought a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Central Islip against the Police Department, its current chief, Michael Sarlo, its former chief, Edward Ecker Jr., the officers involved in the 2012 and 2013 arrests, and the Town of East Hampton, alleging that his constitutional rights were violated during those arrests. His attorney in that case, which is also pending, is Patricia Weiss.

With the inauguration of Donald Trump just eight days away, the president-elect is poised to assume office as the most unpopular chief executive of modern times. The protests that followed his election in many cities subsided, but a spirit of resistance to the next president’s agenda and cabinet picks has not.

Two events scheduled for Sunday illustrate a resolution to speak out on the South Fork. Writers Resist: Teach In/Speak Out happens from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Duke Auditorium in Chancellors Hall on the Stony Brook South­ampton campus.

On the other side of the political divide, on Friday, Jan. 20, the East Hampton Town Republican Committee will celebrate the inauguration with a black-tie-optional party at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett. Tickets to the 6:30 p.m. celebration cost $50 in advance and $60 at the door.

Confirmation proceedings for Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, which opened on Tuesday, drew a number of protesters, and a telethon to be broadcast on Facebook Live on Jan. 20 will benefit the American Civil Liberties Union, Plan­ned Parenthood, and Earth Justice.

The following day, the Women’s March on Washington “will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world,” according to the event’s website, “that women’s rights are human rights.”

In the Stony Brook Southampton “teach in” component, from 2:30 to 3:45 p.m., writers have been invited to put their experiences, insights, or other observations to paper, in English or Spanish, with assistance from writers as necessary. The “speak out” section of the event, from 4 to 5, will feature readings by writers including Roger Rosenblatt, Megan and Scott Chaskey, Grace Schulman, and several others. A 30-minute reception will follow.

Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, Poetry Street, an informal group based in Riverhead, Julie Sheehan, a poet and the director of Stony Brook Southampton’s M.F.A. program in creative writing and literature, and Kathryn Levy, an award-winning poet, organized the event.

“I am not known as an activist,” Ms. Sheehan, who lives in East Quogue, said on Tuesday. “I have become mobilized, as they say, by history.”

“We just thought it was the natural and right thing to do after the election,” said Maryann Calendrille, a partner at Canio’s Books, “to use our voices, and hear voices in the community. We’re always about encouraging creative artistic expression, and in this particular climate we think it’s especially important for people to speak about their experience, give witness, and support the ideals of democracy that we all hold dear.”

“We’re trying to encourage everyone to make their voices heard,” said Ms. Calendrille, who is organizing a bus trip to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 21 march. “As a bookstore, this is one way we can participate.”

Before the event, a rally to support the preservation of the Affordable Care Act, which both Mr. Trump and the Republican majority in Congress have vowed to repeal, will take place at 1 p.m. at the corner of Montauk Highway and Tuckahoe Road in Southampton.