Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to arrive at East Hampton Airport tomorrow in plenty of time for a Saturday fund-raiser, the first of four events in the Hamptons, and to join former President Bill Clinton, who arrived on Sunday for a two-week vacation at the same house they rented in Amagansett last August.

Her peripatetic schedule is to begin at the Cobb Road, Water Mill, estate of Artie and Selma Rabin. Mr. Rabin, an apparel company magnate, is the co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets. Mrs. Clinton is then expected take a week’s hiatus from fund-raising here while she heads to Cleveland and to a Democratic National Committee meeting in Minnesota. She will return to the East End for a pancake breakfast on Aug. 30 at the Huntting Lane, East Hampton, home of Alan and Susan Patricof,  longtime summer residents here and Democratic Party supporters.

The day is a packed one for Mrs. Clinton. After the breakfast at the Patricofs, she is to zip to Southampton for a lunch at the fashion designer Tory Burch’s house and travel back to East Hampton that night for a Full Moon on the Farm With Hillary Rodham Clinton barbecue at Hilary Leff and Elliot Groffman’s place in Northwest Woods. Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton will provide the hors d’oeuvres. Its chef is Jason Weiner, whose brother is the former New York representative Anthony Weiner. Tickets to the barbecue start at only $500, according to published reports, although the minimum contribution for the other events is $1,000.

Mr. Clinton is known to take to the greens, having played at Montauk Downs Golf Course on Tuesday at around 2:45 p.m. About an hour earlier, a crowd of some 100 were seen awaiting his appearance. About a month ago, Secret Service men were also seen poking around the Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton.

The Clintons have been frequent vacationers here, with Mr. Clinton having made a fund-raising splash during his campaign for re-election. Although in previous summers they rented houses on the East Hampton oceanfront, last summer they chose the seven-bedroom house on the former Bell Estate overlooking Albert’s Landing Beach and Gardiner’s Bay owned by Andre and Lois Nasser instead. The tab is reported to be $100,000. Chelsea Clinton, her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and Mrs. Clinton’s granddaughter, Charlotte, are also expected to spend time here. 

The news of Mrs. Clinton’s Hamptons fund-raising came at about the same time that The New York Times revealed her need to do better at wooing high-paying donors. Republican candidates, The Times reported, had received a total of $124.2 million from contributors flooding money into super PACs, a figure 12 times larger than had come from Democratic donors. According to the Federal Election Commission, Mrs. Clinton has raised over $47 million in traditional contributions, the majority from individuals, which far outweighs other contenders. Jeb Bush has received $11.4 million that way and Bernie Sanders, the surprising contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised $15.2 million. Vice President Joe Biden was in Southampton earlier this month.

Criticized as a candidate who did not relate to voters and came across as cool and distant during her campaign against Barack Obama for the 2008 nomination, Mrs. Clinton has evidenced an easier rapport with reporters and constituents this year. She also demonstrated an easier-going, personal touch when she signed copies of her memoir at BookHampton in East Hampton last year. An article in The Star related a conversation she had with a woman who had injured her leg.

“I broke my elbow a few years back and did physical therapy for it. Have you started physical therapy yet? I hope it goes well for you,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Officials from East Hampton Village and the Amagansett Fire District had a sit-down two weeks ago with the chairman of the Springs Board of Fire Commissioners to express their concerns about how often other agencies have to respond to emergency calls in Springs.

The Springs Fire Department is the only agency on the South Fork without a paid provider on duty at least during the day — and there are no plans to add one, despite the difficulty the district faces in getting a volunteer crew to answer calls, especially during the workweek.

From July 1, 2014, to July 1 of this year, Springs needed help about 26 percent of the time from outside the district to answer 441 calls for service, including 89 calls to assist other districts.

Compared to the four other ambulance districts dispatched by East Hampton Village, Springs fared the worst. Sag Harbor needed the least help, about 3 percent of calls, Montauk less than 4 percent, East Hampton  about 5 percent, and Amagansett less than 8 percent.

Springs had the fewest calls.

East Hampton, meanwhile, received 1,427 total calls, 1,186 in its own district. Its ambulances answered 65 calls in Springs. Amagansett, which had the second fewest calls, received 486 over that 12-month period, including 312 in its own district.

Rebecca Molinaro, the East Hampton Village administrator, called the meeting with Patrick Glennon, the Springs chairman, after it became apparent that the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association was answering a larger number of calls in Springs. “It’s taxing on our volunteers,” she said in an interview last week.

“We’re constantly going there, and so is Amagansett,” said Barbara Borsack, the village deputy mayor and a longtime emergency medical technician in East Hampton. “I would say my main concern is the burnout of our members. At the same time, we can’t let people go without help.”

Officials in neighboring districts would like to see Springs move in the same direction the other agencies have so that patient care starts earlier and ambulances get on the road faster.

Two and a half years ago, all of the agencies serving the areas east of Water Mill were volunteer-only. Despite early resistance, an increased call volume led to a change in philosophy and most de partments began to believe that a paid provider with an advanced level of certification, like a paramedic who responds to a call immediately in a first-responder vehicle, could supplement existing emergency medical services on the South Fork. The Montauk Fire District was the first in the Town of East Hampton to start a paid program in 2013, first having a paid responder on duty 12 hours during the day, and later moving to around-the-clock coverage. The Amagansett Fire District and the East Hampton Village Board followed suit in time for summer 2014, and this summer the Bridgehampton Fire District and the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps got programs up and running.

Earlier this month, the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association’s program moved to 24-hour coverage. The village board, which oversees the association, more than doubled the initial funding for the program to $225,000, just for salaries. “It’s a financial and moral commitment that the village is going to continue,” Ms. Molinaro said.

“Springs is not ready to do any type of paid system,” Mr. Glennon said. “Maybe in a couple of years if we find that is the problem. As of right now, we don’t feel that it’s a major problem.” He denied that there was a major issue with the service the district provides and disputed the figures. In addition to being on the board since 2005, Mr. Glennon has been an ambulance volunteer since 1991 and a critical care technician since 2000.

The district cannot afford a paid service, he said. As it is beginning to look at the budget for 2016, he said the district can only add $6,800 to its current budget of just over $1 million in order to keep increases under the 2-percent tax cap. He acknowledged that the board could pierce the cap if its majority approved it, but he said, “We’re not looking to do that.”

Mr. Glennon believes Springs taxpayers, who are paying the highest taxes in East Hampton Town, mainly due to school taxes and a small business district, do not want any increases. “I know I’m a taxpayer in Springs and I don’t want my taxes going up.”

David King, who serves as the Springs Fire Department chief, said the volunteers, often working two jobs to survive here, are doing the best they can. He believes the district has to find the money for a paid provider to help take the burden off the volunteers. “In my opinion, we need one, but financially, it’s a hard sell,” he said, adding, “It’s just the cost of doing business. It’s the cost of having a municipality.” The chief said he has spoken to the commissioners at their district meetings at least three times since the first of the year on this topic.

“Whatever they need to do to man it, I’m for it. We’ll do without on the fire side of it to get enough money in the budget, or as much as we can, to fund a first responder,” he said. He feels so strongly that he would give up the vehicle provided to him by the district if it would help.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be 24 hours, seven days a week. Maybe they can do a 12-hour shift,” Chief King said. A program like that has cost other districts just over $100,000 a year with per diem employees. “Let the residents of Springs decide what to do,” he said.

Mr. Glennon believes his neighbors are “taking the easy way out” by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on the program. “Before we do that we’ll throw money at training,” he said. For the past two years, Mr. Glennon has said that he wants to see money put toward a regional training program to teach advanced level classes on the South Fork (basic life support classes are taught in Sag Harbor annually). “I’m not saying in one year you’re going to solve all the problems of the East End E.M.S. system, but if you do it for several years. . . .”

“For the short term, we’ve just got to talk to our volunteers and tell them to start stepping up a bit — summer is the problem,” he said.

A shortage of volunteers during the day is not unique to Springs, and officials said it is only made worse when the volunteers who can respond are being called so much to answer other agencies’ calls.

Here’s how the system works: When a caller dials 911 from almost anywhere in East Hampton Town, a dispatcher located at the East Hampton Village Emergency Service Building answers. If it is an ambulance or fire-related emergency, the operator will dispatch the appropriate service from the district the caller is located in.

There are two types of ambulance calls: basic life support, like a sprained ankle or general malaise, and advanced life support, required when a patient is having a heart attack or serious allergic reaction, for instance. If a crew has not signed on within two minutes for an advanced life support call or within three minutes for a basic life support call, the call goes out over the paging system again. After the second reactivation — six minutes into an advanced call or nine minutes into an basic call — a neighboring district is called for help. If that neighboring district cannot help form a crew, it is dispatched to the next district, and so on, until a crew is confirmed.

For example, on Aug. 10, a Montauk ambulance responded to a call on Gardiner Avenue in Springs, arriving 42 minutes after the initial call was dispatched at 8:33 a.m. A Springs emergency medical technician eventually got to the patient 15 minutes before the ambulance arrived.

While a patient waits for an ambulance, so does a police officer. Police officers are often the first to arrive and administer basic care, such as oxygen. “Obviously, it is not ideal for our officers to be left with primary care for any prolonged period of time, both from a police operations standpoint and from care and safety concern,” said East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo. “Getting the fully equipped and trained personnel to the aided as quickly as possible is the primary goal, and the districts that have gone to the paid service have managed to increase their operational efficiency in those areas,” he said.

From July 1, 2014, to July 1 of this year, East Hampton was called to Springs 118 times, though it only transported 57 patients because Springs either eventually formed crews or another agency answered the call. Meanwhile, Amagansett was called there 57 times and only had to transport 5 times.

Longstanding agreements for what the agencies call “mutual aid” are necessary, all agree, because if there is an accident involving several vehicles, additional ambulances will be needed. Multiple calls at once also require the help of neighbors. Most agencies have just two ambulances, though East Hampton and Montauk have three.

A paid system does not solve all the problems in an E.M.S. system, but it has made a huge difference, Ms. Borsack said. “What it’s done in East Hampton, is it’s enabled you to just handle the call with just a volunteer driver,” she said. Plus, it has cut back on the need for help from other districts. “Mostly now, if we’re mutual aiding it’s because we have all three ambulances out.”

Paid providers have been used a bit differently under the mutual aid agreement. Whereas a volunteer, whether a paramedic or basic emergency medical technician, may respond to any mutual aid request, paid providers have been held back from going to help neighbors. Most districts have agreed they will only send the on-duty personnel when a patient is in cardiac arrest. The idea, Ms. Molinaro said, is that the district paying for that service wants to ensure that provider is available to its taxpayers should an emergency arise.

“It’s that mutuality that we’re looking for,” said Jack Emptage, the chairman of the Amagansett Board of Fire Commissioners, who sat in on the Aug. 5 meeting with Mr. Glennon. “Springs residents have got to realize that they are really losing out. I don’t think, I haven’t read anything anywhere, and I know within Amagansett, there has been no backlash to it.”

However, Springs fire commissioners say the residents cannot afford a program even if the cost is $50 extra on an annual tax bill. “Maybe in Amagansett that doesn’t matter, but here in Springs, raising taxes $50 a house just to have 24/7 A.L.S.?” Mr. Glennon said shaking his head.

Chris Harmon, who is on the Springs Board of Fire Commissioners with Mr. Glennon and three others, said Tuesday that while he is also concerned about the budget, a paid program is something “we should take a look into”  as a group. Mr. Harmon drives the ambulance and said he knows all too well how hard it is to get a full crew together, but he also said he has responded to plenty of calls to help neighboring districts over the years.

Leander Arnold, who was elected to the board in December and volunteers as a driver, said he is also concerned about the situation. “We’re a very low tax base,” he said. “Is it going to be really worth it to have someone sitting around the firehouse all the time or is it going to be cost effective?” he asked.

A reward of up to $5,000 is being offered in exchange for information that leads to the capture of two men who burglarized a Three Mile Harbor restaurant early Sunday morning.

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers, working in conjunction with the East Hampton Town Police Department's detective bureau, offered the reward in connection with the break-in at Bay Kitchen Bar on Gann Road. They also released three images of the duo taken from a surveillance video.

Police promised confidentiality for anybody who supplies information on the two by calling 800-220-TIPS (8477). Police have not disclosed the amount of money stolen.

The Long Island Rail Road took to social media on Thursday, asking Hamptons-bound passengers on the Cannonball express train to leave their oversized luggage at home for the rest of the season.

This follows a meeting this week between L.I.R.R. officials and the Federal Railroad Administration at which the feds expressed their concern about packed cars and baggage in the aisles. The worry is that the obstructions could get in the way of an evacuation in the event of an emergency on the way to East Hampton or other points.

According to a notice posted on the M.T.A. website on Thursday, no luggage will be allowed in the aisles or doorway areas on the Cannonball.

Typical L.I.R.R. overhead racks can only accommodate items eight inches thick or less.

“We certainly hope that everyone who wants to board the Cannonball can do so,” Patrick A. Nowakowski, the L.I.R.R. president, said.

“If our customers leave oversized items at home, more of them will be able to enjoy a ride to the Hamptons in under two hours. We need everyone’s cooperation to make this work,” he said.

Penn Station's electronic message boards and its public address system will carry a message: “All luggage MUST fit in the overhead rack or under the seat. Luggage MUST NOT block aisles or doors.”

In a prepared statement the L.I.R.R. said, "The topic of Cannonball crowding came up at a previously scheduled unrelated meeting with the FRA yesterday. We're going to continue our productive conversations with them on this topic."

"For the rest of the summer Cannonball runs, we will take extra steps to ensure that aisles and emergency exits are kept clear of luggage, coolers and other objects that could impede access," it said.

The railroad said that it would assign extra personnel and Metropolitan Transportation Authority officers to Penn Station when the train is loading and on the train itself to ensure a safe and orderly ride.

According to Salvatore Arena, an L.I.R.R. press official, the Cannonball, which leaves Penn Station in Manhattan at 4:06 on Fridays, is made up of nine double-decker passenger cars, each with 140 seats and unrestricted standing room, and three reserved parlor cars, where standing is not allowed. Tickets for the first-come, first-seated cars are $28.25; the reserved seating cars cost $49.25 for eastbound service and $41.50 on the return trip.

In a post on the photo-sharing site Instagram on Thursday, the @mtalirr account reminded passengers to "stow all items under seats or in overhead racks."

Last year, the L.I.R.R. sold almost 252,000 tickets to passengers headed to stations between Southampton and Montauk, a 16-percent increase over the 2013 figure.

There are no limits set by either the M.T.A. or the federal government on how many people can stand in a passenger train car.

CBS2 New York was the first to report on the meeting between the L.I.R.R. and Federal Railroad Administration.

The East End Women’s Alliance has no real organizational structure and no formal positions, although a couple of its members call Lilia Melani “captain” for her ability to coordinate events. Mostly, its members gather to talk and discuss reproductive and women’s rights, which since 1971 they turned to action each year in the form of their Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates women’s suffrage in 1920.

This occasion has fallen by the wayside since the late 1990s, and many of the alliance’s original members have died, but when the five women still here reunited last year to donate their archival photos and videos to Barnard College, someone suggested they revive the Equality Day. And so they did for the 95th anniversary of women’s right to vote.

A Women’s Equality Day celebration will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the East Hampton High School. Admission is free.

This year, icons and trailblazers from the past will speak, including Marilyn Fitterman, Judy Lerner, Phyllis Chesler, and Bill Baird. Helen Rattray, the publisher of The Star and its former longtime editor, will be honored for her work at the newspaper.

“She’s a pioneer,” said Sandy Rapp, a member and the group’s singer, about Ms. Rattray. “She’s a great example of feminism at work. We’re proud of her.”

The speakers also have deep roots in feminism. Ms. Fitterman is a past president of the New York State National Organization for Women and is now the East End president. She has given speeches about hate crimes, the separation of church and state, abortion, and other feminist topics.

Ms. Lerner, now in her mid-90s, recently joined the United Nations executive committee to represent nongovernmental organizations. During her years as a civil rights activist, she traveled to Cuba in protest, chained herself to a White House gate during the Vietnam War, and found a mentor in her college friend for life, the late Bella Abzug.

Ms. Chesler became a feminist after she married an Afghan in the 1960s, moved to Kabul, and endured such confining, prison-like treatment that she longed to escape. She wrote in an essay in 2006 adapted from her book, “Death of Feminism,” that as her time wore on in Afghanistan, she underwent house arrest and suffered from hepatitis after her mother-in-law ordered that her water no longer be boiled. These incidents shaped her activism later in life.

Mr. Baird also fought for women. A pioneer of reproductive rights, he was convicted of a felony after handing out a contraceptive to a woman following a lecture of his at Boston University. His case went to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that unmarried people have a right to contraceptives, prohibited in Massachusetts at the time.

On a recent Friday morning in the living room of Astrid Myers-Rosset, an alliance member, four members of the organization congregated to talk about their work and reminisce about their milestones. The height of the women’s movement across America happened in the 1970s, when birth control became legal and the Roe v. Wade decision on a woman’s right to abortion became a landmark case. During those years, throngs of men and women marched along Main Street in East Hampton on Equality Day, waving colorful banners hand-painted by local female artists. The alliance held two-day conferences at the Amagansett School to discuss rape, marriage, and work.

Their most memorable Equality Day occurred years later, in the summer of 1984. The women had invited Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice presidential candidate, to speak about Reaganomics and women. Secret service men swarmed the area and the roads cleared, but it still took Ms. Ferraro four hours to drive from Westhampton to East Hampton. Around 300 people packed into the Amagansett School to see her. Ms. Rapp had opened the event with a concert and had to sing for hours until Ms. Ferraro arrived.

The alliance is still nervous about the state of women’s rights today, another reason its members decided to hold a panel discussion this year.

“Reproductive rights are at risk and equality is being eroded,” said Ms. Melani. “We would like to communicate a sense of urgency.”

Their biggest challenge this time around has been rallying the younger generations. Ms. Myers-Rosset recalled walking into a store on Newtown Lane where she handed a saleswoman a flyer.

“ ‘Oh, I didn’t know there was a problem,’ ” Ms. Myers-Rosset remembered the woman saying.

As the conversation turned back to modern-day politics, Ms. Rapp chimed in that, “It takes quite a degree of imagination,” for the government to lay claim to someone’s body. With that, she grabbed her mint green guitar and began belting out the lyrics to her song “Remember Rose: A Song for Choice,” about Rosie Jimenez, who died after an illegal abortion. When the chorus came around, the others chimed in.

Get your laws off me; I’m not your property

Don’t plan my family; I’ll plan my own

I don’t want to be in your theocracy

Remember liberty, remember Rose

The scene — Ms. Rapp strumming the verse and the three women looking on fondly — resembled an intimate campfire session. After all, bonding with one another is how this alliance blossomed and since 1971 how their feelings and thoughts became action.

Less than a month after it received a real estate appraisal of the former Stella Maris Regional School property, the Sag Harbor School District has announced it will be formally exploring the idea of purchasing the property.

Katy Graves, the district superintendent, dubbed the process “an investigation” during Monday night’s school board meeting.

The details of the appraisal have not been released, but it was the focus of an executive session during the board’s July 20 meeting. Ms. Graves said Monday that the appraisal is “now in the hands of our architect and our attorney” and will be discussed in more detail during another executive session prior to the Aug. 31 school board meeting.

She said the investigation process would include collecting information and feedback from taxpayers, families, educators in Sag Harbor, and even school leaders from other nearby districts.

“We don’t want to jump to conclusions,” she said. “We have a growing population of students. We’ve got to ask folks their opinions and see if we have the support of our community.”

Ms. Graves gave examples of possible programs, among them expanded special education or advanced science, technology, or arts programs, that could theoretically be housed in the former Stella Maris School if Sag Harbor acquires the property.

The most recent listing price of the property, which is owned by St. Andrew’s Catholic Church, was $3.5 million. A representative of the church declined to comment on Tuesday.

Stella Maris was originally known as St. Andrew’s Parish School. It was founded by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary in 1877, and it closed at the end of the 2010-11 school year after sharply declining enrollment and mounting financial troubles. The East Hampton Star reported in May 2011 that the school’s debt had reached nearly half a million dollars.

The owner of a house at 49 Gannet Drive in Montauk, Eileen Alvaliotis of Massapequa, has received citations from East Hampton Town alleging overcrowding and excessive turnover. She was in Town Justice Court Monday to be arraigned on a total of 27 charges.

Under town code, a homeowner can only rent a house twice a season. In addition to the charge of excessive turnover, Ms. Alvaliotis and her husband, who was in the courtroom but not identified, were said to have converted several non-living spaces into bedrooms, including a closet that was reportedly being used as a child’s bedroom.

After entering Ms. Alvaliotis’s not-guilty plea to the misdemeanors, East Hampton Town Justice Lisa R. Rana set her next court date for Monday. Ms. Alvaliotis asked for more time, saying she had five young children at home.

“No, there are health and safety issues here,” Justice Rana said.

Also on Monday, the arraignment process began for alleged code violations in a house on Ocean Boulevard, East Hampton, off Queens Lane, that is owned by the Hamptons Country Day Camp. David S. Skolnick, 32, of Plainview and Doris E. Rosen, 60, of Jericho, both listed on the camp’s website as directors, were not present for their arraignment. Nor were any of the camp’s officers.

“They should have been here today,” Justice Rana said to Brian C. Doyle of the Bridgehampton law firm Farrell Fritz, representing the defendants. She set the return date for the arraignments for Aug. 31, after Michael Sendlenski, the prosecuting attorney for East Hampton Town, told her the house no longer had pressing health and safety issues that would have merited a more immediate return.

Mr. Doyle would not comment afterward.

The clown doctors will be on call in East Hampton on Sunday when performers from the Big Apple Circus demonstrate why laughter can be some of the best medicine.

Proceeds from a 3 p.m. reception at Mary Jane and Charles Brock’s house on Main Street and a performance following at Guild Hall will benefit the nonprofit circus’s Clown Care program, which sends professional artists on “clown rounds” in 15 pediatric hospitals around the country, spreading cheer to lighten the load as families deal with difficult medical realities.

“I love bringing joy and wonder into the hospital in this way,” said Karen McCarty, the circus’s creative director of community programs. “Not only is it a nice thing to do, it’s an important thing to do. The children want to be children, to play and laugh, and we allow them to do that. We treat the healthy part of the child. . . . We bring a normalcy to the hospital and laughter is part of that.”

Ms. McCarty manages about 100 clowns who see more than 250,000 children each year. Their duties range from dispensing laughter through small shows to accompanying cancer patients as radiation escorts. “We make it more like a parade rather than something that’s filled with anxiety,” she explained.

“We realized early on that we’re there as much for the hospital staff and the parents and the caregivers. They need that sort of release as well.”

At the Brock residence, members of the circus’s Clown Care team will roam the garden tweaking noses, balancing on balls, spinning plates, and wowing guests with wondrous bubbles of all shapes and sizes. At the close of the reception, partygoers will join a procession down Main Street to Guild Hall, where veteran Clown Care artists will perform in “Red Nose Revue” at 5 p.m.

The Clown Care program will have its 30th anniversary next year. Ms. McCarty, herself a childhood cancer survivor, has been with it for 27 years. She is directing and will M.C. “Red Nose Revue.”

Tickets to the party and the performance cost $125, or $120 for members of Guild Hall. Tickets to the performance only are $50, or $48 for members.

The Big Apple Circus, a classical European-style one-ring circus, has a run each fall and winter at Lincoln Center, with a new show and new acts each year. This year’s show, called “The Grand Tour,” opens on Oct. 21. In addition to the Clown Care program, which also has a geriatric branch called Vaudeville Visits, the circus has a number of other outreach programs, including a Circus of the Senses for the hearing and vision-impaired, after-school circus programs, and a new initiative with Autism Speaks to adapt Big Apple shows for audiences on the autism spectrum.

Tickets to Sunday’s party and show are available through Guild Hall.

While many of her peers were taking care of last-minute dorm shopping and picking their first college classes, Zoe Vatash was getting ready to join the Israeli Army.

Ms. Vatash, who has lived in Noyac since she was 4 years old, has committed to two years in the Israel Defense Forces because, “I just feel like serving is the least I can do. College can wait, and I think I will have invaluable experiences while I’m there,” she said in an email as she prepared to fly out of Kennedy Airport. “I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor and a proud Zionist. I believe in the state of Israel and its right to exist as an official homeland of the Jewish people.”

The 18-year-old joined 59 other soldiers from across North America through Nefesh B’Nefesh, or Jewish Souls United, a nonprofit organization that promotes immigration to Israel, on a flight to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Monday. “If I’m going to be living and serving in Israel for two years then it just makes sense that I make aliyah, becoming a citizen,” Ms. Vatash said. “They’ve been really patient and informative and really made the complicated bureaucratic process go as smoothly as possible.”

She is part of Garin Tzabar, a program that puts lone soldiers in groups of about 30 people who will experience military service together as a social unit. The largest I.D.F. immigrant program in Israel, it has supported more than 2,000 soldiers since it was founded in 1991, and is partnered with the Israel Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. “They’re all amazing people and the sense of community and support definitely encouraged me to pursue enlisting,” she said.

After an opening ceremony Wednesday, she was to board a bus and go north to Kibbutz Beit Zera, where she will live for the next three months during an assimilation period. “It’s meant to become my home, where I’ll be staying on weekends when I’m not at whichever base I am assigned to serve at,” she said. In November, she will officially enlist and begin basic training.

Ms. Vatash officially made the decision this past May, about a month before she turned 18 and graduated from Pierson High School, where she earned an advanced Regents diploma. “Halfway through my junior year, I was 16 and all my friends were thinking about college, and I suddenly realized that this was an option for me. It felt like the right thing to do,” she said. In Israel, it is required that young adults serve: two years for women and three years for men. “Nowadays there are programs that would allow me to serve later in life for a shorter amount of time, but I think that serving now will allow me to give my best to Israel. College will be there when I get back.”

She’s not the first member of her family to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Her parents, Sue Vatash and Dr. Gal Vatash, their siblings, a few of her cousins, her grandfather, and her great-grandmother all served the Israeli army.

Still, her parents were surprised by her decision. “I’m very antiviolence, more an artsy than athletic kind of person,” she said, “but they’ve been incredibly supportive and so helpful. They probably know what I’m getting myself into more than I do and have been invaluable resources and influences in my decision.”

Ms. Vatash did not idle the summer away as she prepared to go off to Israel. She worked at Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton, and, she said, spent as much time with her loved ones as she could. A budding photojournalist, she had a photography exhibit at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, of which she is a member. The display was of 19 of her images from her past two trips to Israel. The money she made is going toward trips and necessities during the three-month assimilation period. 

In two years, she plans to return to the states for college.

For now, she is focused on the journey ahead. “Israel’s security has been and continues to be a great concern on a daily basis. Although physically small, Israel lives in the hearts of millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims all over the world. The existence of Israel is a universal concern.”

On a January morning this year, Cliff Kalfaian grabbed his dog and his 15-year-old handheld Geiger counter, an instrument that resembles a calculator and measures ionizing radiation. He headed from his house in Montauk toward Oyster Pond on a leisurely stroll. Mr. Kalfaian studied geology in college and still, almost 30 years later, likes to sample rocks on his hikes. As per his other walks, he set out with no real expectations, but as he headed east, crossed the bend at Shagwong Point and neared Big Reed Pond, his Geiger began beeping like it had never before.

Mr. Kalfaian followed the intense clicking. Normally, he hears about 50 clicks a minute. The beeping continued to quicken and soon skyrocketed to 700 counts per minute. He grew excited at the prospect of finding radioactive minerals, which to him would be like uncovering buried treasure. Near the pond, he saw before him a black sand deposit, like a late-afternoon shadow cast across the tan shore. He picked up some of the radioactive grains and they weighed heavy in his hand. He guessed they might contain iron.

Giddy from his discovery, Mr. Kalfaian returned the next day equipped with a shovel, sample jars, and a magnet. He used the latter instrument to draw out the magnetic grains and separate them from the nonmagnetic ones, the ones that contained the radioactive minerals. When he was through, he saw the radioactive pieces, dark pinkish specks resembling a garnet stone, flecked with white grains.

Mr. Kalfaian found the radioactive sands in the area to be widespread and surmised it had occurred naturally, not from poisonous chemicals. But the big question loomed in his mind: Where was it coming from?

Back at home, he shook those remaining particles onto a slanted board until the white grains rolled away and only the black sand remained. His Geiger counter showed that the clicks had reached 800 per minute.

Mr. Kalfaian is not the first to discover the black sands of Long Island.  In 1961, a man named Norman E. Taney determined the mineral content of the sands between Westhampton and East Hampton to range from 2 to 8 percent.

The sands at Montauk Point were especially mineral-heavy. A sample of magnetite, a naturally occurring iron oxide, tested at 25 per cent in a sample taken there.

Gilbert Hanson, a professor at Stony Brook University who studies the geology of Long Island, guessed the sand Mr. Kalfaian found was made of monazite, a rare-earth mineral laced with garnet, magnetite, and other dark minerals, all of which Mr. Kalfaian had surmised as well.

A 1963 report by Wallace de Laguna titled “Geology of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Vicinity, Suffolk County, New York” confirms Mr. Hanson’s theory for other parts of Long Island, not just Montauk. Scientists analyzed monazite samples from Baiting Hollow beach sand to reveal a little over 8 percent thorium oxide and the rest uranium. Another sand sample made of zircon, a gemstone, showed no trace of thorium, which is the ingredient that makes the sands radioactive.

“This confirmed the tentative conclusion reached from the counting measurements that the greater part of the local activity is due to the monazite,” the report states.

“It is not surprising or of concern. At least to me,” wrote Dr. Hanson in an email about the radioactive sands Mr. Kalfaian came across.

Dr. Hanson later explained, “It’s just a natural part of the sand, and when the wind, for example, blows across a sandy beach, it’ll tend to pick up the quartz, which is lower density than the black minerals.” These dark minerals are then left behind and sprinkled across on the beach.

The black sands here were mined for their iron content during colonial times, according to a report by Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook. They have been discovered in Brazil, India, and other parts of the United States as well.

For some, like Mr. Kalfaian, the sands represent an earthen beauty and geology at work. Dr. Hanson, too, spoke affectionately about the sand, like a relic of history. He takes his students to study these minerals on field trips and said when walkers come across it, some like to bottle it up as a keepsake.

Dr. Hanson had one small reservation, though.

“I wouldn’t eat it,” he said. But then he laughed. “I wouldn’t eat any kind of sand.”