As the body of the sperm whale calf was carried over the rocks and down the beach at Ditch Plain in Montauk Saturday evening — its 18-foot length suspended from a payloader — dozens of people lined the dunes to watch the procession backlit by a brilliant sunset.

    That morning surfers paddled out into the waves only a hundred yards from where the whale lay high and dry among the boulders, its blowhole opening for a breath now and again. The tide was low. As it rose, a steady flow of people made the trek to see the stricken, and, as it turned out, dying animal.

    Why can’t we try to push it back into the ocean? Why are the police just standing there? If it’s going to die, why can’t they put it out of its misery? The questions were a constant refrain as the hours passed. Higher water seemed to give the whale, and its human supporters, some hope, but the significant amount of blood in the water only fueled the onlookers’ concern. 

    Frustration, and in some cases, anger grew with the knowledge that biologists from the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation’s stranding network were making painfully slow progress through summer traffic from their headquarters in Riverhead. During the wait, police had to stop two would-be Good Samaritans from trying to help the animal off the rocks.

    When Kim Durham, a biologist, and her team finally arrived it took them just minutes to assess the whale’s condition and to offer their grim prognosis. The sperm whale calf would not survive.

     The species was once the source of the cleanest burning lamp oil, which lighted the Montauk Lighthouse for years. It is a toothed whale, the deepest-diving whale, has the largest brain of any animal in the world, and was the whale Herman Melville chose to immortalize in “Moby Dick.” After being heavily fished in the 19th century, its numbers are now increasing. Sperm whales are now protected throughout the world.

    They are found off New York, but usually well out to sea. The whale at Ditch Plain was a dependent calf, according to Ms. Durham, meaning it had not finished nursing, and it obviously had a serious but unknown injury.

    Even if the whale were healthy and could be towed offshore, it would starve without its mother, the biologist said at about 1 p.m. on Saturday. The calf died naturally just two hours later. Plans were made to remove it from the beach at town’s expense, take it to the East Hampton Town landfill, and perform a necropsy to determine why it became stranded. The Keith Grimes company did the heavy lifting.

    Reached on Monday after she had completed the necropsy, Ms. Durham added some new information about the whale calf. She spoke about her shared frustration, about euthanasia, about the bureaucracy surrounding stranded marine mammals, and how an individual from the South Fork, ideally a veteranarian willing to learn and follow federal guidelines, might prevent needless suffering in the future.

    “She was 18 feet long and weighed 5,000 pounds. The teeth had not erupted,” she said, referring to the fact that the whale was still nursing, although squid beaks found in her stomach meant that she was “in transition” to solid food.

    “Sperm whales nurse for up to two years, so even though she was transitioning, she would have been in the company of the mother. Female calfs tend to stay within a herd, a matriarchal society with mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. Males tend to leave. The females tend to stay together far offshore. It’s very rare to see them close to shore in New York. If one strands on the South Shore of Long Island, something’s wrong,” Ms. Durham said.

    “Along the left side of the tail stock was a considerable wound, a two or three-foot, circular wound,” in other words, the bite of a shark or killer whale. “It was healing, but had the potential to slow the animal down.” Ms. Durham also reported the whale had some plastic in her stomach, although probably not enough to affect her health.

    “It’s a sad case, and I’m really trying to explain the actions we took,” she said, going on to explain that those people, such as the foundation staff, who are involved in responding to stranded marine mammals, were up against strict, federally imposed protocols.

    She said, for instance, that “before we put down an animal, we are required to have a plan to secure the carcass. We have to have a disposal plan in place even before it dies. It is irresponsible to euthanize and then let the tide take the animal out to sea.”

    The reason, she said, was the possibility of attracting sharks, but also because some chemicals used to euthanize big animals kill the scavengers that feed on a carcass. She gave the example of bald eagles dying in Alaska after eating the remains of animals euthanized with pentobarbital.

    Federal guidelines also prevent unauthorized people from pushing stranded whales and dolphins back to sea. She said the health of a common dolphin found stranded on a Montauk beach this summer was very likely compromised when people with good intentions continued to push it back to sea. “We have tanks, not for whales, but for dolphins, seals, and turtles.”

    Ms. Durham said the foundation was sensitive to the criticism that followed what appeared to be the delayed and botched effort to euthanize a humpback whale that was stranded east of Main Beach in East Hampton last year. “I expect letters. Our Facebook page is getting hit. I’m willing to try to explain, but for some people it doesn’t matter.”

    The biologist agreed that summer traffic was a time-consuming obstacle. She said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, was open to the idea of involving an individual living on the South Fork, where strandings occur relatively often. Ideally the person would be a veteranarian willing to learn federal protocols and get first-reponder training in order to prevent needless suffering of a stranded marine mammal if there was not hope of survival.

    She said she understood how people were often “blindsided by their emotions. . . . This would not be a three-hour lecture. They would have to work with us. They would have to be trained, otherwise it’s a liability.”

        A yearling sperm whale calf was found stranded on the rocks east of Ditch Plain beach in Montauk early Saturday morning. The animal was alive but obviously injured and weak.

   There was a shared feeling of helplessness as crowds gathered and watched the animal’s weak attempts to escape. As the tide rose around the whale, a number of people ventured forth to try to push the whale offshore but were turned back by East Hampton Marine Patrol officers and East Hampton Town Police citing a safety issue. The whale might have been young, but it was 20 feet long, weighed thousands of pounds, and was wedged between and on top of large rocks.

   Ed Michels, East Hampton Town's senior harbormaster, said that because whales were federally protected officers were required to wait for experts with the knowledge and authority to act.

   At noon, members of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation arrived. Kim Durham, an experienced marine biologist, quickly assessed the situation. She explained that even under the best of circumstances, even if the whale was uninjured and could be towed into deeper water, “it is a dependent calf,” a yearling not yet weaned from its mother. “It would starve to death,” she said. The whale was bleeding, likely from internal injuries.

   Ms. Durham said the foundation was sensitive to the public’s concerns in light of the anger and criticism that resulted from what appeared to be delayed and botched efforts to euthanize a humpback whale stranded near Main Beach in East Hampton Village in March 2010.

   She explained that putting such a large animal down was not easy, but would be done if it did not die naturally. Just after noon, she said she did not expect the whale to live much longer. The scientist said the foundation would make an effort to study the whale to see what caused it to come ashore.

    Martin Drew, a local resident who has been pressing East Hampton Town for years to allow all-terrain vehicles on public trails and to establish A.T.V. and motocross bicycle tracks, had his say before the town board on Tuesday.

    Announcing that he was now the head of a group called Long Island Sports, he said he might drop the quest to expand where motorized “off-highway vehicles” are permitted to focus solely on a site for motorized bicycle sports. Trails are now limited to walkers and bicyclists.

    Mr. Drew told the board that the group had four other members at present and was planning to become a nonprofit organization.  

    “We’ve talked about it among ourselves, with some of my most senior advisers,” he told the board.

    Mr. Drew said he would like to lease either 5 acres of town land for a bike course or 10 acres to include an A.T.V. track and perhaps other sports. He said he would have no trouble raising the $25,000 that might be required for a bicycling track, while a full-scale facility would cost between $50,000 and $3.5 million.

    “How popular is BMX [bicycle motocross]?” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson asked. Mr. Drew handed him a petition that he had circulated “back in the day,” which, he said, drew 400 to 500 supporters. The petition, to allow A.T.V.s on town trails, had been submitted to a town board nine years ago.

    “It had a lot of 14 and 15-year-olds’ signatures,” Mr. Drew said, but those kids have now grown up and have their own children seeking places to ride A.T.V.s.

    Mr. Wilkinson and other board members said they would not entertain the idea of a track for A.T.V. use, but agreed to consider a recreational facility for motocross bicycles. However, the supervisor said, “Part of the process is to show that there is a user group. We’re not going to fund something on the basis that five people are going to use that facility.”

     Councilwoman Julia Prince agreed. “I think the burden is on you, Martin, to bring us that user group,” she said. “I think that’s the place we stop every time.”

    Mr. Drew said he would poll schoolchildren to assess support once school is back in session. But, he told the board, “the place that we stop is, you’re trying to throw the O.H.V. community by the wayside,” using O.H.V. to signify off-highway” rather than all-terrain vehicles.

    He also complained that, in limiting the trail system to walkers and bicyclists, the town had “given away our resource.” As a boy and a younger man, he said, he freely rode miles of town trails.

    Councilman Pete Hammerle commented that the resource Mr. Drew referred to was private property. As the town sought to expand the trail system by obtaining easements across private property, he said, telling landowners that A.T.V.s would be zipping by would have killed the deal.

    With A.T.V.s off the table, “We as a board will look at properties that are appropriate” for bicycle sports, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said. “You are going to get back to us with names. We as a board need to know we are doing something for a group that exists.”

    “I can prove that to you,” Mr. Drew said, adding, “BMX has just been accepted into the Olympic sporting genre.”

    The East Hampton Town Planning Board revisited a contentious discussion of a commercial subdivision behind the Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton on July 13, and ultimately resolved it by a four-to-three vote to modify a 2005 approval.

    The town attorney’s office recommended last month that the planning board amend the resolution granting Carolyn Snyder and her late husband, Harold, approval to divide seven acres behind the family’s farm and stand on Three Mile Harbor Road into four new commercial lots.

    The application has been at a standstill since 2005 due to a question concerning access to the subdivision through the north portion of West Drive. Last month, the town attorney’s office informed the planning board that it “may have erred by making the condemnation of the northerly West Drive a condition of approval” of the application.

    After researching information provided by the Snyders’ attorney, the town attorney’s office told the board that it could not require access over a portion of land that an applicant does not own and has no legal rights to.

    Three board members were opposed to reopening the debate last week, while others were vocal in their determination to make the changes.

    Those opposed felt that the planning board was being given a directive to do so by the town board.

    “We have created an approval that is illegal. We cannot ask an applicant to make the entrance to West Drive legal. I feel that we’re two years out minimum on this roadwork — gathering estimates, utilities, and the roadwork itself. We owe it to the applicant, as well as the neighbors, to do this,” said Patrick Schutte, a board member.

    He said that the board should be held accountable for the error and should amend the resolution.

    Peter Van Scoyoc, a board member against the modification, pointed out that none of the sitting board members had been on the board when the application was first discussed and approved. “None of us have anything to do with this application,” he said. He was concerned that the point of access would change to the southern portion of West Drive, which many neighbors oppose, because a sentence that will be removed from the resolution reads, “As a result, this approval is contingent upon the applicant obtaining legal access to the northerly portion of West Drive.” He questioned the rationale behind the amendments and whether or not it would speed up the process.

    “This is not an application to change the access point. What’s being changed is the requirement that the town would have to create that northerly access before the applicant can have the map signed and filed,” said Kathryn Santiago, the board’s attorney.

    Board members were unclear who would be responsible for opening the access. “It appears it would be action by the town board,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, adding that the 2005 approval was given with the understanding that the Snyders would take the northern access, which they agreed to. “From my understanding, it’s not an imposition, it’s an agreement,” he said.

    Ms. Santiago reassured the board that everyone involved still wants the northern access; however, “the provision [in the determination] is legally impermissible. We’re looking to change the language, and take out the legally impermissible portion. Only the northerly access would be utilized.”

    Reed Jones, the board’s chairman, told Mr. Van Scoyoc that “you’re discounting the advice the town attorney has given us. They reviewed this, backwards and forwards.”

    “I think we’re in complete agreement that the Snyders have been royally screwed,” said Eileen Roaman Catalano, a board member who opposed the modification. “They want access to their property.”

    “When they went through the initial process they could have asked for southern access or through their property. It was that they didn’t want to do the things that were legal, go through their property or the southern route. They didn’t do that,” Ms. Catalano said.

    Bob Schaeffer, another dissenting board member, questioned why the modification was not presented as its own application. “It is a memo for discussion. I have no problem with dealing with a modification. Why hasn’t this come to us as a modification to an application? Then we go ahead and act on it as a normal application,” Mr. Schaeffer said.

    Ms. Santiago informed the board that making a change usually does not warrant much attention. “When there’s an error, we just do a modification. It’s a pretty normal procedure,” she said. She advised the board members to decide what they want to do, “modify the approval or not. The access would not change, but the finding of fact would.”

    When it came time to cast a vote, board members were still divided on the ramifications of their action. “I don’t know how we can deal with solving these problems if we don’t have the information in front of us,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “It’s an unusual situation. From a planning standpoint, everyone agrees the northerly access is the way to go. Is it an issue of money?” he wondered. “I’m very uncomfortable with this approach.”

    In response, the chairman told Mr. Van Scoyoc, “You’re entitled to your opinion, and I think you have some good points.”

    Asked if the resolution approving the subdivision should be modified as suggested by the town attorney’s office, Mr. Schutte, Nancy Keeshan, Frank Falcone, and Mr. Jones voted yes. Ms. Catalano, Mr. Schaeffer, and Mr. Van Scoyoc said no.

    Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Teresa Quigley, the deputy supervisor, entered the July 13 meeting before the Snyder discussion and sat in the back of the room. Although they did not comment, their presence pointed to the concerns of the board members who opposed modifying the 2005 approval.

    According to State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., “The town board makes appointments to the planning board and the Z.B.A., and then the planning board is supposed to act independently from the town board. Other than making the appointments, the town board isn’t supposed to be involved in the daily aspects of the planning board and zoning board.”

    “It’s not proper for a town board member to try to direct a planning board member or a Z.B.A. member how to vote or make a decision,” Mr. Thiele said. “An application comes in, and boards are supposed to make decisions based on facts presented to them. They’re supposed to be outside of political influence.”

    Howver, he said, “There is nothing wrong with town board members attending a planning board meeting. There’s nothing wrong with assessing what’s going on.”

    When he was the Southampton Town supervisor, he said, “it was my policy to never publically comment on an application that was presented from another board in town.”

    Jay Schneiderman, a Suffolk County legislator and former East Hampton Town supervisor, is in the same camp as Mr. Thiele. “In general I did not attend those meetings unless it was that someone was at the end of their appointment or I was checking to see if a chairperson was doing their job.”

    “You don’t really want them being political in their decision making. You want them to feel they have a sense of immunity and can do whatever they want without retribution,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

    In a move the chairwoman of its local chapter, Elaine Jones, characterized as a “back room deal,” Zachary Cohen has been replaced by Bill Wilkinson as the Independence Party candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor. “I am so upset,” she said Monday. “I was lied to. We are checking in with the board of elections.”

    According to Ms. Jones, on Monday Mr. Wilkinson, as a result of papers filed with the Suffolk County Board of Elections, received a so-called Wilson-Pakula authorization from the party’s leadership designating him as the Independence Party candidate for supervisor, despite the fact that the local Independence Party had named Mr. Cohen as its candidate of choice. Authorization is required because Mr. Wilkinson, a Republican, is not a party member. Mr. Cohen, who is running on the Democratic line, is also not a member of the party.

    For non-party members to be eligible to run on a third party line, according to New York State Election laws, a candidate for town supervisor must receive signatures from 5 percent of the registered party members. In East Hampton, this means signatures of 47 of the 944 registered Independence Party members were needed.

    “I had 80 signatures for Zach,” said Ms. Jones. She submitted them to Frank MacKay, chairman of the Suffolk County, New York State, and National Independence Parties, on July 11, she said. “Theresa Quigley carried petitions for Bill [Wilkinson]. As a notary, she can,” said Ms. Jones. According to Mr. Cohen, Wilkinson supporters “came in with a petition that had the required number of party member signatures” to file a “right to challenge,” his nomination.

    “What I don’t understand,” said Ms. Jones, is “if the Republicans wanted to take the line of the Independents, why haven’t we been allowed to have a primary?” Had Independence Party leadership granted Wilson-Pakula authorization to both Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Cohen, a primary would have been held to determine which candidate would receive the party’s endorsement. It is now too late to run a primary. “Our 944 [party members] should have been given the right to choose,” Ms. Jones said.

    In a May release endorsing Mr. Cohen, Ms. Jones wrote, “Although the decision was a difficult one, many of the Independence Party members felt that because Zach Cohen is neither a registered Republican or Democrat, he will be an independent thinker and represent all the people of East Hampton Town.” In the previous, 2009, election, the party endorsed Mr. Wilkinson, a Republican who had also received Conservative Party backing.

    Ms. Jones said that UpIsland party leadership chose not to endorse Mr. Wilkinson’s Republican running mates, Steven Gaines and Richard Haeg, candidates for the town board and instead provided de facto support for the local designees, Bill Mott, an Independence Party member, and Marilyn Behan, a Democrat who received Wilson Pakula authorization from party leaders to run on the Independence Party line. “I have a good slate,” said Ms. Jones, referring to Mr. Mott and Ms. Behan, “and I’m voting for Zach.”   

    Assemblymen Fred W. Thiele Jr., an Independence Party member, said he, like Ms. Jones, was surprised that the party leadership chose not to hold a primary, assuming both Mr. Wilkinson’s and Mr. Cohen’s petitions were valid. “To my knowledge there weren’t any previous disagreements between East Hampton and county party officials,” he said.

    Reached at his office Tuesday, Mr. Wilkinson said that he “hadn’t received any word on my nomination, [by the Independence Party] but if what people are saying is true, I’m grateful to the 83 people who signed my petition and to Frank Mackay.”

    Ms. Jones has been unable to reach Mr. MacKay since the decision to endorse Mr. Wilkinson was made. “I’m not resigning. They [party leadership] will have to remove me. This is as dirty as it gets,” she said.

    Mr. MacKay did not respond to several requests for comment.

    “Anyone can become disabled in an instant,” Glenn Hall, a longtime resident of Amagansett and a member of the East Hampton Town and Village Disabilities Advisory Board, said during an interview at his house on Cross Highway overlooking Gardiner’s Bay.

    The sobering message is a truth that local government embraces, he said, although budgetary concerns sometimes stand in the way.

    It was understandable, he said, that issues of the handicapped can be invisible to people who are not disabled, and the same was true of disabled people’s unknowing insensitivity to the obstacles facing folks with other handicaps. “Each disability has its own barriers. I may not know the concerns of a blind person, or a deaf person.” 

    Mr. Hall said that in the face of aging infrastructure, he had decided to put out a call asking the disabled in the area to inform his board of any obstacles they face.

    If they exist within the town’s jurisdiction, the will to fix them might be there, but the budget might not. Mr. Hall said that his board looked to fix an immediate problem, then find ways to deal with the town or village to address similar problems comprehensively and “not piecemeal.”

    He joined the disabilities advisory board in 1993, three years after passage of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The board’s aim was, and is, to assure that local municipalities, and others, follow the guidelines and regulations of the far-reaching statute.

    Mr. Hall gave East Hampton Town and East Hampton Village high marks in this regard. He added that this was true within the town’s jurisdiction even before passage of the A.D.A legislation, under the guidance of John Behan, a disabled marine veteran, former state assemblyman, and former town assessor.

    Mr. Hall said that as far as he knew, East Hampton Town and Village were the only municipalities that had incorporated the Americans with Disabilities Act into local law. It was done under Supervisor Jay Schneiderman’s administration.

    The town and village disabilities board pressed for it after it became clear in the early ’90s that neither the town nor village could force the United Artists Theater into compliance with the federal law. So, the board formed the not-for-profit East End Disabilities Group that threatened a boycott of the theater on Memorial Day weekend. “We made that happen.”

    “Everyone is on board.” This was a mom and apple pie issue in East Hampton Town, Mr. Hall said, and “the village is very much a part of it. They’re a wonderful partner.”

    The will is uniquely there, he said, but budgetary concerns need to be overcome. He said he was approached recently by a wheelchair-bound person who complained about the condition of sidewalks along Accabonac Road. “It was costing the man in wheelchair repairs. Mr. Hall’s response was to alert Scott King, East Hampton’s highway superintendent, with whom he said he had had a good working relationship.

    Reached yesterday, Mr. King said he had worked with Mr. Hall recently when downtown Montauk got a new parking pattern. “He came down and suggested moving a handicapped parking spot closer to a curb cut.”

    Mr. King said he had inspected the sidewalks at Accabonac Road and agreed that eight-foot-long cement sidewalk “panels” as well as curb cuts needed repair. “The big issue is we don’t have a budget line. Traditionally, in the past, we’ve had $100,000 for sidewalk repair. We haven’t had that in three years. The town has to be A.D.A.-compliant, so we’re doing what we can with money from other areas.”    

    Mr. King said he understood the town was in the midst of a budget crunch, but suggested that, “instead of having a capital line for repairing sidewalks, they should be a regular line item in my budget, so I don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul.” The highway superintendent said a $1.3 million Highway Department budget surplus was used to fill budget shortfalls townwide, “not a good idea with our crumbling infrastructure.” 

    Like tsunamis and earthquakes, Alison Thompson is a force of nature. The quick-thinking, fast-talking self-described Australian New Yorker didn't sit around in horror like so many others when, during the winter holidays of 2004, she saw on her television much of Indonesia destroyed by a tsunami. She grabbed her last $300 and hopped on a plane, with nothing guiding her except an overwhelming desire to be of service.

    Ms. Thompson's book, "The Third Wave," will be celebrated at Urban Zen in Sag Harbor on  July 15 from 6 to 8 p.m. with a reading and signing. On July 17, Ms. Thompson and WeAdvance.org, the organization that she co-founded with Maria Bello to combat gender-based violence, will be honored at a noon benefit at the Ross School in East Hampton, the Hamptons for Haiti, with a celebrity-filled guest list.

    Ms. Thompson was born in the outskirts of Sydney, Australia. The daughter of a preacher, she and her parents lived in more than 30 countries.    

    A former mathematics theorist, in 1990 she moved to New York and became an investment banker on Wall Street, later enrolling at New York University film school. Since becoming a full-time volunteer, Ms. Thompson spends her time traveling between New York, Haiti, Miami, and Sri Lanka.

    "You've got to cross the line, do something," she said. "Don't over-think it. You don't go expecting to save the whole country," said Ms. Thompson, who has spent the better part of a decade on the ground in the world's hardest-hit disaster areas. "You just look at those people lying on the ground right in front of you. You just concentrate on them."

    "I'm an average person," she said. "There are no special skills required to hold a baby or give someone a hug."

    The book is being published in conjunction with the release of a documentary DVD directed by Ms. Thompson, presented by Sean Penn, with Morgan Spurlock as executive producer.

    The title of Ms. Thompson's book refers to volunteers, who are the third group of people to show up, after the medical personnel and the Red Cross, when disaster strikes.

    Ms. Thompson spent 22 years in and around New York City and the Hamptons, and had volunteered after the events of Sept, 11, 2001, before being struck on a gut-level by the 2004 tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia.

    Ms. Thompson intended to help out for two weeks. She ended up staying for 14 months. While there, she and a small like-minded team set up the first tsunami early-warning center in Sri Lanka, which continues to save lives today, she said.

    In 2010, Ms. Thompson was awarded the Order of Australia, the highest civilian medal awarded by the Australian government and Queen Elizabeth II of England for her volunteer work.

    "It was lovely for my parents," she said with a laugh. "They're almost 80. But for me, it's all inside - bits of paper and medals don't mean anything to me.

    "Of her most recent efforts in Haiti, Ms. Thompson said, "It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life."

    One of her most horrific moments was seeing "60 to 80 orphans, living in the dirt and sewage, all trying to look after each other," she said. "The oldest must have been about eight, holding a baby on her hip. They had worms and maggots all over them -- in their ears."

    Without assigning blame, Ms. Thompson said that relief efforts are necessary in disaster areas long after the media has lost interest and moved onto the next shocking world event.

    "I spent a night hearing a woman screaming for about an hour, getting raped, and the men laughing," she said. "It was horrible, but I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from. I couldn't stop it."

    Stopping gender-based violence is the mission of WeAdvance.org, the group started by Ms. Thompson and Maria Bello, an actress who "works her butt off in Haiti," said Ms. Thompson. "She is really special."

    "The Third Wave" is dedicated in part to Ms. Bello, who will appear in several films and TV shows this year.

    Aleda Frishman is the third co-founder of this organization that deals with protecting Haitian women and children who have been the victims of sexual assault. "I've seen a 3-year-old in a hospital after being raped," she said, explaining that it's a national problem.

    But the joys of volunteering, Ms. Thompson said, far outweigh the heartbreak. She recalled one of her happiest moments, sitting on the ground outside a hospital in Haiti when a little girl came over to her. "I gave her a capful of water," she said. "And she sucked it back like it was chocolate."

    "The smile that spread across her face was incredible, it was beautiful," Ms. Thompson said. "It was like I had taken her to Disneyland."

    "Then I realized it was her first taste of pure water."

    The verbal communication barrier is both the biggest and the smallest obstacle to volunteering in other countries. "But food, water - you use gestures," she said. "If you feel the emotion and the pain, if you can offer support with a hug and a smile, you don't have to speak the language."

    Ms. Thompson still doesn't keep much more than $300 in her checking account. "Money doesn't matter to me," she said. "I'm a billionaire inside."

    Tickets for "The Hamptons for Haiti" benefit are available on the WeAdvance.org Web site.

    It was just under a month ago that David Hartstein, a 35-year-old chiropractor who lived in Montauk, succumbed to a mysterious respiratory ailment that was later identified as hantavirus. Since then, the people who knew him or were moved by his family’s predicament have been working to raise money for his widow, Heather, and three young children, Logan, 5, Devon, 3, and Shane, 1.

    The latest of those efforts will bring together over 20 local restaurants and chefs, who will offer “a taste of Montauk and the Hamptons” tomorrow night from 7 to 10 at Solé East in Montauk.

    For less than the price of a meal out (or more for those with deeper pockets), benefitgoers will get an evening of music, fine food, and libations, while also helping a local family in need. Tickets to the event start at $50 for food and a drink. Those who pay $100 or more can enjoy an open bar. Tickets will be available at the door or in advance at Solé East, Martha Greene Real Estate, or Homeport in Montauk and in East Hampton at Devlin McNiff.

    Among the participating restaurants and caterers, in addition to Solé East, are East by Northeast, Gosman’s, Navy Beach, South Edison, Herb’s Market, the Hideaway, Inlet Seafood, Janet O’Brien, the Montauk Bake Shoppe, the Montauk Lake Club, the Surf Lodge, West Lake Clam and Chowder House, and Yellowfin in Montauk, and, from points west, the Art of Eating, Cittanuova, East Hampton Point, Fresno, the Beachhouse, Goldberg’s Famous Bagels, Citarella, and Townline BBQ.

    There will be a silent auction and raffle and music by D.J. Big Drop and Nancy Atlas and Friends.

    “The community response has been absolutely phenomenal,” said Tom Flight, a friend of the Hartstein family and part of a team of people organizing the fund-raiser. “It’s the community at its best. In a small town this happens, and we have this mentality that we look out for each other. As soon as it happened, we were all on the phone together; we realized the gravity of the situation.”

    “We’re putting together as many ideas as possible to help raise funds to provide them with the lifestyle that Dave was trying to give them,” Mr. Flight said. “It’s the natural thing to do, the right thing to do,” he said, and “it’s something that’s going to go on until the kids are grown up.”

    Dr. Hartstein had practices in Montauk and East Hampton. Before he became ill, he was cleaning out the basement at the family’s Montauk house, which they were in danger of losing to foreclosure. The Centers for Disease Control, which has confirmed that his death was caused by the rare rodent-borne hantavirus, conducted air-quality tests in the house, according to Cindi Ceva, another family friend, who owns Solé East with her husband, Dave Ceva, and is also organizing tomorrow’s fund-raiser. Ms. Hartstein and her children have been staying with family friends in East Hampton since Dr. Hartstein’s death.

    His children “lost their dad and their house,” Ms. Ceva said Tuesday. “One of our primary goals right now is to try to get her somewhere to live.”

    Other fund-raising events will be held in the coming months, and Ms. Ceva said that the people working to help the Hartstein family want to continue as a “standing group,” ready to organize events for local families who might find themselves in similarly difficult situations.

    In addition to attending tomorrow’s benefit, those who would like to help the family can send donations to the East End Foundation, P.O. Box 1746, Montauk 11954, with “Hartstein” written on the memo line of the checks.

    Surrounded by other camp groups playing sports, swimming, and doing arts and crafts on a hot day at the Quinipet Camp and Retreat Center on Shelter Island last week, the teenagers attending the Rena’s Promise creative writing camp were folded into chairs on a shady porch, laptops and notebooks on their laps, talking about dialogue and sharing lines they had collected by eavesdropping on conversations. Journalism, Heather Dune Macadam, their teacher and the founder of the camp, told them, is really just “formal eavesdropping.”

    Inside, Simon Van Booy, the author of several books of short stories whose first novel, “Everything Beautiful Began After,” had been published two days before, was surrounded by girls on couches in a Victorian-style sitting room. “The purpose of a short story is to sort of encapsulate, in a few pages,” he told them.

    He talked to them about character — “You’re trying to understand your characters’ lives . . . and in so doing, you understand your own lives,” he said — and encouraged one writer to develop a scene by describing the details. “What are you hearing?” he asked.

    He suggested different writing strategies, engaged them in a discussion of linguistics — the implications of certain words — and explained how the workshop exercises would take the writers to their goals. “For every page of fiction you’re going to have 10 pages of scrap,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of mess.” But, he added, “What you produce from this is going to look like it just magically floated down from heaven.”

    A smile spread across one writer’s face as he read her work aloud and stopped to repeat a line he called great.

    The teenagers — 18 of them from diverse backgrounds — had been in residence at Camp Quinipet for the better part of a week and had settled in to a casual routine at the Rena’s Promise program, which is named after a memoir Ms. Macadam wrote with Rena Kornreich Gelissen, who spent three years in Auschwitz as a young woman.

    A former teacher at the Southampton campus originally of Long Island University and then of the State University at Stony Brook, Ms. Macadam had been involved in a summer writing camp for high schoolers there and decided to continue a similar program independently when the college discontinued its offering.

    She brought in Stephanie Wade, a poet with whom she had taught composition and creative writing classes at the college, and Simon Worrall, a nonfiction author and journalist who has covered stories around the world for publications such as National Geographic and Smithsonian, along with Mr. Van Booy. Four former students participated as counselors.

    “It’s been such a positive experience, both as a writer and a teacher,” Ms. Macadam said.

    The campers attended two sessions each day, choosing among classes on the short story and novel, memoir, poetry, and nonfiction writing and journalism.

In just a few short days, they formed a community of writers who fed off and learned from one another’s work. It was beneficial “being around other people who don’t write exactly like you do,” one student, Esther Mathieu of Queens, said. “It’s everybody helping everybody else,” said Alexi Block Gorman of Brooklyn.

    Besides their classes, the campers took a number of trips and heard from several guest speakers throughout the week. At the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, they did a writing exercise focused on art and nature. At the offices of Philip Spitzer, a literary agent, in Springs, they got free books.

    The speakers, a deliberately multicultural group, included Erica Doyle, a poet and drummer, two young assistant editors at Time magazine, and Persia Walker, a murder mystery writer and former journalist — all of whom, Ms. Macadam said, gave the students the same positive message: “Say yes to everything.” Dava Sobel, a science writer from Springs, had also volunteered this year but was called away on a family emergency.

    Speaking to the kids by Skype from Los Angeles, Jem, a Welsh singer-songwriter, talked about writing music and “believing in oneself,” Ms. Macadam said. That prompted a couple of campers to stay up late one night on the porch singing and playing guitar. There was some pure recreation, like kayaking, too.

    Although in Mr. Van Booy’s group last Thursday one young woman twirled a length of braided string and another called up a rain sound Web site online as he talked, and in Ms. Macadam’s group outside some giggled as they shared attempts to write in the voice of a boy their age, each writer’s focus on his or her work was clear.

    The one boy in the group, Jason Richartson, had come the longest way — 17 hours on his first plane ride from South Africa. After throwing off his first ambition — to be a lawyer — he had set his sights on becoming an investigative journalist.

    “You could say I’m a bit of a daredevil,” he said. “They could put me out in the war zones; I would find that exciting.” When he learned about the writing camp, which is endorsed by the PEN American Center Writing Institute for Teens, he began raising the money he needed to attend, through raffles, for example.

    “It would never have been possible without my mom,” Jason said during lunchtime at Camp Quinipet. When he remained short of money just a week before the July 2 start of camp, his mom got him an interview on the radio in Cape Town, where he lives. During the talk, the disc jockey told him he had the balance of the money to give him. “I was shell-shocked,” Jason said.

    Jason, who has cerebral palsy, had never been out of the country but took it all in stride. Mr. Worrall picked him up at the airport and took him under his wing. And, Jason said, being the only boy with all those girls at Camp Quinipet was “awesome.”

    At last Thursday’s session, he described the ride-along he’d had the night before with the Shelter Island police, about which he would write a story detailing a busy night of responding to several accidents, and more.

    “I wanted to bring cultures together, and different economic classes,” Ms. Macadam said by phone. “The kids are finding commonalities based on passion for writing.”

    Several had come from neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, others from Sag Harbor’s Azurest and from Mattituck, as well as California, Maryland, and New Jersey, while the youngest, a 13-year-old, lives on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton.

    Georgie Davies, who came from Wales, sent Ms. Macadam her completed 600-page novel before she arrived. “The next J.K. Rowling, that’s what we call her,” Ms. Macadam said.

    Georgie, who had had a series of surgeries that impeded her ability to write, and was facing another, was disappointed last summer to find the college writing camp she planned to attend was canceled. “She was sort of the inspiration behind doing this crazy thing, and wanting it to be international,” Ms. Macadam said. In the future, she hopes to offer a session in Wales as well as on the East End.

    “These kids are really smart; they have something to say. There were a couple of kids I just watched unfold,” Ms. Macadam said after the close of camp, while recuperating this week.

    The campers’ week was capped with a reading at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor last Thursday afternoon. Their work, along with a page of Mr. Van Booy’s sayings collected by his students and submissions by the guest speakers, will be published in an anthology that will be for sale at Canio’s and at the Rena’s Promise Web site, renaspromise. com. Sales will help raise money for scholarships allowing young writers to attend future summer camps.

By Heather Dubin

    In a four-to-one vote last night, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals quashed the Broadview Property Owners Association’s application to remove and replace a crumbling dock at the Bell Estate on Gardiner’s Bay in Amagansett.

    “What’s there has been deteriorated,” said Phil Gamble, the board’s chairman. “The applicant wanted to remove an L portion of the dock, which is now debris and rubble. That’s the only thing left there for the applicant to remove. They also opted to shorten the dock 30 feet. But in lieu of shortening the dock — right now there’s no dock there — they want to remove the rubble and extend the dock. They want to add a rock groin. They want to make it the same size as what they’re eliminating.”

    “I thought that was disingenuous of the applicant,” Mr. Gamble said. “They’re not going to shorten it.”

    Much of the controversy surrounding this application stems from divisiveness among members of the property owners association, some of whom do not want to pay for the costly removal of the dock and its makeover. Also, the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan does not allow for reconstruction of coastal structures, and part of the dock is in a restrictive zone where repair or replacement of hard structures along a beach is forbidden.

    In its current state, the dock functions as a groin, holding back the natural flow of sand, according to neighbors opposed to the application. The area south of Fresh Pond and the dock is being eroded, and the sand is being deposited north of the dock, they say. Aerial photographs seem to support their claims.

    “We’ve never granted a groin in this town. To this date, no one has ever asked to put in a groin or jetty or whatever you want to call it,” Mr. Gamble said.

    The property owners association needed a variance and a natural resources special permit to carry out its plans, but does not need permission from the zoning board to remove portions of the dock that are deemed a safety hazard, Mr. Gamble said. “But that’s not what they want to do. They want to make a structure. They didn’t say that this structure will do anything recreationally. Nothing ever was said they wanted it for parties.”

    While the board has granted permits or bulkheads in the past, this has occurred only when there was imminent danger to the property. In this instance, Mr. Gamble was clear that this was not the case. Not granting the permit will not cause any further damage to properties along the shoreline, he said.

    Also, there are environmental issues at stake if the dock is rebuilt, according to Mr. Gamble. Currently, “sand bypasses it and nourishes beaches south of this particular dock. If we allow sand to go out, it will impede the sand if the dock is built out.” If the board were to approve the changes to the dock, properties closer to Fresh Pond could be “in peril in another 10 to 15 years,” Mr. Gamble said. “That’s an issue I’m torn with.”

    Other board members agreed with Mr. Gamble’s concerns. “I’m not sure if there will be any change to the shoreline if the natural resources permit was granted. . . . The town’s adopted L.W.R.P. is not specific to this structure. To me, as far as the standards are concerned, a classic case of detriment to the community far outweighs the application,” said Alex Walter, a board member.

    Although she was absent from the meeting, Sharon McCobb submitted her opposing vote via a memo: “There is not a situation here where a house is in peril. Shore construction should only be granted if a house is in trouble,” she wrote.

    “I’ll be a minority of one,” said Don Cirillo, the board’s vice chairman and the lone dissenting vote. “There’s a lot of documentation that this is a deteriorating dock. They’ve offered to clear up the beach and take care of it. I think it would be a good thing as opposed to a bad thing instead of letting it deteriorate further.”

    Mr. Cirillo also questioned why the entire project was turned down without an offer of alternatives. “You often let people come back and modify applications,” he said.

    “They could come up with a plan that is not as ambitious. It’s up to them to come up with a plan,” Mr. Gamble said. “I’m asking for a whole new design,” he added. “I am making a motion to deny what is in front of us.”

    Lee White, another board member, concurred with the majority vote.

    “It was once a dock, but it doesn’t serve a purpose as a dock. This is a project 20 times greater than the applicant has said. We have to have a method of consistency,” Mr. Gamble said.

    “You’re turning down the whole thing carte blanche?” Mr. Cirillo asked.

    “Yes, there are potential impact possibilities for three beaches. We create a blockage of sand, we have a loss of beach in those areas — Albert’s Landing, Little Albert’s, and Fresh Pond,” Mr. Gamble said.

    “I think your points are well taken,” Mr. Cirillo said. “They should have been raised at a public hearing so the applicant could have had the opportunity to change this. You’re raising significant issues after the public hearing.”

    Mr. Gamble explained that the process involves hearing from the experts and the people involved, and rendering a decision later that is based on all the information conveyed. “I’m not going to predispose the case,” he said.

    “I find there are problems that were not properly addressed,” Mr. Gamble said. “I asked that night of the hearing, the length of dock. They said we’re shortening the dock. But when you look at the proposed project, they’re taking off specific feet, whatever they’re taking off, they’re putting back with a rock revetment. This is not just a couple of stones piled on the beach. This is a substantial groin.”

    Defeated, Mr. Cirillo said, “You have it, four to one. Next.” The final determination will be signed in a few weeks.