Walter J. Thomason of East Hampton worked for 31 years with the Suffolk County Department of Public Works, but in his spare time, he pursued many interests. At various points in his life he raised and showed prize bantam chickens, raced homing pigeons, took up fly-fishing, photography, and wildlife caretaking, and volunteered at the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center.

James Mason was known to ride his bicycle from his home in Springs to his job in Bridgehampton at the Long Island Lighting Company yard, where he worked for more than four decades until 1996. The first-class electrical lineman and foreman continued his rides even after he moved to Hampton Bays.

Cycling wasn't his only hobby -- he sang with the Whalers Barbershop Chorus for several years in the early 1960s and loved sailing out of Three Mile Harbor into Gardiner's Bay and beyond on his boat, the Song of Joy.

East End Arts will have a reception and final auction for its MLK Portrait Project on Saturday at its gallery in Riverhead.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 133 East Main Street, 12-by-12 inch acrylic panel portraits, which combine to form larger images of Martin Luther King Jr., will be on display and up for bidding. Money raised will go to the arts organization's scholarship fund for students in need, according to an announcement. 

"The effects of climate change are obvious and go beyond scallops," Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences said in a lecture last week. "Locally, things are collapsing." Excessive nitrogen loading, too, poses a threat to both coastal ecosystems and human health.

Representative Lee Zeldin of New York's First Congressional District on Thursday announced he will seek the Republican nomination in the next gubernatorial election, which is in 2022.

East Hampton Town's water quality technical advisory committee has issued recommendations to the town board to fund four projects using money from the portion of the community preservation fund allocated to water quality improvements.

Existing armor stones weighing 5 to 10 tons will be removed from about 1,000 linear feet of the sea wall in front of the Lighthouse, to be reused elsewhere. In their place, contractors will install 10-to-15-ton stones.

The LongHouse Reserve, Amber Waves Farm, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and Duck Creek Farm are among the places that Springs School students will likely visit in the coming months, as field trips appear to be on the horizon once again.

Over the next several weeks, the Montauk School has activities promoting well-being lined up for each grade, starting this week with the eighth grade all the way down through prekindergarten during the first week of June.

Normally, Wellness Week was to happen all at once, Montauk teachers explained in an announcement, but Covid-19 forced them to make some changes to the program.