This essay by Jupiter Hammon, an enslaved person and the first published African-American poet in North America, focuses on laborers as the recipients of salvation.

A culinary stroll, fireworks over the water, ice-carving, fire-dancing, live music, and a whole lotta hot cocoa will heat things up in Sag Harbor Village on Saturday during the chamber of commerce’s annual HarborFrost celebration.

On Tony Lambert’s last day as a clerk at the Bridgehampton Post Office, where he had worked for the past 22 years, the lobby swelled with gratitude and well-wishes for him, as he had accepted a position at a post office closer to his new home.

In a significant win for the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, PSEG Long Island has opted to forgo its original plan to install an underground cable through the greenbelt, and is exploring an alternative  route that would redirect the cable under roadways to the north, including the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike.

“For Windmill I alone, we have 130 people on a waiting list. For Windmill II, it’s over 450 people,” said the project development coordinator with the development for people 62 and older on Accabonac Road in East Hampton. Because of the swelling waitlist, its board wants to expand, and is seeking a path forward that would allow it to get federal grants but also meet town code requirements.

School districts in New York State are facing another difficult budget cycle for the fiscal year ahead, with inflation still at challenging levels, dramatic increases in health insurance costs, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent announcement of changes that could leave some South Fork districts coping with as much as a 20-percent decrease in state aid.

“I’m very happy to share, so the younger generation wouldn’t say that it never happened,” Judy Sleed of East Hampton, who escaped the Nazis in Budapest in 1944, told students at East Hampton High School. “I just hope you don’t have to experience anything like I went through.”

Elizabeth Ann Fenley Grande, who worked as a transportation supervisor for the Island Park School District for 30 years and moved to Montauk full time upon retirement, died at home there on Jan. 21 after a brief illness. She was 81.

Anthony A. Remkus, who worked for 34 years as a bulk delivery driver for Pulver Gas, covering Montauk, and as a school bus driver after that, died on Nov. 29 at Stony Brook University Hospital. He was 67 and had kidney failure and multiple myeloma.

Sophie Mistkowski of East Hampton, who was congratulated by Pope Francis and then-Governor Cuomo when she turned 100 in 2017, died on Dec. 28 at the age of 106.