Grind

Fans of fright and things that go bump in the night may want to pick up their wooden stakes, put on their garlic necklaces, and make their way to the East Hampton Library on Saturday evening.

Little Lucy's annual Halloween pet parade — the 21st sponsored by Little Lucy's Canine Boutique — will take place on Saturday afternoon starting from Agawam Park.

Amber Waves Farm will host a community dig at which guests have been invited to dig and harvest dahlia tubers from its farm fields on Saturday at 11:30 a.m.

Just in time for the start of NaNoWriMo — that's "National Novel Writing Month," celebrated every November — the East Hampton Library has launched a new weekly group for creative writers.

As the Suffolk County malware crisis approaches the two-month mark — and since October is, after all, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced this week that his office has rolled out a series of cybersecurity training webinars for local governments.

Eager to cast your ballot in the Nov. 8 general election? Early voting begins on Saturday, Oct. 29, and runs through Sunday, Nov. 6, in New York State.

The arrival of relatively cool, dry weather translated into generally low levels of enterococcus bacteria at water-quality test sites around East Hampton Town for the week beginning Oct. 17, said Jaime LeDuc, program manager with Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which monitors for the harmful entero bacteria at nearly three dozen sites in Amagansett, East Hampton, Springs, and Montauk.

The Hamptons International Film Festival showed it still had the ability to surprise its guests on Sunday when Hugh Jackman made an unannounced appearance at the screening of his new film, Florian Zeller's "The Son." After the film, he sat down for a chat with David Nugent, the festival's artistic director.

Saturday was a busy day for film viewing all across the South Fork with Hamptons International Film Festival screenings in East Hampton at the cinema and middle school, at the Sag Harbor Cinema, and at the Southampton Arts Center.

Some of the films shown in East Hampton included the Venice and Toronto film festival award-winning "The Whale,"  "The Good Nurse," the Cannes Palme d'Or winning "Triangle of Sadness," and the crowd pleaser and locally based film, "Who Invited Charlie?" 

Allison McGovern, an archaeologist and anthropology lecturer at Columbia University, will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8, at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum about the origins of East Hampton's Freetown neighborhood, which Black and Indigenous people have called home for more than 200 years. Ms. McGovern has gathered oral histories from Freetown residents to document the neighborhood's beginnings and evolution.

Long Island Metro Business Action will host a roundtable discussion of  East End Town supervisors Thursday at noon, at the Southampton Inn, 91 Hill Street.  

Supervisors Yvette Aguiar of Riverhead, Jay Schneiderman of Southampton, Scott Russell of Southold, and Gerry Siller of Shelter Island will be on hand for the midday event. It kicks off with lunch and will be followed by a panel discussion focused on interrelated East End hot-button issues -- affordable housing, tourism, the environment, water quality, and economic development among them. 

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele is looking for nominations of high school seniors for the prestigious Presidential Scholars Program, founded by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.