Carol Lynne Elms, a caretaker and gardener on Gardiner’s Island and at large estates in East Hampton, died of cardiac arrest on Dec. 10.

Keith McDonald of East Hampton, a science teacher at the Tuckahoe School for many years, died at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead on Dec. 13 following a series of medical complications.

Helen Ann MacIsaac, formerly of Amagansett, whose career included over a decade of senior international roles in corporate development, finance, and marketing, died on Dec. 11 in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Kaplan Fonseca died at home in East Hampton on Dec. 19 after a long illness. She was 93.

A joyous, comradely feeling was evident at the East Hampton Hurricane swim team’s New Year’s Day plunge at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach and later at the annual plunge in Wainscott. Both raised money for food pantries here.

While the handsome high-ceilinged 6,000-square-foot building behind the popular Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton could have feathered a nest egg, Shelly Snyder Schaffer, its owner, preferred instead that it become a year-round hub for young ballplayers, boys and girls looking to up their baseball, softball, or lacrosse games.

On their return this week from the holiday break, the East Hampton, Pierson, and Bridgehampton High School boys basketball teams seem to have the playoffs in their sights.

The message the Republican Party offers Long Island voters centers on a distrust of government, as well as the coded racism in its fixation on crime.

Beginning in 2019, the so-named South Fork Commuter Connection was supposed to take a bite out of the weekday morning and afternoon “trade parade” of bumper-to-bumper work vans and delivery trucks.

I am now on my second plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, at a combined gas and electric of 100 or more miles per gallon the way I drive it.

Adventures at the Whitney, on the High Line, and in a lost New York.

I had no Covid symptoms, but that apparently, according to what I read, wasn’t necessarily a cause for celebration.

From our correspondent in Pennsylvania comes a tribute to an illustrator for 50 straight years of Christmas cards that are works or art.

A snapshot of the South Fork real estate scene.

On development and preservation, Star readers weigh in.

Gentle reader, it happened here . . .

Theresa Whelan, who had a long and distinguished law career on Long Island, died of cancer at East End Hospice in Westhampton Beach on Dec. 26. A resident of Wading River, she was 60.

A couple of professional historians cut through the agenda-driven amateurism that’s crippling civic discourse.

Margaret M. Johnson, author of 13 cookbooks, including "Teatime in Ireland," will talk about teacups at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor on Friday from 2 to 3:30 p.m. 

John Haubrich successfully juggles careers as a painter with a long exhibition resume, an art director at Fordham University, and, most recently, running a pop-up gallery in his studio.