“You decide who you are,” Kerri Walsh Jennings, the beach volleyball Olympian, told 50 young people at East Hampton High Monday morning, a day after her surprise visit to the junior lifeguard program at Atlantic Avenue Beach. “You choose what to focus on.”

Hampton Chutney, a culinary fixture on the South Fork since 1997, has begun construction on a new location at Astor Place in NoHo.

The architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi will be at LongHouse to discuss with Paul Goldberger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, some of the problems faced by architects today.

News from the Fireplace Project, Sean Scully talk at the Parrish, new installations at Watermill Center, East End Photographers at Water Mill Museum, open studio in Springs.

Brazilian jazz at The Church in Sag Harbor, comedy about a deadbeat dad, a new executive director of HamptonsFilm, "Much Ado About Nothing" outdoors on Shelter Island.

Marc Murphy, a noted chef and restaurateur, will stir the conversational pot at Guild Hall with Florence Fabricant, and the Grill at Ruschmeyers in Montauk has a new executive chef.

Warm temperatures and scattered precipitation in the past week are likely contributors to increased bacteria in nine of 33 sites tested weekly by Concerned Citizens of Montauk, with a significant spike measured in Montauk’s Fort Pond.

A brush fire along the north side of Montauk Highway on a remote stretch of Napeague was reported on Wednesday afternoon and burned an area roughly the size of a football field before being extinguished.

A special event, purportedly for an electric vehicle educational display in Herrick Park, went awry on July 9 and was promptly shut down by Marcos Baladron, the East Hampton Village administrator, after he fielded multiple complaints from residents about a General Motors “car dealership” at the park’s entrance.

In the summer of 2011, Alex Esposito and James Mirras addressed a specific need with Hamptons Free Ride, an electric shuttle service that ran in a fixed loop through East Hampton and from parking lots in town to Main Beach. Since then, a “hometown side project” has developed into Circuit, an all-electric, on-demand “micro-transit” solution in more than 40 cities and towns.

In a move championed by educators, dreaded by many students, and mandated by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the East Hampton School Board last week officially approved a ban on student use of smartphones and internet-enabled devices during the school day. It will take effect at the start of the school year.

The underutilized Town Lane Park in East Hampton, where works by the late sculptor Sasson Soffer are on permanent display, could see a dramatic transformation, as proposed to the town board on Tuesday by Soffer’s widow, Stella Sands, and Emily Goldstein of the Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton.

Paid Notice: How many people do you know who have cross-country skied on Georgica Beach? Richard Fabricant, who died on July 9 at 94, peacefully, at his home in East Hampton, was one of them. 

As goes the little saltmarsh sparrow, so goes the salt marsh. In what could be a win for both, a team of scientists will now capture and band saltmarsh sparrows at Accabonac Harbor.

The public relations firm WordHampton has long had its finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the East End business community. That comes with the job. And now, with a new office overlooking Park Place in East Hampton Village, it is part of that pulse in a way that was not quite as tangible from its former headquarters in Springs.

East Hampton Town continues to make investments in its dispatch capabilities, with the town board most recently approving a $1.5 million bond issue for improvements to its dispatch center on July 3.

ReWild Long Island and East Hampton Town have launched an initiative to encourage backyard composting by taking advantage of a “flash sale” on compost bins and expert support.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted to authorize a special season for the taking of soft clams or razor clams by the method known as powering, or churning.

Speaking at an Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee Meeting this week, State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni said that rebuilding of the Cranberry Hole Road bridge is included in the M.T.A. capital plan, “but the pace is glacial.”

The case of Augusta Ramsay Folks, an 81-year-old accused of cutting down two trees on Meadowlark Lane in Sag Harbor in June of last year — in violation of the village’s new tree-protection law — was back in court on July 8, when a settlement proposed by Ms. Folks was rejected by the village and then withdrawn by her attorney.