Visiting hours for Virginia Backlund of East Hampton will be tomorrow from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton, with a funeral service on Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Presbyterian Church on Main Street.

There is no charge to enter, but the prize for winning floats is substantial: bragging rights for at least a year.

Let’s talk politics.

Kieran Hildreth of Montauk and Burke, Vt., won the Vermont State Tri-Council u-14 giant slalom alpine ski race held at Burke Mountain on Jan. 31, defeating 77 competitors.

All eight of the swimmers Craig Brierley took with him to the county championship meet at Stony Brook University over the weekend swam personal-best times.

The Pierson (Sag Harbor) Whalers, top seeded in Class C, defeated Southold 67-41 Saturday afternoon, and are now looking forward to another go at Southampton in the county B-C-D game on March 1.

John Romero’s Maidstone Market men’s soccer team has been a perennial champion outdoors, but it’s taken a while for his futsal squad, the East Hampton Futbol Club, to master the indoor version.

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, lost her libel lawsuit against The New York Times this week, but this important case may be headed to the Supreme Court.

The F.A.A. doesn’t like it one bit, but East Hampton Town should stay the course on a long-sought change to the way its airport operates.

Four years ago when a few of us began looking into early East Hampton’s relationship with slavery, we were met with a cocked head and some variation of “We don’t have anything about slavery.”

The news keeps reporting studies that conclude remote work is more productive work, but those studies are clearly incorrect.

Two essential graphic novels on the occasion of Black History Month.

Continuing in the same vein as last week, more excerpts from “Five Characters in Search of an Editor,” read 50 years ago at Guild Hall.

Japan’s tradition of designating artists and performers as Living National Treasures could be adapted here, and my first nominee would be Alan Alda.

Two $6 million transactions in Amagansett lead off the week in South Fork real estate.

The Star was “well spoken of everywhere” 125 years ago, 50 people were injured in a L.I.R.R. derailment 75 years ago, and one Orrin Pilkey sounded the alarm on beach erosion and the folly of hard structures to prevent it back in 1997.

Readers on Kevin Somers, East Hampton’s enslavers, and Duck Creek history.

As of Tuesday, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is allowing patients to receive visitors once again, though there are several Covid-19 prevention measures still in place.

In “Too Famous,” Michael Wolff’s compendium and rogues’ gallery, is it the sleaze of his subjects or his smug knowingness that’s grating?

East Hampton and Southampton Towns are offering free Covid-19 rapid antigen home test kits to residents this week and next.