Polling stations during the early voting period and on Election Day will be populated only by staff, poll inspectors, and, of course, voters, an official at the Suffolk Board of Elections said this week. "You cannot interfere" with voting, a Suffolk County Board of Elections official said, and the county will "have police cars with a bipartisan team of board of elections employees in every town if there's a problem."

Suffolk County completed a dredging of Accabonac Harbor near Louse Point in Springs early this week, removing a spit of beach that had narrowed a channel and made it difficult for boats to navigate through the water, according to Francis Bock and Susan McGraw Keber of the town trustees.

The southern pine beetle, an invasive pest now considered by the D.E.C. to be an established species on the South Fork, has made a comeback in East Hampton Town and regions of the Central Pine Barrens, town and state officials said this week.

Blackfish, also known as tautog, are perhaps the most challenging of fish to catch in our local waters, and quite a few good fishermen are not ashamed to admit that they have never mastered the knack of catching the elusive, bait-stealing fish.

The town trustees voted unanimously to authorize the purchase of a third pumpout boat at their meeting on Friday. The move followed an especially busy summer in Lake Montauk and Three Mile Harbor and what one trustee described last month as "an effluent crisis" in Montauk over Labor Day weekend. 

Representative Lee Zeldin and his Democratic challenger, Nancy Goroff, clashed in a 90-minute debate on Monday, each accusing the other of lying about their records and demanding they remove negative campaign advertisements. 

As a campaign season characterized by mudslinging and often outright mendacity draws to a close, it was unusual to see the two candidates vying to represent the New York State Senate's First District engaged in a civilized discussion of the issues.

The East Hampton School District on Tuesday announced it will add in-person school days for students on Wednesdays at the middle and high schools, and said it is exploring a plan to resume full-time in-person classes for all middle schoolers starting in January as long as infection rates here stay low.

An altercation between a Town Lane resident and a man attempting to take her lawn signs that was caught on video on Friday provides an apt jumping off point for a look at the rules governing political signs.

Waiting for his sweet-and-sour soup by the window of a Chinese takeout a few weeks ago, he had a brief encounter that left him longing for another, an instant connection with a woman who also loved the opera, but her number went missing, so he turned to the classifieds.

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic candidate to represent New York’s First Congressional District, has picked up the endorsement of two prominent Democrats in the state, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. 

At a Springs School Board meeting, parents demanding more instruction from teachers on remote days clashed with educators, who said they are simply doing the best they can. School administrators, who said late in the summer that they would revisit the district's hybrid learning plans by the 10th week of school, are nearing their self-imposed deadline to do so.

George Arthur Wilson, who started his ministry at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor, ended it at the Springs Presbyterian Church, and sailed the world between postings, died in Mill Valley, Calif., of late-stage kidney disease last Thursday. He was 89 and had been ill for seven years.

Paula P. Trentham, who grew up on Talmage Lane in East Hampton and worked for the East Hampton School District for many years, died on Sept. 29 at Community Hospice and Palliative Care's Earl B. Hadlow Center for Caring in Jacksonville, Fla. She was 86 and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease nine years ago.

In Sag Harbor on Friday morning at the Highway Department, there appeared to be a botched robbery, said police. Several tools were reportedly removed from the Highway Department building, the gate to which was left unlocked and open, as were a number of Highway Department trucks in the parking lot.

The session on Thursday, Oct. 29, will be held virtually, starting at 6:30 p.m. Comments can be called in to 351-888-6331. The event will air live on LTV's Channel 22 and via a livestream at ltveh.org.

The defendant reportedly took a "floral Coach wallet containing approximately $2,500 in cash and nine credit cards" on the evening of Aug. 24 from a house on Collins Avenue near North Main Street.

For communities with lower Covid-19 infection rates right now (like many of ours here on the East End) compared to hot spots elsewhere in the country, it can be particularly tempting to seize an opportunity for normality and plan to trick-or-treat as usual. But this could be risky.

Early voting ahead of Election Day, Nov. 3, begins on Saturday and continues through Nov. 1. In East Hampton, it will be held at the Windmill Village housing complex at 219 Accabonac Road, and in Southampton on the Stony Brook Southampton campus at 70 Tuckahoe Road.

The character-driven second book by the singer-songwriter turned novelist Suzzy Roche is set in a Catholic enclave in Pennsylvania in 1961. It is a social satire with sympathy, realism with softened edges.