The owner of Village Hardware in East Hampton was arrested Saturday on a child endangerment charge in an incident that police say happened in the store on Oct. 13.

A man arrested in October for allegedly forcing a woman he had just met to perform a sex act on him pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in East Hampton Town Justice Court, but will have to register as a sex offender.

Rogue embers, still smoldering in a fireplace at an East Hampton house, erupted into flames in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Did someone lose a Christmas card? An envelope with a card inside and a $20 bill was found on Main Street Saturday afternoon and turned in to police. The card thanked “Ricky and the entire North Haven Village staff.” A Sag Harbor Village officer dropped it off at North Haven Village Hall.

At its final meeting of 2019 last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board made several moves aimed at improving environmental conditions.

Among the statewide recipients of $761 million in grants are several local town and village governments, arts and cultural organizations, and programs in historic preservation and land conservation.

The Springs Fire District, which wants to remove a 150-foot-tall tower behind its firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard and replace it with one 30 feet taller, has proposed relocating the new tower farther away from adjoining residential properties.

Michael Bye, an East Hampton native who left Riverhead for Florida on his 35-foot powerboat in late October, went missing off the Carolina coast on Nov. 21 and is presumed dead, his family said this week.

Marjorie F. Cowen, a former administrator at Tulane University, died on Dec. 16 in New Orleans of complications from a fall. The East Hampton summer resident was 77.

Steven M. Jacobson, a playwright, attorney, art collector, and dedicated supporter of arts, died of heart failure on Dec. 8 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

The link between sports and good works was further strengthened here in 2019, what with the polar bear plunge at Main Beach, the Katy’s Courage race in Sag Harbor, Ellen’s Run in Southampton, Montauk’s triathlons, the Shelter Island 10K, the Artists and Writers Softball Game, and the I-Tri program for teenage girls.

Celebrating the standout 1994 football team, and the day the badminton pros came to Amagansett.

Boys and girls hoops continues apace, and Wednesday brings polar bear plunges to Montauk, East Hampton, and Wainscott.

All of the winter bird, or Christmas, counts will be completed by the last days of December. Locally, the Montauk Count, which took place on Saturday, is the longest running on the South Fork.

No matter what the project is, there are always going to be people opposed to it. It is just human nature to watch out for one’s own interests, to suggest that new infrastructure and essential services are fine as long as they are put somewhere else.

As 2019 rumbles to an end, it is fair to think about the year to come and to make wishes about things that we think should change and things that we would like to see improve.

Lights, moves around the western world’s solar calendar because it is based on the Hebrew calendar, which is an ancient, shorter, and lunar one. The years may be briefer, but since there are now 5,780 of them, there is plenty of reason to celebrate: Make of it what you will, a feeling of pride ensues if you accept thousands of years as part of your personal heritage.

My daughter Evvy and I went outside two hours before dawn on Monday to watch for shooting stars. It had been a relatively warm night, that is, just above freezing, and the sky was clear. A fraction of a yellow crescent moon could be seen in the trees to the east, just above the horizon. We stretched on the upper deck to wait.

While walking O’en one day not long ago, a woman, in approaching, said, “What a beautiful dog.”

Writing a memoir was not something that came naturally. It was more like building my first treehouse and my second marriage. I had to struggle to learn how to “measure twice, cut once.”