In the Hudson Valley, the town of New Paltz and nearby places like Rosendale, High Falls, and Gardiner combine for a perfect weekend getaway. History, culture, and green spaces come together spectacularly here; this is home to some of the country's most beautiful rivers, mountain ranges, farmlands, and vistas.

In Reykjavik we have 24 hours of daylight in June and about four hours in January. It's one of the cleanest, greenest, and safest cities in the world — a "greening up" that's urgent as temperatures across the Arctic rise faster than anywhere else in the world.

Fort Pond and Big Reed Pond in Montauk were free of harmful blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, blooms when Concerned Citizens of Montauk took water samples earlier this week, but a number of testing sites in Montauk, Amagansett, Springs, and East Hampton showed elevated levels of enterococcus bacteria, even before Wednesday's heavy rains.

In 1861 -- only 10 years after Yosemite Valley had been "discovered" -- Carleton E. Watkins, perhaps the most famous early Western photographer, wandered this extraordinary natural wonder with heavy camera equipment strapped to mules and snapped images that inspired Abraham Lincoln to secure the world's first national park, in perpetuity, "for public use, resort, and recreation."

African elephants are in trouble. According to the Save the Elephant organization, their numbers have fallen from as many as 10 million a hundred years ago to as few as 400,000 today, and they could be nearly extinct by the end of the next decade.

Amagansett firefighters extricated a man from a silver Toyota sport utility vehicle that had been struck by a delivery truck in front of Cirillo’s I.G.A. on Montauk Highway Thursday afternoon. 

In the history of written correspondence, the usefulness of postcards, in my opinion, falls somewhere between “telegram” and “tweet.” The sender has room for maybe three or four sentences — not a whole lot of space. But with a postcard it’s the picture that says the most, taking its recipient on a quick little journey to another place, maybe far away, maybe not.

The Montauk Seafood Festival will return for its seventh year under a tent at Gurney’s Star Island Resort and Marina on Sept. 7 and 8 from noon to 5 p.m.

The 73rd annual Shinnecock Powwow, one of the largest powwows in the country, gets started tomorrow in Southampton and runs through Labor Day, featuring dancing and vendors. The grounds open at 3 p.m. tomorrow and at 10 a.m. Saturday through Monday. Dancers make their grand entry at 7 tomorrow night, and again at 12:30 and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and at 12:30 p.m. on Monday.

A report released earlier this month by the New York State comptroller says schools in the state collectively reported more than 32,000 violent or disruptive incidents in the 2017-18 school year, but specific data show very few of those incidents taking place locally.

“People can see the plans for Long Wharf, and the conceptual plans for Steinbeck Park, and tell us what they like, and what they don’t like,” Sag Harbor Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy said.

“A fireman is a fireman, and when somebody calls for help you try to help, and I feel like we got that call,” said Tom Bock, one of three new drivers with the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, courtesy of the East Hampton Fire Department.

A majority of the East Hampton Town Board told members of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife last week that it was disinclined to entertain a one-weekend-day ban on hunting, for which the group has been agitating.

A model in Paris, a secretary in Belgium, a columnist and candidate in Brooklyn, and the long-serving, unofficial mayor of Amagansett. “I’ve had an interesting life,” Joan Tulp said on Monday.

Michelle Taveras, Rob Rivera, and Alex Bates are East Hampton High School Bonackers in more than one way. They are East Hampton alumni, with Ms. Taveras and Mr. Rivera having graduated in 2011 and Ms. Bates in 2013 — and now, they have been hired as teachers in the school district.

Anger over the East Hampton Town Board’s plan to relocate the town’s shellfish hatchery to a residential area in Springs spilled over to the town trustees’ meeting on Monday.

On Aug. 13, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals voted 4-to-0, with one recusal, to revoke the certificate of occupancy issued in February for Duryea’s Lobster Deck, the latest turn in a long-running controversy over the Montauk property that was purchased by the billionaire investor Marc Rowan in 2014.

The Sag Harbor School District may not move its prekindergarten classes to the new Sag Harbor Learning Center until mid-November because construction there is still underway, officials said Monday night.

Over in Sag Harbor early Monday morning, Nikita S. Bykov of Brooklyn was charged with felony grand larceny after he allegedly stole a purse, containing $5,000 in cash, at Murf’s Backstreet Tavern.

The East Hampton School District took the lead about a year ago to apply for a state grant for radio upgrades on behalf of all schools in the town, and has received word it will receive $125,000 to share among those districts.