In what may be a first for a school district in New York State, the Amagansett School Board voted on Tuesday to ban the intentional release of helium balloons on school property.

Hoping to limit the spread of overlarge houses on small residential lots, the East Hampton Village Board pondered new zoning code regulations for roof heights at a meeting last Thursday. 

Item of the Week: From the East Hampton Library Long Island Collection

Teresa Barsdis Boothe, who was raised in East Hampton, died at the Aurora Senior Living of Manokin in Princess Anne, Md., on May 29. She was 90 and had been ill.

Marjorie Reese Ludlow, an active member of the Bridgehampton community and its Methodist Church, and a Southampton Hospital volunteer for more than three decades, died last Thursday at her Bridgehampton home. She was 101.

Services for Gertrude Barnard of East Hampton will be held tomorrow at the First Baptist Church in Southampton, with a viewing at 11 a.m. and the funeral at noon. Burial will follow at Calverton National Cemetery, and a gathering will be held back at the church at 4 p.m.

Christian Tyler Schenck, the son of Marcia and Christopher Schenck of East Hampton, was married to Brittany Taylor Greene on May 19 in Lebanon, Tenn. Jeannie Hunter officiated.

Richard Guenther Davis, who served as executive vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, died in Southampton on April 20 after a brief illness. A resident of Amagansett since the early 1970s, he was 85.

Cyanobacteria blooms, which are more commonly known as blue-green algae and pose health risks to people and animals, have been found in Wainscott Pond in that hamlet and Mill Pond in Water Mill, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services announced Wednesday.

AMAGANSETT

East Hampton Housing Authority to Gansett Meadow Housing, 531 Montauk Highway, 4.65 acres, April 23, $4,100,000.

A. and I. Tepper to M. Perlmutter, 101 Meeting House Lane, .5 acre, April 12, $4,550,000.

EAST HAMPTON 

The town lawyer at the center of a controversy over a lawsuit brought by the new owner of Duryea’s in Montauk has departed for parts unknown, but this is hardly the end of the troubling matter. Many questions remain about who knew what when in an improper — and possibly illegal — settlement arrangement he signed.

Degrees have an image problem. In the struggle to control global warming, we are told that unless the Earth stays within 2 degrees Celsius of 19th-century levels, catastrophes both natural and political will arise.

The logo of the Eastville Community Historical Society, a longtime nonprofit based in Sag Harbor, has three profiles, one black, one white, and one red.  When the society sponsored musical and dramatic performances at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Sunday, however, 99 percent of the people in the audience were people of color. 

Hook Pond is jammed with carp. The other evening one of the kids and I pulled over near the Dunemere Lane bridge to watch groups of the nearly leg-long fish breaking the surface of the water. 

I’ve been looking a little longingly lately at accounts in Newsday of playoff games, in baseball, boys and girls lacrosse, and softball, wondering if the day will come when East Hampton teams will be in them again. Baseball used to be, boys lacrosse used to be, girls lacrosse too, and softball, of course, used to be.

Time travel. It’s one of the great, impossible things we sci-fi nerds dream about doing. And I recently figured out how to do it.

Make no mistake, the Hudson Valley is beautiful territory. I’ll match the sunsets we see from our deck with the best Santa Fe has to offer. But touting the region as “the Hamptons North,” as The New York Times did? That’s a covered bridge too far.

The owners of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton are hoping to build pitching and batting cages and two large food prep buildings on a vacant two-plus-acre lot on West Drive, near the farm.  

The East Hampton Chamber of Commerce and the East Hampton Aviation Association will hold a mixer from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the airport’s main terminal. Steven Ringel, the chamber’s executive director, will provide an update on pending projects such as the Aug. 17 East Hampton Village summer fair. 

Very Pleasant
East Hampton
June 10, 2019

Dear David:

This past weekend I rediscovered that it can actually be fun, relaxing, and a friendly experience when an East End town is crowded with vacationers.