Staying in town with the kids for the February break? School may be closed, but there's plenty to do, and even more to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Two hundred and two years ago, Sarah Frances Dering of Shelter Island wrote her paternal first cousin Elizabeth (Eliza) Packer Gardiner in New York City about a perilous, snowy trip by sleigh.

Jason Epstein, author, publisher, and founder of The New York Review of Books, died at home in Sag Harbor on Feb. 4.