Walter J. Thomason of East Hampton worked for 31 years with the Suffolk County Department of Public Works, but in his spare time, he pursued many interests. At various points in his life he raised and showed prize bantam chickens, raced homing pigeons, took up fly-fishing, photography, and wildlife caretaking, and volunteered at the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center.

James Mason was known to ride his bicycle from his home in Springs to his job in Bridgehampton at the Long Island Lighting Company yard, where he worked for more than four decades until 1996. The first-class electrical lineman and foreman continued his rides even after he moved to Hampton Bays.

Cycling wasn't his only hobby -- he sang with the Whalers Barbershop Chorus for several years in the early 1960s and loved sailing out of Three Mile Harbor into Gardiner's Bay and beyond on his boat, the Song of Joy.

East End Arts will have a reception and final auction for its MLK Portrait Project on Saturday at its gallery in Riverhead.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 133 East Main Street, 12-by-12 inch acrylic panel portraits, which combine to form larger images of Martin Luther King Jr., will be on display and up for bidding. Money raised will go to the arts organization's scholarship fund for students in need, according to an announcement. 

"The effects of climate change are obvious and go beyond scallops," Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences said in a lecture last week. "Locally, things are collapsing." Excessive nitrogen loading, too, poses a threat to both coastal ecosystems and human health.