Villages

This photograph shows the Clan Galbraith, a Norwegian four-masted steel bark, after it ran aground near Flying Point Beach in Water Mill.

Least terns are properly named, they’re our smallest tern, and thin. They slice through the air, buoyant and bouncy, on clipped wingbeats, patrolling the waters below. They’re very vocal. Their call is high-pitched and squeaky, with a sharp grating quality. Learn it, and you will often hear them before you see them.

In the three and a half weeks since Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, signed off on Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5, there has not been a huge demand, according to Dr. Gail Schonfeld of East End Pediatrics in East Hampton.

Saturday is Celebrate AVIS Day, honoring the Amagansett Village Improvement Society, which was founded in 1921 and is marking its 100th anniversary one year late because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A handful of recent shark attacks and sightings on Long Island's barrier beaches has beachgoers on edge and officials responding with red-flag beach warnings and enhanced shark patrols — but don't blame the sharks, said Greg Metzger of the South Fork Natural History Museum. They aren't here to feast on humans but on the vast schools of menhaden, or bunker, that have settled in for their annual summer residencies. 

New York Communities for Change got its message across, a member of the Brooklyn-based group of activists said Tuesday, with multiple demonstrations on the South Fork between Friday and Monday. They were protesting what they say is the role of the very wealthy — the “1 percent” — in perpetuating climate change, housing unaffordability, income inequality, and the destruction of native lands.

The lone star tick, which is far more common here than the black-legged tick, does not transmit Lyme disease, nor does it spread the very rare but scary Powassan virus. The good news stops there, though. Lone star ticks transmit ehrlichiosis, heartland disease, tularemia, Bourbon virus disease, and southern tick associated rash illness, or STARI.

Evan Thomas Lightcap and Lauren Elizabeth Sanford of Cleveland were married on April 30 at the Penny Lane Ranch in Sky Valley, Calif.

Miles Menu, a 13-year-old who will start eighth grade at Springs School in the fall, and who is a participant in the Hampton Lifeguard Association's Junior Lifeguarding program, made his first save at Amagansett's Atlantic Avenue Beach on July 3, a feat that was recognized at Sunday's training session there.

The nonprofit that flies aging veterans and their companions to visit the war memorials in Washington free of charge will benefit from a July 16 gala at the Sagaponack Distillery.

The Amagansett U.S. Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station will host its sixth annual lobster bake fund-raiser on Saturday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the restored 1902 building on Atlantic Avenue.

The Rev. Alexander Karloutsos, the pastor at Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons in Shinnecock Hills, is to be awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom by Joe Biden Thursday at a White House ceremony honoring this year’s recipients.

While it is less than a 15-minute drive from the hustle and bustle of East Hampton's Main Street in July, Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton's Northwest Woods feels a world away, which makes it both special and surprising. This year, Doug and Lee Biviano, who also operate concessions at the Fire Island National Seashore, have reopened the camp store and brought glamping back to the park.

This letter, written on July 7, 1803, by John Lyon Gardiner (1770-1816), proprietor of Gardiner’s Island, was sent to his younger brother, David Gardiner (1772-1815), a lawyer and farmer in Flushing, Queens.

When young Ella and Gracie Wobensmith found the diamondback turtle on a Noyack Bay beach four years ago it, had serious wounds to its shell and a punctured lung. It was rehabilitated at a turtle rescue center, and this week the girls had a chance to help release it back into the wild.

Thanks to a wide base of community support that its leaders say has allowed it to grow into a strong local nonprofit, Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island is marking its 20th anniversary this year.

From tears shed over catastrophic traffic to the day Governor Pataki visited Havens Beach, it happened here.

Moira and Robert Booth of New Hyde Park and Southold have announced the engagement of their daughter, Katelyn Barbara Booth, to David Charles McGinnis Boak, a son of Kathleen and Charles Boak of Amagansett and New York City.

After disbanding as the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee last October, former members of the group met at the Bridgehampton School Monday afternoon with a laundry list of housekeeping items, freshly minted articles of incorporation from the State of New York, and a set of land-use priorities that they will focus on in coming months as the independent nonprofit Bridgehampton Civic Association.

East Hampton Village Fire Chief Duane Forrester has a message for would-be Independence Day celebrants with a sackful of illicit fireworks at the ready: “Leave the fireworks to the professionals, so everyone can have a safe and happy Fourth of July.” True, true — and there are plenty of fireworks shows coming up over the holiday weekend and through the summer to enjoy the rockets’ red glare without, you know, losing your thumb to an M-80.

This photograph shows members of Dayton Hedges’s (1884-1957) family attending a tea ceremony on Aug. 21, 1953, in the East Hampton Library’s courtyard as part of the dedication of the library’s Hedges Room.

The Montauk Airport will remain open as an airport, its new director and general manager, Neil Blainey, said this week, and there are no plans to change that status.

The scientific name of the whip-poor-will, Antrostomus vociferus, is spot-on. According to “Birds of America,” edited by T. Gilbert Pearson, “the first word . . . means ‘cave mouth’ and the second . . . ‘strong voice.’ ”

At the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on June 17, Acacia L.L.C., the owner of 8 Marina Lane, asked to reopen its application for a sunken tennis court.

Flag etiquette is an especially big deal around the Fourth of July, in a country where nearly 70 percent of Americans own or fly the flag and spend an estimated $5 million annually on Fourth of July flags. Whether they display the flag with a sort of purist fidelity to the Flag Code is another thing — and given the highly detailed protocols, it’s a high bar indeed.

The Springs General Store is the unofficial center of the hamlet, a place where people flock for breakfast on weekends or coffee and camaraderie on weekday mornings, and where children head after school for a bag of candy or three cookies for $3. "For me the biggest gift is that I was able to be an active part of the community in a way that one person cannot always be," said the business's owner, Kristi Hood.

James V. Wright of Montauk and Ralph Gibson of East Hampton were married on June 15 in a small ceremony at East Hampton Village Hall. Theirs was the first same-sex marriage conducted by Mayor Jerry Larsen.

In honor of the June 23rd birthday of Alan Turing, the “father of modern computer science,” this week we feature a portrait of Thomas L. Collins (1921-2011), East Hampton’s own code-breaking computer specialist.

The Little Free Food Pantries maintained by the Neo-Political Cowgirls in Montauk, Amagansett, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor have been used steadily “from the get-go,” said Kate Mueth, founder of the not-for-profit dance theater company, “but we can’t keep them filled.”

Not unlike a Little Free Library, a Little Free Food Pantry is a place where people can give or take canned goods and other nonperishable food as needed.

“Oh, hi! We’re the people who rented your place.” That’s what the owner of a Springs property, who asked not to be named, said she heard about 20 times, almost daily, over the past three weeks. She believes she has been the victim of a summer house rental scam.