Villages

The property on Long Island Avenue in Sag Harbor where Friends of Bay Street had planned to build a new Bay Street Theater is instead being put on the market, The Star learned this week.

Last week housing for a feral cat colony living under the pavilion at Sagg Main Beach was dismantled and the colony was dispersed. After being sent photos of cat prints in the sand near a piping plover colony, the American Bird Conservancy had threatened to sue the Southampton Town trustees for not doing enough to protect the plovers, which are considered endangered in New York State.

Ripped from the pages of The Star of yore.

Gentle reader, it happened here . . .

Barnes & Noble announced Thursday that it will open a new bookstore in the Bridgehampton Commons this summer, taking over two storefronts previously occupied by Collette and Collette Annex. It will be the company's first foray into the South Fork bookselling world.

Before the 1830s, public schools were not freely available in America, and schools required tuition. Seen here, an itemized receipt for tuition payments from Jonathan Mulford (1770-1840), with his children’s names.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation's Tribal Council voted unanimously on Dec. 22 to pass an ordinance allowing sales of recreational, adult-use cannabis products at established and future smoke shops on Shinnecock territory along Montauk Highway, and since then has been distributing applications to eligible businesses.

A mixed retail and affordable housing development proposed by Adam Potter, the founder of the Friends of Bay Street, for the office district in Sag Harbor Village hit a speedbump recently, as news got out that the developer he was working with, Conifer, had dropped out of the project. The Smith & Henzy Advisory Group, a real estate development firm brought in by Conifer and specializing in funding large-scale housing developments through tax credits, also departed.

Written in the 1819 diary of Eliza Packer Gardiner (1788-1863) is a poem by Jerusha Buell (circa 1788-1829) titled “The Grave of the Year,” in which time itself considers what’s been lost.

Every week, Andrew Visconti assigns his students — English-learning adults from mostly Spanish-speaking countries, but with a Polish immigrant in the mix — to find an article that they’re interested in and take notes on what they’ve read. Then they come to class and tell one another about the article and why it stood out for them. The Star’s nationally-renowned crime pages are a big and repeat hit for the students.

What’s on the horizon for Montauk in 2023? The December meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee laid out some markers for what residents of the hamlet might expect in the new year.

During this Christmas/New Year’s interlude, I offer a fun challenge: Take a walk in the woods at night. Try it. You may hear a great-horned owl, who, despite the cold, is starting its courtship ritual. Its classic hooting call — offered in the cadence of “Who is awake? Me too!” — can be heard for miles, the song of the blue winter night.