Villages

The wrecking ball is swinging, and the $1.4 million renovation and expansion project for the Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is underway. The hope is that it can be finished by mid to late-summer.

The waters surrounding Plum Island are teeming with abundant life, not unlike the Long Island Sound, Peconic Estuary, and other nearby waterways. But a series of scientific dives below the surface last summer revealed something that sets Plum Island's marine environment apart from the rest. "There wasn't any trash," said Dr. Matthew Schlesinger, chief zoologist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, which completed the survey along with InnerSpace Scientific Diving.

Despite the feeling of calm that has settled in after mask mandates were lifted, despite the significantly lower case numbers and deaths across the United States, Covid is not finished with us — or we with it.

The Amagansett Library has launched a free seed "catalog" with vegetable, herb, and flower seeds available for library users to take and grow at home. The project is in partnership with Amber Waves Farm, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and home gardeners and will provide resources and programs this summer about gardening for food and fun.

The peanut craze of 1897, the telephone strike of 1947, and the day in 1997 that the G&T Dairy Chicken House closed for good.

The Breakwater Sailing Center, a.k.a. the Breakwater Yacht Club, in Sag Harbor, will host an open house on Tuesday to introduce a women's sailing initiative and new programs for the summer. "Historically, women are pretty much underrepresented as adult sailors," explained Joan Butler, a sailor, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, and a Breakwater member.

A strain of avian flu that state officials have deemed "highly pathogenic" has arrived on the South Fork, where a farm in Sag Harbor lost a flock of about 6,000 game birds on March 23 due to the infection and its potential to spread. The outbreak has poultry farms here on high alert.

The Amagansett Presbyterian Church and the Stony Brook University School of Health Professions will have a free health fair on April 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Scoville Hall on Meeting House Lane.

April Fools’ Day may be an unofficial holiday traditionally observed with pranks, jokes, and hoaxes every April 1, but this broadside for the “Fantastic, Grand Barbaric, and Cavalric Parade of April Fools” came from a Sag Harbor parade marking the occasion on April 3, 1871.

Stony Brook Medicine’s three hospitals, including two on the East End, have once again been named LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leaders by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The Sag Harbor Cinema and the Plain Sight Project, an initiative that aims to identify all enslaved people, as well as free people of color, who lived and worked on the East End and other Northern towns in America, have together received a $200,000 federal grant sponsored by Senator Charles E. Schumer.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

Rabbi Joshua Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons will travel to the Polish-Ukrainian border on April 9, along with a delegation of about 25 American and Israeli rabbis who will partner with organizations that are actively assisting Ukrainian Jews and others who have fled Russia’s invasion of their country.

An awful lot of people are getting sick with one thing or another in the weeks since New York State's mask mandate was lifted. “In prior years, this is when flu season is just ending, but right now, it’s just starting,” said Dr. Gail Schonfeld, whose East End Pediatrics practice in East Hampton has seen an average of five cases of flu each day over the past two weeks.

An 1897 ice house gets its fill of “excellent quality” frozen blocks from Down East, and Governor Dewey crowns the Potato Queen of 1947 in Riverhead.

As Long Island Collection staffers were digitizing East Hampton High School’s Bonac Beachcomber newspaper, we had some laughs over the Nov. 19, 1947, issue, which covered the junior prom.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have asked the federal Food and Drug Administration for authorization of a fourth (or second booster) dose of their respective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. Should this be approved, how much extra protection would it provide and who would benefit?

In the last two weeks, ospreys have started to return to the East End from their wintering grounds in Central and South America. They’re a sign of spring, and a constant visual reminder that our actions directly affect birds.

Spring comes to Mrs. Payne’s yard 125 years ago, Miss Alice White has a party on Main Street for St. Patrick’s Day, 1922, and in 1972 Montauk saw a Save Our Stripers movement.

Regular customers of Fierro’s Pizza in East Hampton Village will surely have noticed by now that there are new faces behind the counter this week, and that those new faces are actually familiar ones from the pizzeria’s earlier days. Randy Kendall and Joe Page, who worked on and off at Fierro’s for decades — Mr. Kendall for some 18 years, Mr. Page for 12 or 13 — took over as its new owners on March 14.

The operators of the Beach Hut concession at East Hampton's Main Beach pavilion have applied to the state recently for a "summer tavern wine license," which allows the sale of beer and wine for on-premises consumption, and they're also hoping to add dinner service this summer.

Kristofer Kalas, a trained pastry chef and owner of the tiny market Hello Oma in East Hampton, is in Ukraine helping women and children to get out of the country.

This photograph by Robert Hefner shows Broadview, the main house of the Bell Estate in Amagansett, on April 29, 1988, not long after Reginald and Loida Lewis bought it.

A donor known only by the name Eric recently brought smiles to the faces of 25 patients at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with surprise bouquets of flowers in honor of his mother, who died in 2021.

The American woodcock knows a thing or two about a good display. No bird on the East End of Long Island comes close to rivaling its spring show.

It was a good night for the combined school bands of Bridgehampton and East Hampton 75 years ago. A 1972 question over the use of chemicals by farmers here. And the day Tick Hall burned to the ground.

“The dishes in my dish rack rattle,” said Andy Rosenthal, a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the president of Stop the Chop, an organization seeking to end nonessential helicopter flights, including air shuttles to and from the Hamptons and tourist flights over the five boroughs.

As construction of the onshore portion of the South Fork Wind farm proceeds in Wainscott, a lawsuit filed in United States District Court last week seeks to halt that work, claiming its potential to spread the perfluorinated chemicals, known as PFAS, that were detected in nearby groundwater.

A man who says he’s still recovering from a years-long struggle with opioid addiction is suing an East Hampton doctor and a local pharmacy, alleging that they were negligent in his care by overprescribing and overfilling highly addictive drugs.

The account books of the Amagansett Mill Company, kept by John Baker from 1829 through 1841, are featured this week.