Villages

As has been the tradition in East Hampton Village for more than four decades, hundreds of people marched down Main Street on Monday for the Memorial Day parade, which honored military men and women who have been lost in the line of duty since the Civil War.

The East End real estate boom brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic is experiencing a shift thanks to historically low inventory, but the market is still feeding historically high prices, competitive conditions, a near-total lack of available rental properties, and faster turnaround of deals as a result.

This photograph from the Springs Historical Society shows Donald Asa Miller (1917-2007) in a bomber-style aviator jacket. The plane behind him carries an Army Air Corps logo, although Miller served as a radioman in the Navy.

When beaches are closed because of nesting plovers, people get pretty riled up. The birds, which are endangered in the country and New York State, may seem to be prolific here, but in fact nest on only a handful of beaches on the East End. They're also site-specific, returning year after year to breed in the same spots.

Dr. Meera Shah, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood in the Hudson Peconic region, spoke over Zoom this week about her work as an abortion provider, the epic struggle facing her organization, and its fund-raiser in Bridgehampton on June 4, at which she will be a featured speaker.

You might consider the phase “the Hamptons” a tad pretentious and semi-newly coined. But check out its use in The Star from back in 1897. And then in 1947, quick thinking saved a man overboard.

East Hampton Village’s “2023 tentative budget includes the biggest tax cut of the last 20 years,” the village’s administrator, Marcos Baladron, announced at a village board meeting on Friday.

It didn’t take long for the East Hampton Village lifeguard squad to get called into action this season, and their save of two boys caught in a rip current provided a good chance to educate the young swimmers about the dangers of such currents and how to deal with them.

Sparks will be flying in Springs on Saturday, when the Parsons Blacksmith Shop finally reopens after a two-year pandemic hiatus. The smithy, James DeMartis, ready for the day’s work in his knee-length leather apron, will be back at the centuries-old forge, hammering hot steel into hooks, nails, and horseshoes to delight the holiday weekend crowds.

This is a public cervix announcement: East Enders are not going to stand idly by as the United States Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that for nearly 50 years has protected women's right to choose to have an abortion. That was the takeaway on Saturday on the steps of the Suffolk County Supreme Court in Riverhead, where hundreds of people from Montauk and Orient to Brookhaven and Patchogue rallied in support of Roe v. Wade, hoping to send the nation's highest court a resounding message.

The effort to preserve and restore the Springs house and studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park achieved yet another milestone this week when the Preservation League of New York State named the structures to its 2022-23 Seven to Save list, a registry highlighting the state's most at-risk historical places.

For a luxury Montauk rental, it sounds too good to be true. Six bedrooms, 7,300 square feet, ocean view, heated saltwater pool with waterfall edge, and top-of-the-line kitchen appliances listed for $2,500 a night on Airbnb. The catch, says the homeowner: It's a scam offered by "hosts" who've used the legitimate real estate photos to dupe unsuspecting vacationers.

The latest East Hampton Library Item of the Week is the last will and testament of William Barns (1723-1814) of East Hampton, drafted on March 18, 1809. The Barns, or Barnes, family were among the earliest settlers of East Hampton, and this William was the son of another William Barns (1702-1726) and the former Martha Edwards (1706-1745). 

Despite a significant uptick in Covid-19 cases, including the designation of Suffolk and Nassau Counties as a region now at high risk of virus transmission by the federal Centers for Disease Control, the number of patients admitted at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital has remained in the single digits over the last few weeks — very much manageable, the hospital's chief medical officer has said. "We're going to have to learn how to live with it when community spread goes up like it is now."

Catbirds are neither rare nor shy. Work in your garden and you may soon have a catbird working alongside you. They're charming, excellent company, and release a seemingly infinite number of sounds when they open their black bills.

The renovated and reconfigured Montauk Library will host its official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday at noon. The institution's new, state-of-the-art facilities, complete with sustainable elements, look more than ready to deal with the changing future. Yet it's the past, said Denise DiPaolo, the library's director, that has especially captivated the library's patrons, especially the older ones.

When the Sagaponack Village Board offered an amendment to a local law on April 13 that stated that construction of new pickleball courts would be subject to various setback regulations, based on a noise-attenuation study the board had carried out, the people of the village sounded off.

At the end of March, in an ambitious effort to eradicate ticks on North Haven, the village relaunched its campaign to install "four-poster" feeding stations for deer. The stations bait deer with corn. While they feed, a tickicide is applied directly to their necks.

The painter Gaines Ruger Donoho’s house gets an addition in 1897, a 1922 report looks at potato planting on the South Fork, and “the Hamptons as playground” is dissected in a 1947 Holiday magazine article.

With the United State Supreme Court poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which has protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years, hundreds of East Enders took to the streets of downtown Riverhead on Saturday to make their opinions heard.

After the news broke that the United States Supreme Court, in a leaked draft of a decision, is poised to overturn the landmark case Roe v. Wade, several community organizations came together to organize a rally in support of abortion rights in Riverhead on Saturday.

In honor of “See Their Names,” coming to the library on Monday, this week’s item features an 1803 agreement between Jason Cuffee, of mixed heritage, and Abraham Osborn, an East Hampton property owner.

A pollinator garden is soon to be installed in Amagansett, on the ocean side of Bluff Road between Hand and Meeting House Lanes, just west of the East Hampton Town Marine Museum, the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee learned Monday as it got an update on a variety of things happening in the hamlet.

"Right Before I Go," conceived by Stan Zimmerman, directed by Valerie diLorenzo, and starring a host of well-known local actors, will be staged at LTV Studios in Wainscott on Saturday and May 21. The production, which aims to "break the silence and create discussion," is also a fund-raiser for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Alcohol and a horse-driven buckboard do not mix in 1897, and Springs hits a freaky boiling point in 1972.

Joseph DeCristofaro has been named the first honorary chief in the East Hampton Fire Department's 132-year history. 

"To me, one of the more beautiful things about the experience was feeling the Springs community come together," said Lindsay Grodzki of Fort Pond Boulevard, who had an unexpected home birth about a month ago.

It wasn’t just bread baking or pet ownership that Covid refugees turned to once they had alighted here during the pandemic. Many also embraced horseback riding, observed Natalie Mattson, who owns Brennan’s Bit and Bridle in the Bridgehampton Commons.

In the 20 years since Fighting Chance, the free cancer-counseling charity based in Sag Harbor, opened its doors, the death rate from cancer in the United States has dropped by about 30 percent. That is certainly cause to celebrate, and Fighting Chance is seizing it.

In addition to an already tight labor market, three major structural problems plague the East End. Lack of affordable housing, lack of public transportation and inadequate roads to handle growing traffic, and a lack of child care add to the already difficult task of hiring and retaining employees.