Villages

After a months-long search to find someone to fill the newly created position of executive director, the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, a women's organization founded in 1895 with an all-female board of directors, has announced the hiring of "the most qualified candidate," a man.

With a winter weather advisory in effect until Friday night, East Hampton and Southampton Towns closed all town facilities early on Thursday and East Enders were being warned to stay off the roads. 

This photograph shows John Horton (1852-1940) and his wife, Julia A. Montgomery Horton (1868-1915), outside their home in the Freetown section of East Hampton around 1900. The couple married in December 1885 and brought up two boys, Morgan Raymond (1890-1958) and William H. Horton (b. 1887).

In an effort to make sure communities of color have equal access to Covid-19 vaccinations, New York State and Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long will open a pop-up vaccination site at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton on Friday.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation formally announced its plan to build a casino on its territory on Wednesday, saying such a facility would bring with it enough financial opportunity "to lift our members from adversity."

Plans will be announced on Wednesday for a new casino on an 800-acre area of Shinnecock Indian Nation land, a spokesman for the nation confirmed Tuesday.

Bars, restaurants, and other businesses licensed by the New York State Liquor Authority can now remain open until 11 p.m., giving them an extra hour to do business. More New Yorkers with certain conditions now qualify to get the vaccine, and East Hampton Town vaccinated 300 people at its own distribution site on Saturday.

John Howard Payne (1791-1852) of “Home, Sweet Home” fame wrote letters from Washington, D.C., to Joann Miller (1816-1852) of East Hampton, and one, from 1834, is shown here.

Residents of Amagansett, one of the only communities on the South Fork without residential mail delivery, may soon see notices in their post office boxes asking whether they would prefer to get mail at home or are happy with the status quo.

Having read and written about the vaccines and their safety, efficacy, and side-effects profile, I knew that more significant side effects were possible when I went back to the hospital four weeks later for my second dose. And they definitely happened. 

The Village Preservation Society of East Hampton has awarded a $1,500 grant to the Plain Sight Project, a collaboration between The East Hampton Star and the East Hampton Library that is in its fourth year researching the history of slavery here.

For the next season of his show "What Made America Great," which began airing this week on the Fox Nation streaming service, Brian Kilmeade was tasked with finding a local story with national appeal. Covid-19 made traveling tough, so it had to be close to home in New York for Mr. Kilmeade, one of the anchors of Fox and Friends.

Connecticut? Fuhgeddaboutit. Frustrated by an inability to get a Covid-19 vaccination close to home, South Fork residents have been traveling by road and sea to try their luck elsewhere, with some having far more success than others.

The East Hampton Fire Department put recent ice rescue training into action on Monday when a dog fell through the ice at Hook Pond.

When chairwoman of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee asked on the "Springs Dog Park" Facebook page last month whether changes were necessary at the park — not officially a dog park according to its East Hampton Town land management plan — the reply was a loud chorus of 'nos" from dog owners. 

Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island has been chosen as the New York State Project HOPE provider for the East End and now has two crisis counselor teams able to offer assistance in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

East End real estate sales hit historic highs in the final months of 2020 according to fourth quarter reports from several agencies. Across the region, from Montauk to Westhampton, a "massive increase" in home buying resulted in more than $1.6 billion in sales during the quarter, an "unprecedented" 124-percent increase over the same period in 2019, according to one real estate agency.

Shown here is the account book that Daniel Hedges, a shoemaker in East Hampton, kept from 1765-1771. Hedges (1742-1831) was a son of John Hedges and Elizabeth Talmage Hedges. In this account, Hedges identifies each pair of shoes he sells, some listed as "pomps," or pumps, and others simply as "shoes." He also notes repairs to soles of shoes and caps put on heels.

In many ways, there are few things in medicine as dangerous as the passage of time. By this, I mean that inexorable movement toward a place where the status quo holds reign. Patients who come in to discuss their concerns about a recent 5 or 10-pound weight gain over a month or two will often be fired up with the desire to make positive changes in their lives.

The 91st Montauk Christmas Bird Count, held on Dec. 19, tallied 129 species, the second-highest total over the last 10 years, with the highlight of the day the sighting of a wood thrush, the first in count record.

Local legend holds that sections of this house were made from timbers of early shipwrecks. 

Coyotes, which have recently been seen on surveillance cameras on the East End, will be the subject of a South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center talk on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.

An ad hoc meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday night, called to discuss the possibility of bringing home mail delivery to Amagansett, started off with questions about how many of the hamlet's 2,000 or so mailbox owners would actually want it, and ended an hour later with few answers.

The East Hampton Historical Society’s annual winter lecture series, which will take place virtually this year, will launch Friday evening at 7 with “I Remember When: John Howard Payne’s Memories of Old East Hampton and His Life, 1791-1852.”

Lori Hawkins has covered the inauguration before. Whether or not to wear a flak jacket was not something those occasions required her to consider.

A plan is in the works to renovate and expand the Montauk skate park, designed in 1999 by the late skateboarding legend Andy Kessler. To fund the project, East Hampton Town has $50,000 in hand from one donor and is applying for a $25,000 grant from the Skatepark Project in California.

The Amagansett Library's copy of "Great Heart: The LIfe Story of Theodore Roosevelt" was belatedly returned, the late fee waived. It had been checked out on April 5, 1949, and was returned on Friday, approximately 71 years and nine months overdue.

"We tried to come up with something fun during Covid," Mayor Jerry Larsen said.

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen announced a plan to reconfigure parking spaces on Newtown Lane and along the perimeter of the Reutershan parking lot from parallel to angled drive-in parking at a board meeting on Friday.

You may or may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you sure as heck can teach an older adult how to use newfangled technology.