Villages

For most people, the news out of Ukraine is horrible, but it’s just news. However, there are plenty of local residents who have direct ties to the beleaguered nation, people who are watching the slow-motion, 40-mile-long convoy of future death tear a hole through a country that their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers still live in.

This postcard from the Harvey Ginsberg Postcard Collection shows a summer cottage belonging to Benjamin Franklin Evans (1843-1913) on the dunes at Lily Pond Lane.

The much-anticipated, newly renovated Montauk Library officially reopened on Friday. “This is our soft opening,” said Denise DiPaolo, the library’s director, noting that the official ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place in May. But fanfare for the newly reconfigured and expanded library space has begun, as excited patrons passed through the doors on Friday, wearing big smiles and looks of wonder.

A warning about recreational beachfront being washed out to sea from 75 years ago, while back in 1997 Martha Stewart was in top form.

Many people often wonder when they should make the decision to call 911 or go to an emergency room if they are sick or injured. What precisely constitutes an emergency?

The white-throated sparrow’s song “is a lament,” George Gladden wrote, “a lament which is wistful and ineffably plaintive, but in which there is no despair, only sweet hopefulness.”

Hamptons Community Outreach, a nonprofit group that helps economically disadvantaged people obtain food, emergency house repairs, and other support, is a recipient of a new Land Rover donated by the Southampton Village dealership in the company’s Above and Beyond Service Awards.

This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Great Backyard Bird Count. To participate, you spend a minimum of 15 minutes counting birds, and afterward report what you see to the number-cracking scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Two hundred and two years ago, Sarah Frances Dering of Shelter Island wrote her paternal first cousin Elizabeth (Eliza) Packer Gardiner in New York City about a perilous, snowy trip by sleigh.

Lucky for us, if the ponds remain unfrozen, kingfishers are fairly common around the East End during the winter months.

The winners of the Amagansett Village Improvement Society’s “Love Letters to Amagansett” essay-writing contest were announced on the society’s website on Monday, Valentine’s Day.

Much may depend, however, on an assessment of the condition of the site’s four structures, commissioned by the town and to be issued this week. Its author, the consulting engineer Drew Bennett, has said that “there are some things of concern” in his report.