A wise woman once said to me that there are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these, she said, is roots; the other,... more
Once again, as the cherry blossoms appear, so does the arrival of spring — the season notorious for being a prelude to summer. It is so easy to view and smell springtime in the Hamptons. The bay and ocean waters are as clear and smooth as glass. Our seas are crystal clear all the way to the bottom. The beaches are completely free of rubbish and debris. We see only sand and stones. Lawns are green and flowers are about to bloom. There are other harbingers of summer, most notably in the Hamptons. When approaching restaurants of high-quality cuisine and ...
6 May 2024 by Shari Adler
By Bill Manger I am responding to the recent editorial titled “A Costly Hire” [May 2], regarding Southampton Village Administrator Anthony Carter. As mayor, I seek, in all matters, to do the absolute best for the Village of Southampton. When I was elected in June 2023, our then-administrator, appointed by my predecessor, informed us that she was retiring. I can assure you, I took the recruitment of her replacement very seriously — and any other characterization is false. This hiring was not a “make-good” of any kind whatsoever. My predecessor had, in fact, separated the village clerk position from the ...
by Bill Manger
Mother’s Day is next week, and I’m thrilled. The hockey pucks don’t live with us right now, so I’ll be getting what most moms want on Mother’s Day: peace and quiet. I’m lucky. Many of my friends’ adult children’s apartment leases have ended, and they’ve moved back home to save a little money until they find a new place. This stinks for my friends, because when grown kids come back, they revert to teenagers. Even the most capable adult children — those with 401Ks and car insurance — backslide. Once home, these “grownups” leave their half-empty cups on every flat ...
30 Apr 2024 by Tracy Grathwohl
“If we look to western Long Island, there are a lot of lessons that should be applied to us — how a lot of mistakes were made regarding water,” environmentalist John Turner was saying. Turner was speaking about far-western Long Island — Brooklyn — and how it blew its underground water supply more than a century ago. Brooklyn then tried to tap into the aquifers under the Pine Barrens of Suffolk County for potable water but was rebuffed. So it needed to look for water from reservoirs built upstate. These days, the 2.6 million residents of Suffolk and Nassau counties ...
by Karl Grossman
It’s tractor season in Sagaponack, the time of year you’ll see the most tractors with the widest array of implements ahead of you on the road. You see the bright orange triangle of the reflective SMV (slow moving vehicle) sign. You, at 40 mph, close in on the contraption; the tractor rolls at about 10 mph. The person operating the tractor has ear protection on. He’s wrapped in coveralls and, as if riding a horse, is hunched slightly forward. He won’t look back until he reaches the speed bump and the crosswalk. You don’t think he sees you, but he ...
by Marilee Foster
What has happened to our beautiful village by the sea? When I vacationed here in the summer of 1984, I thought I had found my paradise. I even wrote and published a piece some months later, titled “Hamptons Dreamland,” raving about the beauty, serenity and charm of the area. My sister, who worked at The Driver’s Seat then, had invited me for the summer. I stayed in one of the three bedrooms in her upstairs apartment on Elm Street, a few houses down from The Hansom House, a funky bar with outside dining and volleyball games in the big backyard. ...
29 Apr 2024 by Dianne Moritz
It was fitting that Suffolk County, with some of the richest soil in the world and still on the New York State’s list of its top agricultural counties (No. 4 based on “farm sales”), was the setting in recent days of a “Docs Equinox” series of documentaries with the theme “Cultivating Connections: Soils, Farms, Food.” Last year, the “Docs Equinox” series focused on drinking water and the aquifer. There were outstanding documentaries and speakers. The documentaries and speakers on April 12-14 this year — again in honor of Earth Day — were most outstanding, too. Indeed, after viewing a documentary ...
22 Apr 2024 by Karl Grossman
Staff Writer on Jan 17, 2022