State Sen. Ken LaValle with L.Cpl. Jordan Haerter's mother, JoAnn Lyles.

JoAnn Lyles and Chrystyna Kestler spent Tuesday morning driving together from the East End to Albany where their sons were posthumously honored as veterans. It was a bittersweet reminder that this holiday weekend is about more than the beginning of summer and is, in fact, a time to remember those who have given their lives, however young, for the freedoms enjoyed by those of us still living.

"It was a good opportunity for us to talk and talk and talk, share stories and tears," said Lyles on Wednesday morning.

Lyles' son, Marine Lance Corporal Jordan C. Haerter, and Kestler's son, Army First Lieutenant Joseph J. Theinert, were inducted...

A record store? On the East End?

Cgraig Wright at his newly opened record store in Amagansett.

It started with the Japanese.

Record collector and East Hampton native Craig Wright had been running a successful music business on eBay for five years, regularly sending used records to buyers both locally and internationally. But, last year he suddenly began receiving visits from music store owners on record-buying missions from half-way around the world.

"I had at least six or seven guys from Japan looking through my storage facility over the last year," Wright exclaimed. "And I thought, this isn't the way to do it. I've gotta make this available to everyone."

The result is Inner Sleeve Music...

Rojdrefa Patterson goes through a few moves at Marine Park in Sag Harbor last week.

To some, 15-year-old Rojdrefa Patterson is known as the girl who flips.

If you've been to a Pierson High School basketball games, you've probably seen it. In a black-and-red mini-skirt and knit top with the initials "PHS," Patterson flips not once, not twice, but several times in rapid succession down the length of the wooden court. Sometimes she ends her impromptu routines with the splits, which she sinks into effortlessly, the way anyone else might sink into a chair.

Of course, acrobatics are nothing new for high school cheerleading, a sport which has garnered a respectable reputation in the sports world in the last few years.

But Patterson's case is unique. Her talent comes not from cheer camp or gymnastics classes...