“What if the budget gets voted down again, Mom?” That was the question on my 14-year-old daughter’s mind yesterday morning. I explained the potential consequences — the loss of sports and other extracurricular activities.
“Well that sucks,” observed her 13-year-old sister.
This time I didn’t chastise my daughter for using crude language. I simply agreed. It does. “Will that mean no choir? No Blue Masques?” they demanded in unison. I couldn’t say. Participating in the show choir has been one of the highlights of their middle school years. (The show choir even got to perform the national anthem to open the Ducks game last Friday night, which was way cool — for the choir and the rest of the Riverhead contingent huddled together against the drizzle in Citibank Park that evening.) And I can hardly describe their anticipation of the opportunity to get involved in the Blue Masques next year in high school.
My kids wore glum looks on their faces as they went off to school yesterday. I felt the same, maybe worse.
Every year, it’s the same drill. We fret and fight over school budgets, while our kids are stuck in the middle, suffering the consequences of political and economic situations they have zero control over. Every year, the kids are the hostages, the victims of mistakes committed by us grown-ups.
Shame on us! Shame on us for making kids pay the cost of our poor planning, our political agendas and our apathy. It’s astonishing that, even with the infusion of $1.3 million in state payments in lieu of taxes this year on state-owned land that’s otherwise off our tax rolls, keeping our school tax rate increase at just two percent, Riverhead still said no. But a two percent increase on taxes that already have a lot of people stretched to the limit is still, obviously, too much.
Our school property taxes are too high not because our school district spends too much. In fact, the per-pupil cost of education is about the same on Long Island as in districts upstate, when regional cost differences (such as the highest electric rates in the nation) are factored in.
School property tax bills upstate are drastically lower than our tax bills here because school districts upstate get a greater portion of their budgets covered by state aid than we do, so the amount they have to raise by way of property taxes is smaller. Here, property tax payers do the heavy lifting.
On Long Island, we spend an average of 5.1% of our gross household income to pay school property taxes. Other New Yorkers spend less than 2.3% of their gross household income on school property taxes. That’s more than double — 66%, in fact.
Let me put this another way: The income and sales taxes you pay to New York state are being spent by the state to underwrite public education in other parts of the state.
That’s mostly because more than 30 years ago, legislators decided on “regional shares” to divvy up the state aid pie. Long Island got 13%, and that’s where it’s remained, frozen at 13%. The island’s population has grown a bit in the last three decades, wouldn’t you say? But our piece of the pie hasn’t grown with it.
And because of the dysfunctional manner in which our state legislature does business, our local representatives have been impotent to do anything to correct this fundamental unfairness.
Senator LaValle talks about how he had the Enhanced STAR program put into place to give us relief here on Long Island. Do you feel relieved? Not enough to vote “yes.” This year, he came through with that PILOT money, and I give him credit for that. But these are Band-Aids treatments for a terminally ill patient.
I like Ken LaValle. He’s a decent guy who’s done a lot of good things for the 1st senate district. And because Albany is Albany, it’s probably true that no one else could have done anything different or better. But Senator LaValle, along with our as yet unproven new assemblyman, Marc Alessi, and every one of the incumbents in the Long Island delegation need to get the message loud and clear. You have to right this wrong now, or you’re outta here.
The way New York state funds public education is nuts. And very unfair — to the point of being unconstitutional. That’s not just my opinion but the opinion of the highest court in the state.
Our system is broken beyond repair, folks — it needs a complete overhaul. The only way that’s going to happen is if we — you and I — make it happen. Our legislature isn’t going to do it unless we pressure them to the extreme. We’ve got to quit punishing our kids and beating up on our teachers and school administrators and train our sights instead on the real source of our pain: Albany.
Can you think of a good reason why you should pay more than twice as much of your gross annual income for school property taxes than a family in Ulster County? I sure can’t. I don’t know about you, but that makes me mad. And the look on my kids’ faces yesterday makes me even madder. Enough with the hand-wringing and whining. It’s time for action.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Rule 1: Consider the source
We received an anonymous letter at the newspaper this week, accusing us of being “soft” on our local school districts. We only print the good news about our schools, wrote the author of this neatly typed missive alleging our malfeasance.
I can imagine dozens of school board members and district administrators across the Times/Review Newspaper coverage area, stretching from Orient Point on the east to Mount Sinai on the west, laughing out loud as they read these words. That’s because they have a distinctly different opinion of our coverage, and I know it because I’ve heard about it. Repeatedly. We go out of our way to print the negative about our schools, district officials have complained. If something bad happens, we’re on it. Good stuff? We hardly notice.
To some people, we’re sugar-coating news about our schools. We’re in bed with the establishment, helping them to pick the pockets of the taxpayers by making sure that our school districts are portrayed in the best possible light. To some inside the establishment, we’re in cahoots with the disgruntled troublemakers of the world on most issues, and being members of the fourth estate, we of course thrive on and seek out the negative.
And here we are, in the middle, viewed with suspicion by the two warring sides.
Amen and hallelujah — we must be doing something right. Everybody’s mad at us!
When I was just a few years out of law school, as a hearing officer at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, a veteran lawyer at the agency coached me in negotiation skills. Hearing officers often had to broker settlements in complaints between consumers and businesses. “When both sides sign the agreement but walk away from the table unhappy,” he told me, “you know you’ve done a good job.” At the time, I thought this advice was completely bizarre. I was 27, idealistic and a bit naive. I wanted everyone to sign the agreement and walk away happy.
That lawyer’s words have come back to me many times over the years. And I heard his voice again on Monday as I contemplated the allegations in the letter. The advice takes on new meaning for me in the field of journalism. Important new meaning. Nobody we cover as journalists should ever feel too happy with us. Nobody should ever feel like we’re their best friends — or even that we’re their friends at all. In this business, friendship can be a dangerous thing. It can color your perspective, maybe even make you look the other way when you shouldn’t. Nobody should ever be so comfortable with you that they think they can influence or even control what ends up in print on the pages of your newspaper.
So when the establishment and the anti-establishment each think we’re carrying water for the other side, we know we’ve done our job right.
Now, what kind of person would want a job whose measure of success is the extent to which she is mistrusted and even reviled by her neighbors? That’s another story altogether, and probably best answered on a therapist’s couch.
To the author of that anonymous letter, I’d sure like the opportunity to answer each point you raised. I can’t do that here because we’re not in the business of printing — and thereby spreading — unsubstantiated rumors. With one exception, we’d heard each of the rumors you wrote about and did what responsible journalists do before they print anything: We checked them out. (We’re looking into the one we hadn’t heard before your letter came.) None of them panned out. One came close, but we couldn’t get anybody to go on the record with anything of substance, so we couldn’t report it.
That’s the difference between real journalism and some of the stuff masquerading as journalism on Internet message boards and weblogs today: checking, documenting, sourcing things on the record. We may not always get everything right, because we’re only human, but it’s not for lack of trying. We don’t print things we’ve heard without doing our level best to confirm their veracity. And we never, ever run to press with a story from an anonymous source. We’ll protect a the confidentiality of a source who can’t go on the record, but we need to know who our source is and understand the valid reason why he or she needs to remain unidentified before we’ll pursue a story. And except in the rarest of situations — I can’t even think of one right now — we won’t take it to print without confirming the story on the record with other people.
We’re held accountable for what we print, as we should be. That’s also why we don’t print anonymous letters to the editor. Accountability helps ensure truthfulness. If you really believe in what you’re saying, if it’s the truth, then you sign your name to it. To the author of that anonymous letter — you know who you are — I’d love to discuss the things you wrote. Give me a call.
I can imagine dozens of school board members and district administrators across the Times/Review Newspaper coverage area, stretching from Orient Point on the east to Mount Sinai on the west, laughing out loud as they read these words. That’s because they have a distinctly different opinion of our coverage, and I know it because I’ve heard about it. Repeatedly. We go out of our way to print the negative about our schools, district officials have complained. If something bad happens, we’re on it. Good stuff? We hardly notice.
To some people, we’re sugar-coating news about our schools. We’re in bed with the establishment, helping them to pick the pockets of the taxpayers by making sure that our school districts are portrayed in the best possible light. To some inside the establishment, we’re in cahoots with the disgruntled troublemakers of the world on most issues, and being members of the fourth estate, we of course thrive on and seek out the negative.
And here we are, in the middle, viewed with suspicion by the two warring sides.
Amen and hallelujah — we must be doing something right. Everybody’s mad at us!
When I was just a few years out of law school, as a hearing officer at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, a veteran lawyer at the agency coached me in negotiation skills. Hearing officers often had to broker settlements in complaints between consumers and businesses. “When both sides sign the agreement but walk away from the table unhappy,” he told me, “you know you’ve done a good job.” At the time, I thought this advice was completely bizarre. I was 27, idealistic and a bit naive. I wanted everyone to sign the agreement and walk away happy.
That lawyer’s words have come back to me many times over the years. And I heard his voice again on Monday as I contemplated the allegations in the letter. The advice takes on new meaning for me in the field of journalism. Important new meaning. Nobody we cover as journalists should ever feel too happy with us. Nobody should ever feel like we’re their best friends — or even that we’re their friends at all. In this business, friendship can be a dangerous thing. It can color your perspective, maybe even make you look the other way when you shouldn’t. Nobody should ever be so comfortable with you that they think they can influence or even control what ends up in print on the pages of your newspaper.
So when the establishment and the anti-establishment each think we’re carrying water for the other side, we know we’ve done our job right.
Now, what kind of person would want a job whose measure of success is the extent to which she is mistrusted and even reviled by her neighbors? That’s another story altogether, and probably best answered on a therapist’s couch.
To the author of that anonymous letter, I’d sure like the opportunity to answer each point you raised. I can’t do that here because we’re not in the business of printing — and thereby spreading — unsubstantiated rumors. With one exception, we’d heard each of the rumors you wrote about and did what responsible journalists do before they print anything: We checked them out. (We’re looking into the one we hadn’t heard before your letter came.) None of them panned out. One came close, but we couldn’t get anybody to go on the record with anything of substance, so we couldn’t report it.
That’s the difference between real journalism and some of the stuff masquerading as journalism on Internet message boards and weblogs today: checking, documenting, sourcing things on the record. We may not always get everything right, because we’re only human, but it’s not for lack of trying. We don’t print things we’ve heard without doing our level best to confirm their veracity. And we never, ever run to press with a story from an anonymous source. We’ll protect a the confidentiality of a source who can’t go on the record, but we need to know who our source is and understand the valid reason why he or she needs to remain unidentified before we’ll pursue a story. And except in the rarest of situations — I can’t even think of one right now — we won’t take it to print without confirming the story on the record with other people.
We’re held accountable for what we print, as we should be. That’s also why we don’t print anonymous letters to the editor. Accountability helps ensure truthfulness. If you really believe in what you’re saying, if it’s the truth, then you sign your name to it. To the author of that anonymous letter — you know who you are — I’d love to discuss the things you wrote. Give me a call.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Letters, do we get letters
As the editor of a community newspaper, you get accused of a lot of things. That was certainly my experience as editor of The News-Review. I was always up to something, according to some readers. I figured my involvement in electoral politics years ago contributed to that perception — understandably, I guess. Some people assumed I played favorites because of it.
From time to time I found myself accused of things like not printing letters to the editor because I didn’t agree with what the letter writer had to say. Of course, if we did that kind of thing, these pages, usually bursting at the seams with letters from readers incensed about something, would often be pretty barren. And surely those letters calling me all kinds of names would never have seen the light of day.
But, no, we print them all — as long as they had a name, address and phone number attached, and as long as we can confirm that the name on the bottom of the letter belongs to a “real” person.
Usually, our letters pages are filled, and some weeks we even run out of room for all the letters we get. To my mind that’s cause for celebration. Industry experts tell us that a good measure of a community newspaper’s success is the health of its letters to the editor section. Lots of letters tell you that people are reading your newspaper, that its contents matter to them, and matter enough to inspire them to pick up a pen or sit at their computer and voice their own opinions. That’s an honor — even if the opinion they’re inspired to express is that the editor is an idiot.
One of the things that gave me pause about stepping into the editor’s role at The Suffolk Times was, in fact, managing its op-ed section. I knew it would be a challenge. The Suffolk Times almost always has more letters than we can fit on these pages. Many of the letter writers are regulars. Some even have their own followings. How would I know which letters to hold when we run out of room? Which letters to trim to make them more readable and to-the-point?
Southold, I knew, was different than Riverhead (I can almost hear that chorus of “amens” right now.) Its demographic combination of old-time Yankee and cosmopolitan second-home owner is hard to figure for this working-class kid from Brooklyn.
OK, so I was a tad intimidated by the task. Luckily, I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge. And these first few weeks have provided plenty of challenges. For starters, there’s the sheer volume. It’s a huge task to read, edit and confirm all the letters.
Then there’s dealing with the length of some letters. Southold folks can be somewhat — er, shall we say — verbose, I’ve noticed. I had one letter this week that was 1,580 words long. I am loathe to make a hard word “limit” part of our letters policy; I’d rather play it by ear. But 1,580 words? That’s twice as long as most of the stories we print. I sent the author an e-mail asking him to trim his letter to something less than 500 words. As I write this, I haven’t heard back from him yet, but I know I will — and I’m bracing myself. He opened his dissertation by calling The Suffolk Times coverage of the Factory Avenue affordable housing proposal “inflammatory, one-sided, inaccurate and simply the writings of a reporter who is ill-informed.” He will probably think I want to cut his letter down because I didn’t like what he had to say. Of course I didn’t like what he had to say, and I don’t agree, but that’s quite beside the point.
Then there are the once-is-not-enough people. I’m not talking about the people who are our faithful correspondents each and every week, without fail. (How can anyone have so many opinions about everything?) I’m referring to the people who have so many opinions about everything they feel inspired to write several letters almost every week. Three, four, even five letters on different topics! This is a phenomenon I never saw in Riverhead, and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve informed these prolific writers that we have a “one-per-week” policy here, but it hasn’t changed anything. I don’t mind reading multiple letters from one reader every week, but after I edit and format a letter for printing, it’s a drag to have the reader call or e-mail to say, “Never mind that one, print this one instead.” And when that happens three times in one week, it makes for a very cranky editor.
Of course, there are moments of levity in this business and they help balance the trying times (like printing the wrong name at the end of a letter, which we did last week.) My favorite thus far: a letter to the editor accusing us of making somebody up.
“Now I realize there is no such man as John Copertino,” wrote a Southold man in an e-mail to me. “It is a fictional character made up by the editor of the Times/Review to generate controversy and more letters. I have to say to the editor of the Times/Review, you can’t fool us.”
Mr. Copertino is a real person of course. He came into the office this week to drop off another letter. And I have witnesses.
Keep those cards and letters coming. E-mail me at denise@timesreview.com, or post a comment on my blog: civiletti.blogspot.com
From time to time I found myself accused of things like not printing letters to the editor because I didn’t agree with what the letter writer had to say. Of course, if we did that kind of thing, these pages, usually bursting at the seams with letters from readers incensed about something, would often be pretty barren. And surely those letters calling me all kinds of names would never have seen the light of day.
But, no, we print them all — as long as they had a name, address and phone number attached, and as long as we can confirm that the name on the bottom of the letter belongs to a “real” person.
Usually, our letters pages are filled, and some weeks we even run out of room for all the letters we get. To my mind that’s cause for celebration. Industry experts tell us that a good measure of a community newspaper’s success is the health of its letters to the editor section. Lots of letters tell you that people are reading your newspaper, that its contents matter to them, and matter enough to inspire them to pick up a pen or sit at their computer and voice their own opinions. That’s an honor — even if the opinion they’re inspired to express is that the editor is an idiot.
One of the things that gave me pause about stepping into the editor’s role at The Suffolk Times was, in fact, managing its op-ed section. I knew it would be a challenge. The Suffolk Times almost always has more letters than we can fit on these pages. Many of the letter writers are regulars. Some even have their own followings. How would I know which letters to hold when we run out of room? Which letters to trim to make them more readable and to-the-point?
Southold, I knew, was different than Riverhead (I can almost hear that chorus of “amens” right now.) Its demographic combination of old-time Yankee and cosmopolitan second-home owner is hard to figure for this working-class kid from Brooklyn.
OK, so I was a tad intimidated by the task. Luckily, I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge. And these first few weeks have provided plenty of challenges. For starters, there’s the sheer volume. It’s a huge task to read, edit and confirm all the letters.
Then there’s dealing with the length of some letters. Southold folks can be somewhat — er, shall we say — verbose, I’ve noticed. I had one letter this week that was 1,580 words long. I am loathe to make a hard word “limit” part of our letters policy; I’d rather play it by ear. But 1,580 words? That’s twice as long as most of the stories we print. I sent the author an e-mail asking him to trim his letter to something less than 500 words. As I write this, I haven’t heard back from him yet, but I know I will — and I’m bracing myself. He opened his dissertation by calling The Suffolk Times coverage of the Factory Avenue affordable housing proposal “inflammatory, one-sided, inaccurate and simply the writings of a reporter who is ill-informed.” He will probably think I want to cut his letter down because I didn’t like what he had to say. Of course I didn’t like what he had to say, and I don’t agree, but that’s quite beside the point.
Then there are the once-is-not-enough people. I’m not talking about the people who are our faithful correspondents each and every week, without fail. (How can anyone have so many opinions about everything?) I’m referring to the people who have so many opinions about everything they feel inspired to write several letters almost every week. Three, four, even five letters on different topics! This is a phenomenon I never saw in Riverhead, and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve informed these prolific writers that we have a “one-per-week” policy here, but it hasn’t changed anything. I don’t mind reading multiple letters from one reader every week, but after I edit and format a letter for printing, it’s a drag to have the reader call or e-mail to say, “Never mind that one, print this one instead.” And when that happens three times in one week, it makes for a very cranky editor.
Of course, there are moments of levity in this business and they help balance the trying times (like printing the wrong name at the end of a letter, which we did last week.) My favorite thus far: a letter to the editor accusing us of making somebody up.
“Now I realize there is no such man as John Copertino,” wrote a Southold man in an e-mail to me. “It is a fictional character made up by the editor of the Times/Review to generate controversy and more letters. I have to say to the editor of the Times/Review, you can’t fool us.”
Mr. Copertino is a real person of course. He came into the office this week to drop off another letter. And I have witnesses.
Keep those cards and letters coming. E-mail me at denise@timesreview.com, or post a comment on my blog: civiletti.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 20, 2006
A ferry good education
Although I became co-publisher of the company that publishes The Suffolk Times in July 2004, it wasn’t until recently that I began to really dig into the history of the Cross Sound Ferry controversy. One big reason: until January, I was also pulling duty as editor of another Times/Review paper, The News-Review, which covers Riverhead Town, where I live.
I had some rudimentary understanding of the issues involved, of course. And I couldn’t help being aware of the P.R. battle being waged by Cross Sound Ferry to paint the opposition as a small group of fanatical NIMBYs and the Town of Southold’s lawsuit as an attempt to put the ferry company out of business. It was unavoidable because this newspaper had been drawn into the fray, accused by the ferry company of siding with Southold Citizens for Safe Roads, a vocal opponent of ferry expansion and sometime litigant against both the town and the ferry company. That accusation grew out of the opinions of our former publisher, Troy Gustavson, an Orient resident, in his semimonthly op-ed column. In fact, this newspaper’s position on the ferry issue is completely consistent with every position it has ever taken on any environmental issue facing the North Fork: We have passionately advocated the preservation of the North Fork’s character and quality of life.
In the wake of editor Tim Kelly’s resignation last month, I now find myself charged with the responsibility for putting out this paper every Thursday. As such, a stranger in a strange land, I’m taking a very intensive “crash course” on Southold — a baptism by fire that of course includes the ferry controversy. I realize that no matter what I say, there are some who will prejudge me on this and perhaps other issues, just because I work for Times/Review. So be it. I’ve never been anyone’s stooge and, at age 48, I’m not going to start now.
My opinions on the subject of Cross Sound Ferry are, quite frankly, still being formed. As a lawyer (J.D., NYU, 1982), one of my first points of entry to this dispute was the file of court documents in the suit brought by the town last fall. I’m still digesting the pleadings, affidavits and exhibits in the file. But it’s been an education.
As a former Riverhead Town councilwoman — elected in 1987, I served one four-year term — I know something about politics, government, zoning and dispute resolution. Reading through the five-inch-thick court file, I can’t help but wonder why this matter wasn’t resolved long ago.
It’s obvious the ferry company has a right to operate at a location that’s been in active use as a port since long before Southold had a zoning code. It’s equally obvious that the town has the right to regulate the site where the ferry company operates. And it’s also obvious that the increase in the ferry company’s business over the past decade or so — in part thanks to casino-bound vehicles and passengers — has created stress on the local road — albeit one under state jurisdiction — leading to Orient Point. Ferry traffic has many Southold residents seeing red, and they fear what the future holds if the ferry continues to add more vessels and more service between Orient and New London without restriction. Will that happen? If left to the free market, the odds are very good. At least one casino is undergoing a large expansion, and there are plans for a major theme park and a NASCAR race track in eastern Connecticut, both of which would undoubtedly bring more New England-bound vehicular traffic through the formerly quiet country byways of Southold Town.
This has all the makings of a classic land-use controversy, and the responsibility for solving it rests squarely with the Town Board. It’s rather incredible that the board has up until now taken very few proactive measures to bring this bitter dispute to a reasonable, if not happy, conclusion. It hasn’t yet undertaken any study of the traffic volume and patterns on State Route 25, and might not even be discussing doing so today had SCSR president Freddie Wachsberger not shamed board members into it at the last work session. The supervisor pointed out to me that lawsuits have a way of sucking the energy out of everyone. And the town’s been wrapped up in its lawsuit with the ferry company, no doubt. But that’s really no excuse for inaction; inaction is what got the town into this predicament to begin with.
For starters, the Town Board has to get a handle on the facts of the traffic situation as it exists at the peak of the season, and during the off-season, too. It needs to have a clear understanding of what it can and can’t do to regulate the company’s growth at the Orient Point terminal, and it should take the steps needed to put lawful regulations in place.
Cross Sound’s contention that the town can’t regulate its business doesn’t hold water; a municipality has the right to regulate all businesses operating within its borders. If the company’s parking needs are greater than its ability to accommodate its customers’ cars, it can’t simply expect to have the unlimited right to use the public right of way for its customer parking. Nor can it expect to keep annexing the surrounding residentially zoned land to its commercial site to meet its parking needs. At some point, it must recognize that it’s outgrown its present location, and should seek to establish another port.
This isn’t about the ferry company being “evil” or a “bad neighbor,” and it isn’t about a desire to put it out of business. It’s just common sense.
I had some rudimentary understanding of the issues involved, of course. And I couldn’t help being aware of the P.R. battle being waged by Cross Sound Ferry to paint the opposition as a small group of fanatical NIMBYs and the Town of Southold’s lawsuit as an attempt to put the ferry company out of business. It was unavoidable because this newspaper had been drawn into the fray, accused by the ferry company of siding with Southold Citizens for Safe Roads, a vocal opponent of ferry expansion and sometime litigant against both the town and the ferry company. That accusation grew out of the opinions of our former publisher, Troy Gustavson, an Orient resident, in his semimonthly op-ed column. In fact, this newspaper’s position on the ferry issue is completely consistent with every position it has ever taken on any environmental issue facing the North Fork: We have passionately advocated the preservation of the North Fork’s character and quality of life.
In the wake of editor Tim Kelly’s resignation last month, I now find myself charged with the responsibility for putting out this paper every Thursday. As such, a stranger in a strange land, I’m taking a very intensive “crash course” on Southold — a baptism by fire that of course includes the ferry controversy. I realize that no matter what I say, there are some who will prejudge me on this and perhaps other issues, just because I work for Times/Review. So be it. I’ve never been anyone’s stooge and, at age 48, I’m not going to start now.
My opinions on the subject of Cross Sound Ferry are, quite frankly, still being formed. As a lawyer (J.D., NYU, 1982), one of my first points of entry to this dispute was the file of court documents in the suit brought by the town last fall. I’m still digesting the pleadings, affidavits and exhibits in the file. But it’s been an education.
As a former Riverhead Town councilwoman — elected in 1987, I served one four-year term — I know something about politics, government, zoning and dispute resolution. Reading through the five-inch-thick court file, I can’t help but wonder why this matter wasn’t resolved long ago.
It’s obvious the ferry company has a right to operate at a location that’s been in active use as a port since long before Southold had a zoning code. It’s equally obvious that the town has the right to regulate the site where the ferry company operates. And it’s also obvious that the increase in the ferry company’s business over the past decade or so — in part thanks to casino-bound vehicles and passengers — has created stress on the local road — albeit one under state jurisdiction — leading to Orient Point. Ferry traffic has many Southold residents seeing red, and they fear what the future holds if the ferry continues to add more vessels and more service between Orient and New London without restriction. Will that happen? If left to the free market, the odds are very good. At least one casino is undergoing a large expansion, and there are plans for a major theme park and a NASCAR race track in eastern Connecticut, both of which would undoubtedly bring more New England-bound vehicular traffic through the formerly quiet country byways of Southold Town.
This has all the makings of a classic land-use controversy, and the responsibility for solving it rests squarely with the Town Board. It’s rather incredible that the board has up until now taken very few proactive measures to bring this bitter dispute to a reasonable, if not happy, conclusion. It hasn’t yet undertaken any study of the traffic volume and patterns on State Route 25, and might not even be discussing doing so today had SCSR president Freddie Wachsberger not shamed board members into it at the last work session. The supervisor pointed out to me that lawsuits have a way of sucking the energy out of everyone. And the town’s been wrapped up in its lawsuit with the ferry company, no doubt. But that’s really no excuse for inaction; inaction is what got the town into this predicament to begin with.
For starters, the Town Board has to get a handle on the facts of the traffic situation as it exists at the peak of the season, and during the off-season, too. It needs to have a clear understanding of what it can and can’t do to regulate the company’s growth at the Orient Point terminal, and it should take the steps needed to put lawful regulations in place.
Cross Sound’s contention that the town can’t regulate its business doesn’t hold water; a municipality has the right to regulate all businesses operating within its borders. If the company’s parking needs are greater than its ability to accommodate its customers’ cars, it can’t simply expect to have the unlimited right to use the public right of way for its customer parking. Nor can it expect to keep annexing the surrounding residentially zoned land to its commercial site to meet its parking needs. At some point, it must recognize that it’s outgrown its present location, and should seek to establish another port.
This isn’t about the ferry company being “evil” or a “bad neighbor,” and it isn’t about a desire to put it out of business. It’s just common sense.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Who dreams this stuff up?
Have you ever tried to understand state aid to education? I mean, really try to understand how it works, how the dollars are allocated up in Albany?
I'm the first one to admit that I'm no math wiz — never was. When it comes to numbers, I'm downright challenged. Over the last several days, I've had the unenviable task of trying to make heads or tails out of the state education aid our local school districts can expect to receive under the budget plan approved by the state legislature last week.
About the only thing I can say with certainty is that I don't blame our local school superintendents one bit for saying they're not willing to draw any conclusions yet about the revenue that may — or may not — flow downstate from our capital.
Here's the list of state education aid categories from the "2006-07 State Aid Projections" published by the state education department: flex aid; supplemental ENA; limited English proficiency enrollment adjustment aid; full-day K conversion; tax limitation; BOCES & special services,; excess cost; building & building reorganization incentive; transportation; hardware & technology; software, library & textbook; universal prekindergarten; early grade class-size reduction; teacher support aid; and — my personal favorite — sound basic education aid.
In addition to these categories of aid, this year we have supplemental universal pre-K aid; additional universal prekindergarten aid; high tax aid and EXCEL, which stands for "expanding our children's education and learning."
Presumably each category comes with its own unique formula for distributing the state largesse, or why else would there be different categories?
What does it all mean? Fear not, the state education department publishes a cheat sheet to "explain" these categories and how aid under each is calculated. This little pearl contains statements such as the following:
"Flex aid is the sum of: (1) Tier 1 Flex Aid which is the sum of 2004-05 Comprehensive Operating, Extraordinary Needs, Educationally Related Support Services, Limited English Proficiency, Summer School and Maintenance and Repair Aids; (2) Tier 2 Flex Aid, which is Flex Selected TAPU multiplied by the sum of $6 and the result of $55 multiplied by the Geographic Cost of Education Index-based cost adjustment multiplied by the aid ratio (1.37 - 1.10* Flex CWR), maximum .90, minimum .05); and ..."
This only represents about one-third of the "explanation" of what Flex Aid is. I couldn't bear to copy any more. And remember, Flex Aid is just one component of the total state aid picture.
What sadistic mind (no doubt belonging to a government bureaucrat) dreams up formulas like these? Can anyone really explain them, including the state legislators who theoretically adopt them or the school officials who must live with them?
Or are they all, as I suspect, a smoke screen for what really goes on up in Albany during budget season: the leaders of the Assembly and Senate sit down with the governor and carve up the pie. All the wordy explanations, bordering on double talk, exist just to confuse the rest of us into thinking there is a method in their madness. But we know better now, don't we?
I'm the first one to admit that I'm no math wiz — never was. When it comes to numbers, I'm downright challenged. Over the last several days, I've had the unenviable task of trying to make heads or tails out of the state education aid our local school districts can expect to receive under the budget plan approved by the state legislature last week.
About the only thing I can say with certainty is that I don't blame our local school superintendents one bit for saying they're not willing to draw any conclusions yet about the revenue that may — or may not — flow downstate from our capital.
Here's the list of state education aid categories from the "2006-07 State Aid Projections" published by the state education department: flex aid; supplemental ENA; limited English proficiency enrollment adjustment aid; full-day K conversion; tax limitation; BOCES & special services,; excess cost; building & building reorganization incentive; transportation; hardware & technology; software, library & textbook; universal prekindergarten; early grade class-size reduction; teacher support aid; and — my personal favorite — sound basic education aid.
In addition to these categories of aid, this year we have supplemental universal pre-K aid; additional universal prekindergarten aid; high tax aid and EXCEL, which stands for "expanding our children's education and learning."
Presumably each category comes with its own unique formula for distributing the state largesse, or why else would there be different categories?
What does it all mean? Fear not, the state education department publishes a cheat sheet to "explain" these categories and how aid under each is calculated. This little pearl contains statements such as the following:
"Flex aid is the sum of: (1) Tier 1 Flex Aid which is the sum of 2004-05 Comprehensive Operating, Extraordinary Needs, Educationally Related Support Services, Limited English Proficiency, Summer School and Maintenance and Repair Aids; (2) Tier 2 Flex Aid, which is Flex Selected TAPU multiplied by the sum of $6 and the result of $55 multiplied by the Geographic Cost of Education Index-based cost adjustment multiplied by the aid ratio (1.37 - 1.10* Flex CWR), maximum .90, minimum .05); and ..."
This only represents about one-third of the "explanation" of what Flex Aid is. I couldn't bear to copy any more. And remember, Flex Aid is just one component of the total state aid picture.
What sadistic mind (no doubt belonging to a government bureaucrat) dreams up formulas like these? Can anyone really explain them, including the state legislators who theoretically adopt them or the school officials who must live with them?
Or are they all, as I suspect, a smoke screen for what really goes on up in Albany during budget season: the leaders of the Assembly and Senate sit down with the governor and carve up the pie. All the wordy explanations, bordering on double talk, exist just to confuse the rest of us into thinking there is a method in their madness. But we know better now, don't we?
Thursday, March 30, 2006
When the personal is political
I am the granddaughter of an illegal immigrant. My paternal grandfather, Guiseppe Civiletti, made the journey from Sicily to America as a stowaway on a transatlantic cargo ship to begin a new life in the land of opportunity, where the streets were paved with gold. He landed in New York City in the 1920s and found employment as a dock worker in the city’s marine terminals, where he worked until his retirement. He met and married my grandmother, a U.S. citizen by birth, but he never became a citizen himself, though he loved this country fiercely. It was, he would often remind us, “the greatest nation on earth.”
I wonder what Grandpa would think of the immigration debate raging today. (He died at age 104 in 1998.) He was more of a law-and-order kind of guy than a liberal on various social issues, but I wonder how his own experience entering this country without documentation and settling here to work, marry and raise a family would have tempered his perspective. I wonder. Would he empathize with the young Hispanic men who leave their families behind in order to find work in a strange land to earn the money to feed their children back home? Or would he view them — non-Europeans — as different? I know the attacks on his beloved adopted country carried out on Sept. 11, 2001, had he lived to see them, would have devastated and angered him. And I could imagine him getting caught up in the fervor to seal our borders in the interest of homeland security. But then I wonder, would he reflect on the days he spent in the dark recesses below deck on a ship bound for a new land in the hopes of pursuing a better life and feel some twinge of kinship with these new immigrants?
We view the issue in black and white terms. It’s a homeland security issue. We need to protect our nation from future attacks. It’s an economic issue. Many industries rely on immigrant labor in order to thrive or even survive. It’s a law-and-order issue. We should not provide safe haven to people who knowingly violate our laws.
It’s a myriad of social issues. We are tottering under the burden of the influx of undocumented workers in our neighborhoods, the overcrowded rental housing, the uncompensated care provided by community hospitals, the extra expense of educating non-English-speaking children in our schools.
It’s an emotional issue. A whole package of complex, emotionally charged issues, in fact. Why can’t they respect our immigration laws? Why can’t they learn to speak our language? They look different, sound different. Why can’t they assimilate the way our immigrant ancestors did?
In the end, what most of us lose sight of, more often than not, is that this is about people, not about issues. Every one of the men we see pedaling to work by dawn’s early light has a story. Each of them has a family, a history, a motivation for seeking something in the United States of America that he can’t find at home. Mostly, it’s money.
Ramon is a 35-year-old Guatemalan. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally almost two years ago. He walked here. The journey on foot took more than a month. He is the married father of five. His youngest child was just 2 years old when he left in pursuit of earning a living in America that would enable him to feed his family in Guatemala. Ramon frets that his young son doesn’t remember him. He proudly shows me pictures of his children and construction-paper-and-crayon birthday cards they’ve sent him. “Papa we love you,” wrote his eldest, Isabel, age 9, in a neat, formal cursive script. “Thank you for working so hard for us.”
And work hard he does, virtually from dawn to dusk, earning $100 a day employed as a laborer by an American man who runs a Riverhead-based landscaping and masonry business. He is one of about eight or 10 Guatemalans working for this American businessman, who shuttles them to job sites in the back of a beat-up work van. He shouts at them, barking out orders. He refers to them crudely as “spics” and claims he doesn’t even know their names. It doesn’t matter, he says. They work. That’s all that matters.
Ramon and the others are happy — delighted even — for the chance to work. There is work back home, he says, but no money. The pay here is far more than anything they could ever earn back home. Ramon tells me he’s already sent more than $20,000 U.S. to his wife. He is proud and amazed that he could earn so much for his family here.
But it’s a bittersweet accomplishment. He misses them terribly, he tells me in faltering English, and his eyes well up as he gazes longingly at the tattered-edged photographs. He doesn’t know when or if he’ll see them again, because returning to Guatemala may mean never being able to come back to the U.S. again. He and the others I’ve spoken to are clearly here out of desperation, not out of disrespect for our laws. They came here, like nearly all other American immigrants, in search of a better life for their families. That’s all they really want.
In the emotionally charged debates about the social, economic and legal issues surrounding the influx of illegal immigrants across our southern borders, it would do us all well to pause for a moment and remember that simple fact. They are people, like the rest of us, like our immigrant ancestors, who came to America in search of a better life, to pursue “the American dream.” Surely America, the land of opportunity, a nation of immigrants, can find a way to welcome them.
I wonder what Grandpa would think of the immigration debate raging today. (He died at age 104 in 1998.) He was more of a law-and-order kind of guy than a liberal on various social issues, but I wonder how his own experience entering this country without documentation and settling here to work, marry and raise a family would have tempered his perspective. I wonder. Would he empathize with the young Hispanic men who leave their families behind in order to find work in a strange land to earn the money to feed their children back home? Or would he view them — non-Europeans — as different? I know the attacks on his beloved adopted country carried out on Sept. 11, 2001, had he lived to see them, would have devastated and angered him. And I could imagine him getting caught up in the fervor to seal our borders in the interest of homeland security. But then I wonder, would he reflect on the days he spent in the dark recesses below deck on a ship bound for a new land in the hopes of pursuing a better life and feel some twinge of kinship with these new immigrants?
We view the issue in black and white terms. It’s a homeland security issue. We need to protect our nation from future attacks. It’s an economic issue. Many industries rely on immigrant labor in order to thrive or even survive. It’s a law-and-order issue. We should not provide safe haven to people who knowingly violate our laws.
It’s a myriad of social issues. We are tottering under the burden of the influx of undocumented workers in our neighborhoods, the overcrowded rental housing, the uncompensated care provided by community hospitals, the extra expense of educating non-English-speaking children in our schools.
It’s an emotional issue. A whole package of complex, emotionally charged issues, in fact. Why can’t they respect our immigration laws? Why can’t they learn to speak our language? They look different, sound different. Why can’t they assimilate the way our immigrant ancestors did?
In the end, what most of us lose sight of, more often than not, is that this is about people, not about issues. Every one of the men we see pedaling to work by dawn’s early light has a story. Each of them has a family, a history, a motivation for seeking something in the United States of America that he can’t find at home. Mostly, it’s money.
Ramon is a 35-year-old Guatemalan. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally almost two years ago. He walked here. The journey on foot took more than a month. He is the married father of five. His youngest child was just 2 years old when he left in pursuit of earning a living in America that would enable him to feed his family in Guatemala. Ramon frets that his young son doesn’t remember him. He proudly shows me pictures of his children and construction-paper-and-crayon birthday cards they’ve sent him. “Papa we love you,” wrote his eldest, Isabel, age 9, in a neat, formal cursive script. “Thank you for working so hard for us.”
And work hard he does, virtually from dawn to dusk, earning $100 a day employed as a laborer by an American man who runs a Riverhead-based landscaping and masonry business. He is one of about eight or 10 Guatemalans working for this American businessman, who shuttles them to job sites in the back of a beat-up work van. He shouts at them, barking out orders. He refers to them crudely as “spics” and claims he doesn’t even know their names. It doesn’t matter, he says. They work. That’s all that matters.
Ramon and the others are happy — delighted even — for the chance to work. There is work back home, he says, but no money. The pay here is far more than anything they could ever earn back home. Ramon tells me he’s already sent more than $20,000 U.S. to his wife. He is proud and amazed that he could earn so much for his family here.
But it’s a bittersweet accomplishment. He misses them terribly, he tells me in faltering English, and his eyes well up as he gazes longingly at the tattered-edged photographs. He doesn’t know when or if he’ll see them again, because returning to Guatemala may mean never being able to come back to the U.S. again. He and the others I’ve spoken to are clearly here out of desperation, not out of disrespect for our laws. They came here, like nearly all other American immigrants, in search of a better life for their families. That’s all they really want.
In the emotionally charged debates about the social, economic and legal issues surrounding the influx of illegal immigrants across our southern borders, it would do us all well to pause for a moment and remember that simple fact. They are people, like the rest of us, like our immigrant ancestors, who came to America in search of a better life, to pursue “the American dream.” Surely America, the land of opportunity, a nation of immigrants, can find a way to welcome them.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
It could never happen to me
Cancer. One survivor likened hearing the diagnosis to an out-of-body experience — it was like watching it happen to somebody else. It couldn’t be you.
Oh, yes it could.
According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., men have a slightly less than one in two lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women the lifetime risk is a little more than one in three.
The key to surviving cancer is early detection of the disease, before it’s had a chance to spread beyond its site of origin. Recent improvement in cancer survival rates are due in large measure to the availability of better cancer screening technology. But better screening technology means nothing if you don’t take advantage of it.
My mom is a perfect example. She postponed getting her colonoscopy two or three times. She had very good reasons for putting it off, including even surgery to repair a torn meniscus (cartilage) in her knee. The colonoscopy was routine, not an urgent matter, in her mind. She had no personal history of cancer and no history of colon cancer in her family. And (unlike her eldest child, yours truly) she ate right, walked on her treadmill every day and, at age 67, was pretty darn fit and healthy. So she didn’t think twice about it. She had a new appointment for the colonoscopy in January 2004. She never made it. Mom came down with “a bug” right after Christmas 2003. Her stomach didn’t feel well for the next week; she had mild abdominal pain and bouts of diarrhea. In the wee hours of Jan. 3 the pain became intense, too intense to bear. My father brought her to the E.R. at Central Suffolk at 4 a.m. and called me up in tears.
Mom’s pain was caused by a near-total blockage in her large intestine. There, nestled in a location that allowed its growth to go undetected for probably more than a couple of years — because stool passing that part of the bowel is still in a liquid state, so no obstruction and hence no pain occurred — was a cancerous tumor the size of a softball. And the cancer had already spread beyond her colon to points throughout her abdominal cavity, rendering impossible any meaningful treatment or containment of the disease. Her surgeon at University Hospital, Dr. Martin Karpeh, could only remove the blockage and advise us to do what we could to ensure her comfort for the rest of her life — a period of no more than three to six months. We got that news on Jan. 14. She died on April 11, Easter Sunday.
My point in sharing some of the details of my mother’s ordeal is simple. Early detection means the difference between life and death. If my mother had regular colonoscopies, as all people age 50 and over should have, that softball-size tumor would have never had a chance to grow and spread. Odds are, it would have been detected when it was a mere polyp, and removed by the doctor doing the colonoscopy — without so much as a tiny incision. And my mom would be here with us today.
Let me say it again: Early detection means the difference between life and death. Remember, like my mom, you may not have any symptoms — until it’s too late. So early detection can’t happen without screening. And there is no excuse not to get screened for this completely preventable type of cancer — polyps removed are polyps that don’t have the opportunity to become cancerous tumors.
But people dread the screening. Let’s face it, the idea of a doctor probing your intestines with a tube inserted in the anus — well, it’s not something most people look forward to. Other people fear the “prep.” Because of my mother’s fate, I had my first colonoscopy before age 50, in the summer of 2004. (Two polyps were found and removed. I’ll be having another colonoscopy this year.) I can speak from personal experience.
The day before the test, you’re on a liquid diet. The evening before the test, you spike a glass of juice with a couple of ounces of a citrus-flavored liquid that’s a mighty laxative. An hour or so after drinking this little cocktail, you spend about an hour in the bathroom. And that’s it. The next morning you repeat the drill, but bathroom time is significantly less.
The test itself lasts between five and 20 minutes. You’re given a light anesthesia and don’t feel a thing, during or afterward. For me, the worse part was being involuntarily subjected to watching Regis Philbin having a pedicure during the “Regis Show” on TV while waiting for my turn with Dr. Dhrien Mehta, the gastroenterologist who did my colonoscopy at Central Suffolk. I was up and out in little more than an hour, and back at my computer working by noontime.
The tiny probe used by Dr. Mehta can remove polyps and also take color images of the inside of your colon. Dr. Mehta proudly displays these images for you during your post-test office visit. I can say they are some of my most photogenic pictures ever.
As FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, folks. Don’t let fear stop you from screening for colorectal cancer, because fear won’t just paralyze you — in this case, your fear could kill you.
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. If you’re 50 or older, have a colonoscopy. Call your doctor for a referral. Don’t delay. You could very well pay for your procrastination with your life. For more information visit www.cancer.org, the very informative and useful website of the American Cancer Society.
**
A Relay for Life fund-raiser for cancer research and education is scheduled in our community on June 16 and 17 at Riverhead High School. Riverhead Relay for Life has its kickoff meeting tomorrow night, Friday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Riverhead High School. Get involved in this worthy cause. Join a team or support a friend who’s participating. After all, can you think of anyone whose life has not been touched by cancer?
Oh, yes it could.
According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., men have a slightly less than one in two lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women the lifetime risk is a little more than one in three.
The key to surviving cancer is early detection of the disease, before it’s had a chance to spread beyond its site of origin. Recent improvement in cancer survival rates are due in large measure to the availability of better cancer screening technology. But better screening technology means nothing if you don’t take advantage of it.
My mom is a perfect example. She postponed getting her colonoscopy two or three times. She had very good reasons for putting it off, including even surgery to repair a torn meniscus (cartilage) in her knee. The colonoscopy was routine, not an urgent matter, in her mind. She had no personal history of cancer and no history of colon cancer in her family. And (unlike her eldest child, yours truly) she ate right, walked on her treadmill every day and, at age 67, was pretty darn fit and healthy. So she didn’t think twice about it. She had a new appointment for the colonoscopy in January 2004. She never made it. Mom came down with “a bug” right after Christmas 2003. Her stomach didn’t feel well for the next week; she had mild abdominal pain and bouts of diarrhea. In the wee hours of Jan. 3 the pain became intense, too intense to bear. My father brought her to the E.R. at Central Suffolk at 4 a.m. and called me up in tears.
Mom’s pain was caused by a near-total blockage in her large intestine. There, nestled in a location that allowed its growth to go undetected for probably more than a couple of years — because stool passing that part of the bowel is still in a liquid state, so no obstruction and hence no pain occurred — was a cancerous tumor the size of a softball. And the cancer had already spread beyond her colon to points throughout her abdominal cavity, rendering impossible any meaningful treatment or containment of the disease. Her surgeon at University Hospital, Dr. Martin Karpeh, could only remove the blockage and advise us to do what we could to ensure her comfort for the rest of her life — a period of no more than three to six months. We got that news on Jan. 14. She died on April 11, Easter Sunday.
My point in sharing some of the details of my mother’s ordeal is simple. Early detection means the difference between life and death. If my mother had regular colonoscopies, as all people age 50 and over should have, that softball-size tumor would have never had a chance to grow and spread. Odds are, it would have been detected when it was a mere polyp, and removed by the doctor doing the colonoscopy — without so much as a tiny incision. And my mom would be here with us today.
Let me say it again: Early detection means the difference between life and death. Remember, like my mom, you may not have any symptoms — until it’s too late. So early detection can’t happen without screening. And there is no excuse not to get screened for this completely preventable type of cancer — polyps removed are polyps that don’t have the opportunity to become cancerous tumors.
But people dread the screening. Let’s face it, the idea of a doctor probing your intestines with a tube inserted in the anus — well, it’s not something most people look forward to. Other people fear the “prep.” Because of my mother’s fate, I had my first colonoscopy before age 50, in the summer of 2004. (Two polyps were found and removed. I’ll be having another colonoscopy this year.) I can speak from personal experience.
The day before the test, you’re on a liquid diet. The evening before the test, you spike a glass of juice with a couple of ounces of a citrus-flavored liquid that’s a mighty laxative. An hour or so after drinking this little cocktail, you spend about an hour in the bathroom. And that’s it. The next morning you repeat the drill, but bathroom time is significantly less.
The test itself lasts between five and 20 minutes. You’re given a light anesthesia and don’t feel a thing, during or afterward. For me, the worse part was being involuntarily subjected to watching Regis Philbin having a pedicure during the “Regis Show” on TV while waiting for my turn with Dr. Dhrien Mehta, the gastroenterologist who did my colonoscopy at Central Suffolk. I was up and out in little more than an hour, and back at my computer working by noontime.
The tiny probe used by Dr. Mehta can remove polyps and also take color images of the inside of your colon. Dr. Mehta proudly displays these images for you during your post-test office visit. I can say they are some of my most photogenic pictures ever.
As FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, folks. Don’t let fear stop you from screening for colorectal cancer, because fear won’t just paralyze you — in this case, your fear could kill you.
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. If you’re 50 or older, have a colonoscopy. Call your doctor for a referral. Don’t delay. You could very well pay for your procrastination with your life. For more information visit www.cancer.org, the very informative and useful website of the American Cancer Society.
**
A Relay for Life fund-raiser for cancer research and education is scheduled in our community on June 16 and 17 at Riverhead High School. Riverhead Relay for Life has its kickoff meeting tomorrow night, Friday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Riverhead High School. Get involved in this worthy cause. Join a team or support a friend who’s participating. After all, can you think of anyone whose life has not been touched by cancer?
It could never happen to me
Cancer. One survivor likened hearing the diagnosis to an out-of-body experience — it was like watching it happen to somebody else. It couldn’t be you.
Oh, yes it could.
According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., men have a slightly less than one in two lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women the lifetime risk is a little more than one in three.
The key to surviving cancer is early detection of the disease, before it’s had a chance to spread beyond its site of origin. Recent improvement in cancer survival rates are due in large measure to the availability of better cancer screening technology. But better screening technology means nothing if you don’t take advantage of it.
My mom is a perfect example. She postponed getting her colonoscopy two or three times. She had very good reasons for putting it off, including even surgery to repair a torn meniscus (cartilage) in her knee. The colonoscopy was routine, not an urgent matter, in her mind. She had no personal history of cancer and no history of colon cancer in her family. And (unlike her eldest child, yours truly) she ate right, walked on her treadmill every day and, at age 67, was pretty darn fit and healthy. So she didn’t think twice about it. She had a new appointment for the colonoscopy in January 2004. She never made it. Mom came down with “a bug” right after Christmas 2003. Her stomach didn’t feel well for the next week; she had mild abdominal pain and bouts of diarrhea. In the wee hours of Jan. 3 the pain became intense, too intense to bear. My father brought her to the E.R. at Central Suffolk at 4 a.m. and called me up in tears.
Mom’s pain was caused by a near-total blockage in her large intestine. There, nestled in a location that allowed its growth to go undetected for probably more than a couple of years — because stool passing that part of the bowel is still in a liquid state, so no obstruction and hence no pain occurred — was a cancerous tumor the size of a softball. And the cancer had already spread beyond her colon to points throughout her abdominal cavity, rendering impossible any meaningful treatment or containment of the disease. Her surgeon at University Hospital, Dr. Martin Karpeh, could only remove the blockage and advise us to do what we could to ensure her comfort for the rest of her life — a period of no more than three to six months. We got that news on Jan. 14. She died on April 11, Easter Sunday.
My point in sharing some of the details of my mother’s ordeal is simple. Early detection means the difference between life and death. If my mother had regular colonoscopies, as all people age 50 and over should have, that softball-size tumor would have never had a chance to grow and spread. Odds are, it would have been detected when it was a mere polyp, and removed by the doctor doing the colonoscopy — without so much as a tiny incision. And my mom would be here with us today.
Let me say it again: Early detection means the difference between life and death. Remember, like my mom, you may not have any symptoms — until it’s too late. So early detection can’t happen without screening. And there is no excuse not to get screened for this completely preventable type of cancer — polyps removed are polyps that don’t have the opportunity to become cancerous tumors.
But people dread the screening. Let’s face it, the idea of a doctor probing your intestines with a tube inserted in the anus — well, it’s not something most people look forward to. Other people fear the “prep.” Because of my mother’s fate, I had my first colonoscopy before age 50, in the summer of 2004. (Two polyps were found and removed. I’ll be having another colonoscopy this year.) I can speak from personal experience.
The day before the test, you’re on a liquid diet. The evening before the test, you spike a glass of juice with a couple of ounces of a citrus-flavored liquid that’s a mighty laxative. An hour or so after drinking this little cocktail, you spend about an hour in the bathroom. And that’s it. The next morning you repeat the drill, but bathroom time is significantly less.
The test itself lasts between five and 20 minutes. You’re given a light anesthesia and don’t feel a thing, during or afterward. For me, the worse part was being involuntarily subjected to watching Regis Philbin having a pedicure during the “Regis Show” on TV while waiting for my turn with Dr. Dhrien Mehta, the gastroenterologist who did my colonoscopy at Central Suffolk. I was up and out in little more than an hour, and back at my computer working by noontime.
The tiny probe used by Dr. Mehta can remove polyps and also take color images of the inside of your colon. Dr. Mehta proudly displays these images for you during your post-test office visit. I can say they are some of my most photogenic pictures ever.
As FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, folks. Don’t let fear stop you from screening for colorectal cancer, because fear won’t just paralyze you — in this case, your fear could kill you.
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. If you’re 50 or older, have a colonoscopy. Call your doctor for a referral. Don’t delay. You could very well pay for your procrastination with your life. For more information visit www.cancer.org, the very informative and useful website of the American Cancer Society.
**
A Relay for Life fund-raiser for cancer research and education is scheduled in our community on June 16 and 17 at Riverhead High School. Riverhead Relay for Life has its kickoff meeting tomorrow night, Friday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Riverhead High School. Get involved in this worthy cause. Join a team or support a friend who’s participating. After all, can you think of anyone whose life has not been touched by cancer?
Oh, yes it could.
According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., men have a slightly less than one in two lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women the lifetime risk is a little more than one in three.
The key to surviving cancer is early detection of the disease, before it’s had a chance to spread beyond its site of origin. Recent improvement in cancer survival rates are due in large measure to the availability of better cancer screening technology. But better screening technology means nothing if you don’t take advantage of it.
My mom is a perfect example. She postponed getting her colonoscopy two or three times. She had very good reasons for putting it off, including even surgery to repair a torn meniscus (cartilage) in her knee. The colonoscopy was routine, not an urgent matter, in her mind. She had no personal history of cancer and no history of colon cancer in her family. And (unlike her eldest child, yours truly) she ate right, walked on her treadmill every day and, at age 67, was pretty darn fit and healthy. So she didn’t think twice about it. She had a new appointment for the colonoscopy in January 2004. She never made it. Mom came down with “a bug” right after Christmas 2003. Her stomach didn’t feel well for the next week; she had mild abdominal pain and bouts of diarrhea. In the wee hours of Jan. 3 the pain became intense, too intense to bear. My father brought her to the E.R. at Central Suffolk at 4 a.m. and called me up in tears.
Mom’s pain was caused by a near-total blockage in her large intestine. There, nestled in a location that allowed its growth to go undetected for probably more than a couple of years — because stool passing that part of the bowel is still in a liquid state, so no obstruction and hence no pain occurred — was a cancerous tumor the size of a softball. And the cancer had already spread beyond her colon to points throughout her abdominal cavity, rendering impossible any meaningful treatment or containment of the disease. Her surgeon at University Hospital, Dr. Martin Karpeh, could only remove the blockage and advise us to do what we could to ensure her comfort for the rest of her life — a period of no more than three to six months. We got that news on Jan. 14. She died on April 11, Easter Sunday.
My point in sharing some of the details of my mother’s ordeal is simple. Early detection means the difference between life and death. If my mother had regular colonoscopies, as all people age 50 and over should have, that softball-size tumor would have never had a chance to grow and spread. Odds are, it would have been detected when it was a mere polyp, and removed by the doctor doing the colonoscopy — without so much as a tiny incision. And my mom would be here with us today.
Let me say it again: Early detection means the difference between life and death. Remember, like my mom, you may not have any symptoms — until it’s too late. So early detection can’t happen without screening. And there is no excuse not to get screened for this completely preventable type of cancer — polyps removed are polyps that don’t have the opportunity to become cancerous tumors.
But people dread the screening. Let’s face it, the idea of a doctor probing your intestines with a tube inserted in the anus — well, it’s not something most people look forward to. Other people fear the “prep.” Because of my mother’s fate, I had my first colonoscopy before age 50, in the summer of 2004. (Two polyps were found and removed. I’ll be having another colonoscopy this year.) I can speak from personal experience.
The day before the test, you’re on a liquid diet. The evening before the test, you spike a glass of juice with a couple of ounces of a citrus-flavored liquid that’s a mighty laxative. An hour or so after drinking this little cocktail, you spend about an hour in the bathroom. And that’s it. The next morning you repeat the drill, but bathroom time is significantly less.
The test itself lasts between five and 20 minutes. You’re given a light anesthesia and don’t feel a thing, during or afterward. For me, the worse part was being involuntarily subjected to watching Regis Philbin having a pedicure during the “Regis Show” on TV while waiting for my turn with Dr. Dhrien Mehta, the gastroenterologist who did my colonoscopy at Central Suffolk. I was up and out in little more than an hour, and back at my computer working by noontime.
The tiny probe used by Dr. Mehta can remove polyps and also take color images of the inside of your colon. Dr. Mehta proudly displays these images for you during your post-test office visit. I can say they are some of my most photogenic pictures ever.
As FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, folks. Don’t let fear stop you from screening for colorectal cancer, because fear won’t just paralyze you — in this case, your fear could kill you.
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. If you’re 50 or older, have a colonoscopy. Call your doctor for a referral. Don’t delay. You could very well pay for your procrastination with your life. For more information visit www.cancer.org, the very informative and useful website of the American Cancer Society.
**
A Relay for Life fund-raiser for cancer research and education is scheduled in our community on June 16 and 17 at Riverhead High School. Riverhead Relay for Life has its kickoff meeting tomorrow night, Friday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Riverhead High School. Get involved in this worthy cause. Join a team or support a friend who’s participating. After all, can you think of anyone whose life has not been touched by cancer?
Thursday, February 09, 2006
We're stuck in the 70s
1979 — the last time Riverhead Town did a comprehensive update of its property tax assessments. Twenty-seven years ago. Whoa! That's almost three decades! It's startling, and not because I'm a reval junkie. No, it takes my breath away just to think that my memory stretches that far back. Worse still, that long ago I was actually an adult. Well, more or less. 1979 was a watershed year for me — the year I graduated from college, moved out of my parents' home, and started law school at NYU. I'm not sure if I knew what a property tax assessment was in 1979, much less had an opinion about it. My mind was occupied with more important things, like who was I anyway and what did I want to be when I grew up. (Questions that took nearly as long to answer as the town has taken to update its tax rolls.)
In 1979, I found escape from the study of contract and tort law playing a brand-new arcade game called Asteroids in a little pub on MacDougal Street, competing against my 1L classmates. I did well, something my kids find hard to believe today, given the way I fumble with the controls of their Game Cube. How much have things changed since 1979? Here's a little collection of facts and trivia from 1979. It was a happening time.
The Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, after the Shah fled to Egypt. An "energy crisis" took place in the U.S. after OPEC boosted oil prices 50% over the course of the year. Gas prices hit an all-time high, actually breaking the $1 mark for the first time on Memorial Day weekend in 1979. Locally, gas shortages were handled by rationing and limits on purchases.
Sixty-six Americans were taken hostage in Iran, marking the beginning of a hostage crisis that would last 444 days, make Ted Koppel a household name, and the end of the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. Margaret Thatcher was elected the first woman prime minister of Great Britain. Jamesport Fire Deparment accepted its first female firefighter.
There was an accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, releasing radiation into the atmosphere. LILCO still insisted it would open its $2 billion nuclear power plant in Shoreham the next year and build two more on the Sound in Jamesport, to boot. The Riverhead Town Board supported the Jamesport plant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved it, too. Other plans didn't get support, like a plan to build an airport off Sound Avenue and Northville Turnpike, and a plan to build a cross-Sound bridge from Riverhead or Wading River to Connecticut.
1979 was the year the Peconic County movement really gathered steam. It was also the year an unknown school teacher from Wading River, Joe Janoski, ousted Riverhead native Allen Smith from the supervisor's office. The supervisor's annual salary was then $28,000.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average high mark was 907 points in 1979. Inflation was a ravaging 13.3%. The prime lending rate was 15.75%. Unemployment was over 6%. The federal government approved a $1.5 billion bailout for Chrysler Corporation. Federal spending was $504.03 billion and federal debt was $829.5 billion. The Riverhead school district operating budget was $13.5 million.
A first-class stamp cost 15 cents. A pound of coffee was just $1.79. Riverhead had not a single vineyard. Its principal crops were potatoes and cauliflower. A man could buy a three-piece suit at Swezey's for $59.99.
1979 was also the year of the release of the first computer spreadsheet program available for personal computers, Visicalc. But personal computers were a rare thing, as the IBM PC was still in the future.
The year's hit movies were Alien, 10, The China Syndrome, Kramer vs. Kramer and Apocalypse Now. And movies were still being shown at the Suffolk Theatre.
Music — well it was a dark era in music as far as I was concerned. Disco ruled.
"60 Minutes" was America's favorite TV show. L.I. Cablevision brought Showtime to cable TV here, with a great deal of fanfare, including even a preview for the Town Board at Cablevision's Riverhead office.
And the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl. (Number XIV.)
A three-bedroom, two-bath house in Riverhead rented for $350 per month. A three-bedroom Cape Cod here listed for $42,000, while a ranch in Wading River on a quarter-acre listed for $49,500. A half-acre waterview lot in Jamesport was selling for $10,000. A Reeves Park bungalow — also water view — was listed at $25,500. A 100-foot wooded Soundfront building lot went for $55,000, and 59 acres on Main Road in Aquebogue, with a renovated two-story colonial house and two barns (zoned agriculture and business) was listed at $155,000.
See why our equalization rate is around 13% today? Those prices have gone the way of the eight-track tape player I used to own. There's no good reason why Riverhead's tax assessments shouldn't catch up with the 21st century.
Copyright 2006 Times/Review Newspapers
In 1979, I found escape from the study of contract and tort law playing a brand-new arcade game called Asteroids in a little pub on MacDougal Street, competing against my 1L classmates. I did well, something my kids find hard to believe today, given the way I fumble with the controls of their Game Cube. How much have things changed since 1979? Here's a little collection of facts and trivia from 1979. It was a happening time.
The Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, after the Shah fled to Egypt. An "energy crisis" took place in the U.S. after OPEC boosted oil prices 50% over the course of the year. Gas prices hit an all-time high, actually breaking the $1 mark for the first time on Memorial Day weekend in 1979. Locally, gas shortages were handled by rationing and limits on purchases.
Sixty-six Americans were taken hostage in Iran, marking the beginning of a hostage crisis that would last 444 days, make Ted Koppel a household name, and the end of the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. Margaret Thatcher was elected the first woman prime minister of Great Britain. Jamesport Fire Deparment accepted its first female firefighter.
There was an accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, releasing radiation into the atmosphere. LILCO still insisted it would open its $2 billion nuclear power plant in Shoreham the next year and build two more on the Sound in Jamesport, to boot. The Riverhead Town Board supported the Jamesport plant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved it, too. Other plans didn't get support, like a plan to build an airport off Sound Avenue and Northville Turnpike, and a plan to build a cross-Sound bridge from Riverhead or Wading River to Connecticut.
1979 was the year the Peconic County movement really gathered steam. It was also the year an unknown school teacher from Wading River, Joe Janoski, ousted Riverhead native Allen Smith from the supervisor's office. The supervisor's annual salary was then $28,000.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average high mark was 907 points in 1979. Inflation was a ravaging 13.3%. The prime lending rate was 15.75%. Unemployment was over 6%. The federal government approved a $1.5 billion bailout for Chrysler Corporation. Federal spending was $504.03 billion and federal debt was $829.5 billion. The Riverhead school district operating budget was $13.5 million.
A first-class stamp cost 15 cents. A pound of coffee was just $1.79. Riverhead had not a single vineyard. Its principal crops were potatoes and cauliflower. A man could buy a three-piece suit at Swezey's for $59.99.
1979 was also the year of the release of the first computer spreadsheet program available for personal computers, Visicalc. But personal computers were a rare thing, as the IBM PC was still in the future.
The year's hit movies were Alien, 10, The China Syndrome, Kramer vs. Kramer and Apocalypse Now. And movies were still being shown at the Suffolk Theatre.
Music — well it was a dark era in music as far as I was concerned. Disco ruled.
"60 Minutes" was America's favorite TV show. L.I. Cablevision brought Showtime to cable TV here, with a great deal of fanfare, including even a preview for the Town Board at Cablevision's Riverhead office.
And the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl. (Number XIV.)
A three-bedroom, two-bath house in Riverhead rented for $350 per month. A three-bedroom Cape Cod here listed for $42,000, while a ranch in Wading River on a quarter-acre listed for $49,500. A half-acre waterview lot in Jamesport was selling for $10,000. A Reeves Park bungalow — also water view — was listed at $25,500. A 100-foot wooded Soundfront building lot went for $55,000, and 59 acres on Main Road in Aquebogue, with a renovated two-story colonial house and two barns (zoned agriculture and business) was listed at $155,000.
See why our equalization rate is around 13% today? Those prices have gone the way of the eight-track tape player I used to own. There's no good reason why Riverhead's tax assessments shouldn't catch up with the 21st century.
Copyright 2006 Times/Review Newspapers
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Knowing when to let go
I knew this day would come. In mid-2004, when I accepted the job of co-publisher of the company that publishes The News-Review, I knew that in order to do the job well, I’d have to find a new editor for this newspaper. It’s one of four weekly papers published by Times/Review Newspapers — along with The Suffolk Times, The Shelter Island Reporter, and The North Shore Sun.
As co-publisher I’m charged with the oversight and management of the editorial content and production of all four papers, as well as the special publications we put out throughout the year, including the Long Island Wine Press. This involves managing a staff of about 50 and plus an equal number of freelance reporters, columnists and photographers.
My co-publisher, Andrew Olsen, manages the business side of the company: advertising, circulation and finances. That division of labor is a traditional structure at Times/Review, where the separation of editorial and advertising is sacrosanct — as it must be to preserve the quality and integrity of our content.
Essentially, I’ve been working two full-time jobs at Times/Review since July 2004. I knew I’d have to find a new editor to manage the day-to-day affairs of The News-Review, but it’s been so hard to let go. This is my baby. I love this newspaper.
As the mother of two newly teenage girls, I’m facing a similar emotional struggle on the home front. The letting go stuff. It’s oh-so-hard. The girls are going away for the weekend with our church youth group on Friday and I’ve been losing sleep over it for a week. Will the bus get there safely? Will Katie pay attention and not get lost hiking in the woods? Will Courtney have sense enough to put on a jacket in 30-degree weather? Will they do all right tubing down a steep hill without Mom or Dad there to supervise? Will they change their socks when they get wet? What if they get sick?
OK, maybe I’m just a control freak and don’t want to accept that they’re just fine without me. Or maybe this is just normal. At least I’m letting them go — and restraining my husband from going along as a chaperone. A few deep breaths and I’m OK. Really.
“Letting go” of The News-Review is almost as rough. In fact, it’s even harder than I anticipated. When I made the final decision on my successor, I found myself overwhelmed by an odd mixture of excitement, relief and sadness. I’m choosing to focus on the exciting stuff, thank you very much.
I’m putting The News-Review in extremely capable and professional hands. John Stefans’s career in journalism goes back to the Vietnam era when he worked as an Army correspondent in Southeast Asia. He had a long corporate career after that, retiring from Chase Manhattan Bank as senior vice-president for corporate communications. After he “retired” he moved to Riverhead full time and went to work as the editor of The Traveler-Watchman. He resigned from that post in 2002 and came to work for Times/Review as a staff reporter. John left Times/Review to accept a position in Supervisor Phil Cardinale’s administration in 2004 — a job he thought he’d enjoy more than he actually did, and so he left that post last May. He’s been freelancing for Times/Review for a few months now. The job of News-Review editor is a natural and perfect fit.
John knows this town inside and out. He is plugged in here, which for me is one of the most important qualifications for the job. He loves our community and cares deeply about its future. He understands how government works — or doesn’t. He’s intelligent, fair-minded and plain-spoken. He’s not afraid to ask the tough questions and demand answers. His research is thorough, his reporting is accurate and his writing is engaging and lively. And, on top of all that, he’s a genuinely nice guy who’s a pleasure to work with.
If this is starting to sound like a letter of recommendation, I guess that’s because that’s exactly what it is. John will be working for you now, too, because this is, after all, your community newspaper.
While I will now begin to concentrate more fully on my role as co-publisher, I’m not forsaking “my baby” altogether. I’m not going anywhere. I still live in Riverhead and am as invested in its future as ever. I’ll still write this column (assuming the editor wants me.) And I’ll still be overseeing what appears on the pages of this publication every week. You can still reach me at 298-3200 or at denise@timesreview.com with questions, comments and, of course, complaints. And if I’m really lucky, sometimes I’ll even have an opportunity to write a story or two.
With a couple of deep, deep breaths...here we go.
As co-publisher I’m charged with the oversight and management of the editorial content and production of all four papers, as well as the special publications we put out throughout the year, including the Long Island Wine Press. This involves managing a staff of about 50 and plus an equal number of freelance reporters, columnists and photographers.
My co-publisher, Andrew Olsen, manages the business side of the company: advertising, circulation and finances. That division of labor is a traditional structure at Times/Review, where the separation of editorial and advertising is sacrosanct — as it must be to preserve the quality and integrity of our content.
Essentially, I’ve been working two full-time jobs at Times/Review since July 2004. I knew I’d have to find a new editor to manage the day-to-day affairs of The News-Review, but it’s been so hard to let go. This is my baby. I love this newspaper.
As the mother of two newly teenage girls, I’m facing a similar emotional struggle on the home front. The letting go stuff. It’s oh-so-hard. The girls are going away for the weekend with our church youth group on Friday and I’ve been losing sleep over it for a week. Will the bus get there safely? Will Katie pay attention and not get lost hiking in the woods? Will Courtney have sense enough to put on a jacket in 30-degree weather? Will they do all right tubing down a steep hill without Mom or Dad there to supervise? Will they change their socks when they get wet? What if they get sick?
OK, maybe I’m just a control freak and don’t want to accept that they’re just fine without me. Or maybe this is just normal. At least I’m letting them go — and restraining my husband from going along as a chaperone. A few deep breaths and I’m OK. Really.
“Letting go” of The News-Review is almost as rough. In fact, it’s even harder than I anticipated. When I made the final decision on my successor, I found myself overwhelmed by an odd mixture of excitement, relief and sadness. I’m choosing to focus on the exciting stuff, thank you very much.
I’m putting The News-Review in extremely capable and professional hands. John Stefans’s career in journalism goes back to the Vietnam era when he worked as an Army correspondent in Southeast Asia. He had a long corporate career after that, retiring from Chase Manhattan Bank as senior vice-president for corporate communications. After he “retired” he moved to Riverhead full time and went to work as the editor of The Traveler-Watchman. He resigned from that post in 2002 and came to work for Times/Review as a staff reporter. John left Times/Review to accept a position in Supervisor Phil Cardinale’s administration in 2004 — a job he thought he’d enjoy more than he actually did, and so he left that post last May. He’s been freelancing for Times/Review for a few months now. The job of News-Review editor is a natural and perfect fit.
John knows this town inside and out. He is plugged in here, which for me is one of the most important qualifications for the job. He loves our community and cares deeply about its future. He understands how government works — or doesn’t. He’s intelligent, fair-minded and plain-spoken. He’s not afraid to ask the tough questions and demand answers. His research is thorough, his reporting is accurate and his writing is engaging and lively. And, on top of all that, he’s a genuinely nice guy who’s a pleasure to work with.
If this is starting to sound like a letter of recommendation, I guess that’s because that’s exactly what it is. John will be working for you now, too, because this is, after all, your community newspaper.
While I will now begin to concentrate more fully on my role as co-publisher, I’m not forsaking “my baby” altogether. I’m not going anywhere. I still live in Riverhead and am as invested in its future as ever. I’ll still write this column (assuming the editor wants me.) And I’ll still be overseeing what appears on the pages of this publication every week. You can still reach me at 298-3200 or at denise@timesreview.com with questions, comments and, of course, complaints. And if I’m really lucky, sometimes I’ll even have an opportunity to write a story or two.
With a couple of deep, deep breaths...here we go.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
A raw deal for East End
The health-care system in our country is a shambles. More than 45 million people nationwide, almost 16% of the population, have no health insurance. Untold millions are paying through the nose to have coverage. Businesses are struggling to pay the double-digit annual increase in premiums for employee health insurance. People have to rely on an underground market to purchase prescription medications made in the U.S. from suppliers overseas because the cost of the medication in the U.S. is prohibitive.
“The United States spends nearly $100 billion per year to provide uninsured residents with health services, often for preventable diseases or diseases that physicians could treat more efficiently with earlier diagnosis,” according to the National Coalition for Health Care. Hospitals in the U.S. provide about $34 billion worth of uncompensated care a year, the coalition says, and over 30% of emergency department visits by the uninsured are considered nonurgent.
Central Suffolk Hospital in Riverhead, a private nonprofit community hospital, shoulders a burden, all by itself, of more than $5 million in uncompensated care every year. Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport shells out more than $1.5 million a year in uncompensated care, too. That’s care that a hospital is obligated to provide -— it can’t turn a patient away — for which it’s never paid. The uncompensated-care burden borne by local hospitals has been growing, just as the number of uninsured has been growing. Also contributing to the burden in our region is the growing number of undocumented immigrants on the East End.
Whose responsibility is it to pay for health-care services rendered to the uninsured who can’t pay the cost themselves? Is it really the responsibility of a private nonprofit hospital? What is government’s proper role in this? Isn’t it the role of government, not the private sector, to provide for the “health, safety and welfare” of the population?
Where is Suffolk County government in this picture? It’s far away and unresponsive, as usual.
Not only must the local community hospitals shoulder the entire burden of uncompensated care in this county — which lacks a county hospital -— the county won’t even cooperate in the financing of an expansion desperately needed in order to be able to provide advanced medical services on the East End.
It would cost the county nothing to guarantee the replenishment of Central Suffolk’s debt service reserve fund on its capital project bonds, issued to finance its expansion. The hospital has several years’ worth of a reserve fund to pay the debt service if it can’t make the payments out of its annual operating revenues, so the county would not likely ever be called upon to ante up. But the county’s guarantee would save Central Suffolk millions of dollars in interest payments, because it would mean a much lower interest rate on the hospital’s bonds.
The county executive prides himself on his “fiscal conservatism.” That’s swell, but why must the residents of the East End always be unfairly burdened? The fair distribution of the county’s quarter-percent sales tax is an example long in the public eye. But recent revelations on how we’re being short-changed in the delivery of health-care services are astounding.
An article in Sunday’s New York Times revealed that the East End office of the public health clinic has only four public health nurses to serve the entire East End. As a result, patients who need care, who can’t get care anywhere else, aren’t being served by the county health department at all.
Legislator Ed Romaine charges that the county executive is illegally refusing to fill more than 200 vacant positions in the county health department — positions, in other words, that the County Legislature put in the budget and funded. What’s the money being used for, then? How many of those vacant positions are also partly funded by the state or federal governments, I wonder? How can the executive branch of government legally rewrite the budget adopted by the legislative branch in this way?
Then there’s the matter of the digital mammography unit that the County Legislature funded for the East End. Guess what? That, too, is still not in place, according to our county legislator.
Meanwhile, in the Riverside-Flanders area, an area with the lowest per-capita income in Suffolk County, where 80% of the land is off the tax rolls — in public ownership — a quarter of the calls handled by the volunteer ambulance corps come from county facilities within the district (which don’t pay ambulance district taxes). Nearly a hundred times each year the small Flanders volunteer department must respond to emergency calls at the County Jail. Why doesn’t the jail have its own ambulance? Suffolk County thinks it would be “a waste of money,” according to our sheriff. Sure, why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free? With the taxpayers of the poorest area in the county footing the bill, while tax revenues from the East End migrate westward, why should the county see it any other way?
Legislator Romaine is right. The East End is getting the shaft, again. Suffolk County government abandoned its county seat decades ago. It up and moved to Hauppauge. It neglects the citizens of the East End until it’s time for a photo op against the backdrop of a scenic farm field, to buttress a politician’s claim to the label “environmentalist.” Then the folks in Hauppauge wonder why we wanted Peconic County.
“The United States spends nearly $100 billion per year to provide uninsured residents with health services, often for preventable diseases or diseases that physicians could treat more efficiently with earlier diagnosis,” according to the National Coalition for Health Care. Hospitals in the U.S. provide about $34 billion worth of uncompensated care a year, the coalition says, and over 30% of emergency department visits by the uninsured are considered nonurgent.
Central Suffolk Hospital in Riverhead, a private nonprofit community hospital, shoulders a burden, all by itself, of more than $5 million in uncompensated care every year. Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport shells out more than $1.5 million a year in uncompensated care, too. That’s care that a hospital is obligated to provide -— it can’t turn a patient away — for which it’s never paid. The uncompensated-care burden borne by local hospitals has been growing, just as the number of uninsured has been growing. Also contributing to the burden in our region is the growing number of undocumented immigrants on the East End.
Whose responsibility is it to pay for health-care services rendered to the uninsured who can’t pay the cost themselves? Is it really the responsibility of a private nonprofit hospital? What is government’s proper role in this? Isn’t it the role of government, not the private sector, to provide for the “health, safety and welfare” of the population?
Where is Suffolk County government in this picture? It’s far away and unresponsive, as usual.
Not only must the local community hospitals shoulder the entire burden of uncompensated care in this county — which lacks a county hospital -— the county won’t even cooperate in the financing of an expansion desperately needed in order to be able to provide advanced medical services on the East End.
It would cost the county nothing to guarantee the replenishment of Central Suffolk’s debt service reserve fund on its capital project bonds, issued to finance its expansion. The hospital has several years’ worth of a reserve fund to pay the debt service if it can’t make the payments out of its annual operating revenues, so the county would not likely ever be called upon to ante up. But the county’s guarantee would save Central Suffolk millions of dollars in interest payments, because it would mean a much lower interest rate on the hospital’s bonds.
The county executive prides himself on his “fiscal conservatism.” That’s swell, but why must the residents of the East End always be unfairly burdened? The fair distribution of the county’s quarter-percent sales tax is an example long in the public eye. But recent revelations on how we’re being short-changed in the delivery of health-care services are astounding.
An article in Sunday’s New York Times revealed that the East End office of the public health clinic has only four public health nurses to serve the entire East End. As a result, patients who need care, who can’t get care anywhere else, aren’t being served by the county health department at all.
Legislator Ed Romaine charges that the county executive is illegally refusing to fill more than 200 vacant positions in the county health department — positions, in other words, that the County Legislature put in the budget and funded. What’s the money being used for, then? How many of those vacant positions are also partly funded by the state or federal governments, I wonder? How can the executive branch of government legally rewrite the budget adopted by the legislative branch in this way?
Then there’s the matter of the digital mammography unit that the County Legislature funded for the East End. Guess what? That, too, is still not in place, according to our county legislator.
Meanwhile, in the Riverside-Flanders area, an area with the lowest per-capita income in Suffolk County, where 80% of the land is off the tax rolls — in public ownership — a quarter of the calls handled by the volunteer ambulance corps come from county facilities within the district (which don’t pay ambulance district taxes). Nearly a hundred times each year the small Flanders volunteer department must respond to emergency calls at the County Jail. Why doesn’t the jail have its own ambulance? Suffolk County thinks it would be “a waste of money,” according to our sheriff. Sure, why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free? With the taxpayers of the poorest area in the county footing the bill, while tax revenues from the East End migrate westward, why should the county see it any other way?
Legislator Romaine is right. The East End is getting the shaft, again. Suffolk County government abandoned its county seat decades ago. It up and moved to Hauppauge. It neglects the citizens of the East End until it’s time for a photo op against the backdrop of a scenic farm field, to buttress a politician’s claim to the label “environmentalist.” Then the folks in Hauppauge wonder why we wanted Peconic County.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
My wet suit resolution
There’s nothing like a wet suit to accent bulges and curves best left hidden under baggy shirts and slacks. I found that out last Wednesday night when I came home from work to find my husband had a new “wallpaper” on our kitchen computer: a photo of our family of four decked out in wet suits, taken on our trip to Florida over the Christmas break.
Ouch.
When you don’t want to look, it’s easy to avoid mirrors. But a large color photograph on the 17” computer monitor in the kitchen is rather unavoidable. Photos don’t lie. And there I was.
The expanse beneath that black rubber suit — the breadth of the hips, the girth of the belly, and oh, my oh my, those thighs — wasn’t really a surprise. After all, I live in this body. And it’s been talking to me. Stiff joints, knee pain, something called a hiatal hernia. My doctor, a very nice, very polite young man, told me several months ago that I should lose some weight. He seemed worried about offending me, uncomfortable about saying so, practically whispering the advice. He was very gentle. I laughed. Yeah, I’m starting to suffer from fat old lady syndrome, I observed with a jolly chuckle that belied my inward embarrassment. He nodded politely. I promised to pay attention to his advice. I didn’t.
I knew I should heed his admonition, and I thought about it every day, but did nothing. I looked hard at the image of myself in that wet suit. I sat down in front of the computer and stared. Then I changed the picture to one he took of dolphins frolicking at Sea World. There. Much better.
I have to do something about this, I went to bed thinking that night. I realized I’d need help. I didn’t know where to begin. Sure, I’d dieted before. I was never svelte. In fact, I’ve battled with a weight problem since adolescence. As an adult, I came to accept the fact that I would never be thin. But I’d always been pretty fit. Somewhere along the line, being “not thin” became being overweight, then significantly overweight, then, well, obese. There. I’ve said it. And it’s official. My body mass index (BMI) is over 30, and that’s officially obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
I eat too much of the wrong foods and don’t get any regular exercise. That’ll do it. And it has.
I’ve put on 60 pounds in the last 15 years. Sixty pounds!
It happened that I had a breakfast meeting with Central Suffolk Hospital CEO Andy Mitchell the very next day. We met at Lolly’s, a Riverhead classic on Route 58, where you can get great coffee and eggs with the works. Fresh from my horror of the night before, I ordered oatmeal, and was served a huge, steaming bowl of oats. I ate only half.
I brought up the subject of nutrition with Andy, lamenting about the extent of my excess baggage. He told me to read The South Beach Diet. “Don’t mind the silly name,” he advised. Truly, without his recommendation, I would have never picked the book up for that very reason. It sounded like another one of those fad diets, and I knew better. I need to eat less and move more — end of story.
Not exactly. Cardiologist Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet, explains in very understandable, conversational terms, the science behind gaining — and losing — weight. He sheds light on the role of sugar in the obesity epidemic that’s gripping our nation. Sugar found in many different guises in the processed foods that make up a large part of the American diet, along with nasty fats hidden in unlikely places. And how and why they pose such a serious threat to our health, especially our cardiovascular health.
Dr. Agatston sums up the principles of his diet, devised to help his cardiology patients lose weight and regain their health, like this: “good carbohydrates and good fats, nutrient dense whole foods, lean sources of protein, and plenty of fiber.” You don’t have to approach each meal with a scale and a calculator. And you don’t have to eat anything weird or tasteless. The diet aims to cure you of the sugar addiction you probably don’t even know you have, to fix your metabolism, and to educate you about food so you can make the right food choices. It literally allows you to eat “normal” meals and not feel deprived, while losing one to two pounds per week, the rate doctors say is best for permanent weight loss. I bought the book — in paperback for $7.99 — and read it Saturday. I never read a book about nutrition, health and weight loss that made as much sense.
My husband and I started the diet on Sunday. The biggest hitch is that, for the first two weeks, you can’t eat any sugar or starchy foods at all. But it hasn’t been as hard as you might think. Frankly, I feel too well-fed to be on a diet. We’ve also dusted off the treadmill in the basement and begun walking for half an hour each morning. And that feels really good, too.
I’ve never been one for new year’s resolutions. But the wet suit. That resolved it for me.
Ouch.
When you don’t want to look, it’s easy to avoid mirrors. But a large color photograph on the 17” computer monitor in the kitchen is rather unavoidable. Photos don’t lie. And there I was.
The expanse beneath that black rubber suit — the breadth of the hips, the girth of the belly, and oh, my oh my, those thighs — wasn’t really a surprise. After all, I live in this body. And it’s been talking to me. Stiff joints, knee pain, something called a hiatal hernia. My doctor, a very nice, very polite young man, told me several months ago that I should lose some weight. He seemed worried about offending me, uncomfortable about saying so, practically whispering the advice. He was very gentle. I laughed. Yeah, I’m starting to suffer from fat old lady syndrome, I observed with a jolly chuckle that belied my inward embarrassment. He nodded politely. I promised to pay attention to his advice. I didn’t.
I knew I should heed his admonition, and I thought about it every day, but did nothing. I looked hard at the image of myself in that wet suit. I sat down in front of the computer and stared. Then I changed the picture to one he took of dolphins frolicking at Sea World. There. Much better.
I have to do something about this, I went to bed thinking that night. I realized I’d need help. I didn’t know where to begin. Sure, I’d dieted before. I was never svelte. In fact, I’ve battled with a weight problem since adolescence. As an adult, I came to accept the fact that I would never be thin. But I’d always been pretty fit. Somewhere along the line, being “not thin” became being overweight, then significantly overweight, then, well, obese. There. I’ve said it. And it’s official. My body mass index (BMI) is over 30, and that’s officially obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
I eat too much of the wrong foods and don’t get any regular exercise. That’ll do it. And it has.
I’ve put on 60 pounds in the last 15 years. Sixty pounds!
It happened that I had a breakfast meeting with Central Suffolk Hospital CEO Andy Mitchell the very next day. We met at Lolly’s, a Riverhead classic on Route 58, where you can get great coffee and eggs with the works. Fresh from my horror of the night before, I ordered oatmeal, and was served a huge, steaming bowl of oats. I ate only half.
I brought up the subject of nutrition with Andy, lamenting about the extent of my excess baggage. He told me to read The South Beach Diet. “Don’t mind the silly name,” he advised. Truly, without his recommendation, I would have never picked the book up for that very reason. It sounded like another one of those fad diets, and I knew better. I need to eat less and move more — end of story.
Not exactly. Cardiologist Arthur Agatston, author of The South Beach Diet, explains in very understandable, conversational terms, the science behind gaining — and losing — weight. He sheds light on the role of sugar in the obesity epidemic that’s gripping our nation. Sugar found in many different guises in the processed foods that make up a large part of the American diet, along with nasty fats hidden in unlikely places. And how and why they pose such a serious threat to our health, especially our cardiovascular health.
Dr. Agatston sums up the principles of his diet, devised to help his cardiology patients lose weight and regain their health, like this: “good carbohydrates and good fats, nutrient dense whole foods, lean sources of protein, and plenty of fiber.” You don’t have to approach each meal with a scale and a calculator. And you don’t have to eat anything weird or tasteless. The diet aims to cure you of the sugar addiction you probably don’t even know you have, to fix your metabolism, and to educate you about food so you can make the right food choices. It literally allows you to eat “normal” meals and not feel deprived, while losing one to two pounds per week, the rate doctors say is best for permanent weight loss. I bought the book — in paperback for $7.99 — and read it Saturday. I never read a book about nutrition, health and weight loss that made as much sense.
My husband and I started the diet on Sunday. The biggest hitch is that, for the first two weeks, you can’t eat any sugar or starchy foods at all. But it hasn’t been as hard as you might think. Frankly, I feel too well-fed to be on a diet. We’ve also dusted off the treadmill in the basement and begun walking for half an hour each morning. And that feels really good, too.
I’ve never been one for new year’s resolutions. But the wet suit. That resolved it for me.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Flogging by blogging
So much for the flush of optimism I was feeling as the new year dawned. 2006 was barely 10 days old when I heard a story from one of our reporters that hit me like a punch in the stomach.
Riverhead’s longtime community development director, Andrea Lohneiss, for a six-month period between Sept. 2003 and March 2004, was licensed as a real estate salesperson and had her license “sponsored” by the town’s exclusive real estate broker for EPCAL, Jack O’Connor.
EPCAL is technically owned by the town’s Community Development Agency, and Andrea, an employee of the town, is the director of that agency. She’s served in this capacity since 1988 or ’89, hired by the Town Board on which I sat. I supported her appointment. She had great credentials, and that was good for the town. She was also a registered Republican, and that was bad for me, a newly elected Democratic councilwoman being pressured by her party to appoint someone else. I think of Andrea’s appointment as the beginning of the end of my political career. But I never for a single moment regretted it. She is a smart, hard-working, dedicated public servant. Here’s one example: She gave birth to her third child on a Friday afternoon and was back in the office Monday morning working on a grant application. Andrea has taken Riverhead’s CDA to a new level, winning grant monies the town never before even dreamed of.
In the two decades I’ve known Andrea, I’ve never once seen her do anything that made me question her integrity as a public official. The way she has carried out her duties, ably serving five administrations and always managing to stay out of politics, has always been above reproach.
For a paid staff member of the CDA to have a business relationship of any kind with the CDA’s exclusive real estate broker for EPCAL crosses a line of ethics or intelligence that I would never have expected from Andrea Lohneiss. It creates an appearance of impropriety, and for Andrea not to realize this was uncharacteristically stupid.
But in my heart I don’t believe it’s anything more than that. This controversy is being fueled by an Internet gossip blog populated by people who use the cloak of anonymity afforded by the Internet to advance their own agendas, even if it means raking someone over the coals who doesn’t deserve it. They propagate misinformation, half-truths and sometimes out-and-out lies to do it. And they don’t even have the courage to sign their name to their statements. Andrea has not been the only one to suffer this flogging by blogging. Town Attorney Dawn Thomas was tied to the blog site’s whipping post last fall, along with the supervisor, members of his family, councilwomen Blass and Sanders and, yes, yours truly. Internet message boards can be wonderful means by which to communicate, express ideas and debate public policy — but they can also be the electronic equivalent of bathroom walls where hateful graffiti is scrawled anonymously by mean junior-high-schoolers.
There’s certainly no shortage of people around Riverhead who would love to see Andrea hang. Some of them have an ax to grind with Andrea; some are serving their own political and financial agendas. Some are people I don’t trust at all, because I’ve seen too much of their own questionable behavior to believe that their motives are good, regardless of the issue at hand.
The plain and simple truth is that Andrea is and always has been a stickler for detail and making people follow the rules. That can get in the way of people’s plans, and there are people who despise her for it. And they would like nothing better than to get her out of Town Hall.
Andrea having Jack O’Connor “hold” her real estate license was a dumb thing to do, probably the only dumb thing I’ve ever witnessed her do. I believe Andrea when she tells me it was an honest mistake and she never earned a single cent as a real estate salesperson. I believe her because I know her and I know her character. Andrea is not a liar.
Calls for her resignation by anonymous bloggers on a political gossip message board are based on a short-lived error of judgment that’s now more than two years old — and had no consequence to the town whatsoever. I believe they are overblown reactions by people who have their own motives for castigating the CDA director. Much of it revolves around EPCAL, and much of it revolves around promoting aviation at EPCAL.
There are two lessons to be learned from this episode, in my opinion. First, having an ethics code that contains stringent disclosure requirements of business relationships for all public officials is absolutely critical. Second, as consumers of information, we all have to be very careful about what masquerades as “fact” — in print, on the airwaves, and most especially in the anonymous haven that is the Internet.
Riverhead’s longtime community development director, Andrea Lohneiss, for a six-month period between Sept. 2003 and March 2004, was licensed as a real estate salesperson and had her license “sponsored” by the town’s exclusive real estate broker for EPCAL, Jack O’Connor.
EPCAL is technically owned by the town’s Community Development Agency, and Andrea, an employee of the town, is the director of that agency. She’s served in this capacity since 1988 or ’89, hired by the Town Board on which I sat. I supported her appointment. She had great credentials, and that was good for the town. She was also a registered Republican, and that was bad for me, a newly elected Democratic councilwoman being pressured by her party to appoint someone else. I think of Andrea’s appointment as the beginning of the end of my political career. But I never for a single moment regretted it. She is a smart, hard-working, dedicated public servant. Here’s one example: She gave birth to her third child on a Friday afternoon and was back in the office Monday morning working on a grant application. Andrea has taken Riverhead’s CDA to a new level, winning grant monies the town never before even dreamed of.
In the two decades I’ve known Andrea, I’ve never once seen her do anything that made me question her integrity as a public official. The way she has carried out her duties, ably serving five administrations and always managing to stay out of politics, has always been above reproach.
For a paid staff member of the CDA to have a business relationship of any kind with the CDA’s exclusive real estate broker for EPCAL crosses a line of ethics or intelligence that I would never have expected from Andrea Lohneiss. It creates an appearance of impropriety, and for Andrea not to realize this was uncharacteristically stupid.
But in my heart I don’t believe it’s anything more than that. This controversy is being fueled by an Internet gossip blog populated by people who use the cloak of anonymity afforded by the Internet to advance their own agendas, even if it means raking someone over the coals who doesn’t deserve it. They propagate misinformation, half-truths and sometimes out-and-out lies to do it. And they don’t even have the courage to sign their name to their statements. Andrea has not been the only one to suffer this flogging by blogging. Town Attorney Dawn Thomas was tied to the blog site’s whipping post last fall, along with the supervisor, members of his family, councilwomen Blass and Sanders and, yes, yours truly. Internet message boards can be wonderful means by which to communicate, express ideas and debate public policy — but they can also be the electronic equivalent of bathroom walls where hateful graffiti is scrawled anonymously by mean junior-high-schoolers.
There’s certainly no shortage of people around Riverhead who would love to see Andrea hang. Some of them have an ax to grind with Andrea; some are serving their own political and financial agendas. Some are people I don’t trust at all, because I’ve seen too much of their own questionable behavior to believe that their motives are good, regardless of the issue at hand.
The plain and simple truth is that Andrea is and always has been a stickler for detail and making people follow the rules. That can get in the way of people’s plans, and there are people who despise her for it. And they would like nothing better than to get her out of Town Hall.
Andrea having Jack O’Connor “hold” her real estate license was a dumb thing to do, probably the only dumb thing I’ve ever witnessed her do. I believe Andrea when she tells me it was an honest mistake and she never earned a single cent as a real estate salesperson. I believe her because I know her and I know her character. Andrea is not a liar.
Calls for her resignation by anonymous bloggers on a political gossip message board are based on a short-lived error of judgment that’s now more than two years old — and had no consequence to the town whatsoever. I believe they are overblown reactions by people who have their own motives for castigating the CDA director. Much of it revolves around EPCAL, and much of it revolves around promoting aviation at EPCAL.
There are two lessons to be learned from this episode, in my opinion. First, having an ethics code that contains stringent disclosure requirements of business relationships for all public officials is absolutely critical. Second, as consumers of information, we all have to be very careful about what masquerades as “fact” — in print, on the airwaves, and most especially in the anonymous haven that is the Internet.
Monday, January 09, 2006
A fresh start for 2006
The dawning of a new year sparks hope and inspires optimism. It’s nearly a blank slate, a time to start over — and this time get it right. The possibilities and the opportunities are endless. At least that’s how it feels at the beginning of each new year — and this in the dead of winter, even though the ground is bare, the sky is steely gray and daylight is short.
The optimism I feel each Jan. 1 is no doubt connected to my being a morning person. I enjoy the new beginning that comes with each new day. I greet each sunrise enthusiastically, albeit aided by a pot of French roast, brewed in the darkness of my predawn kitchen. The eastern sky takes on a pink hue shortly after its blackness gives way to deep blue. The pinkish glow spreads across the horizon, silhouetting the trees and fence along the eastern boundary of the land we call home. I watch it all from my perch by the window, pausing to appreciate the miracle and wonder of daybreak before the hectic activity of another day encroaches.
There was a time long ago when the only sunrises I witnessed were those following a long night of dancing and partying. But when you’re 20-something, sunrise following an all-nighter on the town doesn’t have the same mystical, wondrous qualities it has when you’re pushing 50, rising early and grateful to be alive and well, in spite of some early morning aches and pains. How true the old saying “youth is wasted on the young.” It’s a pity you have to grow old in order to really understand.
Nevertheless, morning has broken on 2006. What the year will bring remains a mystery. We hope for the best as we step forward into the unknown.
As a community, we have many reasons for optimism. Riverhead is well-positioned as we enter the second half of this century’s first decade. Our town has finally gotten its act together. We’ve got a fully implemented comprehensive land use plan that will guide our town’s development for the next 20 years. And it’s a decent plan, too, limiting population growth and preventing commercial sprawl throughout the hamlets. We’re on the right track — however tenuously — with the former Grumman property now that we’ve set our sights on completing the commercial zoning there before giving up any portion of it to housing schemes. And continued interest and investment in our community abounds — almost too much for some of us. Riverhead is in the catbird seat.
Now is the time for our supervisor and council members to show courage, vision and creativity. With a little of each, great things can happen.
Craft a transfer of development rights program that allows development rights to be taken off riverfront property along West Main Street and transferred to other downtown locations, acquiring the land for a riverfront park without taxpayer expense.
Sit down and seriously talk with the Shinnecocks about how the Indian tribe might use the EPCAL site and what kind of tax dollars Riverhead would see out of it. Talk with our state representatives about the possibility of a direct-access road from the LIE to EPCAL, an essential prerequisite to any intensive use of that site. Explore these things with an open mind and avoid knee-jerk reactions.
Finalize the additional industrial and commercial zoning at EPCAL. Don’t let the sun set on 2006 without making this important change. Get serious about housing code enforcement. Put in place a code that will stand up to judicial review, and then enforce it. Revisit the town ethics code. Fill in the gaps: Make mandatory the disclosure of the identity of all business partners and corporate co-owners of all town employees, elected and appointed alike. Set standards for the operation of the ethics board, requiring it to render decisions on all filed complaints within a fixed time limit and requiring that those decisions be made a matter of public record.
Will 2006 bring real progress on the restoration of the Suffolk Theatre? Ground-breaking on a much-needed expansion of Central Suffolk Hospital? A decision on a new high school? Construction of desperately needed rental units downtown? The beginning of improvements to Route 58?
A year from now, when we look back on 2006, will we see a year of action and accomplishment or a year of indecision and stagnation? Maybe it’s just my heady flush of new year optimism, but my bet’s riding on progress.
The optimism I feel each Jan. 1 is no doubt connected to my being a morning person. I enjoy the new beginning that comes with each new day. I greet each sunrise enthusiastically, albeit aided by a pot of French roast, brewed in the darkness of my predawn kitchen. The eastern sky takes on a pink hue shortly after its blackness gives way to deep blue. The pinkish glow spreads across the horizon, silhouetting the trees and fence along the eastern boundary of the land we call home. I watch it all from my perch by the window, pausing to appreciate the miracle and wonder of daybreak before the hectic activity of another day encroaches.
There was a time long ago when the only sunrises I witnessed were those following a long night of dancing and partying. But when you’re 20-something, sunrise following an all-nighter on the town doesn’t have the same mystical, wondrous qualities it has when you’re pushing 50, rising early and grateful to be alive and well, in spite of some early morning aches and pains. How true the old saying “youth is wasted on the young.” It’s a pity you have to grow old in order to really understand.
Nevertheless, morning has broken on 2006. What the year will bring remains a mystery. We hope for the best as we step forward into the unknown.
As a community, we have many reasons for optimism. Riverhead is well-positioned as we enter the second half of this century’s first decade. Our town has finally gotten its act together. We’ve got a fully implemented comprehensive land use plan that will guide our town’s development for the next 20 years. And it’s a decent plan, too, limiting population growth and preventing commercial sprawl throughout the hamlets. We’re on the right track — however tenuously — with the former Grumman property now that we’ve set our sights on completing the commercial zoning there before giving up any portion of it to housing schemes. And continued interest and investment in our community abounds — almost too much for some of us. Riverhead is in the catbird seat.
Now is the time for our supervisor and council members to show courage, vision and creativity. With a little of each, great things can happen.
Craft a transfer of development rights program that allows development rights to be taken off riverfront property along West Main Street and transferred to other downtown locations, acquiring the land for a riverfront park without taxpayer expense.
Sit down and seriously talk with the Shinnecocks about how the Indian tribe might use the EPCAL site and what kind of tax dollars Riverhead would see out of it. Talk with our state representatives about the possibility of a direct-access road from the LIE to EPCAL, an essential prerequisite to any intensive use of that site. Explore these things with an open mind and avoid knee-jerk reactions.
Finalize the additional industrial and commercial zoning at EPCAL. Don’t let the sun set on 2006 without making this important change. Get serious about housing code enforcement. Put in place a code that will stand up to judicial review, and then enforce it. Revisit the town ethics code. Fill in the gaps: Make mandatory the disclosure of the identity of all business partners and corporate co-owners of all town employees, elected and appointed alike. Set standards for the operation of the ethics board, requiring it to render decisions on all filed complaints within a fixed time limit and requiring that those decisions be made a matter of public record.
Will 2006 bring real progress on the restoration of the Suffolk Theatre? Ground-breaking on a much-needed expansion of Central Suffolk Hospital? A decision on a new high school? Construction of desperately needed rental units downtown? The beginning of improvements to Route 58?
A year from now, when we look back on 2006, will we see a year of action and accomplishment or a year of indecision and stagnation? Maybe it’s just my heady flush of new year optimism, but my bet’s riding on progress.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Merry Christmas to the Doonans
In this business, you get a lot of anonymous calls and letters. People want anonymity for different reasons. Some fear retribution by government or neighbors. Many don’t give a reason, but it’s pretty obvious. They want to say mean things, but they don’t want to trash their good name. Now that’s what I call having the courage of your conviction.
“This call will remain anonymous,” announced a female voice on my voice mail recorder Tuesday afternoon. “I’m calling to say that your newspaper reporting skills suck, Denise. I can’t believe that you didn’t even report that the guy who does all the Christmas lights on the Main Road near 105 is in the hospital and that’s why he can’t do the lights this year that all the children enjoy so much ... I can’t believe the newspaper didn’t even notice that the house wasn’t lit this year. I hope you break this story, Denise, because I’m calling the other papers.” CLICK.
And a very Merry Christmas to you, too, lady.
Now, let’s set the record straight.
First, Bill Doonan, “the guy who does all the lights” is not in the hospital. He had an emergency appendectomy on Nov. 11 and is abiding by his doctor’s orders to avoid heavy lifting and ladder-climbing.
Second, of course we noticed the house was dark this year. We live here, too, you know. We noticed it Thanksgiving weekend, the weekend Mr. Doonan’s been lighting up his Main Road house for the past decade. Barbaraellen Koch called his house and spoke to his wife Sharon, who jokingly said they were thinking of putting up a sign that says “No, he’s not dead. He just had an appendectomy.” We discussed writing a story about it, because we knew people were talking about it. But we decided that the man was entitled to recover from an appendectomy in privacy and peace.
Wrong.
“We’ve had a ton of calls,” Bill Doonan told me Tuesday afternoon, when I called his house to make sure he hadn’t in fact, suffered a complication that landed him back in the hospital. “I am alive and kicking,” the 50-year-old limousine company owner reported with a chuckle. “The rumor mill in this town is just amazing,” he noted.
Bill is really into Christmas. He’s bummed out over the darkness at his house this year, and feels a sense of responsibility to put on his spectacular light show. Bill said he and his wife actually considered hiring people to put the lights up this year. But that just didn’t seem right. “It’s something my wife and I do together, something we love to do. Our heart goes into that display,” he said.
“That display” consists of thousands of lights — too many to count — and 30 illuminated inflatables, along with more than 100 Christmas lawn ornaments. It takes the Doonans 10 full days to set it up.
“I’m an all or nothing kind of guy,” he said wistfully. Last year, he even dressed in a Santa suit — a gift from his wife — and stood outside his bedecked homestead waving to passersby. “You wouldn’t believe how many people stopped and gave me bottles of champagne,” he marveled. “Too bad I don’t drink.”
People really appreciate his efforts every year, he said. Last year, a busload of carolers knocked on his door one Saturday night and sang to him and his wife. He was so touched it made him cry. I was on that bus and saw Bill’s eyes tear up. I’d assumed it was our singing. But he was genuinely touched by our expression of appreciation of the gift of his Christmas spirit to the community.
That’s what it’s all about.
“There’s nothing like seeing a kid’s face pressed up against the window of a car, looking in awe at the house,” Bill says dreamily. “Or watching the stress drain from parents’ faces as their kids roam around our yard in wonder.”
People love the Riverhead Christmas house, as he calls it. He’s gotten plenty of notes and drawings from kids over the years saying thank you for “the Christmas house.” He laminates them and hangs up. He feels bad for the children he knows are disappointed by the darkness there this year. But then he brightens, “Wait’ll next year,” he says. I could hear the twinkle in his voice, and could picture him in his red flannel suit, waving and smiling.
We wish you a Merry Christmas, Bill and Sharon Doonan, from all of us at The News-Review and all over Riverhead. Thank you for your effervescent spirit and good humor.
And to that anonymous caller: Thanks for the gift. I wanted to write a Christmas column, but until your message, I was stumped.
“This call will remain anonymous,” announced a female voice on my voice mail recorder Tuesday afternoon. “I’m calling to say that your newspaper reporting skills suck, Denise. I can’t believe that you didn’t even report that the guy who does all the Christmas lights on the Main Road near 105 is in the hospital and that’s why he can’t do the lights this year that all the children enjoy so much ... I can’t believe the newspaper didn’t even notice that the house wasn’t lit this year. I hope you break this story, Denise, because I’m calling the other papers.” CLICK.
And a very Merry Christmas to you, too, lady.
Now, let’s set the record straight.
First, Bill Doonan, “the guy who does all the lights” is not in the hospital. He had an emergency appendectomy on Nov. 11 and is abiding by his doctor’s orders to avoid heavy lifting and ladder-climbing.
Second, of course we noticed the house was dark this year. We live here, too, you know. We noticed it Thanksgiving weekend, the weekend Mr. Doonan’s been lighting up his Main Road house for the past decade. Barbaraellen Koch called his house and spoke to his wife Sharon, who jokingly said they were thinking of putting up a sign that says “No, he’s not dead. He just had an appendectomy.” We discussed writing a story about it, because we knew people were talking about it. But we decided that the man was entitled to recover from an appendectomy in privacy and peace.
Wrong.
“We’ve had a ton of calls,” Bill Doonan told me Tuesday afternoon, when I called his house to make sure he hadn’t in fact, suffered a complication that landed him back in the hospital. “I am alive and kicking,” the 50-year-old limousine company owner reported with a chuckle. “The rumor mill in this town is just amazing,” he noted.
Bill is really into Christmas. He’s bummed out over the darkness at his house this year, and feels a sense of responsibility to put on his spectacular light show. Bill said he and his wife actually considered hiring people to put the lights up this year. But that just didn’t seem right. “It’s something my wife and I do together, something we love to do. Our heart goes into that display,” he said.
“That display” consists of thousands of lights — too many to count — and 30 illuminated inflatables, along with more than 100 Christmas lawn ornaments. It takes the Doonans 10 full days to set it up.
“I’m an all or nothing kind of guy,” he said wistfully. Last year, he even dressed in a Santa suit — a gift from his wife — and stood outside his bedecked homestead waving to passersby. “You wouldn’t believe how many people stopped and gave me bottles of champagne,” he marveled. “Too bad I don’t drink.”
People really appreciate his efforts every year, he said. Last year, a busload of carolers knocked on his door one Saturday night and sang to him and his wife. He was so touched it made him cry. I was on that bus and saw Bill’s eyes tear up. I’d assumed it was our singing. But he was genuinely touched by our expression of appreciation of the gift of his Christmas spirit to the community.
That’s what it’s all about.
“There’s nothing like seeing a kid’s face pressed up against the window of a car, looking in awe at the house,” Bill says dreamily. “Or watching the stress drain from parents’ faces as their kids roam around our yard in wonder.”
People love the Riverhead Christmas house, as he calls it. He’s gotten plenty of notes and drawings from kids over the years saying thank you for “the Christmas house.” He laminates them and hangs up. He feels bad for the children he knows are disappointed by the darkness there this year. But then he brightens, “Wait’ll next year,” he says. I could hear the twinkle in his voice, and could picture him in his red flannel suit, waving and smiling.
We wish you a Merry Christmas, Bill and Sharon Doonan, from all of us at The News-Review and all over Riverhead. Thank you for your effervescent spirit and good humor.
And to that anonymous caller: Thanks for the gift. I wanted to write a Christmas column, but until your message, I was stumped.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Where's my happy switch?
The PC police have sensitized us on the issue of offending Jews, Muslims and atheists, among others, as we celebrate the Christmas holiday. To use a phrase that will date me, we’ve had our consciousness raised.
But the celebration of Christmas is “offensive” to another group of people for completely different reasons. Offensive isn’t quite the right word, but it’ll do.
The Christmas season is really hard on the depressed and grieving among us. Count me in. This time of year, I’m not very merry. Being wished a Merry Christmas — or a Happy Holiday for that matter — only reminds me of the hole in my heart. I force myself to go through the motions of the holiday, trying my best to continue our family traditions “for the sake of the children” but it’s hollow. I feel like a fake.
And a failure. I struggle with my faith, and the past couple of years, when Christmas rolls around, I’m reminded of my spiritual shortcomings. If I had a strong faith, I wouldn’t be depressed, I chastise myself. If I were focused on the true meaning of the season, I’d be joyful, not down.
I wish we humans came equipped with a happy switch.
Some of my holiday tsouris is cultural. As a first generation Italian-American, my childhood was steeped in the cultural traditions of the “old country.” My entire extended family lived within a 10-block radius of my great-grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, until my parents wound up settling our family in Coram — “in the middle of nowhere.”
We saw each other, well, constantly. Family was our social network. Holidays were spent together — always. Great aunts and uncles, their children and their children’s families crowded together in my great-grandmother’s home on Christmas Eve for a traditional fish dinner, zuppa di pesci. Holidays were boisterous at “Big Grandma’s” — at 5’7” she “towered” over her husband in the turn-of-the-century wedding picture that hung in a place of honor in her living room. My great-grandfather died before I was born, but Big Grandma was the center of my mother’s extended family until she passed away when I was 14.
Our move to Coram marked the beginning of The Scattering. My parents’ generation left that one-square-mile “village” in Brooklyn for the suburbs. But they returned with their children for holiday gatherings. After Big Grandma died, my mother’s parents’ home became holiday central for us. Nana gave up the Christmas gig the year my grandfather died, 1975, and Christmas gatherings after that took place at my Aunt Evy’s home in Rocky Point. It was brand new and huge, an ideal place for parties of every kind. And she was the embodiment of gracious entertaining. Martha Stewart has nothin’ on my Aunt Ev. Nana would come for an extended holiday stay, and Aunt Evy’s kitchen became a bakery for a few weeks before Christmas. The aroma of their confections baking mixed sweetly with the evergreen scent of her Christmas tree and the logs burning in the fireplace — until all the shellfish cooking on Christmas Eve fouled the air!
Nana’s five children, their spouses, their children and grandchildren all gathered at Aunt Evy’s house for Christmas. That’s where my own daughters got a little taste of the family holidays I knew as a child. But after Nana passed away in 1998, my aunt and uncle moved to Florida, and Christmas changed. There were no more huge, noisy family gatherings. We still made the Christmas Eve fish dinner, but there weren’t 20 of us seated around a long dining room table to share it.
It was on Christmas Eve two years ago that my mom got sick. Her stomach was upset, and it seemed like no big deal at the time. We didn’t know it was the first symptom of a blockage in her large intestine that would send her to the emergency room two days after New Year’s. We didn’t know it was the beginning of the end. She didn’t touch her dinner, changed out of her fancy clothes and into sweats — absolutey unheard of for my mother — and watched her family enjoy the last Christmas fish dinner she’d make. It was delicious.
Now, Mom’s gone. Her generation is scattered up and down the East Coast. Their children — my generation — are scattered around the country. There will never again be another family Christmas of the kind I grew up with. Where my mother and her cousins were friends and hung out with each other, I’m barely in touch with my cousins. An occasional e-mail, a Christmas card, and sporadic visits during weddings and funerals.
I guess we’ve become “real” Americans. We don’t live like Italians any more.
All of these things are wrapped up in the Christmas holiday for me, so this season triggers many complex emotions. I don’t feel especially merry, but I do feel the pressure to be merry, everywhere I turn. And that makes this season even harder.
I’ll keep looking for that happy switch. But if my “Merry Christmas” is less than enthusiastic when we meet on the street, please understand it’s got nothing to do with being politically correct.
But the celebration of Christmas is “offensive” to another group of people for completely different reasons. Offensive isn’t quite the right word, but it’ll do.
The Christmas season is really hard on the depressed and grieving among us. Count me in. This time of year, I’m not very merry. Being wished a Merry Christmas — or a Happy Holiday for that matter — only reminds me of the hole in my heart. I force myself to go through the motions of the holiday, trying my best to continue our family traditions “for the sake of the children” but it’s hollow. I feel like a fake.
And a failure. I struggle with my faith, and the past couple of years, when Christmas rolls around, I’m reminded of my spiritual shortcomings. If I had a strong faith, I wouldn’t be depressed, I chastise myself. If I were focused on the true meaning of the season, I’d be joyful, not down.
I wish we humans came equipped with a happy switch.
Some of my holiday tsouris is cultural. As a first generation Italian-American, my childhood was steeped in the cultural traditions of the “old country.” My entire extended family lived within a 10-block radius of my great-grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, until my parents wound up settling our family in Coram — “in the middle of nowhere.”
We saw each other, well, constantly. Family was our social network. Holidays were spent together — always. Great aunts and uncles, their children and their children’s families crowded together in my great-grandmother’s home on Christmas Eve for a traditional fish dinner, zuppa di pesci. Holidays were boisterous at “Big Grandma’s” — at 5’7” she “towered” over her husband in the turn-of-the-century wedding picture that hung in a place of honor in her living room. My great-grandfather died before I was born, but Big Grandma was the center of my mother’s extended family until she passed away when I was 14.
Our move to Coram marked the beginning of The Scattering. My parents’ generation left that one-square-mile “village” in Brooklyn for the suburbs. But they returned with their children for holiday gatherings. After Big Grandma died, my mother’s parents’ home became holiday central for us. Nana gave up the Christmas gig the year my grandfather died, 1975, and Christmas gatherings after that took place at my Aunt Evy’s home in Rocky Point. It was brand new and huge, an ideal place for parties of every kind. And she was the embodiment of gracious entertaining. Martha Stewart has nothin’ on my Aunt Ev. Nana would come for an extended holiday stay, and Aunt Evy’s kitchen became a bakery for a few weeks before Christmas. The aroma of their confections baking mixed sweetly with the evergreen scent of her Christmas tree and the logs burning in the fireplace — until all the shellfish cooking on Christmas Eve fouled the air!
Nana’s five children, their spouses, their children and grandchildren all gathered at Aunt Evy’s house for Christmas. That’s where my own daughters got a little taste of the family holidays I knew as a child. But after Nana passed away in 1998, my aunt and uncle moved to Florida, and Christmas changed. There were no more huge, noisy family gatherings. We still made the Christmas Eve fish dinner, but there weren’t 20 of us seated around a long dining room table to share it.
It was on Christmas Eve two years ago that my mom got sick. Her stomach was upset, and it seemed like no big deal at the time. We didn’t know it was the first symptom of a blockage in her large intestine that would send her to the emergency room two days after New Year’s. We didn’t know it was the beginning of the end. She didn’t touch her dinner, changed out of her fancy clothes and into sweats — absolutey unheard of for my mother — and watched her family enjoy the last Christmas fish dinner she’d make. It was delicious.
Now, Mom’s gone. Her generation is scattered up and down the East Coast. Their children — my generation — are scattered around the country. There will never again be another family Christmas of the kind I grew up with. Where my mother and her cousins were friends and hung out with each other, I’m barely in touch with my cousins. An occasional e-mail, a Christmas card, and sporadic visits during weddings and funerals.
I guess we’ve become “real” Americans. We don’t live like Italians any more.
All of these things are wrapped up in the Christmas holiday for me, so this season triggers many complex emotions. I don’t feel especially merry, but I do feel the pressure to be merry, everywhere I turn. And that makes this season even harder.
I’ll keep looking for that happy switch. But if my “Merry Christmas” is less than enthusiastic when we meet on the street, please understand it’s got nothing to do with being politically correct.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
'Tis the season to argue
I don’t watch Fox News. All those angry conservative white men in an incessant tirade give me a headache.
So I wasn’t up-to-snuff on the latest raging battle in the cultural war for the American mind and spirit — and dollar. I didn’t realize that when the Wal-Mart greeter wished me “happy holidays” I, as a Christian living in this predominantly Christian nation, should be offended. I just smiled back at her and wished her the same.
And when my Dad and sister showed up at the Big Duck holiday lighting ceremony in Flanders last week with their knickers in a twist, I was at first perplexed.
“He’s all worked up over this Christmas thing,” my exasperated sister informed me.
“Christmas thing?” I asked.
“You know. O’Reilly.” She assessed the blank look on my face and explained further.
Our Dad watches Fox constantly — except when there’s a Yankee or Ranger game on. Fox even blares on the TV in his bedroom all through the night — helps him sleep, he says. Go figure. And Bill O’Reilly? He’s the man. You can always get a glimpse of O’Reilly’s cause du jour by having a brief conversation with my Dad.
Her recitation of the latest O’Reilly-driven family flap completed, my sister gestured to the county showmobile stage and whispered, “I hope nobody says ‘happy holidays’ or else I’ll be hearing about it all the way home, too.’
It was the holiday lighting ceremony, after all, so that prospect seemed inevitable. But whatever ill will those “happy holiday” wishes might have generated was offset by the sight of his grandchildren singing traditional Christmas carols — and other songs — before the strand of colored lights around the Big Duck’s neck was lit and Santa arrived by fire truck.
I don’t argue these points with my father any more. Sparks flew at the dinner table every night during my teenage years, when we would argue about anything and everything. In the late 60s and early 70s, there were plenty of topics to choose from, too. My poor mother.
Sunday in Wal-Mart, I’m actually looking at boxed Christmas cards when my cell phone rings. It’s my Dad. He’s not happy when he hears where I am, and it’s not because he thinks I should be in church instead. When I tell him what I’m doing, he says he hopes I buy cards that say Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays — if Wal-Mart even sells cards that say Merry Christmas, that is. Of course — maybe in response to my father yelling in my ear — I go for the secular version. (That’s how I became a Mets fan and a Democrat, if you want to know the truth.)
Now I happen to think there’s a whole host of valid reasons not to shop in Wal-Mart, but the greeter wishing me a “happy holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas” isn’t one of them.
Bill O’Reilly wrote in his Dec. 1 column: “Corporate America should get down on its knees and thank God that the baby Jesus was born two thousand plus years ago.” I don’t get it, Bill. It’s OK for corporate America to exploit the birth of Christ for profit, as long as they acknowledge that “Jesus is the reason for the season” as they’re counting their loot?
Christians have had much to be offended by at this time of year for decades. I’m not talking about seeing menorahs lit next to crèches on public property or people using a secular phrase like “happy holidays.” The Christmas holiday in America hasn’t been about celebrating the baby Jesus for half a century at least. Who are we kidding? It’s been all about money — shopping and spending, even going into debt to do it. That’s the meaning of Christmas in America. So if you’re going to get offended about anything, Bill, as a Christian, that should be it. The celebration of the birth of Christ — which didn’t even happen in December, by the way; it was, ironically, placed on the calendar at this particular time of year by the early church in an effort to coopt a pagan holiday and win followers — has long been exploited for commercial gain by corporate America. It’s not about Jesus or any of the things he taught, like loving your neighbor and serving others.
It’s an excuse to sell things. One trip to The O’Reilly Christmas Store at billoreilly.com illustrates the point. There you can buy “The Spin Stops Here” fleece vests and “O’Reilly Factor” garment bags and a variety of “No Spin” mugs, pens, umbrellas, caps and dormats — even a tin with “No Spin” mints. There’s no Christ or Christmas at The O’Reilly Christmas Store. In fact, the only mention of God I could find there was a “God Bless America - No Spin Zone” license plate frame, specially priced for this holiday — um, I mean Christmas — season at just $17.95. Seems Mr. O’Reilly, the self-appointed guardian of American Christian values, understands the true meaning of Christmas: retail.
Even so, I’m not sure how much Jesus would mind, since the season seems to help people -of all religious persuasions to spread a little good will and cheer for a few weeks.
Until now. With Christmas made part of the conservatives’ cultural war, it’s been turned into another reason to mistrust, hate and fight one another. I’d bet Jesus would have something to say about that, for sure.
So I wasn’t up-to-snuff on the latest raging battle in the cultural war for the American mind and spirit — and dollar. I didn’t realize that when the Wal-Mart greeter wished me “happy holidays” I, as a Christian living in this predominantly Christian nation, should be offended. I just smiled back at her and wished her the same.
And when my Dad and sister showed up at the Big Duck holiday lighting ceremony in Flanders last week with their knickers in a twist, I was at first perplexed.
“He’s all worked up over this Christmas thing,” my exasperated sister informed me.
“Christmas thing?” I asked.
“You know. O’Reilly.” She assessed the blank look on my face and explained further.
Our Dad watches Fox constantly — except when there’s a Yankee or Ranger game on. Fox even blares on the TV in his bedroom all through the night — helps him sleep, he says. Go figure. And Bill O’Reilly? He’s the man. You can always get a glimpse of O’Reilly’s cause du jour by having a brief conversation with my Dad.
Her recitation of the latest O’Reilly-driven family flap completed, my sister gestured to the county showmobile stage and whispered, “I hope nobody says ‘happy holidays’ or else I’ll be hearing about it all the way home, too.’
It was the holiday lighting ceremony, after all, so that prospect seemed inevitable. But whatever ill will those “happy holiday” wishes might have generated was offset by the sight of his grandchildren singing traditional Christmas carols — and other songs — before the strand of colored lights around the Big Duck’s neck was lit and Santa arrived by fire truck.
I don’t argue these points with my father any more. Sparks flew at the dinner table every night during my teenage years, when we would argue about anything and everything. In the late 60s and early 70s, there were plenty of topics to choose from, too. My poor mother.
Sunday in Wal-Mart, I’m actually looking at boxed Christmas cards when my cell phone rings. It’s my Dad. He’s not happy when he hears where I am, and it’s not because he thinks I should be in church instead. When I tell him what I’m doing, he says he hopes I buy cards that say Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays — if Wal-Mart even sells cards that say Merry Christmas, that is. Of course — maybe in response to my father yelling in my ear — I go for the secular version. (That’s how I became a Mets fan and a Democrat, if you want to know the truth.)
Now I happen to think there’s a whole host of valid reasons not to shop in Wal-Mart, but the greeter wishing me a “happy holiday” instead of “Merry Christmas” isn’t one of them.
Bill O’Reilly wrote in his Dec. 1 column: “Corporate America should get down on its knees and thank God that the baby Jesus was born two thousand plus years ago.” I don’t get it, Bill. It’s OK for corporate America to exploit the birth of Christ for profit, as long as they acknowledge that “Jesus is the reason for the season” as they’re counting their loot?
Christians have had much to be offended by at this time of year for decades. I’m not talking about seeing menorahs lit next to crèches on public property or people using a secular phrase like “happy holidays.” The Christmas holiday in America hasn’t been about celebrating the baby Jesus for half a century at least. Who are we kidding? It’s been all about money — shopping and spending, even going into debt to do it. That’s the meaning of Christmas in America. So if you’re going to get offended about anything, Bill, as a Christian, that should be it. The celebration of the birth of Christ — which didn’t even happen in December, by the way; it was, ironically, placed on the calendar at this particular time of year by the early church in an effort to coopt a pagan holiday and win followers — has long been exploited for commercial gain by corporate America. It’s not about Jesus or any of the things he taught, like loving your neighbor and serving others.
It’s an excuse to sell things. One trip to The O’Reilly Christmas Store at billoreilly.com illustrates the point. There you can buy “The Spin Stops Here” fleece vests and “O’Reilly Factor” garment bags and a variety of “No Spin” mugs, pens, umbrellas, caps and dormats — even a tin with “No Spin” mints. There’s no Christ or Christmas at The O’Reilly Christmas Store. In fact, the only mention of God I could find there was a “God Bless America - No Spin Zone” license plate frame, specially priced for this holiday — um, I mean Christmas — season at just $17.95. Seems Mr. O’Reilly, the self-appointed guardian of American Christian values, understands the true meaning of Christmas: retail.
Even so, I’m not sure how much Jesus would mind, since the season seems to help people -of all religious persuasions to spread a little good will and cheer for a few weeks.
Until now. With Christmas made part of the conservatives’ cultural war, it’s been turned into another reason to mistrust, hate and fight one another. I’d bet Jesus would have something to say about that, for sure.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Free exercise vs. the establishment
I consider myself a Christian. But that’s beside the point.
My personal spiritual beliefs have little to do with my opinion about the lawsuit brought a few weeks ago against the Riverhead school district by four residents angered by the district’s agreement to rent space at Riley Avenue Elementary School to a Christian church for Sunday worship services.
This is a frivolous lawsuit that we taxpayers are going to pay dearly to defend.
It’s frivolous because there’s plenty of legal precedent that says so, including decisions by the highest court in the nation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that an upstate New York school district’s refusal to allow a religious group to use school property because its activities were religious in nature violated the group’s First Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. That decision followed the Supreme Court’s 1993 ruling against the Center Moriches School District in a similar case. Less than a week after the plaintiffs announced their lawsuit against the Riverhead school district, a federal judge in New York City threw out a similar case, citing these two Supreme Court decisions as binding precedent.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the current lawsuit against Riverhead schools will eventually meet with the same fate.
Why is this lawsuit a dog, anyway? Isn’t it true that our constitution mandates the separation of church and state in the U.S.? How can it possibly be legal for a church to hold Sunday services in a public building like a school? The very notion raises the hackles of many an uninformed secularist.
Actually the words “separation of church and state” are nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.
When it was written in 1787, the constitution was intended to create a unified, lasting national government — without infringing too much on states’ rights. It didn’t make much note of individual rights. It was a controversial document then, and so it remains today. One of the most heated controversies at the time was actually the document’s failure to protect individual rights — the constitution nearly wasn’t ratified because of its silence on certain individual freedoms. That’s why the framers went to work amending the constitution even before its ratification was official. Their work is reflected in the first 10 amendments of the constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
The first order of business was to guarantee certain freedoms that the framers of the Constitution held essential. And so the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
The exact meaning of these 45 words — arguably the most important words in the document for ordinary people like you and me — has been the subject of a legion of federal cases. The freedoms they guarantee, as precious to individuals and as essential to a free society today as they were 214 years ago, are in greater jeopardy today than ever before in our union’s history. But not because the North Shore Christian Church is renting space at Riley Avenue Elementary School for Sunday services. The so-called Patriot Act is what ought to be putting fear in the hearts of Americans worried about their personal freedom.
In the current case against the Riverhead school district, two basic First Amendment questions are raised. Does renting space in a school building, when school isn’t in session, to a religious group for religous purposes constitute an “establishment of religion?” The answer is, simply, no. If the school district refused to rent space to a religious group for religious services while at the same time renting space to other community groups, would that constitute prohibiting the free exercise of religion? The answer to this is yes.
The First Amendment rights of the small group of Christians meeting in a publicly owned building — in space they are paying rent for — are the only First Amendment rights in danger of being trampled here. They are no different than all the other groups that rent school property during non-school hours for purposes that have nothing to do with primary or secondary public education — groups of adults learning line dancing or reiki healing, cultural groups putting on dance performances or theater groups producing plays. They are certainly no less protected by the First Amendment than the Indian cultural heritage organization that holds Hindu religious services in another district school.
The establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment go together hand in glove. Our founding fathers (and mothers) knew about religious persecution. They knew what it was like to have one’s particular brand of spiritual expression banned — even on penalty of death. They understood the role an “official” state religion has in that kind of repression and persecution. And with the very first words of the Bill of Rights they sought to ensure that such persecution would never again happen on American soil.
Note: December marks a season deep in spiritual meaning for many people in our multicultural society. Fittingly, this month also marks the anniversary of the Bill of Rights, ratified Dec. 15, 1791.
My personal spiritual beliefs have little to do with my opinion about the lawsuit brought a few weeks ago against the Riverhead school district by four residents angered by the district’s agreement to rent space at Riley Avenue Elementary School to a Christian church for Sunday worship services.
This is a frivolous lawsuit that we taxpayers are going to pay dearly to defend.
It’s frivolous because there’s plenty of legal precedent that says so, including decisions by the highest court in the nation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that an upstate New York school district’s refusal to allow a religious group to use school property because its activities were religious in nature violated the group’s First Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. That decision followed the Supreme Court’s 1993 ruling against the Center Moriches School District in a similar case. Less than a week after the plaintiffs announced their lawsuit against the Riverhead school district, a federal judge in New York City threw out a similar case, citing these two Supreme Court decisions as binding precedent.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the current lawsuit against Riverhead schools will eventually meet with the same fate.
Why is this lawsuit a dog, anyway? Isn’t it true that our constitution mandates the separation of church and state in the U.S.? How can it possibly be legal for a church to hold Sunday services in a public building like a school? The very notion raises the hackles of many an uninformed secularist.
Actually the words “separation of church and state” are nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.
When it was written in 1787, the constitution was intended to create a unified, lasting national government — without infringing too much on states’ rights. It didn’t make much note of individual rights. It was a controversial document then, and so it remains today. One of the most heated controversies at the time was actually the document’s failure to protect individual rights — the constitution nearly wasn’t ratified because of its silence on certain individual freedoms. That’s why the framers went to work amending the constitution even before its ratification was official. Their work is reflected in the first 10 amendments of the constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
The first order of business was to guarantee certain freedoms that the framers of the Constitution held essential. And so the First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
The exact meaning of these 45 words — arguably the most important words in the document for ordinary people like you and me — has been the subject of a legion of federal cases. The freedoms they guarantee, as precious to individuals and as essential to a free society today as they were 214 years ago, are in greater jeopardy today than ever before in our union’s history. But not because the North Shore Christian Church is renting space at Riley Avenue Elementary School for Sunday services. The so-called Patriot Act is what ought to be putting fear in the hearts of Americans worried about their personal freedom.
In the current case against the Riverhead school district, two basic First Amendment questions are raised. Does renting space in a school building, when school isn’t in session, to a religious group for religous purposes constitute an “establishment of religion?” The answer is, simply, no. If the school district refused to rent space to a religious group for religious services while at the same time renting space to other community groups, would that constitute prohibiting the free exercise of religion? The answer to this is yes.
The First Amendment rights of the small group of Christians meeting in a publicly owned building — in space they are paying rent for — are the only First Amendment rights in danger of being trampled here. They are no different than all the other groups that rent school property during non-school hours for purposes that have nothing to do with primary or secondary public education — groups of adults learning line dancing or reiki healing, cultural groups putting on dance performances or theater groups producing plays. They are certainly no less protected by the First Amendment than the Indian cultural heritage organization that holds Hindu religious services in another district school.
The establishment clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment go together hand in glove. Our founding fathers (and mothers) knew about religious persecution. They knew what it was like to have one’s particular brand of spiritual expression banned — even on penalty of death. They understood the role an “official” state religion has in that kind of repression and persecution. And with the very first words of the Bill of Rights they sought to ensure that such persecution would never again happen on American soil.
Note: December marks a season deep in spiritual meaning for many people in our multicultural society. Fittingly, this month also marks the anniversary of the Bill of Rights, ratified Dec. 15, 1791.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
What's news, what's not
As I'm sure you can imagine, I get frustrated and angry when I see people accusing The News-Review of being biased or slanted because I was a Democratic councilwoman once upon a time. I am not by any means a partisan. Period. My lack of partisanship got me into a great deal of trouble with the Democrats when I was on the Town Board. Why? They hated me every time I voted with the Republicans. That's just the way partisan politics "works" and why government is so dysfunctional.
I've got my own opinions about things certainly. Who doesn't? Does that disqualify me as a reporter or editor? It would only if I let my opinions drive what I report or how it's reported. And it most certainly does not.
Contrary to what many people here assert whenever we report something they'd rather not have aired, we really try our best to play it right down the middle at The News-Review, without the "bias" or "slant" that some here like to accuse us of. We take our responsibility seriously to provide fair and accurate coverage of what's going on in our town. We confine our opinions to the editorial conmentary pages.
Some people think it's not "news" that a candidate for Town Board wrote a false address on his witness affidavit on his nominating petitions.
Some people think it's not "news" that a sitting councilman would go into business with a man who has pending litigation against the town and has operated an illegal 45-acre sand mine --literally digging $10 million out of Calverton-- for several years.
Some people think it's not "news" that the same councilman would participate in policy-making and decisions on issues that directly affect the business interests of that same sand-mine operator, even after they established their business together.
Some people think it's not "news" that this councilman didn't even bother to tell his colleagues on the Town Board, never mind the public, of his business relationship in the context of all these things, and that, if a question wasn't asked in an interview, it never would have come to light. (His disclosure statement does not disclose who he owns "Densieski Fuel" with.)
Some people think it's not "news" that our councilman's business partner helped send the former county Republican leader to jail for taking $20,000 worth of bribes from him.
Some people think it's not "news" that our councilman's business partner TESTIFIED in federal court on Nov. 17, 1999 that he bought a truck with the corrupt county political leader and gave the corrupt political leader money in connection with that business deal.
To the people who would question why we report these things, and assert that we do so to advance our own "agenda" I would like to know why they think a newspaper would NOT report these things. They are all relevant to a candidate's qualifications to hold the public trust. Are they not? It doesn't matter to me a whit whether the councilman involved in this kind of stuff is Republican, Democrat or any other party enrollment.
It seems to me that the only reason you might disagree with that premise is that your own political bias has blinded you. Or that you are intent on defending your party or your candidate by spinning facts and/or discrediting whomever might get in the way of your cause (or doing whatever else it takes.)
We'll keep doing what we do, and work as hard as we can to produce the best newspaper we can for Riverhead. I do this because I love my town and I'm concerned about its future and I believe in democracy, which depends on the free flow of information to the public. That's my agenda, and I'm proud of it.
You keep drawing your own conclusions. You can buy our paper or not. Feel free to get your "news" from these message boards or from Suffolk Life or the Independent or any other source instead. It's still a free country and we're still a free press. But I don't believe you'll be as well informed about what's happening in our community, because we DO play it down the middle and because we are the only newspaper completely dedicated to covering this community, inside and out.
I've got my own opinions about things certainly. Who doesn't? Does that disqualify me as a reporter or editor? It would only if I let my opinions drive what I report or how it's reported. And it most certainly does not.
Contrary to what many people here assert whenever we report something they'd rather not have aired, we really try our best to play it right down the middle at The News-Review, without the "bias" or "slant" that some here like to accuse us of. We take our responsibility seriously to provide fair and accurate coverage of what's going on in our town. We confine our opinions to the editorial conmentary pages.
Some people think it's not "news" that a candidate for Town Board wrote a false address on his witness affidavit on his nominating petitions.
Some people think it's not "news" that a sitting councilman would go into business with a man who has pending litigation against the town and has operated an illegal 45-acre sand mine --literally digging $10 million out of Calverton-- for several years.
Some people think it's not "news" that the same councilman would participate in policy-making and decisions on issues that directly affect the business interests of that same sand-mine operator, even after they established their business together.
Some people think it's not "news" that this councilman didn't even bother to tell his colleagues on the Town Board, never mind the public, of his business relationship in the context of all these things, and that, if a question wasn't asked in an interview, it never would have come to light. (His disclosure statement does not disclose who he owns "Densieski Fuel" with.)
Some people think it's not "news" that our councilman's business partner helped send the former county Republican leader to jail for taking $20,000 worth of bribes from him.
Some people think it's not "news" that our councilman's business partner TESTIFIED in federal court on Nov. 17, 1999 that he bought a truck with the corrupt county political leader and gave the corrupt political leader money in connection with that business deal.
To the people who would question why we report these things, and assert that we do so to advance our own "agenda" I would like to know why they think a newspaper would NOT report these things. They are all relevant to a candidate's qualifications to hold the public trust. Are they not? It doesn't matter to me a whit whether the councilman involved in this kind of stuff is Republican, Democrat or any other party enrollment.
It seems to me that the only reason you might disagree with that premise is that your own political bias has blinded you. Or that you are intent on defending your party or your candidate by spinning facts and/or discrediting whomever might get in the way of your cause (or doing whatever else it takes.)
We'll keep doing what we do, and work as hard as we can to produce the best newspaper we can for Riverhead. I do this because I love my town and I'm concerned about its future and I believe in democracy, which depends on the free flow of information to the public. That's my agenda, and I'm proud of it.
You keep drawing your own conclusions. You can buy our paper or not. Feel free to get your "news" from these message boards or from Suffolk Life or the Independent or any other source instead. It's still a free country and we're still a free press. But I don't believe you'll be as well informed about what's happening in our community, because we DO play it down the middle and because we are the only newspaper completely dedicated to covering this community, inside and out.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Politics as usual?
I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. Things have been hectic and I've been under the weather with a nasty cold and sore throat. Yuck!
The last two weeks have been a rather wild ride around our newsroom. Political intrigue, anonymous letters, even copies of emails that somebody evidently accessed without the owner's permission. Just another boring local election season in Riverhead.
The beginning of the present strange journey started with those anonymous mailers blasting the two incumbent councilwomen, mailers that everyone denied having anything to do with. Well, you know they had to come from somewhere, and somebody had to pay for them. And you can bet that whoever did isn't about to abide by the campaign finance laws and file a statement with the board of elections. Although the law requires the filing, no law requires the sender to identify himself, so the filing requirement is a joke.
The only tantalizing link to the anonymous sender was the return address on the mailers, a vacant condo in a fairly new complex here in Riverhead. Tax records showed the unit still in the name of the developer.
The developer told us the condo was sold and would be closing any day. Figuring the new owner would be moving in, I went back to the condo to try to talk to him or her — and see if there was any connection to the anonymous mailers. It was still empty, but that's when I saw a small "for sale" sign in a window. I called the number on the sign, and hit a jackpot of sorts. The guy trying to sell the condo, who told me he's owned it for about a year, was the graphic artist named in Tony Coates' email correspondence between Tony and others involved in the GOP campaign (including Republican committee treasurer Russ Kratoville and Ed Densieski's campaign manager, Tara McLaughlin. The artist, Christopher Carbone, admitted to me that he worked on the mailers at Tony's request, but said he didn't know who they were working for. He said he used his condo address because the post office won't accept the mailer without a return address.
Now, Tony still — incredibly — maintains he has no idea who did the mailers. He just "threw some ideas out there" and — poof! — they ended up on these 8 1/2 by 11-inch glossy pieces mailed to every registered Republican in Riverhead the day before the primary.
The GOP chairman and candidates Ed Densieski and John Dunleavy all insist — quite indignantly — that they knew nothing about this either. Yet Ed's paid campaign consultant and his campaign manager were involved in the development of these mailers (the emails show them discussing language, punctuation, etc.) and GOP treasurer Russ Kratoville was also aware of them, getting at least one email from Chris Carbone.
So, how do we believe all these denials? Personally, I can't.
And why did the condo developer try to help with the cover up by saying that the condo had just been sold? Did he have something to do with this?
Mailers like these cost a nice chunk of change— to produce and mail. Who financed them? Even though there are laws on the books requiring such expenditures to be disclosed, we'll of course never know, because whoever sent them is sure to ignore the laws.
Then there's Robert Woodson, who needed four days to come up with "an address." The one on his voter record and nominating petitions was long-vacant. Trying to get this answer out of Woodson involved me in the most bizarre conversations I've ever had in my life. Refusing to answer my question about where he lives, he calls a press conference to announce his address and complain that The News-Review attacked his "patriotism" for asking him where he lived! At the press conference he says he lived at the vacant Aquebogue address until July. So we go to the Board of Elections to look at the nominating petitions he filed, and find that he's listed — hand written — the same address on his petitions all through the month of August! So the man signed the legal equivalent of an affidavit, lying about his residence.
I've had several people call me to tell me that Woodson has actually been living in Coram for years. I even have an address in Coram.
The Riverhead Conservative & Republican parties have political motives to want Woodson on the ballot. I guess their reasoning was he would have been likely to draw votes from a traditional Democratic base, the African American community. But how could the Conservatives stand with this candidate after it's pretty clear he doesn't live in town? And, by his own admisson, he filed false statements on his nominating petitions?
I'm disturbed that a reporter for another local paper was so willing to accept Woodson's allegation that he rented a room in the Aquebogue house from "a former owner" who, he said, was the owner until July. Real estate records are public documents. The person named as an "owner" by Woodson never held title to that house. The current owner, a corporation whose principal I located and interviewed last week, has owned the house since Sept. 2004. He never heard of Woodson. The prior owner lived in the house for several months after she sold it last fall, and she too said Robert Woodson never lived there. The house has been vacant since she moved out, the current owner said. How could you print a report stating that the house was owned by someone without checking into it? That's not responsible journalism.
Given what we've seen so far, it's safe to say the rest of this campaign is going to be nothing if not interesting.
The last two weeks have been a rather wild ride around our newsroom. Political intrigue, anonymous letters, even copies of emails that somebody evidently accessed without the owner's permission. Just another boring local election season in Riverhead.
The beginning of the present strange journey started with those anonymous mailers blasting the two incumbent councilwomen, mailers that everyone denied having anything to do with. Well, you know they had to come from somewhere, and somebody had to pay for them. And you can bet that whoever did isn't about to abide by the campaign finance laws and file a statement with the board of elections. Although the law requires the filing, no law requires the sender to identify himself, so the filing requirement is a joke.
The only tantalizing link to the anonymous sender was the return address on the mailers, a vacant condo in a fairly new complex here in Riverhead. Tax records showed the unit still in the name of the developer.
The developer told us the condo was sold and would be closing any day. Figuring the new owner would be moving in, I went back to the condo to try to talk to him or her — and see if there was any connection to the anonymous mailers. It was still empty, but that's when I saw a small "for sale" sign in a window. I called the number on the sign, and hit a jackpot of sorts. The guy trying to sell the condo, who told me he's owned it for about a year, was the graphic artist named in Tony Coates' email correspondence between Tony and others involved in the GOP campaign (including Republican committee treasurer Russ Kratoville and Ed Densieski's campaign manager, Tara McLaughlin. The artist, Christopher Carbone, admitted to me that he worked on the mailers at Tony's request, but said he didn't know who they were working for. He said he used his condo address because the post office won't accept the mailer without a return address.
Now, Tony still — incredibly — maintains he has no idea who did the mailers. He just "threw some ideas out there" and — poof! — they ended up on these 8 1/2 by 11-inch glossy pieces mailed to every registered Republican in Riverhead the day before the primary.
The GOP chairman and candidates Ed Densieski and John Dunleavy all insist — quite indignantly — that they knew nothing about this either. Yet Ed's paid campaign consultant and his campaign manager were involved in the development of these mailers (the emails show them discussing language, punctuation, etc.) and GOP treasurer Russ Kratoville was also aware of them, getting at least one email from Chris Carbone.
So, how do we believe all these denials? Personally, I can't.
And why did the condo developer try to help with the cover up by saying that the condo had just been sold? Did he have something to do with this?
Mailers like these cost a nice chunk of change— to produce and mail. Who financed them? Even though there are laws on the books requiring such expenditures to be disclosed, we'll of course never know, because whoever sent them is sure to ignore the laws.
Then there's Robert Woodson, who needed four days to come up with "an address." The one on his voter record and nominating petitions was long-vacant. Trying to get this answer out of Woodson involved me in the most bizarre conversations I've ever had in my life. Refusing to answer my question about where he lives, he calls a press conference to announce his address and complain that The News-Review attacked his "patriotism" for asking him where he lived! At the press conference he says he lived at the vacant Aquebogue address until July. So we go to the Board of Elections to look at the nominating petitions he filed, and find that he's listed — hand written — the same address on his petitions all through the month of August! So the man signed the legal equivalent of an affidavit, lying about his residence.
I've had several people call me to tell me that Woodson has actually been living in Coram for years. I even have an address in Coram.
The Riverhead Conservative & Republican parties have political motives to want Woodson on the ballot. I guess their reasoning was he would have been likely to draw votes from a traditional Democratic base, the African American community. But how could the Conservatives stand with this candidate after it's pretty clear he doesn't live in town? And, by his own admisson, he filed false statements on his nominating petitions?
I'm disturbed that a reporter for another local paper was so willing to accept Woodson's allegation that he rented a room in the Aquebogue house from "a former owner" who, he said, was the owner until July. Real estate records are public documents. The person named as an "owner" by Woodson never held title to that house. The current owner, a corporation whose principal I located and interviewed last week, has owned the house since Sept. 2004. He never heard of Woodson. The prior owner lived in the house for several months after she sold it last fall, and she too said Robert Woodson never lived there. The house has been vacant since she moved out, the current owner said. How could you print a report stating that the house was owned by someone without checking into it? That's not responsible journalism.
Given what we've seen so far, it's safe to say the rest of this campaign is going to be nothing if not interesting.
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