The Henderson-Hepner wedding announcement came in, like most do, without explanation or fanfare: a written submission, reciting the basic information about the ceremony and a brief bio on the happy couple, accompanied by a photo.
Occasionally we get a wedding announcement that doesn't follow this usual pattern. They're submitted with great fanfare, most often by the mother of the bride, whose mental and emotional state can best be described as hysterical, for whom the announcement of this important milestone in her child's life is a source of anxiety as large as the event itself. And, of course, there's the occasional "bridezilla," who hasn't downshifted in spite of that marvelous honeymoon on a tropical island that really should have dissolved all the stress caused by getting married. Handling those announcements — more accurately, the people who submit them — causes much angst around our newsroom.
But the Henderson-Hepner announcement wasn't like that at all. It was a simple, cut-and-dried wedding announcement, complete with smiling photo. Yet it caused a little stir around our office here, and the associate editor sought my permission to print it.
For the first time in its nearly 150-year history, The Suffolk Times was being asked to print a same-sex wedding announcement.
Charmaine Henderson and Paula Hepner, part-time residents of Southold, were married last month in Toronto, Canada, where same-sex marriages have been legal since June 10, 2003.
I authorized publishing the announcement, and it appeared in last week's edition of this newspaper, making the Sept. 14, 2006, edition one for the history books.
Of course I knew — we all did — that there would be some negative reaction among some of our readers. And there has been, although thus far it's taken the form of one call from an extremely agitated woman who left a voice mail message for the editor castigating us for publishing such a thing. Among other things, she said that this couple's union wasn't really a wedding, because a marriage can only be entered into between a man and a woman. And she chastised us for exposing the youth of the North Fork to such sordid content. ("Don't you know children will be reading this newspaper?")
While so far we've heard from just one reader about this — and her reaction was mild compared to the angry man who came in here last week and literally threw a copy of The Suffolk Times at our five-foot-two-inch pregnant receptionist because he was mad about the anti-war column I'd written the week before — I think this issue is important enough to address here. I'm hopeful we might engage the community in an intelligent dialogue about it, on these pages and on my blog.
The Suffolk Times will print announcements of weddings and civil unions between same-sex couples.
Among the most important functions of a community newspaper is chronicling the milestones in the lives of people who live in the community the newspaper serves. On the pages of your community newspaper, you find detailed information about the lives of people who live here that you will find nowhere else: births, deaths, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, scholastic achievements. A good community newspaper reflects the demographic composition of its community. The Suffolk Times is among the best of the community newspapers in the state of New York and one of the reasons for that is our dedication to the mission of community journalism; the role of chronicler is central to that mission.
Sometimes we fall short, like failing to get a photographer to the Cutchogue Fire Department's 50th annual chicken barbecue. And we get our comeuppance when we make our missteps, by outraged readers like Denise Lademann who wrote in last week to complain that The Suffolk Times didn't cover the fire department barbecue. They are insulted by the apparent snub. (Ms. Lademann, it was not intentional, and I am sincerely sorry that we messed up.) They are passionate in their outrage, and that's good. Because that means The Suffolk Times is their paper. They expect us to be there alongside them, and they should. It's what we do and have been doing for 149 years.
There's certainly room for improvement in how we do what we do, especially when it comes to covering minority communities on the North Fork. But we never intentionally exclude anyone from coverage because they're in the minority. Among those minority communities is the lesbian and gay community that has lived and thrived here for decades. They are our friends, our neighbors, our family, our coworkers. They are our readers. The pages of this newspaper should — and will — reflect their presence, and chronicle the milestones of their lives, including ceremonies celebrating their love and commitment to their life partners — whether or not the state of New York recognizes their right to marry.
As for children reading our newspaper, that's a good thing. Reading a newspaper promotes literacy, improves academic performance and increases participation in community and civic affairs in adulthood. We're confident that a lesbian wedding announcement in The Suffolk Times won't harm the youth of our town. Other media are full of graphic and disturbing images, particularly the potent images of death and destruction in the Middle East that are printed in the daily press and beamed into our living rooms via satellite every day. I've seen how those images have affected my own daughters. As a mother, I find it much more difficult to explain murder and mayhem by religious fundamentalists in the name of God, or torture of prisoners by the United States military, than the love for one another of two people of the same sex.
To Ms. Henderson and Judge Hepner, congratulations on your marriage. Forgive me for making the announcement of your vows the topic of this column. I don't know if you realized you were blazing a new trail at The Suffolk Times with your wedding announcement, but thank you for your courage. May yours be a lifetime of love, peace and happiness together.
Copyright 2006 Times/Review Newspapers
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Five years of terror & lies
Sept. 11. Where were you? What were you doing that morning?
There probably aren’t too many Americans who don’t know. Sept. 11 is the Nov. 22 of a new generation. (And there are probably too many young Americans who don’t know what that means.)
I was sitting at my open kitchen window, sipping a mug of hot coffee, looking up at a cloudless cobalt sky, feeling peaceful and content. I remember inhaling the sweet morning air deeply, relishing it, feeling relaxed and being slightly annoyed by the ringing telephone that jarred me out of my reverie shortly before 9 a.m.
Much of that Tuesday is, quite honestly, a blurry memory, haunting images jumbled in my mind. But the emotion comes back clearly, as clear as the blue sky that morning: in a word, fear. All hell was breaking loose. Thousands of people surely had perished. Nobody seemed to know what was really going on. Who wasn’t terrified that day? That was, after all, the objective of the people who attacked us and they achieved it. They robbed our sense of security.
Sept. 11 is a turning point in our nation’s history. It is a pivotal date not only for what happened that day but for how our response to the events of that day shaped America’s — and the world’s — future.
Our response included heroism: police officers and firefighters rushed into the burning buildings immediately following the attack; volunteers from outlying nearby areas, such as ours, rushing to the scene to help with the grim recovery effort, remaining there for weeks on end; men and women in the military, and those who signed up in answer to what happened that day, shipping off to Afghanistan, and later, to Iraq, to fight the enemy that brought terror to American soil. The way Americans, New Yorkers in particular, came together after the attacks — to search for survivors, recover remains, mourn our dead, comfort the grieving, clear the rubble, pick ourselves up and move on — inspired awe and respect throughout the world.
But our response also included deceit and manipulation, which, from the vantage point of five years down the road, we can now see with clarity, if we are willing to look. We dishonor the memory of those who perished in the attacks and those killed fighting in the war that followed, if we refuse to see it for what it is and speak out.
Our government lied to us.
When the federal EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman reassured us that the air near Ground Zero was safe to breathe, she was not mistaken. She was lying.
When the president told us that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by people linked to Saddam Hussein, he was lying. When he told us that Hussein was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, he was lying.
When the Bush administration, just a month and a half after the attacks, pushed the so-called Patriot Act through a panic-stricken Congress, it was manipulating us, capitalizing on our fear to wrought fundamental change in our 225-year-old democracy. In the name of “homeland security” and “patriotism,” we have sacrificed many of the basic rights that made the United States of America a free nation. The Soviets would be proud of what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft have accomplished: warrantless wiretaps, searches and seizures, supported by no more than the mere suspicion of relevance to a terrorist investigation; the imposition of gag orders that criminalise revealing that a search has occurred; the right to detain a suspect indefinitely without even a hearing of the charges against him. That’s just a sampling of the wounds inflicted on American democracy by the current government as America lay injured, grieving and terrified in the weeks following the attacks.
And then there’s the war waged not to bring to justice the “evildoers” who attacked us, as the president told us, but for some other reason: a personal vendetta against the man who plotted the assassination of the first President Bush, perhaps, or to secure a strategic presence in an oil-rich region, which just happened to benefit, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the financial interests of key decision-makers in our government.
Whatever the real motives for the decision to invade Iraq, one thing is clear: Saddam Hussein, who sits in a jail cell today, was not responsible for or connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, nor was he manufacturing weapons of mass destruction to use against us in future acts of terror. Those were lies mouthed by the president to rally the support of — to manipulate — a frightened nation. The man who is responsible for those attacks remains free and still directs a global terror network organized specifically to destroy America. Americans, meanwhile, continue to die in a war that is woefully lacking in political or moral justification. And our government says there is no way out.
And the manipulation continues, as evidenced by the president’s recent rhetoric shamelessly invoking the specter of terrorism to rally support for the GOP in November’s congressional elections.
Five years after Sept. 11, I continue to feel terror and outrage — not only about the attacks but also about what the United States government has done to the world, to its own people and to our future in the wake of the attacks.
I also feel shame. When the president lied, I believed him. I wanted desperately to believe him, to believe that America had in no way provoked what had happened, when I knew full well that failed American foreign policy had set the disaster in motion decades before and continued to fuel the anger and hatred of terrorists like bin Laden. Our failed policy continues to fan the flames — the invasion and occupation of Iraq has done more for the resolve of Islamic fundamentalists than even the “victory” of Sept. 11.
Surely we haven’t seen the last of terror on our shores. But are we willing to see the blood on our own hands for what happened on Sept. 11, what’s happened in years since and for the horrors yet to come? Maybe it’s still too soon. But by the time we gain clarity and perspective, it may be too late.
There probably aren’t too many Americans who don’t know. Sept. 11 is the Nov. 22 of a new generation. (And there are probably too many young Americans who don’t know what that means.)
I was sitting at my open kitchen window, sipping a mug of hot coffee, looking up at a cloudless cobalt sky, feeling peaceful and content. I remember inhaling the sweet morning air deeply, relishing it, feeling relaxed and being slightly annoyed by the ringing telephone that jarred me out of my reverie shortly before 9 a.m.
Much of that Tuesday is, quite honestly, a blurry memory, haunting images jumbled in my mind. But the emotion comes back clearly, as clear as the blue sky that morning: in a word, fear. All hell was breaking loose. Thousands of people surely had perished. Nobody seemed to know what was really going on. Who wasn’t terrified that day? That was, after all, the objective of the people who attacked us and they achieved it. They robbed our sense of security.
Sept. 11 is a turning point in our nation’s history. It is a pivotal date not only for what happened that day but for how our response to the events of that day shaped America’s — and the world’s — future.
Our response included heroism: police officers and firefighters rushed into the burning buildings immediately following the attack; volunteers from outlying nearby areas, such as ours, rushing to the scene to help with the grim recovery effort, remaining there for weeks on end; men and women in the military, and those who signed up in answer to what happened that day, shipping off to Afghanistan, and later, to Iraq, to fight the enemy that brought terror to American soil. The way Americans, New Yorkers in particular, came together after the attacks — to search for survivors, recover remains, mourn our dead, comfort the grieving, clear the rubble, pick ourselves up and move on — inspired awe and respect throughout the world.
But our response also included deceit and manipulation, which, from the vantage point of five years down the road, we can now see with clarity, if we are willing to look. We dishonor the memory of those who perished in the attacks and those killed fighting in the war that followed, if we refuse to see it for what it is and speak out.
Our government lied to us.
When the federal EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman reassured us that the air near Ground Zero was safe to breathe, she was not mistaken. She was lying.
When the president told us that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by people linked to Saddam Hussein, he was lying. When he told us that Hussein was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, he was lying.
When the Bush administration, just a month and a half after the attacks, pushed the so-called Patriot Act through a panic-stricken Congress, it was manipulating us, capitalizing on our fear to wrought fundamental change in our 225-year-old democracy. In the name of “homeland security” and “patriotism,” we have sacrificed many of the basic rights that made the United States of America a free nation. The Soviets would be proud of what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft have accomplished: warrantless wiretaps, searches and seizures, supported by no more than the mere suspicion of relevance to a terrorist investigation; the imposition of gag orders that criminalise revealing that a search has occurred; the right to detain a suspect indefinitely without even a hearing of the charges against him. That’s just a sampling of the wounds inflicted on American democracy by the current government as America lay injured, grieving and terrified in the weeks following the attacks.
And then there’s the war waged not to bring to justice the “evildoers” who attacked us, as the president told us, but for some other reason: a personal vendetta against the man who plotted the assassination of the first President Bush, perhaps, or to secure a strategic presence in an oil-rich region, which just happened to benefit, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the financial interests of key decision-makers in our government.
Whatever the real motives for the decision to invade Iraq, one thing is clear: Saddam Hussein, who sits in a jail cell today, was not responsible for or connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, nor was he manufacturing weapons of mass destruction to use against us in future acts of terror. Those were lies mouthed by the president to rally the support of — to manipulate — a frightened nation. The man who is responsible for those attacks remains free and still directs a global terror network organized specifically to destroy America. Americans, meanwhile, continue to die in a war that is woefully lacking in political or moral justification. And our government says there is no way out.
And the manipulation continues, as evidenced by the president’s recent rhetoric shamelessly invoking the specter of terrorism to rally support for the GOP in November’s congressional elections.
Five years after Sept. 11, I continue to feel terror and outrage — not only about the attacks but also about what the United States government has done to the world, to its own people and to our future in the wake of the attacks.
I also feel shame. When the president lied, I believed him. I wanted desperately to believe him, to believe that America had in no way provoked what had happened, when I knew full well that failed American foreign policy had set the disaster in motion decades before and continued to fuel the anger and hatred of terrorists like bin Laden. Our failed policy continues to fan the flames — the invasion and occupation of Iraq has done more for the resolve of Islamic fundamentalists than even the “victory” of Sept. 11.
Surely we haven’t seen the last of terror on our shores. But are we willing to see the blood on our own hands for what happened on Sept. 11, what’s happened in years since and for the horrors yet to come? Maybe it’s still too soon. But by the time we gain clarity and perspective, it may be too late.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The woman in the mirror
I did something two weeks ago I'd never done before and could never imagine myself doing — ever.
I joined a gym.
It was my husband's idea. He convinced me to check it out, just go have a look-see. No obligation. I was reluctant.
And scared. Gyms, I figured, were for muscle-heads and fit chicks with tight glutes sporting Spandex shorts and perfect tans. Just imagining the kind of people I'd be surrounded with at a gym intimidated me. Going there wearing shorts — I never wear shorts in public places — scared the daylights out of me. And the mirrors. There'd be mirrors everywhere — no escaping the sight of flabby old me huffing and puffing on a treadmill.
Nevertheless, I went with him to check it out. Holding his hand tight as we approached the entrance, I told him if we joined, he had to promise me he'd go there with me faithfully.
"I'd never, ever come here by myself," I warned.
Yet there I was the very next morning, sans spouse, using the elliptical machine, my new best friend.
What — me? Intimidated?
Sure, there are some serious bodybuilders at the gym, grunting their way through workouts, bench-pressing who-knows-how-much weight. And there are also some trim, taut, Spandex-clad lovelies working out on the equipment.
But most of the people there are a lot like me — middle-aged, overweight and eager to be reasonably physically fit before — well, before it's too late.
I imagine a mantra being chanted under the collective breath of the 40- and 50- and 60-somethings working out on the cardio machines: "I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
Turn the clock back 20 years, and I might have had delusions about circuit-training myself into one of those Spandex-clad fit chicks. I might have been thinking about attaining some definition in my shoulders, triceps and biceps, about firming those buns. I might have been hoping I could avoid looking — gulp — 30.
The passage of time changes your perspective. As I'm staring down 50, I'm a whole lot less concerned about how I look than about how I feel. Having shed 40 pounds since starting the South Beach Diet in January, I feel great. I was reminded just how great this weekend, as I lugged a 40-pound bag of dog food into the house. I could feel my knees laboring under its weight, and the familiarity of that sensation reminded me that a year ago I'd been carrying around that much weight in body fat, stressing my joints and muscles with every step I took. No wonder I ached so much! (And felt so old.)
At the gym, there are far more people in my camp than the fit and trim "beautiful people" whose image nearly intimidated me out of setting foot in the joint. At the same time, I've had a wonderful revelation: The vast majority of people who look like that are young enough to be my children. No need to compare my flabby abs to their firm ones. There's no bikini in my future. And the good-looking young hunks intently working out over there? This silver-haired woman working her thighs on the hip adductor machine is invisible. Growing older can be so liberating.
On the flip side, mornings at the gym can be quite the social encounter for people of a certain age. It seems like the whole town is there. I've seen people I hadn't seen in years. There are pleasant little chats between sets of reps. (I'm getting the lingo down.) Discussion of possible golf dates. (Where did I put those clubs?) And a reminder that it's nice to talk with people outside the context of an interview. (Note to self: You work too much.)
And there's also inspiration everywhere you look. It takes the form of the physically fit young men and women, whose sculpted forms are truly things of beauty. But it also takes the form of people working out there who are — easily — old enough to be my parents, and then some. It's a joy to watch them and a real boost to my own drive to stick with the regimen. That's what I aspire to now instead of Spandex shorts and halter tops: being able to work out like that when I'm 70. A mere 20 years from now. (How did that happen?)
I've also found inspiration in a place I never would have imagined: the woman in the mirror. I usually avoid mirrors, but at the gym, there is no avoiding mirrors, unless you work out with your eyes closed. Sitting two feet away from a wall covered in mirror, there's no avoiding me. I've spent more time looking at myself in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. And while I'm no fit chick — not even close — I don't look quite as bad as I'd imagined I'd look working my little-used muscles on the gym equipment.
But this isn't about looks, I remind the woman in the mirror, who wonders silently (I can read her mind) how much younger she would look if she let the hairdresser have her way with the hair dye. The woman in the mirror smiles knowingly at me. You're little secret's safe with me, she winks.
I joined a gym.
It was my husband's idea. He convinced me to check it out, just go have a look-see. No obligation. I was reluctant.
And scared. Gyms, I figured, were for muscle-heads and fit chicks with tight glutes sporting Spandex shorts and perfect tans. Just imagining the kind of people I'd be surrounded with at a gym intimidated me. Going there wearing shorts — I never wear shorts in public places — scared the daylights out of me. And the mirrors. There'd be mirrors everywhere — no escaping the sight of flabby old me huffing and puffing on a treadmill.
Nevertheless, I went with him to check it out. Holding his hand tight as we approached the entrance, I told him if we joined, he had to promise me he'd go there with me faithfully.
"I'd never, ever come here by myself," I warned.
Yet there I was the very next morning, sans spouse, using the elliptical machine, my new best friend.
What — me? Intimidated?
Sure, there are some serious bodybuilders at the gym, grunting their way through workouts, bench-pressing who-knows-how-much weight. And there are also some trim, taut, Spandex-clad lovelies working out on the equipment.
But most of the people there are a lot like me — middle-aged, overweight and eager to be reasonably physically fit before — well, before it's too late.
I imagine a mantra being chanted under the collective breath of the 40- and 50- and 60-somethings working out on the cardio machines: "I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
Turn the clock back 20 years, and I might have had delusions about circuit-training myself into one of those Spandex-clad fit chicks. I might have been thinking about attaining some definition in my shoulders, triceps and biceps, about firming those buns. I might have been hoping I could avoid looking — gulp — 30.
The passage of time changes your perspective. As I'm staring down 50, I'm a whole lot less concerned about how I look than about how I feel. Having shed 40 pounds since starting the South Beach Diet in January, I feel great. I was reminded just how great this weekend, as I lugged a 40-pound bag of dog food into the house. I could feel my knees laboring under its weight, and the familiarity of that sensation reminded me that a year ago I'd been carrying around that much weight in body fat, stressing my joints and muscles with every step I took. No wonder I ached so much! (And felt so old.)
At the gym, there are far more people in my camp than the fit and trim "beautiful people" whose image nearly intimidated me out of setting foot in the joint. At the same time, I've had a wonderful revelation: The vast majority of people who look like that are young enough to be my children. No need to compare my flabby abs to their firm ones. There's no bikini in my future. And the good-looking young hunks intently working out over there? This silver-haired woman working her thighs on the hip adductor machine is invisible. Growing older can be so liberating.
On the flip side, mornings at the gym can be quite the social encounter for people of a certain age. It seems like the whole town is there. I've seen people I hadn't seen in years. There are pleasant little chats between sets of reps. (I'm getting the lingo down.) Discussion of possible golf dates. (Where did I put those clubs?) And a reminder that it's nice to talk with people outside the context of an interview. (Note to self: You work too much.)
And there's also inspiration everywhere you look. It takes the form of the physically fit young men and women, whose sculpted forms are truly things of beauty. But it also takes the form of people working out there who are — easily — old enough to be my parents, and then some. It's a joy to watch them and a real boost to my own drive to stick with the regimen. That's what I aspire to now instead of Spandex shorts and halter tops: being able to work out like that when I'm 70. A mere 20 years from now. (How did that happen?)
I've also found inspiration in a place I never would have imagined: the woman in the mirror. I usually avoid mirrors, but at the gym, there is no avoiding mirrors, unless you work out with your eyes closed. Sitting two feet away from a wall covered in mirror, there's no avoiding me. I've spent more time looking at myself in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. And while I'm no fit chick — not even close — I don't look quite as bad as I'd imagined I'd look working my little-used muscles on the gym equipment.
But this isn't about looks, I remind the woman in the mirror, who wonders silently (I can read her mind) how much younger she would look if she let the hairdresser have her way with the hair dye. The woman in the mirror smiles knowingly at me. You're little secret's safe with me, she winks.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
So what would Jesus do?
Eva Piccozzi’s story about homelessness in Riverhead (on page 1 of the 8/10 edition of The News-Review) brought back memories of my own brush with homelessness.
A few years ago, there was an old Polish woman living on the streets in Riverhead. People took notice of her. She didn’t look like a “typical” homeless person, I suppose. And for one reason or another, people kept calling me to tell me about her. Even the pastor of First Congregational Church, which opens its doors for a daily soup kitchen to feed the hungry, called me to ask what “we” could do about this woman. We? I thought. You’re the pastor. I’m just a newspaper editor. Of course I didn’t say that to Pastor Wally. But I was confounded. What’s this got to do with me?
Nothing. And that’s exactly what I did.
Then one cold December day, a call came in from a guy who told our receptionist he had “a huge news story.” I got on the line.
“There’s an old Polish lady living on the streets downtown,” he said excitedly.
Huge news, I groaned to myself. Here we go again. But there was more.
Figuring someone at the Polish Catholic church in Riverhead could help, at least by communicating with the woman in her native tongue, this fellow (whom I later came to know as Stevie) had knocked on the rectory door that afternoon. His “huge news” was what had transpired as he stood on the rectory steps.
It was unusually cold for December, and the forecast called for temperatures below zero that night — and for the next several nights. Stevie was frantic that the old Polish woman would freeze to death in the alley of the Suffolk Theatre, where she spent a lot of her time huddled in the stairwell.
Stevie called to tell me that the pastor of the church had refused to help, and refused in a rather remarkable manner. Stevie said he begged the pastor for help — food, shelter, just for the night. No. He asked the pastor if someone who spoke Polish could speak with this woman, to talk to her about the coming deep freeze, convince her to go to an emergency shelter. No. But Stevie was persistent. Finally, he reported, the exasperated pastor said to him, “Look, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, what would Jesus do?” Stevie said he asked the pastor. The response was the “huge news” that prompted his call to me.
“Don’t give me any of that Jesus stuff,” the pastor replied, and slammed the door in his face. (I later called the pastor to ask about this interchange, but he didn’t take my call or call me back.)
Stevie was aghast. But more than anything, he was desperate to help this woman. “Can you do something?” he implored. She was at EastEnders Coffee House right now, he told me, having a cup of hot coffee.
I agreed to go meet her, though I wasn’t sure why. I speak no Polish. I had no contacts at any social services agency. What could I do? But Stevie’s passion, the desperation in his voice, the story he told me — what would Jesus do? I wasn’t comfortable pondering that question either. I knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
Outside the coffee shop, I ran into a young woman who used to help at the soup kitchen, where I also volunteered for a while. I told her I was there to meet a homeless Polish woman.
“That’s my mother,” was her unexpected reply.
I was stunned. I’d known this young woman came from some sort of troubled home. She’d been a daily visitor at the soup kitchen, there for a hot meal — but she always helped serve and clean up. And she always brought a plate of food home for her “sick mother,” who never showed up herself.
I stood in the cold air of Flower Alley, looked up at the steel gray sky and said aloud, “All right, I get it. I get it!”
And that’s how it came to pass that we had a homeless woman living with us for the winter of 2002.
It was an experience I’ll never forget.
Jenny wasn’t actually “old.” She just looked that way. Living on the street can do that to you. I drove her around to collect some of her belongings. She had some things stashed in an abandoned car on property just south of the river — she slept in the car on really cold nights. It was the warmest place she could find, in spite of its broken windows. She had a few plastic garbage bags of clothes. I convinced her to leave the tattered blankets behind. I was afraid of fleas and lice and God-knows-what coming into my house.
Over the course of the next few months, we learned a lot about Jenny and some lessons about homelessness. Like many of the homeless, Jenny was suffering from mental illness. It’s hard to tell which came first, the mental illness or the homelessness. In some ways, she was very bright, shrewd even. She wanted to work, but couldn’t find a job without a permanent address. She’d worked as a chambermaid at a local motel, and also at a couple of local nurseries. She wanted to clean our house in exchange for room and board. She did, with mixed results.
She spoke a unique mixture of English and Polish; some words she made up, I think. We learned her language enough to communicate and cohabitate. We also learned a lot about Jenny from her daughter, who was living in Patchogue at a group home for the developmentally disabled. She faithfully took the bus to Riverhead every day to visit her mother, and often spent the weekends at our house, too.
They’d lived in an apartment in a house downtown. The daughter attended Riverhead public schools, but dropped out of high school at 16 because other kids made fun of her. After Jenny lost her job at the hotel, and couldn’t find or keep another job, they were eventually evicted from the apartment. The daughter, a U.S. citizen by birth, got placed at a shelter, then at a group home. Jenny, a Polish immigrant whose visa had expired long ago (and whose Polish passport and birth certificate were long lost) had no options besides the street. She lived in Grangebel Park, in the abandoned car near McDonald’s, in the alley next to the theater. She ate at noon every weekday at the church soup kitchen. And enjoyed supper there three nights a week, as well. Weekends, she was on her own. She panhandled to get money to buy cigarettes. She attended AA meetings so she could get a cup of coffee and cookies. The people at the coffee shop gave her coffee and food sometimes. She sat at a table in the back, next to the bathroom, which she was grateful to use. Her presence there became a nuisance, though. Among other things, she smelled bad.
It wasn’t easy to convince Jenny to shower on a regular basis. “Me no smell,” she insisted. She sprayed herself with room deodorizer.
She was suffering with a bad toothache that winter. She was missing a number of teeth. She’d pulled them out herself, she said.
She liked to sit on the arm of our sofa near the woodstove and watch the fire. She talked about Poland, her mother, and the two children she said she left behind there a quarter-century ago. She claimed to come from a well-to-do family and said she wanted to return to Poland, with her American daughter — who wanted no part of it. She loved Tchaikovsky and would play my CDs at maximum volume, filling the house with music, as she stood, mesmerized, directly in front of the stereo. One day I came home and found her like that, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was unable or unwilling to tell me what she was thinking about.
She distrusted and disliked the other homeless people. Most of them were drug addicts and alcoholics, she said, and she had nothing but disdain for them. She saw herself as a victim of circumstance but saw them as a victim of their own stupid behavior. She hated living on “the schtreet-a.”
She was an interesting house guest. But she also drove us crazy. There was the showering thing. And the smoking. She would sneak cigarettes in the basement room where she slept, then adamantly deny it — though the smell was unmistakable. “Me no schmo-kee,” she’d say over and over again.
I suppose any house guest drives you crazy after a couple of months, much less one used to living in a busted-up car on the Peconic River. All in all, she wasn’t too bad to have around, though to this day, my kids still roll their eyes and shake their heads at the mention of her name.
We turned her out on the first day of spring, after a futile effort, aided by Sr. Margaret Smyth, to obtain a copy of her birth certificate through the Polish embassy. Sr. Margaret paid for a room for Jenny at a motel on West Main Street — a dark, tiny cell of a room. I drove her there, with her plastic bags, along with some basics like a frying pan, coffeepot, dishes, etc. Jenny was to find a job and pay her own way after a couple of weeks. She stood in the doorway of the room and smiled and waved goodbye. For reasons I didn’t quite understand, I found myself crying as I drove away.
Jenny never found work, Sr. Margaret eventually stopped paying the weekly rent, and Jenny was back on the street.
We might have saved her from freezing to death that winter but there were more winters ahead. What would happen to her? We didn’t really make a lasting difference in her life. The cycle continued. We see her around from time to time, on the “schtreet-a.”
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, other than for every homeless person on the street there is a story. I can’t say I learned all of Jenny’s story. Much remains a mystery. But by getting to know her that way, I’ll never view homelessness or homeless people the same way again.
A few years ago, there was an old Polish woman living on the streets in Riverhead. People took notice of her. She didn’t look like a “typical” homeless person, I suppose. And for one reason or another, people kept calling me to tell me about her. Even the pastor of First Congregational Church, which opens its doors for a daily soup kitchen to feed the hungry, called me to ask what “we” could do about this woman. We? I thought. You’re the pastor. I’m just a newspaper editor. Of course I didn’t say that to Pastor Wally. But I was confounded. What’s this got to do with me?
Nothing. And that’s exactly what I did.
Then one cold December day, a call came in from a guy who told our receptionist he had “a huge news story.” I got on the line.
“There’s an old Polish lady living on the streets downtown,” he said excitedly.
Huge news, I groaned to myself. Here we go again. But there was more.
Figuring someone at the Polish Catholic church in Riverhead could help, at least by communicating with the woman in her native tongue, this fellow (whom I later came to know as Stevie) had knocked on the rectory door that afternoon. His “huge news” was what had transpired as he stood on the rectory steps.
It was unusually cold for December, and the forecast called for temperatures below zero that night — and for the next several nights. Stevie was frantic that the old Polish woman would freeze to death in the alley of the Suffolk Theatre, where she spent a lot of her time huddled in the stairwell.
Stevie called to tell me that the pastor of the church had refused to help, and refused in a rather remarkable manner. Stevie said he begged the pastor for help — food, shelter, just for the night. No. He asked the pastor if someone who spoke Polish could speak with this woman, to talk to her about the coming deep freeze, convince her to go to an emergency shelter. No. But Stevie was persistent. Finally, he reported, the exasperated pastor said to him, “Look, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, what would Jesus do?” Stevie said he asked the pastor. The response was the “huge news” that prompted his call to me.
“Don’t give me any of that Jesus stuff,” the pastor replied, and slammed the door in his face. (I later called the pastor to ask about this interchange, but he didn’t take my call or call me back.)
Stevie was aghast. But more than anything, he was desperate to help this woman. “Can you do something?” he implored. She was at EastEnders Coffee House right now, he told me, having a cup of hot coffee.
I agreed to go meet her, though I wasn’t sure why. I speak no Polish. I had no contacts at any social services agency. What could I do? But Stevie’s passion, the desperation in his voice, the story he told me — what would Jesus do? I wasn’t comfortable pondering that question either. I knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
Outside the coffee shop, I ran into a young woman who used to help at the soup kitchen, where I also volunteered for a while. I told her I was there to meet a homeless Polish woman.
“That’s my mother,” was her unexpected reply.
I was stunned. I’d known this young woman came from some sort of troubled home. She’d been a daily visitor at the soup kitchen, there for a hot meal — but she always helped serve and clean up. And she always brought a plate of food home for her “sick mother,” who never showed up herself.
I stood in the cold air of Flower Alley, looked up at the steel gray sky and said aloud, “All right, I get it. I get it!”
And that’s how it came to pass that we had a homeless woman living with us for the winter of 2002.
It was an experience I’ll never forget.
Jenny wasn’t actually “old.” She just looked that way. Living on the street can do that to you. I drove her around to collect some of her belongings. She had some things stashed in an abandoned car on property just south of the river — she slept in the car on really cold nights. It was the warmest place she could find, in spite of its broken windows. She had a few plastic garbage bags of clothes. I convinced her to leave the tattered blankets behind. I was afraid of fleas and lice and God-knows-what coming into my house.
Over the course of the next few months, we learned a lot about Jenny and some lessons about homelessness. Like many of the homeless, Jenny was suffering from mental illness. It’s hard to tell which came first, the mental illness or the homelessness. In some ways, she was very bright, shrewd even. She wanted to work, but couldn’t find a job without a permanent address. She’d worked as a chambermaid at a local motel, and also at a couple of local nurseries. She wanted to clean our house in exchange for room and board. She did, with mixed results.
She spoke a unique mixture of English and Polish; some words she made up, I think. We learned her language enough to communicate and cohabitate. We also learned a lot about Jenny from her daughter, who was living in Patchogue at a group home for the developmentally disabled. She faithfully took the bus to Riverhead every day to visit her mother, and often spent the weekends at our house, too.
They’d lived in an apartment in a house downtown. The daughter attended Riverhead public schools, but dropped out of high school at 16 because other kids made fun of her. After Jenny lost her job at the hotel, and couldn’t find or keep another job, they were eventually evicted from the apartment. The daughter, a U.S. citizen by birth, got placed at a shelter, then at a group home. Jenny, a Polish immigrant whose visa had expired long ago (and whose Polish passport and birth certificate were long lost) had no options besides the street. She lived in Grangebel Park, in the abandoned car near McDonald’s, in the alley next to the theater. She ate at noon every weekday at the church soup kitchen. And enjoyed supper there three nights a week, as well. Weekends, she was on her own. She panhandled to get money to buy cigarettes. She attended AA meetings so she could get a cup of coffee and cookies. The people at the coffee shop gave her coffee and food sometimes. She sat at a table in the back, next to the bathroom, which she was grateful to use. Her presence there became a nuisance, though. Among other things, she smelled bad.
It wasn’t easy to convince Jenny to shower on a regular basis. “Me no smell,” she insisted. She sprayed herself with room deodorizer.
She was suffering with a bad toothache that winter. She was missing a number of teeth. She’d pulled them out herself, she said.
She liked to sit on the arm of our sofa near the woodstove and watch the fire. She talked about Poland, her mother, and the two children she said she left behind there a quarter-century ago. She claimed to come from a well-to-do family and said she wanted to return to Poland, with her American daughter — who wanted no part of it. She loved Tchaikovsky and would play my CDs at maximum volume, filling the house with music, as she stood, mesmerized, directly in front of the stereo. One day I came home and found her like that, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was unable or unwilling to tell me what she was thinking about.
She distrusted and disliked the other homeless people. Most of them were drug addicts and alcoholics, she said, and she had nothing but disdain for them. She saw herself as a victim of circumstance but saw them as a victim of their own stupid behavior. She hated living on “the schtreet-a.”
She was an interesting house guest. But she also drove us crazy. There was the showering thing. And the smoking. She would sneak cigarettes in the basement room where she slept, then adamantly deny it — though the smell was unmistakable. “Me no schmo-kee,” she’d say over and over again.
I suppose any house guest drives you crazy after a couple of months, much less one used to living in a busted-up car on the Peconic River. All in all, she wasn’t too bad to have around, though to this day, my kids still roll their eyes and shake their heads at the mention of her name.
We turned her out on the first day of spring, after a futile effort, aided by Sr. Margaret Smyth, to obtain a copy of her birth certificate through the Polish embassy. Sr. Margaret paid for a room for Jenny at a motel on West Main Street — a dark, tiny cell of a room. I drove her there, with her plastic bags, along with some basics like a frying pan, coffeepot, dishes, etc. Jenny was to find a job and pay her own way after a couple of weeks. She stood in the doorway of the room and smiled and waved goodbye. For reasons I didn’t quite understand, I found myself crying as I drove away.
Jenny never found work, Sr. Margaret eventually stopped paying the weekly rent, and Jenny was back on the street.
We might have saved her from freezing to death that winter but there were more winters ahead. What would happen to her? We didn’t really make a lasting difference in her life. The cycle continued. We see her around from time to time, on the “schtreet-a.”
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, other than for every homeless person on the street there is a story. I can’t say I learned all of Jenny’s story. Much remains a mystery. But by getting to know her that way, I’ll never view homelessness or homeless people the same way again.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Still a man's world
If women were in charge, the world would be a better place.
Now that I’ve got your attention, what do you think? True or false?
Would bombs be raining down on Lebanon right now, would the death toll in Iraq keep climbing, would the world seem poised to destroy itself this way, would children be starving to death, would everything be all about MONEY, MONEY, MONEY all the time … if women were calling the shots?
While the number of women in high places in government and commerce has steadily, albeit slowly, increased over the last 30 years, it is still a man’s world, being run by men playing by men’s rules, defined by male paradigms. Look at our testosterone-laden foreign policy, for example. Or the testosterone-laden foreign policy of any other nation. Or the testosterone-laden philosophy of jihad, for that matter. The guy who’s bigger, stronger, tougher, and able to beat up the other guy, or the guy who’s sneakier and more determined, or the guy who thinks he’s got God (most definitely a male god) on his side — wins.
Even with the occasional woman, like Condoleezza Rice, involved, it’s still a man’s world. To get along in it, certainly to get ahead in it, women like Condi have to play by men’s rules in order to succeed — some would say, become “like men.” Ironically, if they’re really good at it, they get called all sorts of names, many of which can’t be printed in this newspaper, as a result.
Do women make a difference? Can they make a difference?
That was the topic for a panel discussion hosted last Thursday night at Patti B’s in Mattituck (a woman-owned business) by a group called Progressive Women in Southold Politics.
Vivian Viloria-Fisher, deputy presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, the Rev. Lynda Clements, pastor (soon to be former pastor — she’s heading upstate to answer a call to a new ministry later this month) at Cutchogue Presbyterian Church, and yours truly fielded questions about our experiences as “women making a difference” in our communities. It was the first in a series of three such discussions being sponsored by PWSP, so women could “hear the stories of women who take on the issues that matter to all of us,” according to a flier put out by the group.
Personally, I was honored but astounded to be included on the panel. And I honestly felt like I was way out of my league. But I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and found myself inspired — and empowered — by the stories Ms. Viloria-Fisher and Ms. Clements had to tell. That’s the idea behind these sessions, according to PWSP organizer Leslie Weisman. Give women the opportunity to hear the stories of other women, women who are making a difference, to inspire and empower them to go out and do the same. Maybe we can change the world, one woman at a time.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher is a fantastic example of a woman successfully navigating the hazardous waters of a man’s world (county politics) who’s not following the male paradigm, playing by men’s rules, succeeding by being “just like one of the boys.” A retired schoolteacher and mother of five (yes, five) she views her role in government as a “ministry,” she told the women gathered at Patti B’s. She got involved in electoral politics as a way to better accomplish long-held goals of making a positive difference in people’s lives, and that’s what she’s been trying to do.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher is the very antithesis of a politician: down-to-earth, real, no ego, no bluster, no baloney. She spoke from her heart. She spoke about her feelings, without fear or embarrassment.
With women like that in charge, would the world be on a fast-track to hell? Doubtful. But women like Ms. Viloria-Fisher aren’t in charge, not even close to it. And I’m not certain they ever will be. The institutional framework of our society, and the world at large, is thoroughly male, designed to profit a male-dominated corporate culture. As a result, things like hunger, poverty and health care are lower priorities than missile defense systems, stealth bombers and law enforcement — as if more guns, more bombs and more cops and soldiers are the answers to everything.
I realize I’m not sounding terribly inspired or empowered at the moment, two adjectives I used to describe how I felt after last Thursday’s panel discussion. In fact, I am depressed. Things in the Middle East seem to be spiraling out of control, and the world scares me to death. The images of war and the devastation wrought by it bring me to tears daily. My heart breaks for its victims, especially the women and children, victims of circumstance, people without choice, power, or control over their own destinies, particularly in fundamentalist Islamic culture. I fear for my own children’s future.
Then I think of women like Lynda Clements, working for social justice mostly behind the scenes, and Vivian Viloria-Fisher, working for the same causes on the public stage of county politics, and outspoken women like Dee Alexander of Southold (NOW’s first executive director and a founder of what became known as “the women’s movement”), who are not afraid to stand up and demand change, who never tire of it, even after 40-plus years of working for change with mixed results. And the thousands of women like them. Maybe one day we will reach “critical mass” and turn the world on its head. Then there will be a paradigm shift, and the strength of a nation will no longer be defined by the quantity and deadliness of its weapons, but rather by the compassion and humanity of its government and the quality of life of its citizens — all of its citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, age or gender.
Ah, from my lips to God’s ears.
There’s an old saying that appeared on bumper stickers and T-shirts in the ’70s: “God is coming, and is she pissed!” Look out, fellas. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Now that I’ve got your attention, what do you think? True or false?
Would bombs be raining down on Lebanon right now, would the death toll in Iraq keep climbing, would the world seem poised to destroy itself this way, would children be starving to death, would everything be all about MONEY, MONEY, MONEY all the time … if women were calling the shots?
While the number of women in high places in government and commerce has steadily, albeit slowly, increased over the last 30 years, it is still a man’s world, being run by men playing by men’s rules, defined by male paradigms. Look at our testosterone-laden foreign policy, for example. Or the testosterone-laden foreign policy of any other nation. Or the testosterone-laden philosophy of jihad, for that matter. The guy who’s bigger, stronger, tougher, and able to beat up the other guy, or the guy who’s sneakier and more determined, or the guy who thinks he’s got God (most definitely a male god) on his side — wins.
Even with the occasional woman, like Condoleezza Rice, involved, it’s still a man’s world. To get along in it, certainly to get ahead in it, women like Condi have to play by men’s rules in order to succeed — some would say, become “like men.” Ironically, if they’re really good at it, they get called all sorts of names, many of which can’t be printed in this newspaper, as a result.
Do women make a difference? Can they make a difference?
That was the topic for a panel discussion hosted last Thursday night at Patti B’s in Mattituck (a woman-owned business) by a group called Progressive Women in Southold Politics.
Vivian Viloria-Fisher, deputy presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, the Rev. Lynda Clements, pastor (soon to be former pastor — she’s heading upstate to answer a call to a new ministry later this month) at Cutchogue Presbyterian Church, and yours truly fielded questions about our experiences as “women making a difference” in our communities. It was the first in a series of three such discussions being sponsored by PWSP, so women could “hear the stories of women who take on the issues that matter to all of us,” according to a flier put out by the group.
Personally, I was honored but astounded to be included on the panel. And I honestly felt like I was way out of my league. But I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and found myself inspired — and empowered — by the stories Ms. Viloria-Fisher and Ms. Clements had to tell. That’s the idea behind these sessions, according to PWSP organizer Leslie Weisman. Give women the opportunity to hear the stories of other women, women who are making a difference, to inspire and empower them to go out and do the same. Maybe we can change the world, one woman at a time.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher is a fantastic example of a woman successfully navigating the hazardous waters of a man’s world (county politics) who’s not following the male paradigm, playing by men’s rules, succeeding by being “just like one of the boys.” A retired schoolteacher and mother of five (yes, five) she views her role in government as a “ministry,” she told the women gathered at Patti B’s. She got involved in electoral politics as a way to better accomplish long-held goals of making a positive difference in people’s lives, and that’s what she’s been trying to do.
Ms. Viloria-Fisher is the very antithesis of a politician: down-to-earth, real, no ego, no bluster, no baloney. She spoke from her heart. She spoke about her feelings, without fear or embarrassment.
With women like that in charge, would the world be on a fast-track to hell? Doubtful. But women like Ms. Viloria-Fisher aren’t in charge, not even close to it. And I’m not certain they ever will be. The institutional framework of our society, and the world at large, is thoroughly male, designed to profit a male-dominated corporate culture. As a result, things like hunger, poverty and health care are lower priorities than missile defense systems, stealth bombers and law enforcement — as if more guns, more bombs and more cops and soldiers are the answers to everything.
I realize I’m not sounding terribly inspired or empowered at the moment, two adjectives I used to describe how I felt after last Thursday’s panel discussion. In fact, I am depressed. Things in the Middle East seem to be spiraling out of control, and the world scares me to death. The images of war and the devastation wrought by it bring me to tears daily. My heart breaks for its victims, especially the women and children, victims of circumstance, people without choice, power, or control over their own destinies, particularly in fundamentalist Islamic culture. I fear for my own children’s future.
Then I think of women like Lynda Clements, working for social justice mostly behind the scenes, and Vivian Viloria-Fisher, working for the same causes on the public stage of county politics, and outspoken women like Dee Alexander of Southold (NOW’s first executive director and a founder of what became known as “the women’s movement”), who are not afraid to stand up and demand change, who never tire of it, even after 40-plus years of working for change with mixed results. And the thousands of women like them. Maybe one day we will reach “critical mass” and turn the world on its head. Then there will be a paradigm shift, and the strength of a nation will no longer be defined by the quantity and deadliness of its weapons, but rather by the compassion and humanity of its government and the quality of life of its citizens — all of its citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, age or gender.
Ah, from my lips to God’s ears.
There’s an old saying that appeared on bumper stickers and T-shirts in the ’70s: “God is coming, and is she pissed!” Look out, fellas. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Up all night gambling
A driver fell asleep at the wheel, lost control of his car, flipped over an embankment on Route 25 and crashed into the Orient Village Cemetery last Thursday evening, wiping out about 20 monuments. (See story, page 1.) Fortunately no one was seriously injured, including, miraculously, the driver.
Almost before the dust had settled in the cemetery — no exaggeration — word spread that the driver, a young man from Sound Beach, had just gotten off the ferry, returning from a Connecticut casino, where he'd been up all night gambling the night before.
Fact or fiction? Officials wouldn't confirm for us, on the record, that the man said he'd been up gambling all night. In fact, Ethel Terry of Orient Fire Department, the EMT in charge at the scene, denied the man said such a thing. But two officials recounted that he said exactly that. They, however, asked not to be identified by name in the paper. They're not supposed to talk to the press about things people involved in accidents say to them, they said.
The driver of the car didn't want to talk to us, either. He didn't return several messages left on his answering machine.
Because we could confirm it only with sources willing to speak off the record, associate editor Eileen Duffy and I grappled with whether to report that the man was coming from the ferry and said he'd been up all night gambling the night before. I hate reporting based on anonymous sources, though sometimes I realize there's no choice. It's got to be corroborated in some way and I've got to be thoroughly convinced of the source's veracity before I'll go forward with it. I made that decision here.
The people involved in Southold Citizens for Safe Roads immediately saw this incident as a prime example of everything wrong with the Orient ferry, and staged a rally at the cemetery Saturday evening, with signs posing the grim question, "What if these [the headstones] had been children?" The cemetery is right across the road from the elementary school, after all, where soccer practice was just getting under way when the crash occurred. He could have just as easily veered off the road and into the school parking lot.
Should Cross Sound Ferry be held accountable for irresponsible behavior of its customers? I think not — at least no more than any other business.
But I do believe the ferry company should be held accountable for the impact of its operations on our local roads. And there has been an impact.
This much is clear: Cross Sound Ferry cannot be allowed to continue unfettered expansion at its Orient terminal. And that's exactly what will happen if the town doesn't step in and limit it. Why? The demand for ferry service is going to increase, quite dramatically in fact, because of what's going on just across the Sound.
Both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are in the process of major expansions that will add more than a couple thousand new hotel rooms. Mohegan Sun alone is planning a second, new 100,000-square-foot casino, with 2,000 slot machines, nearly doubling its operation and almost matching that of Foxwoods. In addition, Mohegan Sun is building a new 1,500-room hotel, a 10,000-seat arena, a 100,000-square-foot convention center and 900,000 square feet of retail space and restaurants.
A brand-new $1 billion casino is in the works just across the Connecticut border, in West Warwick, R.I., a partnership of the Narragansett Indians and Harrah's Entertainment.
Then there's the $1.6 billion entertainment center — including a 1.85 million-square-foot theme park, a 6,000-seat amphitheater and 4,200 hotel rooms — proposed for nearby Preston, Conn., by Utopia Studios, which says it expects to attract 10 million visitors per year.
The indoor auto racing track proposed for Plainfield, Conn., seems stalled, for now. The town changed its mind — and its zoning — and the developer filed suit two weeks ago. If the developer wins, the possibility of a NASCAR track will again be added to the mix.
Southeastern Connecticut's a happening place.
The existing casino operations have had traffic impacts there, and Connecticut officials are trying to deal with what's going to happen to their roadways — particularly the clogged I-95 — as a result of casino expansions, the new casino in Rhode Island, and the huge theme park/entertainment center. Connecticut state senator Bill Finch is quoted in a recent article in the Fairfield County Business Journal: "Whatever we do in Connecticut, it's going to have an impact on traffic if we don't have alternate means of transportation for all of these things. We're not going to grow with the current infrastructure we have."
Alternate means of transportation? The planners' buzzword is "intermodal." That includes trains, buses, and — yes — ferry service. That's why Cross Sound Ferry got a federal highway administration grant to improve its New London facilities.
State, county and local officials in Connecticut embrace all the development because of the economic benefits it brings. Connecticut officials are working to address casino traffic impacts "regionally." But their regional approach stops at the state line — unlike the traffic impacts, which are delivered to our doorstep by Cross Sound Ferry. Not only are they unmindful of traffic impacts on the other side of the Sound, they are increasingly looking at ferry transportation as a means of getting cars off their clogged interstate. And they're even getting assistance from the federal government to make that happen.
Who's looking out for the North Fork? Are traffic impacts here even being considered in the environmental impact statements and traffic studies being prepared in connection with these projects? Or is Southold Town on its own?
Almost before the dust had settled in the cemetery — no exaggeration — word spread that the driver, a young man from Sound Beach, had just gotten off the ferry, returning from a Connecticut casino, where he'd been up all night gambling the night before.
Fact or fiction? Officials wouldn't confirm for us, on the record, that the man said he'd been up gambling all night. In fact, Ethel Terry of Orient Fire Department, the EMT in charge at the scene, denied the man said such a thing. But two officials recounted that he said exactly that. They, however, asked not to be identified by name in the paper. They're not supposed to talk to the press about things people involved in accidents say to them, they said.
The driver of the car didn't want to talk to us, either. He didn't return several messages left on his answering machine.
Because we could confirm it only with sources willing to speak off the record, associate editor Eileen Duffy and I grappled with whether to report that the man was coming from the ferry and said he'd been up all night gambling the night before. I hate reporting based on anonymous sources, though sometimes I realize there's no choice. It's got to be corroborated in some way and I've got to be thoroughly convinced of the source's veracity before I'll go forward with it. I made that decision here.
The people involved in Southold Citizens for Safe Roads immediately saw this incident as a prime example of everything wrong with the Orient ferry, and staged a rally at the cemetery Saturday evening, with signs posing the grim question, "What if these [the headstones] had been children?" The cemetery is right across the road from the elementary school, after all, where soccer practice was just getting under way when the crash occurred. He could have just as easily veered off the road and into the school parking lot.
Should Cross Sound Ferry be held accountable for irresponsible behavior of its customers? I think not — at least no more than any other business.
But I do believe the ferry company should be held accountable for the impact of its operations on our local roads. And there has been an impact.
This much is clear: Cross Sound Ferry cannot be allowed to continue unfettered expansion at its Orient terminal. And that's exactly what will happen if the town doesn't step in and limit it. Why? The demand for ferry service is going to increase, quite dramatically in fact, because of what's going on just across the Sound.
Both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are in the process of major expansions that will add more than a couple thousand new hotel rooms. Mohegan Sun alone is planning a second, new 100,000-square-foot casino, with 2,000 slot machines, nearly doubling its operation and almost matching that of Foxwoods. In addition, Mohegan Sun is building a new 1,500-room hotel, a 10,000-seat arena, a 100,000-square-foot convention center and 900,000 square feet of retail space and restaurants.
A brand-new $1 billion casino is in the works just across the Connecticut border, in West Warwick, R.I., a partnership of the Narragansett Indians and Harrah's Entertainment.
Then there's the $1.6 billion entertainment center — including a 1.85 million-square-foot theme park, a 6,000-seat amphitheater and 4,200 hotel rooms — proposed for nearby Preston, Conn., by Utopia Studios, which says it expects to attract 10 million visitors per year.
The indoor auto racing track proposed for Plainfield, Conn., seems stalled, for now. The town changed its mind — and its zoning — and the developer filed suit two weeks ago. If the developer wins, the possibility of a NASCAR track will again be added to the mix.
Southeastern Connecticut's a happening place.
The existing casino operations have had traffic impacts there, and Connecticut officials are trying to deal with what's going to happen to their roadways — particularly the clogged I-95 — as a result of casino expansions, the new casino in Rhode Island, and the huge theme park/entertainment center. Connecticut state senator Bill Finch is quoted in a recent article in the Fairfield County Business Journal: "Whatever we do in Connecticut, it's going to have an impact on traffic if we don't have alternate means of transportation for all of these things. We're not going to grow with the current infrastructure we have."
Alternate means of transportation? The planners' buzzword is "intermodal." That includes trains, buses, and — yes — ferry service. That's why Cross Sound Ferry got a federal highway administration grant to improve its New London facilities.
State, county and local officials in Connecticut embrace all the development because of the economic benefits it brings. Connecticut officials are working to address casino traffic impacts "regionally." But their regional approach stops at the state line — unlike the traffic impacts, which are delivered to our doorstep by Cross Sound Ferry. Not only are they unmindful of traffic impacts on the other side of the Sound, they are increasingly looking at ferry transportation as a means of getting cars off their clogged interstate. And they're even getting assistance from the federal government to make that happen.
Who's looking out for the North Fork? Are traffic impacts here even being considered in the environmental impact statements and traffic studies being prepared in connection with these projects? Or is Southold Town on its own?
Escaping fat old lady syndrome
It isn't easy being fat. But it's almost just as hard losing weight — especially if you're a woman closing in on the half-century mark and you've got more pounds to lose than the number of years under your belt.
I don't remember being anything other than overweight, engaged in a lifelong struggle with the scale.
Two years ago, three different doctors told me to lose weight — but they were all very polite about it and not nearly forceful enough. My primary care provider, a nice young man in his early 30s, couldn't bring himself to tell me directly, even though his office scale — which I still believe to be calibrated incorrectly — said I weighed 231 pounds. He talked about how extra weight worsened my hiatal hernia. My knee problem? Well, my joints were struggling to support my body. Etc. I looked him in the eye and said, "So you mean I have fat old lady syndrome?" He winced. "Well, I guess so." "Why don't you just say so?" I laughed and left his office without even seriously considering doing something about it. So, what else is new, I thought. I'm fat. Always have been, always will be.
I wasn't always so fatalistic about it. In my teens, 20s and 30s, trying this or that diet was a way of life for me. I counted every calorie. I tried appetite suppressants. I tried liquid "meals." I joined weight loss programs. I did the low-fat thing. I did the low-carb thing. I'd lose some weight, then put it back on, plus some. I was on a weight-loss roller coaster. But no matter what I did, I could never manage to keep my weight under 150.
But I refused to allow my self-worth to be defined by the shape of the body staring back at me in the mirror. What self-respecting feminist would? I decided that my five-foot, seven-inch frame was meant to weigh 150 pounds, not 110 or 120. And I was going to be OK with that. Really. No matter what.
But I wasn't.
At some point, after having two babies in two years in my mid 30s, I more or less surrendered to obesity. The pregnancies left me almost 40 pounds heavier. Caring for two tots isn't conducive to exercise. And I found myself grazing on kid scraps all day long. An evening cocktail after the kids were down for the night packed more appeal for me. And since we'd wait till they went to bed to eat a peaceful supper, my husband and I wouldn't dine until 8:30 or 9 o'clock at night. And so it went.
I pretended to accept and love myself just the way I was. But I also refused to look. I avoided mirrors, cameras and shopping for clothes.
In January, on vacation in Florida, I didn't manage to avoid a camera while wearing a wet suit. We were swimming with dolphins, you see. And I looked like a whale. There was no escaping it.
It was like a smack across the face: Wake up! This isn't about vanity. At age 48, it's about health and longevity. "Fat old lady syndrome" would define how I'd live the rest of my life, and it would most likely even define how many years the rest of my life would have to it. Staring at the image of me in a wet suit, something snapped inside me. I marched downstairs, dusted off the scale and got on. And off. And on again. My doctor's scale was wrong, unless I'd lost 20 pounds without trying between May 2005 and January 2006 — yeah, right. But my own scale informed me that I weighed 211 pounds. Ouch.
It's been six months since the day I resolved to celebrate my 50th birthday (in November 2007) being more fit than I've been since childhood. I've lost 34 pounds since Jan. 14. On the recommendation of Andy Mitchell, Peconic Bay Medical Center CEO, I picked up a copy of "The South Beach Diet," and I am now a devotee of Dr. Arthur Agatston, the cardiologist who developed the diet to help his overweight heart patients. He explains in very understandable terms the science behind gaining — and losing — weight. He sheds light on the role of sugar in the American obesity epidemic — 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 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. And that's exactly what I've done.
I'm never going on another diet again. And I'm never going to weigh 200 pounds again. You've heard the saying, "It's not a diet — it's a lifestyle?" It's true. I've changed the way I eat and drink and live. It's hard to describe how much better — and younger — I feel. I've got 27 pounds to go before I reach my goal — ironically, that 150-pound mark that bothered me so much 25 years ago. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to stay there. If I need inspiration, I peek at that wet suit photo. That's all it takes. Well, that and a desire to live long enough to see — and play with — my grandchildren someday. And since my daughters may keep me waiting as long as I kept my mother waiting, I'll need to be a healthy septuagenarian. That's the plan.
I don't remember being anything other than overweight, engaged in a lifelong struggle with the scale.
Two years ago, three different doctors told me to lose weight — but they were all very polite about it and not nearly forceful enough. My primary care provider, a nice young man in his early 30s, couldn't bring himself to tell me directly, even though his office scale — which I still believe to be calibrated incorrectly — said I weighed 231 pounds. He talked about how extra weight worsened my hiatal hernia. My knee problem? Well, my joints were struggling to support my body. Etc. I looked him in the eye and said, "So you mean I have fat old lady syndrome?" He winced. "Well, I guess so." "Why don't you just say so?" I laughed and left his office without even seriously considering doing something about it. So, what else is new, I thought. I'm fat. Always have been, always will be.
I wasn't always so fatalistic about it. In my teens, 20s and 30s, trying this or that diet was a way of life for me. I counted every calorie. I tried appetite suppressants. I tried liquid "meals." I joined weight loss programs. I did the low-fat thing. I did the low-carb thing. I'd lose some weight, then put it back on, plus some. I was on a weight-loss roller coaster. But no matter what I did, I could never manage to keep my weight under 150.
But I refused to allow my self-worth to be defined by the shape of the body staring back at me in the mirror. What self-respecting feminist would? I decided that my five-foot, seven-inch frame was meant to weigh 150 pounds, not 110 or 120. And I was going to be OK with that. Really. No matter what.
But I wasn't.
At some point, after having two babies in two years in my mid 30s, I more or less surrendered to obesity. The pregnancies left me almost 40 pounds heavier. Caring for two tots isn't conducive to exercise. And I found myself grazing on kid scraps all day long. An evening cocktail after the kids were down for the night packed more appeal for me. And since we'd wait till they went to bed to eat a peaceful supper, my husband and I wouldn't dine until 8:30 or 9 o'clock at night. And so it went.
I pretended to accept and love myself just the way I was. But I also refused to look. I avoided mirrors, cameras and shopping for clothes.
In January, on vacation in Florida, I didn't manage to avoid a camera while wearing a wet suit. We were swimming with dolphins, you see. And I looked like a whale. There was no escaping it.
It was like a smack across the face: Wake up! This isn't about vanity. At age 48, it's about health and longevity. "Fat old lady syndrome" would define how I'd live the rest of my life, and it would most likely even define how many years the rest of my life would have to it. Staring at the image of me in a wet suit, something snapped inside me. I marched downstairs, dusted off the scale and got on. And off. And on again. My doctor's scale was wrong, unless I'd lost 20 pounds without trying between May 2005 and January 2006 — yeah, right. But my own scale informed me that I weighed 211 pounds. Ouch.
It's been six months since the day I resolved to celebrate my 50th birthday (in November 2007) being more fit than I've been since childhood. I've lost 34 pounds since Jan. 14. On the recommendation of Andy Mitchell, Peconic Bay Medical Center CEO, I picked up a copy of "The South Beach Diet," and I am now a devotee of Dr. Arthur Agatston, the cardiologist who developed the diet to help his overweight heart patients. He explains in very understandable terms the science behind gaining — and losing — weight. He sheds light on the role of sugar in the American obesity epidemic — 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 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. And that's exactly what I've done.
I'm never going on another diet again. And I'm never going to weigh 200 pounds again. You've heard the saying, "It's not a diet — it's a lifestyle?" It's true. I've changed the way I eat and drink and live. It's hard to describe how much better — and younger — I feel. I've got 27 pounds to go before I reach my goal — ironically, that 150-pound mark that bothered me so much 25 years ago. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to stay there. If I need inspiration, I peek at that wet suit photo. That's all it takes. Well, that and a desire to live long enough to see — and play with — my grandchildren someday. And since my daughters may keep me waiting as long as I kept my mother waiting, I'll need to be a healthy septuagenarian. That's the plan.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Gay marriage ruling by New York's highest court
Note: If you're here to comment on one of my columns in the July 6 editions of The News-Review and The Suffolk Times, feel free to email your comment to me: denise@timesreview.com. I felt compelled to write this morning about yesterday's decision by the N.Y. Court of Appeals upholding the state's ban on gay marriage.
Yesterday's decision by the New York State Court of Appeals was a bad decision, and not because I don't agree with its conclusion. The decision is seriously, shockingly flawed. (Read the decision at
The opinion written by Judge Smith for a 4-2 majority stated its conclusion up front:
"We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature."
The way the opinion reads, it seems as though the court reached its conclusion up front and then bent over backwards to justify it, employing circular logic, flawed reasoning and misinterpreted precedent in the process.
Here's the court's circular logic:
The court held that marriage is a "fundamental right" — but only for straight people. It's not a fundamental right for gay people, the court said, because gay people have never been allowed the right to marry.
Huh?
Then, the court reasoned, since the law banning gay marriage is not restrictive of a fundamental right for gay people, the court need only find a "rational basis" for the law in order to uphold it.
The "rational basis" standard is a much lower standard to meet than the "strict scrutiny" standard required when a law affects an individual's fundamental rights. It's the difference between asking "Is there any legitimate state interest in regulating a particular activity?" versus "Does the state have a paramount interest in taking this action, an interest so compelling that even fundamental individual rights must bow to it?"
It found its rational basis in the legislature's intention to protect children. Marriage promotes stability in relationships, the court said. Stable relationships are preferable for child-rearing. Since only heterosexual sex results in children, the court reasoned, the state can legitimately promote stability in heterosexual relationships only by allowing only opposite sex couples to marry.
Huh?
There are tens of thousands of children being raised in same-sex households in New York state alone — regardless of how, where or by whom those children were conceived. If there's a state interest in promoting stable households — for the sake of the children — why isn't there a state interest in promoting stable same-sex households where children are being raised?
Using this kind of "logic" the state legislature could also prohibit marriage between opposite sex couples where the woman is beyond child-bearing years. Since the marriage wouldn't further the state's interest in promoting stable households for children, it could be restricted.
But the real flaw in yesterday's court decision is turning aside the claim that the gay marriage ban tramples on a fundamental right — which allowed the court to indulge in its cockamamie "rational basis" analysis.
The court says "fundamental" means "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition." The right to marry is "unquestionably fundamental," the court ruled, but not for gay people because the right of same sex couples to marry is not deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition.
In other words, straight people have different — read: more — fundamental rights than gay people because that's always been the way it is and always has been.
Chief Judge Judtih Kaye, in her dissenting opinion, tears apart the majority's flawed rationale: "[F]undamental rights, once recognized, cannot be denied to particular groups on the ground that these groups have historically been denied those rights."
Judge Kaye points out that this kind of flawed logic was previously used to ban interracial marriage. Since blacks and whites didn't traditionally enjoy the right to marry one another, it wasn't a fundamental right and the states could prohibit it.
More recently the same flawed logic was used by the Texas courts to uphold that state's ban against consensual sodomy by homosexuals. The court in Texas "framed" the question as whether homosexuals have a fundamental right to engage in sodomy." The Texas court said that homosexuals never had that right, so therefore it couldn't be a "fundamental" right. (Sound familiar?) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas court asked the wrong question. The correct question was whether consenting adults have a fundamental right to engage in private consensual sexual conduct. By framing the question too narrowly, the Texas court reached the wrong conclusion, and the Supreme Court overturned the Texas court's decision (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003.)
Judge Kaye establishes three bases for "heightened" scrutiny of the law banning gay marriage. First, homosexuals meet the constitutional definition of a "suspect class" — a group whose defining characteristic is "so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy." Second, the statute banning gay marriage constitutes sex discrimination. It's a classification based on sex. Third, the law infringes on the exercise of a fundamental right.
Judge Kaye even punches huge holes in the court's "rational basis" argument: It's not enough that the state have a legitimate interest in recognizing or supporting same-sex marriages, the "relevant question" is "whether there exists a rationale basis for excluding same sex couples from marriage and whether the state's interests in recognizing or supporting opposite sex marriages are rationally furthered by the exclusion. The State plainly has a legitimate interest in the welfare of children, but excluding same-sex couples from marriage in no way furthers this interest. "The State's interest in a stable society is rationally advanced when families are established and remain intact irrespective of the gender of the spouses."
"There are enough marriage licenses to go around for everyone," Judge Kaye notes.
Yes, there are.
Yesterday's decision by the New York State Court of Appeals was a bad decision, and not because I don't agree with its conclusion. The decision is seriously, shockingly flawed. (Read the decision at
The opinion written by Judge Smith for a 4-2 majority stated its conclusion up front:
"We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature."
The way the opinion reads, it seems as though the court reached its conclusion up front and then bent over backwards to justify it, employing circular logic, flawed reasoning and misinterpreted precedent in the process.
Here's the court's circular logic:
The court held that marriage is a "fundamental right" — but only for straight people. It's not a fundamental right for gay people, the court said, because gay people have never been allowed the right to marry.
Huh?
Then, the court reasoned, since the law banning gay marriage is not restrictive of a fundamental right for gay people, the court need only find a "rational basis" for the law in order to uphold it.
The "rational basis" standard is a much lower standard to meet than the "strict scrutiny" standard required when a law affects an individual's fundamental rights. It's the difference between asking "Is there any legitimate state interest in regulating a particular activity?" versus "Does the state have a paramount interest in taking this action, an interest so compelling that even fundamental individual rights must bow to it?"
It found its rational basis in the legislature's intention to protect children. Marriage promotes stability in relationships, the court said. Stable relationships are preferable for child-rearing. Since only heterosexual sex results in children, the court reasoned, the state can legitimately promote stability in heterosexual relationships only by allowing only opposite sex couples to marry.
Huh?
There are tens of thousands of children being raised in same-sex households in New York state alone — regardless of how, where or by whom those children were conceived. If there's a state interest in promoting stable households — for the sake of the children — why isn't there a state interest in promoting stable same-sex households where children are being raised?
Using this kind of "logic" the state legislature could also prohibit marriage between opposite sex couples where the woman is beyond child-bearing years. Since the marriage wouldn't further the state's interest in promoting stable households for children, it could be restricted.
But the real flaw in yesterday's court decision is turning aside the claim that the gay marriage ban tramples on a fundamental right — which allowed the court to indulge in its cockamamie "rational basis" analysis.
The court says "fundamental" means "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition." The right to marry is "unquestionably fundamental," the court ruled, but not for gay people because the right of same sex couples to marry is not deeply rooted in our nation's history and tradition.
In other words, straight people have different — read: more — fundamental rights than gay people because that's always been the way it is and always has been.
Chief Judge Judtih Kaye, in her dissenting opinion, tears apart the majority's flawed rationale: "[F]undamental rights, once recognized, cannot be denied to particular groups on the ground that these groups have historically been denied those rights."
Judge Kaye points out that this kind of flawed logic was previously used to ban interracial marriage. Since blacks and whites didn't traditionally enjoy the right to marry one another, it wasn't a fundamental right and the states could prohibit it.
More recently the same flawed logic was used by the Texas courts to uphold that state's ban against consensual sodomy by homosexuals. The court in Texas "framed" the question as whether homosexuals have a fundamental right to engage in sodomy." The Texas court said that homosexuals never had that right, so therefore it couldn't be a "fundamental" right. (Sound familiar?) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas court asked the wrong question. The correct question was whether consenting adults have a fundamental right to engage in private consensual sexual conduct. By framing the question too narrowly, the Texas court reached the wrong conclusion, and the Supreme Court overturned the Texas court's decision (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003.)
Judge Kaye establishes three bases for "heightened" scrutiny of the law banning gay marriage. First, homosexuals meet the constitutional definition of a "suspect class" — a group whose defining characteristic is "so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy." Second, the statute banning gay marriage constitutes sex discrimination. It's a classification based on sex. Third, the law infringes on the exercise of a fundamental right.
Judge Kaye even punches huge holes in the court's "rational basis" argument: It's not enough that the state have a legitimate interest in recognizing or supporting same-sex marriages, the "relevant question" is "whether there exists a rationale basis for excluding same sex couples from marriage and whether the state's interests in recognizing or supporting opposite sex marriages are rationally furthered by the exclusion. The State plainly has a legitimate interest in the welfare of children, but excluding same-sex couples from marriage in no way furthers this interest. "The State's interest in a stable society is rationally advanced when families are established and remain intact irrespective of the gender of the spouses."
"There are enough marriage licenses to go around for everyone," Judge Kaye notes.
Yes, there are.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Securing those unalienable rights
Why is it that government’s knee-jerk reaction is to keep things under wraps — even when there’s no obvious reason?
Riverhead Supervisor Phil Cardinale says that transparency in government is a lynch pin of his administration, essential to “putting Riverhead first.” He talks a good game, but sometimes, when it comes to walking the walk, he falls flat on his face.
In his first administration, Phil’s stumbling block in open government was the Wilpon deal — the subject of far too many closed-door sessions. This time around, it’s the Pulte plan. Both proposals would have housing built at EPCAL. Both are controversial. And in both instances, Mr. Open Government was all too happy to hold meetings behind closed doors, out of the hearing of the press and public, and quite arguably in violation of the state’s open meetings law. When it comes right down to it, Phil can trample the public’s right to know just as well as the next guy — or, in Riverhead, the last guy, who ran town government like he was head of the CIA, not town supervisor.
Oh, irony of ironies that Councilman Ed Densieski has become our watchdog for open government, calling Phil on illegally convening executive sessions to discuss things like housing at EPCAL that should be discussed in an open forum.
Last week in The Suffolk Times we reported that the Southold Town Board convened an executive session to discuss the possible acquisition of the Peconic School. True, the state’s open meetings law allows for a closed session to discuss the proposed acquisition of real estate, but only “if publicity would substantially affect the value of the property under consideration.” In other words, if letting out word that the government is interested in buying a property means the owner will jack up the asking price, the government is justified in keeping its intentions hush-hush. Makes sense.
That clearly wasn’t the case with the Town Board’s discussion of the Peconic School. The Southold school district already knows the town is interested. The price will be set by an appraisal to determine the property’s fair market value. Why the secrecy?
True, this isn’t a really big deal and I don’t mean to make a mountain out of a molehill. Nor do I mean to imply that the Southold Town Board is up to no good. I doubt that’s the case.
It’s just that government bodies have a tendency to go behind closed doors whenever they can, just because they can — as long as they can get away with it. If the call can go either way, you rarely see a board decide in favor of openness. Why? It’s almost as if they’ve lost sight of the fact that it’s the public’s business they’re discussing. Openness should be the default mode, not something that happens when government is forced into it.
The Pulte Homes and Peconic School discussion are just small examples of a disturbing trend in post 9/11 America, land of the formerly free. Our government has too many secrets. Open government laws — enacted largely in response to the Watergate scandal some 30 years ago — are being eroded and the American free press is under attack.
And that’s not hyperbole.
In post-9/11 America, the notion of homeland security is used to suppress everything from transcripts of Congressional proceedings to our local emergency preparedness plan. We’re not allowed to have access to the government’s plans for response to a major hurricane, because if those plans fall into the wrong hands — the local Qaeda cell, say — who knows what disaster, even worse than a Category 3 hurricane, might befall the North Fork. Not to worry: the government’s got everything under control. They’ll take care of everything; all we have to do is trust them.
The less we know the better off they are.
The federal government is going back and classifying documents retroactively, then making it a crime to be in possession of classified documents.
The federal government is eavesdropping on phone calls without warrants. It’s collecting data on calls being made by Americans in America. It’s collecting data on who we send e-mails to, the websites we visit and what topics we Google. It’s even collecting data on Americans’ banking transactions. We’re not supposed to know any of that, though. Ask Dick Cheney. Boy, is he mad at The New York Times for disclosing the feds’ clandestine activities. The Times has gone and blown their cover and thwarted the government’s ability to fight The War on Terror. The president called the Times’ disclosure “disgraceful.”
What to do? Well, prosecute the press, of course. That’s what the chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, Rep. Peter King, is calling for. And that’s just what the federal government is planning, according to the U.S. attorney general.
This is a dangerous trend. Where does it lead? Look at a nation where the government attempts to have total control over the flow of information: China. In Tuesday’s Times, there was a report about the Chinese government covering up the murder of about 30 people by police, who sprayed a crowd of protestors with gunfire. The people were protesting the construction of a power plant, because building it means landfilling a body of water their village depends on for fishing. The government quashed the protest by gunning down the participants, and then covered up the shooting. On the same page of the paper was a report of China’s plan to require the media to gain government authorization before publishing any reports of “sudden events” — earthquakes, protests, accidents. Violators will be fined as much as $12,500 for each publication.
Can you imagine the government of the United States of America, in the name of homeland security, pronouncing a whole category of information “off limits” and requiring the media to get prior government authorization before publishing reports pertaining to the forbidden subject matter? Not too long ago, I couldn’t have imagined it — only in Richard Nixon’s fondest dreams. Today — well, sorry to say, it’s not beyond the realm of imagination any more.
In five days, we will mark the 230th anniversary of the birth of our nation. If you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence lately, reacquaint yourself with the words of that magnificent document. These will jump out: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent, unless it’s informed consent, is no consent at all.
Riverhead Supervisor Phil Cardinale says that transparency in government is a lynch pin of his administration, essential to “putting Riverhead first.” He talks a good game, but sometimes, when it comes to walking the walk, he falls flat on his face.
In his first administration, Phil’s stumbling block in open government was the Wilpon deal — the subject of far too many closed-door sessions. This time around, it’s the Pulte plan. Both proposals would have housing built at EPCAL. Both are controversial. And in both instances, Mr. Open Government was all too happy to hold meetings behind closed doors, out of the hearing of the press and public, and quite arguably in violation of the state’s open meetings law. When it comes right down to it, Phil can trample the public’s right to know just as well as the next guy — or, in Riverhead, the last guy, who ran town government like he was head of the CIA, not town supervisor.
Oh, irony of ironies that Councilman Ed Densieski has become our watchdog for open government, calling Phil on illegally convening executive sessions to discuss things like housing at EPCAL that should be discussed in an open forum.
Last week in The Suffolk Times we reported that the Southold Town Board convened an executive session to discuss the possible acquisition of the Peconic School. True, the state’s open meetings law allows for a closed session to discuss the proposed acquisition of real estate, but only “if publicity would substantially affect the value of the property under consideration.” In other words, if letting out word that the government is interested in buying a property means the owner will jack up the asking price, the government is justified in keeping its intentions hush-hush. Makes sense.
That clearly wasn’t the case with the Town Board’s discussion of the Peconic School. The Southold school district already knows the town is interested. The price will be set by an appraisal to determine the property’s fair market value. Why the secrecy?
True, this isn’t a really big deal and I don’t mean to make a mountain out of a molehill. Nor do I mean to imply that the Southold Town Board is up to no good. I doubt that’s the case.
It’s just that government bodies have a tendency to go behind closed doors whenever they can, just because they can — as long as they can get away with it. If the call can go either way, you rarely see a board decide in favor of openness. Why? It’s almost as if they’ve lost sight of the fact that it’s the public’s business they’re discussing. Openness should be the default mode, not something that happens when government is forced into it.
The Pulte Homes and Peconic School discussion are just small examples of a disturbing trend in post 9/11 America, land of the formerly free. Our government has too many secrets. Open government laws — enacted largely in response to the Watergate scandal some 30 years ago — are being eroded and the American free press is under attack.
And that’s not hyperbole.
In post-9/11 America, the notion of homeland security is used to suppress everything from transcripts of Congressional proceedings to our local emergency preparedness plan. We’re not allowed to have access to the government’s plans for response to a major hurricane, because if those plans fall into the wrong hands — the local Qaeda cell, say — who knows what disaster, even worse than a Category 3 hurricane, might befall the North Fork. Not to worry: the government’s got everything under control. They’ll take care of everything; all we have to do is trust them.
The less we know the better off they are.
The federal government is going back and classifying documents retroactively, then making it a crime to be in possession of classified documents.
The federal government is eavesdropping on phone calls without warrants. It’s collecting data on calls being made by Americans in America. It’s collecting data on who we send e-mails to, the websites we visit and what topics we Google. It’s even collecting data on Americans’ banking transactions. We’re not supposed to know any of that, though. Ask Dick Cheney. Boy, is he mad at The New York Times for disclosing the feds’ clandestine activities. The Times has gone and blown their cover and thwarted the government’s ability to fight The War on Terror. The president called the Times’ disclosure “disgraceful.”
What to do? Well, prosecute the press, of course. That’s what the chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, Rep. Peter King, is calling for. And that’s just what the federal government is planning, according to the U.S. attorney general.
This is a dangerous trend. Where does it lead? Look at a nation where the government attempts to have total control over the flow of information: China. In Tuesday’s Times, there was a report about the Chinese government covering up the murder of about 30 people by police, who sprayed a crowd of protestors with gunfire. The people were protesting the construction of a power plant, because building it means landfilling a body of water their village depends on for fishing. The government quashed the protest by gunning down the participants, and then covered up the shooting. On the same page of the paper was a report of China’s plan to require the media to gain government authorization before publishing any reports of “sudden events” — earthquakes, protests, accidents. Violators will be fined as much as $12,500 for each publication.
Can you imagine the government of the United States of America, in the name of homeland security, pronouncing a whole category of information “off limits” and requiring the media to get prior government authorization before publishing reports pertaining to the forbidden subject matter? Not too long ago, I couldn’t have imagined it — only in Richard Nixon’s fondest dreams. Today — well, sorry to say, it’s not beyond the realm of imagination any more.
In five days, we will mark the 230th anniversary of the birth of our nation. If you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence lately, reacquaint yourself with the words of that magnificent document. These will jump out: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent, unless it’s informed consent, is no consent at all.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
RIverhead budget passed
Riverhead's 2006-07 school budget passed by more than 600 votes tonight. Voters also approved the establishment of a capital reserve fund.
There was a large crowd waiting for the vote result tonight a little past 9 pm in the high school gym. The vote results were announced at 9:24 by Ed Dougherty. His announcement triggered cheers and applause in the gym.
I stopped in to hear the vote results on my way home from the office. This being Tuesday, I stay at work until I finish editing all the stories that have been filed today, and that usually means at least 8 or 9 o'clock. But I couldn't go home without finding out whether the budget passed or failed.
The budget's passage is good for our community. Congratulations, Riverhead! We did the right thing.
Now we need to turn our attention to the reforms that our state's system for funding education so desperately needs. I spoke today with State Senator Ken LaValle. He doesn't embrace the notion that the system is fundamentally flawed. He suggested we meet to discuss it after the legislative session is concluded. I am definitely going to take him up on it. Radical change is necessary, change that the reality of Albany probably won't accommodate. But we have to try. The way we fund public education in New York is stupid, with its emphasis on property taxes. Long Island gets short-changed because the state is using a formula that's 30+ years old. It's just WRONG. We have to mobilize to do something about it.
Well, this is probably the first time I'm actually using this blog the way blogs are used--to disseminate news and information. But I've been simply posting my print column here for so long, I doubt that there's anybody out there checking this thing on a Tuesday night or Wednesday. If you are, post a comment on the budget vote! What do you think we should do to avoid this agony in May 2007? What reforms should we work toward?
Your thoughts?
There was a large crowd waiting for the vote result tonight a little past 9 pm in the high school gym. The vote results were announced at 9:24 by Ed Dougherty. His announcement triggered cheers and applause in the gym.
I stopped in to hear the vote results on my way home from the office. This being Tuesday, I stay at work until I finish editing all the stories that have been filed today, and that usually means at least 8 or 9 o'clock. But I couldn't go home without finding out whether the budget passed or failed.
The budget's passage is good for our community. Congratulations, Riverhead! We did the right thing.
Now we need to turn our attention to the reforms that our state's system for funding education so desperately needs. I spoke today with State Senator Ken LaValle. He doesn't embrace the notion that the system is fundamentally flawed. He suggested we meet to discuss it after the legislative session is concluded. I am definitely going to take him up on it. Radical change is necessary, change that the reality of Albany probably won't accommodate. But we have to try. The way we fund public education in New York is stupid, with its emphasis on property taxes. Long Island gets short-changed because the state is using a formula that's 30+ years old. It's just WRONG. We have to mobilize to do something about it.
Well, this is probably the first time I'm actually using this blog the way blogs are used--to disseminate news and information. But I've been simply posting my print column here for so long, I doubt that there's anybody out there checking this thing on a Tuesday night or Wednesday. If you are, post a comment on the budget vote! What do you think we should do to avoid this agony in May 2007? What reforms should we work toward?
Your thoughts?
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Save a farm; drink local
This may be a first. I'm not sure I've ever written a column about a column in another newspaper. And I've certainly never written a column about wine. But here goes.
Last Wednesday, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov turned his attention to Long Island wines in his column "The Pour." Flipping through the pages of the "Dining In" section last Wednesday morning — a section I rarely find time to peruse, especially on a Wednesday — my heart skipped a beat when I saw the words Long Island in the title of Asimov's column. Would he pan the wines of our emerging wine region? As the headline came into focus — "On Long Island, a Case for Respect" — I felt instant relief. If Mr. Asimov is talking about respect for Long Island wines in the title, this wasn't going to be bad. I reached for my reading glasses and sat down.
Why the fleeting moment of panic? Why do I care? I don't own a vineyard or a stake in one. Heck, I don't even have a wine cellar, never mind the wine to fill it.
But I'm invested in the Long Island wine region, and you should be, too. Long Island wineries are central players — if not the central players — in our evolving North Fork economy.
The success of Long Island as a wine region has a direct bearing on our quality of life on the North Fork. Look around. Those acres and acres planted in grapes, stretching out before you as far as the eye can see in some places? Envision acres and acres of single-family homes dotting the landscape, because were it not for the success of our fledgling wine region, that's probably what you'd be looking at.
Many moons ago, as a Riverhead town councilwoman considering zoning initiatives aimed at preserving farmland, I was told (repeatedly) by Long Island Farm Bureau executive director Joe Gergela: "The best way to preserve farmland is to preserve farming." He was, obviously, correct. We grappled with that concept and with each other. Farm Bureau asked government to get and stay out of the way — something vineyard owners I'm sure would agree with today, 20 years later.
While we were arguing these points in Town Hall, people like the Hargraves, Lenzes, Massouds, Bedells and Goerlers were planting grapes, tending their vines and experimenting. As a result of their efforts, the idea of a Long Island wine region took root — and grew. People in Southold town government are still debating how best to preserve farmland but the vineyard owners — they've done it.
The way of life we enjoy on the North Fork — its rural character and beauty — is directly dependent on the continued growth, development and success of the Long Island wine region. This is not to minimize the importance of other agricultural pursuits in these parts, of course. But the dominant feature of the agricultural and economic landscape on the North Fork is becoming the vineyard. What would happen to our tourism-based economy if acres of grapes gave way to housing, and the North Fork's rural landscape became a suburban one?
If you appreciate the North Fork as it is, you have, in my opinion, an obligation to support the Long Island wine region. What does that mean?
For Times/Review Newspapers, it means publishing Wine Press, the official guide to Long Island Wine Country. We started publishing Wine Press in the early 1990s as an expression of our commitment to the local wine industry and to a sustainable economy tied to North Fork's rural character and beauty.
For individuals, supporting our wine region means, first and foremost, if you drink wine, drink Long Island wine. There's a local wine — a good local wine, as Mr. Asimov pointed out in his column last week — for every taste and purpose. You may be able to pick up a cheaper bottle of wine imported from France or Italy, but then you're shipping your dollars out of town, instead of supporting your local economy and your own quality of life. If a local wine costs $5 more, think of it as a direct investment in local farmland preservation. I'd rather pay a little more for a bottle of fine local wine to preserve local farmland than pay higher property taxes for the services required by all the houses that'll be built where the vineyards once were. Wouldn't you?
Ask for Long Island wine in restaurants, especially local restaurants, but ask for them wherever you go. Patronize local restaurants that have Long Island wines on their wine lists, and let the restaurant staff know you appreciate their local wine list and dine there, in part, because of it.
Visit the wineries, and take your visiting friends and family on a tour. I did this last summer for the first time in a very long time and it was a great deal of fun. It's also educational, and to really appreciate wine and the region we're living in, it's essential to learn something about it. And don't be intimidated. I still can't quite pick up all the subtle flavors that wine experts detect in a glass of wine. But that's never detracted from my enjoyment.
Back to Asimov's column: He noted that our region gets very little attention in the wine world. (It was featured in a big spread in Wine Spectator last month, though.) Mr. Asimov's assessment of the local wines (both white and red) he tasted at a dinner arranged for him by Charles Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue was very positive.
"... Long Island wines are proving themselves worthy of respect," Mr. Asimov wrote. "The best have a style of their own, leaner than the California wines with lower alcohol and higher acidity. As tastes swing away from the fruit bomb end of the spectrum, people are going to find a lot of pleasure in the wines from the North Fork."
And that, my friends, is good for all of us.
Last Wednesday, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov turned his attention to Long Island wines in his column "The Pour." Flipping through the pages of the "Dining In" section last Wednesday morning — a section I rarely find time to peruse, especially on a Wednesday — my heart skipped a beat when I saw the words Long Island in the title of Asimov's column. Would he pan the wines of our emerging wine region? As the headline came into focus — "On Long Island, a Case for Respect" — I felt instant relief. If Mr. Asimov is talking about respect for Long Island wines in the title, this wasn't going to be bad. I reached for my reading glasses and sat down.
Why the fleeting moment of panic? Why do I care? I don't own a vineyard or a stake in one. Heck, I don't even have a wine cellar, never mind the wine to fill it.
But I'm invested in the Long Island wine region, and you should be, too. Long Island wineries are central players — if not the central players — in our evolving North Fork economy.
The success of Long Island as a wine region has a direct bearing on our quality of life on the North Fork. Look around. Those acres and acres planted in grapes, stretching out before you as far as the eye can see in some places? Envision acres and acres of single-family homes dotting the landscape, because were it not for the success of our fledgling wine region, that's probably what you'd be looking at.
Many moons ago, as a Riverhead town councilwoman considering zoning initiatives aimed at preserving farmland, I was told (repeatedly) by Long Island Farm Bureau executive director Joe Gergela: "The best way to preserve farmland is to preserve farming." He was, obviously, correct. We grappled with that concept and with each other. Farm Bureau asked government to get and stay out of the way — something vineyard owners I'm sure would agree with today, 20 years later.
While we were arguing these points in Town Hall, people like the Hargraves, Lenzes, Massouds, Bedells and Goerlers were planting grapes, tending their vines and experimenting. As a result of their efforts, the idea of a Long Island wine region took root — and grew. People in Southold town government are still debating how best to preserve farmland but the vineyard owners — they've done it.
The way of life we enjoy on the North Fork — its rural character and beauty — is directly dependent on the continued growth, development and success of the Long Island wine region. This is not to minimize the importance of other agricultural pursuits in these parts, of course. But the dominant feature of the agricultural and economic landscape on the North Fork is becoming the vineyard. What would happen to our tourism-based economy if acres of grapes gave way to housing, and the North Fork's rural landscape became a suburban one?
If you appreciate the North Fork as it is, you have, in my opinion, an obligation to support the Long Island wine region. What does that mean?
For Times/Review Newspapers, it means publishing Wine Press, the official guide to Long Island Wine Country. We started publishing Wine Press in the early 1990s as an expression of our commitment to the local wine industry and to a sustainable economy tied to North Fork's rural character and beauty.
For individuals, supporting our wine region means, first and foremost, if you drink wine, drink Long Island wine. There's a local wine — a good local wine, as Mr. Asimov pointed out in his column last week — for every taste and purpose. You may be able to pick up a cheaper bottle of wine imported from France or Italy, but then you're shipping your dollars out of town, instead of supporting your local economy and your own quality of life. If a local wine costs $5 more, think of it as a direct investment in local farmland preservation. I'd rather pay a little more for a bottle of fine local wine to preserve local farmland than pay higher property taxes for the services required by all the houses that'll be built where the vineyards once were. Wouldn't you?
Ask for Long Island wine in restaurants, especially local restaurants, but ask for them wherever you go. Patronize local restaurants that have Long Island wines on their wine lists, and let the restaurant staff know you appreciate their local wine list and dine there, in part, because of it.
Visit the wineries, and take your visiting friends and family on a tour. I did this last summer for the first time in a very long time and it was a great deal of fun. It's also educational, and to really appreciate wine and the region we're living in, it's essential to learn something about it. And don't be intimidated. I still can't quite pick up all the subtle flavors that wine experts detect in a glass of wine. But that's never detracted from my enjoyment.
Back to Asimov's column: He noted that our region gets very little attention in the wine world. (It was featured in a big spread in Wine Spectator last month, though.) Mr. Asimov's assessment of the local wines (both white and red) he tasted at a dinner arranged for him by Charles Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue was very positive.
"... Long Island wines are proving themselves worthy of respect," Mr. Asimov wrote. "The best have a style of their own, leaner than the California wines with lower alcohol and higher acidity. As tastes swing away from the fruit bomb end of the spectrum, people are going to find a lot of pleasure in the wines from the North Fork."
And that, my friends, is good for all of us.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Marriage and civil rights
Marriage has no place in the United States Constitution. That document, the foundation of our democracy, has existed for 217 years with nary a mention of this venerable, centuries-old institution. And we have to keep it that way.
There's no doubt that the traditional institution of marriage is in trouble. What was once viewed as a lifetime bond between a man and a woman — a bond some viewed as ordained, even preordained, by God — has become something of a transient social arrangement. Half of all marriages end in divorce. This has far-ranging negative implications for our society — and our economy. But what's ailing marriage isn't about to be cured by a constitutional amendment banning some people who want to get married from being able to do so.
Yet that's precisely the reason why the president says we should amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage — to "protect" the institution of marriage. What malarkey. But what did we expect him to say — that he's advocating the so-called marriage amendment to shore up his standing among right-wing religious fundamentalists? Not likely, even though that's obviously exactly what he's doing. It's infuriating — though not surprising — that the president would exploit this hot-button issue to make political hay, to try galvanize "the right" around this emotionally charged topic on the eve of congressional elections when control of the House will be at stake. The GOP needs the support of conservatives to hang onto the House; George has thrown the right a bone.
It's repulsive, really, to play with people's lives this way. It's especially revolting that the president chose this month, Gay Pride Month, to do it.
There are 27 amendments to the United States Constitution. The first 10, referred to as the Bill of Rights, were adopted and ratified almost immediately following the adoption of the constitution itself in 1789. The other 17 became the law of the land over the course of the next 200 years, with the most recent amendment (concerning setting the salaries of members of Congress) coming in 1992.
Generally, the constitutional amendments all deal with subjects like protecting individuals from government oppression, or with the structure and operation of government itself. Only once did politics corrupt the constitutional amendment process enough to steer it off course into the realm of attempting to legislate morality: in 1919 the 18th amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, sale or transport of "intoxicating liquor." That was a dismal failure and is, to date, the only constitutional amendment that's been repealed. That ought to tell you something, Mr. President.
But the president doesn't really think his marriage amendment is going anywhere. He's just using the issue to rally supporters at a politically expedient moment. Fully aware of the torrent of emotion and hatred surrounding the issue of homosexuality among his right-wing "base" — heck, these are the people who protest military funerals shouting that God is punishing the U.S. for accepting gay people by allowing our soldiers to be killed — Mr. Bush has the brass to say he wants the nation to "conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger." Fat chance.
We've treated gay people shabbily. The battle has been long and hard to gain even some semblance of acceptance, social justice and equal rights under the law. People point to passages of Scripture to defend laws that discriminate against gays. People used to point to Scripture to defend slavery, too. In any case, Scripture has no place in our system of government. The founding fathers saw to that with the very first amendment to our constitution, prohibiting the establishment of religion.
For me, as for countless other people here on the North Fork — your family members, friends and neighbors — this is a very personal issue. And it's a civil rights issue, not a morality issue. There are so many rights and privileges that married people take for granted — from having the right to be at the bedside of the one you love at the hospital ICU, to sharing health benefits, to having an exemption for your partner on your income tax return. Never mind the whole host of civil rights that are not guaranteed to people just because they are gay, the question of marriage aside.
Socially, things have gotten easier for gay people. There is more acceptance, less bigotry. Now it's time for the law to catch up to the realities of modern life. It's not time to go backwards, as the president proposes. And it's certainly not time to embroil the country in a bitter, hate-filled and pointless debate. There are far too many other truly important issues — the debacle in Iraq, the faltering economy, the trade and budget deficits, to name a few — that we really should be focusing on as a nation. But maybe taking attention away from these other issues is the real motive behind the president's shameless pandering to his "conservative base," after all.
© 2006
There's no doubt that the traditional institution of marriage is in trouble. What was once viewed as a lifetime bond between a man and a woman — a bond some viewed as ordained, even preordained, by God — has become something of a transient social arrangement. Half of all marriages end in divorce. This has far-ranging negative implications for our society — and our economy. But what's ailing marriage isn't about to be cured by a constitutional amendment banning some people who want to get married from being able to do so.
Yet that's precisely the reason why the president says we should amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage — to "protect" the institution of marriage. What malarkey. But what did we expect him to say — that he's advocating the so-called marriage amendment to shore up his standing among right-wing religious fundamentalists? Not likely, even though that's obviously exactly what he's doing. It's infuriating — though not surprising — that the president would exploit this hot-button issue to make political hay, to try galvanize "the right" around this emotionally charged topic on the eve of congressional elections when control of the House will be at stake. The GOP needs the support of conservatives to hang onto the House; George has thrown the right a bone.
It's repulsive, really, to play with people's lives this way. It's especially revolting that the president chose this month, Gay Pride Month, to do it.
There are 27 amendments to the United States Constitution. The first 10, referred to as the Bill of Rights, were adopted and ratified almost immediately following the adoption of the constitution itself in 1789. The other 17 became the law of the land over the course of the next 200 years, with the most recent amendment (concerning setting the salaries of members of Congress) coming in 1992.
Generally, the constitutional amendments all deal with subjects like protecting individuals from government oppression, or with the structure and operation of government itself. Only once did politics corrupt the constitutional amendment process enough to steer it off course into the realm of attempting to legislate morality: in 1919 the 18th amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, sale or transport of "intoxicating liquor." That was a dismal failure and is, to date, the only constitutional amendment that's been repealed. That ought to tell you something, Mr. President.
But the president doesn't really think his marriage amendment is going anywhere. He's just using the issue to rally supporters at a politically expedient moment. Fully aware of the torrent of emotion and hatred surrounding the issue of homosexuality among his right-wing "base" — heck, these are the people who protest military funerals shouting that God is punishing the U.S. for accepting gay people by allowing our soldiers to be killed — Mr. Bush has the brass to say he wants the nation to "conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger." Fat chance.
We've treated gay people shabbily. The battle has been long and hard to gain even some semblance of acceptance, social justice and equal rights under the law. People point to passages of Scripture to defend laws that discriminate against gays. People used to point to Scripture to defend slavery, too. In any case, Scripture has no place in our system of government. The founding fathers saw to that with the very first amendment to our constitution, prohibiting the establishment of religion.
For me, as for countless other people here on the North Fork — your family members, friends and neighbors — this is a very personal issue. And it's a civil rights issue, not a morality issue. There are so many rights and privileges that married people take for granted — from having the right to be at the bedside of the one you love at the hospital ICU, to sharing health benefits, to having an exemption for your partner on your income tax return. Never mind the whole host of civil rights that are not guaranteed to people just because they are gay, the question of marriage aside.
Socially, things have gotten easier for gay people. There is more acceptance, less bigotry. Now it's time for the law to catch up to the realities of modern life. It's not time to go backwards, as the president proposes. And it's certainly not time to embroil the country in a bitter, hate-filled and pointless debate. There are far too many other truly important issues — the debacle in Iraq, the faltering economy, the trade and budget deficits, to name a few — that we really should be focusing on as a nation. But maybe taking attention away from these other issues is the real motive behind the president's shameless pandering to his "conservative base," after all.
© 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
This is a first for my blog
Now that I'm writing op-ed columns on a regular basis for both The Suffolk Times and The News-Review, I suppose this is going to happen. I have two different columns I'd like to post this week. I'll post each of them separately below: "Fighting cancer one step at a time" and "Riverhead's budget vote failure." (Please scroll down to read — and comment!)
This was a grueling week at the papers — a grueling couple of weeks, actually. Last week was our Memorial Day issue. It's a big holiday issue, and that means lots of pages to fill and produce. We have an incredible crew at Times/Review (and that most definitely includes the folks at our "outposts" on Shelter Island and in Wading River). It was a herculean task, and they did it, did it well and did it gracefully — and more or less on time, too.
Then, following the big holiday editions, we have a three-day weekend, which in this business simply means you have one less day to get the papers out. You come back from the weekend and — bam — it's Tuesday. The community section has to go to press, and the bulk of the stories in the main section are filed and must be edited and proofed — not to mention ad production! This is what we call "a short week," i.e. cramming five days into four — 14-hour days become 18 hour days.
And in the middle of everything in the past two weeks, two different network servers had unrelated hard drive failures, putting just a teeny glitch into the production process. Thank God for mirror drives and tech people, who manage to keep it all running, somehow. Rubber bands?
One staff member has a great bumper sticker posted at his workstation: "Another deadline, another miracle."
So if you see any of us around town this weekend and we've got a glazed-over look on our faces, now you know why. We just need a little R&R and we'll be fine.
Actually, I'll be capping off this week with a one-day trip to Hershey Park, Penn. with the Riverhead Middle School 8th Grade class. As if I need any more roller-coaster rides! And somehow, a bunch of Suffolk Times staffers are going to find the energy to stay up all night tomorrow night for Southold's Relay for Life!
This was a grueling week at the papers — a grueling couple of weeks, actually. Last week was our Memorial Day issue. It's a big holiday issue, and that means lots of pages to fill and produce. We have an incredible crew at Times/Review (and that most definitely includes the folks at our "outposts" on Shelter Island and in Wading River). It was a herculean task, and they did it, did it well and did it gracefully — and more or less on time, too.
Then, following the big holiday editions, we have a three-day weekend, which in this business simply means you have one less day to get the papers out. You come back from the weekend and — bam — it's Tuesday. The community section has to go to press, and the bulk of the stories in the main section are filed and must be edited and proofed — not to mention ad production! This is what we call "a short week," i.e. cramming five days into four — 14-hour days become 18 hour days.
And in the middle of everything in the past two weeks, two different network servers had unrelated hard drive failures, putting just a teeny glitch into the production process. Thank God for mirror drives and tech people, who manage to keep it all running, somehow. Rubber bands?
One staff member has a great bumper sticker posted at his workstation: "Another deadline, another miracle."
So if you see any of us around town this weekend and we've got a glazed-over look on our faces, now you know why. We just need a little R&R and we'll be fine.
Actually, I'll be capping off this week with a one-day trip to Hershey Park, Penn. with the Riverhead Middle School 8th Grade class. As if I need any more roller-coaster rides! And somehow, a bunch of Suffolk Times staffers are going to find the energy to stay up all night tomorrow night for Southold's Relay for Life!
Fighting cancer one step at a time
One in three. Those are my odds of developing invasive cancer at some point during my lifetime. Men are a bit worse off. Their odds are one in two. 50-50. At age 48, I have about a one in 11 chance of developing invasive cancer before I reach my 60th birthday.
Kind of helps you put in perspective those one in three gazillion odds of winning Lotto, doesn’t it?
These sobering statistics are from an American Cancer Society publication, “Cancer Facts & Figures: 2006,” I don’t know about you, but I really had no idea that the odds were that high. I should have.
All I need to do is look around at my own family and circle of friends. My mother, both of my grandmothers and two uncles have died of cancer. The number of friends and acquaintances who’ve been diagnosed blows my mind whenever I stop to think of it.
You can relate, I’m sure. Statistically, Southold should see 103 new cancer cases in 2006, and 42 Southolders will die of cancer this year. Of the 22,000 people or so who call Southold home, more than 9,100 will develop cancer at some point, and 4,640 will eventually die of the disease. With odds like those, there isn’t anyone whose life hasn’t been touched in some way by this disease.
That will be nowhere more evident than at Jean Cochrane Park tomorrow night, where hundreds of people will gather to take a stand — or, more accurately, a walk — against cancer, in Southold’s first Relay for Life.
“It’s about communities taking up the fight against cancer ... Relay brings communities together to make a difference,” says an American Cancer Society’s brochure about Relay for Life. Funds raised by Relay participants support American Cancer Society research efforts and programs that support and educate people battling the disease.
Relay is a fun overnight event, a giant community camp-out with barbecues, music, contests and, of course, plenty of walking. Participants form teams and raise money in all kinds of ways, ranging from individual solicitation to car washes to some very odd and creative efforts — like populating a front lawn with cardboard gnomes under cover of darkness and making the homeowner pay to get the gnomes removed. Each team has to try to keep one team member on the track all night long. (This is one time when being the parent of teenagers, who love to stay up all night, is actually a convenience.)
Most Relay team members will have a real personal reason for being there because — well, who doesn’t? Some will be cancer survivors themselves, and they will proudly wear their purple survivor T-shirts and take the track for the first lap of the evening, known as the survivor lap. There can be no doubt that a cancer diagnosis changes your whole life, from the way you spend your time to the way you look at the world. One survivor friend of mine told me, “I don’t have any patience or tolerance for superficial BS any more.” A face-to-face with one’s own mortality tends to have that effect on people.
Increasingly, thanks to improved screening, earlier detection and innovative new treatments, there are people more around who’ve had that confrontation and lived to talk about it. Cancer death are going down; survival rates are increasing.
The Suffolk Times will have a team on the track tomorrow night. If you’re not on a team yourself, come down and cheer our team — and all the other Relay teams — on. Don’t miss the lighting of the luminaria as night falls. Candles placed inside white paper bags around the track are lit to honor our survivors and remember loved ones lost to cancer. It’s a moving sight you won’t soon forget.
Kind of helps you put in perspective those one in three gazillion odds of winning Lotto, doesn’t it?
These sobering statistics are from an American Cancer Society publication, “Cancer Facts & Figures: 2006,” I don’t know about you, but I really had no idea that the odds were that high. I should have.
All I need to do is look around at my own family and circle of friends. My mother, both of my grandmothers and two uncles have died of cancer. The number of friends and acquaintances who’ve been diagnosed blows my mind whenever I stop to think of it.
You can relate, I’m sure. Statistically, Southold should see 103 new cancer cases in 2006, and 42 Southolders will die of cancer this year. Of the 22,000 people or so who call Southold home, more than 9,100 will develop cancer at some point, and 4,640 will eventually die of the disease. With odds like those, there isn’t anyone whose life hasn’t been touched in some way by this disease.
That will be nowhere more evident than at Jean Cochrane Park tomorrow night, where hundreds of people will gather to take a stand — or, more accurately, a walk — against cancer, in Southold’s first Relay for Life.
“It’s about communities taking up the fight against cancer ... Relay brings communities together to make a difference,” says an American Cancer Society’s brochure about Relay for Life. Funds raised by Relay participants support American Cancer Society research efforts and programs that support and educate people battling the disease.
Relay is a fun overnight event, a giant community camp-out with barbecues, music, contests and, of course, plenty of walking. Participants form teams and raise money in all kinds of ways, ranging from individual solicitation to car washes to some very odd and creative efforts — like populating a front lawn with cardboard gnomes under cover of darkness and making the homeowner pay to get the gnomes removed. Each team has to try to keep one team member on the track all night long. (This is one time when being the parent of teenagers, who love to stay up all night, is actually a convenience.)
Most Relay team members will have a real personal reason for being there because — well, who doesn’t? Some will be cancer survivors themselves, and they will proudly wear their purple survivor T-shirts and take the track for the first lap of the evening, known as the survivor lap. There can be no doubt that a cancer diagnosis changes your whole life, from the way you spend your time to the way you look at the world. One survivor friend of mine told me, “I don’t have any patience or tolerance for superficial BS any more.” A face-to-face with one’s own mortality tends to have that effect on people.
Increasingly, thanks to improved screening, earlier detection and innovative new treatments, there are people more around who’ve had that confrontation and lived to talk about it. Cancer death are going down; survival rates are increasing.
The Suffolk Times will have a team on the track tomorrow night. If you’re not on a team yourself, come down and cheer our team — and all the other Relay teams — on. Don’t miss the lighting of the luminaria as night falls. Candles placed inside white paper bags around the track are lit to honor our survivors and remember loved ones lost to cancer. It’s a moving sight you won’t soon forget.
Riverhead's budget vote failure
Did the Riverhead school budget fail because voters don’t trust the school board or the administration? Some people, including the teachers union, are banging this drum. I think it’s both oversimplification and, quite frankly, spin.
We seem to get a pretty consistent “no” vote on Riverhead school budgets, in the 1,400 to 1,700 vote range, according to vote results for the past six years. The one exception during this period was the year 2004, when the proposed budget represented a 12.99% spending increase over the previous year; the budget failed with a whopping 2,255 “no” votes.
This year, there were 1,667 “no” votes. That’s right in line with the number of “no” votes in each election in the preceding five years.
The difference this year was the number of “yes” votes. This year, there were 1,576 “yes” votes. When the budget passes, we see around 2,000 “yes” votes.
This year’s vote had the lowest total voter turnout over the past six years. And the low turnout was among the “yes” voters.
So I don’t think the budget defeat represents a vote of no confidence for the school board or the district administration, the way some people spin it to serve their own agendas.
If there are any conclusions to be drawn looking at these numbers, it’s that the parents of school age children didn’t bother to turn out to vote (as they typically do) “yes” on the school budget this year. Maybe they were busy doing other things or maybe they figured with a 2% tax rate hike, the budget simply couldn’t fail.
I looked at the voting results from 2001 through this year — votes, proposed budget amounts, percentage increases and total voter turnout. One thing that hits you over the head when you look at these numbers is the cumulative spending increase over the past five years.
The district budget increased from $65.2 million in 2001 to $93.3 million in 2006, an average increase of about 8% per year. That’s almost $30 million, and that’s a heck of a lot of money. The question is: Why? What does that $30 million represent?
Another drum people are banging is that we have exorbitant administrative costs in our district. What percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased administrative expenses?
And what percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased expenses for salaries and benefits for teachers and staff? Public employee collective bargaining agreements have built-in cost of living increases and “step” adjustments. Teachers move up in steps and earn higher wages by earning credits toward advanced degrees. And then there’s health insurance. Health insurance costs have increased astronomically for all of us. Public sector employees, including teachers, have a better deal than most of the rest of us when it comes to health insurance coverage. Government employers pays a higher percentage of an employee’s health insurance premium than most private sector employers. The school district picks up 85% of the tab for active teachers and 50% of the premium for retired teachers, according to the district superintendent. The teachers union seeks to increase the percentage paid by the district for retired teachers’ health insurance. That’s the heart of the current contract dispute between the district and its teachers. But the private sector is trending in the opposite direction. Most companies have decreased or eliminated health benefits for retirees.
Another major hit for district taxpayers has been pension costs. Because the stock market tanked, investments held by the state pension fund have shriveled. Local governments, including the school district, have had to make huge, budget-busting contributions to the pension fund to make up the difference — hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the private sector, pensions are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Private sector workers today are lucky if their employers provide matching contributions to their 401k plans.
And then, of course, there are the various state and federal mandates that come with price tags both big and small, but without state and federal funding to pay for them. Not to mention the higher proportional costs of educating special needs and limited English proficiency students, both of which Riverhead has in significant numbers.
To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirkson: A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
The bottom line is that the bottom line isn’t looking very good for many district residents. People genuinely want to provide a sound education for our community’s children, but they want assurances that costs are kept in check — and they want to see results. There may be 1,600 people who turn out to vote “no” every year no matter what. But the rest of us need to believe that every dollar being spent is being spent wisely and that the education our kids are getting is worth every penny of our hard-earned tax dollars. That will get the “yes” voters out to the polls.
We seem to get a pretty consistent “no” vote on Riverhead school budgets, in the 1,400 to 1,700 vote range, according to vote results for the past six years. The one exception during this period was the year 2004, when the proposed budget represented a 12.99% spending increase over the previous year; the budget failed with a whopping 2,255 “no” votes.
This year, there were 1,667 “no” votes. That’s right in line with the number of “no” votes in each election in the preceding five years.
The difference this year was the number of “yes” votes. This year, there were 1,576 “yes” votes. When the budget passes, we see around 2,000 “yes” votes.
This year’s vote had the lowest total voter turnout over the past six years. And the low turnout was among the “yes” voters.
So I don’t think the budget defeat represents a vote of no confidence for the school board or the district administration, the way some people spin it to serve their own agendas.
If there are any conclusions to be drawn looking at these numbers, it’s that the parents of school age children didn’t bother to turn out to vote (as they typically do) “yes” on the school budget this year. Maybe they were busy doing other things or maybe they figured with a 2% tax rate hike, the budget simply couldn’t fail.
I looked at the voting results from 2001 through this year — votes, proposed budget amounts, percentage increases and total voter turnout. One thing that hits you over the head when you look at these numbers is the cumulative spending increase over the past five years.
The district budget increased from $65.2 million in 2001 to $93.3 million in 2006, an average increase of about 8% per year. That’s almost $30 million, and that’s a heck of a lot of money. The question is: Why? What does that $30 million represent?
Another drum people are banging is that we have exorbitant administrative costs in our district. What percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased administrative expenses?
And what percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased expenses for salaries and benefits for teachers and staff? Public employee collective bargaining agreements have built-in cost of living increases and “step” adjustments. Teachers move up in steps and earn higher wages by earning credits toward advanced degrees. And then there’s health insurance. Health insurance costs have increased astronomically for all of us. Public sector employees, including teachers, have a better deal than most of the rest of us when it comes to health insurance coverage. Government employers pays a higher percentage of an employee’s health insurance premium than most private sector employers. The school district picks up 85% of the tab for active teachers and 50% of the premium for retired teachers, according to the district superintendent. The teachers union seeks to increase the percentage paid by the district for retired teachers’ health insurance. That’s the heart of the current contract dispute between the district and its teachers. But the private sector is trending in the opposite direction. Most companies have decreased or eliminated health benefits for retirees.
Another major hit for district taxpayers has been pension costs. Because the stock market tanked, investments held by the state pension fund have shriveled. Local governments, including the school district, have had to make huge, budget-busting contributions to the pension fund to make up the difference — hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the private sector, pensions are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Private sector workers today are lucky if their employers provide matching contributions to their 401k plans.
And then, of course, there are the various state and federal mandates that come with price tags both big and small, but without state and federal funding to pay for them. Not to mention the higher proportional costs of educating special needs and limited English proficiency students, both of which Riverhead has in significant numbers.
To paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirkson: A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
The bottom line is that the bottom line isn’t looking very good for many district residents. People genuinely want to provide a sound education for our community’s children, but they want assurances that costs are kept in check — and they want to see results. There may be 1,600 people who turn out to vote “no” every year no matter what. But the rest of us need to believe that every dollar being spent is being spent wisely and that the education our kids are getting is worth every penny of our hard-earned tax dollars. That will get the “yes” voters out to the polls.
Friday, May 26, 2006
IS THERE REALLY A MESSAGE IN THE SCHOOL BUDGET FAILURE?
Did the Riverhead school budget fail because voters don’t trust the school board or the administration? Some people (like Molly Roach and teachers union advocates) are banging this drum. I think it’s both oversimplification and, quite frankly, spin.
We seem to get a pretty consistent “no” vote on Riverhead school budgets, in the 1400 to 1700 vote range, according to vote results for the past 6 years. The one exception during this period was the year 2004, when the budget failed with a whopping 2255 “no” votes. In 2001, the proposed budget represented a 12.99% spending increase over the previous year.
This year, there were 1667 “no” votes. That’s right in line with the number of “no” votes in each election in the preceding 5 years.
The difference this year was the number of “yes” votes. This year, there were 1576 “yes” votes. When the budget passes, we see around 2000 “yes” votes.
This year’s vote had the lowest total voter turnout over the past 6 years. And the low turnout was among the “yes” voters.
So I don’t think the budget defeat represents a vote of no confidence for the school board or the district administration, the way some people spin it to serve their own agendas.
I don’t think it even represents any loud “enough is enough” statement on property taxes. The tax rate increase was only 2%.
If there are any conclusions to be drawn here it’s that the parents of school age children didn’t bother to turn out to vote (as they typically do) “yes” on the school budget this year. Maybe they were busy doing other things or maybe they figured with a 2% tax rate hike, it simply couldn’t fail.
I’ve compiled the voting results from 2001 through this year, showing votes, proposed budget amounts, percentage increases and total voter turnout.
Looking at these numbers, I have a few questions.
What’s the total number of registered voters in the Riverhead Central School District (registered to vote with the county board of elections)? Our voter turnout in these elections is usually in the 3000-4000 range. What percentage of eligible voters does this represent?
The budget increased from $65.2 million in 2001 to $93.3 million in 2006. That’s just about $30 million. What does that $30 million represent? Another drum people are banging is that we have exorbitant administrative costs in our district. What percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased administrative expenses? What percentage is attributable to increased salaries and benefits for teachers and staff? What IS it attributable to? I’d like to see an analysis of that and I’m sure other parents and taxpayers would as well.
Here are the numbers:
2006 FAILED 1,667 to 1,576. $93,352,740, 6.5% spending increase; voter turnout: 3243
2005 PASSED 1,994 to 1,483. $87.6 million, 6.4% spending increase; voter turnout:
3477
2004 FAILED 1975 to 2255. $83,901,512 , 12.99% spending increase; voter turnout: 4230
Revote : PASSED 2,864 to 2,153. $82,275,746, 10.8% spending increase; voter turnout: 5017
2003: PASSED 2397 to 1760. $74,253,460, 4.41% spending increase; voter turnout: 4157
2002: FAILED 1,741 to 1,635. $71,120,126, 9.91% spending increase; voter turnout: 3376
Revote: PASSED 1764 to 1568, $71,120,126, 9.91% spending increase; 3332
2001: PASSED 1,975 to 1,412, $65,209,167, 9.39% spending increase; Voter turnout: 3387
We seem to get a pretty consistent “no” vote on Riverhead school budgets, in the 1400 to 1700 vote range, according to vote results for the past 6 years. The one exception during this period was the year 2004, when the budget failed with a whopping 2255 “no” votes. In 2001, the proposed budget represented a 12.99% spending increase over the previous year.
This year, there were 1667 “no” votes. That’s right in line with the number of “no” votes in each election in the preceding 5 years.
The difference this year was the number of “yes” votes. This year, there were 1576 “yes” votes. When the budget passes, we see around 2000 “yes” votes.
This year’s vote had the lowest total voter turnout over the past 6 years. And the low turnout was among the “yes” voters.
So I don’t think the budget defeat represents a vote of no confidence for the school board or the district administration, the way some people spin it to serve their own agendas.
I don’t think it even represents any loud “enough is enough” statement on property taxes. The tax rate increase was only 2%.
If there are any conclusions to be drawn here it’s that the parents of school age children didn’t bother to turn out to vote (as they typically do) “yes” on the school budget this year. Maybe they were busy doing other things or maybe they figured with a 2% tax rate hike, it simply couldn’t fail.
I’ve compiled the voting results from 2001 through this year, showing votes, proposed budget amounts, percentage increases and total voter turnout.
Looking at these numbers, I have a few questions.
What’s the total number of registered voters in the Riverhead Central School District (registered to vote with the county board of elections)? Our voter turnout in these elections is usually in the 3000-4000 range. What percentage of eligible voters does this represent?
The budget increased from $65.2 million in 2001 to $93.3 million in 2006. That’s just about $30 million. What does that $30 million represent? Another drum people are banging is that we have exorbitant administrative costs in our district. What percentage of that $30 million is attributable to increased administrative expenses? What percentage is attributable to increased salaries and benefits for teachers and staff? What IS it attributable to? I’d like to see an analysis of that and I’m sure other parents and taxpayers would as well.
Here are the numbers:
2006 FAILED 1,667 to 1,576. $93,352,740, 6.5% spending increase; voter turnout: 3243
2005 PASSED 1,994 to 1,483. $87.6 million, 6.4% spending increase; voter turnout:
3477
2004 FAILED 1975 to 2255. $83,901,512 , 12.99% spending increase; voter turnout: 4230
Revote : PASSED 2,864 to 2,153. $82,275,746, 10.8% spending increase; voter turnout: 5017
2003: PASSED 2397 to 1760. $74,253,460, 4.41% spending increase; voter turnout: 4157
2002: FAILED 1,741 to 1,635. $71,120,126, 9.91% spending increase; voter turnout: 3376
Revote: PASSED 1764 to 1568, $71,120,126, 9.91% spending increase; 3332
2001: PASSED 1,975 to 1,412, $65,209,167, 9.39% spending increase; Voter turnout: 3387
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Back to blogging
I'm going to start blogging again. I know that sounds strange since this is, after all, my blog and I've been posting to it since last year. But for several months now, I've only been posting my weekly columns that are published in the print editions of Times/Review papers. That's not blogging.
A blog is supposed to me more spontaneous, more "real time," and more interactive than what this has been.
It certainly was all of those things last fall. But in the heat of the election season, it turned into a forum where people posting things without regard for the truth to further their own agendas. No matter what I blogged about, the comments posted were always all about the election. Some were really mean and nasty, besides being untrue. I felt like my blog got hijacked and I grew disgusted, eventually shutting it down altogether until after the election. Once that insanity was behind us, I started posting my weekly columns here. And never got back to what this type of publishing is supposed to be all about.
I want to pursue this because this type of interactive online publishing is part of the future of journalism. I'm looking toward a day in the not-too-distant future when Times/Review has a website that hosts a number of blogs by citizen journalists.
Anyway... The thing on my mind this morning is our school budget crisis. Districts on the North Fork all passed their budgets. Riverhead and a number of districts in Southampton town failed theirs. Something like 6 of the 11 budgets that failed Tuesday were within Southampton, which just completed a town-wide tax reval that has a lot of taxpayers angry. That may have factored in the defeat of Riverhead's budget -- by a mere 91 votes. We can't tell for sure because school votes are not taken by election district, so we don't know if "no" votes are concentrated in any one location.
It's disgraceful that we couldn't pass a budget calling for a 2% tax rate increase. The contingency (aka austerity) budget tax rate increase is 1.5%. The voters of our district wouldn't go for a half-percent more?! Shame on us! How are we ever going to approve a bond to build the new classroom space we so desperately need if we can't even get approval of a bare bones budget like this one?
The real issue is, we're doing this all wrong. School budgets shouldn't be funded by property taxes to the extent that they are on Long Island. We are getting screwed by the state. And that's the point I tried to make in my column this week. (See last post, below.) Fundamental change is needed. We can't rely on our state representatives to bring that kind of change about. (Obviously.) So what can we do? We can vote them out of office. But that's a real long-shot. Incumbents get reelected. They are too damned entrenched. I plan to research whether there's any other recourse, perhaps even a movement to amend the state constitution.
Anybody got any ideas?
A blog is supposed to me more spontaneous, more "real time," and more interactive than what this has been.
It certainly was all of those things last fall. But in the heat of the election season, it turned into a forum where people posting things without regard for the truth to further their own agendas. No matter what I blogged about, the comments posted were always all about the election. Some were really mean and nasty, besides being untrue. I felt like my blog got hijacked and I grew disgusted, eventually shutting it down altogether until after the election. Once that insanity was behind us, I started posting my weekly columns here. And never got back to what this type of publishing is supposed to be all about.
I want to pursue this because this type of interactive online publishing is part of the future of journalism. I'm looking toward a day in the not-too-distant future when Times/Review has a website that hosts a number of blogs by citizen journalists.
Anyway... The thing on my mind this morning is our school budget crisis. Districts on the North Fork all passed their budgets. Riverhead and a number of districts in Southampton town failed theirs. Something like 6 of the 11 budgets that failed Tuesday were within Southampton, which just completed a town-wide tax reval that has a lot of taxpayers angry. That may have factored in the defeat of Riverhead's budget -- by a mere 91 votes. We can't tell for sure because school votes are not taken by election district, so we don't know if "no" votes are concentrated in any one location.
It's disgraceful that we couldn't pass a budget calling for a 2% tax rate increase. The contingency (aka austerity) budget tax rate increase is 1.5%. The voters of our district wouldn't go for a half-percent more?! Shame on us! How are we ever going to approve a bond to build the new classroom space we so desperately need if we can't even get approval of a bare bones budget like this one?
The real issue is, we're doing this all wrong. School budgets shouldn't be funded by property taxes to the extent that they are on Long Island. We are getting screwed by the state. And that's the point I tried to make in my column this week. (See last post, below.) Fundamental change is needed. We can't rely on our state representatives to bring that kind of change about. (Obviously.) So what can we do? We can vote them out of office. But that's a real long-shot. Incumbents get reelected. They are too damned entrenched. I plan to research whether there's any other recourse, perhaps even a movement to amend the state constitution.
Anybody got any ideas?
Punish Albany, not our children
“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.
“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 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
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