Wii for people like mii

We have a Wii. Procurement was not easy. Getting up and out at dawn wasn't enough. It took a lot of luck.

But our Wii, whose name is George, now lives in our TV room, where my children can be found, even as I write this, standing in front of (rather than sitting upon) the couch, flailing their arms about wildly.

The Wii (pronounced "we") is Nintendo's new video game system, replacing the Game Cube, which sits, cast aside, passé, in the corner of our TV room. You can play Game Cube games on the Wii, you see. It is that clever.

The distinguishing feature of the Wii, the one that sets it apart from Sony's PlayStation 3, is its wireless game controller that detects motion and rotation in three dimensions. The really neat thing about that, gushed my 14-year-old daughter a year ago, when she first started talking (incessantly) about Wii, is that it allows "old people like you, Mom" to play video games with ease.

"You know how you're so spastic operating the controller?" she asked me excitedly. Like I'm going to admit to being spastic at anything.

"No," I insisted. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on, Mom," she insisted, laughing hard. "You can't play Tony Hawk. All you do is crash. And you can't get Dash past the first intersection in The Incredibles without getting creamed. You can't even play Klax."

She was right. It is true. When it comes to video game controllers, I'm hopelessly, totally spastic. There were no video games when I was a kid. I didn't touch a controller until adulthood. That makes all the difference. At least that's how I explain my spasticity to my kids. They find it entertaining. Sometimes they ask me to play with them just so they could get a good laugh and make fun of me.

"Nintendo made Wii for people like you," Katie giggled. "You don't have to push buttons. You just move the controller around." Wii would be such a hit, my daughter predicted, Sony (maker of PlayStation) will go out of business. If I owned Sony stock, I'd sell it.

Revolution. They code named it Revolution while it was in development. That's how significantly different it is, my daughter advised solemnly.

While Katie was counting down the days till Nov. 19, the day Wii would go on sale in North America, I didn't think much about Wii until I saw a tent city sprout up around Best Buy last week, where people camped out for days hoping to buy PlayStation 3 on Nov. 17.

As the big day for Wii approached, the frequency and urgency of my daughter's reminders about Wii increased.

"We're not sleeping in the parking lot outside a big box store, absolutely not," I said firmly. "No way."

Surely, there would be plenty of opportunity to buy Wii before Christmas. Isn't that the point of timing its release in mid November? This is all hype. I reminded her how we'd spent the night in Borders last year — until midnight anyway — just so we could buy the new Harry Potter book the moment it went on sale. They would surely run out of them immediately and permanently — or so she feared. The next morning, Wal-Mart had eight-foot-tall stacks of them. We could have gotten our beauty rest.

But what if...? What if there won't be any more Wiis any time soon? That thought jarred me awake before 6 a.m. Sunday morning. I was at Wal-Mart one minute past its 7 a.m. opening. And the Wiis were all gone. People had camped out the night before, to be able to get tickets distributed by Wal-Mart an hour or so before the store would open. A ticket secured a Wii. Wal-Mart only had 20 Wiis to sell. Twenty? If Wal-Mart only had 20, this was serious.

A lady in Wal-Mart told me Kmart had them, but only the "bundle," which came with games and cost a lot more. The Wii base price is $249. The Wii "bundle" was something like $489. I went to Kmart anyway. A sign on the door said Wii tickets would be given out at 6 a.m. Too late again. I headed for Target, wondering when this ticket system thing had taken root in the American marketplace.

My heart sank when I saw the line of people outside Target. I'd missed the boat again.

The mother of one of Katie's friends was bringing up the rear. She looked as happy as she could be under the circumstances — in a line outside Target at 7:15 on a brisk Sunday morning, coming off a night shift at work, no less. But she had a ticket. And to my amazement, I would get mine. Number 61. Target had gotten a shipment of 67 Wiis to sell. I arrived in time to get ticket number 61. Five minutes later and I'd have been out of luck.

I was excited, but couldn't share the news with anyone at home. They were all still asleep.

Most of the people around me in line were parents in pursuit of Wii for their kids. The young people who'd camped out at Target all night were at the front of the line. Other parents came from Springs. And Sag Harbor. And Orient. We had one thing in common: spoiled children. We chatted about the revenge we would exact.

The best revenge, I decided, would be to actually win at Wii. So Sunday afternoon found me "boxing" with Katie, punching the air with my Wii controllers (one of them is called a Numchuk) trying to land a good punch on Katie's character on the TV.

Katie clobbered me. Knocked me out, in fact.

Turns out I'm just as spastic with the Wii as I am with a traditional video game controller. What a surprise.

© 2006 Times-Review Newspapers

Holiday weeks

I've been distracted— so much going on. Managing a company with a staff of 60 is quite the enterprise. As former GE CEO Jack Welch, whose book, "Winning" I'm listening to right now, says (repeatedly) it's all about the people. That is just so true. Having the right people in place is what makes a business succeed or fail.

We're very fortunate at Times/Review to have so many great people. You'd be hard pressed to find people more dedicated and hard-working than the staff that produces and distributes our four newspapers. They are fantastic and I am often awed by how they do what they do. Sure, we have our ups and downs, and we make our mistakes. We're human. But as a group, we get it done and, I'm proud to say, most of the time, do it very, very well.

Thanksgiving week and the week after are a rough time for us. We're off Thursday and Friday. So that means we have two "short weeks" in a row. This week is one of the toughest of the year, because we have to produce our papers a day early. So today is Wednesday at Times/Review, even though the rest of the world thinks it's Tuesday. Getting it done this week means staying in overdrive for three straight 14-hour-plus days. Then next week, it's more of the same— somewhat easier because losing a Friday isn't as stressful as losing a Wednesday, our normal production day. Holidays take on a different meaning in this business.

But I'm not complaining. This is about as fun and exciting as work can get. Every week, every day is different. And you're doing something that makes a difference in your community. That's what inspires and infuses us with energy, feeling that what we do really matters, that people count on us to know what's going on, to help them navigate through their busy lives.

As we approach Thankgiving Day and I take time to count my blessings, I count among them working with such a fantastic group of people to contribute something meaningful to the community we call home.

Affordable housing - are there really any answers?

We've had a back-and-forth debate on affordable housing on the letters pages of The Suffolk Times in the past few months. A retiree from East Marion, John Copertino, has been a vocal opponent of municipal-sponsored affordable housing initiatives, like the Factory Avenue plan in Mattituck, claiming that these housing developments will cause taxes to rise and hurt seniors on fixed incomes. He's also said things like the younger generation needs to learn the meaning of sacrifice and suggested that if the young people can't afford to live here they should quit whining and move away. (He notes that he couldn't afford to live where he preferred to when he and his wife were just starting out, so they moved to a more affordable location and he commuted a greater distance to work, etc.)

While I don't agree with Mr. Copertino, I also don't see any real solutions to the housing crisis on the horizon. A dozen or two subsdized homes here or there won't make a dent in the problem. And it IS a crisis. Because communities need a diverse demographic to maintain good health. And our community is poised to become very unhealthy in that respect.

Riverhead's stated plan to build rental housing downtown could help young people (and seniors for that matter). But what about the American Dream of home ownership? Is that lost forever on the North Fork for the generation now coming up and starting their own families? My kids are young teens. I'm figuring there's no way they're going to be able to afford to buy a house in the community where their family has lived for generations. (While I'm a transplant — I grew up in Brooklyn and Coram — my husband has lived in Riverhead his whole life, as did his parents. His dad's mother's family, the Young family, were some of the first settlers of the North Fork.) This is our home, our town. We want to spend the rest of our lives here, but not if it means sacrificing being around our children and grandchildren. I think that if things were not so out-of-whack on Long Island, our kids would at least have the option of settling here too. But that's out of the question as far as I can tell. My hope for the long term future is that they choose to plant roots not to far from each other, so that we may follow them and be near both of their families, and be able to know our grandchildren growing up.

What's happened to real estate prices on LI represents the free market economy at its worst. It's supply and demand. The location of this little spit of land, next to one of the greatest metropolises on earth, surrounded by beautiful bodies of water, make it a most desirable place. For people like me and my family, that means being priced out of the market.

The ramifications of this state of affairs are far-reaching. For business owners, it means being unable to find qualified people to fill skilled labor jobs. I have personal experience there too. We can't recruit people from out of the area because they can't afford to buy a home or live here. We must "hire from within" and the pool of applicants is shrinking. For people like Mr. Copertino, it will eventually mean a crisis in the shortage of people available to do the work that needs to be done for the seniors on fixed incomes. The firefighters, rescue volunteers, nurses, nurses' aides and other health care workers, the auto mechanics, plumbers, electricians, and all other home improvement contractors, landscapers — the WORKERS — are going to become more and more scarce. And (thanks to the supply and demand economy) expensive. Some people decry the "illegals" working locally and advocate shipping them all back to Mexico or Guatemala. Not so fast! They're going to be the only people left who are able to do the work that needs to be done. And things that people volunteered to do (fire and rescue services) for instance, will have to be done by paid municipal workers. And that will make local taxes go up.

So, we NEED young people here. And we have to figure out a way to make it feasible to stay here. Living in Dad's basement isn't the answer. Neither is 22 "affordables" here and there. This is something I've beent thinking about for almost 20 years now. (Riverhead did its first affordable housing development during my term on the Town Board.) I don't see an answer yet.

The Mark Houraney saga

Mark Houraney is the poster child for everything that's wrong with the Calverton Enterprise Park.

He wanted to run the airport there, and Councilman Ed Densieski and Supervisor Bob Kozakiewicz wanted him to do it — in spite of a clear message against an airport by the voters in a referendum several years ago. So they made sure not to call it an airport, but they were intent on putting in place all the trappings of an airport. And that included a fixed base operator — the guy with the right to sell fuel, maintain a terminal, maintain the runway and control access to it. Enter Mark Houraney. While they weren't calling him the FBO, the management agreement they negotiated with him and were set to approve in the spring of 2003 was actually an agreement to make him the airport's FBO.

Mr. Houraney believed he was going to make a ton of money at it. The dollar loss he claimed in his breach of contract action in federal court was $50 million.

He was so eager to begin — and so certain the deal was done — that he started marketing his plan on the Internet before his management agreement was approved — publicly, at least — by the Town Board. The Town Board had one brief public meeting on the deal, which is how I learned of it. But the whole thing was negotiated behind closed doors, in executive session, or privately in officials' offices. It was a done deal, until we published a front page story on Dec. 19, 2002, disclosing it for what it was, using Mr. Houraney's own words from his Web site. There, he offered Calverton to business executives as an alternative to New York City's crowded airports, just a short helicopter ride from Manhattan. He also offered jet charter service into and out of the site. And aircraft fueling, storage and maintenance.

So, just as the Town Board was poised to ink Mr. Houraney's 20-year management agreement — which, among other things, gave him the exclusive right to develop regulations governing the use of the runway — without ever airing the terms of the that agreement in public, The News-Review went to press with the story of what Mr. Houraney was actually planning to do at EPCAL, drawing attention to the fact that the town was proceeding without a bidding process, which seemed a clear violation of applicable law. And people went ballistic.

Mr. Houraney's plans — hatched, it seemed to us, with airport proponents Ed Densieski and Steve Kirschenbaum — sputtered, stalled and skidded off the runway.

But Mr. Houraney had ensconced himself in an office at the top of the old Grumman control tower, which he was leasing from a company that had purchased the building from developer Jan Burman — the man who bought the entire developed area at EPCAL, known as "the industrial core," from the town for $17 million, dubbed "the great Grumman giveaway" by Koz and Ed in their successful 1999 election campaign.

Mr. Houraney was there because, without much public attention, the Town Board in October 2002 had already signed a runway use agreement with him. From his perch atop the control tower, he pursued his plans, even though the FBO deal wasn't signed. He bought equipment, including fuel tanks. He applied to the FAA for various approvals, some of which Mr. Kozakiewicz signed off on as town supervisor. And he had, pursuant to his runway use agreement, the right to use the runway.

2003 was a bad year for Mr. Houraney. First, The News-Review stalled his FBO plans, which, it turned out, were permanently scuttled. Then things went sour between him and Steve Kirschenbaum. It's still not clear to me what their relationship was or how Mr. Kirschenbaum fit into Mr. Houraney's airport dreams. But they did share that airport dream. And in furtherance of that dream, they planned the New York Air Show, which Mr. Kirschenbaum and his airport ally Joe Van de Wetering pitched to the Town Board as a fundraiser for Central Suffolk Hospital, where Mr. Van de Wetering served as chairman of the board of directors. For that "good cause," the town gave the air show use of the facility at no charge, except the reimbursement of town police costs of $50,000.

The public will probably never know how much money Mr. Kirschenbaum made off the air show. He drew payments during the planning stages and never provided the town with a complete accounting of the cash that came in at the gate over the course of the weekend. Cars were backed up bumper to bumper from the EPCAL entrance on Route 25 in Calverton to LIE Exit 68 at William Floyd Parkway. But somehow, the air show was a bust and the hospital wasn't going to see a plug nickel — until this newspaper got all over Mr. Kirschenbaum's case and he forked up a $5,000 donation to the event's supposed beneficiary. The town didn't even get its police costs reimbursed. And its pursuit of the matter has been, at best, impotent. I'm resigned to having these questions remain forever unanswered. And I guess I'm the only person in town that's still bothered by this "mystery" — and by the fact that Mr. Kirschenbaum and Mr. Van de Wetering are both principals in Grumman Memorial Park, another not-for-profit venture using town-owned land at EPCAL.

Mr. Houraney says his relationship with Mr. Kirschenbaum went south after Steve decided to take the air show fuel concession away from him and sell it to an Islip-based company for a $25,000 fee. Selling fuel at the air show was to have made Mr. Houraney a tidy sum, and he was hopping mad. Feeling betrayed, he proceeded to do whatever he could to get back at his former friend, including coming to me with Quicken printouts of the air show's operating account. I was very surprised to hear from Mark when he called shortly before the air show was to take place. Since I'd played a big part in mucking up his FBO plans, I was no friend of Mark Houraney's. Why would he be tipping me off on a story like this? The desire for vengeance will do strange things to people.

Mr. Houraney's attempts to get back at Steve Kirschenbaum didn't stop there. He called the FAA, complaining that the runway was in unsafe condition. He sent photos of town highway department workers patching potholes in the runway. He called and wrote and met with the supervisor. If he was going to be cut out of the air show, he was going to do everything he could to make sure it didn't happen.

But Supervisor Kozakiewicz had the opposite resolve. After the Field Day debacle that summer — the three-day big name concert that was canceled at the last minute because the county determined that the town didn't have adequate law enforcement plans in place — Koz, who was facing reelection that fall, could not afford another EPCAL embarrassment. (The multimillion dollar Field Day lawsuit is still pending.) The air show was going to happen and if Mr. Houraney got in the way, he would be eliminated. Figuratively speaking, of course.

And that's exactly what happened. Mr. Houraney demanded that the air show pay him $25,000 to forfeit use of the runway for the weekend of the event, as others with runway use rights had been paid to keep off the runway. His former friend Steve told him to get lost. He threatened to hold a "fly-in" that weekend. The town responded by revoking his runway use agreement — claiming that he was in breach of contract because he hadn't bought property at EPCAL. The letter advising Mr. Houraney of the revocation was faxed to his attorney on the Friday afternoon of the air show weekend.

And so, Mr. Houraney's $50 million lawsuit was born. It was subsequently amended to include a civil rights claim (and another $130 million in damages sought) thanks to stupid comments made by town officials during a closed door settlement discussion that Mr. Houraney, of Middle Eastern heritage, found offensive. Mr. Densieski said they were only joking when they made those cracks about whether Mr. Houraney would store Osama bin Laden's planes at EPCAL. Mr. Houraney didn't find them funny.

Town officials trying to accomplish something on the sly that the public had resoundingly rejected in a referendum (the airport). Closed door meetings. No bid contracts. Good ol' boy back room deals. Political ambition taking priority over public interest. A healthy dose of avarice. Pure stupidity. (Yes, public officials shouldn't make Osama bin Laden jokes to a guy of Arab-American ethnicity, Eddie, especially during federal lawsuit settlement discussions.)

For all these reasons and more, the town's handling of Mark Houraney's proposal exemplifies everything wrong with EPCAL — a textbook case of how not to manage an "enterprise zone," bungled from start (selling all the buildings and central facility for $17 million) to finish (the ultimate development of hundreds of houses there, which will certainly ensure that no meaningful industrial or economic development will ever occur.)

What a shame.

Copyright 2006 Times/Review Newspapers

Our sample ballot slip-up

It seems we got a lot of people upset by not publishing a sample ballot in the paper on the Thursday before Election Day. I'm very sorry. We've got at least one letter to the editor this week (in The Suffolk Times) blasting us for not printing the ballot.

I wanted to get the sample ballot in a digital format, as a portable document file (PDF) which provides the best image for reproduction. Up until a couple of years ago, we had to get the paper version (we had to drive to Yaphank to the Board of Elections to pick it up, too) and then scan it to create a digital image of it for use in the paper.

Last year, I asked and got the sample ballot as a PDF — emailed to me! No wasted time or gas, and the reproduction quality was great.

This year I figured we'd do the same thing. So I called the Board of Elections and asked. I was told I had to fax a letter with my request to the BOE Commissioners and they'd get back to me. (I got the same answer to my question about what phone number we should print for voters to call if they have problems at the polls — fax the question to the commissioners! Why is it that a Board of Elections employee who answers the phones there a few days before Election Day doesn't know if the BOE has a hotline number for reporting poll problems? That's preposterous!)

Anyway, I faxed my request for the sample ballot PDF as instructed.

The BOE emailed the sample ballot PDF to me at 4 PM on Wednesday, too late to make it into Thursday's paper; The News-Review is already at the printer and The Suffolk Times is on its way!

That resulted in a number of people calling the paper to complain that we let them down — they rely on us to provide the sample ballot they like to study before going to the polls — as well as a scathing letter to the editor from someone who sees this failure as an indication that our journalistic standards are slipping.

Next year, I will try to get the PDF, but I'm going to get my hands on that paper sample ballot just as soon as the BOE will let us have it. I don't mind getting slammed for unpopular positions we take in editorials. But I hate being held responsible for bureaucratic paralysis at government agencies, especially the BOE, which should have been able to fulfill my request for a PDF within minutes. This is, as they say "the digital age." Somebody please tell the folks in Yaphank.

Regardless, I take responsibility for not having the ballot in the paper, where it should have been, and I apologize.

When the news isn't good

Sometimes this job requires really tough decisions. Every week we publish police reports that contain allegations about people that the subjects of the report would rather not have published. We are frequently contacted by people who've been arrested (or by their friends and relatives) to ask us not to publish news of their arrest. Our answer is always the same: If it's in the police blotter, we print it, no exceptions. We had an editor once in the inenviable position of having to print news of his own child's DWI arrest.

A lot of folks think we relish this. Nothing could be further from the truth. We hate it.

Then there are the less-than-black-and-white situations we have to make judgment calls on. A couple of weeks ago, we ran a story in The News-Review about the Riverhead Highway Superintendent being charged with DWI one night in the Village of Quogue. Normally we wouldn't run a story about a local resident being charged with DWI out of town. For one thing, we don't look at all the police reports other towns. But this was an elected official. And his driver's license was suspended, meaning the town highway superintendent couldn't drive a vehicle on the public highways. So it seemed newsworthy enough to merit coverage. But decisions like these gnaw at you long after they're made.

Then there was the Riverhead schools superintendent, who was apparently conducting a romantic affair with a woman on the district administrative staff. He was asked to resign as a result of the school board's discovery of this relationship. We reported it, especially because we learned that the superintendent and the employee were conducting their affair during business hours. We didn't disclose the woman's name in the paper — though I haven't met anyone in town who doesn't know who she is anyway.

But, boy, these are tough decisions. So, too, are decisions about whether to publish reports of suicides, photos of fatal motor vehicle accidents and articles about high school athletes being suspended from school.

I bought a book at the National Newspaper Association convention last year called "Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper." One of the author's main points is that policies on reporting these kinds of stories must be clear, consistent and put in writing for all staff. And they should be clearly explained to readers in the paper, by way of editors' columns. That's something we haven't done enough of, and something I need to address.

The "Bad News..." book indicates that we made the right calls on both of these recent tough stories, mostly because the lives of public officials and public employees, whose salaries are paid by tax dollars, merit a higher level of scrutiny than private citizens. But that doesn't make it any easier to write and publish stories like that, nor does it make it any easier when you have to encounter the people you publish "bad news" about in the supermarket, or on your kid's soccer field, etc.

A day in the life

I'm posting because I said I would. It's not like I have anything much to say.

It was a crazy day today, consumed by "publisher duties" that would, I'm sure, be of no real interest to anyone outside of Times/Review Newspapers. But they kept me going nonstop from 8 am till 6 pm. Oh well.

I'm working on a column about the Northeast Holdings/Mark Houraney lawsuit against the Town of Riverhead. Well, "workng" might be a bit too strong; I've been thinking about it. If I'm lucky, I will have it formulated in my head enough to go with it in this week's News-Review.

Saturday's Riverhead Blue Waves football game was a heart-breaker — a one point loss in the final seconds of the game. To the team and coaches Congratulations on an amazing season, guys. An 8-0 record . It doesn't get much better than that! We're very, very proud of you! Way to BE!

Saturday morning

Time to take a breath. It's nice to shift into a lower gear — at least for a little while, until reality, in the form of mountains of dirty laundry, etc., sets in. Weekdays, I'm up at 4, spend a little time reading the news online, then head for the gym by 5. I have to be back in time to coax my daughters out of bed and get them off to school by 7. Weekends, the morning pace is slower and that's good. I'm still up ridiculously early; the internal clock doesn't re-set itself on weekends. But I can lollygag around for a while, since even the gym opens later on weekends.

Saturday morning is my day to weigh in on the South Beach Diet website. As of today, I've hit the 45 pound mark. When I saw that on my SBD online chart, it actually brought tears to my eyes. Part of me can't believe I've actually done this. That's probably because it's been so effortless. I have 8 pounds to go to reach a "Normal" BMI. If I continue to lose at the rate of one pound per week, I will reach my goal weight (160) by my one-year anniversary of starting my new lifestyle (notice I didn't say "diet"). That will be a total of 54 pounds lost since Jan. 14, 2006, when I took a look at the horrifying image of myself in a wet suit (a family snapshot taken at Discovery Cove, Sea World, Orlando FL during the holidays) and resolved to do something about my obesity. I'm very grateful to Andy Mitchell, CEO of Peconic Bay Medical Center, for telling me to read "The South Beach Diet." I never would have picked that book up without his recommendation, mostly because of its dopey name. But that little paperback changed my life.

Now I'm off to the gym, a daily physical routine I've become sort of addicted to. I alternate between weight training and working out on the cardio equipment every other day. On Saturdays I often do both, which is what I intend to do today. I never imagined myself as a gym rat. But hey, life is full of surprises.

Enough about grandmothers

If I hear or see Nancy Pelosi referred to one more time as "a 66-year-old grandmother" I'm going to scream.

How many grandfathers are members of the House of Representatives? Can you recall ever — ever — hearing a member of congress described as a "grandfather?" And I'm not talking about the fill-in details at the end of a story. I'm talking about a sentence high up in the story, the woman's initial description, as in Bob Herbert's op-ed column in yesterday's New York Times:

"Also in Washington, Nancy Pelosi, the 66-year-old grandmother who had been portrayed as some kind of raving San Francisco radical in countless Republican campaign ads..."

In the past few days, I've seen references in the media to newly elected congresswomen as "working mothers." I'd like to know: Is there any other kind? And why aren't there any "working fathers?" We all know the answer is because fatherhood has not traditionally been considered a full-time job, the man's occupation. Motherhood is, of course, the main gig for us double-Xers. The rest we take on at our own peril.

Then, of course, there was the president's feeble attempt at humor during his press conference Wednesday afternoon, when he said he told Ms. Pelosi he'd give her the names of some good Republican interior decorators to help her with her new office.

Yep. I'm sure decorating her new office is her top priority, Mr. President, right up there on her agenda for the first 100 hours. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on W's part, but it was a sexist remark nonetheless.

It's 2006. Are you as aghast (and annoyed) as I am that things like this are still being said/printed/talked about?

When things go whoosh

I am a lousy blogger. I'm good with essays and I've got a decent touch for columns. But blogging? I've discovered this old dog needs to learn a new trick or two when it comes to adapting to this unique literary form.

Blogging requires frequency and regularity. Blog readers and subscribers want to know that a blogger will have a new post on the Web at regular intervals. But I have a conceptual difficulty to overcome. I have a hard time writing unless I've actually got something to say.

Another problem I have with blogging is the idea that it's OK to post little blurbs about things. Me? I sit down at my keyboard and don't come up for air until I've got a thousand words on my screen. The first draft usually comes out of me in one big whoosh. It's almost involuntary. It usually happens first thing, in the predawn darkness of my kitchen. It's an idea that's been knocking around in my head for several days that erupts into a column, even before I've poured my second mug of coffee.

After the initial spewing forth, I read what I've written and start editing, whittling it down to a manageable 650 words or so. Usually the editing process takes me longer than it takes me to write the first draft. That's because the real work is in the reworking — the scrubbing, polishing and finessing. That's also the fun part for me. That's my chance to try and make my writing sing.

Often I'm reminded that I'm just plain tone deaf. But sometimes, well, it can be sweet.

A blog is a different animal, though. That much I've learned. It's not just putting my column on the Web, which is pretty much what I've been doing since I started my own blog back in August 2005.

A blog is supposed to be more spontaneous than any column-writing I've ever undertaken. It should be informal, less structured, more conversational. And it's supposed to be interactive. That is, bloggers are supposed to engage readers in discussion — a back-and-forth exchange between blogger and reader and among readers themselves.

To this end, posting short, informal entries regularly — daily, even — is crucial. And that's where I fall flat on my face. Maybe it's my lawyer background that compels me to be long-winded. Maybe it's just that I'm such a creature of habit and my habit is to write 700-word columns. But I've got a hard time with brevity. And spontaneity. Not to mention forgoing all the editing and polishing. I've got to learn to go with the initial whoosh (and have shorter, more frequent whooshes) and leave it at that.

But what's the big deal? Why should I care? Is blogging so important anyway? Blogging, along with all the other bells and whistles of the World Wide Web, is the way of the future. They've even got a cool name for it as it relates to the craft we practice here in the newsroom: citizen journalism.

When it comes to journalism, everything about the Web requires lots of big changes in how we do what we do. Brevity is just the beginning. Interactivity is key. No longer do news editors alone define what is and isn't "news." People are no longer "readers" on the receiving end of news editors' decisions. Now they are "users" who get to pick and choose their "content" from a variety of sources. And in this brave new world we live in, "users" are even able to create "content" themselves and put it up on Web sites for all to see — and comment on.

In other words, the monopoly previously enjoyed by the news media on the identification and reporting of news is now a thing of the past. This isn't all bad — even if you're in the news business. But there are certainly some dangers. We've all learned that the Internet is not always the most reliable source of accurate information. A lot of the stuff floating around out there isn't vetted for accuracy. Rumors spread like wild fire — and the fire is fueled by the anonymity of the Internet.

Travel on the information highway is fast and treacherous. The trick for journalists is to take advantage of the great things the Web has to offer — for example, new sources of information, an incredible opportunity for research, the ability to reach the entire world with a story or image — without compromising the standards that make journalism more than rumor-mongering.

The trick for me, in particular, is to let go of some old habits. I'm starting tomorrow. I'm going to blog often and blog briefly. No more 700-word essays on my blog. No more simply posting the columns that I write for our newspapers. From now on, my blog takes on a life of its own. I'm scared but willing. Come along for the ride. Go to civiletti.blogspot.com and — whoosh. Interact with me and with each other. It is the 21st century, after all.

© 2006 Times-Review Newspapers

What a sorry episode

I can't stand it when people gossip about other people's sex lives. When you live in a small town — which still describes Riverhead, sort of — whispered rumors like that spread like wildfire.

My tolerance for that kind of salacious gossip is low because I was the subject of plenty of it myself. Heck, as a young, single town councilwoman 15 years or so ago, my sex life was legendary — according to the rumor mill. I heard rumors that had me carrying on with people I had never even met, let alone been intimate with. I'm fond of saying that if I'd had even half as much sex as I was rumored to have had back then, I'd still be smiling.

So I put no stock in rumors of this sort. And when I first heard the gossip about the "real reason" for school superintendent Paul Doyle's abrupt resignation last week, I discounted it completely. But holy cow, did that rumor spread. It was not only all over Riverhead within hours, it was even being repeated to us by a superintendent in another school district.

I decided to do what a responsible reporter should. When I reached Mr. Doyle by phone to interview him about his resignation, I told him what I'd heard and asked him to comment. I was expecting an indignant denial of the rumor that he was asked to resign because he was having a sexual relationship with a district employee. Instead, he said: "People are going to say what they're going to say."

Ordinarily, I couldn't care less about this kind of thing. It's none of my business — unless, of course, my husband or daughters are involved.

How Mr. Doyle spends his private time or who he spends it with is his private business and has no place on the pages of this newspaper, assuming no laws are being broken.

But the distinguishing factor here is the notion of private time, since it seems the superintendent's indiscretion included not only a district employee, but also time spent during the regular business day, when district taxpayers were paying him — both of them — to work. That's a problem.

Another, maybe even bigger, problem is how district officials handled this situation. District officials hired a private investigator to follow the superintendent. They then confronted him with evidence obtained by the investigator and sought his resignation. I suppose that's a perfectly reasonable course of action.

But I have a hard time accepting that district taxpayers will continue to pay this man's salary, with benefits, through the end of the year — to the tune of some $48,000. That's three months' worth of his annual salary of $180,000, plus health insurance premiums at $1,000 per month. That's more than what some district taxpayers have to survive on for an entire year. That is absolutely unconscionable.

School board members, who should be held accountable to the public for their handling of this, won't talk to us about it. Mum's the word. It's a personnel matter, not for public discussion, they say. Malarky, I say. Having a sexual relationship with a subordinate is grounds for dismissal, doubly so if they are cavorting during business hours. His behavior exposed the district to a possible sexual harassment claim, as well. Instead of punishing this errant behavior, the Riverhead Board of Education chose to reward it by "reassigning" the superintendent to his home through Dec. 31. In other words, he got a free pass. And we're paying him for a three-month vacation, to boot.

Why? It was the path of least resistance. Terminating the superintendent "for cause" would take time and money — lawyers' fees, plus the superintendent's salary during the termination process. It could cost the district tens of thousands of dollars. Paying him a three-month severance to "make him go away" was a "business decision" the board had to make. Some board members expressed regret that they felt they had to choose expediency over what's right. They also said they were warned by district legal counsel not to speak to the press about the circumstances of Mr. Doyle's departure, or they could be "sued personally."

This whole sorry episode leaves me wondering what else our school board might be willing to sweep under the rug for the sake of cover-your-backside expediency or for fear of being sued.

© 2006 Times/Review Newspapers

Protecting our schools

What is going on? Has the world gone mad?

Well, yes. And not just for the usual reasons. There's the war in Iraq, turbulence in the Middle East, nuclear muscle-flexing in Asia, global terrorism — all the usual signs and symptoms of malady in the human condition.

Then there's the likes of Charles Roberts, the 32-year-old psychotic who went on a rampage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, slaughtering five innocent little girls before turning his gun on himself.

The horrific incident in rural Lancaster County, Pa., once again drove home a point for people like us here on the North Fork: No place is safe.

We live in a quiet, rural area. Our kids go to nice schools, where things like this don't happen.

That's what we tell ourselves.

But things like this didn't used to happen in Nickel Mines, Pa., either. Or in Essex, Vt., where a gunman shot and killed a teacher preparing for class in an elementary school this fall. Or in Bailey, Colo., where a man police described as a drifter took six teenage girls hostage, sexually assaulted some of them, and killed one, before killing himself. Or in Hillsborough, N.C., where a deranged ex-student opened fire at a high school, injuring two.

Every one of these incidents in the past several weeks took place at schools in small towns — towns like ours, where crime rates are low and people feel secure in their homes. And where parents didn't give the possibility of armed men invading the local schoolhouse a second thought. Until now.

No place is safe from the madness and violence in this world. Not even a place like Lancaster County, a little piece of God's green earth where the Amish, consciously rejecting modern culture, set themselves apart to live and work in peace. If Amish country is susceptible to the madness of 21st-century America, what of Mattituck, Southold or Orient?

The violent incidents in schools around the country since the new term began share another disturbing characteristic. Other than the incident involving a student who killed his principal in a rural Wisconsin town last month, this new wave of violence has been at the hands of intruders, not students. This reverses an established trend: School violence had been an "inside" problem up till now. The vast majority of the 400 or so murders in schools over the past dozen years were committed by students.

The past month put a new face on school violence. The face of a drifter, a madman, a vengeful ex-boyfriend, the face of a stranger forcing his way through the doors of our school buildings, attacking our children and our teachers, for reasons the rest of us will never comprehend. Senseless, random violence.

The new threat weighs heavily on the minds of school superintendents on the North Fork this week, from Orient to Riverhead. They're trying to figure out how to react appropriately to what's been going on, trying to make sure they're doing everything they can to prevent the unthinkable from happening here. Should all schools have security guards? Metal detectors? Should doors be kept locked? How can we protect our children?

"We think we're so far removed from the big city that we're immune," said Oysterponds superintendent Stuart Rachlin, whose Main Road, Orient, elementary school suddenly feels exposed and potentially vulnerable. "But no one is immune." He and other local superintendents are thinking and talking about tightening security at their buildings, where doors are generally left unlocked and entry to the premises monitored by school office personnel.

School officials know that they can only do so much. There is the chilling realization that, as Greenport superintendent Charles Kozora puts it, "I don't think you can really do anything that's going to curtail a madman."

Sure, there are some basic precautions that schools can take, like having classroom doors that can be locked from the inside — which Greenport installed just a few years ago — so that the school can go into "lockdown" if there's an intruder or other threat of violence.

But you can't prevent someone from shooting into the classrooms from outside, notes Dr. Kozora. Denise Civiletti


"What do you do? Install bullet proof glass? And how about the kids on the playground? How do you protect them?"

Most security measures simply give people a false sense of security, he believes.

And at the same time, they turn a school campus into a prison-like environment — there's at least one school up-island where a barbed wire fence surrounds the property, whose driveway entrance has a guardhouse. No one enters the building — theoretically — without passing through another guarded checkpoint, complete with metal detectors. Sounds like the county jail complex in Riverside. Is that the school environment we want our kids to grow up in?

Recent events make you realize "it can happen anywhere," said Mattituck-Cutchogue superintendent James McKenna. "You can have the best plans in place and there are no guarantees. At any given moment, at any given time, anything can happen."

That's a unnerving thought. But it's an honest assessment of today's reality. Ours is a violent society. Popular culture — video games, movies and music — and the media are rife with violent images. It's no longer enough to report that the limousine struck by an allegedly drunk driver on the LIE last year had a dashboard camera that recorded the crash that took two innocent lives, and that the video was shown to the jury this week. No. Now we have to post the jarring video on the Internet for all to see, as Newsday did this week, so we can all bear first-hand witness to a nightmare.

Violence — from places around the corner to places around the globe — is so pervasive that we've become inured to it. We have raised an entire generation of children inured to violence. We have probably only just begun to see the fruits of that upbringing.

Same-sex marriage is here

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.