We just don't go there

As editors and publishers of small community newspapers, we have to wear many hats. If you're involved in running a small business of any kind, you can relate, I'm sure.

You have to do whatever it takes to get done the things that need doing — including the things you'd never ask anyone on the staff to do, like dealing with that stopped-up toilet. That's what makes running a small business fun, right?

If your business is publishing local newspapers, though, you sometimes have to assume roles that are, on the face of it, seemingly in conflict with one another. We've got a small editorial staff — those are the people who report and write the news content of our newspapers. Though our editorial staff is fairly typical of community weeklies, it's much smaller than the staffs at most dailies. As a result, our editors find themselves doing just about everything from writing obituaries to reporting and writing local news, to editing articles written by their reporters, to writing editorial commentary on local issues, writing headlines and proofreading pages. (Not to mention writing columns like this.)

We are dead serious about maintaining a strict division between our news and advertising departments. Advertisers, no matter how "big," will never dictate the editorial content (by this I mean news coverage and commentary) of our newspapers. It's not that they don't try. But we just don't go there. In fact, we have separate management overseeing advertising and editorial. If you want to pitch a news story, write a letter to the editor, or complain about a story we've written, talk to me. But if you want to buy an ad, I'll introduce you to my co-publisher, Andrew Olsen, who oversees advertising.

There's only one place where ads and news cross paths — we call it "political" advertising. In essence, these are ads whose purpose is to express a point of view rather than sell a product or service. We've got some long-standing policies about political ads.

For starters, we don't print anonymous ads. Every ad must disclose the name of the person, group or committee paying for it. And if the ad is from a group or committee, the ad must disclose the name of an individual officer (chairperson, president, treasurer, etc.).

The statements made in every political ad must be documented. This sometimes drives political party operatives nuts. Some of them want to be able to say whatever they want in their ads, and they resent it when we tell them they have to back up their allegations with facts. When in doubt, we ask for documentation, on paper. No exceptions.

When a political ad is taken by one of our sales representatives, an editor must approve it before publication. Among other things, it's the editor's responsibility to ensure that statements made in the ad are accurate and that they're documented. If an ad passes these tests, we'll print it. But publishing an ad doesn't mean we agree with the point of view expressed in it.

A newspaper is a unique business, because, even though it's a private business, it's a business that provides an important public forum. We have a duty to preserve that forum as an open forum, accessible to all. The forum extends beyond the letters pages, to the pages where paid advertising appears. As long as it's from an accountable source, and as long as it's accurate, and not libelous, we'll print it.

Last week, Broadwater Energy, whose proposal to site a huge floating liquefied natural gas facility in the Long Island Sound is something we've editorialized against more than once, took a full-page ad in our newspapers to promote its project. That we took Broadwater's ad will affect neither our coverage of the Broadwater plan nor our opinion of its merits. But Broadwater is entitled to access the public forum provided by the pages of our newspapers, just as anyone else is.

Before agreeing to run the ad, I asked for — and got — documentation of every statement Broadwater alleged in its ad. Some of the facts and figures they cite are, in my opinion, subject to interpretation and debate. But it's not my role to debate them in this context — any more than it's my role to engage in a debate when I'm reporting a story. I have to remember which hat I'm wearing, keep my opinions to myself — and save my opinions for the commentary pages.

Since this is an opinion column, I'm free to opine. I think Broadwater is a very bad idea. It doesn't belong in the Long Island Sound. That seems patently obvious. It also seems pretty obvious that the Bush administration, under which the natural gas industry has enjoyed favored son status since before the first inauguration (remember the vice president's "secret" energy policy committee?), is determined to foist this thing on us, like it or not. I for one don't like it, and I won't hesitate to say so — in the appropriate forum. But we also won't hesitate to provide full access to this forum to others with contrary opinions, no matter how fervently we disagree with them.

Going in circles

Deja vu. That's how I felt reading Tim Gannon's story about the town and county discussing ways to solve the Route 58 traffic nightmare. I've read this story before. More than once. Tim Gannon must feel like the weatherman character played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day — stuck in the same story.

Route 58 is a mess. Not only is it inconvenient, it's a safety hazard. It's the route to our community hospital.

Traffic levels have outgrown the capacity of this two-lane "Old Country Road." It was built as a by-pass for people traveling to points on the North Fork, so they wouldn't get snagged in traffic on Main Street in what was then a bustling regional commercial hub: downtown Riverhead.

The town has allowed intense commercial development along Route 58. The existing road can't handle the volume of vehicles using it.

Rt. 58 must be widened. It can't be widened with the existing traffic circle in place. The obvious thing to do is remove the circle. The county has been recommending these changes for 20 years. The county would have started the work (Rt. 58 is a county road) many years ago (at a fraction of the cost of what it's going to cost today). But the town wouldn't agree to remove the circle. (Rt. 58 intersects with a town road, Roanoke Avenue, where the circle is,so the town must agree.) We've been having these same discussions for 20 years.

The traffic engineers who prepared the "traffic element" of the town's master plan several years ago recommended that Rt. 58 be widened and the circle be removed.

Residents and some town officials went bonkers (as usual) at the idea of removing the circle.

So the traffic engineers changed their recommendation. They then proposed the circle be expanded to a two-lane circle. Lots of luck with that. (My prediction: same bottleneck, more motorist confusion, more accidents.) But that wasn't the traffic consultants' original advice.

County and town officials recently met (again) to discuss (again) what to do about Rt. 58. The county public works people said (again) Rt. 58 should be widened to four lanes in each direction. They also said (again) the circle must go. Riverhead officials (again) objected. DPW said let's agree we'll go with the recommendations of traffic engineers (again). Town officials argued the engineers already recommended a two-lane circle. But that's not quite true. That was the engineers' fall-back position after the town rejected (again) the idea of removing the circle.

That circle is part of our heritage, says Councilman Ed Densieski, who is leaving his council seat to run for highway superintendent. Like many Riverheaders, he is emotionally attached to that circle. I guess it's nostalgia; it reminds them of a simpler, quieter time in our little town, the good ol' days.

It's fitting that our government leaders see a circle as something emblematic of Riverhead. Riverhead government is pretty good at going in circles, after all.

You know, I have a funny feeling. I could swear I've written this column before...

I guess it's just deja vu all over again.

When the spirit moves you

Spirituality. For me, it ebbs and flows. I'm usually too caught up in the brick and mortar world to spend much time trying to get in touch with things spiritual. And lately, I've been feeling especially bereft, spiritually. Not long ago, this was different. I spent time each morning in meditation and prayer. I felt my connection to a higher power, a life source, God. Not lately. I guess I just work too much.

Finally taking some time to dig in the dirt of my garden this weekend, I felt reconnected with earth, always a good first step to connecting with the spiritual side of life. How can you observe all the amazing things of the natural world without feeling a connection to something so much bigger than yourself?

Then on Sunday, I met a man who seems to spend a great deal of his time in the spiritual plane. More work for me, though. I went to a press conference on the Sound in Wading River, held by a man who was starting a 35 day vigil to protest Broadwater. Well, protest isn't exactly the right word. His vigil is held to "invoke the spirit of nature," the spirit of the Sound, to stop Broadwater.

Now, protests I can relate to. Vigils to invoke the spirit of a body of water to rise up and stop a development project... Well, that's not something I understand very well.

I expected the guy to be a crackpot, if you want to know the truth. What I found when I met Pete Maniscalco at Wading River Creek Sunday afternoon was something else entirely. Sure, what he's doing is really sort of "out there" — but he is intelligent and thoughtful and a delight to speak with. (And quite a good interview.) He exudes an inner peace. I found myself wondering what it would be like to camp out on the Sound for more than a month, to spend all that time meditating, praying, communing with Mother Earth and the spirit of nature. I have a hard time sitting still and being quiet (without reading or writing) for more than five minutes.

So I asked him to blog about his experience for our papers. After explaining to him that a blog is sort of an online journal, he readily agreed to do it. He'd planned to keep a journal anyway, he said. So every day at around 5 p.m. for the next month, Pete is going to phone in his blog entry to me, and I am going to type what he dictates and post it on a blog I've created for him, which I called Pete's Broadwater Vigil.

To learn more about Pete and his vigil, read one of Times/Review's papers this week. And please do check out his blog, and post your own comments about what he's doing, feeling and thinking about. I think this could be a very interesting community dialogue about an extremely important subject.

Long Island's death by taxes

Tallgrass The magnitude of it takes your breath away. Set in the context of the lot lines of surrounding properties and roadways, the Tallgrass PDD map makes your jaw drop. At least it did mine.

Three hundred seventy-eight homes, 175,000 square feet of retail space, and an 18-hole golf course set on 320 acres. High density but “smart” development, at least according to proponents who say the overall environmental and economic impacts of the 283 single-family homes the developer could build as-of-right under current zoning. A Hobsian choice.

Small wonder many Shoreham residents were clamoring for the government to buy the land for preservation, and why Shoreham Councilman Kevin McCarrick tried to maneuver a moratorium to give the preservation effort time to bear fruit.

Is preservation the right thing for Tallgrass? I’m not so sure. Public funds for preservation are scarce and must be spent according to a well-thought-out plan that prioritizes properties according to objective criteria — which, in the best of all worlds, shouldn’t include “not in my backyard.”

When it comes to development, we’ve gotten a lot wrong on Long Island. We’ve carved this place up into large lots and built big homes surrounded by a lot of lawn, kept green and pretty by high doses of fertilizer and pesticides. We’ve shunned public transportation, and made being a pedestrian a life-threatening endeavor. We’ve constructed “The American Dream” on this fragile spit of barrier beach, and we’re learning that the dream is, in some ways, more of a nightmare.

Astronomical property taxes stalk us in our nightmare. Taxes have driven businesses and people off Long Island. They’ve made it hard to hire qualified employees from other places. I speak from hard experience in this. I lost a great editor because he got fed up with his $12,000 annual property tax bill. In his new home in the Midwest, he’s got a bigger house and his property taxes are around $2,000. I lost the opportunity to hire, over the past couple of years, two great editors — one from Virginia and one from Missouri — because of Long Island’s property taxes. Both were flabbergasted by the amounts we have to shell out every month to pay property taxes around here. Their tax bills now, they told me, are under $2,000 a year, an amount that would at least triple if they came to work for me here on Long Island. As an employer, I’m struggling to be able to pay employees enough to afford to live here. And it hurts.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. They were the talk of the town at the Republican convention last week. The Republicans, who arrived at the convention in cars bearing “Hi-Tax Foley” bumper stickers, would have us believe that property taxes were invented by Brookhaven Democrats. But there isn’t a thoughtful person alive on Long Island who would buy into that oversimplified poppycock. (Advice to Brookhaven Republicans: Don’t insult the voters’ intelligence.)

Property taxes — along with electric rates — are indeed killing us. Most of the property tax burden (around two-thirds) is the tab for education. Developers, in recognition of this fact, have crafted proposals to limit impacts on our schools, and, therefore, on our tax bills. These are often ultra-high-density projects like Tallgrass, but the pitch — now a familiar refrain — is that the project won’t bring a lot of children into our schools, either because ownership is limited to the over-55 set or because the housing units contain fewer than three bedrooms. So a plan with 378 homes developed with (theoretically) child-limiting housing stock is “better” than one with fewer, bigger homes, a large retail development and a golf course.

I find this all very sad. For one thing, children are not one of the seven plagues (though as the mother of teenagers, sometimes I wonder). And housing developments that don’t “add” children to the schools are not, by definition, automatically wonderful. Senior citizen housing comes with its own burdens — ask hospital administrators and our volunteer ambulance squads about that. Besides all that, the health of our local economy depends, in large part, on young workers who need to be able to buy houses and raise families.

We need the right mix of housing; single-family homes, townhouses, condos and rental units are all an important part of the mix. Sometimes it requires biting the bullet on a gargantuan housing project, like Tallgrass or the one being planned for Yaphank. Sometimes it means tacking a TDR component onto an open space bond or transfer tax.

But we also desperately need tax relief, and it can’t come from limiting the child-bearing-age population. It must come, in part, from the frugal administration of governments at all levels, from Albany down to the local school districts. And it must come from a wholesale restructuring of how we fund public education, one that shifts the burden from property taxes to income taxes. Without such a shift, property taxes here have nowhere to go but up; let’s not allow ourselves to be fooled by shallow promises of politicians willing to cook the books to win elections. (Did somebody say “tax holiday?”)

We’re in trouble here, folks. Who has the chutzpah to admit it and the backbone to tackle the crisis head-on? That’s what we need. As County Executive Steve Levy, a scrappy Democrat and self-described fiscal conservative, told the Republican convention when he accepted their cross-endorsement last week, taxes are not a partisan issue. Quality of life is not a partisan issue. These things transcend party politics. They are the stuff of the American Dream, things that are important to all of us, regardless of which box we check off on the voter enrollment form.

“Hi-Tax Foley” may sound good to Republican campaign strategists, just as the refrain of government reform in “Crookhaven” was sweet music for Democratic operatives two years ago. But voters will be looking beyond campaign slogans to the meat-and-potatoes of candidates’ plans to control property taxes and their ability to make the tough decisions that need to be made — to deliver government services efficiently, protect the environment, preserve our quality of life and allow the next generation to pursue its dreams in the place we call home.

Who is Joe Latini? (Or, the return of the llamas.)

I covered the Brookhaven Town and Suffolk County Republican party conventions at the Radisson Hotel in Holtsville Thursday evening. But the most interesting part of the evening involved Riverhead politics.

After the proceedings ended, I was chatting casually with the man who's running for tax receiver — I'm sorry but his name escapes me; I didn't write it down — when this other man I'd never met before came over and joined the conversation.

He started telling the tax receiver candidate he should move to Riverhead, like he himself had done. Things are so easy out there, he said. You can really influence elections. It's so small. Etc. He said, you can knock incumbents out so easily, because without the committee designation, there's no way they can win a primary. And then he started bragging about what he did in the last town election in Riverhead.

"I did it to Rose," he boasted. "And I can't wait to do it to Barbara. She's not going to get re-elected. She's not even going to get the nomination," he said with a big smile. "And I'm going to be grinning from here to here." He pointed at his ears with his two forefingers.

All right, then. I wasn't sure how, or whether, to respond to this. Who the heck was this guy? That's what I wanted to know. So I asked. Joe Latini, he told me. I introduced myself, but I'm fairly certain he knew exactly who he was talking to when he came over and said these things about Riverhead politics, Rose Sanders — who got railroaded out of office in a very sleazy campaign in 2005 — and Barbara Blass, who has a target on her back now. (Her party is mad at her for supporting Rose in the 2005 primary, among other things.)

Joe Latini. He lives in Wading River, apparently a recent transplant, because he was the Republican candidate for county legislator in the 5th district in 2003. He ran against Vivian Viloria-Fisher, the deputy presiding officer of the county legislature.

Blass, a Riverhead Republican, and Fisher, an East Setauket Democrat, have one thing in common that I know of (besides gender): the Long Island Environmental Voters Forum wants them both out of office.

I don't recall whether LIEVF took an official position against Sanders in 2003. But LIEVF board member Anthony Coates, who ran Republican Ed Densieski's failed supervisor campaign in 2003, was involved in creating a couple of very nasty anonymous mailers that went out to Republican voters on the eve of the GOP primary. (The Riverhead GOP didn't support their incumbent councilwoman, Sanders, nominating instead John Dunleavy. Sanders ran a primary campaign to try to get the nomination.) One of the anonymous mailers had a picture of Sanders, Blass and Hillary Clinton at an anti-Broadwater rally, organized by the Anti-Broadwater Coalition (of which LIEVF is a member). It didn't mention Broadwater; it just said, "Birds of a feather?" obviously trying to smear Sanders and Blass by associating them with the devil Hillary. Pretty ironic, a LIEVF board member involved in creating a mailing that slammed a candidate with a picture taken at an anti-Broadwater rally sponsored by a coalition LIEVF belongs to.

The News-Review tracked down the name of the owner of the vacant condo whose address was the return addresss on the anonymous mailer: Christopher Carbonne. We also tracked down the name of the mailing house that owned the bulk mail permit used on the mailer, Village Graphics. Anthony Coates admitted to me that he was the one who involved Chris Carbonne, a graphic artist, in the Sanders mailings. Carbonne was a personal acquaintance, he said. But Coates claimed, quite incredibly in my opinion, that he didn't know who had placed the order or who paid for the mailings. Carbonne and Village Graphics both wouldn't say.

LIEVF's campaign finance disclosure statements, posted online at the board of elections Web site, show a $1,725 payment to Christopher Carbonne, Inc. for "graphic design and printing" and a $540 payment to Village Graphics, "mail house" both on Nov. 3, five days before the 2005 general election. I looked at all of LIEVF's disclosures that are posted online. These were the only payments to Carbonne and Village Graphics ever made by LIEVF, at least for the eight reporting periods for which statements are posted online. So, did LIEVF order and pay for the Sanders mailers? Oh, irony of ironies, LIEVF paying for an anonymous mailer slamming a candidate with a picture taken of her at an anti-Broadwater event!

This was a question I had to ask. So I called up LIEVF's treasurer, Richard Amper, and asked him.

No, no, Amper said.

"That was a mailing we did against Viloria-Fisher," he told me.

Villoria-Fisher's opponent in 2005, Joe Michaels, doesn't list any in-kind contributions showing payment for mailings by LIEVF. (He shows one contribution from LIEVF, for $100, on Oct. 28, 2005.) But if it was the same nasty, anonymous mailer — an attack piece on the incumbent rather than a piece soliciting support for Michaels, maybe Michaels wouldn't have to disclose it by law. Or maybe, as Sanders' opponent John Dunleavy claimed in 2005, he knew nothing about it. Funny, if there was a nasty anonymous attack piece against Villoria-Fisher, she doesn't remember it. (I called and asked.) You'd think she would, but, she said, she tries not to dwell on the negative.

I guess we just have to take Dick Amper's word for it that LIEVF didn't pay Carbonne and Village Graphics for the anti-Sanders attack pieces.

It's interesting that Riverhead's got all these Brookhaven "players" involved in its local politics now. And maybe a little scary. Just like Latini said, Riverhead is small. And, yes, it's elections are probably very easy to influence, compared to a town like Brookhaven. But though it's a small town, it's got big issues, and lots of land. There are deals to be cut and there's money to be made. It's very appealing to these "players." The fun has just begun.

Flying a flag of remembrance

Memorial Day. As a kid, war seemed long ago and far away. World War II and Korea were ancient history for me, born in the late 1950s. Then the tumult of Vietnam swept the country. The older brothers of my peers got drafted and sent to the jungles of Southeast Asia. The death and destruction there was distant, detached. And Vietnam, for me and so many young people of that era, was all about resistance. Resisting the draft, resisting the yoke our parents' generation put on us to fight a war that made no sense, resisting "the establishment."

Honoring our war dead at that time did not occur to many people my age. The men who donned a military uniform and went off to fight in Vietnam, the 58,000 of them who were killed there — they deserved pity, perhaps, for being exploited that way. But honor? My generation was too caught up in the frenzy of protest to even consider honoring those men and women who lost their lives in that awful war.

Vietnam so complicated things for young people of the 1970s. Our parents and grandparents fought wars that mattered. Our nation seemed much more clearly on the side of what was right back then. Vietnam, on the other hand, was pointless — fighting to preserve the rule of one horrible dictator versus another, protecting Southeast Asia from the spread of communism, and thereby protecting democracy throughout the world. The threat didn't seem real. The arguments shallow. And our government lied. Repeatedly. Tens of thousands died. For what? The distrust for government bred in my heart during those formative years of my life remains with me to this day.

So I was never one to observe Memorial Day. It seemed somehow a celebration of war. I couldn't separate honoring the soldiers who gave their lives from honoring the war that claimed them. And war, the war I knew (albeit, gratefully, from afar) was no cause for honor.

War is nothing to celebrate. War rarely accomplishes anything. War breeds more hatred, more violence, more war. More destruction and death.

There are loud echoes of Vietnam in Iraq: wars fought under false pretenses, government leaders lying, the true purpose of battle, and its efficacy, justifiably questioned.

But those of us opposed to the present war should not make the same mistakes we made during Vietnam. We must not get the matter of honoring the men and women who sacrificed their lives in this war tangled up in our opposition to it. They answered a call — whether patriotic or economic. They put on a uniform. They went into battle in service to their country, and died. Honoring that sacrifice is not the same as honoring the war that claimed them, or honoring the war's purpose, or its perpetrators.

When I fly the flag on Monday, it won't be an expression of support for the war in Iraq, or solidarity with the administration's purpose or plan for this ill-conceived battle. It will be to remember, acknowledge and respect the lives cut short — all lives — by the insanity of war — all wars. It will be an expression of grief, not glory. It will be flown in the hope that by remembering, truly remembering, the real costs of war, we will diminish the opportunity for war in the future.

E-mails to denise@timesreview.com.

'Tis the season to be silly

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To normal people living normal lives, spring has arrived. Trees are flowering, peonies are budding, bulbs are blooming. The air is sweet and warm, infused with the optimism of new life.

But there's a dark underbelly to this season. Beware.

Aroused perhaps by the spring peepers that fill the night with song, sleeping creatures awaken in a netherworld existing parallel to the universe normal humans occupy. It's a dangerous place, this netherworld. The streets run with mud (for slinging) and blood (for letting). Citizens of this netherworld come to life right about now, in the heart of this glorious time called spring by the innocent masses.

We ink-stained wretches of the fourth estate know this season for what it is. We have a better name for it.

Silly season.

Silly season is the dark underbelly of spring, especially in odd-numbered years, which herald local elections. It's that unglorious time of year when the netherworld begins seething with life. The office fax machine begins spitting out daily (or more frequent) messages from political strategists, political party committees, campaign headquarters and politicians. E-mail inboxes are stuffed with an assortment of "news" announcements by elected officials, clamoring for ink and a photo op. And sooner or later — sooner and sooner in silly seasons of late, it seems — the mud begins to fly and blood begins to flow.

Silly season is a time when leading citizens of the netherworld do and say peculiar things, often orchestrated by self-styled strategists in dark, ill-fitting suits, who are obsessed with making "the other side" look bad. These creatures, living in the shadowy netherworld, are the enemies of good government. And they're damn proud of it. For them, it's all about the game. It's all about winning. It isn't how you play the game, but whether you win or lose, you know.

Silly season is well under way in Brookhaven. And it's as compelling an argument for four-year council and supervisor terms as you can make.

Case in point: this week's press conference by Republican council members to announce a bill that would prohibit elected officials, town employees and candidates for public office from appearing in "taxpayer-financed advertisements, promotional, educational or informational materials."

In other words, now that Democrats are in control at Town Hall, the Republicans are indignant that town taxpayers are paying for printed materials that might benefit the re-election prospects of elected officials (read: Democratic elected officials) because the names and photos of said officials appear therein.

Gimme a break.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I enjoy reading the self-promoting "newsletters" from various elected officials that arrive in my mailbox — at frequent intervals during silly season. Though these mailings are sometimes unintentionally humorous, they are, I agree, a waste of taxpayer dollars. Their purpose is to promote the politician much more than to inform the public about important issues, as is their guise.

But this week's campaign stunt — and that's all it was — by board Republicans reeks of such hypocrisy, it's hard to believe they could assemble at that press conference and announce their new "ethics" resolution without breaking into loud guffaws. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

It's especially ironic that the offending mailer with which the Republicans took umbrage is the town's "Green Gazette," a newsletter with a legitimate purpose — informing residents about waste reduction and recycling — that actually contained useful information whose dissemination is totally appropriate for the expenditure of public funds. That this four-pager had pictures of the supervisor in it didn't make it "political." GOP strategists hope voters to forget this publication actually predates the current administration. Under prior (Republican) administrations, it used to be called "Trash Talk." Hilariously apropos, if you ask me, all things considered. And you can bet your sweet bippy it had pictures of Republican supervisors and council members in it. Not unlike the oversized magnet stuck on my refrigerator door at home, with the name and picture of a certain Brookhaven Republican councilman prominently splayed across the top, above a "service directory" listing various town departments and phone numbers.

The Republicans this week were dancing to a number choreographed by campaign strategists, a political consulting firm called The Roosevelt Strategy Group, which advised the recent campaigns of Republican candidates Jeanine Pirro (for state attorney general), Judith Pascale for county clerk, Jay Schneiderman for county legislator, and Conservative Vincent DeMarco for sheriff. News of the Walsh-Mazzei-McCarrick — ahem — initiative came in a press release issued by the Roosevelt group — presumably hired by the town Republican Party, and not paid for with tax dollars.

These are the kinds of people who put the "silly" in the season. And this is something we can expect more of as the season unfolds. For those of us hoping to engage people seeking elective office in a meaningful discussion of important local issues, it's a disappointment but no surprise. That is, after all, how this season got its name.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Of Mothers and Daughters

Motherhood. Some days, it's not what it's cracked up to be. Especially when you happen to be the mother of teenage daughters. When raging hormones collide in the kitchen at 7 a.m. before school — this could be a WWF spectacular: Adolescence vs. Menopause, battle of titans — well, look out.

Being a mother is a tough job. It's the hardest thing I've ever taken on in my life, much harder than publishing newspapers — and often a lot less fun. To all you new mothers out there, I'm sorry to tell you that pregnancy, childbirth and infancy — even with all those sleepless nights — are the easy days in this odyssey called motherhood. Just buckle your seat belts. Babies are so uncomplicated. They eat. They burp. They soil their diapers. The colicky ones, like my older daughter, are more of a challenge. (If she's any indication, the challenge of colic may be a precursor of challenges to come.) But babies are relatively easy to keep happy — and entertained.

In hindsight, even the rough spots in infancy and early childhood really aren't so rough. Looking back, they can even be funny. Like the time when I picked my crying daughter up from her crib just in time to experience projectile vomiting for the first time — square in the face. I wax nostalgic for the days when my biggest struggle with my daughters was whether they'd wear their Barney or Mickey Mouse T-shirts to preschool.

Teenagers are much more complicated beings. I once saw a bumper sticker: "Adolescence is the reason some species eat their young." I can relate. Teens are totally self-absorbed. Sometimes I'd swear if I dropped dead on the kitchen floor, they'd step over me on their way out the door, peering down long enough just to see if I happened to be clutching cash in my hand.

Motherhood is a euphemism for indentured servitude. Heavy labor from dawn till dark, no pay, little notice or appreciation, and frequent abuse.

So why is it I wouldn't trade this vocation for anything? Why, no matter how hard the days get, or how hurt I feel, or how crazy they make me, why would I do anything for those two girls I call my daughters? Why do I feel so blessed just to be their mom?

Actually, I don't really know. It's completely illogical. Call it love. Call it the deepest, most abiding, life-changing love imaginable. Call it motherhood, because that's as good a word as any. And it certainly sounds better than "indentured servant."

Maybe it's because I remember how it felt to carry their developing bodies inside me, to feel those magical movements in my belly. Or because I remember the texture and scent of their soft baby skin and the fierceness of the grip of their pudgy little hands. Or the first time they looked at me and smiled — and it wasn't gas. Or what it was like to hold their hands and walk on the beach, gathering shells and trying to find answers to their impossible curious questions. (How do you admit to your 4-year-old that you don't know why the sky is blue, or how planes stay up in the air?) Or watching their eyes wander off to sleep during our bedtime story ritual.

I remember all the little miracles along the way, and without fail, I fall in love all over again.

And I know if I endure these difficult years, I'll eventually get my daughters back. That's what the parents of 20-somethings reassure me. "You'll get them back." I usually joke in reply, "If I live long enough." But in my heart, I'm only half-kidding.

Meanwhile, I'll watch the 200 videotapes on which my husband and I recorded much of the first decade of their lives. And I'll thumb through their baby books and photo albums and reminisce.

Until then, every now and again when they reach out to me — for a hug or advice or a shoulder to lean on — I'll be there. Remembering, waiting, and looking forward to 2017.

That we should never forget

Marion Blumenthal Lazan's hazel eyes sparkle with pride as she flips through the pages of the small photo album she carries in her purse, showing off her children and grandchildren to teachers and students at a luncheon in her honor at Rocky Point Middle School Monday.

The petite and vivacious, well-dressed woman from Hewlett could be anybody's modern-day bubbe. (For all you goyim out there, that's grandma in Yiddish.) She identifies her three grown children by what they do and where they live. She kvells — beams with pride and pleasure — over the images of her nine grandchildren. Her index finger touches each face as she says each name aloud, a broad smile on her face. My mother used to do the same thing with pictures of her grandkids.

But Ms. Lazan's pride takes on special meaning when you think about how the smiling, attractive people in the snapshots filling the pages of this grandma's brag book were almost never born.

Ms. Lazan, a German-born Jew, spent more than six of her first 11 years of life in the Westerbork refugee camp and the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She and her family were on their way to a death camp, packed into a cattle car with 2,500 other prisoners for two weeks, facing certain extermination at the end of their journey, when an allied invasion ended their trip and ended the war.

She had nearly starved to death, weighing only 35 pounds when Russian soldiers liberated the surviving occupants of that death train, on April 23, 1945. One in five had perished on the way. Marion and her family were among the fortunate to have escaped with their lives, though barely. And her father died six weeks later of typhus contracted at Bergen-Belsen.

The nightmare she lived as a child still haunts her, 60 years later. She recalls in vivid, explicit detail the horrors suffered at the hands of the Nazis: being slowly starved to death, being beaten, terrorized by vicious German shepherd police dogs. The lice that infested her hair and clothes and spread disease and death among the prisoners. The straw mattress on a narrow wooden bunk that served as living quarters for two in an unheated wooden barracks, with one thin blanket to share between them. Standing in assembly for hours on end, while Nazi soldiers conducted head counts of their prisoners, with little to wear and nothing to shield her from the weather. The frostbite she suffered as a result. Prisoners trying to warm their hands with their own urine. Having nothing to occupy her mind but fear, nothing to play with but dirt and pebbles — and lice. The sights and sounds and odors that no little child should have to see or hear or smell. The utterly unspeakable.

And yet, Marion Blumenthal Lazan speaks. She has to. Driven by a passion that the world must never forget how six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, Ms. Lazan speaks. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to recount the details of her imprisonment repeatedly as she travels the country with her doting husband, Nathaniel, speaking to schoolchildren, as she did at two assemblies of middle and high school pupils in Rocky Point Monday.

"I detach," she told me. "That's the only way I can do it. So it's as if I'm talking about a bad dream I had, rather than something that I actually lived through."

But Ms. Lazan's mission extends beyond making sure the Holocaust is not forgotten by future generations. Hers is a mission to make children understand the logical consequences of unbridled bigotry. The details of her ordeal are interspersed with words of wisdom: Be kind, be gentle, be tolerant. Accept others' differences, even celebrate them. Never judge a large group of people by the actions of a few of them. Don't generalize. Don't ever, ever follow anyone blindly. No one.

Quietly, but firmly, she teaches us how history repeats itself, relating current events to the lessons of the Holocaust. Religious fundamentalists, terrorists, Sept. 11, ethnic "cleansing," genocide in Darfur. All the violence in the world that's fueled by hatred, bigotry and intolerance.

Of course, I can't do justice to the compelling message carried by this 73-year-old Holocaust survivor to the children of Rocky Point this week. But I can tell you it is a message those kids heard loud and clear. They were riveted in their seats. You could hear a pin drop in the auditorium, though it was filled with 750 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. Nearly every student's hand shot up when Ms. Lazan asked for questions at the conclusion of her talk. They didn't want to leave the auditorium; a large group surrounded her onstage, where she spoke with students one-on-one, and freely dispensed warm, loving hugs to each of them.

Ms. Lazan's courage, spirit and determination, her zest for life, her love for humanity and her message of respect and tolerance made an indelible impression on the young hearts and minds of Rocky Point students this week. Her living history lesson will be remembered by those she touched forever.

Armed & dangerous at school

A disturbed young man, two handguns, a shooting spree on a school campus, and 32 innocent people are dead in what authorities are calling the worst shooting rampage in our nation's history.

Amid the chaos, law enforcement officials are trying to figure out why a 23-year-old college student at Virginia Tech became a mass murderer Monday. They're piecing together bits of information about who he was, what made him tick, and what was so terribly wrong.

It's not as if there aren't any clues. The depth of the man's psychological troubles was evident — to his roommates, to whom he barely spoke, to his classmates, who found him so "creepy" they dropped out of a class they shared, even to a teacher, who refused to continue to teach him, referred him for counseling and even reported him to the police.

Then there are the other "whys" about this horrific incident, the questions being asked of school and police officials: Why didn't the university administration take immediate action after two students in a dorm were shot dead at 7 a.m., hours before the rampage in an academic building? Why weren't students notified of a gunman on campus? Why didn't the administration implement a campus "lockdown"? People will continue to ask, especially the family members of the students who lost their lives — and inevitably, their lawyers. The university president's answer this week will not likely change very much: We did the best we could with the information we had available.

And they probably did. Which doesn't make the answer any more satisfying to the parents of children murdered in their classrooms Monday morning.

There are plenty of unanswered "whys" but the "how" is crystal clear. A 23-year-old man legally purchased two handguns in the last two months, according to police. He walked into a pawnshop and bought a .22 caliber pistol in February. In March, he bought a semiautomatic 9-mm Glock from a gun dealer — a gun similar to the handgun carried by police officers, capable of firing 15 rounds in rapid succession. He bought these guns pursuant to Virginia law. The dealers conducted the routine background check the law requires. He was clean. He walked out with the weapons — and ammo — in hand. In Virginia, you can buy one handgun every 30 days.

The ease with which people, even deeply disturbed people like Cho Seung-Hui, can legally purchase weapons in America is appalling. I don't understand the justification for selling semiautomatic and automatic handguns. These are not hunting guns. They are murder weapons, period. How could this even be a matter of debate?

How could anyone look at Monday's massacre and not think about gun control laws? Better still, how could anyone respond to what happened this week by accusing gun control advocates of "dancing in blood" and trying to politicize the massacre in an effort to "destroy the second amendment." That's exactly what Alan Gottleib, the founder of The Second Amendment Foundation, says in a press release e-mailed to me Tuesday. And Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, says in another press release, issued the same day as the attack, that gun bans are the problem, not the solution. He calls for an "immediate end to the gun-free zone law" in Virginia, which prohibits guns on school campuses. "[Criminals] don't like having their victims shoot back at them," says Mr. Pratt in the press release — sent to the media, offering him as a talk show guest. If other Virginia Tech students had been armed, they could have stopped the shooter, he says.

Give everyone a gun and we'll all be safer. Machine gun, anyone?

I doubt there's a parent in America this morning, still processing this week's events, and remembering Columbine, a similar tragedy that occurred eight years ago tomorrow, who doesn't have a heavy feeling in the pit of her or his stomach. It comes over me as I watch my daughters walk into Riverhead High School when I drop them off every morning. I think of the parents who said goodbye from behind the wheel of their car on April 20, 1999, unaware they'd never see their kids again, because of two deeply disturbed, heavily armed young men on a rampage. Most mornings, I whisper a little prayer. Keep them safe, Lord. Please keep them safe.

And that's the best I can do. Pray. Like the actions of administrators at Virginia Tech this week, it may not be enough. Only two things would stop a shooter like Cho: cure his sickness or keep a gun out of his hands. We can't seem to do either.

Good news, bad judgment

What's "news" is all too often bad. Political corruption, rising taxes, murders, fatal car accidents, suicides — you name it. At the editor's desk in the office of any community newspaper, you see it all. Sometimes, it's hard to decide what to do with some of the stuff that lands in your e-mail in-box or comes in across the fax machine. And contrary to popular opinion about modern-day media, we do give these things long, hard thought. Every story and picture we print can have an effect — sometimes a really big one — on somebody in our community, be it a neighbor, a member of our church congregation, the friend of a friend, or a total stranger. We recognize this and take very seriously our duty to be accurate and fair — and sensitive.

Last year, at the National Newspaper Association conference in Milwaukee, I picked up a copy of a book whose title intrigued me, "Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper," by Jim Pumarlo. It's an instructive little handbook on best practices for small-town-newspaper editors faced with tough decisions about whether and/or how to report on difficult events and circumstances. I've read and reread it, taking away and putting into practice some key points about using good judgment when reporting bad news close to home.

Here are the basics. Establish clear policies about reporting this kind of news — including reporting suicides or suspensions of high school athletes, for example, or publishing photos of fatal car accidents. Be aware of the effect your news reporting may have on people's lives, and act with appropriate care in researching, reporting and writing sensitive stories. Explain your newsroom decisions to your paper's readers.

Mr. Pumarlo was a workshop presenter at the N.Y. Press Association convention two weeks ago — you know, the convention where the Sun was crowned top weekly newspaper in the state, something I was gloating about in this space last week? I eagerly took advantage of the opportunity to hear him speak about "bad news and good judgment."

Then I came home to SunLand and blew it. Big time.

In my zeal to show off how well the Sun did in the Press Association's 2006 Better Newspaper Contest, I violated some basic principles when I decided to reprint a photo of a fatal car crash originally published Sept. 15, 2006. The scene depicted in the photo — a very unusual single-car accident in which a car became airborne and crashed into the second story of a garden apartment building in Coram, killing the driver — was news when it happened, and, as such, we were correct to print it at the time.

We reprinted it last week just to show a photo that won a first place award for "spot news" in the contest. The scene it depicted was no longer news; reprinting it simply to show our readers what won the Sun a photography award in the contest was, in a word, wrong.

I soon heard from relatives of Vincent Pontillo, the crash victim, decrying my decision to reprint that photo. A letter from the sister of Mr. Pontillo, Laura Kraus-Johnson, appears on page 8. Ms. Kraus-Johnson wrote to me to express her dismay and disappointment; I asked her permission to print the letter, because I believe its message is important and I believe my action warrants a public apology to Ms. Kraus-Johnson and the rest of Mr. Pontillo's family.

Reprinting that photo demonstrated insensitivity and poor judgment on my part. I am, as I've expressed to Mr. Pontillo's family members, deeply sorry.

The photograph — a picture the contest judges called "amazing" and "spectacular" — depicted a horrific accident that took the life of a 43-year-old Mount Sinai man. He was a gentle, family-oriented guy with a great sense of humor, his sister told me this week. His tragic death was a life-altering event for his mother and four siblings, his longtime girlfriend, Cathy, his seven nieces and nephews, and large extended family. He was, Ms. Kraus-Johnson said, an all-around good guy, loved by many.

I'll never know Mr. Pontillo, of course. But I have a sense of what he was like from my brief encounter with his older sister — not just by her words, but by her behavior. She didn't want to berate or reprimand me; she only wanted me to understand how she felt. At the same time, she understood and accepted how badly I felt about it. She taught me a lesson in sensitivity — and forgiveness — hard to glean from any book, and one I'll not soon forget.

First printed in The North Shore Sun, April 13, 2007

Good plans run amok

Leave it to government to create chaos in an attempt to create efficiency.

That's exactly what's happened as a result of the state commission charged with improving health-care facilities. The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century — colloquially known as the Berger Commission after its chairman, investment banker Stephen Berger — was created by Gov. George Pataki and the state Legislature in 2005 to come up with a plan to fix the state's ailing health-care system. It did. Now, in the initial steps of the process of implementing that plan, the state has thrown community health-care providers into chaos, as the page one story by Julie Lane this week shows.

A good idea: strengthen and improve acute and long-term health-care facilities, which are suffering many ills, not the least of which is their ongoing financial crisis — caused in large measure by government in the first place.

A good plan: consolidate some hospitals — including the three community hospitals on the East End — to create economies of scale and eliminate duplication of services. This was a good plan that our three local hospitals had already devised and begun to put in place, in fact — forging an alliance with each other and with the county's only tertiary care hospital, Stony Brook — before the commission recommended it.

A botched execution, so far: bureaucratic stupidity in the initial implementation of the plan. It's already cost Peconic Bay Medical Center $200,000 and will likely cost it much, much more before the hospital can get back on track with its renovation and expansion plans.

The chaos: PBMC's already-approved, designed, bid-out expansion and renovation project was abruptly halted by the state health department after the Berger Commission issued its report in December.

Like Joe Jitsu in the old Dick Tracy cartoons, shouting "Hold everything!" for a quick consult with the boss via his trusty wristwatch radio, the health department stopped PBMC's construction project in its tracks. Hold everything! Freeze frame. And stay that way for months. But in this cartoon universe, the freeze frame has dire consequences.

PBMC, acting in good faith on the health department's prior approvals, obtained construction financing. It's paying interest on the debt that isn't matched by interest earned on the money in the bank.

The hospital, having no indication that its approved project would be stopped in its tracks like this, purchased construction materials, including custom-made structural steel, and must now pay storage fees to warehouse the materials.

PBMC, acting in good faith on its four health department-approved certificates of need, bid the entire project out — and arranged its financing according to the contract prices it obtained in the bidding process. Anyone who's ever dealt with a construction project like this knows bids are not a forever kind of thing. Oh, no. They're good for a set period of time. Go beyond that time and you have to rebid the project, because labor and material costs change. And because they change, if you have to rebid, you can expect to pay more.

The hospital even had jeopardized by bureaucratic inanity an opportunity to replace a portion of its ordinary financing with tax-exempt financing through the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency — because of the health department's reluctance to approve a change in PBMC's already-approved financing arrangements, now in limbo thanks to the "Hold everything!" order. The new financing would save the hospital $100 million over the life of the new facility. $100 million in savings, just by replacing one kind of financing with another. And the state agency charged with implementing recommendations aimed at saving hospitals money — blinked. Go figure. Fortunately, Assemblyman Marc Alessi got the health department to come to its senses and at least allow PBMC to proceed with the substituted financing.

The hospital's air conditioning broke at the end of last summer. New equipment was purchased — again, with the health department's approval — and would have been installed and operational in time for warm weather. But — "Hold everything!" Now PBMC must rent a temporary chilling plant, which will run on a costly generator. And even though the health department has come to its senses and concluded that the new air conditioning system is an "emergency" and should be reapproved immediately, it won't be possible to install the new permanent system before the end of summer. PBMC's cost for the temporary set-up this year: $50,000 per month, for four months — another $200,000.

The Department of Health maintains it must reapprove the rest of PBMC's already-approved construction project. And, since the Berger Commission requires PBMC to join together with Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport and Southampton Hospital, the health department won't reapprove the project until the other two hospitals sign off on it. But here's another irony. They already did — twice. Now they're taking a third, closer look.

With the three entities jockeying for position in the East End's health-care delivery system, and with everything PBMC has riding on the — ahem — speedy reapproval of its project by the state, including, perhaps, its very survival, I'd say our local hospital is caught by the short hairs.

"Hold everything!" Somebody get Dick Tracy on the radio. We need help.

Keep fire district scandal in context

There are always a few bad apples.

That's should be the take-away from the arrests last week of fire district officials in surrounding areas.

Because there are inevitably people motivated by self-interest and greed in every walk of life, there must be adequate safeguards to ensure that the bad apples don't have the opportunity to do what people like that will do if there aren't adequate safeguards: play the system for their own personal gain, or even steal.

The combination of a lack of safeguards and access to a lot of money is a very dangerous combination indeed. People who are so inclined can't resist temptation.

Every organization that, directly or indirectly, receives public funding or has nonprofit status and solicits contributions for civic or charitable purposes must adhere to rules that protect the public trust. And there must be adequate oversight by an independent entity to ensure that those rules are followed.

When those two elements are lacking, there's bound to be trouble. Because there are, after all, always a few bad apples. Witness the school district scandals. And now, according to District Attorney Thomas Spota, we've got similar problems in some of our volunteer fire departments.

What we should not do, however, is assume that all of the people running our local fire departments are up to no good and misusing public funds. And we should not make the burdens of oversight so onerous that we discourage volunteerism in local emergency services.

In other words, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

It's tempting to do just that. But it's wrong.

Volunteer firefighters and EMTs are sacrificing their time and energy — sometimes their health and even their lives — to serve their communities. They are the people who run to, not away from, a catastrophe as it unfolds. They get up in the middle of the night to answer their neighbor's call for help. They rush into burning buildings, putting their own lives on the line, to rescue others. They put others ahead of themselves. They do it because they care.

Let's not forget that, in spite of the sensational headlines and TV-news hype surrounding the arrest of a handful of emergency services volunteers who allegedly abused the public trust.

I'm not a volunteer firefighter, nor is my husband. I used to think I'd someday volunteer for my local ambulance district. But life got in the way. I have young children. I work full-time. I have all I can do to keep up with my life as it is. I can't imagine finding time to complete all the training required of emergency service volunteers; there's lots of it — hours and hours worth of training. Never mind the meetings. And the calls — during dinner with your family, or in the middle of a blizzard, or at 2:30 in the morning.

So the passing thoughts I've had about serving my community as an emergency service volunteer have remained just that: passing thoughts. But because others find a way to make the time and the sacrifices, I can rest comfortably at night, knowing that if my family has an emergency, we can pick up the phone, dial 911, and within minutes, help will arrive.

That's a situation I've been in more than once. Time passes in excruciating slow motion from the moment you make that frantic call till the moment the ambulance pulls into your driveway. Those are the longest five or 10 minutes of your life, waiting for help to arrive to try to save the life of your father-in-law in cardiac arrest, or your mother, gasping for air because of a post-operative pulmonary embolism. The relief and gratitude you feel when the EMTs rush through the door and go to work — cool, calm, trained professionals — is something I can't quite find words to describe.

The men and women who answer those calls, the volunteers who serve our local fire departments and ambulance districts, deserve our gratitude, respect and support.

They are heroes. My heroes. Your heroes. Our community's heroes.

Let's not forget that.

"What do you make?"

A News-Review reader emailed this to me yesterday. There's been some debate on our commentary pages recently about whether public school teachers are paid too much.

WHAT TEACHERS MAKE

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?" He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?"

Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You Want to know what I make? (She paused for a second, then began...)
"Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 without an I Pod, Game Cube or movie rental...

You want to know what I make?" (She paused again and looked at each and every person at the table.)
I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.
I teach them to write and then I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them show all their work in math.
I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity.
I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe.
I make my students stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, because we live in the United States of America.

Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life. (Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.) "Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant... You want to know what I make?
I MAKE A DIFFERENCE. What do you make?

From lemons to lemonade

You have to expect change. And roll with it.

When you run a company with more than 50 full-time employees, and an equal number of part-timers and independent contractors (our dedicated and talented cadre of freelance writers and photographers), things are always changing. The sands are constantly shifting.

I've learned to accept it. Deal with it. Even grow and benefit from it. Often, you find yourself in a better place as a result.

When North Shore Sun editor Drew Crouthamel came into my office a month ago today and said, "Listen, there's no good way to say this..." my heart literally sunk in my chest. I knew what was coming. I did my best to "take it like a man." I cursed him out. All right, not exactly. But I didn't dissolve into tears, either. Even though, if the truth be told, I felt like crying.

Drew was a phenomenal addition to Times/Review's staff — an aggressive, fair and insightful journalist. And, boy, can he write. Editing a community newspaper was a new challenge for him — and it's no easy task — but he proved himself up to it. And The Sun's got some prestigious journalism awards on the walls to show for it. Not to mention a growing audience of loyal readers who appreciate the intensely local, high-quality community journalism that is Times/Review's hallmark. Under Drew's stewardship, The Sun has made great strides, evidenced by our circulation growth, vibrant commentary pages, and a Web site featuring breaking news and podcasts.

So of course I felt like crying. (And cursing.)

But as my grandmother used to say, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. Count your blessings. Here they are:

The Sun, the "baby" of the Times/Review family at just 4 1/2 years old, is already a well-regarded, authoritative source for local news in Sun Land — our name for the communities we cover. It's a great community newspaper in the tradition of its older sisters, two of which date back to the 19th century. (The other one is almost as old as I am.) We're serious about community journalism, and the papers we put out every week demonstrate it, from cover to cover.

We've assembled an awesome editorial staff at The Sun. In the past year and a half, we hired sports editor Grant Parpan, who was an editor at a California daily before returning to Ridge, where he grew up; Frank Petrignani, a hardworking, nose-to-the-grindstone journalist; and Tom Burke, who (like me) found journalism as a second career in life and has been, well, born again; Joe Werkmeister, an award-winning collegiate sportswriter covers local sports with flair; and photographer Peter Blasl captures images of the people, events and beauty of Sun Land for us every week. Beyond our regular staff, we've got a growing network of citizen journalists who contribute to the lively, informative read you get when you pick up The Sun each week.

Our commitment to The Sun and its mission is deep. For that reason, I'm taking the helm to guide The Sun through its next phase of growth. I'm not "just" a publisher. I served as editor of The News-Review for nearly four years. During that time, the paper won a host of awards for its hard-hitting coverage of Riverhead Town, including the top award in community journalism in the state. I earned a reputation as a gutsy investigative journalist and I'm proud of it. That's what it's all about.

Our company is family-owned by people who take journalism — and its role in a democracy — seriously. We don't mix editorial and business. We even have two publishers, one to oversee each "side" of the company. Andrew Olsen runs sales, circulation and finance, and I oversee editorial and production. We don't make editorial decisions based on economic decisions. We don't cover events or issues — or look the other way — because advertisers want us to.

And we never, ever shy away from a fight if a fight is what it takes to get to the truth. Times/Review president, former co-publisher Troy Gustavson, wrote a short manifesto called "What We Stand For" in his first editorial after he and his wife, Joan, bought The Suffolk Times and The News-Review 30 years ago. "We stand for truth," he wrote. "We stand for excellence ... We stand for fairness ... We stand for self-determination ... We stand for non-partisanship." I've got that editorial taped up next to my desk for inspiration, when I need a reminder of why we do what we do and how important it is.

Those are the things we stand for today: truth, excellence, fairness, self-determination and non-partisanship.

And we've got the people and the gumption to carry it out.

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Community journalism evolves

If you’re reading this column on the printed page, you’re a member of a shrinking minority of people who read newspapers today. A generation ago, 70 percent of adults read a newspaper every day. Today, that number is just over 30 percent. Among young people — the under-30 set — the numbers are sharply lower than that.

But this isn’t news. Daily newspaper circulation has been declining for years. The troubles newspapers are facing today, from Main Street to Wall Street, are old news.

Technology has changed everything, turning the newspaper industry (among others) upside down. Fifty years ago, newspapers were your source to find out what was going on around the world or down the road. Today, anything you want to learn about, any piece of information, is just a click or two away, delivered to your desktop or to your mobile device, wherever you are. More than that, you can customize the news and information you want, so that you don’t have to waste your time sorting through information that someone else — an editor — has decided is important.

Daily papers rushed to jump on the information superhighway, putting all their content on their Web sites, without first figuring out how to reap advertising revenues in the new medium. They lost circulation and advertising revenues as a result and their profit margins slipped. Investors in publicly traded newspaper companies started to panic, resulting in the gloom-and-doom headlines we’ve all grown accustomed to reading: sell-offs, layoffs, buyouts, cutbacks.

That’s what prompted one of our loyal readers to ask me, during a Q&A at a recent speaking engagement, whether “his” community newspaper was in trouble, too. Is The Suffolk Times Is the News-Review going to be here 10 years from now? “How else will I find out what’s going on in my community?” he asked.

I was touched both by the man’s concern and by the reminder of the important role newspapers like The Suffolk Times the News-Review play in the community we serve.
We’re not going anywhere. Community journalism is alive and well and community newspapers like ours are, in fact, thriving. That’s because community newspapers provide people with news and information they really can’t get anywhere else — at least not yet. The daily papers have begun to notice this, and the new mantra among newspaper industry executives struggling and experts is now “local, local, local.” One of the most popular buzz words you hear in the industry now is “hyper-local.”
That describes what we do, and what we’ve been doing for 150 years, for 139 years, to a T. And it also describes what we’ll continue to do, and do better than anyone else, in the future.

But how we do it in the future will inevitably change — just as the look and feel of newspapers have changed, with better reproduction, color photographs and more graphics. We’ve adapted, retooled and improved. And we’ll continue to adapt, retool and improve.

The Web will continue to grow in importance as a means by which people access and consume news, including “hyper-local” news. As a result, the way news is packaged and presented will continue to change. News consumption is increasingly becoming a multimedia experience — it’s much more than words on a page, accompanied by a photo or two. Consumers now expect to be able to access photo slideshows, videos, audio interviews and podcasts as part of their online news experience. Even the label we use to describe the people we work for — you — has changed. You’re no longer readers; now you’re consumers and users.

The Web will also play an ever-larger role in news gathering and reporting, too. It has revolutionized the way reporters research their stories and even the way they find sources and leads.

Technology has also increased our ability to spend more time in the communities we cover. We can report, write a story on our laptop, take photos and videos with our digital cameras and file them all by e-mail from anywhere, completing our job without ever stepping foot in the newsroom.

Unless you’re a technophobe or averse to change, this is a really exciting time to be a journalist. The opportunities are nearly endless, and they are as accessible to small community publications like ours as they are to the bigger daily papers — because technology is inexpensive, easy to use and available to everyone.

We are embarking upon a major overhaul of our existing Web sites this year. Our goal is to make them more dynamic, interactive and user-friendly, and provide you with a rich, multimedia experience.
Soon, we’ll be publishing breaking local news on our Web site as it happens every day. You won’t have to wait till Thursday anymore. But you can still look forward to in-depth comprehensive coverage and analysis of the events and issues that matter most to you every Thursday in print.
We’ll have videos and podcasts and the ability to send the news and sports feeds you want to your computer or your Blackberry.
There will be blogs about neighborhoods and topics that hit home, as well as message boards where you can discuss what’s important to you with others who share your concerns.
We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re on our way. And we’d love to hear from you about what functions and features you’d like to see on our Web site. Until we get our message board up and running, we’ll have to communicate the old-fashioned way: Send me an e-mail at denise@timesreview.com. Or comment on my blog at civiletti.blogspot.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Smart growth

I spent this week in Reston, Virginia, attending an American Press Institute seminar called "Leading the 24/7 Newsroom." The hotel where the 50 or so seminar attendees stayed was located in Reston Town Center. While we didn't have a lot of free time to explore (API seminars are pretty intense) I was struck by how Reston Town Center was laid out. It seemed to me to be a very well planned, modern, suburban "downtown." There is a central plaza, with an ice skating rink and fountains, surrounded by a rich mix of residential and commercial uses — the Hyatt Regency (where we stayed), street level retail shops and restaurants, a 13-screen multiplex movie theater, with offices, apartments and condominiums rising above these ground level uses. There's also a multi-level parking garage (but no huge paved parking lot to serve the stores and hotel).

It occurred to me that I was staying in a built-out planned development district that exemplifies what we talk about here on the East End — a very walkable, pedestrian-friendly, well-planned mixed-use suburban "downtown." We talk about this sort of thing an awful lot around here lately. But nobody's even come close to attempting to build such a thing. And whether anyone will ever succeed in doing so (on a smaller scale, with multi-level buildings that are not so tall, of course) remainst to be seen.

Curious about where I'd just spent the past week, I did a little searching on the Web this morning and found some interesting stuff about Reston.

Turns out, Reston was the first post-war planned community in the U.S. It was founded by Robert E. Simon, who bought some 7,000 acres of land outside of Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, between the capital district and a planned airport (now Dulles International). The town is named for Simon; its name is his initials (RES) plus -ton, the English suffix for "town." He was interested in planned communities and had "an aversion to the automobile," so he wanted to establish a community that would be very walkable. Interesting note: He'd lived on Long Island, in a house on a five-acre lot, and felt that the sprawling suburban landscape was isolating for his family.
The Reston Association has a history of the community on its Web site. And I also came across a podcast of an interview with Bob Simon, at age 92, in which he speaks about what motivated him to establish the community and what his goals were. (The podcast interview was done by Planetizen, a planning and development network whose Web site looks pretty interesting, too.)

One key quote from the Simon interview: "Zoning ordinances all over the country made mixed use virtually impossible." Why? Zoning codes establish separate districts for residential, shopping, office and other commercial uses. How true. And the familiar sprawling suburban landscape we live in is the result.

The notion of "mixed use" is relatively new, Simon being a pioneer in the field and Reston being the result. Simon also employed lots of other principles that other communities, like ours, are just starting to implement in pursuit of open space and energy conservation, such as clustered development and zero lot line homes. In addition to housing, retail, commercial and high-tech industrial uses (businesses that employ more than 30,000 people), Reston has 1,300 acres of open space forever preserved, plus miles of walking, jogging and bike trails, parks, 14 community pools, tennis courts, golf courses, and, as mentioned, an ice rink. The residential uses are mixed as well, from typical suburban single-family homes on substantial lots, to high rise and garden apartments, townhouses and condos, with the denser development concentrated around the downtown, much like the "halo" zones currently under consideration for hamlet areas in Southold Town.

I'd be interested to know how these concepts work with re-development plans such as what Riverhead is aiming for with its downtown "master developer" idea, and whether other communities have successfully used them to do what Riverhead is hoping to accomplish downtown. Anybody out there know of such a place or places? Maybe the Planetizen site has more info.

Asking help for Bryan

Those of us lucky enough not to know what it's like, well, we really have no idea.

We can only imagine, if we can even let our minds wander there. I don't know about you, but I can't do it. The thought of one of my children being stricken by a serious, potentially fatal, illness is too much. When I try to imagine what that might be like, my chest tightens, my body shivers and my mind just won't go there. I guess that what the saying means: I can't wrap my mind around it.

The only reason I've tried to imagine it is, like most of the other lucky parents, I sometimes try to put myself in the shoes of those who've found themselves confronted with a child's illness or even death. The unthinkable. The unspeakable.

"I don't know how you deal with this," I said once to an acquaintance of mine, Mary Lou Tressler. A former owner of Jet Set Printing in Riverhead, our children were in nursery school together.

"I don't have any choice," she answered. "What else can I do?"

Her words stay with me. What else can she do, indeed?

Her son, Bryan, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare, generally fatal, childhood cancer, when he was just 5 years old. Doctors told his parents, Mary Lou and her husband, Bob, that there was no hope. But Bob and Mary Lou refused to give up. They searched high and low until they found doctors willing to treat Bryan with new, cutting-edge therapies that were then still in development. Thanks to such aggressive treatment — some of it classified as experimental — Bryan has survived. He's now going on 14. But it hasn't been easy, and the future, even after all he's been through, is still bleak.

Bryan is a brave young man. He was brave before he understood the meaning of the word "courage." He's instinctively fought a battle he didn't even know he was engaged in at first — he was too young to understand. Maybe that worked to his advantage. He wasn't mentally or emotionally dragged down by the horrible disease trying to steal his life away because he was too young to understand his affliction. So he lived a kid's life, typical of so many little boys. He played baseball. He went sailing with his dad on the family boat. He scraped his knees, collected bugs, played video games.

Now he's old enough to understand the concept of courage. He's also old enough to understand his illness, old enough to ask "Why?" Old enough to be mad as hell at the unfairness of it all.

But he's still brave. Maybe more so, because now he understands. And he still fights.

A few years back, at the Riverhead Relay for Life, Bryan told the crowd how important it is to fight, to soldier on. "We'll find a cure one day," he said. He was maybe 10 or 11. Everyone marveled at his strength, including me. I wrote a column about it, in fact.

Bryan's battle continues. His cancer has come back with a vengeance, yet again. Bryan is a fighter and endures the physical pain of both the disease and its treatments. His parents and siblings are coping. But the cancer and the treatments are now taking a major financial toll on the family and they are in need of help.

The Tresslers moved upstate a few years back. Bryan's father, Bob, sold his printing business, and the family relocated to a rural area, where there would be less pressure and where Mary Lou and Bob would be able to spend less time working and more time with Bryan and his siblings, Robert and Jennifer.

Bryan now has to make a 180-mile round-trip journey for treatment four to six times each month from his home in Granville, N.Y., to Children's Specialty Center in Burlington, Vt. He also has to travel to Albany five times each week for transfusions, radiation and blood tests.

Mary Lou wrote to me last week asking for help, seeking gas card donations to help them pay for travel to and from treatments. Asking for help certainly wasn't easy for her to do, but it's nothing compared with the reality she has to deal with every day.

I know many people in Riverhead knew Bryan and his family before they moved, and many folks would want to know if they are in need of assistance now. If you can help, with either a check or a gas card, mail it to Friends of Bryan Tressler, P.O. Box 92, Granville, NY 12832.

I would love to organize a fundraiser for Bryan. If you have any ideas for how we might raise some money, or want to help with the effort, please e-mail me at denise@timesreview.com.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

When we get it wrong

Nobody said it was going to be easy.

That's true. Nobody said this was an easy job. In fact, it's pretty tough sometimes.

Reporting, writing, editing and publishing a community newspaper — they all present many challenges, each step of the way.

I don't mind people carrying on and calling me names for expressing my opinion in an editorial or in a column on the op-ed page. I expect it. Especially when I write about a subject as sensitive as the war. I've developed thick skin over the years. I can take it.

Sometimes, reporters make mistakes. Hey, we're only human. But when reporters for community newspapers make errors, it affects our neighbors — or people we do business with, or acquaintances, or friends. No matter what, it's tough. Unlike reporters at a huge daily, working out of some distant office, we live and work in the community we write about.

When we err, we print corrections. We print them on the inside front cover, page 2. But they're never enough to satisfy the person who was affected by something we got wrong. I realize that, but there's not much else I can do.

I'm dwelling on this tonight because we made a mistake in this week's police report in the Suffolk Times. The reporter got her "vehicle 1" and "vehicle 2" mixed up as she wrote up the report of an accident involving a school bus on Route 48 last week. We reported that the bus struck the other vehicle. In fact, acccording to the police report, it was the other way around. The other vehicle struck the bus, the report said.

That may make it seem that the driver of the school bus was at fault, and that's how she took it. To say she was unhappy when she showed up at our office Thursday morning would be an understatement along the lines of saying The Beatles were "popular." She tore me a new one, and there was no placating her.

The driver's dispatcher called me, too — at about 8 am Thursday morning. In an email subsequent to our conversation, she said that the people of Southold view The Suffolk Times "as law." That got me thinking even harder about the awesome responsibility we have. We take our responsibility seriously, all the time. There is a certain amount of power in what we do. We know we must never abuse it, or abuse the trust of the people who rely on our papers each week to understand what's going on in their communities.

Everyone at all of our publications works really hard and cares very deeply about what we do and the communities we cover. Accuracy and fairness are our top priorities. But, yes, sometimes we make mistakes. And when we do, it hurts — and we're sorry. This is one of those times.

Negative reactions

Here's a sampling of the negative reactions to my previous post, which was also published as an op-ed column in three of the Times/Review newspapers last week. Some of them are taken from letters to the editor, which will be printed in this week's papers. Others were from notes sent to me directly, some anonymously.

"To suggest this President, or any President would take this country to war for some kind of political or personal gain, to state as fact this President knowingly lied to enter into a war without any certainty is journalist criminality. Document your evidence so we the people can bring it to Congress so they can take action under our laws and constitution. Without such evidence - stop bloviating."

"How can anyone possibly quote (Hanoi) Jane Fonda as a reputable source of anything outside of Hollywood acting? Here is a person who collaborated with the enemy, who should've been charged with treason, perhaps aided in the deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam and I'm suppose to listen to what she has to say about this war?"

"I am truly disgusted by the lack of backbone displayed by all too many Americans as displayed in recent editorials & letters to the editor in the Suffolk Times. Seem like we have plenty of sunshine patriots who don't have the fortitude to withstand someone else picking up a rifle and fighting for them. Must be a rough life sitting on the sidelines sacrificing nothing while giving all that sound Monday morning quarterback advise to those who make tough decisions based on the real world we actually live in."

"Just like Mrs. Civiletti, I find it very difficult to read letters and columns each week that continually slam our president and keep silent. His decscion to go to war was not only based on WMD and a terrorist connection but also because the UN passed many resolutions that were ignored by Saddam and the UN didn't have the backbone to enforce them. Thank God president Bush did. Also the US congress almost unamiously voted for the war. Most of the people of Iraq are glad we are there. Most ot the soldiers who actually are doing the fighting think we are doing good there. As far as hundreds of thousands dead, how many did Saddam kill???"

"What shall we do in Iran?? In the 1930's the world ignored Hitler and millions lost their lives because they refused to deal with him. The president of Iran has stated his intention to wipe out Israel. Should we stand by and let him attain and use nuclear weapons and then try to deal with him or shall we just roll over and submit to Shariah law because his ultimate goal is that all the world be muslim."

"It’s been several years now and my memory is a bit fogged but I don't recall this administration citing evidence to Congress, the United Nations (UN), or to the American people linking Iraq with the attacks of September 11."

"I usually enjoy your column until I saw that you quoted Jane Fonda...I guess you forget howmany american prisoners were tortured because of her. She openly declared she was for North Vietnam. There is a big difference being anti war and being anti american. No one likes war and in one way or another we are all effected. You better check out these groups you are involved with whether they are anti war or anti american."

"Once again you showed either your ignorance or your dishonesty in you latest article in the North Shore Sun. "My daughters soon-to-be-draft-age teens." Last time I checked there was not a draft in this country and only males over the age of 18 are required to register with the Selective Service."