Smithtown's Shanna Brady Named Hofstra's Asst. Women's Lacrosse Coach

WLAX: Shanna Brady Added To Hofstra Coaching Staff

Hofstra: Named Shanna Brady assistant women’s lacrosse coach. 

Shanna Brady ( College photo)Hempstead, NY – Hofstra University Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach Shannon Smith announced the addition of Shanna Brady to the position of assistant coach with the Pride. 

“Shanna is a tremendous addition to our program,” commented Smith. “She has played and succeeded at the highest level of collegiate lacrosse and has strong experience coaching collegiately and on the club level. We are thrilled that she is joining us at Hofstra and will serve as our defensive and recruiting coordinator. Shanna has a pure passion for the game of lacrosse and we are eager for her to start working with our student-athletes.”

Brady, a native of Smithtown, New York, joins the Hofstra program after serving as an assistant coach at LIU Post this past season. Brady oversaw the defensive unit for the Pioneers, who compiled a 17-4 record and advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Quarterfinals. She also assisted in in the recruitment of prospective student-athletes, organizing team travel and community outreach. 

Brady won a pair of national titles as a student-athlete at Maryland in 2014 and 2015 and reached championship weekend all four years of her highly-successful career. 

She totaled 75 ground balls, 46 caused turnovers and 30 draw controls during a career that spanned 92 games. Incredibly, Brady started 91 of the 92 games she played in during her career.  

Brady has also served as a coach with the Long Island Express Lacrosse Club from 2011 to 2014 and was a two-year member of Maryland’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee during her undergraduate career. 

She is currently playing professionally for the Long Island Sound of the United Women’s Lacrosse League.

Brady earned her degree in family science from Maryland in 2015. 

Book Review - 'Radiant Angel'

BOOK REVIEW - “RADIANT ANGEL” - By Nelson DeMille 

311 pages – Grand Central Publishing -Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur 

Unfortunately, thrillers about New York City being targeted for nuclear attack, are a dime a dozen … but finding one as well-crafted as ‘Radiant Angel,’ by Long Island’s own Nelson DeMille, is a singular, once in a generation, rarity (triple redundancy intended!).

Though readers might claim that in evaluating a novel, they are not influenced by the author’s roots, or the recognizable nature of a proximate locale, I respectfully say, ‘hogwash! None of us can live, play, and work in close proximity to a place like ‘The Big Apple’ and fail to respond enthusiastically to a story in which the neighborhood next door is the star player … or at least, one of them.

Indeed, in the case of this, Nelson DeMille’s 19^th novel, we Long Islanders are treated to a special date with the familiar. In ‘Radiant Angel,’ wherein a Russian cabal is determined to blow lower Manhattan into oblivion, the homespun plot takes shape in Eastern Suffolk County, and propels us from The Hamptons, to Shinnecock, to landmark Jones Beach, and beyond. The westbound, edge-of-your-chair hunt is for a yacht so elegant that only a writer of DeMille’s fabled, descriptive ability could have invented it.

We know practically from the outset where the excruciating chase is destined to take us, but it’s the journey there that’s important… and as the author reminds us with non-stop episodic action … the trip promises to be filled with constant surprise.

As is DeMille’s practice, he utilizes the actual names of certain true-life friends and associates who have contributed to philanthropic causes in return for being written into this novel. In the interest of full disclosure, I know two of these people personally … a factor which makes ‘Radiant Angel’ all the more gripping … and of course, fun!

One of the potential hazards connected with writing sequels (‘…Angel,’ though technically not a sequel, constitutes the seventh in a series of ‘John Corey’ thrillers) is the possibility that the author might erroneously assume, usually with fatal result, that his audience has read prior books in the sequence, and thus already knows the players involved. Only once in this ‘Corey’ tale does DeMille flirt with that prospect … at the end of the book, when referring to a female character. The incident is just that … incidental … it’s not even cringe-worthy, but the reference is enough to make one wonder if Nelson has exploits in mind for the lady in question somewhere down the road.

This most notable of the current crop of Long Island writers … a group that contains emerging novelists like Dina Santorelli, and poets such as Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan … has come a long way since his earlier works involving transparently autobiographical Viet Nam war experiences (‘Up Country’ for example). With ‘Radiant Angel’ he adds still another thriller to a mesmerizing list of New York area spellbinders that includes such bestsellers as ‘Cathedral’ and ‘Plum Island.’

Those who have not yet tapped in to the mother lode of this witty storyteller’s compelling works should do so. He plots so well … researches so meticulously… describes with such insight … that to miss the opportunity, is to pass up a rich literary experience.

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of eleven novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. His newest book, THE GHOSTWRITERS, explores the bizarre relationship between the late Harper Lee and Truman Capote. It maintains that each wrote the other’s most famous work. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Journalism Is To Be A Check On Power

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Once there were two daily newspapers on Long Island competing vigorously with each other—Newsday and the Long Island Press, where I was a columnist and did investigative reporting. But the Long Island Press, founded in 1821 as the Long Island Farmer, in 1977 suddenly ended publication—after those 156 years! That left one Long Island daily newspaper.

Once there were more than a dozen cable TV outlets on Long Island. Then came Cablevision gobbling up all the cable TV outlets leaving only one, with its monopoly position somewhat moderated by Verizon beginning its Fios service a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Cablevision acquired Newsday in 2008 for $650 million leaving Long Island with one company owning its only daily paper and its dominant cable TV system.

Last month, in a $17.7 billion deal, Cablevision and Newsday were acquired by Altice, a Netherlands-based company with an empire of cable TV and telecommunications operations overseas. It’s big in nations including Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland.

The Fair Media Council, founded on Long Island in 1979 and describing itself on its website as “one of the oldest media watchdogs in the country,” a non-profit entity that “advocates for quality local news and works to create a media savvy society,” has been among the organizations opposing the Altice acquisition.

The council has said an Altice purchase caused it to have “grave concern for the public interest, public safety and the local economy.” It has warned of a prompt and dramatic cut in expenses by Altice. Indeed, Altice is known for this. “Altice’s claim to fame is cost-cutting,” as the council’s executive director Jaci Clement told Long Island Business News last year.

Moreover, Ms. Clement and the council have been—and are—deeply worried about monopoly control in Long Island media. As she declared to Long Island Business News

“For Long Island…back in 2008, I didn’t want one entity [Cablevision] owning both Newsday and News 12”—Cablevision’s TV news operation—“and I still don’t. Lots of people didn’t understand that back then, but have since come to see how media consolidation hurts both the quality and the quantity of the news.”

Following the Altice acquisition of Cablevision, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Cablevision’s debt by two levels—to a speculative grade. “We believe that Altice will quickly reduce costs,” said Moody’s. Altice is readying $450 million in yearly savings, it said.

“However, if the cost cuts drive too fast a pace of organizational change and headcount reduction, this could result in disruption of Cablevision’s service quality and lead to market share erosion.” Moody’s cited “this business risk, combined with the elevated financial risk from the debt raised to fund the transaction.” Moody’s expects Verizon’s Fios “to gain market share if Cablevision stumbles operationally.”

Newsday has been noted for its investigative reporting since its founding in 1940? Investigative reporting is an expensive proposition.  Cablevision, based in Bethpage, has been a family entity led by patriarch Charles Dolan. He’s a native of Cleveland, Ohio. Once, at a Press Club of Long Island function, I shared my experience as an Antioch College student doing an internship at the Cleveland Press, the first newspaper of publisher E.W. Scripps and known for investigative reporting going back to the Muckraking Era of the early 1900s. Mr. Dolan reflected on the great respect he had for the newspaper and the crusading editor who headed it when I was there, Louis Seltzer. Working at it inspired me to get into investigative reporting. 

Mr. Dolan, like Louis Seltzer, has understood that a central mission of journalism is to be a check on, to challenge power. Under the Dolans, solid investigative reporting has continued at Newsday.

A Town of Smithtown man, the late Bob Greene, was for many years the star investigative journalist at Newsday. At the newspaper from 1955 until his retirement in 1992, Mr. Greene, of Kings Park, led investigative teams that won two Pulitzer Prizes. The first, in 1970, was for exposing land deals involving government officials in Islip Town, and the second, for years later, was for “The Heroin Trail,” a series that tracked heroin from Turkish poppy fields to the streets of Long Island. Mr. Greene also brought together reporters from across the country to uncover corruption in Arizona after Don Bolles, a journalist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, was killed by a car bomb in 1976 as he was investigating the Mafia and Arizona politicians. Newsday’s Greene assembled a team that followed up on Mr. Bolle’s work and put together a 23-part series which ran in newspapers around the United States. At the time, Mr. Greene commented that what was called the “The Arizona Project” would make people “think twice” about killing journalists. “We are buying life insurance on our own reporters,” he said.

Altice is led by Patrick Drahl, born in Casablanca, Morocco, moving at 15 with his family to France, studying fiber optics, and subsequently jumping into cable TV and telecommunications.

Why did Cablevision sell to Altice? Leon Lazaroff, who writes on the financial website The Street, explained last year: “That Cablevision had to sell or find a partner has been obvious. The traditional cable bundle is under attack, as streaming services from Netflix…and Time Warner’s…HBO NOW along with popular video platforms from Google’s…YouTube and Facebook…divert viewers from pay TV channels, bringing marketers and their money along with them.”

When it comes to cable TV, Charles Dolan would know when to buy and sell. He made his initial fortune founding HBO in 1971, the first premium program service in cable TV, and subsequently selling it to Time Life.

Meanwhile, this Thursday, July 7^th, came the announcement that Charles Dolan’s son, Patrick, is buying a majority stake in the Newsday Media Group from Altice. He will own 75 percent of Newsday. With a background himself as a journalist, Patrick Dolan will become president of Newsday Media and continue to run News 12, which he has for many years.

Newsday, in a story on this quoted Patrick Dolan as saying: “My father and I, together with our Altice partners, are deeply committed to preserving the state-of-the-art journalism that Newsday has consistently provided and that has served Long Islanders so well.” The article also said his father will serve on a new board of directors of Newsday Media. 

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Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.

Royal Rangers Gold Medal Of Achievement Ceremony At Smithtown Gospel Tabernacle

Legislator Leslie Kennedy with Skylar Fallon, Connor Fallon, Russell Fallon, Elias Velez-Maldonado, and Andrew Frey, Jr.June 25, 2016 – At a ceremony at Smithtown Gospel Tabernacle, Legislator Leslie Kennedy (R, Nesconset) congratulated several young members of the Royal Rangers Outpost #149 on attaining the Gold Medal of Achievement, the highest honor available in the organization. Skylar Fallon, Connor Fallon, Russell Fallon, Elias Velez-Maldonado, and Andrew Frey, Jr. were presented with the award, an honor that is only achieved by 1% of Royal Rangers worldwide.

A Christian youth organization similar to the Boy Scouts of America, the Royal Rangers promote the mental and spiritual growth of young Christian men. The Gold Medal of Achievement in particular requires a Royal Ranger to demonstrate his mental, social and spiritual development through a capstone project. “Today, many of us parents do everything to accelerate the educational and physical growth of our children for the sake of their futures,” Legislator Kennedy remarked after the ceremony, “but it is also true that we often neglect their social and spiritual growth. In receiving the Gold Medal of Achievement, these individuals have demonstrated themselves as faith men in our community.”

If you are interested in taking part in the Royal Rangers, contact the Smithtown Tabernacle Outpost of the Royal Rangers and request more information at csinclair@sgtmail.org. More information on the Royal Rangers Ministry can be found at http://royalrangers.com/.   

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Turtle Rescue On LI

SUFFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It’s tough being a turtle on Long Island.

“Turtle Rescue,” answered Karen Testa last week on the “emergency line” at the century-old farmhouse at 111 Manor Lane in Jamesport in which she and her staff care for turtles.

It was another in a blizzard of daily and nightly calls about a turtle in need.  “I sleep with the phone next to my bed,” explained Karen. “I’m here 24-7.”

The turtles have come from all over Long Island—including Smithtown, said Ms. Testa.

Ms. Testa enumerated the many threats facing turtles here. Cars on all the highways regularly run into and over turtles. Bulldozers involved in construction are devastating to turtles. “They can’t run away—they move super-slow.” Boat propellers rip into turtles in Long Island waters. Pieces of fishing line ensnare them.  Pesticides, weed-killers and other chemicals leave turtles sick. People take hatchling turtles from Long Island shores—“people don’t understand that these are wild animals and it’s illegal to take them”—and they “feed them incorrectly” leaving them in terrible shape. Ms. Testa’s list of the perils that turtle face goes on and on,

She was three years old, she recounted, when she had an experience that began her commitment to take care of turtles.

Ms. Testa was visiting her grandmother in Worcester, Massachusetts and there, in a park, “I saw a turtle with three legs…I felt so sorry for this animal and what it had gone through—a leg ripped from its body.”

This resulted in a “place in my heart” for turtles.

A New York State licensed wildlife rehabilitator with other state certification to care for turtles, Ms. Testa, from the Village of Poquott near Setauket, went to Southampton College where she majored in marine biology. She volunteered at the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays and then “branched off” to establish Turtle Rescue of the Hamptons. (Although it’s on the North Fork, Hamptons has continued to be included in its formal name because of its origin with her work at the Wildlife Rescue Center.) Turtles, she explained, “need special care” different from the care provided for “mammals and avians.”

Turtle Rescue is a not-for-profit 501-c-3 charitable endeavor that is always looking for donations.

As Turtle Rescue’s website states: “Our mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and release wild chelonian species native to Long Island, to provide sanctuary with a high quality of life for those who have sustained permanent disability, and to allow injured animals to live out their lives with dignity and respect. We work to promote a safe and healthy natural environment by providing public education services regarding the threats and challenges facing our native population.” It goes on to note that Turtle Rescue’s “state of the art rehabilitation facility” is called “Turtle Manor.” (Until writing this column, I didn’t know about the word chelonian but, as Google explains, it denotes “a turtle, terrapin, or tortoise.”)

I didn’t know about Turtle Rescue either until my old friend Jennifer Puleston Clement of Brookhaven sent me a message on Facebook relating how she had found a Box Turtle that “some low-life driver smashed up” and was referred by a local “rehab center” to the “full-time turtle-exclusive” facility of Ms. Testa. “This woman is sincere in her devotion to the rehabilitation of our dwindling population of turtles,” said Ms. Clement, suggesting a piece be written.

At Turtle Manor “every room has a special purpose,” said Ms. Testa. This includes a room called an ICU and facilities to perform X-rays and provide oxygen to ill turtles. Outside are small ponds for turtles. 

Ms. Testa, the executive director of Turtle Rescue, is assisted by three licensed veterinarians, two licensed veterinarian technicians and three marine biologists.

“We’ve been super-busy from the day we opened,” she relates. There are “Good Samaritans” (like Ms. Puleston) bringing turtles to Turtle Rescue and there is the constant stream of phone calls leading to the picking up of turtles in trouble and bringing them back to Turtle Manor for care. The number of the “emergency line” at Turtle Rescue is 631-779-3737. Its website is: www.turtlerescueofthehamptons.org

Representative of the plight of turtles here is the situation involving the Box Turtle, that sweet creature long so common on Long Island. However, noted Ms. Testa last week, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation recently listed Box Turtles as “a species of special concern.”

“Box Turtles were common on Long Island—but not any longer,” said Ms. Testa, “because of habitat destruction.” 

Topping the Turtle Rescue website is the appeal: “Help us save turtles. Please don’t turn your back on an injured turtle! They depend on us to make a difference.”

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Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.