Smithtown Soccer Uniforms Make Trip Around The World

Smithtown soccer uniforms make trip around the world

Thanks to a generous donation of used soccer uniforms by the Smithtown Central School District, student-athletes in Uganda are sporting new uniforms for their tournament this year. 

Smithtown High School West marine science teacher Kimberly Williams and Smithtown High School East varsity field hockey assistant coach/Nesaquake Middle School coach Carisa Eye connected with volunteers who work with H.E.L.P. International. In a coordinated effort, the pair worked with members of the Smithtown athletic department to gather and box the uniforms. H.E.L.P. International volunteers, who were making a trip to Uganda, knew of students in need of the uniforms at the Masese School and helped facilitate the delivery. 

Photo Caption: The Smithtown Central School District donated used soccer uniforms to students at the Masese School in Uganda. 

Photos courtesy of the Smithtown Central School District

In Smithtown July 28th, 2017 Will Be Known As Brad Harris Day

Bradley Harris has served as a president of the Smithtown Historical Society for twenty-five years. On Friday, July 28th at a barbeque hosted by the Historical Society and surrounded by his wife Joan, friends, family and members of the society, Bradley Harris retired. 

Since becoming president the historical society has seen unprecendented growth in the number of visitors as well as the diversification of programs. Thouseands of school children visit properties where they participate in educational programs. Adults participate in programs that include movies, dancing, History and Happy Hour and most recently a book club and goat yoga. 

On Friday Supervisor Patrick Vecchio, after taking a walk down memory lane reminissing about Brad’s work as councilman on the Town Board and his very successful work organizing Smithtown’s 350th anniversary celebration, presented Brad with a proclamation and declared that July 28, 2017 is Brad Harris Day in Smithtown. Executive Director Marianne Howard made an emotional presentation of a watch and Nissequogue Mayor Richard Smith presented Brad with a special tie representing Smithtown’s history. 

The Brush Barn was filled to capacity with everyone in agreement that Brad Harris an unassuming, beloved gentleman made Smithtown’s history a little more relevant and a little more personal.

Incoming Smithtown Historical Society President Kathy Tusa and Brad HarrisBrad wants everyone to know  that the society in good hands as long time board member Kathy Tusa has agreed to take on the role of president.

photos of Brad Harris retirement BBQ 

Presiding Officer Gregory's Statement After Trump Endorses Police Brutality

Presiding Officer Gregory Releases Statement After Trump Endorses Police Brutality

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. – Suffolk County Legislature Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory issued the following statement after President Donald Trump in his address today at Suffolk County Community College encouraged increased police force.

“The challenges facing law enforcement today are enormous, made all the more difficult by the danger of gangs like MS-13, which are infiltrating our communities, murdering innocent people and destroying the peace and safety that are the very fabric of our lives. However, divisive and offensive rhetoric that insights further violence and insinuates police violence is not the answer. That would be endorsing behavior that is unfitting to the honorable profession of law enforcement.”

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Squirrels "Get My Goat" And Fruit

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 Eastern gray squirrel IMG_3723©Maria de Bruyn 2013It was quite unlikely for me, a vegetarian for 50 years, to be out shopping the other day for a gun to shoot squirrels. But squirrels have been stripping our fruit trees. I’ve planted nearly 40 apple, pear, peach and plum trees. And last summer squirrels stripped all them of their fruit. Squirrels scampered across the property with fruit in their mouths all day long.

I tried to solve the problem the way we try to solve many problems these days: seeking help through Google. One of its suggestions: ultrasound devices. Being sold were “electronic repellers” which emit a sound that various animals were said to abhor and humans can’t hear.

So I ordered four of these devices. My nearly $100 purchase arrived and I carefully read the manual which came with them. There was a dial on each that I set for what it said was the ultrasound that repels squirrels (as contrasted to other critters on the dial that included raccoons, possums and armadillos). I laid out wires that sent electricity to each device. The squirrels clearly hadn’t read the manual. The utrasound didn’t work.

I again pursued the issue this year asking people who might have had experience with fruit-thievery-by-squirrel. A Havahart trap? You’d need to trap 30. A repeated suggestion: shoot the squirrels either to kill them or shock and thus discourage them. My choice was the non-lethal approach (as someone who has not eaten steak or a lamb chop for a half-century, although I’ve been unable to resist a good meatball every few months). Also my wife was firmly against killing the squirrels.

John, who grew up in Pennsylvania countryside, the son-in-law of friends, said he had plenty of experience shooting squirrels with a pellet/bb rifle and if you didn’t pump it many times, he said the pellet or bb wouldn’t kill the squirrel but would do just what I wanted: scare the varmints. 

So I went to a sporting goods store. On the way, on my iPhone, I got an email from an editor, Tanya, saying she hadn’t received my column. I phoned to say I had sent it but would resend it when I got home—noting I was out buying a rifle to shoot squirrels. She was shocked. I explained that I needed to stop squirrels from going after fruit but she counseled that “you could buy fruit at a farmer’s market or the supermarket.” I assured her I didn’t intend to kill squirrels, just scare them. 

At the store, I emphasized to the salesman how I wanted not to kill marauding squirrels but to scare them by not pumping the rifle too many times. He was aghast—even more than Tanya, but for a different reason. “That’s poaching,” he exclaimed. He believed that when you use a gun you need to go for the kill. “I don’t know if I want to help you,” he muttered.

Also, he said, I should check with the state Department of Environmental Conservation about the season for shooting squirrels. I checked online and the squirrel hunting season on Long Island turns out to be in the winter, no good for stopping the harvest-time fruit thievery. I telephoned the regional DEC office for more details and was told that squirrels are a “non-protected species” and if they were going after fruit on my property they’re considered a “nuisance” and it was always open season on them.

So I went back to the store and bought a pump pellet/bb rifle, but when I took it home, it was missing a part. On the phone the salesman said he had no more rifles of this type in stock and I could either call the manufacturer or return the rifle. So I returned it and the salesman then slickly sold me another kind of pellet rifle, its power unable to be adjusted by pumping. On its box was a picture in cross-hairs of one of the animals it was meant to kill: squirrels. 

That evening I was reading the just-published (and excellent) autobiography, “Nevertheless,” by Alec Baldwin and came upon a poignant passage about his finding a dead squirrel as a kid growing up in Massapequa and burying it.  And then I inquired of my wife about the second rifle I bought being able to kill squirrels and she, a PETA contributor, gave a solid no. So I returned this rifle, too.

Then I went to Walmart and the salesman there appreciated my non-lethal squirrel plan. “You want to just scare them, yes,” he said.  At Walmart, too, there were plenty of Daisy rifles—just like John had used—and I bought one. It was amazingly cheap: $35. But the squirrel-familiar salesman said I might also get a bb-pistol with a clip of 13 bb’s, considering that the rifle was only good for one shot at time. For those especially brazen squirrels that come to the fruit trees right in front of our porch, I figured this would be practical. So I bought the bb-pistol, too, for $25.

So now I am well-armed with non-lethal weaponry when thieving squirrels return.

BOOK REVIEW - 'HOUSE OF SPIES'

BOOK REVIEW

‘House of Spies’ - By Daniel Silva

527 pages – Harper Collins

Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur

 

One of the most interesting attributes with which Daniel Silva’s irresistible protagonist, Gabriel Allon, is blessed, is (of all things) the Israeli master spy’s facility as a world-class art restorer. Doubly fascinating is author Silva’s uncanny ability to weave together the unlikely combination of espionage and fine art savvy so expertly that each of his stories makes logical use of both Allon aptitudes. Thus we find several of Silva’s book titles laced with artistic terms, as in The Kill Artist, The Rembrandt Affair, Portrait of a Spy, etcetera.

In my view, while one admittedly should not ‘judge a book by its cover,’ a novel’s content is usefully hinted at by its title. Given that premise, those Daniel Silva thrillers whose covers contain allusions to the fictitious Gabriel Allon’s artistic propensity, are the ones that readers who are new to this exquisite storyteller, might look into initially. 

This is not to say that any of Daniel Silva’s books necessarily constitute a better read than another. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a Gabriel Allon novel that isn’t marked by the sort of intrigue and tension readers have come to expect from this razor-sharp master of suspense. Nor is any thriller buff likely to open a Silva novel that’s written in less than incisive prose. Consider the skill with which the simple act of lighting a cigarette is described on page 222 … Madame Sophie appeared relieved … she lit a cigarette and with thumb and ring finger, discreetly picked a fleck of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. 

That’s the kind of sentence most writers only dream about composing … but which Daniel Silva delivers in droves while defining the characters that populate his nineteen novels.

Furthermore, the author’s descriptive skills are not limited to character definition. As one who spent a year in Morocco, this reviewer can vouch for Silva’s perceptive eye in describing that enigmatic country. It was almost breathtaking to read his spot-on depictions of cryptic Casablanca (where I saw a lone gendarme, armed with only a nightstick, beat back a crowd of a hundred riot-bound jihadists) … or mysterious Marrakesh (I interviewed Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day on location there while they filmed Hitchcock’s spellbinder, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”) … or Rabat, Fez, and Tangier (each of which city is known for its unique stamp of North African peculiarity).

But it is plain to those of us who have experienced Fez, and its Al Quaraouiyine  University,  (the oldest continually-operating university in the world)  … or Tangier in northernmost Morocco  (with its incredible views of Gibraltar) … that author Daniel Silva knows his venues intimately. In ‘House of Spies’ this phenomenal writer leads us through mystifying locales stretching from Washington D.C., to London, and Corsica (to name but a few of Gabriel Allon’s haunts) and we quickly come to the realization that the fictitious hero’s creator has indeed personally walked the streets he describes so intimately.

It is not surprising, therefore, that MGM has recently acquired the rights to all of Silva’s incomparable books. The competition in Hollywood must have been keen … and rightly so.

Daniel Silva is the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, The Confessor, A Death in Vienna, Prince of Fire, The Messenger, The Secret Servant, Moscow Rules, The Defector, The Rembrandt Affair, Portrait of a Spy, The Fallen Angel, The English Girl, The Heist, and The English Spy.His books are published in more than thirty countries and are bestsellers around the world. He serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and lives in Florida with his wife, CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel, and their two children, Lily and Nicholas.

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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of a dozen novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. His recent hit, THE GHOSTWRITERS, explores the bizarre relationship between the late Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Ladouceur’s newly completed thriller, THE SOUTHWICK INCIDENT, debuted last month, when it was introduced at the Smithtown Library.. The book involves a radicalized Yale student and his CIA pursuers. Mr. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com