SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Suffolk County Is Something To Be Thankful For

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Although from New York City, I’ve lived in Suffolk County all my adult life. And, I was thinking the other day, that’s something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

My family, after living in Brooklyn and Queens, ended up in a lovely part of Manhattan—on Gramercy Park for 50 years until my mom and dad passed away. The apartment had two terraces on its east and west sides the glitter and excitement of Manhattan. My parents had the key to Gramercy Park itself, their favorite green sanctuary. 

Two weeks back, just after the scallop season opened, my wife and I were at the Southold Fish Market. If Norman Rockwell lived not in Massachusetts and Vermont but in Suffolk, he would have painted pictures of it. There was a handmade sign out front: “Wanted Scallop Openers.” Also outside was a huge bin filled with empty shells. Inside, folks in rubber waders were shucking scallops, a picturesque scene.

Moreover, Peconic Bay scallops are, hands-down, the finest scallops in the world—and I’ve tried many including those on Nantucket, said to be the nearest competition.

At Charlie Manwaring’s Southold Fish Market, not only are shellfish and finfish sold,  but there’s a café. At it, scallops are perfectly cooked. “Dredged in flour and cooked in butter with some garlic in a hot pan,” I was told. You’d never find scallops so fresh, so good, so sensationally cooked in the Big City. On the menu is a tale beginning with: “ONCE UPON A TIME…a young boy learned to clam and fish from his father and grandfather….That young man….Charlie…still works his heart out at the job he loves. He and his crew look forward to showing you what our surrounding waters and the hard work of our local baymen can offer.”

We were on the North Fork so I could get an epidural injection from a fantastic doctor to deal with pain in a hip. That’s a thing about Suffolk, there’s quality all over the place.

Dr. Frank Adipietro presides at the Dr. Frank J. Adipietro Interventional Pain Center, an entire wing of Eastern Long Island Hospital. The hospital is right on the water in Greenport. It’s quite a contrast, besides its setting, to hospitals in New York City. Here medical care is remarkably friendly, personal and on a small-scale—yet still of the highest-quality. (That shot by the next morning had virtually eliminated the pain.)

I’ve always gotten a kick out of quaint Greenport. 

We took the North Ferry going back and I thought of the other place where there are small white ferries like this: the San Juan Islands off the state of Washington. A big difference is that waters there are frigid. Indeed, on those ferries are signs warning of hypothermia in an instant if one falls into the water. Happily, Suffolk waters are swimmable much of the year.

Driving across bucolic Shelter Island, past the sign warning motorists that there may be turtles on the road, I thought of the contrast between this sweet island and much of the area where I’m a journalism professor in now mostly heavily built-up Nassau County. 

We were on the South Ferry, named the Lt. Joe Theinart, going to North Haven. Lt. Theinart of Shelter Island was killed in 2010 at age 24 by the explosion of an improvised bomb in Afghanistan. On entering Shelter Island from the ferry, you see, nearly a decade later, a hand-written sign declaring: “We Love You Joey” and a depiction of a heart.

Service to the nation has long been revered in Suffolk, as the host of monuments to Civil War and World War I (many extended to World War II) service attest. There’s also a monument in Huntington to a patriot of the Revolutionary War—Nathan Hale who at 21 answered General George Washington’s request and volunteered to be a spy behind enemy lines on Long Island. He began his mission on the shores of Huntington Bay. He was later captured and hung by the British. He famously declared as his last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

My wife, Janet, was from nearby Huntington Beach when we met in 1959 on the first week for us at Antioch College in Ohio. (As of the new year, we’ll have been together for 60 years.) A half-year Antioch internship at the Cleveland Press inspired me to get into journalism as quickly as I could. Janet and I went to Suffolk. Thinking I needed some more college to get a job in journalism, for a year and a half I attended then Adelphi Suffolk College in Sayville and started and was editor there of the first newspaper at a four-year college in Suffolk which I named The New Voice. 

We first lived in Islip, then Brentwood, then Sayville and now, going on 45 years, Noyac.

From the South Ferry we drove through beautiful Sag Harbor and then adjacent Noyac. It was to Sag Harbor that my paternal grandparents came from Hungary, met, married and settled more than a century ago, later moving to the city. I became a reporter in Suffolk in 1961. Janet,  now retired as a teacher, and I raised two sons, Adam and Kurt, in Suffolk. It’s been a good life here.

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. 

Theater Review - 'A Christmas Carol'

Theater Review – ‘A Christmas Carol’

Produced by: Theatre Three – Port Jefferson

Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur 

Jeffrey Sanzel as ‘Ebenezer Scrooge’ (foreground) and his Clerk, ‘Bob Crachit’ - Douglas J. Quattrock

On Long Island, Christmas wouldn’t be the happy, traditional time we all look forward to, were it not for the inclusion of Theatre Three’s perennial staging of Charles Dickens’ classic ‘A Christmas Carol.’ 

Every year at about this time, the itch to kick back in Port Jefferson’s 160-year-old playhouse and wonder at the genius of its guiding light, Director Jeffrey Sanzel (who wrote the prize-winning adaptation) wafts over us like the millions of falling leaves that herald the arrival of the holiday season along with the great Sanzel’s masterpiece.

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If that smacks of hyperbole, you must ask yourself how many staged dramatic versions of world-renowned stories you know of that have kept audiences returning annually to the same venue for nearly thirty-five years!

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It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to learn that some of the roles being played by newcomers to this familiar production were interpreted a few years back by their mothers or fathers. That’s how much staying power originally Dickens … and now Sanzel … have injected into this most endearing (and enduring) of all Yultide-oriented dramas.

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You may number this reviewer among those critics who have found Theatre Three’s productions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ more and more charming as the years go by. Leave it to Director Sanzel and his talented retinue to alter for the better even that which so many Long Islanders have already dubbed “…a perfect classic of the first rank…” and we’ve been quick to embrace the show as our very own contribution to the Arts. 

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That claim is not as presumptuous as it may sound at first blush, for just as a book is never really completed until it’s read, no play is ever truly finalized until seen in performance. Thus, local theater fans themselves contribute in a major way to the success of this home-grown classic.

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Indeed, Jeffrey Sanzel seems to delight so much in touching up his superb adaptation annually, that some of us who note these improvements with the passing seasons have taken to calling him ‘The Leonardo of Port Jefferson,’ such is his dedication to perfection. Of course, we do so in private … because the self- effacing impresario would be aghast to know that in his re-workings he is being compared to the greatest of all renaissance men. So be it. We stand by our characterization.

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It is only fair that five artists should be saluted for having earned key ‘A Christmas Carol’ roles for the first time. They are: Nicole Bianco (a charming Belle) … Eric Hughes (convincing London apprentice Dick Wilkins) … Michelle LaBozzetta (the perfect narrator of Christmas Past) … Andrew Lenahan (wonderful as Jacob Marley) … and Richard Schindler (endearing as the jolly Fezziwig). Congratulations to them all … their sure-footed performances on the Theatre Three stage reveal clearly why they’ve been selected for the important parts they play.

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Of course, this most beloved of all Christmas Season stories belongs largely (though not exclusively by any means) to its antagonist-turned-protagonist—Ebenezer Scrooge. The central character is played by Jeffrey Sanzel himself, and it is nigh on to impossible to picture anyone else undertaking the miser’s demanding but unforgettable role. Similarly, one can hardly imagine a serious patron of the Theater Arts ever leaving Port Jefferson’s famed Theatre Three … its glittering Main Street marquee flashing the invitation to, ‘A Christmas Carol’ … without feeling amply rewarded for having partaken of the grand old playhouse’s holiday treat.

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The Show runs thru December 29th - (631) 928-9202 … and by all means, bring the kids … they’ll love you for it!

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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 topical thriller, THE SOUTHWICK INCIDENT, was introduced at the Smithtown Library on May 21st. The book involves a radicalized Yale student and his CIA pursuers. Mr. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Quite An Election In Suffolk County And The Nation

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

           What a midterm election—in Suffolk County and the nation!

           When I entered my polling place, a poll-watcher commented about how it had been an extremely busy day. That was true of voting across the nation. For years, voter apathy has been bemoaned in the United States. Perhaps the 2018 midterm election will mark a change.

            The biggest contest in Suffolk was in the lst Congressional District where Republican Lee Zeldin of Shirley held his own and will have a third term. However, Democrat Perry Gershon of East Hampton waged a strong, well-organized campaign. Indeed, this newcomer to politics in receiving 46% of the vote did better against Mr. Zeldin than Democrat Anna Throne-Holst in 2016 with 41.8% and Tim Bishop, the Democratic incumbent, in 2014 with 44.5%

            Will Mr. Gershon pull “another Otis Pike”—in that Democrat Pike initially lost his race in 1958 against lst C.D. incumbent Stuyvesant Wainwright of Wainscott. Mr. Pike of Riverhead then embarked on a two-year marathon of going to virtually every meeting of civic and community groups in the lst C.D., mixing with residents at every opportunity, not stopping campaigning. And in 1960 he defeated four-term Republican Wainwright. Mr. Pike held the lst C.D.seat for 18 years, longer than anyone in history, from 1789 when it was first representative was Declaration of Independence-signer William Floyd of Mastic.

             Is it possible that Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman will be the Democratic candidate to run in two years in the lst C.D. considering his mighty showing against incumbent County Comptroller John M. Kennedy, Jr.?

             Even though Mr. Schneiderman of Southampton has lived his adult life on the East End—and candidates from the relatively lightly populated East End have not been seen as doing well in countywide races—he came 1% away from upsetting Republican Kennedy from Nesconset. Mr. Schneiderman grew up in Hauppauge, graduated from Hauppauge High School.

             Mr. Kennedy was Suffolk County legislator for five two-year terms (his wife, Leslie, now holds the seat), was an official at many other levels in Suffolk government and is the incumbent comptroller. Still, Mr. Schneiderman did very well and at this writing was not conceding with thousands of absentee ballots still not counted.

             If Mr. Schneiderman, long an Independence Party member, had received the Independence line with the 6,490 votes it pulled in—it was outrageous with his Independence background he did not—he’d have won. A former East Hampton supervisor and six-term county legislator, he need not leave his Southampton supervisor’s post to go for Congress in two years. 

            Will Mr. Kennedy run as the GOP candidate next year for Suffolk County executive?

            Long Island had a key role in Democrats gaining a majority in the New York State Senate in Election 2018. From Suffolk, Democrat James Gaughran of Northport, a former Suffolk County legislator who is chairman of the Suffolk County Water Authority, unseated 11-term Republican incumbent Senator Carl Marcellino of Syosset. Longtime—very longtime—Senate incumbent Republican Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson won by good margin to his 22^nd (!) two-year term. But his important—for Long Island and the state—chairmanship of the Senate’s Higher Education Committee might be collateral damage. Mr. LaValle has been ideal as chair of that committee as a former teacher and school administrator. 

            I’ve been a guest lecturer in the class he taught at what was Dowling College—and the guy can teach. He knows education personally. But the New York State Legislature is very partisan. I know this from having for years been sent to Albany to cover the closing week of its sessions when I reported and wrote a column at the daily Long Island Press. If you are a senator or assemblyperson from the minority party, you are relegated to being a near political outsider. Will the Senate under Democratic control allow Mr. LaValle to continue as committee chair? That’s unlikely.

             Finally, Andrew Cuomo won re-election to a third term as governor by a solid—59%—margin but it’s considered doubtful he will run for a fourth four-year term. And, before that, it’s likely he will try to be the Democratic candidate against President Trump in 2020.

             Who might be the Democrat to potentially be his successor? I’d say State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, a Long Islander who won re-election last week by a bigger margin—66.5%—than even Mr. Cuomo—or any candidate for a state government administration post.

             Mr. DiNapoli is remarkably independent, a straight-shooter strong on ethics, affable and thoroughly competent. He’s quite the environmentalist, too, was co-chair of the Suffolk-based State Legislative Commission on Water Resource Needs of Long Island. A resident of Great Neck Plaza, he served 10 terms as a state assemblyman before being appointed to an open term as state comptroller and then was elected twice to the position. He would make an extraordinary governor.

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. 

Kings Park Heritage Museum Recognizes KP Suffragist Elizabeth Freeman

November is New York State History Month. The State Education Department honors the rich history of our great state and celebrates the valuable education resources of our museums, libraries, archives and historic sites.   In commemoration of the 101st anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York State, the New York State Museum is displaying a model of a statue honoring Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 2020 in New York’s Central Park. It is the first statue in the park in honor of a woman.

In tribute to NYS History month and the 101^st anniversary of women suffragists, the Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum would like to recognize Kings Park’s Suffragist Elizabeth Freeman, 1876-1942.   Freeman her spent younger years growing up at St. Johnland in Kings Park.  She came from England along with her mother, Mary Hall Freeman, her brother, Printer’s Union Leader, John Freeman and her sister, renowned artist, Jane Freeman.

Elizabeth had returned to England, 1905 with her mom, supporting themselves by making silk ribbon flowers for nobility.  She had come across a woman being mistreated and when she came to her aid she found herself thrown in jail alongside the woman. It was at that time she learned of the women’s rights movement and why this woman was thrown in jail.

In her diary writings, published by grandniece Margret Johnson in An Interactive Scrapbook of Elisabeth Freeman: Suffragette, Civil Rights Worker, and Militant Pacifist., www.elizabethfreeman.org, “Elisabeth found a cause that so uplifted her and saved her from the tedium of daily life that she likened it to spirituality: ““But the supreme spirit of the militant movement is one that, I say reverently, is not of this world. In the great battle of Downing Street, as I  looked down the line of marching women I saw that their faces were turned to heaven, and there was that expression which awed and uplifted me. It was as though the early Crusaders had been reincarnated in them. I felt that I was watching the advance of a mighty Christian army. 

When Elizabeth returned to the USA, she began her journey alongside many thousands of women, to earn the right to vote. To Elisabeth, who had gone to jail for the Cause, street speaking, selling suffrage newspapers, attracting the attention of reporters and photographers were child’s play.  She was represented by Wm. Feakins Speaker’s Bureau and also worked with many of the suffrage organizations of the day, including the NYS Woman’s Suffrage Assn., the Women’s Political Union, the National Woman’s Suffrage Assn., The Woman’s Journal, the Texas Woman’s Suffrage Assn., and the Congressional Union, as written by Margret Johnson. (www.elizabethfreeman.org) 

Elizabeth traveled extensively through state such as NYS, Ohio and Texas by means of horse drawn wagon willed with literature with other women, such as “General” Rosalie Gardiner Jones, ancestor of Lion Gardiner of Gardiner’s Island, lobbying for the Cause of suffrage, the right to vote in political elections. 

Through her years, Elizabeth was engaged in many additional important life changing causes.  The NAACP campaign brought her expertise to these social problems and she became an investigator and speaker. “By the end of 1916 with her participation in the NAACP anti-lynching campaign and the Hughes Women’s Special, Elisabeth Freeman had established herself as a national player. She was a contender for the position of national organizer for the NAACP.” (www.elizabethfreeman.org)

By 1917, Elizabeth Freeman was standing up for civil liberties during war time, she would become a lobbyist for the Emergency Peace Foundation that later became People’s Council of America and do extensive organizing and speaking.  Her continuous radical fight for civil equality would shine a light on political and oppressive matters that would shape our country.  

Elisabeth Freeman retired to Altadena, California and promptly joined the local chapter of the National Woman’s Party, still led by suffragist Alice Paul, with continuous dedicated to passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). From her correspondence to her nieces we know that she continued her strong belief in peace and labor issues. She died of pleurisy on Feb. 27th, 1942.

In the publication Equal Rights of the National Woman’s Party, they wrote of her life: Soap-box orator, banner bearer, colorful organizer, always the hardest work fell to her lot and was conquered by her enthusiasm…Her contribution to the cause of women never faltered. (www.elizabethfreeman.org)

For this information and more the Leo P. Ostebo Kings Park Heritage Museum recommends and encourages those interested to go online to www.elizabethfreeman.org for more detailed information.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Corruption In NYS Govt. Is No Joke

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“We’ve had the governor’s right-hand man and the two former leaders of the legislature convicted of crimes. There’s no clearer picture than that as to why ethics reform needs to be on the top of the state’s to-do list,” says State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. from Suffolk.

Mr. Thiele is a leader in promoting enactment of what is being referred to as the “Anti-Corruption Amendment.” It seeks to amend the New York State Constitution by creating a single and independent New York State Government Integrity Commission. 

It would replace the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) and Legislative Ethics Commission (LEC). The problem with JCOPE, says Mr. Thiele, is that it is “controlled” by the governor and the problem with LEC is that it is “controlled” by the state legislature. 

Both have been “complete and total failures,” says Mr. Thiele.

“The new single commission would be responsible for ensuring consistent enforcement” of ethics standards, says the Sag Harbor-based assemblyman, in “both the executive and legislative branches.” Moreover, it “would have widened powers” to punish “misconduct.” Also, it would “be responsible for the enforcement of campaign finance laws” and “would operate under substantial transparency laws, with several provisions in place to ensure fair and just appointment of members.”

It would be comparable, says Mr.Thiele, an attorney, to the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct which serves as a watchdog on the judiciary “and is independent. We need something like that in regard to the executive and legislative branches.”

The legislation that will be before the State Assembly and State Senate when they begin their 2019 session in January states: “The people of New York expect officers and employees of the state to observe laws, rules and regulations that specify high standards of ethical conduct designed to avoid the reality and appearance of corruption, conflict of interest, self-dealing and breach of the public trust. Equally they expect that candidates for state office and others seeking to influence state elections to observe laws, rules and regulations designed to regulate actual and potential corruption and conflicts of interest by regulating the influence of money in politics and making transparent the financing and expenditures of efforts to influence voters.”

“Achieving this goal,” it continues, “requires an independent and non-partisan agency with jurisdiction over matters pertaining to both the legislative and executive branches of government and that has the needed powers to train, advise, interpret, adopt rules and regulations, conduct fair hearings that afford due process and impose appropriate sanctions on a consistent basis so that, with fair and equal application of the law, no person or entity, no matter what their status, influence or role in government, can place themselves above the law…”

New York State government most recently got a grade of D-minus for ethics from the Center for Public Integrity which cited its “unending string of scandals” that “fail to spur meaningful reform.” It is a Washington-based non-profit non-partisan investigative journalism organization with a mission “to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty in powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and put the public interest first.”

And that was in late 2015. The Center for Public Integrity noted: “First came the Assembly speaker, the powerful Democrat Sheldon Silver, arrested for “exploiting his position by accepting millions in bribes and kickbacks. Then it was the Senate leader, Republican Dean Skelos, who federal prosecutors charged with bribery, extortion and fraud….Skelos was the fifth straight Senate leader to be charged with corruption.” And there had been many other lesser state officials charged and found guilty of corruption.

This was before Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s closest aide, Joseph Percoco, and yet more other state officials, were accused and convicted of corruption. The trial in September of Mr. Percoco was punctuated by the code-name he used in taking bribes: “ziti.” As The New York Times account of the trial related, the code-name was a “term used in the HBO mob drama, ‘The Sopranos.’ Typical was this kind of exchange, after a payment from a company to Mr. Peroco was slow to arrive. ‘’I have no ziti,’ Mr. Peroco wrote [in an e-mail]. Another time, Mr. Peroco seemed more testy, ‘Where the hell is the ziti???’….The pasta parlance almost became a running joke during the trial but it also provided a powerful symbol for the prosecution.” 

Corruption in state government is no joke. Mr. Peroco was sentenced to seven years in jail. Mr. Silver also got seven. Mr. Skelos, of Rockville Centre, was sentenced to four years and the judge added three months to that for his “false testimony.” This related to his having taken the stand “and tried to spin a tale about an innocent, doting father” just trying to help his son, when, said a sentencing memo sent to the judge from the prosecution, he was a “brass-knuckled power broker…who shook down constituents for bribes.”

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.