What will be the future off offshore wind turbines off Long Island and elsewhere along coastal United States with Donald Trump as U.S. president? “We recommitted to reducing carbon emissions... more
2025 has already mugged me, repeatedly. I look forward to years that end in a zero or a five. They feel auspicious. One of my life’s numerical highlights was to have my high school graduation land on an ’0 year. Many of us partied extra hard at the turn of the millennium. After all, it was a ’000. I associate auspicious with superlatives like “great!” And so, despite all the signs, I was feeling hopeful, looking forward to 2025. I should have been looking backward for the kick in the butt. Let’s start with the fires ravaging my native Southern ...
by Carlos Sandoval
Suffolk County in recent years has been the only region in the state to increase its number of farms and add farmland, according to a report titled “A Profile of Agriculture in New York State,” by the office of the state’s comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli. The report includes data from 2017 to 2022, a period in which the state lost 8 percent of its farms, while Suffolk County added 18 farms, a jump of 3 percent. The number of farms in Suffolk in 2022 totaled 578, it says; the amount of farmland, 33,821 acres. The Suffolk figures are in the ...
14 Jan 2025 by Karl Grossman
The starlings begin stuffing grass and garbage in the overhead track of the barn door. These are not permanent nests: They fall every time we need a tractor and the doors get pushed open. The birds, if they are home, fly out. Do they count their tragedy in homeownership? Or does this merely occupy and entertain them, practice on a winter’s day, cozy on the coldest nights. Of which we’ve had at least a few. Farther from the farm, the geese are destroying a rye field. You can only spend so much time hunting them, you can only spend so ...
by Marilee Foster
Many people see in the raging Los Angeles a harbinger of the future. Those seeking a metaphor for our past and present can look at a small town in Pennsylvania. In May 1962, the Centralia Town Council met to discuss how the town would go about cleaning up the local landfill. The 300-foot-wide, 75-foot-long pit was made up of a 50-foot-deep strip mine that had been cleared in 1935. A state inspector had become concerned about the pit when he noticed holes in the walls and floor, as such mines often cut through older mines underneath. The town arranged for ...
13 Jan 2025 by Tom Clavin
With the end of a long career of public service on the East End, I am looking forward to new opportunities in this next chapter of my life, including some time to decompress and enjoy friends and family. One of those opportunities I couldn’t pass up was the offer to do a column periodically for The Express News Group. The East End continues to confront so many important challenges and changes. I am thankful to have the chance to offer some opinion and perspective, and maybe an inside view, on some of the important issues of the day. This week, ...
7 Jan 2025 by FRED W. THIELE JR.
At long last, Suffolk County has a county executive who fully understands the need to send highly treated wastewater back into the underground water table, on which the people of Suffolk depend as their “sole source” of potable water, instead of dumping it in nearby waterbodies, including the Atlantic Ocean. And Ed Romaine has legislative support. Further, providing funding to do this was the passing of a referendum in the November election, amending the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act and increasing the county sales tax by one-eighth of a penny to raise money to build sewers and install high-tech ...
by Karl Grossman
If I could draw any direct line between Jimmy Carter and me, it was his alleged impact on my afternoon chores. As the price of oil rose, so did the number of wood stoves in our house. To feed them, we had a massive, continually expanding wood pile. It did not fill me with joy to see its peak outperforming the chicken coop in height. After a storm, or during the height of Dutch elm disease, the pile dwarfed the garage. Our big, old farmhouse had a furnace, but my father kept the thermostat at 60 degrees. The wood pile ...
by Marilee Foster
Back when Jimmy Carter was president, politics didn’t even have a back seat in my life. It was just after college, and it was the dawn of my independence. My plan was to work hard, have fun, pay New York City rent and never have to lean on my parents again. My only memory of Jimmy Carter’s presidency was that interest rates went up so high that paying off credit cards cut into my bar tab. Worse, soon after Carter left office, Congress passed a bill that eliminated the tax deduction on the interest on credit cards. The payments must ...
6 Jan 2025 by By Donathan Salkaln
Karl Grossman on Jan 20, 2025