Black Lives Matter Protests in Huntington June 2020

#BLM protests started May 31 in Huntington and continued for several days afterward, with marches into Huntington Village, protests at two restaurants, and marches from Greenlawn to the SCPD Second Precinct stationhouse.

May 31

Stories I Won't Read at Nytimes.com

Along with its many question-mark riddled headlines, NYTimes.com continues down its path of trying to have something for everyone, and giving no weight to what's important, what would be a good cover story on Elle and the problems of the rich and famous on Sunday afternoons and who can whine the most about their difficulties when it comes to planning their weddings.

I'm old enough to remember when the Times told me what to think, and while I could rebel against that, at least the paper wasn't confused about who it was: it didn't bother writing over and over about who trims their bushes, if you know what I mean, why, and the cultural significance of it.

It's not that it's wrong to write about those other topics, though I do wonder who is whispering in Dean's ear to convince him that these stories matter. But it's not why I read the Times and I'm pretty sure that's not why MOST people go there.

Our Republic is in danger. Stop littering the main page of the website that could and should run somewhere else.

The News About the News---LIBN Takes a Look

My friend Adina Genn wrote about the state of local media, given buyouts, cutbacks and other things happening here on Long Island, and around the country, of course.

 She did a great job capturing the big issues of what happens when major players are diminished and what could fill the void.

Facebook comments and people jumping to conclusions about the news do not replace reporting, no matter how tempting it might be to just buy into the latest flippant remark. I saw someone commenting on a local community page the other day, complaining about a post and wondering how it would be considered news. And of course, it wasn't news. The post was a gripe about how someone had parked. So there is a blending, a slippage perhaps, in what constitutes news.

But I know people miss real reporting, just based on the emails I get asking me to find something out for them. 

Local publications, usually weeklies, have always done the school lunch menus, fire reports, obituaries, etc., but in the past, there's usually been a strong daily to get the big stuff. That's no longer the case, meaning the publications, whether print or digital, are often left to figure out what to do next--try to step up in to the gap left by the big guys or continue on as they have in the past. The jury is still out. It is annoying as hell to see out of town organizations pretend to be covering the local news (and no, I'm not talking about Patch.com) But that's definitely happening. 

Take It Easy with the Coding. And the Caps

Dear PR Friends,
Please stop hyper-coding all your press releases. When you do, that means I'm less likely to use your information because I don't have time to go and remove 10 lines of xxxx in your overly long list of details you want me to write about.

And for the Love of God, stop randomly capitalizing Words so that you'll get my Attention.
We are, after all, not Germans.

Putting Reporters Through Hoops

What reporters do and why we need them: When a green card holder was (falsely) accused of smuggling drugs, he was arrested and tossed into jail for more than 2 months. This is some of what reporters did to try to find out what happened to him.

When asked about the case, Customs officials directed The Washington Post to Maryland Transportation Authority Police, which directed a reporter to prosecutors in the Anne Arundel County state’s attorney’s office. Prosecutors answered some questions about their case but directed The Post to the Department of Homeland Security over questions on Haughton’s detainer.
ICE directed The Post back to Customs, where Steve Sapp, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said privacy laws prohibit the agency “from discussing specifics of any individual traveler’s arrivals inspection.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/innocent-man-spent-months-in-jail-for-bringing-honey-back-to-united-states/2019/08/22/6c5c538c-71c3-11e9-9f06-5fc2ee80027a_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2jI17imit_4U2Q5dqvUGcJ6EWW45SFevPGxGDZ0HlCngpdwn47p6WteVM

'Active Shooter' Language

From the Virginia Beach mass killing.

“I thought someone had fallen down the steps,” she said. “Then, someone yelled, ‘There’s an active shooter in the building’ and they told us to get out.”

Please stop using this lingo. That's cop talk and that's fine for them. But normal human beings shouldn't be using it to talk about people with guns.

Cracks in the Foundation of Press Freedom

Strange and bizarre things are happening to the press in the land of Oz.

Australian federal police raided a reporter's home after a story about secret correspondence between government ministries over a plan to expand intelligence agencies’ surveillance powers. and the next day, the newsroom of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, investigating how the broadcaster learned that Australian special forces were being investigated over possible war crimes in Afghanistan.

The New York Times notes that Australian law forbids government officials to disclose classified or secret information. "This is a serious development and raises legitimate concerns over freedom of the press and proper public scrutiny of national security and defense matters,” the broadcaster said.

Freedom House finds the raids occuring in a liberal democracy are part of a downward spiral for press freedoms.

The report's key findings:

• freedom of the media has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade.
• In some of the most influential democracies in the world, populist leaders have overseen concerted attempts to throttle the independence of the media sector.
• While the threats to global media freedom are real and concerning in their own right, their impact on the state of democracy is what makes them truly dangerous.
• Experience has shown, however, that press freedom can rebound from even lengthy stints of repression when given the opportunity. The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished.

The report comes at the same time that an American president routinely refers to reporters as the enemy of the American people, disputes anything he doesn't like as fake news and  threatened to punish reporters and others who say things he doesn't like.

I know from personal experience that ordinary people seem much more willing to challenge the reasons and motivations for stories. It has become almost routine for people to to believe reporters have an agenda, a reason for reporting stories that they don't like or don't believe. I don't know how this ends.

Kansas State Senate Kicks Out Reporters Covering Protest

So reporters were doing their jobs, covering the protests against the Kansas State Senate's decision not to expand Medicaid, and the politicians had them kicked out for giving the dissidents "an audience?"

We should all remember this when the same politicos can't wait to invite to to come cover a tree planting or Scout award.
>“We never denied the press access to government proceedings,” communications director Shannon Golden said in an email. “Removal was purely due to safety reasons, and any other account is an embellished story.” Was anyone really in danger? Journalists — who cover wars, national disasters, violent protests and criminal behavior — are pretty good judges of what is threatening and what isn’t. They wanted to stay, the Kansas City Star wrote.

Speaking in very general terms, it's almost always the people in authority who cause reporters problems at protests, not the demonstrators, including those in clerical collars.

No Free-Lunch Reporting

Sometimes we want stories to be true. It would help if companies were more forthcoming with the facts and got away from BS statements like "This is not who we are." I  recall this company seeming to confirm her account by saying she'd violated policy and then offering her job back.

It wouldn't be the first time someone got a story like this wrong. A combination of speeding to deliver a powerful story and a  breakdown in the traditional editing process that might have stopped an inaccurate story are part of the story. Standard reporting would have required interviewing the family  involved or at least an explanation of why they weren't available.  And the beginning of the mother's statement doesn't really make the case that the worker lied, although later it does.

And maybe, just maybe, a dozen TV cameras don't need to show up.  We don't need to act like a mob. I'm a big fan of returning to relying on local news operations to produce news for the national networks or the Associated Press, instead of hordes of reporters showing up. Especially since outlets are supposedly so shorthanded.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/05/24/remember-lunch-lady-fired-giving-boy-free-meal-his-mother-now-says-she-lied/?utm_term=.b57100c39d6d

Not Funny, Not a Right to Threaten Someone

No doubt someone thinks this "game" is clever. I suppose if someone gets hurt, the creators will claim their First Amendment rights, thinking it's okay to harm those who actually do live by the First Amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/19/this-wildly-popular-game-you-kill-journalist-make-him-famous-different-way/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.38146b298bbc

Love for Huntington

It's been about 37 years since I arrived in Huntington and have never regretted moving here. Well, there was that time right after I moved here when, blissfully unaware of the many anti-renter issues, I got a visit at 1 a.m. from the town attorney's office, the building inspector and a cop. Turns out I'd unknowingly rented from a guy who had previously been in court and sworn never to rent illegally again.

One of the things that always catches my attention is how people stamp themselves as "real Huntingtonians."

The response to a such a question as, 'Did you grow up here?' is, almost invariably "Yes, I grew up here, I was born in Huntington Hospital." I heard it again today. It makes me laugh because it often is said with a bit of firmness, proof of people's bona fides. I've lived in three other states as an adult, and can't recall a similar kind of statement about those places. It's a point of pride, and it's charming.

Done and Down With Facebook

Facebook's horrible decision to allow the fake Nancy Pelosi video to spread, knowing full well it's fake,  so "people can make up their own mind about the truth" is such a gutless, dishonest decision that I'm done.   While it's  difficult to walk away from Facebook entirely, I'm going to do my very best to post here. Some things may have to up on Facebook until I'm ready to cut loose completely.

Good luck to everyone else.

Knowing What You Don't Know

I've always felt I could take care of myself and could figure out what I needed. But that's a bit of self-delusion, especially when something serious happens. This little cancer journey--and I say little because it's new and because there seems to be a positive resolution in the near future--has reminded me that things aren't black and white. Not everything is knowable. The experts don't always agree. They CAN put something on the internet that isn't true. You know, just one surprise after another.

The trip from fear about something wrong to knowing it to fixing it to continuing to treat it has gone remarkably fast. My information changes day to day, partly because the facts change a  bit, partly because my own rather uninformed thoughts are disposed of, though sometimes I've guessed or have understood something I've read on my own. It's funny what we know but not really--yes, some cancer cells had gone elsewhere but it's not a metastasized cancer. It's a couple of isolated cells. "They got it in time" has real meaning.

Wednesday I saw the radiologist and despite some things about the course of this cancer that sound a little like what I'd read about prostate cancer, it's not at all the same. So the passing thought that maybe radiation wasn't necessary since the cancer is very slow growing and it tends to affect, shall we say, older women, a question about doing that seemed to horrify the radiologist. She in fact seemed to know that I was going to ask, because I think I hinted at it with the oncologist a few days earlier.
It's not that I think I should or that I'm opposed to radiation. Just a question, folks.  I'm also a little fuzzy brained still, maybe from the surgery, probably just being very tired, something radiation is likely to increase in the short run.

It will keep me busy--five days a week, five weeks. But the sessions are really short, after the first one where they measure and mark you to make sure they don't set your heart on fire or something. I was offered a slightly different option, three weeks, longer sessions but that would mean slightly less radiation delivered. But I'm in for a dime, in for a dollar. Five weeks it is, starting in January.

So, Yeah, I've Been Busy

If I submitted the story of the last five weeks of my life as a soap opera script, it would probably be rejected as too ridiculous, so overloaded with cliched drama as to be utterly unbelievable. The good news is that it all looks like there will be a happy ending.

 I'll tell this chronologically but keep in mind, it seems to be turning out well.

 In the space of about two weeks, I was diagnosed with cancer, went through a hurricane, had a knife pulled on me and got subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.

 Within two more weeks, I've had surgery, seen an oncologist, started a five-year (!) daily drug regimen that's already making me a tad ill,  and am preparing to start radiation. (Update: regimen is now 10 years).

 The sequence was, roughly, this: I knew something was growing where it shouldn't, but ignored it awhile out of fear. Not a good move but I could rationalize it a bit by thinking about the several harmless cysts I'd had, including one that turns out to have perhaps saved me now. But the lump wouldn't go away, wouldn't take on the texture of a cyst, until one day in early October as I was mentally debating what to do, I saw someone on tv say about her cancer treatment, "I got sick and then I got better."

That statement did it for me and I knew I could take the next step, that I could accept becoming sick to become better.

So off I went to the hospital women's clinic, which produced an absolutely negative (as in horrible) report that had me wondering very calmly whether my life insurance would arrive quickly enough to keep my kid's tuition payments up.

 Two days later, I was sitting with a surgeon who faulted several aspects of the report, big time, but wisely decided to do a biopsy on the spot.

Three days later, while working spin alley at a presidential debate, I got his call confirming it was indeed cancer, something ridiculously rare called mucinous colloid carcinoma. It is a cancer with an amazingly good general prognosis though I've since learned, the variables of cancer are endless. In my case, they are mostly good news.

After a couple of more tests, surgery was booked for Nov. 1. From the moment I got the diagnosis, I began feeling like two people: this person diagnosed with cancer and then me, the regular me, who wasn't sick. It's a cliche to say that a serious diagnosis creates an emotional roller coaster. I felt oddly able to step outside myself and see how I was reacting though now I think I probably wasn't as detached as I thought. (The only other time I felt anything close to this was in the weeks right after Sept. 11, when I kept sensing the presence of another person standing very close to me, at my elbow, watching as I worked on stories. I have no idea what that was about.) But mostly I felt eerily calm.

 As the surgery date approached, so did Hurricane Sandy, and so two days before it hit, the procedure had to be postponed. And then the hurricane hell broke loose, with a loss of power that would last eight days, return long enough to allow me to write some election copy, and then fail again for two days because of the nor'easter.

But but! That's not enough, right? A hurricane, no power, a snowstorm and little to no fuel. I will explain in more detail, but the day after the hurricane was the moment the neighborhood trash chose to attack some good people over an imagined slight, slugging one guy in the head with a brick, pulling knives on us, etc. I will tell that story another time but the good guys have won that one, too.

 After a second postponement because I had no power and no heat to come home to, I had surgery Nov. 12 and, at the hospital, the doc said, everything's normal, the malignancy removed, no metastasized cancer found in the removed lymph node.

 Aha, I thought, returning home where I promptly began feeling like the bionic woman (it was the post-surgical endorphins, apparently.) Cancer defeated in less than a week! Criminals disposed of since they were finally evicted and we all have orders of protection! Hurricane gone and the heat back! Sure, I've got a couple of hideous scars but so what?

 But. And there's always, always a but with cancer, I'm learning.

A week after surgery, I visited the surgeon whose opening comment to me was, "Well you're Stage I." It turns out that the experts test the removed lymph node (two, actually) on the spot but also look at it over a few days. And a couple of stray cancer cells were found.  The doctors distinguish between stray, isolated cells and an actual metastasized cancer, so again, this is good news. Who knew?

Yet I'm in this weird grayish world of technically diagnosed with cancer but medically, it's doubtful that any cancer remains. And I'm not sick, or haven't been though, I'm starting to feel a bit weakened from a drug that is meant as insurance against  a recurrence.

I have no grand statement on life, no fantastic insight into the meaning of life. This is just something, well, several things, that have happened in a very short amount of time.

 And that's all I can write tonight. Please do not feel compelled to comment. I just need to write all this down.

Get the Question Right

I just started reading "The Age of Anxiety" by Haynes Johnson, which traces what Johnson calls the culture of fear from the days of Joe McCarthy to present times.

Aside from solid research and a smooth writing style, Johnson's book almost immediately notes something we see all the time these days: the failure to ask the right question--any question, really-- in news stories. Johnson relates the  story of McCarthy's first speech where he claimed to have a list of known Communists serving in the State Department, and quotes at length the story about that first speech, which would lead to such hardship for so many. Aside from the fact that the charge is buried at the end of the story, guess what the reporter didn't ask?

He didn't ask to see the list.

I highly recommend this book. Among other things, you'll see certain accusations of socialism, disloyalty and demagoguery that will sound and feel familiar today, and while the book's primary emphasis is McCarthyism, the book serves as a great reminder of the great damage created by fear.

Also, though Johnson's been a major political journalism figure for years, it was fun discovering that he'd also worked as a copy editor at The Washington Post.

*The failure to ask the right question isn't limited to journalists. I'll skip the details but several years ago I was being deposed about a document the other side's team was convinced I'd produced that they felt supported their case. The lawyer waved the document under my nose, and with great flourish loudly asked, "Is this your signature?!" To which I replied no.  Someone had written my name at the top of the paper to indicate where it had come from. But he didn't follow up. End of case.

Diagrams, Detailed

   Does anyone still teach diagramming?

   If you're of a certain age, you certainly had to learn how. If you want a refresher or want to learn something new, try Eugene Moutoux's site. Go straight to the English section to get started, unless you want to try it in Latin or German.

  My favorite diagrams of his come from the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

  Yes, I have mentioned him before but am glad to see him still at it, still teaching.

Also, the Capital Community College Foundation has, what else, a PowerPoint explanation of diagramming. CCCF has terrific resources but I prefer Moutoux's because he teaches the concepts.

The Stolen Valor Case

The Supreme Court apparently is going to take up another controversial First Amendment case that pits those who want to punish people falsely claiming military honors against those who believe free speech should have few limits.

I'm inclined to go with public shaming when someone falsely claims to have won a Medal of Honor or suffered as a prisoner of war.  Anyone who sees old vets sit around telling literal war stories knows how they get embellished after a while, so I've never understood how the atrociously named Stolen Valor Act (it's not the valor that's stolen; it's the honor) could be applied. Just where's the line?

That's not to say we should excuse people who stand up at public meetings or run for office while claiming credit for service they didn't render or awards they didn't earn. There's where public shaming comes in. Thanks to the internet, there's plenty of ways to track down every POW, every Medal of Honor winner, even everyone who ever made it to SEAL training.

No need for a federal law. Let the First Amendment prevail. And maybe a set of stocks for those who are legends in their own minds.

Leading the Race to the Bottom

Ha, ha. Usually "worst error ever" is a competition, but it appears The Cranky Copy Editor is winning for now with this citation. I don't know the source.

Support OpEd News

It hasn't received that much attention here on the East Coast, but the collapse of an organization known as International Humanities Center, and with it, the disappearance of funds, is threatening dozens of mostly small nonprofits. One of them is OpEdNews.If you enjoy reading a range of viewpoints from beyond the usual TV gasbags, check out and consider supporting the site.

I May Faint

Who do you suppose wrote this?

"As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma."