A colleague of mine at this newspaper used to refer to the North Fork’s easternmost hamlet as The People’s Republic of Orient. The implication was that residents of Orient considered themselves and their hamlet separate and apart from the rest of Southold Town — a humorous suggestion that was, at the very least, partially reality-based. READ
Columns
Last Saturday night a large group of men, women, children and babies filled all the pews at St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church in Greenport for the 8 p.m. Spanish Mass. Benches at the rear of the church were filled, and the foyer by the doors that open onto Main Road was standing room only. READ
It’s been 30 years since Times Review Media Group honored its first people of the year.
Published only in The Suffolk Times that first go-round, the list of honorees was top ped by overall Person of the Year Linda Graham. Ms. Graham, a mother of five and co-founder of the Southold Hospice in Progress program, had died just one month earlier in a tragic crash at the age of 44.
I wouldn’t call myself a tree hugger, though I once came close to getting arrested when attempting to block the Southold Town Highway Department from cutting down a neighbor’s maple — but that’s another story. Usually I am more moderate in my actions, though I am concerned about the well-being of the world I inhabit.
Twelve years later, the headline still stands out in my mind. I’ve read thousands of newspaper headlines since, written hundreds more, most of them easily forgettable. READ
Want some good news?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced last month a plan to expedite the approval process for a vaccine to ward off Lyme disease. READ
Standing amid a crowd of hundreds Monday afternoon, Fred Sandusky held a yellow Cheerios box with a tiny pinhole up toward the sun. READ
On Friday, Southold Farm + Cellar’s second day back in business after more than a year, co-owner and winemaker Regan Meador tells me he has just killed five scorpions. They commonly crawl along his 62-acre property and can range in size from the diameter of a quarter to the length of a human palm, he says.
Last weekend, my wife and I saw “Dunkirk,” a movie about an extraordinary time in history when German armies pushed all the way to the English Channel in their conquest of France and the Low Countries. Hundreds of thousands of English and French troops were surrounded, their backs against the Channel.
Carl Vail was an American story. He was born Aug. 12, 1895, on his father’s farm in Peconic. His father was Floyd Vail, and he farmed land that ran from the North Road nearly to the Sound, where he also maintained cabins on the bluffs that he rented to tourists. READ
