By Karl Grossman
Maria, an honor student at Suffolk County Community College, lives in fear of being thrown out of the country she knows and loves — the United States.
Coming here was not her choice. Her father came in 1996, leaving a troubled Argentina. His lifelong dream was to come to “America which he saw as [...]

By Karl Grossman
The late Suffolk County Legislator John J. Foley was a model for compassion in government. He was dedicated to the care of the ill. And thus it was fitting that the historic Suffolk County infirmary was renamed the John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility.
It was Mr. Foley of Blue Point — a county [...]

By Karl Grossman
A giant in the publishing field — and a man who loved the East End — died last week. Barney Rosset, as his Page One obituary in the New York Times said, “changed the course of publishing in the United States, bringing masters like Samuel Beckett to Americans’ attention under his Grove Press [...]

by Karl Grossman

Leaders of environmental and civic organizations in Suffolk County, at the last meeting of the Suffolk Legislature, took on the bloc of Suffolk legislators who are highly critical of the county’s farmland, open space and drinking water preservation programs and are pushing for a moratorium on acquisitions.
“We taxpayers in Suffolk County have consistently [...]

By Karl Grossman
Sag Harbor Express editor Bryan Boyhan asked me to write a piece, because of my island-wide experience as a journalist, about whether there are other communities on Long Island which might provide pointers for Sag Harbor as the village faces a future that could change it from being the beautiful and diverse place [...]

By Karl Grossman
She’s a highly unusual chief deputy executive for Suffolk County. Regina Calcaterra is the first woman to hold the post. She’s an East Ender and thoroughly appreciative of life in eastern Suffolk. And her background growing up in Suffolk is extraordinary – living in foster homes and homeless shelters and worse.
She was chosen [...]

By Karl Grossman

More than a century ago, my father’s father came from Hungary to America and worked at the watchcase factory built by Joseph Fahys in Sag Harbor. Engraving was a major art among Hungarian Jews and Fahys and his agents would seek out Hungarian Jewish engravers when they arrived at Ellis Island and take [...]

By Karl Grossman
“It’s like back to the past—let the bulldozers roll,” says an outraged legislator Edward Romaine about the negative stance of some members of the Suffolk Legislature towards the county’s farmland, open space and drinking water preservation programs. “We have legislators who would shut down our preservation programs.”
The legislators, who include Democrats and Republicans [...]

By Karl Grossman

It was a whopper of a mistake made by the Suffolk County Legislature as last year ended — elimination of the Suffolk Department of Environment and Energy.
It was done for economic reasons. Suffolk government’s tight financial situation required cuts, it was said. But in eliminating the department, the Suffolk Legislature lost sight of [...]

by Karl Grossman
Twenty-twelve marks my 50th year as a Long Island-based reporter. I got to thinking about that when invited recently to speak at a meeting of the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Organizations. I put together a presentation, “Fifty Years as a Reporter on Long Island.”
You stay in an area long enough and you learn the [...]