by Richard Gambino
“The Child is father of the Man,” wrote Wordsworth. So it is I see so many ghosts from my earliest Christmases. Little ghosts. All about me.  In Sag Harbor, so far from the Brooklyn of my earliest years, the Red Hook long gone, itself a ghost of an Italian immigrant neighborhood where longshoremen [...]

  by Joseph Hanna
 Wisdom must be refreshed. Snow in the high Colorado Mountains does not melt, it “sublimates”. Sublimation means that snow at a certain altitude changes from a solid to a gas without going through the usual watery phase. Wisdom is like that. You acquire it through painful lessons. You then own it rock solid. [...]

By Richard Gambino
In Part I of this essay, published on Oct. 30, I said I’d further pursue the topic after the elections on Nov. 4, in light of whatever new political realities emerged. I made several points. One, the credit crisis which triggered the present world-wide economic situation was brought about by the well-intentioned massive [...]

By Marissa Maier      
   
In the days leading up to the election, the noise level at the Barack Obama office in downtown Pittsburgh was deafening. Dozens of people squeezed into the one-room space. A team of volunteers sat around three plastic tables calling local voters. “Hello, how are you doing today? I am [...]

By Robbie Vorhaus
Recently, a terrible thing happened that ended well.
One of Molly’s friends fell down a flight a stairs on her head. It was just one of those freak accidents you pray never happens. But it did.
In a matter of moments the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps was on the scene, and in another short [...]

By Richard Gambino
Triggered by an unprecedented credit crisis, the economic scene since September has been something we’ve never experienced in the U.S. Or the world. Whether one likes it or not, we are in fact in a global economy, and America’s economy, measured by GDP (Gross Domestic Product), of $14 trillion in 2007, accounted for [...]

By Harvey Jacobs
Between political pundits and financial gurus burbling all over radio and television these days, one phrase emerged that is new to me. Several analysts of the global fiscal debacle speak about a phenomenon they call: The Shirley Temple Effect.
In the midst of chatter about the “bail out” –or is it “out on [...]

By Julie Penny
 In last week’s column I made mention of a lawsuit. Let me expand.
This July, two Ohio attorneys, Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis, filed a motion to have a “stay lifted” on a lawsuit—“King Lincoln Bronzewell Neighborhood Association vs. Blackwell.” This lawsuit had been filed in 2006 and has to do with fraud in [...]

By Julie Penny
Tens of millions have been spent — a hundred million — to go on a pig in a poke.
This summer, with a gun held to its head by the Feds, New York State was forced into buying new voting machines. Counties selected their choice from a short-list provided by the state. They are [...]

by Jim Marquardt
An imposing, white marble shaft representing the broken mast of a ship stands tall in the Oakland Cemetery off Jermain Avenue. The inscription on the base says simply “Entombed in the ocean, they live in our memory.” The names of six Sag Harbor whale ship captains who lost their lives hunting their huge [...]