Ariel Castro, the accused monster of Seymour Avenue, has a mother, just like all of us do or did. Her name is Lillian Rodriguez, and what a Mother’s Day she must be enduring now.

She is apparently one of the few who had seen Amanda Berry’s daughter — fathered by her son, according to DNA tests. Little Jocelyn, now 6, reportedly called the older woman “grandmother.”

MOTHER’S LOVE

THE NEWS IN SONG

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Is Michael Fagen giving a whole new meaning to the term “suspended sentence”? For the fourth time since his felony unemployment-fraud conviction in February, the former Long Beach councilman has had his date with destiny postponed . . . Just because they’re both mentally disabled, why shouldn’t newlyweds Paul Forziano and Hava Samuels be allowed to live in the same group home? Love has pushed them together. What overriding legal principle must keep them apart? . . . Oh, so this is what “scholar-athlete” means? Paul Maline, All-Long Island wide receiver and safety, weighted Commack High GPA of 101.7, perfect SAT score in verbal and math . . . Prosecutors call him a highly refined housepainter-slash-art-thief. That’s nice, but how was Joselito Vega’s ladder-and-roller work at the art-filled Schulhof estate in Kings Point? . . . Loud Second Amendment protesters managed to block an attempt to close the Suffolk Trap and Skeet range in Calverton, but didn’t anyone speak up for the voiceless skeet? . . . Can you spot the Riverhead locations in the just-released trailer for “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the locally shot Coen Brothers film? Sharp-eyed local moviegoers notice a potato barn on Northville Turnpike and a water-district facility made up as a 1961 gas station . . . The name’s been changed to honor mega-donors Charles and Helen Reichert, but here’s the $850,000 question: Will LI field trip kids just keeping calling the Centerport stargazing emporium the Vanderbilt Planetarium?

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK
THE PRINCESSES

Ready or not, here they come—and with them, a whole new wave of Long Island stereotype. Where Amy Fisher and “Mob Wives” left off, here come “Princesses: Long Island,” the new Bravo series about young Nassau and Suffolk women profoundly unable to exit their childhood bedrooms. Clingy, entitled, stubbornly eschewing their twenty-something independence—it’s not that they’re bad or pathetic. It’s how much, for a little while at least, they will come to define this island not-so-paradise. Love them or loathe them, the world will soon be seeing them as us.

“Drug overdoses fueling midlife suicide rate”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 5 2013

Is middle age really so awful? For a growing number of baby boomers, the answer seems to be yes.

The midlife suicide rate is skyrocketing — up 30 percent in a decade, now surpassing even the numbers killed in car wrecks. According to the CDC, the suicide rise has been sharpest for men in their 50s and women in their 60s.

So why? Family pressures, career disappointments, social isolation — clearly, they all play a role. But one factor hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves: the overflowing medicine cabinets in people’s bathrooms, jammed with painkillers, sleeping pills, anxiety drugs and other prescriptions that can easily be fatal in an overdose.

Never before has it been so easy to end it all. Far too often, those handy medications are the gateway between depression and death.

There is one potential bright spot, a lesson from the New York City Department of Health. The five boroughs have a suicide rate half the national average. It’s one-quarter the national average for suicide by gunshot.

I don’t have the parallel numbers for Long Island, but I’ll bet they’re not too different, and the reason is the same.

Our strict gun laws mean far fewer people have firearms in their homes. When the hour is darkest, there is no loaded gun to raise.

The clouds lift. The moment passes. A life is saved. Now if only we can find a way to empty those medicine chests.

LIFELINE

1. Call a friend.

2. Say a prayer.

3. Go outside.

4. Get therapy.

5. Please just wait.

THE NEWS IN SONG

And pray to God he hears you

“How to Save a Life”

The Fray

tinyurl.com/howtosav

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

They don’t allow smoking at Westhampton Beach’s Seafield Center rehab? Come on, how many addictions is Lindsay supposed to kick at once? . . . Is Club Avanti in Westbury (a) a “Latin dance club,” as some ads say, or (b) a swinging-couples’ party spot? Mayor Peter Cavallaro is firmly in the (b) camp — and he’s in no party mood . . . Sixty recycled bikes are on their way from Hicksville to Ghana? Don’t those Returning Peace Corps Volunteers of Long Island ever get tired of doing good? . . . They’re not Zegnas or Brionis? So what did East Hampton Supervisor Bill Wilkinson expect? That employees of his stylish town would all jump at the chance to wear uniform logo-ed jackets? . . . Suffolk County has the worst ozone air pollution in New York State? Did testers from the American Lung Association really find cleaner air in Buffalo? And the Bronx, too? . . . Did Huntington Bay Mayor Herb Morrow think no one would notice one item in his draft 2013-14 budget? The one mentioning the first-ever compensation package for himself and the village trustees? Folks noticed,

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

THE RUNNERS

Immediately after Boston, some people wondered nervously: What about the other big marathons? Would the deadly terror attack scare other runners away? The reaction from the runners prepping for Sunday’s RXR Long Island Marathon seems to be a loud and resounding no. Yes, there will be extra security, including State Police. Yes, some of the heightened measures — bag searches, tighter starting and finish lines — will cause minor hassles. But no, Long Island’s fearless runners are not letting the carnage in Boston paralyze them. Serious runners are a notoriously hardy breed. Pursuing their passion through unfamiliar neighborhoods at odd hours of the day, dressed in tiny shorts and tees — they don’t frighten easily. And they don’t look scared today.

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“It’s a hacker’s world, don’t believe in it”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 28 2013

That dumb column you thought I wrote? Nope. Syrian hackers. The AP Twitter feed wasn’t the first credible dispatch to be hijacked.

Media, business and government — we’ve all been wringing our hands since The Associated Press (Altered Post?), gold standard of fact-based reporting, announced that the White House had been bombed and the president injured, sending the Dow into a 143-point bungee dive.

There’d been no explosion. Barack Obama was fine. The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit for the mayhem, tittering like a couple of mid-20th-century 8-year-olds who’d just phoned a clueless housewife and asked: “Is your refrigerator running? It is? Then, you’d better go catch it.”

Ha. Ha.

Malicious electronic intrusions are a cause of growing concern. A phony news bulletin is one thing. But what about some crackpot with nuclear codes or a fraudster intent on draining your checking account?

Still, there’s an upside here, too, though it got no attention at all this past week. In an era of provably porous digital security, no one can really be held responsible for anything at all.

How do you know it was me who sent that drunken text, that compromising Weiner photo, that reply-all email?

For all you know, it could have been Syrian hackers. In a world where no code is unbreakable, we can never be certain who’s talking to us.

The smart stuff? Of course that was me. The rest of it could have been anyone.

TWEETIFIED

1. Changed password.

2. Disguised voice.

3. Encrypted data.

4. Set up alter-egos.

5. Wait, remind me who I am!

THE NEWS IN SONG

Brad Paisley

He’s so much cooler -

“Online”

tinyurl.com/onoffon

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Given all the real crime, should undercover Nassau detectives really be out getting “unlicensed massages”? And what do they mean by undercover, anyway? The latest deep-rub bust-ee is Luo Chun Hong of Hempstead Turnpike. . . Suffolk cops are getting volunteers drunk for a safe-boating training exercise? Will a similar strategy be tried in the narc unit? . . . With the Isles eying an early outta-here, is the future of the unloved Nassau Coliseum coming down to a Ratner-Dolans grudge match?…Why should cerebral palsy stop Kevin Michell from wrestling? The Hicksville Meteors’ seventh-grader (now 1-0) decided it shouldn’t, and it didn’t . . . Ducks Unlimited — or Donations Unlimited? The Eastern Suffolk chapter of the waterfowl-habitat conservation group is taking national bows for its fundraising prowess . . . Did you hear that North Fork teens drink more alcohol than most American high school students? Don’t agree? Then go argue —soberly! — with Greenport’s North Fork Alliance . . . Don’t any Republicans want to run for East Hampton supervisor? Will an all-Dem field undermine Town Hall’s famous rancor? . . . Can Riverhead name the new riverfront drive for EMS hero Heidi Behr AND aquarium co-founder Jim Bissett? Won’t the GPS be confused?…At Brookhaven Lab’s new Interdisciplinary Science Building, the physicists, chemists and mathematicians will actually talk to each other? In whose language? . . . Someone just FORGOT to make a bond interest payment, briefly throwing Suffolk County into technical default? County officials blame their escrow agent, M&T Bank, noting that the missed payment (quickly covered) was for only $722.65….Temple Beth Sholom found a roommate on Craigslist? And the Spanish-speaking Ministerio Jesucristo Vive (Jesus Christ Lives Church) is now happily sharing the Smithtown synagogue? Hasn’t anyone around here heard of dogmatic inflexibility?

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

BABY DOCS

Might as well have a baby, if only out of Long Island pride. Nassau University Medical Center just hit the top 10 percent in a maternity-care survey from Healthgrades, stacking the East Meadow hospital against 4,500 others nationwide. Research tracks how the staff handled more than two dozen common birth complications. NuHealth president Arthur Gianelli says the ranking reflects a “growing reputation to ensure successful outcomes for our patients.”

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“Like NY, Boston won’t cower to terrorism”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 21 2013

Boston is learning nicely. But we’re the ones who wrote the rules on responding to one of these attacks.

Taking the terror out of terrorism. Refusing to give the killers what they’re desperate for. Holding on to the values, the justice and the decency that make us better than our enemies.

New York didn’t sort all that out immediately. We gasped a few times, buying two wars and a Patriot Act.

But in the 11 1/2 years since the World Trade Center attacks, we have come to understand a few things:

The rule of law is at the core of being American. Judging people by race or religion gets us nowhere. High-priced high-security measures can keep us only so secure.

And now Boston is following our lead.

We win these battles in the end by living the lives we intended to.

We don’t cower. We don’t bend. We don’t become them.

THEY WIN IF. . .

1. We let ‘em scare us.

2. We cower at home on the couch.

3. We don’t travel, race or work in tall buildings.

4. We don’t party loud and late.

5. If we don’t do all those crazy fun things we might not have done in the first place just to let the terrorists know they won’t ever win — so there!

THE NEWS IN SONG

You learn to live again

Foo Fighters

“Times Like These”

tinyurl.com/footimes

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Is Illegal Reptile Amnesty Day limited to actual reptiles? Or can Suffolk residents also turn in their scaly, hissing, potentially poisonous politicians on Saturday at the SPCA — no questions asked? . . . Is Huntington really about to trade the stagecoach-era metal cash box at the LIRR parking lot for newfangled MuniMeters? What’s next, phasing out the horses’ water trough? . . . Did Stony Brook sociology prof Arnout van de Rijt just get 15 minutes of fame for announcing “fame isn’t fleeting” anymore? . . . More Sunday bus services in Suffolk? You mean people ride the bus on Sunday? Legis. Jay Schneiderman thinks they might . . . By what logic does Westhampton Beach Village Attorney Richard Haefeli believe an audit of village finances is not a public document? Put state open-government director Robert Freeman in the release-it camp . . . Why should senior Intel kids have all the fun? High school underclassmen, even middle-schoolers, will be full participants in the first Science and Engineering Fair on May 18 at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City . . . Forty feet? Fifty feet? How high is too high at Hauppauge Industrial Park? Did Smithtown Supervisor Pat Vecchio just promise the sky (or part of it) to spur development — and taxes? . . . What’s next for journalism in a 140-character world? Brainiacs from Tumblr, Constant Contact, Sawhorse Media, LI Press and WNYC’s New Tech City will explain it all to me Wednesday, 6:30 p.m., at LIU Post’s Theatre at Hillwood Commons.  You should come. That way, we can all find out together.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

EILEEN AULD

Sandy didn’t discriminate. The superstorm slammed areas rich and poor. But recovery has been so much slower for people without the capital to quickly rebuild. Eileen Auld has a mouthful of a corporate title. She is Citibank’s tri-state regional director for Citi Community Development. But living in Forest Hills with a summer cottage in Breezy Point, she’s also seen and felt Sandy’s wrath. Since the storm, she’s helped deploy more than 1 million rebuilding dollars in “underserved communities,” backed groups such as the Long Island Housing Partnership, driven customers back to small businesses and coordinated with local governments. The point of it all? “Making a positive impact among those who have lost so much and helping the region bounce back stronger than ever.”

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“Nowadays, secrets are often easily exposed”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 14 2013

Who’s wearing the wire in your office? If not you,  it could be anyone. Secret recordings are suddenly everywhere.

I’m just back from Albany, where the whole capital city is playing a new guessing game: How many politicians will get indicted from the tapes made by Nelson Castro, the secret-agent/Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx? No one thinks the target list stops at one.

As Albany quakes, Mitch McConnell, Republican boss of the U.S. Senate, is deflecting reports that he and campaign aides conspired to smear country singer Ashley Judd, who almost had the nerve to challenge him. Worse than his campaign tactics, the Kentucky senator insists, are the dirty tricksters who caught his words on tape.

The fact of that matter is that people have always done smarmy, dumb and embarrassing things. What’s different now is the technology for spreading our worse moments everywhere. Just ask Anthony Weiner, the former congressman, Twitter user and underwear model.

Weiner may soon test the premise that New Yorkers are at least as forgiving as South Carolinians, who recently put the moony Appalachian Trail enthusiast Mark Sanford at the top of a local congressional primary pack.

Whether we are as forgiving or not, one click or misclick of a mouse can cast any of us onto the ragged shoals of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter — just hopefully not in our underpants.

TOO MUCH INFO

1. Speak into the lapel, please.

2. Don’t worry, only my Facebook friends can see this.

3. Say “cheesy.”

4. Who cares about my boring life?

5. No way Google Maps can photograph my sunbathing deck!

THE NEWS IN SONG

“All I want to be is left alone”

Mysto & Pizzi

“Somebody’s Watching Me”

tinyurl.com/watchstop

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Did someone just say “Duck Dynasty?” Major-league second-chancers Vladimir Guerrero, Dontrelle Willis and Ramon Castro are giving that idea a second chance . . . Yes, Randy Sauber got an earful from frustrated Shelter Islanders. But wasn’t the rattled Postal Service manager relieved by one thing: These customers really care about mail? . . . Did superstorm Sandy blow some sense through the Nassau Police Department? Baldwin’s First Precinct isn’t being closed — for now . . . Did Lindsay get a legacy discount at the Seafield rehab in Westhampton Beach? That’s where pop Michael Lohan cleaned up — or tried to — in 1989 . . . Crowd-source this, please: Why would digital-media manager job pay 14 percent less on Long Island? . . . What can Stony Brook students do to help jumpy kids at sister school SUNY Korea? That’s in Songdo, just outside Seoul . . . Now that 19 states have legalized, are LI’s anti-drug advocates opening up to medical marijuana? Doc pot is back on the Albany agenda. . .More Sunday bus services in Suffolk? You mean people ride the bus on Sunday? Legis. Jay Schneiderman thinks they might…Forty feet? Fifty feet? How high is too high at Hauppauge Industrial Park? Smithtown Supervisor Pat Vecchio did promise the sky (or part of it) to help spur development (and taxes).

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

RODNEY MARVE

As a young black boy in Alexandria, La., Rodney Marve wasn’t welcome at the local library. But at 14, he rode a train north and soon enough took a job as maintenance helper at the Bayshore-Brightwaters Public Library. Forty-three years later, he’d risen to library page, library clerk, chief of adult reference, assistant director and interim director and picked up a master’s in library science at CW Post. At his recent retirement dinner at Captain Bill’s in Bay Shore, some people said the library just won’t be same without Mr. Marve’s reading suggestions, obscure research facts and constant smile. But his glow will remain in what is now officially known as the Rodney G. Marve Reference Area. “Truly,” he said, connecting his Louisiana boyhood and his library career, “God has a good sense of humor. He has taken good care of me.”

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“Two thumbs up for unequivocal Roger Ebert”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 7 2013

Thumbs up. Thumbs down.

Doesn’t that cover everything?

Of course, it doesn’t. Even Roger Ebert knew that. On TV, the famously unequivocal movie critic delivered his reviews with take-a-stand adamance. But he lived out the final years of his life on a far murkier terrain between public and private, between illness and health, between here and gone.

Yes, strong people take strong positions, but they also understand: Gray is a color between black and white, and choices don’t always come in twos. By the time Ebert died on Thursday after a long battle with cancer, his extraordinary life had long since proven that.

His rise to prominence was a newsman’s fairy tale. With his TV co-star Gene Siskel, he turned film criticism into a coffee-shop and bar-room staple and showed millions of movie-going Americans that, yes, their opinions mattered, too.

The team’s signature device — those confidently pointed thumbs — were an in-your-face challenge to the sea of nuance that American culture had become. The black-and-white of the civil rights era had long since given way to the multihued complexity of the post-Vietnam age. And the world was divided by superpowers no more. No person was entirely good or evil. No problem could be easily solved. There was no way this world would be untangled by a couple of boldly insistent thumbs.

Ebert kept trying. And through an illness that sickened him, disfigured him and ultimately took his voice away, he kept on writing, reviewing and talking with the help of a voice synthesizer.

His opinions were just as clear and strong as ever. They were just a little more complicated, like everything.

TWO THUMBS DOWN

1. Maniacal college coaching

2. Gun-control parlays

3. Kevin Ware’s leg

4. Target’s “manatee gray”

5. Kim Jong Un-glued

THE NEWS IN SONG

Others take a different view

Des’ree

“You Gotta Be”

tinyurl.com/yougotta

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

A rose-haired tarantula loose in Amityville? Dropped in front of a house on Grand Central Avenue? Who did those people tick off? . . . Am I being naive here, or is Wyandanch Rising really about to rise? Public-private partnership at last! . . . Who put up those “Worst Road in America” signs on Stony Brook’s Christian Avenue? Certainly not the Brookhaven Highway Department . . . Pushing, shoving, throwing things inside the polling station — is that how the Shinnecock Indian Nation elects its tribal trustees? Did the tribe’s Warrior Society — then the State Police — have to be called in to avoid an all-out election-day brawl? . . . Dropping rocks? That’s the one step — out of 19 proposed — that the East Hampton Town board seems actually ready to take against Montauk beach erosion? . . . Will the old Hooters in East Meadow really be replaced by a Canz? What body-part slang is coming next? . . . What would you do with a piece of the old Long Beach boardwalk? I mean, besides reliving great splinters past! . . . What part of GPS does Steven Torborg not understand? The East Rockaway fire chief has resigned over where he was and what he was doing in his official department car.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

AARON FOSS

This island is loaded with inventors. They’re tinkering in garages and attics, testing their families’ patience with dreams of riches and technological advance. But here’s the cool part: Some of those dreams actually come true. Take Port Jefferson programmer Aaron Foss. His Nomorobo system, which hangs up on annoying robocalls before the phone even rings, just won a $25,000 prize from the Federal Trade Commission. And his creative mind wanders everywhere. Other Foss inventions include SmartChemo, an order-writing program for oncologists, and the WingDipper, for getting just the right coating of gooey sauce around Buffalo wings. Foss isn’t rich or famous yet. But it could happen. Wouldn’t you pay good money to make those robocalls stop?

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“When will we tire of make-believe wars?”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 31 2013

So how did the big war on Easter turn out?

Easter baskets, Easter services, premium-priced Easter brunches at hundreds of Long Island restaurants: Reports from the front say Easter is alive and kicking around here.

Some of my cable TV friends were sounding dire warnings all week. Cynical secularists, they charged, had launched a loathsome war on the holiest day in Christendom, although the w-word probably should have been wrapped in quotes. This “war,” like the “war” on Christmas, the “war” on smoking and the “war” on Big Gulps, was far more a rhetorical concept than a bombs-and-bullets operation. And all these make-believe battlefields had quickly devolved into predictable slogan contests.

This time, the alleged aggression involved a few school boards across the country hosting “Spring egg hunts” instead of “Easter egg hunts.” Before you knew it, it seemed, the entire Judeo-Christian tradition was at risk.

Uh, not quite.

Egg hunts by any name have little to do with the resurrection of Jesus. And even if the PC language police had managed to pull off a couple of tiny incursions, Easter isn’t at any greater risk than Christmas ever was.

Maybe the time has come for a truce on all these make-believe wars, including the one on women that some of my other friends have been so agitated about. Let’s pepper our rhetoric with a few fresh analogies — then all head off together to church or to brunch.

BOMBS AWAY

1. War on Mindless Slogans

2. War on Overblown Rhetoric

3. War on Silly TV Arguments

4. War on Anything I Disagree With

5. War on Calling Things Wars

THE NEWS IN SONG

Someone has to launch it.

“War on War”

by Wilco

tinyurl.com/warswar

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

What made Simon Cowell of “The X Factor” book the Nassau Coliseum for an April 25 open call? Some special something about the unloved arena that no one else can hear or see? . . . Bren Smith of the Thimble Island Oyster Co. in Branford, Conn., says he’s about to become the first commercial kelp farmer to harvest from Long Island Sound? Anyone on this side beating him to the seaweed? . . . Did Lindsay do it again? TMZ says the ex-con from Merrick was accused of stealing clubbing clothes from the “Anger Management” set . . . After pop-up restaurants, why not pop-up churches? Manhattan pastor Parker Green’s been scouring Montauk with event planner Jessi Marquez for a Memorial Day-to-Labor-Day location . . . 1,400 boxes of knock-off Prada, Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton seized from a warehouse in Maspeth? Who knew Maspeth was so fashion forward? . . . Will Steve Bellone’s Comprehensive Master Plan 2035 really make Suffolk bus travel rapid in 22 years? How rapid is that? . . . You hear all the poor-mouthing from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun? Are the tribal grumbles from Connecticut making LI’s Shinnecocks reconsider their casino dreams? . . . Is Southold too fit or just too crowded? Supervisor Scott Russell says too many biking and running events equal an “unmanageable situation” for his hard-breathing town.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

MICHAEL HALTMAN

The Main Event isn’t until Nov. 25. But some large-hearted (and hard-headed) LI business people are already in training for a competition that could easily draw more than customers. The Long Island Fight for Charity Tale of the Tape could also draw blood. The three-round boxing matches feature suit-and-tie pounders like Michael Haltman, the 53-year-old president of Hallmark Abstract Services in Jericho. These days, he’s working the heavy bag at the Glen Cove Boxing Club and hoping for the best. Now in its 10th year, the charity event raises money for Genesis School, LI Community Chest and the National Foundation for Human Potential. Cheer the charities and the fighters at lifightforcharity.org.

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“Why don’t we join together for a proper single payer system?” – Ellis Henican

A report by the Society of Actuaries had some bad news.  The report says that in some states insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under Obamacare.

Not all states. Some — including New York and Massachusetts — will see double-digit declines in costs for claims. And the rest of the news isn’t all doom and gloom. The study also showed that employer health-care plans, the kind most of us have, won’t see these increase. Also, the law will cover more than 32 million currently uninsured Americans.

That’s not all bad. Remember, we didn’t get the plan we wanted. We got this compromised watered down plan thanks to our politicians pandering to the powerful  big insurance companies.  But the Affordable Care Act is a valuable half-way step forward.

A bigger step would be if we joined every other civilized nation in the world and demanded our own single-payer system. It’s cheaper and it’s more effective.  I’m all for that.

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“Suffolk is serious about its bans”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 24, 2013

What hasn’t Suffolk County banned or restricted yet? Wouldn’t that be a much shorter list? The roster of the officially verboten is getting awfully lengthy.

Drop-side baby cribs.

Toxic detergents.

Steel-jaw leg traps for small animals.

Infant bottles containing BPA.

Electronic cigarettes in county buildings (over objections from the Long Island Vapors Club — and whatever happened to them?).

Plastic food wrappers (banned in 1988, unbanned in 1999).

Many of these county crackdowns were touted at the time as first in the nation or at least first in the state. And, of course, Suffolk has joined most of America’s conventional bans like the ones prohibiting smoking in offices, bars and restaurants.

Maybe the county should go and ahead and make it official. “Safety First” would be the perfect Suffolk motto.

Let Michael Bloomberg take the heat for being America’s nanny mayor. Somehow Suffolk’s been skating around the widespread backlash. No one in Mississippi is coming out in favor of fatty foods in restaurants, then passing a law nicknamed “the anti-Bellone bill.”

Again, the city gets the fame.

This time, Suffolk lawmakers added energy drinks to the county’s oh-no list.

Now Red Bull and its many cousins, some of them containing almost as much caffeine as a grande cappuccino at Starbucks, can’t be sold at county parks and beaches or marketed to minors with coupons.

I’d publish the whole X-list. But I’m sorry, it’s too long.

BANNED IT

1. Rubber Banned
2. Marching Banned
3. Wedding Banned
4. Rock ’n’ Roll Banned
5. Banned Aid

THE NEWS IN SONG

Everybody’s taking the chance

“Safety Dance”

by Men Without Hats

tinyurl.com/1stsafety

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

If criminals weren’t so dumb, would the cops ever arrest anyone? Do you catch my drift, Michael Ohara, grabbed outside Roosevelt Field Mall after allegedly hawking prescription anxiety pills on Craigslist?…Why the war of words between Northport American Legion Post 694 and the Cow Harbor Warriors? Aren’t the two vets groups supposedly on the same side?…Of all the things the things to be offended by, are the new LIRR ads for cable health channel Veria Living really causing widespread outrage? “Ladies, admit it. You’re doing kegels right now.” What percentage of riders even know what kegels are?…Who needs high-paying engineering jobs when we have Spidey? “The Amazing Spider Man-2” will be partly filmed at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, bringing day-rate work for 11,000 extras…On stilts? Protected by giant storm barriers? How should LI be rebuilt before the next superstorm blows in? NY Tech architecture students are soliciting bright design ideas at 3Ccompetition.org….March madness? What’s any madder than springtime winter temps?…Now that every Brookhaven Town Board meeting opens with a prayer, has Ed Romaine invited all denominations to send over a clergyman? Are the Wiccans, Wahabis and Scientologists on the schedule yet?…What would you do with the Nassau Coliseum site? Ed Mangano and master developer Renaissance Downtown are still looking for ideas…Who do the members of the Huntington High School Special Olympics snowshoe team think they are? Jamaican bobsledders? After practicing at Fleets Cove Beach in Centerport, they stomped away with eight individual medals at the state meet in Rochester…What’s better, paid or volunteer EMTs? The sick and injured of East Hampton could be finding out next year…When was St. Patrick’s Day? Rockville Center (and Southampton) just got around to marching yesterday, a solid week after broguing Manhattanites began their post-parade, post-corn-beef-and-cabbage naps.

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

SUIT-AND-TIE PUGILISTS

The Main Event isn’t until Nov. 25. But business people and professionals across Long Island are already training for one competition that may draw more than customers. The Long Island Fight for Charity Tale of the Tape could easily draw blood. It’s large-hearted (and hard-headed) guys like Michael Haltman, 53 and president of Hallmark Abstract Services in Jericho, is working the heavy bag at the Glen Cove Boxing Club, preparing as well as he can for three long rounds of pounding and being pounded. Now in its 10^th year, the charity bouts support Genesis School, LI Community Chest and National Foundation for Human Potential. Support them at lifightforcharity.org.

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“Perceived labels that no longer fit reality”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 17, 2013

It’s all in the labeling sometimes.

Is St. Patrick’s Day a “drunkfest” or a “sober family holiday”? As always, that depends on who’s being asked. Police across Long Island certainly have a view. They’ve set up breathalyzer checkpoints at many of the major intersections. The Long Island Rail Road added cars and cut the booze.

Erin go blah!

Pro football’s expensive, you say? Well, the Jets are lowering some ticket prices. Babies are born in hospitals? Not always. One popped out on the side of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway after a very nervous expectant father made a very bad turn.

Label that a huge surprise.

Even Bruno the Rottweiler got a labeling makeover that no one could possibly have anticipated. He went from being a “strong and sometimes stubborn” dog to “the last dog left at the Sandy emergency shelter.” Suddenly, he was Long Island’s pooch célèbre. On the strength of that alone, he shot to the top of the pet-adoption list and will surely be fetching someone’s slippers in no time.

What will they try to tell us next? That the new pope is a Jesuit from Argentina? That’s as crazy as a college dean on drugs. Oh, wait.

Suffolk Community’s Robert Beodeker denies it. But he’s now charged with drugged driving and aggravated vehicular manslaughter after a crash that claimed two lives on the Meadowbrook State Parkway.

A bad label all around.

LABEL THIS

1. Carnival Lose Lines

2. CPAC Your Bags and Go Home

3. Portman Family Values

4. National Ridiculous Association

5. Washington Why-Partisanship

THE NEWS IN SONG

I wish to Christ I’d stayed home last night

Black 47

“Livin’ in America”

tinyurl.com/livinhere

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Solar panels on 15 town-owned properties in Brookhaven? Wind turbines too? So who exactly will all that renewable power lower electric rates for? . . . Now that Steve Israel got Tim Bishop named to the national Democrats’ fundraising priority list, how will Tim return the favor? Is it enough just to win again in 2014? . . . Will the frozen dessert wars heat up this summer in Stewart Manor, as TCBY moves onto what had been strictly Carvel turf? The ice-cream and yogurt franchises are somehow coexisting on Seventh Street in nearby Garden City . . . Will Barret Beyer, sous chef at The Emporium in Patchogue, ever reheat a beef Wellington again? Not in front of “Hell’s Kitchen” hellion Gordon Ramsay, you can bet he won’t . . . Who on Long Island hasn’t been slammed by Sandy? Local farmers are pointing at their saltwater-slogged fruits and vegetables and pleading now: “Hey, don’t forget about us, OK?” . . . Who’s the bartender? After Tony Danza’s successful fundraising shift at Connolly’s Station in Malverne, what other beloved TV stars are available for charity fill-in work on Long Island? . . . Isn’t today St. Patrick’s Day? You mean I already missed the parade?

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

LI AUTHORS AND WRITERS SOCIETY

This can be very lonely work, pounding out nouns and verbs, day and night. That’s no secret around here, where the streets are dotted with thousands of writers in attic offices and basement rooms. Almost all of them could use a few more friends — or at least a supportive colleague to proofread the latest essay. That’s where the Long Island Authors and Writers Society comes in. Best-selling authors, industry pros and a quite a few wide-eyed newbies, all trading ideas, encouraging each other, sharing their hopes and grumbles in roughly equal measure, securing this Long Island as the writer’s Mecca that it is. All are welcome for an informal networking event, Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Melville Marriott Long Island, which could soon be known as the Algonquin of Walt Whitman Road.