MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Suburban focus now jobs, not real-estate”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, July 10, 2011
All stories in the suburbs, it’s been said, are eventually real-estate stories.
People moving from the city. Houses, roads, schools and malls. Neighbors turning up at public meetings to declare: “Not in my backyard!” This has been especially true on Long Island, where the houses are priced like mansions and taxes are through the roof.
Well, don’t look now. But all our stories aren’t about real estate anymore. All our stories now are about jobs.
Can new industry be attracted to the island? When the kids finish college – then what? Should Nassau build a new Coliseum? What about illegal immigrants? If not them, who else will bus the tables, nanny the children and cut the grass? And wasn’t an unemployed druggie just charged with shooting up a drugstore?
With official U.S. unemployment now back at 9.2 percent, it isn’t just Barack Obama and congressional Republicans tussling over how to the make the jobs return. Jobs and the lack thereof are the only news anywhere. The debt ceiling, the presidential race—even the war stories—are now stories 
about jobs.
A new Rotary chapter has just been chartered on Long Island, the Veterans Rotary Club of North Hills. Its focus? Helping returning veterans find jobs.
“All these vets are coming back into a very tough civilian economy,” said Robert Donno of Rotary District 7250. “It’s a huge problem. We’ll be mentoring them. You know how hard it is today to find a job?”
JOB ONE
Work cheap.- Don’t get fired.
- Court the boss’s kid.
- Don’t quit this job ’til you have a better one.
- Don’t leave your resume on the copy machine.
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
Does anyone have a clue how the Nassau Coliseum referendum will turn out? What happened to the vaunted science of 
polling?…Now that he’s co-chair of the state Republican finance committee, will Hauppauge investment banker and Merrick native Thomas Belesis expand LI’s voice in the party’s rebuilding phase? He’s been an effective party fund-raiser, that’s for sure…Will the “Horrible Bosses” sequel be shot on LI? Oh, that’s right. We don’t have any horrible bosses here…Does planking still count as exercise if I do it under the sheets in bed?…Have you missed Eric Naiburg’s unique exuberance?
Drought over, now that the media savvy Amy Fisher lawyer is repping David Laffer, the Medford massacre suspect…Mass wedding at Carlyle on the Green on July 26? Will Steve Carle be slapped with copyright infringement by Reverend Moon?…Up for some gracious inspiration from a local hero gone too soon? Here’s the 1992 NFL Hall of Fame induction speech by Roosevelt native, Hempstead High grad and Baltimore Colts tight end John Mackey: tinyurl.com/mackeyhall…900 people working around the clock seven stories below Grand Central? Is it crazy-optimistic to believe the LIRR’s $8-billion East Side Access project might actually be done by 2016? MTA chair Jay Walder says, “Believe it.”…3-2-1-ho-hum? How excited were YOU at the last shuttle liftoff?
THE NEWS IN SONG:
“Hard Times in America”
by Willie Nile
tinyurl.com/hardnile
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK:
JOHN WILLIAM CODLING
When John Codling walked away from a lucrative Wall Street career to become a full-time artist, his friends Out East 
didn’t think he’d gone crazy. They always knew the Levittown native was a little – okay, let’s call him eccentric. What they didn’t know was how quickly Codling would start turning heads – and making hefty sales – in the art world. His first major exhibit, “Sundays with Chris,” was an obsessive study of oddball actor Christopher Walken. The artist’s latest, opening next Saturday at the Waasteria Gallery in Wainscott, is “Me I Play,” a highly nonconformist take on Grace Kelly, Bridget Bardot and the Muppets and other pop-culture subjects. But Codling, like his work, has unexpected flashes of seriousness: During the show, he’s hosting special fund-raising events for the nonprofit “Solving Kids Cancer.” Art meets life, again.
E-mail ellis@henican.com.
Follow him at twitter.com/henican
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