Denise Civiletti

The number of new daily COVID infections in New York is four times what it was a year ago, before the second wave last fall/winter killed more than 10,500 New Yorkers. The delta strain of the coronavirus, now responsible for 83% of all infections, is much more contagious than last year's virus. And more than 8.5 million New Yorkers remain unvaccinated.

The tragedy that befell Michael Hubbard 10 years ago today did not have to happen. With at least two dozen burn injuries and one death before May 28, 2011, the product that ended Michael Hubbard's life should not have been on store shelves that spring.

Behind this door is "another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead. Your next stop: the Twilight Zone.” Welcome to Riverhead Town Hall.

Celebrating our beautiful planet on Earth Day, 2021.

From the day I first met the young teacher who greeted my own little girl on her first day of school, Keri has always been larger than life. And so she remains, and will always remain, larger than life.

The man with all the answers last spring has become a man watching a frog slowly cook to death in a pot of water that's being gradually heated to boiling — and doing nothing much to turn down the heat. The best he can come up with is “Hey, I warned you.”

It only takes one infected person — who may be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic — at a holiday gathering to infect everyone who attends. That scenario made too many Thanksgiving dinners spreader events. And the hospitalizations and deaths data for the month of December tell the rest of the story. Don't become a statistic in the post-Christmas/New Year's surge to come.

Thanksgiving will be different at our house this year — starting with a change of venue, because social distancing won't work at our house, built when "cozy" was good. And that's just the beginning.

After confusing official reports of spiking COVID infection rates in Riverhead, I sought the town-level data. What I got was a bunch of baffle-gab and bullsh*t and a state official essentially telling me to take a hike.

The situation our district finds itself in right now — failed budgets, failed bond votes, upset and angry parents, dejected children — isn’t somebody else’s fault. It’s a direct result of the persistent lack of candor on display at every carefully scripted board meeting — of the board and a series of superintendents being consistently unwilling to give people straight answers to straight questions about subjects that are, in fact, the people’s business.