I’m honored today to see that Newsday published my letter to the editor about Tucker Carlson’s recent misinformation about the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol. It’s the very last letter in today’s Letters page; you can find it right here.
Newsday is America’s ninth-largest newspaper, and the third-largest in New York State. Its Sunday circulation is just under a half million people.
Actually, I was given a really nice birthday gift — two frames for things that make me happy. The first is a copy of my first letter to the editor to appear in Newsday; the second is the Dark Horse Comics ad for “Grendel” comics, where I am quoted right underneath Alan Moore.
I wouldn’t even have a copy of the Newsday letter if it weren’t for my totally awesome Longwood High School alumna, Diane Aviles Cosgrove. (This was the one about the 9/11 anniversary. The newspaper could not send me one because their archives staff was telecommuting due to Covid.) Diane thoughtfully grabbed a copy of the paper up in New York and sent it to me straight away in the mail. 🙂
Thanks again, Buddy! Longwood Lions are the best!!
I just found out that my recent letter to the editor about the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago was printed in the Sunday edition of New York’s Newsday. You can find it right here.
Thanks once again to Newsday’s editorial staff for allowing me to share my opinion through this outstanding regional newspaper.
I got some more amazing news today, guys — Newsday printed my most recent letter to the editor, about the word “overeducated” being thrown around by our national politicians. You can find it right here in yesterday’s paper.
My letter was edited down considerably for length, but I am still quite honored to see something I authored appear in this major regional newspaper. Newsday is the America’s 10th largest paper, and the third largest in New York State. It has a weekday circulation of 437,000 in the New York metropolitan area, and reaches nearly half of the households on Long Island.
I really am grateful to Newsday’s editorial staff for deciding that my letter merited the attention of its readers.
I was so pleased this morning to see that The Roanoke Times published my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. You can find it right here.
I’m honored that my thoughts about the occasion appear to have struck a chord with people. This same letter was featured first on Wednesday by New York’s Newsday (with a weekday circulation of 437,000), and then here in Virginia by The Bristol Herald Courier (with a circulation of 39,000). As The Roanoke Times has a Sunday circulation of 85,000, this would mean that the letter was distributed to 561,000 readers.
Here’s a big word of thanks to the editors of The Roanoke Times for allowing me to communicate with with my neighbors through such a superb regional newspaper.
I’m honored today to discover that Newsday published my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks. (It is an edited version of the letter that I submitted.) If you are a digital subscriber to Newsday, you can also read it online here.
Newsday is not only the newspaper that I grew up with — it is also the third largest paper in all of New York State and one of the largest in America. It has a weekday circulation of 437,000, and reaches nearly half of Long Island’s households. The 80-year-old publication has been the winner of 19 Pulitzer Prizes, with nominations for 20 more. I am especially grateful to its editorial staff for selecting my letter for such an esteemed newspaper.
This “Throwback Thursday” post is one to which only my longtime fellow Long Islanders might relate. And it’s really more of a bittersweet news item … I signed onto Facebook the night before last only to see this message from a great old friend from the neighborhood:
“They tore down the old T.S.S. today.”
Yes — that’s “T.S.S.,” as in Times Squares Stores, even though nobody ever called it the latter. And “T.S.S.” is an appellation that only the 40-and-up-ish crowd would recognize, I think. Everyone else thinks of it as “the old K-Mart.” But in the late 70’s and early 80’s, it was a sprawling local family discount store.
I and other Longwood High School kids have a hell of a lot of memories from there. I remember accompanying my parents there during their shopping expeditions when I was .. maybe the age from Kindergarten through the third grade?
“Warehouse”-type club stores weren’t really a thing back then. T.S.S.’ immense space was truly impressive to a little boy; it seemed like a world unto itself. We all remember the toy section — that was where I browsed wistfully through the very first Star Wars figures — I’m talking the original toys released in connection with the 1978 and 1980 films. I still remember them arrayed along the racks in their original packaging — Lord only knows how much those racks of unopened original toys would be worth today. I’m also pretty sure that’s where my parents picked up those Micronauts figures I got for Christmas one year. Come to think of it … I’ll bet the majority of my Christmas presents were bought there.
I also vividly remember the bedding department, for some reason. I think it’s because I really took a liking to some Charlie Brown bedsheets I saw displayed there.
But more than anything else, I remember the weird entranceway — they sold concession-style drinks and snacks on both sides, the better to appeal to children to beseech their parents.
There’s a neat little blog entry, complete with the store’s original TV commercials, right here at LongIsland70skid.com:
http://www.longisland70skid.com/tss/
T.S.S. was such a vivid, memorable part of my early childhood that it was pretty damned depressing for me Tuesday to discover its eventual fate. I’m not talking about the sprawling space being razed. I’m talking about the goddam dystopian state of disrepair into which the entire commercial property fell.
After some long intervening years during which the space became a K-Mart, the building just went to hell after that doomed chain went as defunct as T.S.S. Tuesday’s Newsday article, below, should give you the rundown.
And the rundown isn’t pretty. Over the past decade, it seems that the “hulking eyesore” of a building was the site of squatters, drug users, and encroaching wild plantlife. If you have fond childhood memories of the store, then do not perform a Google image search for the location, as I did. It’ll show you a massive, vacant monolith of a building on a vast, overgrown, dangerous looking lot. It looks frikkin’ postapocalyptic. And it’ll make you sad.
And if that weren’t enough, a murder victim was found this past Saturday in the woods just next to the site:
“Middle Island vacant K-Mart demolished days after body found,” by Carl MacGowan, Newsday, 4/5/16
They say you can never go home again, huh?
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 