Author: GreggPSullivan

This one’s for Tommy Byrne. Walking over the trestle to the Bayside Post Office Annex I spotted this deisel locomotive whose engine was running in the train yard. Totally couldn’t help myself and walked down and snuck into the yard to get a closer look and check it out and thought – you know, I bet if Tommy Bryne and I had grown up together we would have been doing stuff like this and going down to the train yard all the time. Wierd thing was there was absolutely no one around. Place was totally deserted with no one in sight so i walked over to the train to get a real close look and started taking pictures of the wheels and the brakes while the engine was running and as valves kept hissing and releasing pressure making you think there must be some ghost engineer operator on board making it happen and I’m not afraid to admit I had a Walter Mitty moment as I circled the locamotive and imagined myself climbing up the side of the train and into the cabin and started turning steam dials and pulling levers that cranked and clicked as the gears engaged until the engine started moving down and out of the yard and that I drove the train down the tracks and through the Bayside train Station past people on the platform and continued across the country across desolate wheat fields and ended up in Illinois 😀 It was only a brief moment of mental abstraction but how can you not feel like a kid standing that close to a huge train engine like that . It was pretty cool.

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/BaysideLiveTV/posts/748508508637368

January 20, 21st and 22nd. 2017

Friday and Saturday Nights and Sunday Afternoon .

The opening weekend of the  “Literary Nights on Bell” events.

This was one intense weekend.

This was the reschedule of the “Literary Nights on Bell”event  that had previously been cancelled due to a freak snowstorm

that landed right smack dab in the middle of town.

We had two published authors, three woman from the advanced Bayside writers club , a performance art author and a local film maker, Gino Cafarelli .

On opening night we had two actors reading from the script Gino wrote

and we showed clips from Gino’s movies as he narrated .  That was pretty cool.

Lon Blais was there reading snipets from his one man show that’s now taking off like a shooting star

and we had the unexpected pleasure of a new addition of a local writer , David R. Yale

a published and very talented and versatile author

who we were somewhat serendipitously blessed to meet because he came to us through our notices at the LIRR

and not through our website or social media or Facebook pages.

He , along with the others who came down during the snowstorm to be present at the opening

of  our “Literary Nights on Bell” event, he in particularly came not knowing that the evening had been cancelled and not having seen the postings of the cancellation on-line.

He is the person I had stated in my cancellation notices that I’d still go down to open up the nascent Bayside Center for the Arts for,

just in case someone from the LIRR Train Station notices came by, and as if by wizardry, VOILA !!, David R. Yale appeared and was that guy.

BTW, there’s a complete and wonderful story all its own about working with the Long Island Railroad

who were incredibly accommodating and helpful to us and without whom we’d never have been introduced to David in the first place.

So, The Event.

We video recorded the entire weekend from introductions to question and answers and everything in between.

The writers were front line and each captivated the audience’s attention like magnets to metal.

The members of the newly formed Bayside Council for the Arts

Maria Provavano Sausa, John O’Neil , Melissa Brodman, Willy Airaldi and Paul DiBenidetto ,

all chipped in to help the initiative along and lend a hand.

Attached is the program that we held over the three days thanks to John O’Neil who volunteered his time to construct it for us

as well as a lot of pictures that tell the story. Some more the others .

I felt a particular joy in taking the pictures of the guys standing outside the Arts Center looking up

applying their imaginations and expertise to the survey of the facade of the new center.

More to come .

 

 

Quite The Defining Moment for Our Country.  Quite the speech.

Ok, Ok, Ok, Listen up everybody.
Mine is not “A Better Way, mine is just “Another Way” and this is the way I’m going with this. YOU are free to go whichever way makes you happiest.
I’m personally choosing to separate the man from the process right now and moving forward. Though what I’m about to present may sound contradictory at first, here’s where I’m going.

Continued below photo gallery.

1) I’m all for the protests and “The People, the Patriots of America” jumping on the busses and getting on the trains and heading out join in demonstration of our displeasures and expressing our concerns . I’m all for and inspired by what we’re seeing today with the demonstrations across the country that are letting it be known to Trump and everybody associated with him, our country and every person in it comes before You and this country is not for sale.

2) However, I believe much of the protests are misguided and counter productive. I’d choose to reset our sites and refocus our guns of intolerance and angst and aim them not at the man ( who is now our President as the pictures in this gallery have adequately documented 😉 ) but at the broken process and the un-American activities and people behind the corrosion, if not dismantling of our, “We The People ” electoral process and through our protests and demonstrations, stop complaining about “The Man” but demonstrate to demand and force all our other elected officials and the news organizations to do their patriotic duty and fulfill their mission statements and in the case of the news, go and uncover the facts about what just took place with “OUR ELECTION” and deliver those facts to us , unfiltered and forthrightly, in order for “We, the American people” to examine those facts and force our Judicial System to do its patriotic, American duty to adjudicate fairly should unlawful activities be found prosecutable. The potential to benefit from this surreal presidential story is realized by redirecting our way of thinking to see what really needs addressing right now, right here at this defining moment in our American history and not let it get away from us, that is to protest what a horrible, unfair, unjust, unacceptable , if not illegitimized election we just witnessed took place in our country.
I won’t go into to many details now, but you all know, whether you are a Trump supporter or not , that that election was the most corrupted, poorly and dishonestly orchestrated and executed election we have ever seen, and probably in all American history. That is where I believe the most productive focus of our attention lies (in addition to letting Tump and his entire administration know were watching).

 

3) The unfair use of character besmirching propaganda , as Trump correctly points out is like something straight out of Nazi Germany, with the dissemination of false facts and fake news and unqualified Wiki Leaks that now have compromised veracity and questionable integrity and may actually be manipulated by foreign and adversarial governments to sway the election away from a candidate that they do not want to see get in, (which should actually be viewed as an endorsement of that candidate when you think about it long enough) .

The FBI Director, in unpatriotic and complete dismissal and complete disregard for our Constitution and our Bill of Rights and the very principles and values our Founding Fathers and Patriots have given their lives to provide for the people of our land , one of our most important core values of “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”. How dishonoring of America , how dishonoring of the Founding Fathers, how dishonoring of our Constitution and all the men and woman and patriots of this country was it to repeatedly blast out unfairly damaging “allegations” about Hillary’s e-mails when she has not been proven guilty of anything just as Trump has not been proven guilty of any of the lawbreaking and constitutional violations he’s now being accused of. I believe what they did was unconscionable and don’t understand why Americans , why “We The People” are not more outraged and incensed by that. AND they did it repeatedly and again days before the election. Why the hell are we all not seeing that for what it was and saying “Hey- NOT ON MY WATCH YOU DON”T”. ???

4) All you protestors out there , please remember , when you’re protesting and demonstrating against Trump, against “The Man” you are also protesting against your brothers and sisters and the other half of our country who are wildly and even fanatically for him and only serving to divide us more and separate the American people into two halves -them that’s for, and them that’s against. Many of the protests are backfiring and you’re only fighting against ourselves. Not Good :-/

5) Demonstrate against the multitude of wrongs that just took place with that election and you become the patriot. Why are we not seeing that? Place your demonstrations where they really need to be focused and go after the corrupting influences in that election so that all American’s can be assured our Constitution and Bill of Rights and Core Values will not be dishonored and will be defended and protected and honored and maintained no matter what and All America will be united behind that .

6) “We The People” have to play our part and have an obligation and duty to our country of paying attention and being active and diligent to our duties, as Obama poignantly and wonderfully reminded us, of performing our role here of being “Good Citizens” again .
If we want to make America Great again, it’s up to us , not just to the people we put in office but its up to us to play our part . No matter who you were for, or who you were against, we must stay focused on the the American process and practices of our institutions and stand up against them when they move away from the purpose we created them for .

7) Regarding “The Man”.
I am the master of my own life and hold dominion over my own experience and by my own design and desires for what I want out of life, I CHOOSE to lean towards the positive. Not to the left, neither to the right, but to the positive as opposed to filling the precious minutes of my life experience with negatives.
Silver Lining Finding is a special delight of mine 🙂 .
So, regardless, separate and apart from my complete disgust with that election and no matter how much my heart goes out for Hillary because of how unfairly she has been treated and how unfair that election AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE were to her, I’m going to choose to look at the man and go with this. Though I don’t like and choose to fight with how you got there, Donald Trump, for right now YOU’RE THE MAN 🙂
and you just took an oath that “We The People ” put into place to guide and get you to Honor and Defend and Protect the Constitution of our United States of America and you just gave the most fascinating, curious , if not mind bogglingly controversial Inaugural Speeches America has ever heard.
If our sisters and brothers and fellow American’s feel compelled to continue to protest against “The Man”, and they want to be patriotic about it, the only productive and patriotic demonstration would be to take that Inauguration speech Trump just deliver and plaster it on signs and march back and forth in front of the White House every single day carrying those signs back and forth reminding the President of The United States of America , Donald J. Trump of what he said he’d do and remind him of who he works for now. Unlike the world he’s used to, where everybody works for him, he now works for somebody else — US .

8) And — if Trump actually delivers on what he stated and promised in that speech, in front of the eyes of the whole world, not only will I shout HOORAY !! but he will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all American history and I’ll even say, be right up there with the likes of Lincoln , inheriting a bitterly divided and critically ailing America and bring us back to unity, prosperity and to the role model we want our America to be again.
So, I’m choosing to move away from the divide and protests against so many of my own family and close friends and my fellow American’s with demonstrations against “The Man”. Like him or not, and as you can plainly see with this Gallery of pictures , from the looks of it, Donald J Trump is our president I’ll stand behind him.
But I’ll also be a patriotic citizen by standing behind him holding a copy of that speech and making sure he does what he says and insist that our press be watching closely.

 

BTW, just a prediction, but if not Hillary, which I genuinely feel badly about because the injustices to the Clintons, Bill and Hillary both, were too many and too unAmerican, Your first Female American President is emerging right in front of you. Elizabeth Warren . You heard it here first