TWF 358: No Kings Protests In Mineola, Elsewhere Tomorrow, 10/18/2025

 Hello, friends,

I hope this message finds you well, and that you weathered last weekend's storm well!

This is just a notification that on Saturday, October 18th at 11:00 AM-12:30 PM there's going to be a No Kings rally at the Nassau County Courthouse in Mineola in conjunction with many other events held nationwide.

I will say that as long as the protest goes off like every other protest there does, it's a pretty chill affair.  I've heard some truly unbelievable numbers may turn out, but that doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels.

I made a short video about it for my Dystopian Review Youtube channel, which you can check out below, that includes a few very basic amateur tips for protesting.

I hope you'll be able to attend.

TWF 357: Major Storm Incoming This Weekend (10/10/2025)

Hello, Freeport (and the whole of Long Island, and the north-east in general),

I hope this post finds you well.  While I'm no longer weekly - nor a present-tense Freeporter - I do keep an eye on Long Island in general, my hometown in particular, and situations that might impact those I care about back home.

So if you've been living under a very peculiar rock (wherein you see this post but haven't heard about this elsewhere), there's a major storm system coming through this weekend that you should be prepared for.

Accuweather has an article about it here.  Of particular note is the line that the storm surge "could rival that of Sandy in some areas."  That's no small claim, so if you're near the shore?  Be alert for warnings and be prepared to protect yourselves.

Hopefully it won't be that bad, but one can never be sure.

For the video-centric among you, Ryan Hall has a video that covers the storm (starting a few minutes into the video) here.  I'd suggest subscribing to Ryan's Youtube channel, he makes good weather warnings.

The New York State Department of Health has a list of things to do to be storm-prepared here.  Make sure you're covered for your specific situation.

Otherwise, that's about all I have to say for now.  Leave a comment if you have any feedback.

TWF 332 - A Decade After Sandy

Hey Friends,

It's hard to really measure the timing of a decade, let alone the start of the events which happened beforehand.  We have leap-years which means something isn't *quite* 365x10 days after it happened.  Then, you have to ask whether the damage from an event starts accruing when - say - it generates waves that chip away at protective dunes; or, whether you start from the time a storm makes landfall.  It certainly doesn't depend on whether or not it's still called a "Hurricane," or if it's now a "Superstorm" or "Frankenstorm" because technically it doesn't fit the profile it used to.

If you're a Long Islander, you know I'm talking about Hurricane Sandy, a topic that's still hard for many to talk about.  If you're unfamiliar, I urge you to check the Wikipedia article to understand it's national impact.

If you're a reader of The Weekly Freeporter, you know that we (in this case, myself, and my friend/occasional co-conspirator Jason Bass, who controls the Youtube page) chronicled the storm from the first warning calls to being on the ground the day after the storm did its worst, all the way to checking in on the community when a Nor'Easter slammed us and froze us out right after Sandy.

I want to be up front:  I'm sorry for any offenses caused.  We've all grown a lot since then, and some of our approach/commentary may have been wrong and/or disrespectful.

So How Does The Anniversary Make Us Feel?

I can really only speak for myself, and a lot of it I've already said in a different way.

So let's start with the community.

To begin with, no, Freeport has not forgotten the damage that Mother Nature can do to a community if she decides to throw her weight into a punch.  Some people have surely got PTSD; I read one conversation on Facebook recently about how just telling the story is painfully taxing.  I completely understand that feeling.  It's hard to talk about what we went through, especially to those who might not understand the damage it did.

The community seems to have survived the incident relatively well?  But that sentiment comes with a question mark for a reason  Some buildings are now super-tall and it's a little hard to figure out why at first glance.  To be perfectly clear, there are still houses in South Freeport that are waiting to have their re-construction completed.  My dad lived down the block from one.  And, since this cannot be left unsaid, many people were permanently displaced from the community, being forced to move to other towns and even states, either because they couldn't afford to rebuild here, or because others they cared about had to move out. 

As far as prevention and mitigation goes...?  It's hard to say.  Sadly, we lack those (not-quite) futuristic, now-far-off sounding things like flood-prevention systems briefly discussed in this article.  I'm sure that the various dunes and ecological barriers we have to prevent us from having future flooding have been worked on and improved, but at the same time climate change has led to rises in sea level, offsetting their effectiveness.  We now know what to expect when a big storm is coming, and preparedness is important.

How About On A Personal Level?

Well, I...My thoughts immediately run to one thing:

As many of you are aware, my father passed away on December 3rd, 2021.  He fell to the eventualityof a liver disease he was diagnosed with in the immediate aftermath of Sandy.  He began getting sick soon almost exactly at the same time as the storm hit.  At the time, he had been working at the Freeport Schools as a maintainer, and he'd been lining up sandbags at Giblyn elementary (which would prove to be less-than-successful at keeping water out), so we feared maybe he'd contracted some kind of waste-water-bourne pathogen.

It turned out to be far worse; Hepatitis C-induced liver failure.  He danced with death more than once,.  He survived a liver transplant from a benevolent soul (Seriously, consider being an organ donor - I am!  And while we're at it, bring down the cost of drugs like Harvoni that cure Hepatitis C!!!), but it took damn near ten years for that shit to kill him.

Sadly, kill him, it did.

I have an awful lot of thoughts on the eventual outcome of Sandy's aftermath, and my experience post-Sandy.  It was one piece of a much larger mental puzzle that ended...Hmm.  For now, let's just say it ended BADLY.  Some day, maybe soon, I'll write more about that.

But I do still have feelings about it, and always will.  For me, it's heavily-compounded trauma from multiple directions at one critical point in my life.

All Of This To Say

With the ten year anniversary arriving to remind us of things lost - and, perhaps, still broken - it's worth giving you the reminder that it's okay to feel things.  It's okay to reach out to a mental health professional if you find yourself having trouble with the trauma that Sandy smacked us with.  That's all totally fine.

The best part of this entire disaster is that we have, as both individuals and a community, grown.  Freeport is far from perfect, and to my knowledge it still has at least one dystopian law it needs to change, but it's still a great community.  We come together in times of crisis and support one another.  You know, except for the seemingly-weekly debate over which pizza place is the best.

Here's a hint on that one, by the way:

Try 'em all, and then it's the one you like the best.

Jesse Pohlman is a sci-fi/fantasy author from Freeport, New York, and while The Weekly Freeporter is certainly no-longer weekly, it documents and reflects on critical events within the Village.

TWF 315: Hurricane Henri Approaches Long Island!

 Hello, friends,

I hope you're all doing well.

Well, Freeporters and Long Islanders in general, it's that time of year, again!  We've got a hurricane coming our way.  It's name is Henri.  Say, "Hello, Henri!"  Anyway:  According to Accuweather, this is Hurricane Henri's most likely approach - and it's gonna broadside Long Island this weekend, predominantly on Sunday.

I feel like I used to have a handy-dandy list of hurricane tips, but to be honest you're all probably pretty well-acquainted with them - and, if not, you're certainly familiar with basic tenants of storm preparations.  If not, may I direct you to the CDC's website for hurricane and tropical storm planning?

I remember seeing the weather on TV and hearing that Henri was likely to head east of where it's now predicted.  I also remember, much more recently, seeing the phrase, "The 'Sandy' Hook" pop up on the internet as a reference to the devastation Hurricane Sandy caused and how it seemed to go out to see and then came back towards the island from the east.

This time, there doesn't seem to be a Nor'Easter colliding with the hurricane, though, so hopefully we'll be alright.

Jesse Pohlman is an author from Long Island, New York.  His website is at this link, where he hocks his sci-fi/fantasy novels that, hey, you can read during the storm!

TWF 286: Does The Earlene Hooper Saga Continue With Write-In Campaign?

Freeporters,

I hope you're all having a fantastic Thursday, and that you're keeping those suffering from Hurricane Michael in your minds as that storm rolls through the south, reminding us all of how Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Earlene Hooper is a name synonymous with "Freeport Legends," if for no other reason that she has been involved with myriad contentious issues with Village residents.  I've already chronicled this history multiple times (I encourage you to give it a read), but the two greatest conflicts she had with Freeporters in general remain, A; her adamant refusal to allow the Freeport Armory to be transferred to the Village Of Freeport, and, B; her extraordinarily surprising attempt, in collaboration with then-Freeport Mayor Andrew Hardwick, to convince Freeport to house a garbage incinerator.

I know I recycle this image a lot, but they made a whole frikkin' video about this thing.

I've spoken before, both on this very blog and even in-person at an event hosted by Adelphi University (I had the true honor of sharing a stage with Anthony J Miller, of the Freeport School District Board of Education!  Squeee!) about how New York State hasn't come close to escaping the gerrymandering that so many states embrace to limit voter turnout.  Freeport is, for those who don't know, split across multiple districts (on many levels of government...), meaning our full voice doesn't get to vote for any one leader, but rather many chunks of our populace are lumped in with those from many other communities also sometimes split into parts, all to create safety for incumbent politicians.  That's what makes Taylor Raynor's victory against Mrs. Hooper so impressive; while Freeporters might have been natural allies, she had to contend with many other small constituencies to win.

Is Hooper Running A Write-In Campaign?

Today I want to let everyone know that Earlene Hooper's time in politics is not necessarily over, for better or worse, because after her defeat in the democratic Primary for New York State Legislative District 18 at the hands of Taylor Raynor, rumors (from who I will happily concede is a credible source) are flying on Facebook trying to claim that she is planning on running a write-in campaign.  However, I'm going to assess what truth I can find in this concern.

First of all, Google is my friend; I searched for news articles having to do with Hooper running a write-in campaign and...Came up empty.  I next searched for any sort of website tied to Hooper running a re-election campaign.  I...Also came up empty!  I searched Facebook and Twitter, the top-two word-of-mouth machines necessary for such a campaign for active accounts and...Still, nothing.  Ballotpedia didn't chart anything about a write-in, either.  The only thing I found still up-and-running was her official NYS Assembly page, and that didn't look updated at all.

Now, maybe there is information that I'm yet to be aware of; or, maybe there was an effort, since-abandoned.  After all, I am not on any e-mail list Hooper may have accumulated over the years, and since I cannot find any active accounts (I mean, not even an official Twitter account? Or am I missing it?) for her, I can't be sure if I'm simply blocked or otherwise excluded from viewing it.

The Conclusion...

Let's be honest:  Write-in campaigns are long shots, anyway, often undertaken for farcical reasonsand made complicated by spelling errors and general electioneering trickery.  Lisa Murkowski, a U.S. Senator representing Alaska, is the most famous example of one working.  However, it took a massive political effort to effectively communicate with and mobilize volunteers to recruit voters who would be prepared to successfully cast a write-in vote.

The complete absence of any visible, easily-accessible social media presence, as well as a thorough lack of a serious campaign website for social media efforts to guide volunteers and donations towards, indicates that even if Mrs. Hooper were to decide at the last minute to try for a write-in campaign, she simply won't have the resources in place to succeed.

With that said, as always, The Weekly Freeporter as a publication does not endorse candidates, and we urge you to vote for who you think will best support your community.  Thanks for reading!


Jesse Pohlman is a long-time Freeport resident who sometimes just likes to share what he's thinking about it.  He's also a science-fiction and fantasy writer you can check out on Amazon!