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Part of Manhasset High School librarian Karin Greenberg’s home library, in addition to a separate room filled with her great-grandparents’ books, contains titles accumulated since college. Credit: Karin Greenberg
I’m 5 years old, wearing a striped, blue-and-green Danskin outfit. As I walk toward my kindergarten teacher’s desk, I feel excited. Mrs. Stuchio pulls out the little plastic chair and tells me to sit. I place my workbook on the table and begin. “A pig can jig,” I recite. “Excellent,” she says. “Go on.”
As I read the words and look at the pigs, I feel strong, smart . . . happy.
I don’t remember much else about that 1974 day at the Hills School in Dix Hills, but when I realized that sounding out letters on a page allowed me to read an entire story, I was hooked.
As a child, I had a busy life: birthday parties at an East Northport crafts store and the Commack Roller Rink; soccer games; guitar and piano lessons; riding bikes with friends; and story times at the Half Hollow Hills Community Library. I can still hear the librarian reading “Make Way for Ducklings.” My favorite place, though, was in my pink-and-orange bedroom snuggled up with a book.
When I was old enough to read chapter books, I couldn’t get enough of them. “Harriet the Spy,” “All-of-A-Kind Family,” anything by Judy Blume. Then I graduated to Danielle Steel and Sidney Sheldon. Back then, the “young adult” genre didn’t exist; I went straight from family breakfast scenes to love stories, like “Evergreen” by Belva Plain. The times I was lucky enough to visit Book Revue in Huntington, I was thrilled by the possibilities as I ran my fingers across the book spines. Years later, I took my own children there.
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At Candlewood Junior High School, English became my favorite class. I have vivid memories of Mrs. Ayers, with her thick bob, reading “The Cask of the Amontillado” aloud as my eighth-grade classmates and I sat mesmerized by her deep, emotive voice. At Half Hollow Hills High School East, my 10th-grade English teacher, Mr. Alford, was a strict man who wore suits and sweater vests. We had a rigid schedule of spelling tests and book reviews that we recorded in black-and-white composition notebooks. I loved the structure.
In subsequent English classes, my teachers assigned strenuous books (“The Stranger,” “A Tale of Two Cities”) and complex research papers. For the first time, I felt book-related anxiety.
After getting my college degree in English and working at seventeen magazine, books called again: I left to get my teaching certification.
As a new English teacher in Manhattan, I stressed the importance of immersive reading. Annotations, I feel, break the momentum; I encouraged students to read without distractions. Years later, after raising my three children, I taught English, filling in for teachers on leave at Half Hollow Hills High School West. “Sustained silent reading,” during which students spent entire periods reading, was integral to my curriculum.
Today, as a librarian at Manhasset High School, I promote reading with enthusiasm. For a recent ninth-grade class, I created a “reading workout.” Students sampled books spread across tables and read with no agenda. I’d never seen them more engaged.
Looking back on my literary path, I recall the joy from that kindergarten day. I dream of a school curriculum centered around books. For now, I’ll keep getting lost in reading and use my platform as a librarian to share my passion.
Reader Karin Greenberg lives in Dix Hills.
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2 nato countries claim russian drones violated airspace during nighttime attacks.
KYIV, Ukraine — Two NATO members said Sunday that Russian drones have violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day.
A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense reported.
It added Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions.
It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited zone along the Romanian-Ukrainian border.
There were no immediate reports of any casualties or damage.
Later on Sunday, Latvia’s Defense Minister Andris Sprūds said that a Russian drone fell the day before near the town of Rezekne, and had likely strayed into Latvia from neighboring Belarus.
Rezekne, home to over 25,000 people, lies some 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Russia and around 75 kilometers (47 miles) from Belarus, the Kremlin’s close and dependent ally.
While the incursion into Latvian airspace appeared to be a rare incident, Romania has confirmed drone fragments on its territory on several occasions since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, as recently as July this year.
Mircea Geoana, NATO’s outgoing deputy secretary-general and Romania’s former top diplomat, said on Sunday morning that the military alliance condemned Russia’s violation of Romanian airspace. “While we have no information indicating an intentional attack by Russia against Allies, these acts are irresponsible and potentially dangerous,” he wrote on X.
Latvia’s military on Sunday similarly said that there were no indications that Moscow or Minsk purposely sent a drone into the country. In a public statement, the military said it had identified the crash site, and that a probe was ongoing.
Sprūds, the Latvian defense minister, sought to downplay the significance of the drone incursion.
“I can confirm that there are no victims here and also no property is infringed in any way,” Defense Minister Andris Sprūds told the Latvian Radio on Sunday, adding that any risks in the event were immediately eliminated: “Of course, it is a serious incident, as it is once again a reminder of what kind of neighboring countries we live next to.”
In Ukraine, two civilians died and four more suffered wounds in a nighttime Russian airstrike on the northern city of Sumy, the regional military administration reported.
Two children were among those wounded, the administration said. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed later that day that its forces struck foreign pro-Kyiv fighters in a village on Sumy’s northern outskirts.
It was not immediately clear whether this was a reference to the same attack.
In the Kharkiv region in the east, overnight shelling killed two elderly women, according to local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.
During the night, Ukrainian air defenses shot down one of four cruise missiles and 15 of 23 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russia, Ukraine’s air force reported. It added that none of the cruise missiles had hit targets.
Later on Sunday, three women were killed after Russian forces shelled a village in the eastern Donetsk region, Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on the Telegram messaging app.
Elsewhere in the province, rescue teams pulled the bodies of two men from the rubble of a hotel destroyed on Saturday evening in a Russian airstrike, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.
That same day, the death toll rose to 58 from the massive Russian missile strike that on Tuesday blasted a military academy and nearby hospital in the eastern city of Poltava, regional Gov. Filip Pronin reported.
More than 320 others were wounded.
Since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the Russian military has repeatedly used missiles to smash civilian targets, sometimes killing scores of people in a single attack.
Poltava is about 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv, on the main highway and rail route between Kyiv and Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is close to the Russian border.
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The attack happened as Ukrainian forces sought to carve out their holdings in Russia’s Kursk border region after a surprise incursion that began Aug. 6, as the Russian army hacks its way deeper into eastern Ukraine.
Russian forces continued their monthlong grinding push towards the city of Pokrovsk, and also ramped up attacks near the town of Kurakhove farther south, Ukraine’s General Staff reported.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday its troops had taken Novohrodivka, a small town some 19 kilometers (11 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
An update published Saturday evening by DeepState, a Ukrainian battlefield analysis site, said Russian forces had “advanced” in Novohrodivka and captured Nevelske, a village in the southeast of the Pokrovsk district.
Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.
Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defense and supply routes, and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.
Elsewhere, falling debris from downed “aerial objects” injured two young boys and an adult in Russia’s Belgorod region, some 20 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported on Sunday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry the same day claimed that its forces had shot down multiple Ukrainian drones over the province, and a further one over the neighboring Kursk region.
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Russia ukraine war.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Two NATO members said Sunday that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day.
A drone entered Romanian territory early Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, Romania's Ministry of National Defense reported. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions.
It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Later on Sunday, Latvia’s Defense Minister Andris Sprūds said a Russian drone fell the day before near the town of Rezekne, and had likely strayed into Latvia from neighboring Belarus.
Rezekne, home to over 25,000 people, lies some 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Russia and around 75 kilometers (47 miles) from Belarus, the Kremlin’s close and dependent ally.
While the incursion into Latvian airspace appeared to be a rare incident, Romania has confirmed drone fragments on its territory on several occasions since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, as recently as July this year.
Mircea Geoană, NATO's outgoing deputy secretary-general and Romania's former top diplomat, said Sunday morning that the military alliance condemned Russia’s violation of Romanian airspace. “While we have no information indicating an intentional attack by Russia against Allies, these acts are irresponsible and potentially dangerous,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Latvia's military on Sunday similarly said there were no indications that Moscow or Minsk purposely sent a drone into the country. In a public statement, the military said it had identified the crash site, and that a probe was ongoing.
Sprūds, the Latvian defense minister, sought to downplay the significance of the drone incursion.
“I can confirm that there are no victims here and also no property is infringed in any way,” Defense Minister Andris Sprūds told the Latvian Radio on Sunday, adding that any risks in the event were immediately eliminated: “Of course, it is a serious incident, as it is once again a reminder of what kind of neighboring countries we live next to.”
Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the incursions “a reminder (that) the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation go beyond Ukraine’s borders.”
“The collective response of the Allies should be maximum support for Ukraine now, to put an end to (Russian aggression), protect lives and preserve peace in Europe,” Sybiha said in a post on X.
Civilians reported killed in Ukraine
In Ukraine, two civilians died and four more suffered wounds in a nighttime Russian airstrike on the northern city of Sumy, the regional military administration reported. Two children were among those wounded, the administration said. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed later on Sunday that its forces struck foreign pro-Kyiv fighters in a village on Sumy's northern outskirts. It was not immediately clear whether this was a reference to the same attack.
Also on Sunday, Ukraine’s General Staff said that Russian troops continued to pound Sumy and the surrounding regions with airstrikes, and had lobbed at least 16 devastating “glide bombs” at the province by mid-afternoon. Russian forces shelled the city again during the day Sunday, wounding a teenager and a civilian man, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
Three more women died Sunday after Russian forces shelled a village in the eastern Donetsk region, Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on the Telegram messaging app. Separately, Russian shelling killed a woman on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city in the northeast, local authorities said.
Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 58 from the massive Russian missile strike that on Tuesday blasted a military academy and nearby hospital in the eastern city of Poltava, regional Gov. Filip Pronin reported. More than 320 others were wounded.
Since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the Russian military has repeatedly used missiles to smash civilian targets, sometimes killing scores of people in a single attack.
Russian forces continued their monthlong grinding push toward the city of Pokrovsk, and also ramped up attacks near the town of Kurakhove farther south, Ukraine's General Staff reported.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Sunday its troops had taken Novohrodivka, a small town some 19 kilometers (11 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk. An update published Saturday evening by DeepState, a Ukrainian battlefield analysis site, said Russian forces had “advanced” in Novohrodivka and captured Nevelske, a village in the southeast of the Pokrovsk district.
Pokrovsk, which had a prewar population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defense and supply routes, and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.
Berlin raises prospect of peace talks with Russia
Also on Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agree that Moscow should be included in a future peace conference aimed at ending its invasion of Ukraine.
“There will certainly be a further peace conference, and the president (Zelenskyy) and I agree that it must be one with Russia present,” Scholz told Germany’s ZDF public television.
A previous peace conference June 15-16 in Switzerland ended with 78 countries expressing support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” but otherwise left the path forward unclear. Russia did not participate.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy did not immediately comment on Scholz’s remarks, but said in a video address Sunday that he had held “important negotiations” with the German leader and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He did not give details.
Associated Press writers Stephen McGrath in Sighisoara, Romania, and Jari Tanner in Helsinki, Finland contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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A Day in My Life. Category: Life. Topic: About Myself. Pages: 1 (466 words) Views: 803. Download. Each day brings a new opportunity for experiences, growth, and memories. In this essay, I will take you through a typical day in my life, highlighting the routines, activities, and moments that shape my daily existence. Do not use plagiarized sources.
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