1. Spelling is hard.

2. Hell is the Long Island Railroad trip between Jamaica Station and Penn Station. On a Saturday night. With drunk frat boys and their tarted up girlfriends.

3. After reading this story, no one is allowed to say anything negative about Daniel Radcliffe when I’m around.

4. Sailor August Provost, III was buried this week-end. RIP.

5. Will you pay attention to this week’s confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor?

6. Am I the only one who gets a special thrill watching people lose it at the grocery store? Yesterday this woman was cussing at a clerk and manager. When the manager asked her to watch her language, she turned even crazier!

7.Hulu.com is replacing my addiction to youtube.

8. Any opera fans in Santa Fe? Bring back reports of The Letter. The tenor has my last name. The librettist has a new biography on Louis Armstrong coming out. With all of this, how could the opera not be a classic?

9. In this ad whose hand is carrying the Gateway Arch?

10. Poor Sarah Palin. Getting no love from fellow Republicans.

“Like most men of his generation,” biographer Randy Shilts wrote in The Mayor of Castro Street, “Milk assiduously stuck to the double life he had carefully followed since his high school days.”

More than half a century later, the Long Island Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Services Network will honor the slain gay-rights activist posthumously to draw attention to gays and lesbians with small-town roots. Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, will accept the award for his uncle on Saturday.

“Things have changed dramatically since the late 1940s when Harvey Milk graduated from high school,” said David Kilmnick, founder of the network of three organizations. “But there’s a lot more to be done.”

Milk, the focus of renewed attention this year when the biographical film “Milk” won two Oscars, became one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

In November 1978, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were fatally shot by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor. Milk was 48.

Since the days when Milk was growing up in the shadow of New York City, there’s no question life for gay men and women on Long Island, home to more than 2.8 million people, has improved in many ways.

Many gays and lesbians say they feel comfortable enough to live openly. Still, they add, not everyone welcomes that openness.

During his senior year at Bay Shore High School, which counts Milk among its alumni, Erik Normandin came out.

“Everyone was pretty much OK with it,” the 18-year-old recalled, except his ex-girlfriend’s family. “They told me it was disgusting,” said Normandin, who graduated in 2008.

Since then, Normandin has had no qualms about holding another guy’s hand at the mall or on the street, but the manager of a restaurant that markets itself as a family establishment once asked him to stop or leave, and a customer complained.

“I’m very surprised how many people on Long Island are accepting of it,” Normandin said. “I thought they’d have more resistance.”

Normandin didn’t rule out settling in Long Island after college but he was unsure whether his career goal of working in stage lighting and design will take him elsewhere.

One of the goals of Kilmnick’s organization is to get Normandin and other suburban and rural gays and lesbians to live openly gay lives and create friendlier environments in their hometowns, rather than flock to gay meccas like New York, San Francisco and Atlanta.

That was partly the point of the posthumous award to Milk, he said.

“We need to keep some of that in suburban and rural America, if we truly want to see full equality,” Kilmnick said.

When Milk was elected, he was only the fifth openly gay U.S. elected official, according to Denis Dison, a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a political action committee.

Today there are 427 openly gay elected officials, Dison said, and more than three-quarters of them serve at the local level. “In the last few years there have been folks who did not leave their towns and go to the coastal cities,” he said.

When Kilmnick and his partner of eight years moved into their Long Island home in 2003, a neighbor dropped by to welcome them to the neighborhood.

“She asked, `Oh, where’s your wife?’” Kilmnick said. He then introduced her to his male partner, Robert. “This was six years ago and we haven’t seen her since,” he said.

Still, Kilmnick said, there’s tangible evidence things have changed since Milk lived in Long Island. There are 67 gay-straight alliances in Long Island schools, he said, and last year, more than 40,000 students participated in National Coming Out Day.

The Long Island Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Services Network says Stuart Milk will accept an award on his uncle’s behalf at a gala on April 18.

Milk was born in Woodmere and graduated from a high school in Bay Shore. He later became the country’s first openly gay man to hold public office when he was elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977.

In November 1978, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were fatally shot by Dan White, a city supervisor who had resigned.

“Milk,” the film based on his life, won an Oscar for actor Sean Penn and the award for best screenplay last month.

Suffolk County Police said 21-year-old Milagro Ruiz, 20-year-old Gilbert Geigel, 19-year-old Kerrond Miller-Jones, and 21-year-old Charles Diaz, all of Bay Shore, were charged with second degree criminal mischief.

On Feb. 2, workers arrived at the Center to find the front door smashed, all the windows of its 2003 Ford van were shattered, the mirrors ripped off and the tires slashed. The van is used to transport more than 50 youth a week to the Center for support and leadership programs.

There was no sign that the building had been entered and nothing appeared to be stolen.

Damage is estimated in the thousands of dollars and a fund raising campaign has begun to repair the damage to the van.

David Kilmnick, the Center’s CEO, said the attack sent a message to the entire gay community. “This was not a simple case of vandalism, but an attack on our entire community,” he said last week.

On Friday NY Gov. David Paterson (D) dispatched state Human Rights Commissioner Galen D. Kirkland to Bay Shore to meet with members of the LGBT community.

“We must understand that an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us,” Paterson said in a statement.

But following the arrest of the four, police said their investigation determined “it was not a hate crime” but declined to say what they believed the motive to be.

The front door of the Center was smashed, all the windows of its 2003 Ford van were shattered, the mirrors ripped off and the tires slashed.

“This was not a simple case of vandalism, but an attack on our entire community,” said David Kilmnick, the Center’s CEO.

“We are thankful that this act happened while The Center was closed and therefore no one was physically injured, but this was a clear attempt to instill fear in GLBT people throughout Long Island.”

There was no sign that the building had been entered and nothing appeared to be stolen.

The Suffolk County Police Department hate crimes unit has begun an investigation.  If the culprits are caught the District Attorney would have to determine where to file a hate crime charge in addition to vandalism charges. A hate crime conviction would result in a longer sentence.

“This type of attack against the gay community will not be tolerated in Suffolk County,” County Executive Steve Levy said in a statement. “Our police department will seek to apprehend any wrongdoer and help ensure that there is swift justice to deter any such activity in the future.”

Workers on Tuesday began repairing the Center’s front door, but the facility has sent out an urgent appeal to supporters for money to repair the van, which transports more than 50 youth a week to the Center for support and leadership programs.

Kilmnick said the attack will not deter the Center from its purpose.

“I want all Long Islanders to know that we will not stand by and allow anyone to terrorize our community,” he said.

“We will use this heinous act to raise awareness of the discrimination and hatred that GLBT people are all to often a target of.  The glass will be cleaned and the van will be back on the road soon, but ultimately it is my hope that we can make this a turning point for GLBT people.”