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HERALD Lacrosse High School Preview
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VoL. 23 No. 16
East Meadow celebrates Easter
What’s happening in the schools
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APRIL 13 - 19, 2023
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Supporting troops with food-filled baskets By MALLoRY WILSoN mwilson@liherald.com
Tim Baker/Herald
StEW LEoNARd’S, IN East Meadow, helped military families celebrate Easter this year. The store enlisted the help of local Boy Scouts, and other organizations, to pack boxes with food. Leonard, the president and CEO of the supermarket chain, is in the blue blazer.
Stew Leonard’s, in East Meadow, was on a mission to help military families of those on active duty have a better Easter this year. Operation Easter Basket was an effort that the grocery store came up with to help military families have special meal for the holiday. Local volunteers — Boy Scout Troop 362, members of Girl Scout Troop 1315, American Legion Post 1082 and Veterans of Foreign War Post 2736 — gathered on April 7 to help pack boxes, making it a true community Continued on page 10
Author Laurie Lico Albanese returns to hometown By MALLoRY WILSoN mwilson@liherald.com
Laurie Lico Albanese has memories of growing up in East Meadow and spending time studying at the East Meadow Public Library. Now, Albanese, 63, an author of three novels and a memoir and the co-author of another historical fiction story, is coming back to the library to give residents a taste of her most recent book. “Hester” is a reimagining of the creative inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter” and its protagonist, Hester Prynne.
Albanese will discuss “Hester” on April 20, at 7 p.m., at the library. To register, visit EastMeadow.info. In Hawthorne’s book, Prynne is the woman who must wear the letter “A” for the rest of her life as a symbol of having committed adultery. In Albanese’s reimagining, Isobel Gamble, a young Scottish seamstress, comes to meet Hawthorne during the 1800s. The book dives into what it meant to be American in the 19th century, and how women were targeted for being different. “This is Hester Prynne finally tells her own story,” Albanese said. “This novel asks the question, was there a real Hester
Prynne? And if so, who was she? And what would she tell us if she could?” This is Albanese’s third historical novel, and her first one set in America after her other two took place in Europe. Her first book, published in 2000, was contemporary; she switched to historical fiction because she liked reading those types of books, and that’s what was getting the best reception. Her first historical novel, “The Miracles of Prato,” coauthored with her friend Laura Morowitz and published in 2009, was well-received, Albanese said. So she took that genre and ran with it.
It’s been more than a market decision for Albanese. She said that doing research for her historical fiction books transports her back to being a student and spending hours at the library reading encyclopedia after encyclopedia to get the information that she needed for an assignment. “I always think about when I
was in elementary school, middle school, in high school, we always had to write reports — and that my reports, then, as it would be now, consisted of physically going to the library and literally sitting on the floor with all my different books,” she said. “I love doing that, and I kind of feel like that’s what I’m doing when I Continued on page 2