Monthly Archives: June 2017

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If you were to ask those of us of a certain age, we would insist that we want to age in place. That is, we want to continue to live in our houses, cook in our kitchens and sleep in our bedrooms. This is a worthy goal for it saves family and the government a lot of money. Statistics have shown that hospitalization and nursing homes are far more costly than living at home. Still, we also know that more accidents happen in the home, and that means continuing to live at home presents certain challenges.

The greatest hazard, it would seem, is for older adults to fall. Now, and for the last score of years, there are programs with certifications that train people how to make homes safer, especially for preventing falls. For example, the National Association of Home Builders offers a course that trains CAPS: certified aging in place specialists. These may be builders, remodelers, occupational therapists or interior designers who can come into a home and make suggestions for retrofitting.

There are 3,500 such specialists but Dan Bawden, from Houston, who helped develop the program in 2001, told The New York Times there are 10 times as many needed to upgrade such homes. The highest rate of home ownership in the country, some 80 percent, is by older people, and the great majority of us are in single-family homes.

The three most important features allowing residents to move around safely are: to have an entrance without steps; to live on a single floor; and to have hallways and doorways wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and walkers. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, less than 4 percent meet that description. And if further features are thrown in, like doors with lever handles — rather than knobs — plus light switches and electric outlets that can be reached from a wheelchair, that rate falls to 1 percent, according to the recent article in the Times: “Planning to Age in Place? Find a Contractor Now” by Paula Span.

At this point, with about 10,000 Americans turning 65 every day, it would make the most sense for every new house to be constructed according to what is termed “universal design.” Such homes would have bathroom grab bars, higher toilets, curbless showers, widened doorways and added lighting. Such features would promote independence for the disabled and older people.

There are other associations that offer similar certification programs. Certified Living in Place Professional program is one such. Local agencies on aging and senior centers may also give this kind of information. What seems to work best is if an occupational therapist and a CAPS, or equivalently trained graduate, team up to interview each homeowner and determine what is most needed.

Costs for these modifications can be a problem. There is little government help for such remodeling, with the exception of the Department of Veterans Affairs and perhaps Medicaid. Some states do offer tax credits but not many. Mostly such alterations are privately financed, despite the potential savings from staying at home. A bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress last year for a $30,000 federal tax credit, but to date it has gone nowhere.

Approximate costs could run as follows, according to Bawden: two grab bars installed for $200-$300; replace doorknobs with lever handles $60-$90; for every relocated electrical outlet or switch, $175-$250. Those are the smaller costs. Then there is replacing a tub with a roll-in shower at $8,000-$10,000, and an entirely new bathroom with universal design elements for more than $25,000.

The biggest hurdle of all may be to get older residents to feel that they need such modifications. At the least, kitchen floors might be textured rather than covered with tiles that are slippery when wet; the color of the kitchen counters might contrast with the color of the floor as the more elderly lose depth perception; front edges of stairs could be outlined with colored tape; freezers are safer in a pullout drawer at the bottom of a refrigerator — and, for Pete’s sake, get rid of those much-beloved throw rugs.

Werner Hess shows students the passport Germans required he carry around as a young boy. Photo by Victoria Espinoza.

By Victoria Espinoza

Young students in the Northport-East Northport school district were given a firsthand account of one of the most pivotal and horrific periods in human history.

Holocaust survivor Werner Hess, 96, spoke to Northport elementary students last week to share his story and encourage attendees to be kind and accepting of one another.

Hess’ life changed when Hitler came to power while he was living in Frankfurt, Germany. His mother was able to help him escape to England in 1939 and, Hess eventually arrived in the United States in 1940. He talked about how the events leading up to World War II were encouraged by racial hate speech, and isolating and mistreating certain groups of people.

“These horrible sufferings must not be forgotten, and the lessons of the Holocaust must not be diminished into just a footnote in history,” Hess said at Dickinson Avenue Elementary School May 26. “We must educate generations…and combat all forms of racial, religious and ethnic hatred before it is too late.”

The passport with a large red “J” for Jew. Photo by Victoria Espinoza.

Hess told the children to imagine living how they are now, except being forced to no longer see their friends, and family members being sent off to concentration camps to do slave labor. Hess himself went through that reality when he was about the same age as the fourth- and fifth-graders he spoke to.

Hess’ family had lived in Germany for generations, and his grandparents fought for Germany in World War I. Hess had plans to go to college and become an accountant, however he said this became impossible once Jewish people were no longer allowed to attend college in Germany. This led Hess to drop out of school and learn how to make women’s handbags in a factory in his town. However, soon enough the government shut down the factory, and Hess’ Christian supervisor helped him get work elsewhere undercover, where he was hidden from inspectors.

The only part of Hess’ childhood the Northport students could relate to was that he was playing on a local soccer team. He was  the only Jewish boy on the team. He had played for years, however one Sunday in 1935 he was told by the coach he could no longer play due to his religion.

“Quite a blow to a 14-year-old boy,” he said.

Eventually Hess said Jewish-owned stores were closing down, with signs on their windows saying, “owned by Jews, don’t shop from Jews.” Books written by Jews were burned in his town, statues erected for well known Jewish leaders were destroyed and Jewish names were removed from street signs. Hess lost his citizenship, and was given a passport with a large red ‘J’ on it to identify his religion. Hess said he watched synagogues, including the temple where his bar mitzvah was held, Jewish owned stores, including his parent’s fish store and homes burned down by the government, and Jewish citizens rounded up and taken to concentration camps. He saw German troops marching through his streets singing, “Jewish heads must roll, Jewish blood must be spilt.”

Gestapo officers came to Hess’ house to arrest his father and bring him to a concentration camp.

“We are all created in the image of God, you may not like each person you meet in your life, that does not mean you must hate an entire race, ethnic group or religion. You must respect the human rights of everyone.”
—Herner Wess

“After they were convinced that my father was sick and dying, they asked for me,” he said. “I was hiding in the attic of the apartment we lived in. They told my mother I should report to them when I returned home or else I would be killed on site. Trembling and with tears in her eyes, my mother came to my hiding place and sent me off to the designated assembly point.”

When Hess arrived at the train station he was told the last round of transfers just left and they would get him on the next train, but it never showed and he was sent home.

“Whether it was just luck or higher powers that protected me I don’t know,” he said.

When Hess was 17-years-old, shortly after his father died, he was able to escape Germany and fled to England.

“Saying goodbye to my mother at the train station in Frankfurt was very, very difficult,” he said. “Put yourself in my position. Having just lost my father, saying goodbye to my mother and not being assured if we would ever see each other again. Forced to leave family and friends, and head to a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language.”

He said traveling to England was not easy, and people were constantly taken off trains by border guards and shipped to concentration camps to be murdered — including his aunt, uncle and cousins.

Eventually Hess was able to bring his mother to England and in 1940 he left for America. Three years later he was drafted into the Army.

“It was not only the Jewish people who suffered during this time,” Hess said. “Millions of innocent people of all religions were killed. We are all created in the image of God, you may not like each person you meet in your life, that does not mean you must hate an entire race, ethnic group or religion. You must respect the human rights of everyone.”

After Hess finished speaking students asked him dozens of questions about his life, what soccer position he played, what it was like making handbags, what he misses about Germany and if he’s ever been back. Students looked in awe at his original passport he used to travel out of Germany, and saw the red ‘J‘ and Swastika symbols covering the front.

“In those 12 years he [Hitler] turned one of the most civilized nations in the world into one of the most barbarous of all time,” he said. “Please do not bully your friends, because everyone is different, but that doesn’t mean you need to hate them. So be nice to each other.”

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We all have our routines. We go to certain restaurants, drive certain routes to work and support certain gas stations, where we know we’ll get a competitive price, a friendly response from the attendant and rapid service.

When we travel, everything changes. We sleep in unfamiliar beds, flick the channels on television stations where the stations aren’t the same numbers as they are on Long Island, and navigate along routes that aren’t our familiar pattern.

Breaking the routine offers us a chance to step away from our lives and to experience something new. Maybe we’ll go to a museum in a new city or visit a place we’ve seen in a movie, which blends both the familiar and the unknown.

Our level of adventure and appetite for risk — as in, what happens if I don’t like the experience — can rise or fall depending on our travel companions.

Recently, I visited another city for a weekend with my daughter, who was traveling with a group of her teenage contemporaries and their parents. We all managed to get to our designated stops in our cars and to return to a hotel chain so ubiquitous that, with the blinds closed and without access to the local weather on TV, we could have been in Anywhere, USA.

We each had a GPS and an address for our activities which reduced both the stress and the adventure that came from the unknown.

While we could have gotten lost, the probability of that seemed slim. Getting lost, nerve-racking as it might have been 20 years ago, is almost an impossibility with navigation systems built into cars, phones and watches.

Following an afternoon activity, several of the girls decided they were hungry. One of the members of the group suggested a national pizza chain, to which the others readily agreed.

I wrinkled my brow at the suggestion and wondered, as a cellphone order was quickly placed, whether we might want to try a local pizza restaurant instead.

“No, that’s OK,” I was assured. “This will be better.”

I waited in a packed car until the order was placed, at which point the girl in the back transferred the address to her mother, who was riding shotgun during my weekend away with my daughter.

“Honey,” the mom said, “are you sure you dialed the closest restaurant?”

“Yes,” the daughter grumbled, shaking her head at her mother.

“I just checked the address for this restaurant and it’s two hours from here. You sure you want a pizza that far away?”

“Wait, what?” the daughter said, double-checking the address and the phone. Sure enough, the restaurant was on the other side of the state.

“Wait, before you order from a closer one,” I said, as she was already searching her phone for a nearby restaurant, “we’re sitting right outside a pizza restaurant. Don’t you want to try this one?”

“No, thanks,” she said, trying to be polite to someone else’s parent. “We want this one.”

When we got to the closer restaurant, we ran into another parent who was picking up pizza for his family. With so many other local choices, how did both families make the identical choice?

I suppose they might have discussed their food preference during the day. That was unlikely, given the social split in the group.

Alternatively, they have become so accustomed to the familiar that they prefer it, even when traveling.

I suppose when the opportunity for something new and different knocks, people don’t always feel the urge to answer the door.

Carrie Chapman Catt, center, in white, leads a group of suffragists in a New York City parade staged in the fall of 1917 to gain support for woman suffrage. Photo from League of Women Voters website

In an increasingly polarized and heated political climate, a historic, nonpartisan, multi-issue grassroots organization is doing its best to remain focused on important matters. Representatives from the League of Women Voters of Brookhaven, a local “league” or chapter of a nationwide organization, discussed their mission amid today’s politics during a May interview.

Belle Sherwin, center, wearing plaid coat and hat with feather, and other women members walk down from jury panel to hear civil and commercial cases in Cleveland, Ohio, court in February 1923. Photo from LWV website

The League of Women Voters of the United States was formed after the 19th Amendment was passed, with the purpose of informing women about the issues by studying both sides of each question and coming to an agreement on what they would support. The Shoreham-Wading River League was started in 1934 and others in South Brookhaven and North Brookhaven were formed in 1949. Shoreham-Wading River and North Brookhaven merged in 1960, then the North and South Brookhaven Leagues merged in 1979, to form the present-day League of Women Voters of Brookhaven. The various leagues do not endorse any candidates running for office but instead select several important issues to local voters and carefully establish league positions on them. They also monitor government activities on all levels in the hopes of presenting facts to the public.

“We don’t ask what party you’re with, we don’t ask your nationality, we’re very careful to be in support of issues and we don’t discuss candidates or parties or anything like that,” Joan Nickeson, a three-year member of the Brookhaven League said.

Issues on the league’s agenda for the current year include a desire to reform campaign finance, defending the environment, reforming immigration policy to establish a path to citizenship, ensuring access to affordable health care for all Americans and many more. The agenda for the National League is established from the ground up, with local leagues brainstorming important issues and positions on those issues.

The Brookhaven League, which currently has 67 members — including two men — has public board meetings once a month, 10 months per year. There are also two yearly public meetings, one in the spring and one in the fall, to discuss issues and establish positions. The league also produces and distributes pamphlets with lists of elected officials in all levels of government, helps people register to vote and overall strives to inform voters above all else.

Nancy Marr the current president of the Brookhaven league and a member of the various Suffolk County versions since 1954 said the goal is to examine both sides of issues before taking a stance. However, Marr said she could see the league getting slightly bolder in their positions should they ever see fit.

“When you look at some of those suffragette pictures, they’re really out there in costume,” Marr said of the enthusiasm of those around when the league was first created. “I would think the league would do that if we really wanted to support say climate change.”

A League of Women Voters march in the 1920s. Photo from League of Women Voters website

League member Jean Baker said the current political discourse has made it difficult at times to remain neutral and adhere to the league’s principles.

“It’s tricky because sometimes you have to hold your tongue and keep your cool when people are saying things you think are crazy and not thoughtful,” Baker said.

Nickeson reiterated that there are other grassroots activist organizations out there for people interested in creating controversy or boldly attacking or endorsing specific candidates. The league plans to remain a steady, guiding example of issue-first political conversation.

“I think we’re so concerned about our integrity,” Nickeson said.

To learn more about the League of Women Voters of Brookhaven or to become a member visit www.lwv.org/local-league/lwv-brookhaven/.

Councilman Tom McCarthy shouts in anger during the meeting. Photo by Victoria Espinoza.

The Smithtown Republican Committee was anything but united this week at their convention while deciding which GOP candidates to support for town board positions.

It was revealed earlier in the week Councilman Ed Wehrheim (R) was a contender for the GOP’s Smithtown supervisor nomination, although at the committee’s meeting Tuesday night, May 30, it was clear leadership believed Wehrheim is not the only change they have in mind.

After a roll call vote the results gave Wehrheim the comittee’s nomination instead of current Supervisor Pat Vecchio (R) who announced his intentions to run for another term last month. Incumbent councilmembers Tom McCarthy (R) and Lynne Nowick (R) also lost the comittee’s nominations for re-election from their party, with the committee voting to support Robert Doyle, a retired Suffolk County detective from Nesconset, and Thomas Lohmann, a Suffolk district attorney investigator. None of the incumbents came out of the meeting defeated though, and are determined to claim victory in the primaries this fall.

“You’ll get an opportunity in September to vote the way you all want,” Nowick said at the meeting. “Here’s the problem…nobody is interested, if they were interested they would be here tonight. This shows a lack of unity in the leadership.”

Councilman Ed Wehrheim listens to a protester Tuesday night at the Smithtown GOP convention. Photo by Victoria Espinoza.

Nowick was referring to the amount of proxy votes submitted — the majority of which went to challengers and not incumbents. She and other members of the party said the committee decided these changes last minute, and several members who sent in their proxy assumed the chairman would be casting their votes for the incumbents.

“You fixed this with proxies that no one even knew who they were voting for,” McCarthy said at the meeting. “Everybody gets blank proxies, they didn’t know they weren’t voting for their incumbents. It was a sham by you Bill [Ellis] and your lack of leadership. This committee was lied to. You led us to another split of the Smithtown Republican Party. You don’t know what the heck you’re doing.”

Ellis is the current chairman of the Smithtown Republican Committee, and said before the meeting he was confident that many members of the party wanted these changes.

“A lot of people support this,” Ellis said in a phone interview. Of the 180 members, Ellis cast proxy votes for dozens. As for the most controversial decision to try and unseat Vecchio, who was supported by the party in each of his previous campaigns over his 39-year tenure running the town, Ellis said he believes it’s the right decision.

“[Wehrheim] is the best man for the job,” he said. “The supervisor is 87 years old, and he’s not necessarily functioning like he did in the past.”

Ellis said there were several political reasons that led to the decision but would not go into any details.

As for the current leader of the town, he’s not swayed at all by the turn of events.

“I’m determined to get those signatures and win the primary,” Vecchio said in a phone interview. As for the decision made by Ellis and the leadership Tuesday night, Vecchio said he certainly doesn’t see it “as an example of a participatory democracy or very democratic at all.”

Marlene Wolke, who served as Vecchio’s secretary for many years, nominated him at the convention.

“I would be proud to nominate Patrick R. Vecchio who has served this town faithfully for the last 40 years,” she said. “He has done an outstanding job, I was proud to have served under him.”

Joanna Betts also spoke in support.

“I’m perplexed why we’re doing this when the town is run so finely by him,” she said.

But regardless of the divide in the party, Wehrheim came out the winner of the night, and thanked members for their support — despite having to wait several minutes for members to stop yelling in protest and calling for him to step down.

“I will say that this was a very difficult decision for me,” the councilman said at the meeting. “But I made it on behalf of this committee and the Smithtown community. I’ve worked 45 years serving this community and I will continue to do so with honor and integrity.”

It’s clear this primary will be anything but business as usual.

“This is no different than an election in the U.S.S.R, it’s fixed in advance,” McCarthy shouted at the end of the meeting.

“Mr. McCarthy I think needs to take a tranquilizer,” Ellis said in response.

Port Jefferson Village Hall. File photo by Heidi Sutton

By Alex Petroski

The terms of two Port Jefferson Village board trustees and the mayor are up this year and an election awaits them June 20, but in a race devoid of actual opponents, those up for reelection have opposition in the form of difficult, long-range challenges to square off against instead.

Barring a groundswell of support for a potential write-in candidate, incumbent trustees Stanley Loucks and Larry LaPointe, as well as incumbent Mayor Margot Garant know they’ll be serving the community for another two-year term after the election.

Garant will embark on her fifth term in office, while Loucks is set to begin his second and LaPointe his fourth.

Port Jefferson Village residents will see only incumbents on the June 20 ballot, including Margot Garant, left and Stanley Loucks. Photo by Alex Petroski

With long-term issues looming, like large-scale apartment developments and an ongoing legal battle with the Long Island Power Authority, Garant said a focus of her first four terms has been to bolster the village’s sources of revenue in any way possible. Beautification projects funded in large part by state and county grants are underway in upper Port, the area surrounding the Long Island Railroad station, in an effort to get blighted and vacant properties back on the village’s tax roll and attract private investors to build in the area.

“I really wanted to make sure that we …had a beautiful new gateway on the south side of the village that made you feel like you were entering the village of Port Jefferson in upper Port,” Garant said. “I think we owe that to the upper Port community.”

Loucks, who serves as the board’s liaison to the village-owned Port Jefferson Country Club and to the village’s recreation department, said his focus has been on improving and building up each of those village assets in the hopes of attracting members and village participation — another source of village revenue. About $100,000 of tax dollars were invested to improve the golf course’s village-owned grill room, which Loucks said is now an asset for the club.

“This year alone our membership, for the first time since I’ve been involved … is up,” Loucks said during the May 25 interview. “We’ve had a decline in membership over the past 10 years. Approximately 50 members per year on average have left us either through attrition or they’ve passed away or they’ve moved away or gone to other clubs. This year we’re up.”

LaPointe, the deputy mayor, was someone Garant pointed to as a possible successor when she decides to step away.

“I’m happy to see Margot in that chair because I think she’s been a wonderful mayor,” he said in an interview. “I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of this and that’s why I continue to do it.”

All three incumbents surmised that a lack of challengers could serve as proof residents are happy with the job the board is doing. Garant explained that the platform of the Unity Party, the name the three have attributed to their joint ticket, is to do what’s best for the community. The result has been a board that has a positive and productive rapport, according to Garant.

“We may not always agree, but we’ll always be able to listen. We’ll try and compromise, but largely we’re not on opposite pages,” she said. “I think if you put your self-interests aside and say, ‘What’s in the best interest of the village?’ we’ll all get there together. I think that that’s how
we survived.”

Trustee Bruce Miller, who Garant said tends to have differing opinions from the rest of the board at times, said in a phone interview he wished his colleagues faced some opposition because it would be a chance for different viewpoints from the community to be brought to the forefront.

“There are some ideas that I have, but there’s nobody to bring these ideas forth,” he said. “I’m not completely thrilled, but at some level it does reflect some contentment in what’s going on.”

He reiterated that the working relationship within the board is overwhelmingly positive.

Bruce D’Abramo, the fifth member of the board, said in an email he fully supports Garant, Loucks and LaPointe in their reelection bids.

LaPointe expressed a similar sentiment regarding varying viewpoints from residents being heard and represented.

“I think in a way it’s a disadvantage because when we run with an opponent, which we’ve done several times, it forces us to take the time to go and knock on doors, and the last time we found that very, very fruitful,” he said. “I want to talk to some people other than the people who typically come to board meetings.”

Each of the three candidates expressed a desire to see solutions to some of the more difficult problems through to the end before stepping aside.

A lawsuit is currently pending that includes the village and the Port Jefferson School District as plaintiffs against LIPA, associated with the power authority’s desire to pay less in property taxes at sites like the Port Jefferson power plant because of its condition and infrequent use. The village and district receive substantial amounts of revenue from property taxes because of the presence of the plant.

Port Jefferson Village residents will see only incumbents on the June 20 ballot, including Larry Lapointe. Photo by Alex Petroski

Garant said in an interview in her office May 25 the village will continue to build up its unencumbered fund balance as a savings to use in the event a settlement is reached between the two parties that results in a loss of revenue for the village. The plan is to reach an agreement with LIPA with a gradual reduction in their property taxes, should the village’s first choice of repowering the plant not happen.

In addition, three apartment complexes in the village are at various stages of completion, which will in total result in nearly 300 new living spaces for new village residents. The expansion is expected to stimulate local businesses, but could wreak havoc on the school district should renters with school-aged children flood the homes, with little gain in property tax revenue because of financial assistance agreements reached between the property developers and the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency.

The village will receive PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, for 15 years instead of actual property tax revenue thanks to the agreements.

For example, The Shipyard apartment complex being constructed by TRITEC Development Group, across from Port Jefferson Harbor on the corner of East Broadway and Barnum Avenue, would net the village about $49,000 in property tax revenue in 2025, according to Garant. Thanks to the agreement, the PILOT payments in that year will amount to about $3,000. Garant estimated the losses for the village to exceed a half a million dollars by 2030. She said she and the board opposed the agreement between the Suffolk IDA and TRITEC. However, building permits and other fees written into the village code will serve to offset a small portion of those costs, Garant added.

Increased traffic and the sheer size of the projects have also caused angst among some longtime village residents.

Flavorings in drinks can make the refreshment less healthy than it appears. Stock photo

By Chris Zenyuh

“Natural” is one of the most abused terms in food marketing.

Most “natural flavors,” for example, are simply chemical compounds synthesized in the same laboratories as artificial flavors using slightly different techniques and sources.  Similarly, “fruit sugar” or fructose has an enticing natural sounding name, but very little of our fructose consumption actually comes from fruit.  Instead, we typically accumulate fructose via table sugar — half of every teaspoon turns to fructose in our digestive system — and/or high fructose corn syrup found in almost all processed foods and beverages, even fruit juice. Though coffee and tea are, by themselves, free of fructose, the commonly consumed versions with syrups and flavoring from familiar national chains are more akin to soda, nutritionally.

When it comes to fructose, you should keep a few things in mind to keep a more healthful perspective. As a sweetener, fructose hits 170 on a scale that ranks table sugar at 100 and glucose at 70.  It also tastes sweet faster, browns faster, and holds more moisture than other sugars.  These characteristics have made fructose an industry favorite, especially once the chemistry behind high fructose corn syrup became cost efficient.

The only organ in your body that can process fructose is your liver.  Metabolically, your body makes very little distinction between alcohol and fructose.  Both are seen as poisons and both are detoxified by your liver accordingly.  The primary distinction is that your brain can metabolize about 10 percent of the alcohol consumed, thus inebriation. Chronic exposure to fructose generates much of the same metabolic dysfunction as alcohol, including liver disease. Unfortunately, there is no “drinking age” for fructose, so even the youngest of children are regularly exposed to fructose.

Glucose and fructose molecules can stick to proteins in your body.  This is known as glycation.  The more your cells are exposed to these sugars, the more frequently this occurs.  Your body does have the ability to disconnect these molecules, but too much glycation can overwhelm that system. Eventually, the attachments become permanent, known as ‘advanced glycation end-products’ or A.G.E.s (a telling acronym, for sure).

These compromised proteins cross-link with each other in a manner that disrupts their function. Collagen fibers that should slide past each other become rigid and tear under stress. Skin wrinkles, ligaments tear, and the lens of your eye can start to block light (glaucoma). Consistently high levels of exposure are recorded by your blood cells as the hemoglobin becomes glycated. Blood tests can thereby show your general glucose and fructose levels over the three months preceding the test and indicate a pre-diabetic condition.

Notably, fructose attaches to proteins seven to ten times faster than glucose, and it is harder for your body to undo these attachments.  Following simple logic, that makes you age up to ten times faster, or faster than your dog.

Eating a reasonable amount of fruit is not a problem.  Beware of how easy it is to consume too much dried fruit, though. And remember that the true nutritional value of fruit resides in its vitamins, antioxidants and fiber.  When consumed whole, the potential negative metabolic impact of the sugars within is greatly lessened by the presence of the other nutrients, especially the fiber. Consuming ‘fruit sugar’ isolated from these beneficial components of fruit, including fruit juice, is a far more dangerous game to play with your metabolism.

Knowing how your body responds to fructose enables you to make more healthful choices regarding food and beverages. Choose well, live well.

Chris Zenyuh is a science teacher at Harborfields High School and has been teaching for
30 years.

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The cover of the Beatles’ iconic ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’ album

By Kevin Redding

It was 50 years ago today … on June 1, 1967, that the Beatles released “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the United States and completely changed everything: music, culture, themselves, how people viewed and analyzed rock ’n’ roll.

The incredibly ambitious and experimental 13-track album — on which John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr abandoned their traditional mop-top image and sound in favor of a more conceptual, weird, wholly new product with a scope and style that hadn’t been attempted before by them or anybody else — helped usher in the Summer of Love and set the tone for the rest of the decade.

While many older albums, especially when they fall on younger ears, tend to lose their might over time, “Sgt. Pepper” still stands strong, and sounds just as vibrant and fresh as ever. To this day, it’s argued to be the greatest, if not most influential, album of all time.

Peter Winkler
Favorite Beatles song:
‘A Day in the Life’

“It was just absolutely groundbreaking,” Peter Winkler, a retired Stony Brook University professor of composition and theory and popular music, said, recalling the first time he listened to the record.

Winkler, who taught one of the very first rock music classes at the university in 1971, said he’ll never forget the week it came out and how stunned he was upon hearing the album’s epic finale “A Day in the Life” — “I had never heard anything like that before,” he said, “with that big orchestral roar — that had never happened on a pop record before.”

“Everybody was listening to the album, everybody was talking about; that doesn’t happen these days where one particular record is having that impact on everyone,” Winkler continued. “It was incredibly innovative and made this enormous splash around the world. It expanded the vocabulary of pop music in such a dramatic way. It was just a game changer. Everything that followed — Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd — came straight from ‘Sgt. Pepper.’”

Pete Kennedy
Favorite Beatles song:
‘A Day in the Life’

Pete Kennedy, a New York-based singer-songwriter who regularly performs at The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook, echoed Winkler’s excitement over the innovation of the album, comparing it to the release of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” a grandiose, cohesive novel, amid decades of mere folktales in the Middle Ages. “That’s kind of what the Beatles did with this. They put rock music together in a much more serious way than anybody had before. It marked the beginning of the rock world that still exists now … they were already so well known and could’ve coasted along doing what they’d been doing but they took this step instead,” Kennedy said.

The album’s release coincided with, and legitimized, an emergence of rock journalists and professional critics who recognized the genre as something to be taken seriously, a notion that would’ve been inconceivable beforehand. A month before, renowned classical composer Leonard Bernstein even hosted an hour-long CBS special called “Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution” referring to the Fab Four as a group whose songs were “more adventurous than anything else written in serious music today.”

Just before the album came out, Kennedy explained, he and a lot of other people thought the Beatles were a done deal. In August 1966, the group performed their final live concert, having had enough of the screaming girls and a hectic atmosphere wherein people were burning their records after Lennon referred to the band as being “bigger than Jesus,” choosing to work exclusively from the studio from then on.

Norman Prusslin
Favorite Beatles song:
‘Getting Better’

One June afternoon the following year, Kennedy walked into a record shop and saw an unrecognizable band, dressed in colorful military costumes and surrounded by a slew of famous faces and flower-power imagery.

“Just seeing that pop-art album cover, with no advanced warning and them with mustaches, it might not seem like a big deal, but it really was because their appearance was such a big part of them,” he said. “The Beatles hairstyle and matching suit … now they looked like hippies, and it was sort of shocking.”

Norman Prusslin, the first station manager of WUSB and director of the media minor at Stony Brook, said of the infamous cover, “it was almost like their alter ego, a way for them to step out of being the Beatles … it was also one of the first times pop records had lyrics printed on the back.”

“It was a very different record, musically, it wasn’t your typical Beatles record up to that point,” Prusslin, who saw the group live in 1964, said. “It felt continuous,

Charles Backfish
Favorite Beatles song:
‘Within You Without You’

like one long thing … I think the concept of the album, rather than being just a collection of songs, became a pallet for an entire creative journey that became influential to other bands that came later. It maximized studio equipment to its fullest potential at the time and contained exploratory, autobiographical lyrics that encouraged other bands to free themselves and try different things and not be set in the two minutes and 50 seconds standard pop hit duration.”

Charles Backfish, the host of WUSB’s “Sunday Street” program, highlighted the album’s coinciding impact with the rise of FM radio. While AM was the dominant form of radio in the ’60s, with FM merely broadcasting whatever AM played, an FCC regulation went into effect in January 1967 declaring each dial needed to have different programming.

“So it opened up the option for FM stations to do something different,” Backfish said. “While AM played classic top 40 songs, FM started to explore different music and some things happening in the rock scene at the time lent themselves to being played on there … and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ is a perfect example. There were no singles released from the album, each song segued into another, and so it’s an album that found a real home on FM radio and helped drive the popularity of FM radio.”