Opinion

Mockingbird. Photo from Unsplash

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

This is the time of year when our five senses go into overdrive. Let me enumerate. In no particular order of delight, I’ll start with sound.

The birdsong is sometimes loud enough to provide dance music at a wedding. There are all kinds of musical bars put forth: crooning, warbling, shrieking, hooting, gurgling. There is an incredible range of notes, from high soprano and countertenor to tenor and baritone, even bass. Sometimes the birds seem to be singing in a chorus, other times at counterpoint. If your bedroom window is open, they can wake you up at first light. There can be many birds in the trees or there may just be one mockingbird pretending to be an entire flock. 

The sight of the birds is as much a treat as the sounds, if you can spot them among the leaves. They can range from a nondescript small brown chick, who nonetheless utters the most melodious songs, to crimson or orange-breasted or blue-tailed or grandly multi-colored varieties of different sizes and shapes that perch briefly on the porch railing or snack on the front lawn. They can seem the model of purpose as they deliver food to the open beaks of their newly hatched offspring or of patience as they sit quietly atop the eggs and wait for the next generation to appear.

Speaking of sight, we go from the early purple of crocuses and joyful yellow of forsythia and daffodils to the lush pink of dogwood and cherry blossoms to the deep red of tulips and azaleas. All of that artwork is provided against a bright green backdrop of new leaves on the bushes and luxuriant attire for the tree limbs. Branches on either side of the road unite in the air overhead, creating sun-dappled tunnels as we drive the back-way routes.

The waves at the beaches are calm now, climbing the sand with rhythmic whispers, and the seagulls fly low, looking for a fish dinner in the clear blue water. Too soon, there will be motor boats and jet skis on the harbors and lawn mowers and leaf blowers keeping the landscape orderly — but not yet. The magic and peace of early spring are still, however briefly, with us to be treasured.

The smells at the beach of salt in the air and blossom-scent on the breezes are intoxicating harbingers of the season. Lilacs, that always know when it is Mother’s Day, perfume the neighborhood. And among us humans, there are always those early-bird few who fire up the grill and begin to barbeque on a sunny weekend afternoon. If we play our cards right, we might be invited to share in this primitive treat. The taste is so much better than anything cooked indoors.

Taste is tantalized by early fresh fruit, like locally grown strawberries, and by vegetables like baby asparagus and snow peas. Several different kinds of dark green lettuces are also ready for dining early in the spring.

As for touch, there is the sweetness of a gentle breeze, reduced on a rare spring day from a stern wind to a caress against the cheek. It carries with it the promise of a summer day and the seduction of a summer night.

Add to all of that, the temperature in spring can reach a universally perfect range. Now I know some people like it hot, really hot, even up in the 90s when they can happily sweat. And some people like it cold, even freezing, during which time they can feel energized and stimulated to ski and ice skate. But all humans feel comfortable moving about in a temperature of 75 degrees. Knowing that could be found most months in San Diego almost prompted my husband and me to move there some 50 years ago. Of course, there were other things to consider, and we ultimately moved to Long Island.

Not for a moment do I have any regrets. My five senses are glad we live here.

Photo by Pixabay

Next week, residents across Long Island will vote on what their next board of education and budgets should look like. 

Some districts have no unopposed runners, some have a handful of candidates vying for the same seat. 

We are happy to see that, although some districts within our area are having hostile debates, people have been interested in this upcoming year’s budget and the candidates running for the BOE seats. 

Oftentimes, parents and people in the community don’t know what’s going on until something happens — and that’s OK. Life is busy with working, raising a family and maintaining a social life — it can be hard to tune into a board meeting or flip through the pages of a proposed budget. 

But we’ve noticed this year that it seems a little bit different. Maybe it’s because of the COVID-19 pandemic, maybe people are more concerned than before. 

Whatever the reason is, we’re happy that residents are getting involved. 

Whether it’s voicing your opinions or concerns over a school board election, or preparing for the 2024 presidential election down the road, it’s important to exercise those rights. 

We have the luxury and the privilege to be a part of a democracy. People might not realize that the school board — that is “small” on the scale of things — has a huge impact on not just our children, but the community as a whole, especially regarding taxes 

Pay attention to these things, whether you have children in the district or not. Read the local news and pay attention to what’s going on.

If you don’t agree with something, prevention is key — complaining after the fact on a social media post won’t do much when everything is already set in stone. Your vote can make a difference.

School districts across our coverage areas will be holding budget votes and board of education elections Tuesday, May 18. Check your district’s website for details on times and locations, and continue visiting tbrnewsmedia.com for updates.

Photo courtesy of SCCC

Education prepares people for the future, helps them achieve their goals and increases their odds of living a life where they not only survive, but thrive.

As blues musician B.B. King is famously quoted as saying, “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”

President Joe Biden (D) gets that concept, and last week he asked Congress to enact legislation that would allow Americans to attend community colleges for free. Under the American Families Plan, $109 billion would be slated to make two years of community college free for all students. There would also be an $85 billion investment for expanding federal Pell Grants, which is awarded to undergraduate students who display financial need and have not earned a degree. This is one important way to help our young people who are unprepared for the workforce after high school.

For many, a community college has given them an advantage that they may not have had otherwise. From those whose grades were less than ideal in high school to those whose can’t afford to attend a four-year university or are undecided on what they want to do with their lives, a community college provides a stepping stone that is local and affordable for most. 

Here at TBR all three of our current editors attended Suffolk County Community College, which in turn paved the way to making obtaining bachelor’s degrees at other institutions more manageable.

According to the website joebiden.com, approximately six out of 10 jobs require education beyond a high school diploma. To succeed in a world where the economy is globalized and technology driven, people are going to need more than 12 years of education.

The website also goes on to say that one can do a lot with an associate degree. 

“Today in the United States there are an estimated 30 million quality jobs, with an average salary of $55,000, that don’t require a bachelor’s degree,” according to the site.

Free college tuition for community colleges would mean even more young people being able to achieve the American Dream. It can also keep college-aged students in the area, frequenting local stores, which stimulates the local economy. And in the long term, with less student debt to pay, it may increase the odds of people staying on Long Island and settling down.

Two years can make a difference and transform a life. Our sincere hope is that Congress will take this proposal from the president seriously.

At the same time, we hope a better look is taken at our current public school system in America. Even before the pandemic, American children were not receiving an equal education from state to state as many schools are funded through local taxes. The more affluent an area a person lives in, the better the education tends to be. Also, there is a need for more pre-K classes across the country to provide children a head start in learning, both academically and socially. Most of all, everybody should be required to complete 12th grade and not be able to drop out of school at 16.

The education system in the U.S. needs a lot of fine-tuning. Let’s start by providing high school graduates a chance to get the skills they need in today’s competitive world.

Photo from Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

We live such a two-handed life these days. On the one hand, we are emerging from our pandemic shells. On the other, we don’t want to race out too quickly, undermining all the work we did to protect ourselves, our families and our school communities. To that end, I had a few topics on the two-handed nature of our lives:

The weather

On the one hand, it’s a relief that we can enjoy warmer weather. The summer is approaching. The calls from seagulls blend with the steady rhythm of water lapping up on the shores, urging the fortunate residents of Suffolk County to return to the peace and harmony of the water.

On the other hand, the temperature will undoubtedly climb into the hazy, hot and humid zone at some point. While the beaches are wonderful, we won’t all have time to stroll on a sandbar during the week.

Vaccinations

On the one hand, many people are getting vaccinated, increasing the likelihood that we’re taking an immunological stand against a deadly virus. With a greater percentage of the population inoculated, we stand a better chance of coming together, revisiting family and friends we’ve only seen on Zoom for over a year.

On the other hand, a subgroup of people are reluctant to take the vaccines, worried about side effects, the speed at which the vaccine was developed, and a host of other concerns. If enough of them don’t get vaccinated and/or if variants evade the vaccine, we may not be able to beat back this virus as quickly as we’d like.

Graduations

On the one hand, we are so incredibly proud that our children have made it through whatever stage concludes this year. We appreciate all they have done to get here and to become the incredible people they are.

On the other hand, wait, hello? How did the time go by so quickly? Did we prepare them for the real world? What is the real world? What does it mean to graduate into the second year of a pandemic and how can we prepare them for some of the unknowns and unknowables ahead? 

Politics

On the one hand, we can, potentially, talk about politics again without the echoes of personal animus reverberating from an angry White House. In theory, we can even agree to disagree or to consider compromise.

On the other hand, has the left become too powerful even as the right engages in party strife? Are calmer waters really around us, or is it a temporary reprieve until the tempest returns with the elections in 2022 and 2024?

Freedom

On the one hand, we are freer than we’ve been in over a year, to travel and visit family, to take our masks off outside and read people’s lips and study their smiles. We can even consider traveling outside the country.

On the other hand, after living with a fear of human contact, how much can we set aside our concerns about the public health dangers of interacting with other people? 

A return to offices

On the one hand, we have a chance to speak with each other in person, to share stories about our lives and our children and to discuss the surprising run of a Knicks team guaranteed to have a winning record this year.

On the other hand, we have to deal with traffic, parking spots, lines at lunch, and conversations that keep us from returning to the homes we couldn’t wait to leave.

Photo from Pixabay

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Strange as it may seem, I always wanted to be a mother. Even before I was in elementary school, I remember hoping someday to be a mother. Thinking back on my early years, I was really more of a tomboy, playing stoop ball and stick ball on the block with the other kids. I did have one doll that I loved. It was quite a progressive doll for its time. I could give it a bottle, and it would subsequently pee. My mother would make sure the baby bottle that had come with the doll was filled with water and not milk. But other than that, I wasn’t particularly given to imaginative girly games like playing house or cooking. I just knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be, among other pursuits, a mother. The idea, of loving a child, teaching a child, nurturing a child, made me happy.

Then I grew up, married a man who also loved the prospect of having a child, and in a short time, we had three. That is, we had three boys within four years and two days. Ever hear the old adage, be careful what you wish for? On the one hand, I adored my boys. I fed them, bathed them, dressed them, played with them and hugged them a lot. On the other hand, I well remember a moment when I sat at the kitchen table, my head down on the crook of my arm, and cried. The three of them were screaming “Mommy!” and chasing each other around my legs with two of them needing diapers changed at the same time. There were dishes in the sink, the next batch of dirty laundry was behind me in a pile, waiting to be put into the overworked washing machine, I had not had a chance yet to change out of my nightgown, and I was seriously doubting I would ever get out of the kitchen alive. This from someone who was never much for crying except in sad movies.

They were exceptionally good communicators. I was convinced that they caucused every night before bedtime and arranged for each to wake me up during the night with a loud scream at a different time. One of my neighbors, catching sight of me putting out the garbage one morning, commented to another neighbor that he had never seen anyone look so tired. Yup, that was me.

But then there was the other side of the experience. They got a little older, made friends who, it seemed, always lived at the farthest reaches of the district, and of course I drove them frequently to play dates. It gave me a chance to meet lots of other mothers. I drove them to weekly music lessons, which enabled them to join the school bands and orchestras. We proudly attended their initially cacophonous concerts that over the years turned into remarkably good classical music and jazz performances. They played baseball, joined the swim team and the tennis team, and we thoroughly enjoyed cheering each at bat, each match, each meet, even if we sometimes melted in the heat or froze in the cold.

Their academic efforts gave us great satisfaction. They studied diligently and sometimes won contests and awards, which gave us vicarious joy. Of less satisfaction would be a trip to meet with the teacher for discussion of any less than perfect behavior.

Then it was prom time. And suddenly, for it seemed sudden, they stood before us in tuxedos, with young women on their arms who they were squiring to the dance. They were all grown up. It was the signal that they would shortly be leaving, eagerly leaving the nest and their parents behind. Yes, they came back regularly from college to have their laundry done and for some good meals. And I like to think for some great hugs. But they were off now, busy with their exciting lives, developing their careers, finding the women they would marry. And the best prize: grandchildren.

How lucky I am that my wish came true.

Photo by Julianne Mosher

This week, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) officially signed a new law stating that drivers must give bicyclists a 3-foot distance on the road.

Photo by Julianne Mosher

We think it’s great, and know how important it is to share the road. No one wants to hurt someone who’s riding for leisure or exercise.

But what concerns us the most are the riders who might feel entitled, who don’t follow their own rules of the road. 

Yes, vehicle drivers — especially on Long Island — can be awfully aggressive and distracted at times. But to play devil’s advocate, it isn’t just the car drivers. We have seen some aggressive bike riders, too. 

There are times that sharing the road on a busy street like Route 25A or Nesconset Highway is near to impossible. The driver of the vehicle slows down traffic to abstain from the biker, who is weaving in and out of their bike lane. 

Not all bike riders are bad, and again we think it’s great they are staying fit and not thrusting carbon dioxide fumes into the air. But, just as there are bad apples to everything, we are begging those riders to not take this new law in vain.

While car drivers are now more responsible for keeping a safe distance from a bicyclist, we are asking the rider to do the same. 

Please don’t ride your bike in traffic, and please pay attention, yourself. Please don’t be a nuisance to the people trying to get to work during rush hour, and please, please, please stop at stop signs, too. 

If we all abide by the rules of the road, all of us will be safe and laws like this won’t even have to be considered down the road. 

Use common sense. Be kind. Stay safe. 

Photo by Pixabay

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I have two friends whose sons are contemplating important choices. The first son, Matt, is trying to decide where to attend college.

He has gained admission to two elite schools. He can’t go wrong, as his parents have told him repeatedly, with either choice. Making this decision in a normal year would be hard. In a pandemic year, it’s almost impossible.

Matt can’t stay over at each school for a weekend or even attend a few classes. He can’t get much of a feeling for the “vibe” of the school because he can’t go into most of the buildings, even with a mask and with his letter of admission.

He can compare the national rankings from U.S. News and World Report, check college guides, talk with his guidance counselor, chat with graduates from his high school who attend each school and stroll around each campus. 

He can’t, however, fully try on the school, the way he might a tailored suit. Masks cover the faces of most of the people at each school, which makes it impossible to search for smiles on the faces of his potential future classmates.

He recently found himself leaning toward school A. The same day, his father spoke with a friend of his whose daughter was attending school B.

His father showed a picture of his friend’s daughter to Matt. The friend’s attractive daughter caused Matt to rethink his tentative decision.

That brings me to my other friend’s son, Eric. In his mid-20s, Eric has been caught in the same social world that has limited the options for everyone else.

Eric has been dating a woman for over two years and is considering the future of the relationship. He is not sure whether it’s the appropriate time to consider living together or getting married.

Eric is incredibly attached to his girlfriend, who has been one of the few people he sees regularly in real life during the pandemic.

Eric is not sure how long this altered reality, in which he works from home, speaks with family and friends virtually most of the time, and sees his girlfriend during his limited social hours, will last. In the meantime, he’d like something in his life to move forward.

Matt and Eric are weighing their options. For Matt, the choice of college may well come down to the last picture of another student he sees before he pushes a button.

Choosing a college can, and likely should, involve more significant factors. Then again, both of the colleges line up so well that he is likely to have a similar experience, albeit with different people around him, at each school.

Eric’s decision, however, isn’t so interchangeable. It involves a leap of faith that those of us who are married have made that relies on our own criteria. We can consult family, friends, and counselors as we weigh the pros and cons, but, ultimately, the responsibility and opportunity rest with us.

Coming up with his own questions and his own scale to evaluate the relationship is challenging, particularly when everything seems somewhere between good and great right now. He can’t possibly know what life will look like in two, five, 10 or 20 years from now.

I don’t envy either Matt or Eric as they contemplate these decisions. I do, however, agree with Matt’s parents: he can’t go wrong. For Eric, the decision has more significant longer-term ramifications and likely reflects variables that are difficult to imagine, particularly amid the uncertainty of the present.

METRO photo
Leah Dunaief

By Leah S. Dunaief

Would you like to be different? Would you like to change your personality? Perhaps you would like to be more extroverted. Or more open to new experiences. Or even just more organized. Well, thanks to the pandemic, here is your chance. 

People can and do successfully change their personalities even as adults. Now we are about to emerge from the isolation of lockdown and quarantine and rejoin the larger world. The stage is set for a new you. But this transformation will take work. To start, one could embrace the “As If Principle,” proposed by Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire in England. This would require one to behave as if one were already that different person, and after a time, the new behavior and the person would sync. Famously, that is the story the debonair Cary Grant told of his early life, which started on the Bristol docks as Archie Leach and wound up at the pinnacle in Hollywood. “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me,” Grant said, according to the British newspaper, The Guardian.

An article in the April 11 issue of The New York Times took up this subject. Headlined, “You Can Be a New You After the Pandemic,” written by Olga Khazan, the story states the following. “Researchers have found that adults can change the five traits that make up personality — extroversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, agreeableness and conscientiousness — within just a few months.” 

Another psychology professor, this one at Columbia University, asserts a similar theme. Geraldine Downey, who studies social rejection, has found that “socially excluded people who want to become part of a group are better off if they assume that other people will like them. They should behave as if they are the popular kid. Getting into social interactions expecting the worst, as many socially anxious people do, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.” In another example of change, “people were able to become more extroverted or conscientious in four months just by listing the ways they’d like to change and what steps they would take to get there,” according to the NYT article. If one wants to be more outgoing, one can make a list of upcoming events in which to interact or persons to call for lunches, and after enough such efforts, the act becomes natural.

It can help in this transformation to see a therapist, research recommends. One such example described a person with neuroticism, “a trait responsible for anxiety and rumination.” After a short burst of therapy, in which the “warm, comforting presence” of a therapist encouraged the idea that the client is a valued person, neuroticism receded, and the studies showed the effect lasted for at least a year.

But not everyone can afford a therapist. Mirjam Stieger, a postdoctoral researcher at Brandeis University, and her colleagues developed an app that “reminded people to perform small tasks to help tweak their personalities, like “talk to a stranger when you go grocery shopping,” to prompt extroversion. The app then asks them if they had done that. According to the study, after three months, the change had stuck.

Agreeableness, by the way, involves “greater empathy and concern for others.” And so, being agreeable after this pandemic could mean being gentler toward one another. We now know, for example, how much essential workers sacrificed during the pandemic, many even their lives. That would suggest greater kindness and patience toward someone who, during the pre-pandemic, might just have been dismissed as annoying. We don’t know what exactly has been that person’s recent experience. At least that can be a conscious thought to modify behavior in what otherwise might have been a contentious situation.

For those who wish to change or live differently, as the NYT article says, “your personality is more like a sand dune than a stone.”

Volunteers clean up the Greenway Trail in Port Jefferson on April 17. Photo by Herb Mones

Volunteerism — to some degree — still exists. When it comes to Earth Day and protecting our environment, this is a wonderful thing.

Two weeks ago, on our editorial page, we mentioned the increase in roadside litter along our towns’ roads and the importance of keeping garbage off the streets. In that editorial, we made a small mention of the groups that volunteer to clean up in our areas, but they deserve more than a sentence or two.

With Earth Day celebrated April 22, residents may have seen people out this past weekend with bags, gloves and trash pickers along roads, in parks and on beaches collecting the garbage of others. 

On Saturday, the Lake Ronkonkoma Improvement Group hosted a cleanup in conjunction with Suffolk County at Larry’s Landing, and Three Village Community Trust members along with the Friends of the Greenway could be found along the Setauket-Port Jefferson Station Greenway Trail.

Hometown Hope, a Port Jefferson nonprofit, gathered volunteers Sunday to clean up the beaches in the village. Dozens of people helped pick up trash along the four-and-a-half-mile shoreline. These are just a few of the cleanups that occur on our roads, trails and beaches throughout the year.

These volunteers deserve a standing ovation for helping to improve our environment and restoring a sense of pride to our communities. 

We would love to see cleanups like this happen more often throughout the year. While it’s the responsibility of individuals to treat the outdoors as they would their own living room or car, unfortunately many don’t follow this common-sense rule. 

Groups like the ones mentioned above have the ability to organize people and get things done and pick up where towns leave off — even though we would like to see highway departments out cleaning more, too.

Sadly, many organizations are in desperate need of volunteers. As more residents commute to the city or work two jobs, many civic associations, advocacy groups, nonprofits and even fire departments have seen a decrease in the number of people volunteering.

Yet so many groups just ask for a bit of time to help make our neighborhoods better places to live. One individual giving up an hour here and there to help others causes a ripple effect. It could influence many to do the same and create a wave of community engagement.

That wave is evident in these cleanups as not only a spot of land becomes cleaner but, in the long run, it helps our foliage and wildlife thrive and keeps our waterways clean.

So, thank you to all of you who took the time out of your busy weekends to make our little space on Earth a bit cleaner.

Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

About 16 years ago, I stood on the warning track and held my then one-year old son high in my arms above the blue, outfield fence in right center field of the old Yankee Stadium. We asked him to extend his glove as if he had leapt in the air to catch a home run.

Now, as he prepares to graduate from high school, my wife and I are pondering the end of an era filled with the numerous triumphs and challenges of youth sports.

In the last few weeks, while we have awaited the time outs, batting glove adjustments, pauses to look for signs from the catcher, and warm up tosses by each pitcher, we have been replaying our own montage from his years on a baseball field.

A few years after his Yankee Stadium debut, our son donned a baggy uniform that hung from his slight four-year old frame, standing with his left arm out, hoping to catch a ball I tossed with a slight arc toward him.

As the years advanced, his skill set and intensity for the game grew more rapidly than the developmental rules of the sport.

Station-to-station baseball was an abomination for him. When he was six, he caught a ball at shortstop, tagged the runner jogging from second and stepped on third for, what he considered, an unassisted triple play. He tossed the ball to the mound and jogged off the field, only to hear that everyone hadn’t batted so he had to stay on the field. I can still see the disappointed look on his face as all the runners moved to the next base.

Every moment wasn’t athletic heaven. He struggled to find the strike zone when he was pitching, swung and missed at pitches he knew he could hit and suffered through the inconsistent coaching and advice of everyone from his father to the parents of his teammates to semi-professionals eager to give back to the community.

Despite playing a game of failure, he continued to venture to fields close and far for another opportunity to compete, get some exercise and join teammates who have become long-time friends.

He learned how to pick up his friends after their moment in the spotlight didn’t end the way they wanted.

He took us to places way off a tour guide’s map of the eastern United States, as we drove from single traffic-light towns, with their one gas station and one diner, all the way up to Cooperstown.

We paced along frigid sidelines, hoping darkness or snow would grant us a reprieve from frozen bleachers and numb toes. We drove on roads in which the car thermometer read 113 degrees.

When he was old enough, he stood on a 90-foot diamond, looking from third to first as if he needed binoculars to see his teammate and a strong wind to help his throw reach the target.

As he got taller and stronger, the distance became more manageable. 

As parents, we made our share of errors on the sidelines and in the stands. While we told him it was the effort that mattered, not the result, he could see the joy in our faces after a win and the slumped shoulders after a tough loss.

While he’ll undoubtedly play other games down the road, that road won’t be as close as the ones we’ve traveled together. 

In a recent game, our son raced back and caught a ball against the wall, in a place on the field similar to the one where he extended his tiny glove at Yankee Stadium. We have shared such a long and inspired journey between those two mirrored moments.