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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Thanksgiving 2020 will surely be remembered by all. Other Thanksgivings blend into each other on the impressionist edges of memory, in a sepia-colored haze. But this one will stand out like a gargoyle, in bas-relief at the center. Never before have we disinvited our children from our homes during this holiday. Never have we set the table for so few. Never have we been urged not to travel to reconnect with our families. Never have we been drilled on the three Ws: wash your hands, watch your social distancing, wear your mask. COVID-19 overhangs our lives.

Nonetheless, for most of us, there is so much to be thankful for, even as we have to push past the anxiety and the upending of our lives the pandemic has caused to remind ourselves of the many ways we can be thankful.

First is for the good health most of us are lucky enough to enjoy: for our own and that of our loved ones. Perhaps, never has good health been viewed as such a blessing as now, as hundreds of thousands fall ill. Even without the coming vaccine, we can work to keep the virus at bay by diligently following the three Ws.

Next is the love we have in our lives that has become so manifestly important to acknowledge and declare. It is that love: for our spouses, our parents, our children, our dearest relatives and friends that is our safety net during these challenging days. We have always been aware of that love but perhaps not so appreciatively as now. The need to connect with them has not been so vital as now. And if we have a warm home and people who live in it with us, and enough to eat each day, how thankful we can be.

We can be thankful for our jobs, if we have them, and if we don’t, for the country we live in that supports us at least partially during our temporary unemployment. And if we are holding on ourselves, we can help others around us through our churches, soup kitchens and donations to our neighbors in need. To help others is a great privilege.

Though I never particularly embraced the computer when it appeared in our daily lives in the 1970s and 1980s, I am thankful for technology. Because of my computer, I can see my children and grandchildren regularly. I even have a place in the house nicknamed the Zoom Room. I can also see my friends, attend meetings, albeit virtually, and learn new subjects if I choose.

I escape from the news and the responsibilities of daily life with movies on Netflix and other streaming services. I still cannot stop marveling at Siri and the ability to find the answers to all sorts of questions by just pushing a button on my cellphone.

I sometimes think of my husband, whose poor sense of direction was legendary in the family, and how he would have loved the GPS. The ability to call someone from this marvelous invention I hold in my hand and tell them I am on my way but will be 15 minutes late or that I need help because I have a flat tire is a commonplace miracle of the 21st century. How lucky we are to be alive in these times, when a vaccine to overcome our version of the black plague can be developed in a matter of months.

Difficult times force us to turn inward and find the resilience to cope. And we can cope, we all can. If we believe in ourselves and have faith that this pandemic will end, which it surely will, we can then build back our lives and our world again. We can give thanks for that inner strength. Governments must help, charities and philanthropies do help, and we can help ourselves and each other. We can take inspiration from the natural world, which goes on in all its seasons of beauty despite periodic upheavals, and thankfully we will too.

Thanksgiving 2021 we will all together sit around the dinner table and profoundly give thanks.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

“Crazy time.”

That was the message a friend in California texted me yesterday. And she certainly summed up perfectly these days of our lives. Let us together count the ways we have gone off the rails. For starters, can you imagine a time when you had to decline a visit from your children at Thanksgiving in order to ensure your health and theirs?

I suspect the same for you; gathering around the table at Thanksgiving and appreciating our lives with our family and close friends has been a tradition for us as long as I can remember. After my children married and joined their wives’ families with ours, we have even traded off other holidays for Thanksgiving at our home every year. I guess we can include thanks this time for and via Zoom.

Could you imagine a political stalemate over the election at the presidential level like the one playing out in the courts in different states across the country? Yes, the 2000 vote was a handwringer, but it pales in drama when compared with this election. Back then, the decision hung on 537 votes. This time, with vital information withheld and with a pandemic raging, more is at stake than the outcome of the election. We are vulnerable to attack as a nation.

And as for that pandemic, as direly predicted this past spring, it is rearing its ugly head now that the weather has cooled and we are living more indoors and closer together. We have learned some things since the affliction started. Masks make a difference in protecting others and also ourselves from the spread of the virus. Fresh air, social distancing and hand washing continue to be vital. HEPA filters are powerful allies. And broad scale testing, followed by tracing, matter. Still, people are hospitalized, emergency rooms and ICU beds fill up and even some patients die, as we wait to be rescued by science. Incredible progress has been made developing a vaccine, and by more than one laboratory, but distribution to and acceptance by the general public of the vaccines will not happen during this imminent winter.

Weather has also been a villain. Violent storms and hurricanes, the ferocity of which has been unleashed, we are told, by climate change, have disrupted life for many in the United States and across the globe, even in the midst of desperate efforts to fight the pandemic. And further complicating rescue are the unprecedented fires burning in California and the far west. Then throw in assorted mudslides and tornados for good measure. Tragic!

The economy continues to worsen for many as it excels for the few businesses that benefit from the consequences of the virus. Restaurants, hotels, travel, transportation, formal entertainment, cultural events, retail, health care, child care, education — all have suffered huge financial blows. And the effects are not, curiously, shared equally among men and women. Most of the jobs in those industries are filled by women, who now have no jobs because of shutdowns, or have jobs they cannot get to because of child care responsibilities. This one issue is being viewed as a significant setback for women in the workplace, and for society as a whole, for years to come. Meanwhile construction, renovation, manufacturing and high tech, that makes Zoom and countless other products now deemed a necessity possible, are mushrooming.

The tenor of watershed events in people’s lives is tarnished. Weddings, graduations, significant and not-so-significant birthday parties, reunions, baptisms, funerals — all are put on hold or otherwise unwillingly altered in timing and attendance. Even an entitlement as innocent as looking forward to a thrilling freshman year in college has now morphed into a two-dimensional, remote experience. And returning college students are considered risks for households and communities.

There is no point in complaining. It will not alter this bizarre year and the troubles it has brought. The one thought I could offer my friend on a return text: “We will be able to say, as we someday will tell the tale, that we lived through it.”

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There’s no good way to put this. We know in a year of hardship so many of us crave the companionship and familial connection of a traditional Thanksgiving, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s something we simply can’t have this year.

Yes, we fought through the worst of the virus in New York, but cases are rising again all over the country. Suffolk stands as a positive test rate of 3.4% as at Nov. 17. Just a few weeks ago we were bragging about how well we were doing at 1%.

Experts have repeatedly said we will enter a second wave of the virus as the weather cools and more people spend time indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced new limits on several businesses and gatherings. Bars, restaurants and gyms are mandated to close by 10 p.m. for everything barring takeouts. The state also limited in-person gatherings to 10 people, though it excludes households with residents already numbering 10 or more.

Some have questioned the point of the latter restriction, especially whether the state even has the ability to restrict the number of people in a family home. Though there are residents who have reported large gatherings in backyards, the order should be taken more as a notice and reminder. It’s easy to guess just how quickly COVID-19 spreads when there are 20 or more people sitting shoulder to shoulder shoveling Thanksgiving delights into maskless mouths.

We only have to look at recent superspreader events to know just how dangerous maskless gatherings can be. A Sweet 16 event at the Miller Place Inn in September caused 37 people to come down with the virus, some of whom weren’t even at the event, while a reported 270 were required to quarantine.

Local officials have already cited Halloween parties for an increase in positive cases. One can only think holidays like Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year will do even more harm if we don’t take the initiative now.

With that said, there are still many local businesses who depend on Thanksgiving sales, whether it’s the local butcher or bakery. We ask people to still patronize your neighboring establishments even if you might not need as much this year as previous. I mean, don’t we all look forward to Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches?

But likely more people are concerned about not seeing their family sitting around the table as they do every year. There’s no way around it, no, you shouldn’t. Keeping it to household members only will be hard, but there are ways to talk to friends and family through video and phone. We know some people in our office will offer toasts over Zoom and other facilities. And we know that we will be toasting the many people who work and continue to work, making sure people are safe during an unprecedented time. We also need to thank the many volunteers providing food for the needy during an especially difficult  time, and hope all those hungry people find some meal and companionship this holiday.

So, combined with people still traveling home for Thanksgiving, with more visitors likely to come from out of state, we are left with few good options. Some people say something to the effect that “we can’t let the virus control our lives.”

We would counter that thought with the following: If every single one of us having a smaller Thanksgiving for one year saves even just one life, then it would have been worth it.

Is Thanksgiving canceled? Maybe a traditional one is, but the spirit of the holiday certainly won’t be, not if our goal is to keep those around us safe and healthy.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Are we coming apart together, coming together apart or just coming apart? The first in that list, coming apart together, gives us a chance to feel connected to others. By coming apart together, we are acknowledging the challenging year we’ve had and continue to have.

Without offering specific solutions, it helps to know we’re not alone and that, perhaps, through the together part, we can manage through conditions that are far from optimal, including the separation we feel from so many people we need in our lives.

Now, if we’re coming together apart, we are focusing on the fact that we can be, and are, together first, before we also admit that we may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from people whose hugs, smiles and laughter fill the rooms we share. Zoom, FaceTime and other modern conveniences make it possible for us to see each other’s faces, even though the image of the other person can feel flat compared to the reality of sharing time and space.

The third of those possibilities, just plain coming apart, enables us to throw up our arms and acknowledge the reality of our world. Many children are home most, or all, the time. Parents are still working through
Zoom, looking at small squares of people on computer screens for way too many hours during the day. The sameness of each day can become tedious and wear on our nerves, especially during this time when we’d typically plan for family visits.

And, of course, without passing any specific judgment, the hot button election continues to drive wedges among families, friends and neighbors, who can’t imagine how the other side fails to see the obvious realities their favorite anchors or faux news and commentary shows echo each day.

It’s agonizing to see how the differences between camps have become a defining feature and have stirred a sense of frustration and antipathy for the other camp.

Where are the adults in the room? For so long, the country brought together people from different backgrounds, uniting us under the umbrella of an American Dream that was available to anyone who worked hard enough for it.

Our sports-crazed culture believed in the winners they cheered for and used their teams as an inspiration to get ahead, to put more into their craft and to try to win the battle for original ideas. Even fans of hated rivals acknowledged the skills and remarkable games they witnessed from their rivals during heated playoff series. I always rooted against Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, but I also recognized his incredible talent.

Will a vaccine enable us to come together, together? I hope so. Next year at this time, if we have returned to some level of normalcy that allowed us to visit with our friends, to celebrate weddings, graduations, birthdays, and newborns, we will have the structural opportunities to spend time indoors, even in crowded rooms, and support each other.

Between now and then, ideally we’d plant the seeds that enable us to move forward together. We are not an archipelago nation, separated from each other by the ideological, religious or other labels. We do best when we play to the strengths of a workforce dedicated to getting ahead, to providing for our children and to helping the country even as we help ourselves.

While many of us are physically apart, we can try to reach out to family, friends, and neighbors, even if their ideas temporarily baffle us. We can come together if we are there for each other and if we listen to views outside our own.

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Amongst record-breaking turnout for the 2020 election, there is still one lingering issue that Suffolk County needs to correct for the many elections in our future, namely the dearth of early voting locations in the county.

In the midst of a pandemic, providing an opportunity for locals to vote earlier than Election Day made more sense than ever before. It was about keeping the number of people to a minimum to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Accommodating those who didn’t want to vote amongst crowds because they felt they would be at a higher risk to catch the coronavirus should have been at the utmost of priorities.

In Suffolk, past years have seen one early voting site per town, and this year the number of locations was increased to 12. Critics had lobbied for more than a dozen sites in the county, preferably 21, but the calls were met with compromise.

Well, the results are in and the critics were right. The slight bump in polling places wasn’t enough. People found themselves in line at early polling locations for hours. Lines at locations like Brookhaven Town Hall or Nesconset Elementary School snaked through parking lots and twisted around residential streets. As ridiculous as it sounds, people had to bring chairs with them to vote.

According to New York State law, the boards of elections should consider various factors when choosing a site including population density, travel time, proximity to other sites and how close it is to public transportation routes.

In Brookhaven, voters could find locations in Farmingville and Mastic but nothing on the North Shore. Smithtown residents had one location in Nesconset and many, once they discovered they would have to wait hours in line, traveled to Brentwood to vote early. In the TBR News Media coverage area from Cold Spring Harbor to Wading River along the North Shore of the Island — which can vary between 40 to 50 miles depending on what route a person takes — that Nesconset location was the only early voting polling place.

Of course, we realize one of the problems may be a lack of poll workers and volunteers. Hearing the concerns of many residents who are now shouting voter fraud and the like it’s ironic how more people aren’t willing to participate in one of the most important processes in America. Our suggestion to the Suffolk County Board of Elections: Make more of an effort in getting the word out that people are needed to help voters.

The long lines of people to cast an early vote proved that Suffolk residents wanted their voices to be heard. Those lines proved that the county and country need to rethink the early voting process.

Suffolk County needs to work out a funding stream that is dedicated to early polling places come Election Day, and the nation needs to have a serious conversation about standardized processes for mail-in ballots or early voting. At the same time, why not make Election Day a national holiday?

While the hope is that future election procedures won’t need to adhere to pandemic guidelines, offering a more flexible schedule enables people more than 15 hours on Election Day to have their say, no matter what their workday schedule or other responsibilities entail.

To have one day to vote may have worked in the early days of our country, but with the U.S. population increasing massively over the centuries, and people of color as well as women gaining the right to vote along the way, it’s time to expand to make sure every adult in America can vote no matter what their circumstances may be.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

With a number of extended friends and family pregnant during this turbulent year, I have been thinking about one of the first decisions parents make on behalf of children who can’t yet verbalize their preferences.

What’s in a name, you say? Well, just about everything.

A long, complicated and difficult to spell name could help someone stand out. It could also connect that person to a family legacy or history and enable him to
carry the trappings of a family tree every time he says or writes his name.

At the same time, that person, if she interacts with a large collection of people, may spend an enormous amount of time each day spelling or pronouncing her name and answering questions about its origin.

As an aside, one of my favorite names comes courtesy of a close friend who is a doctor. He was in the operating room many years ago during a complicated delivery by an expectant mother who didn’t speak English. She decided to name her son Nosmo. His middle name was King. She got the name from the No Smoking sign she read in the waiting room.

For some reason, when I meet someone, I struggle with two of the most basic elements of communication. First, they say their name. Something happens in that time shortly after I hear the name. I’m so focused on saying my name, which I’ve known all my life, that I erase her name. It’s as if a devilish part of my brain has blurred her name with a miniature eraser. That also appears to happen to other people, as  several of them have listened to me say my name and then ask, “Did you say your name was Doug” or “Dave?” They tend to remember the first letter.

You would think I wouldn’t have any trouble with such a simple first name, Dan, and yet, you’d be wrong. When I start with “My name is” or “This is,” somehow, the “s” from the “is” elides with my name, making my response sounds like, “This is Stan.”

To compensate, I have tried to wait as long as possible between the “is” and my name, almost as if I’m building suspense. “Hi, this is” … wait for it … have a sandwich … check your email … look at that pretty bird … okay, now, “Dan.”

Sometimes, when I’m outside, I hear my name when no one was talking to me or to anyone else who shares my name. I returned from walking my dog recently and heard “Daaaannn,” “Daaaaaaaann,” “Daaaaaannn” calls. At first, I thought it was my wife, trying to use her special human echolocation to find me, but it turned out to be a crow welcoming my dog and me back.

When people are flustered, injured, or disappointed, they often yell something. Unfortunately for me and, perhaps, other Dans, they shout something that sounds like my name. After stubbing their toe or reading a disappointing email, they scream, “Damn!” Hearing the frustrated and loud call, I match that with, “Yeah, what?” That might be funny to them, if they weren’t already annoyed.

The ubiquitous nature of my name has created confusion on athletic teams or in offices. My last name doesn’t offer an easy alternative.

Indeed, my son, who doesn’t share the same first name as anyone on the baseball team, is, nonetheless, nicknamed “Knife” because, somehow, Duh nay uff, became Doo knife, which was shortened to knife. It makes sense to teenagers.

As one of Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends on the eponymous show “Seinfeld” pointed out, it could be worse: her name rhymed with a female body part Jerry couldn’t remember, and it wasn’t “Vulva.”

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From left, Geraldine Ferraro, Ivan and Leah Dunaief

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

The road to the election of a woman vice president of the United States is a long one, and with our newspapers, we have traveled it from the first nomination of a woman by a major party to today.

Geraldine Ferraro was the running mate of Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election and was supported after she was nominated by a majority of women, according to a Newsweek poll, 49% to 41%.  Men supported the Reagan-Bush ticket 58% to 36%.

In the end, despite a lively campaign that had Ferraro traveling 55,000 miles around the country and speaking in 85 cities, the Democratic ticket lost in a landslide, carrying only the underdog, Walter Mondale and his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

When I was president of the New York Press Association, it was my responsibility to arrange for the keynote speaker at our 1985, 500-member state convention. I mailed an invitation to Ferraro, and despite collegial assurances that she would not even read the letter herself, much less come, she delighted us by accepting. Indeed, she came to the hotel in Colonie, north of Albany center, for the entire weekend and was most generous with her time, including a productive shopping trip during break to the local mall on Saturday afternoon. She also gave my oldest son a private interview for his college newspaper.

Why did she agree to come? She felt poorly treated by the press throughout her campaign, and I had suggested that she might want to offer her impressions of how badly she was covered to us. Indeed, she did, in direct and no uncertain terms.

Ferraro, as you might guess, was a remarkable woman and politician. She was known for her breezy style and saucy manner, and when she felt patronized by Reagan’s vice presidential candidate, George H. W. Bush during the campaign, she memorably scolded him publicly. She was endearing in many ways. When introduced at public gatherings, if she liked the introduction music, she would break into a little dance behind the speaker’s platform before beginning her talk. She wore silk dresses and pearls but never flowers. When my husband, who was with me at the convention, brought both of us corsages to wear on stage, she declined most apologetically. “I’m not allowed to wear flowers,” she explained to our astonishment. “They are too feminine.”

As The New York Times described in her obituary in 2011, she was ideal for television. Down to earth, streaked blond hair, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich-making mother of three, she was appealing, I guess in the way of Doris Day. She was brought up by a single mother, who over the years, it was told, sewed beads on wedding dresses to pay for her daughter to attend good schools. And while Ferraro graduated from Fordham Law School, it was not until her own children were of school age that she started working in the Queens District Attorney’s office.

From 1979-1985, after serving as a criminal prosecutor, she was elected to the House of Representatives. Less combative than Representative Bella Abzug before her, she proved to be comfortable and well liked “by the boys,” especially House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Jr. And while she was more familiar with urban ward politics than foreign policy, for example, she was a quick study and learned what she needed to know at any given time.

Unfortunately, Ferraro was forced to hold a marathon news conference in the middle of the election, when her husband, John Zaccaro, was accused of financial misdealings, an event that certainly hurt the ticket.

Born in Newburgh, New York, in 1935, Ferraro was, to me, a phenomenon in a crowded room. She would stop and shake hands with every person as she walked along, look each one in the eye and within 30 seconds establish some common connection that brought a smile to each face. She was not only the first woman candidate for vice president of a major party but also the first Italian-American nominee. Kamala Harris stands on Geraldine Ferraro’s shoulders finally with her win.

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Here is the rub, we’re in tense, dangerous times. We all feel it, a sense of unease blowing on the wind from who knows where. We don’t know what will come in the weeks following election day Nov. 3.

Absentee voting has been around for years, but the pandemic has caused a new swath of residents looking to vote remote. In New York state, boards of elections will not even begin to count absentee ballots until Nov. 6, and that process could take weeks to finish, especially if this year’s Democratic primary is anything to go by. Some experts have said we could not see the final results until December.

Due to this, sites like FiveThirtyEight, which often analyses election polling, said New York may initially skew Republican and then edge Democratic as more absentee ballots are counted.

Effectively, as we look at the preliminary results in the days after Tuesday, we have to remember that nothing is set in stone, especially this year.

It’s only fair that every person who voted in this year’s election is counted, no matter which way they may have voted. Anything else would be undemocratic, and nobody can judge another for deciding to stay home and cast a ballot by mail, especially if they or a person in their family is in the high-risk category for getting COVID-19.

Despite this, President Donald Trump (R) has continually called absentee votes into question, despite the likely fact that many of the people voting for him have cast absentee ballots, and that he himself has voted by mail, specifically by giving it to a third-party individual to return. He has even suggested legal action to mandate only the votes counted by Election Day are applied.

We’ve been trained to want our results election night, but no state has ever fully counted every ballot on the first Tuesday in November. Some states, like North Carolina, are counting absentee ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12.

And lacking any bombshell reports of vote mismanagement, we have to trust the system. New York’s process double checks each absentee ballot to make sure the person also did not vote in person. Voter fraud remains rare, and multiple states use mail-in ballots as the primary way people can vote in local, state and federal elections.

And what should we expect in those days after? Are we really going to see violence? Will people really accept the outcome of this year’s election? That’s the real question, and as we write this editorial for an issue that comes out two days after the initial results, we cannot say what’s on the horizon.

We urge everyone to stay safe and stay sane. We’re all looking for someone to take the lead in asking for calm, but it seems we should be looking to those in education for a guiding light. Stony Brook University’s new President Maurie McInnis wrote: “While we wait for the results, we are bound to be anxious and tense. Practice patience, extend courtesy and be considerate. When results do come, given the variety of political affiliations that are part of our strength as a diverse community, some are bound to feel elation while others will be disappointed and distressed. I encourage you to reach for empathy. Reach for critical understanding. Reach for the profound combination of caring and intelligence.”

We know tensions will be high, we know the national news will be covering unrest in different parts of the country, but we want to believe our communities have the right mindset to move forward, and that we can stifle the most radical voices with a bulwark of civic mindedness and a sense of neighborly compassion.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I’d like to add time to the list of things that have changed during 2020. In addition to our notion of personal space, our concept of public health and our ability to empathize with friends, neighbors and strangers around the world battling against the virus, some of us have a warped sense of time.

My brother calls it a “Groundhog Day” existence, the Bill Murray movie in which each day seems to be a carbon copy of the one before, as time stands still for him while everyone else thinks that one day is a unique part of a continuum.

These days, with so many people working from home and our ventures away from the house fairly limited, our daily existence, even in various phases of reopening, don’t change much, either by month or by season.

Indeed, for many of us, the weekends just mean two more working days from home until Monday. Now, we might not all be working as hard on Saturday or Sunday, but we are well-equipped to get that one additional project done before the week begins.

In addition to forgetting the day of the week, some of us have also developed a less clear connection to the usual merry-go-round elements of each year. Birthdays don’t involve the customary travel, we haven’t attended the same seasonal musical concert at school, and we don’t have the annual family traditions or gatherings.

That has meant both an acceleration and a slowdown in the movement of time. I am both stunned and not surprised that it is early November already.

To illustrate my point, I recently reached out to a scientist with whom I chat periodically. Not wanting to go to the same well too frequently, I try to separate my emails and calls by a few months.

Before I wrote to him, I guessed my last contact was about two weeks earlier. In reality, it had been two months since we spoke.

The mismatch between my memory of the interaction and the reality of the time that passed likely came from a host of factors, including the fact that I enjoy his insights, his sense of humor and the information he shares.

Additionally, however, the time warp is a product of the amount of running in place I do on a regular basis, whether that’s chasing down stories or providing updates on the ongoing twists and turns in our coverage of the pandemic.

Without much variability, each day achieves its own familiar rhythm, even if the days and weeks blend together.

For me, this week, with the election, arrived both quickly and not soon enough. It’s a relief that the attack ads, the cross talk and the vitriol connected with the election will end, even if the parties lining up on both sides of the fence line continue to shout into the wind about each other.

In addition to “Groundhog Day,” I have also pondered the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away.” When Hanks’ Chuck Noland — wait, I finally get it, Noland, as in “no land” because he’s cast away from his previous life — finally escapes and returns to civilization, I thought we missed out on the incredible opportunity to see Hanks adjust to speaking to people after four years with only a volleyball for companionship.

Once our lives return to some level of normal, I imagine we will all make numerous adjustments, including to the annual journey through years filled with more varied activities and in-person connections with people who live further away.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

However devoutly to be wished, the election results concerning the next President of the United States of America are not yet known. Nor will they be for a good while, it would seem, as the avalanche of mailed ballots needs to be counted and recounted for accuracy. The suspense and anxiety remain.

What can any one of us do?

For starters, we do the obvious. We wait. As adults, we know we don’t always get what we want when we want it, and that goes for the political world as well.

This year, 2020, will be known as the year we all waited. We are waiting for a vaccine to save us from COVID-19 too. But while we are waiting, there is a lot we can do.

First, we can calm ourselves down. It does no good to hurl accusations and invectives at each other for believing differently. We are, for better or worse, all Americans, and we will be moving forward from here. As to how we can calm down, I suggest (and it may seem ironic) that we watch and listen to less news. One or two good and brief news reports a day should do nicely. My own preference is CBS News at the top of the hour on my clock radio first thing in the morning and PBS News Hour or the BBC in the early evening. I stress “early” because I don’t want the news to be the last thing I hear before going to bed.

As for the rest of the day, besides the daily efforts to keep life going — from brushing one’s teeth to doing our best job at work and at home — we can use our energies productively instead of shouting into a void. We can make a big difference on a local level economically and socially. We can donate food, and perhaps even time, if done safely, to local soup kitchens and food banks.

We can also donate unused clothing and even furniture through the offices of local houses of worship. We can spend a little time on the phone, calling those we love who live elsewhere in this large country, and those who live nearby but are elderly and don’t get out much, to keep relationships vibrant and perhaps share a laugh or two. Sometimes people just need to talk with someone who will listen in order to feel better. It is a merciful thing just to be willing to actively listen.

We can shop locally, especially at this holiday time when store owners depend on revenue gained during the last quarter of the year to keep them in business. By and large, those store owners and their employees are also local residents and the first ones to underwrite educational and sporting events for our children and funds for community betterment. If we don’t want to go indoors because of the risk of contagion, we can call in to the store or restaurant and the merchandise or orders will be brought to the curb. Or we can call and ask what precautions are being taken to ensure safety within a store: masks, social distancing, hand sanitizing and so forth to help us decide if we feel safe there. Together we form a tight community and look out for each other.

These are all pretty obvious, but we need to be reminded, especially when there is so much noise abroad. And I will further share with you my personal ways to escape the tumult of our times. Thanks to the marvels of technology, I think of my children and grandchildren as being in the computer room, in a way, where we Zoom with each other regularly.

And I regard my smart TV as a temporary replacement for the plays, musical performances and other cultural events that have of necessity been put on hold.

Netflix and other services allow talented actors to hang out in my family room, available with their performances at the mere flick of a switch. At the moment, I’m watching “Outlander,” a love story couched in time travel. Being transported to a different time can remind us that people have had their challenges whenever they have lived, and by and large survived them.

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