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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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METRO photo

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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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

As we trudge through the last quarter of a year filled with challenges, I wanted to share some light hearted, ridiculous and truly 2020 fortune cookie message ideas. Enjoy!

• A vaccine may be in your future. Whether you take it is up to you.

• You will Zoom again some time soon.

• You will continue to see toilet paper in a whole new light.

• You will have another opportunity to learn an academic lesson you missed years ago.

• You don’t have to look hard to find heroes.

• The four walls around you will look better at some point.

• You will save money on gas this year.

• The election will end, hopefully.

• If you get off the couch and do some push ups, your body will thank you.

• This is the only 2020 you have. Make the most of it.

• It’s okay to lose track of the day: don’t lose track of your goals.

• Watch one fewer episode. You can make better use of your time.

• Use a shower to wash away your cares, and your stench.

• Don’t use a mask to hide from the truth.

• One person’s monster is another person’s savior.

• Feel free to pat yourself on the back. Don’t break your arm doing it.

• Petting the dog will bring you relief. Taking him out will bring him relief.

• Sometimes being odd is the only way to get even.

• Keep your enemies at bay. Six feet should work.

• Even while social distancing, do your best to stay connected.

• Love conquers hate, but hate can’t defeat love.

• Don’t forget to floss. Your periodontist will thank you.

• Lock your doors at night, but open your heart.

• Mythology occurs when we dare to dream.

• Take chances, but make sure you wash your hands.

• Consider what the younger version of yourself would do.

• Your children are not a younger version of you.

• Remember which days your kids are in school and make the most of them.

• Mute your computer before the dog starts barking. Your colleagues will thank you.

• Our editor is quarantined because he started coughing, so the gloves are off.

• When people calm down, they are better at solving their problems.

• When people stop telling other people what to do, they become more tolerable.

• Don’t expect a fortune cookie to change your life.

• Wow, you’re going off the rails there, George. Are we allowed to do that?

• Yes, Alissa, our editor is gone and we have to fill these cookies with something.

• Love has no statute of limitations.

• What, so you’re now a lawyer?

• I could have been, Alissa.

• Did you read about the shower? That one was for you.

• Perfect effort means giving 110 percent.

• You can’t give 110 percent. It’s not possible.

• Then why do these athletes say it?

• They’re talking about how hard they’re working. It’s an exaggeration.

• Your intelligence is an exaggeration.

• Get us out of here. They don’t even let us order Chinese food.

• Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

• You got that from the Airplane sequel. You can’t put it in a fortune cookie.

• In a fortune cookie? I don’t think someone from Airplane the Sequel is going to find us.

• That’s your problem. You don’t think.

• Thinking alone never cured anything.

• You’re wrong and you never tried thinking.

• I have to get out of here. That’s not the voice in your head. That’s me, George.

• Stop whining and start winning.

• You’re not a victim, you’re a survivor.

• That’s not bad, Alissa.

• How about ordering Italian next time?

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Finally, we are in the home stretch, with Election Day soon upon us. Of course this has been no ordinary election experience for Americans. In addition to the usual barrage of electioneering from local and national candidates, we are forced to work around COVID-19 in deciding how to vote.

Some residents, in record numbers, have chosen to mail in their ballots, some have decided to vote early in-person, a novel situation forced into existence by the virus to spread out the voting population and avoid crowds. And some will just show up at their normal polling places at their usual time and do what they always do to cast their ballots.

Whatever you may think of our president, Donald Trump has certainly supercharged the electorate. Voters are out in record numbers, whether to vote for or against him. Joe Biden has not pulled any punches. His main goal in running is to keep President Trump from a second term. And that also seems to be the goal of the voters: either for the man or against him.

I have to confess that I would feel a little envious when I would see pictures of residents, in countries newly emerging from dictatorships, who lined up for hours and miles to cast their votes in their first exercise of democracy. Many in the United States were generally uninspired to vote, often letting the minority who came to the polls decide who would govern us. We were often apathetic about voting and about politics in general. But not this year. So that’s a good thing.

A not so good thing is that we stand in red vs. blue partisan formation, aggressively shouting our views and often disparaging the other side’s beliefs. Dialogue is one matter, screaming matches are something else, something totally unproductive and ultimately injurious to those others with whom we are otherwise proudly united into one country.

In an attempt to simplify the positions of the local candidates, we are dedicating much of this issue to their views. We as journalists are in the unique and privileged position of having access to them. We invite them, individually for each race with their opponent(s), to a Zoom meeting to answer questions put to them by our editorial board. This typically takes about an hour and a half. We then write up their answers as informational articles, passing on what we have learned. Those stories can be found in a separate section elsewhere in this paper.

In our usual end pages for opinion, we offer our endorsements of the candidates. These can be found on the page opposite this column and are based on the interviews and whatever else we might know about them after following them as we covered the news. Of course, these are only our opinions, and we urge you to learn about the candidates and make your own decisions as to whom you will give your vote. We merely share our impressions with you, feeling it our duty since we have personally interviewed them.

The following is a list of local races for which we have held interviews with the candidates:

1st Congressional District

Nancy S. Goroff (D) & Lee M. Zeldin (R)

3rd Congressional District

Thomas R. Suozzi (D) & George A.D. Santos (R)

State Senator 1st Senatorial District

Laura A. Ahearn (D) & Anthony H. Palumbo (R)

State Senator 2nd Senatorial District

Mike Siderakis (D) & Mario R. Mattera (R)

State Senator 5th Senatorial District

James F. Gaughran (D) & Edmund J. Smyth (R)

2nd Assembly District

Laura Jens-Smith (D) & Jodi Giglio (R)

4th Assembly District

Steven Englebright (D) & Michael S. Ross (R)

8th Assembly District

Dylan G. Rice (D) & Michael J. Fitzpatrick (R)

10th Assembly District

Steve Stern (D) & Jamie R. Silvestri (R)

12th Assembly District

Keith Brown (R) & Michael Marcantonio (D)

We hope we have helped. Whatever you decide, please vote.   

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A caravan of cars rolled through Port Jefferson Oct. 17 in support of President Donald Trump. Photo by Kyle Barr

Beyond the interruption to Saturday business for stores, some of whom are hanging on for dear life by their pinkie, beyond the traffic and the noise, where is this going?

Because we are two weeks before an election, likely one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and the Trump caravans taking over roads not just on the North Shore as they did last weekend, but from both east and west, have told us one thing: There are real efforts to take the general antipathy seen on the national stage and transport it to here at home.

Seemingly in response to a single Black Lives Matter march in Port Jefferson back in June, local right-wing group Setauket Patriots has hosted three events since July. One was a sanctioned car parade for Fourth of July. Another was an unsanctioned parade for 9/11. Now we have the most recent caravan supporting the reelection of President Donald Trump (R) last Saturday. All these events have contained many examples of people waving flags supporting Trump, but this latest parade finally dropped any pretense.

In videos shared online, some patriots members have displayed animosity to local officials, to neighbors or effectively anyone who doesn’t agree with them. One video highlighted an actor portraying Trump calling Port Jeff Mayor Margot Garant “evil” for issuing the group a summons for marching without a permit. In another, a member of the caravan jokes about shooting counterprotesters.

Grown men and young children got into public shouting matches on the side of the street. There were reported examples of people in the caravan using gay slurs at any who showed disagreement. And, of course, not every example of bad behavior was carried out by Trump supporters. One counterprotester flipped the bird at all those gathered at the street corner, drawing jeers from the crowd.

Are these examples just small bites of a larger, more intricate context? We hope so, but there’s a real danger to thoughts like these. Yes, you can and should disagree with the decisions of public officials like the mayor of a small incorporated village, but what is the point of pejoratives? Where is this going? Is there going to be something like the planned armed coup by residents against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D)? Not likely but, then again, officials like U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) have joined in on attacks against the mayor seemingly on political grounds. These attempts at further dividing a local community are not welcome.

And beyond that, if you joke about shooting your political opponents, no matter if they are protesters, officials or police, you no longer deserve the kind of public platform you currently enjoy.

Divided. That’s what we call ourselves now. We say we are polarized and distinct, with one red America and one blue America. Why? Why do we push this polarization as if it’s inevitable?

This month, TBR News Media has been hosting debates with candidates running for local elections. Would you be offended or glad to know just how often these people from two separate parties actually agree on local issues? Both Republicans and Democrats agree with how important it is to maintain our North Shore bays and the Long Island Sound in general. Both parties understand the issue of Long Island’s brain drain and the need to keep both old and young here. They might disagree on the particulars, but that is why we have the debates in the first place, isn’t it?

Even on the so-called hot-button issues like police reform, there is real nuance and ideas from candidates you likely won’t see on any nationally televised debate stage.

There are people, even in our local community, who are trying to twist us and divide us. We ask that we all look past that and attend to the facts to guide our political decision-making. Check back with TBR News Media Oct. 29 for our upcoming preelection issue.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Jill has been cutting hair for 38 years. She has owned a few salons, but these days she has been scheduling hair cutting appointments at people’s homes.

She wears a mask, asks her customers to do the same and does her work outside or in the shelter of a garage, where the wind isn’t as strong.

An immigrant from Lebanon, Jill is completely professional, asking for extension cords through the garage, setting up a chair for her customers, and carrying her sterilized scissors, electronic clippers and comb.

Reflecting on the decades she’s spent chatting with customers while she works, she has an easy, purposeful manner about her efforts, while she rolls her “r’s,” sharing linguistic hints on her life.

These days, she lives with her daughter, son-in-law and her three grandchildren. She has her own space in the house, but is hoping, before too long, to rent or buy a small place where she can call the shots.

She shared a story with me that offers some perspective about life and our reactions in the moment to our wins and losses.

Back in February, Jill had decided it was time to own a salon again. She pooled all her savings and placed a bid on a property. She was excited about the prospect of serving more customers, hiring staff and growing a business that would help her make money and increase her savings towards retirement.

She knew she was close to winning the bidding and had started imagining how she’d reinvent the space and the people she’d hire. But, then, the people selling the property informed her that they had chosen another bidder, who had deeper pockets and was a part of a larger chain. She was incredibly disappointed and felt as if she’d lost out on a business she knew she could run. She spent several weeks irritated by the situation.

A month after she lost the property, she joined the rest of the world in the pandemic-triggered lockdown. Initially, she couldn’t get out much.

As the days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, she realized how lucky her loss on that property had been. She would have had to carry a $4,000 monthly mortgage for a location that was producing no revenue for months.

She considers herself an incredibly lucky loser. Back in February, of course, a mere month before the virus changed the United States, she had no way of knowing that her loss would save her from a mountain of unmanageable debt.

She feels as if a force from up high was looking out for her, protecting her from a financial burden and responsibility that would have been hard to manage, even with whatever government program she might have turned to for help.

Down the road, when the world returns to something resembling the experiences of 2019, she may, once again, consider buying a salon. Until then, however, she’s perfectly happy without the debt and the uncertainty of managing through a difficult small business and economic environment.

In the meantime, she will continue to show up at people’s homes, brushes, clippers and scissors in hand, ready to provide on-site haircuts to people who prefer, or can’t, leave their properties.

The challenges and obstacles that disappoint also sometimes protect us, even if we can’t see that in the moment, particularly when we know how much we want something.

Many of us will confront those frustrations in the future over which we have no control. Sometimes, we may gain perspective on what, at first, appears to be an unfortunate outcome.

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By Leah Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

A friend is planning to retire at the end of the year. His wife is already retired, and we three talked about the future. Since none of us has jobs with pensions, they are understandably trying hard to discern economic trends for the investments they hope will carry them through their golden years. Currently their money is mainly in stocks, which are doing well enough, but they, and the rest of us, have duly noted the disconnect between the stock market and the economy.

The stock market, of course, is not the economy but rather is thought to be one predictor of future economic trends at least six months ahead. There are others as well, and one place to get some insight is the PBS program, “Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.” Mack is the host of this weekly financial program, and in the tradition of “Wall Street with Louis Rukeyser,” which ran on the same channel (13) and in the same time slot (Friday, 7:30 p.m.) from 1970 to 2002, a guest each time discusses with her their area of expertise.

Originally broadcast on Oct. 9, a recent guest was economic guru Nancy Lazar, who spoke of four forces she sees as driving the economy to a powerful comeback. The first is, as you may have guessed, technology, which helps make companies more profitable. Lazar emphasized the importance of reinvestment in their companies by executives in order to stay up to date and to increase productivity.

As an example, she offers the sad story of Sears vs. the strong growth of Amazon. Businesses must keep up or be left behind. Technology, especially software, is a critical driver in a strong recovery. Banks are another example. Their movement to online services has been enabled by software developments and now COVID considerations using that software. And as she points out, the United States is the technology leader.

A second driver is housing, which brings with it so many related businesses and jobs: carpenters, painters, spacklers, roofers, plumbers, electricians, cesspool servicers, landscapers, driveway pavers, furniture and carpeting salesmen, and on and on. Housing is doing well, driven by exceptionally low mortgage interest rates, demand from millennials and now single family homes for COVID refugees from the cities.

A third driver for Lazar is manufacturing. She refers to the Rust Belt as her “favorite emerging market.” Disruption in the supply chains due to the pandemic have made companies aware of how much safer it is to make it here if they are going to sell it here. This has even become something of a national security issue. She counts 176 companies that have moved back to or started up in the United States since the beginning of 2020. States like South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama have benefited.

And the fourth is capital spending. Lazar believes that the reinvestment that companies have made in their businesses as a result of the huge tax cuts has been underreported and underappreciated. While many companies have indeed increased their dividends and bought back shares, she has tracked reinvestment from some of that windfall and feels that will result in higher productivity, higher profits and more jobs. In order to grow, companies must reinvest, and when they do, the economy grows. A business cycle spurred by reinvestment — building new plants, hiring and training new workers -— lasts 30 years.

Meanwhile, many are out of work and there is a lot of pain. Lazar also recognizes that in every recovery, not all sectors improve. But she advocates for more business reinvestment to produce more jobs and believes that will lower unemployment to half by next year. Without a further stimulus package, she envisions a handoff from government to the private sector as a driver for healing unemployment. Consumers, meanwhile, are turning more conservative, having been hit by two shocks in the last decade: recession in 2008 and COVID now.

While Nancy Lazar is not an investment advisor, but rather an economist, she has pointed out areas that might be ripe for investment. Good luck to us all!

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Stony Brook University. File photo

In 2016, Stony Brook University rebranded itself to a new campaign called Far Beyond.

The idea behind the campaign was to highlight the wide range of programs and activities the school offered, since everyone normally acknowledges the university for its medicine, science and technology specialties.

But this year in 2020, the institution proved that it indeed has gone “far beyond” with protecting public health.

Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House’s coronavirus task force, visited SBU last week, a stop in a several-month-long tour of different colleges and universities across the United States. But her visit to the local university was different, and she made that clear.

During her press conference, she spoke highly of how Stony Brook has handled the COVID-19 crisis. She said from the start, it was going, well, “far beyond” what other schools, and even hospitals, were doing.

She said that back in March when the university shut down and patients with the virus were filling the rooms, Stony Brook did something different from other institutions — it actually collected data, while continuing to take care of the patients.

“I was listening to the research activities that they started from day one,” she said during the press conference. “And it thrilled my heart to hear from them that their number one thing was collecting data and collecting information in real time.”

It’s right to give credit where its due, and Stony Brook, both on the medical and campus side, has done good work in keeping the number of cases down. The university’s COVID dashboard reports just two students, one university employee and four Stony Brook Medicine employees have currently tested positive as of Oct. 11. Better yet, the school has been upfront in where those cases are located and how it is handling them.

This is compared to places like SUNY Oneonta, which had to close back in August after hundreds of students tested positive after a large super-spreader party. The Oneonta dashboard reports 712 confirmed cases among students since the start of the fall semester.

It’s also not to say that SBU has not made stumbles, especially in communicating with students.

Right off the bat during the start of the pandemic, students were rightfully upset at how the university handled the virus. In March, dorming students were shocked when each received an email saying they needed to move out, go home or find shelter elsewhere because the campus was officially closed.

Students said they felt rushed, and felt the university wasn’t being truthful or transparent with everything being so abrupt. Some international students couldn’t even go home since their countries were in lockdown.

But the students are back, and cases remain low. Is it because of the incentives the university has taken with social distancing guidelines, removing of sports and recreational activities, hybrid learning and sanitizing stations? Or is it just because Stony Brook is not a “party school” and the students there really don’t congregate as at some of the schools upstate, like Oneonta. It’s also important to note the number of students living on campus has fallen from 39% in 2019 to 17% this fall.

With a new president installed at SBU, Maurie McInnis, we think that communication with students has improved. Every person, every institution has been impacted by the pandemic. The students, who feel they are paying a lot for what at times must feel like a mostly online education, need that person-on-person interaction to let their voices be heard, even if it’s behind a clear plastic barrier.

Nonetheless, Stony Brook gets high praise from both us and those involved in the national response to COVID-19, as well as Birx, for going “far beyond.” We kindly ask that the university keeps it up, for the sake of both your students and the wider community.

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