CLOSE
Opinion

by -
0 1236
METRO photo

We’re a small paper, really a small company, and just like so many small companies, the pandemic has done a number on us, except for an explosive growth on the internet. That’s how it is, and if you’re reading this, we cannot fully express how much we appreciate your support, even if it is just picking up this paper to read it.

It’s such a little thing, but knowing somebody is there holding our words in your hands is the reason we get up every morning to do this. To know we might be impacting somebody on a weekly basis is enough, or it should be enough.

We write about the small things. The small town government — towns, villages, school districts. We include the small donations to local nonprofits or our libraries, veterans groups, and on and on.

It’s easy to say we just report on what’s happening, that we exist to regurgitate the facts of what somebody said at a meeting, or give you statistics about who is running for what public office.

But more is needed. Humanity can’t subsist off of data points. Democracy can’t continue without somebody to put facts in context.

That is why we enjoy giving you profiles of people doing extraordinary things, from young people fresh out of college working on their own farm seven days a week to a financial adviser who supports the art community on the North Shore..

Because those stories do more than offer interest and escape from day-to-day drudgery, they offer something much deeper, a shared sense of empathy and community.

If we can break through the veil into each other’s lives, understand the hardships of other people, find that they have so much more in common than they don’t have in common, then that helps bridge divides, builds upon that universal sense that humanity itself is a sacred thing.

We cannot let partisanship craft our belief systems for us. Something that should be as universally understood as the need for the means for people to vote outside of polling places has become yet another red or blue issue. What does it matter if not what political aisle you shop for your beliefs, the end result should always be to at least attempt the betterment of the biggest number of people, and to add support for those who fall through the cracks like water drops through and open hand.

We cannot and should look at something like the COVID-19 pandemic without noticing how it disproportionately impacts people with fewer resources. Those with jobs in service industries, those that pay little and are staffed mostly by those of limited means, were much likelier to get the virus during the height of its spread through New York. It impacted communities of color such as Brentwood and Central Islip, whose school districts are largely Black and Latino, and had many more cases, even considering size, compared to our North Shore communities.

You can argue what is best for people, but really there is no mistaking empathy. Empathy is when local soup kitchens and food pantries along with many, many volunteers worked to feed people unable to provide for their family and themselves in the past few months.

Empathy is when a local volunteer animal rescuer takes away some abandoned roosters knowing the only other likely fate for the birds is to be hit by a car or eaten by a predator.

It’s not enough to know why these people do what they do. We must look at both them and at their shining hearts as well as the social reasons those things happen. That is what we do, and as we fight to keep reporting amidst a backdrop of decline for the entire newspaper industry, we hope that our readers will find that a communal sense of empathy is the best, and perhaps the only way to survive in times like these.

by -
0 799
Stock photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Next week, I invite you to the virtual and completely imaginary People’s National Convention, or PNC. It’s not a Democratic Convention or a Republican Convention. It’s just a fake gathering, virtually and invisibly, in which real people can stop worrying about partisan politics and enjoy the chance to live
each day.

Now, this PNC won’t nominate any one person, because, let’s face it, no singular person is capable of succeeding with the challenges that face our nation in this extraordinarily challenging year.

We’ll keep the speeches to a minimum because we don’t think people listen to most of what others say at these things anyway. Our first speaker will come up with a mask and will start by rolling her large and expressive eyes. She’ll try to convey, without using her mouth or her cheeks, which will be hidden behind her mask, a wide range of emotions. In fact, we might have a “guess-her-expression” game and the person who wins will receive absolutely nothing in the mail.

After that, we’ll launch into a rage presentation. Our speaker will bark, growl, throw himself around the room and urge you, with his arm motions, to get off your sofa and join him. He’ll work his way up to a fevered snarl and then he’ll bang his fists so hard against the TV set that he’ll shatter the screen. You’ll see the cracks on the TV, but don’t worry, the cracks and the blood — we won’t use real blood — are all on the PNC end. Your TV is fine. At the end of his speech, he’ll take a 2020 sign, or one of those 2020 New Year’s glasses with the holes for the eyes in the zeroes, put them on the floor and stomp on them.

After our rage speaker, we’ll have a fear speaker. He, too, won’t use words. He’ll move from left to right, then right to left and then, you guessed it, left to right again, on your screen, afraid of something over his shoulder. He might see a shadow. He’ll be frightened because, as the other conventions suggested, we must feel the need to fear something. He’ll run towards the letters PNC and will smile with relief, knowing that the PNC will protect him.

To offset this potentially overwhelming programming, we’ll offer a counterbalance of kids and pets accompanied by light-hearted music on a harpsichord. We call this portion of the programming the “Awwwww” segment. We’ll show images of toddlers laughing, baby bunnies hopping around a flower-strewn meadow and dolphins cutting in and out of the surface of the water.

We’ll have the icon room, where you can stand up, or not, as you see fit when you see the images. We’ll start with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where the ancestors of so many modern Americans arrived. We’ll add the Grand Canyon, the California coastline, Yellowstone National Park and Niagara Falls.

Then, we’ll have people trip and fall and try to juggle cell phones ineffectively. When the phones land, their screens, which might or might not have images of familiar faces, will crack. Will the entire segment be funny? Not necessarily. No one is always funny, but they promise to try because laughter might be our best medicine.

We’ll have a few actual speakers who use words, who tell inspirational stories about triumph over impossible odds. We’ll talk about people who were told many times that they couldn’t do something, until they went out and did it.

At the conclusion of the PNC, we’ll celebrate our friends and neighbors and the people who enhance every day and we’ll promise each other we’ll be better to them, and to ourselves.

by -
0 40
2nd Place winner for Spot News Photo by Kyle Barr

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Consider this a big Thank You card.

First, thank you to the New York Press Association for awarding us 17 prizes in their annual Better Newspaper Contest for 2019. Please check them out in the Arts and Lifestyles section of today’s paper or read about it on the web. These awards are normally given out at the spring convention up in Saratoga Springs in March for work done during the preceding year. But we know that there is nothing normal about 2020, and so the good news arrived this past week via — you guessed it — the internet. The physical prizes, wood plaques and certificates, will follow at some future time, but the news of the winners was flashed to us digitally.

The purpose of the contest is twofold: to honor the winners and to help improve the more than 400 weekly and small daily newspapers across the state with examples of good work for the membership to view. It is indeed an honor to be selected by our peers, who are the judges, and we deeply appreciate the recognition.

There is a third consequence of the awards: bragging rights. We are able to share with our communities, whom we serve, the peer-reviewed quality of our efforts. We can do our jobs because you, our readers and advertisers, support us. So please accept this as a report card of sorts, along with our deepest appreciation for your continuing faith in us. We do our best to bring you the latest news and issues in the towns and villages we cover in an honest and unbiased fashion.

We also serve as a sounding board for opinions and analyses, clearly labelled as such. We enable others to have bragging rights too, for their family members and community groups and even pets, by proudly printing their accomplishments. And we like to amuse and entertain you with contests, beautiful photos and interesting stories just for the fun of it. The bottom line there is, Thank You to our communities.

I would like to call your attention to the nature of our awards. We consider our job to be publishing both editorial and advertising content, the two together making up the news and our primary focus. So I am pleased to note that half of our prizes are for editorial excellence and the other half for advertising effectiveness. And for this distinction, I thank our talented staff and salute their commitment, especially during these times of few numbers both in the newsroom and in the art, production and sales departments.

And of course, we have to have the support of the business office to maintain our company and the circulation people to pick up the papers in the middle of the night and get them to the post offices and the newsstands in time for you to read them with the rest of your mail on publishing day.

But even as our staff numbers have shrunk, their work has increased. For we are no longer a weekly newspaper group but a daily and hourly news source, thanks to the internet. We have brought you daily briefings and news stories about the various aspects of COVID-19 since March, along with other news scoops, breaking news and advertising — all for the most part in addition to the content in the newspapers — on our website and also on our social media platforms. This enormous effort was made possible by our overworked and underpaid staff.

So a heartfelt and deeply appreciated Thank You to the following, by departments: Kyle Barr, Rita J. Egan, Heidi Sutton, David Luces, Donna Deedy, John Broven, Ernestine Franco, Bea Ruberto and Daniel Dunaief in Editorial.

To Kathleen Gobos, Kathryn Mandracchia, Elizabeth Bongiorno, Robin Lemkin, Minnie Yancy, Jackie Pickle and Katherine Yamaguchi in display sales.

To Sheila Murray, Ellen Segal and Joann Brady in Classifieds. To Beth Heller-Mason, Janet Fortuna, Sharon Nicholson and Lauren Vohrer in Art and Production, and to Courtney Biondo in Legals and her team in Circulation.

To Sandi Gross, Meg Malangone, Diane Wattecamps and Cathie Kitz in Business. To Sheila Murray again in Business and Subscriptions. To Rob Alfano, for Internet Strategy. And to Johness Kuisel, our General Manager, who is everywhere. Please all take a bow.

by -
0 1623
Stock photo

Who uses the post office? In 2019, 143 billion pieces of mail were sent to 160 million delivery addresses, with more than 31,000 offices being operated.

Baby boomers and those who live in rural areas rely on the USPS to receive prescriptions and social security checks as well as pay bills more so than other demographic groups. But in a presidential election year, especially one during a pandemic where many are hesitant to cast their votes in person, mail-in voting could be what allows so many the chance to participate in democracy.

Perhaps more importantly, it could possibly show just how amazing democracy can be if even more people are enfranchised.

It’s been evidenced at the very local level. Residents were sent ballots for their school district budgets and trustee elections directly in the mail. What we saw was a massive increase in the numbers of ballots cast amongst all our local districts. The Smithtown school district, for example, saw over 8,000 more people cast votes compared to 2019 numbers.

This is an example of how granting easier access to voting will result in more votes cast. How important is this? In 2016, only 58.1% of the voting age population cast their ballots, and that was during a presidential election year.

Despite fears that mail-in ballots will somehow lead to voter fraud, experts have consistently said that states that have mail-in voting systems have not experienced notable numbers of fake or false ballots more than states lacking such systems..

It is in everyone’s interest to have more people participating in democracy.

And with the White House’s constant refrain that voter fraud could occur if mail-in ballots are widely used, and with the administration having threatened to withhold funds from the USPS, it’s necessary to cast a critical eye on the controversial changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. His decisions have led to overtime cuts, reduced post office hours, changes to delivery policies and the removal of some sorting machines. The changes have already led to mail delays, including on Long Island, according to the Letter Carriers Local 6000, a L.I. and Queens-based postal union. Though DeJoy announced Aug. 18 he would be “suspending these initiatives” until after the election, we must remain alert. The postal agency itself has said delivering an estimated 80 million ballots nationwide will be difficult.

Instead we should now focus on making sure the process runs as smoothly as possible. It’s true that the New York and California Democratic primaries were hurt by an inefficient infrastructure that was not made to handle the mass influx of votes. Reports say that thousands of such votes had to be discounted because of flaws by the people who cast them.

The goal of the Suffolk County Board of Elections should be to increase its capability to handle what will likely be a mass influx of both mail-in and absentee ballots. Better yet, it should be incumbent on the federal government to supply local municipalities the capability to handle the new influx of votes. 

We agree with Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-NY3), who at a press conference Aug. 17 said we needed an “urgent call to arms to break through all the noise and focus on protecting not only the security of our elections, but the integrity and reliability of the United States Postal Service. Lives, livelihoods and our democracy are at stake.”

We need to extend this thought process to the efficacy of our democracy itself. Improving people’s ability to vote should be a no-brainer in a society such as ours. We must cut through partisanship and remember just how important it is that every person should have a voice in government, despite — or more so, because of — the ongoing pandemic.

by -
0 1173
METRO photo
Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

My mother often describes family rituals in her columns, whether they are the way we play baseball, the way we argue (remember the pancakes on my then teenage brother’s cantankerous head?) or the way we celebrate victories and help each other rise off the mat after defeats.

Ever the driven optimist, my mother can turn the most lemony lemons into something much more palatable, often, as Julie Andrews did in “My Favorite Things” with a spoonful, or two, of sugar.

It would be easy this week to lament the fact that, for the first time in decades, my family can’t see my mother on her birthday because of the danger from bringing the virus to her home. We recognize that so many people are enduring so much more challenging disruptions to their routines and that we are fortunate to have each other and can share the events of the week with her
through Zoom.

So, instead of being disappointed by the distance, I will share ways in which my mother, who will celebrate this birthday with my brothers and not me, my wife and our children, has cast a long shadow, all the way to our doorstep.

Well, for starters, my children and I can be, and often are, serious when the moment demands. And yet, a part of us can’t help imagining uproariously funny images or interruptions to a somber and important speech at just the wrong moment. I’m sure part of what was so familiar about my wife’s similarly mischievous nature comes from recognizing the moment when one of us feels compelled to answer a rhetorical question or to laugh during a silence.

My mother also has a keen ear for the words people choose to use or that immortalize them, much the way my children and I do. Of the many Winston Churchill quotes, she has, on occasion, shared this one: “I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

I suppose that one isn’t too surprising, given her appreciation for animals which likely comes from her father, who grew up lactose intolerant on a dairy farm. Hmm, maybe that’s where she gets her sense
of humor?

Moving along, my family revels in our senses. We smell something wonderful, like baking cookies or the scent of new flowers in the spring, and we take a moment to appreciate the gift of the scent and our senses, which enable us to perceive and process it.

My mother also has a spectacular appreciation for nature. A sudden dark sky isn’t cause for concern or disappointment, but is a chance to appreciate the variety of weather that makes the coldest day warmer and the warmest day cooler.

Now, given the times in which we live, I see my mother in both of our children as they handle the ever-changing rules and realities of a world that hasn’t yet conquered the virus. Our daughter could rue the inequities that are robbing her of a “normal” college education. Instead, she and her resilient friends are staying in touch, supporting each other, and looking forward, as my mother would, to the day when they can return to a campus they might have otherwise taken for granted.

As for our son, despite his dedication and passion for baseball, which is a rite of passage each spring, he kept his head up and took time to train on his own, waiting for the moment when he could return, stronger and faster, to his field of dreams.

We can’t wait to sing to you this year, mom, and to let you know that, even though we haven’t traveled to see each other, we are enjoying the echoes of your joie de vivre in the halls of our home.

by -
0 753
Photo from Facebook

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

“What’s new?” is a question asked regularly in newsrooms all across the country, as editors and reporters plan for the next edition. During the third week in August, the answer typically is, “Not much.” A lull usually sets in as people realize summer is coming to an end and this is a time to get in “last licks” of vacation before the world of serious work and school returns. But not this year. There has been nothing typical about 2020. This year will go down in the history books as unique.

Here are some of the major themes in the news today: the progress of the coronavirus as it rages across the south and west; the ongoing damage to the economy the pandemic has caused; recognition of systemic racism in our nation and the protests that has engendered; attitudes toward the police; the growing crisis in the postal service alarming voters; the announcement of explicit diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) without first a settlement of the Palestinian question; the immigration issue again in focus with the selection of Kamala Harris as Biden’s vice presidential ticket mate; the changing face of America that nomination reflects; the reopening of schools; the reevaluation of a college degree vs. its costs precipitated by the prospect of Zoom classes and of course the Democratic National Convention held primarily via the internet.

Notice I didn’t even list the damage caused by Isaias; the increasingly troubling relationship between the United States and China; the windstorms that wrecked Iowa’s coming harvest; the abdication of Congress in the face of public desperation for fiscal stimuli; the grand centennial celebration of the 19th amendment concerning women’s right to vote; the defiance of the current recession by the stock market; and the rush of New York City residents to buy houses in the suburbs and settle in for the long haul. And that’s just some issues.

Almost all of these themes to some degree directly affect us here on Long Island. The one I would like to expand on, perhaps because it is the least confrontational and we have had enough confrontation for now, is the rapid change in American demographics.

The last big wave of immigrants, who arrived at the turn of the 20th century, was largely from Eastern and Southern Europe. This time, the surge is made up of second generation Americans — the children of immigrants who came from around the world. In California, for example, almost half of the children are from immigrant homes of Asians, Hispanics and those who are biracial. For the first time in our country’s history, whites make up less than half under the age of 16, according to the Brookings Institute. According to The New York Times, more than a quarter of all Americans are immigrants or the American-born children of immigrants, the latter representing “about 10 percent of the adult population.” About 42 million adults, or one in six of the country’s 250 million adults, are foreign-born.

What are the consequences of this shift in population?

This is nothing short of a transformation of this country’s identity “from a mostly white baby-boomer society into a multiethnic and racial patchwork,” according to The Times. “Boomers are 71.6 percent white, Millennials are 55 percent white, and post-Gen Z, those born after 2012 are 49.6 percent white … The parents of these modern children are from the Caribbean, China, Central America and Mexico” as well as India, Korea and more. They often came with higher education, mainly as a result of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, but it’s their children who are moving into public life. They tend to feel “very patriotic about America,” according to Suhas Subramanyam, born of Indian parents who became the first Indian-American to be elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

This mix of immigrants brings cultural richness and energy to our society, not to mention great new foods.     

by -
0 900
A car crushed by a tree in Miller place after strong winds by Tropical Storm Isaias. Photo by Kyle Barr

We imagine that if you’re looking into your fridge and not finding any cold air coming out, that you’re smelling the milk starting to curdle and watching the meat in the freezer becoming wet and discolored, that you likely don’t want to hear anything else but the sound of heads rolling.

One has every right to be angry when the response to a storm like Isaias has been so clumsy. Reportedly, PSEG Long Island was ready for the storm but communications were not, and they continue to be confusing and out of touch. While the utility company puts out daily or even bi-daily releases about numbers of people who have gotten their power back online, the web and mobile app for reporting outages still show too many people lacking power. Either the reporting app is broken, or the lines of communication have broken down.

For a utility that promises so much of its reporting technology, residents would expect some timely communication, at the very least. Residents had a constant refrain over the past week that the timetables for when their street’s repairs would be done kept getting moved. A week after the storm, by Monday, 17,000 on Long Island still lacked power, according to the utility company, even though their own map showed at least 30,000 more potentially lacked any power out of the original 420,000.

PSEG has a lot to answer for, especially with the $40 million annual contract (plus incentives) that the Long Island Power Authority pays the utility company to handle Long Island’s electrical infrastructure.

Electeds at every level have come down on the utility company. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has requested an inquiry into PSEG’s handling of the storm. New York State Attorney General Letitia James (D) has obliged and will conduct an investigation, according to a Newsday report that was confirmed by PSEG. Cuomo has also threatened to pull PSEG’s contract.

Should PSEG be responsible for people’s spoiled food and other financial hits due to loss of power? The many people who lost hundreds of dollars worth of food and medicine would certainly agree, especially those who can ill afford to lose an ounce of that during a pandemic, when many have lost jobs and unemployment benefits. The company should absolutely buckle up and support the people who need it most, especially since we still do not know just how much the 18 heads of PSEG make in salary of their multimillion dollar contract with LIPA.

But the speed and readiness that officials were ready to pounce on the utility company displays a different sort of callousness, especially in an election year. To say PSEG has become a punching bag is too quaint of a depiction for how much politicians want to make easy villains out of complicated issues. Some politicians have made going after PSEG and LIPA the cornerstone of their campaigns. Some have called for the heads of each organization to resign.

But tackling the challenges of supplying power to Long Island takes more than a readiness to plant a boot on the back of whatever company was taped with a “kick me” sign.

Isaias will not be the last major storm this season. If we’re unlucky, there could be even worse storms that hit our little sandbar called Long Island. That is where our heads should be, shoring up the infrastructure to ensure PSEG’s response does not repeat itself and getting behind initiatives that can prevent widespread damage, instead of having more people ready to clean up the aftermath.

New York is right to move toward a future where the majority of energy comes from renewable technologies. For the sake of the future of our planet, we have no choice. More than that, we need to think about our planet with the ferociousness we do when our lights stop working. Hurricanes are unrelenting. We must be as well.

by -
0 961
A tree fell on a mail truck on Old Post Road in Setauket during Tropical Storm Isaias. Photo by John Broven

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Timing is everything. Just ask the people who bought large blocks of tickets to sporting events and then tried to resell them in the year with empty stadiums or, perhaps, PSEG last Tuesday.

The New Jersey-based utility was supposed to be the savior of Long Island power, bringing corporate muscle, know how and technology to a region that had suffered in 1985 from outages that lasted weeks from Hurricane Gloria and dislocations and gas shortages during Superstorm Sandy.

But then, Tropical Storm Isaias had other ideas. The storm came through Long Island last Tuesday and, within hours, the communications system went down at PSEG, making it difficult for residents to know whether their efforts to report outages, downed trees, and dangling power lines were effective.

The storm caused about 420,000 people to lose power. That is particularly problematic at a time when some residents are still working from home. It also disrupts the angst-ridden end-of-summer period as parents and students prepare for a school year filled with questions about an uncertain future.

Hardened by all the difficulties of an impossible year, some residents chalked it up to the mess that is 2020, hoping that the change in the calendar will allow everyone to return to a normal in which we can hug friends, shake hands, visit extended family and lean in at a crowded restaurant to hear what someone said. If the vaccine Russia rushed to the market for the virus proves effective without serious side effects, maybe that hope will become a reality.

Just before Isaias hit, however, PSEG must have frustrated the entity in control of the disruptions during this haywire year. You see, the company sent out a postcard.

Now, postcards are nice, particularly when you get one from someone vacationing in an exotic location. You might appreciate the magnificent scenery, even if the card makes you wonder why your friend didn’t take you along instead of spending 42 cents to make you jealous of her wonderful life.

But, no, this wasn’t that kind of postcard. This was the kind of message that helps build a brand, that makes you feel as if you’ve landed somewhere between the familiar rhythm of a safe Brady Bunch household and the high-tech, happy future of the Jetsons.

The card, which arrived hours before Isaias in mail trucks that would have had trouble delivering them the next day, had a picture of a man in sunglasses on a power truck, wearing a yellow hard hat with blue skies and intact branches behind him.

The message offered GOOD NEWS! Of course they used all caps and an exclamation point. Then, the card continued, UPGRADES COMPLETED! How nice and promising, right? The postcard went on to suggest, “PSEG Long Island recently finished work to ensure that you and your neighbors will continue to receive safe and reliable electric service for years to come.” The words safe, reliable and years to come were in orange, as if they were highlighting the parts you needed to read closely, emphasizing their comforting professionalism and reassuring skill set.

The last paragraph read, “After careful inspection, we replaced and upgraded equipment that strengthens the infrastructure to better withstand storms and extreme temperatures.” The highlighted words were replaced, upgraded, and strengthens the infrastructure.

The tag line, after thanking customers for their patience, was, “Just one more way PSEG Long Island is working for you.”

Hmm, now, that postcard might have slipped, unnoticed, into the trash bin. But, that’s not what happened here. The postcard and storm arrived the same day and, despite the reassurance that the company had the infrastructure to better withstand storms, it seems that the storm, and maybe 2020, had other plans.

by -
0 677
A large tree in front of Emma S. Clark Memorial Library was no match for Hurricane Isaias. Photo by Pam Botway

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

It’s no secret that we are living in chaotic times. The pandemic has changed all our routines and we certainly didn’t need a tropical storm with its accompanying power loss to further churn our existence. But Mother Nature gave us no choice. There we were, in the summer heat and in the dark with no phones, no TV and no internet. On top of that, it was Tuesday afternoon, the height of our production week at the office, and we had newspapers to get to the printer and the latest news for our website and our social media to publish.

But how?

We went home Tuesday night, hoping when we returned there would be electricity. The main event that lasted less than two hours gave us little rain, but high winds, and many days of downed trees intertwined with lots of electric lines to remember Isaias by. It seemed like every other local road was blocked.

While Wednesday morning was clear and beautiful, we were in a frenzy at the office. Normally our six papers leave us in turn via email to meet our press time at the printer, but that surely wasn’t happening. We needed power, and we needed the internet. We also needed at least eight more hours of in-house work by our pandemic-shrunken skeletal crew before we could even get to the printer.

I kept reminding myself, at least we we’re all healthy. And the extreme heat had somewhat abated so that we could keep our windows and doors open. Staff poured in and we threw out various suggestions for how to deal with this crisis that had snuck up on us. Well, it almost snuck up except for one staffer who had asked us on Monday how we were going to deal with the coming hurricane. “What hurricane?” I had responded cheerfully. “It’s only going to be a tropical storm!” Dubious, she returned to her desk, knowing how Cassandra must have felt during the Trojan War. Next time I will listen to her.

After we had parsed all the ideas for how to proceed, the one that made the most sense was to get a generator. There then began a furious round of phone calls on our juice-deprived cellphones to try and find one. Good luck! We tried from Hauppauge to Sag Harbor. There was none to be had.

Just when all seemed lost, our sales director remembered an advertiser called appropriately, Generators R Us by North Country Electric, Corp. Desperately we called. Trish Restucci answered the phone and, in the midst of their frenzied day, sensed our great need and remembered they had a small, old one in a closet that just might work. Later her husband, Frank, arrived with it and a can of gasoline and worked tirelessly to get us going. Now the frantic search for extension cords began until we found one long enough to stretch from the generator outside to our server inside, with stops along the way for the various computers.

By the end of the day, we were hooked up and ready to go. And then the power came on.

We at least had the satisfaction of knowing that we had rescued ourselves and had not waited hoping to be rescued in time. Yes, we were able to reach the printer, who rearranged his tightly scheduled press time to fit us in on Thursday afternoon, and we were in readers’ mailboxes and on the newsstands by Friday.

It was a true miracle. It was also the result of extraordinary help. Our heartfelt thank you to our neighbor, Denis Lynch of Setauket Kitchen and Bath, Dolores Stafford and Mike Vincenti of Stafford Associates, the computer wizards, Astrid at Ace Hardware, the post offices, and our saintly printer, among others. It took a village.

It also took the extraordinary energy and creativity of our most loyal and professional news media staff at TBR: our production and art director and her assistant, the editors, the ad director, the circulation manager and her husband, our drivers, the classified director, the webmaster and our general manager. It is an honor to work with you. You are the best!

by -
0 1153
METRO photo

Schools have been releasing their reopening plans — ranging from students attending full time to hybrid models — and many parents and teachers are buzzing with concerns.

We’re disappointed that some of our local districts did not reveal their reopening plans until the state deadline of July 31. We understand the massive undertaking it was to craft these plans and the number of people on committees involved to see it through, but many districts’ reopening data is long and convoluted. More effort can be made to present this reopening data in a digestible way.

It’s no surprise that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has not yet created a blanket school reopening plan across the state. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for our school districts during a pandemic. Each one varies in size and number of students, teachers and space available. All this, of course, with an ax hanging over schools heads with state aid potentially being cut later this year.

The same is true for within a school district. Each student’s family is different. There are those who legitimately fear catching the coronavirus to the degree that it has kept them in lockdown even after some restrictions have been lifted. And while some have the luxury of having at least one parent being able to stay home if the local district offers a hybrid model, other families will be unable to provide the supervision their child needs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended that schools across the country reopen as long as they put safety first. Cuomo, after reviewing the districts’ reopening plans, will be making a final decision later this week.  The governor has said that as long as infection rate averages over a two-week period stay below 5 percent, schools will be able to reopen to some capacity. Suffolk County currently hovers at around 1 percent. There is no guarantee that figure won’t increase in the future, especially considering the current case with states like California, which was heading in the same promising direction as New York until cases spiked to a current total of more than 525,000.

Here is the thing we have to understand, none of us will be happy. Nobody will get everything they want from current plans. In a normal year, every kid would be learning in school, desks spaced only inches from each other and halls crowded with kids.

A parent who relies on schools to watch their children while a parent or guardian is at work may not be able to afford a different kind of day care. Families that rely on school reduced cost or free lunches won’t have that option without a kid in school. Hybrid models only help with a portion of those issues, but it’s better than nothing.

Some parents ask why the district can’t provide learning options for students who stay home 24/7 while the rest go into their full-time or hybrid schedules. Districts are already hurting financially due to the pandemic. Many are taking from their fund balances just to afford the additional staff and resources needed to have some students in the classroom. Asking them to put further resources into the extra time it takes to help students at home may not be feasible for so many districts.

We are now in a situation where each family needs to look at their school’s plan and then adjust it to their reality. Districts should do all they can to keep residents in the loop on a consistent basis. Parents, for their part, must acknowledge no plan will be perfect. It will take both parties and compromise to get the best outcome for students while keeping the virus under control.

Prev1...636465...146Next Page 64 of 146
TBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.
We provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.
Contact us: [email protected]

Most Viewed

©