This past Tuesday was International Women’s Day, and the message behind such an occasion is still very important, necessary and timely.
As we come off celebrating the day, time should be taken to reflect on the challenges that women still face today. Unequal compensation and women’s health issues are still hotly debated —but these subjects can be traced back to much earlier times.
Stories come from all over the country about young female students being taken out of school for outfits deemed too revealing by administrators, even despite the widespread acceptance of boys shedding their shirts to play basketball or in the stands at football games. Girls’ sports teams have a harder time getting necessary funding for new uniforms and equipment, and many young women still get a puzzled look from others if they express interest in certain educational fields.
We heard one story in which a male engineering student told a female classmate that she must be lost as she walked in for the first day, also telling her that she wouldn’t last long.
It’s not only up to women to push back against sexist beliefs, thoughts or stigmas. It is also up to men.
We need to teach our boys at a young age how to view women — as their equals. We need to instill in them the correct way to value women and understand that women can make just as many contributions as females can.
Women can only achieve true equality if men stand by their side as partners. Let’s strive to raise a generation of men who will be proud to be those partners.
A dispatcher in training for the Suffolk County Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services helped deliver a baby over the phone on Wednesday morning.
According to a press release from the FRES, a man who had been on the way to the hospital called 911 shortly before 10 a.m. to report that his wife was in labor but the baby’s delivery could not wait. He had pulled their vehicle to the side of Nesconset Highway in East Setauket, in front of the Walmart.
Dispatcher Joseph Pucci answered the call. FRES said he verified the couple’s location and that the woman was 36 weeks pregnant, about to deliver for the fourth time. He gave instructions to the 38-year-old woman’s husband, and the couple delivered a baby boy within three minutes.
Pucci, who FRES said has been training for the past five months, instructed the father on how to check the baby’s breathing, keep the infant warm and use a shoelace to tie off his umbilical cord. Then he stayed on the line until Suffolk County police and Setauket Fire Department personnel arrived on the scene.
According to FRES, both the mother and the baby seemed healthy and were transported to Stony Brook University Hospital.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone commended the dispatcher-in-training for his work later on Wednesday.
“Thanks to the knowledgeable response from emergency service dispatcher Joseph Pucci, a baby boy was delivered safely this morning,” he said. “Good training and clear thinking helped this couple and their baby just as it was needed. Congratulations to this family on their newest arrival.”
Movie buffs, rejoice! After a long and dreary winter, it’s time to explore politics, health care, pop culture and more with a new season of the Port Jeff Documentary Series.
This month will mark the beginning of the 23rd season for the PJDS, which has brought compelling and award-winning documentaries of all kinds to our area in the spring and fall since 2005. The festival is sponsored by the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, the Suffolk County Film Commission and the New York State Council on the Arts.
It’s a labor of love for the “film ladies,” the six board members who plan the festival from the ground up twice each year. They include co-directors Barbara Sverd and Lyn Boland, as well as Wendy Feinberg, Honey Katz, Phyllis Ross and Lorie Rothstein.
Each year, the film ladies travel to some of the biggest film festivals in the area, among them the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan, the Stony Brook Film Festival and the Hamptons Film Festival. They also closely follow online buzz for film festivals they can’t attend.
‘Sweet Micky for President.’ Photo from GPJAC
“Everyone on the board searches for films independently and brings them back to the group. This way, we get a lot of variety because we all like different things,” said Boland.
While each board member has her own opinions, they’re all looking for those films that generate a lot of interest and offer wide appeal. All of them are fresh off the circuit, and you won’t be able to see them on TV or other outlets, Boland explained.
Boland has always loved documentaries, and the series was born out of the desire to see them closer to home. She said those first films were chosen sitting around a kitchen table with the help of her late friend and law partner, Sondra Brooks. “I would hear about these great documentaries nominated for Academy Awards, but there was absolutely nowhere around here to see them. We wanted to change that,” Boland said.
These days, documentary film is one of the most common entry-level styles, leaving more titles and themes to explore than ever.
Each film lady selects two of her personal favorite documentaries to bring back to the group for discussion. Then, they write letters to directors and production teams of their favorite films, asking them to consider sending the group a copy for screening. Once the films arrive, everyone gets a say; 5/6 of the group must love the film in order for it to make the festival’s short list. It also has to fit well with that season’s other selections and budget. The final list features seven films, one for each board member and a seventh unanimously chosen by all the ladies.
Boland admitted that her two favorites for this season are the films she chose, which she affectionately calls “her babies.” They are “The C Word,” an eye-opening expose into cancer treatment and its many flaws, and “Speed Sisters,” which follows the unexpected experiences of five female race car drivers in Palestine.
During the series, each film is followed by a Q-&-A session or discussion with someone on the film’s production team, usually the director. It is an opportunity for audiences to delve deeper into the film’s development and themes.
Boland said that putting the series together twice each year is a lot of work, but there’s never bad blood in the group when they make the final selections.
Director Amber Fares photo from GPJAC
“[The board members] volunteer to do this and it’s really like a year-round job,” Boland said.“I can’t even say how many films I see each year, but I watch several every week. All but one of us have been involved from the beginning and it’s such a respectful environment. We do this because we’re passionate about it.”
In addition to showing the films at Theatre Three, the festival has recently added the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook as a co-host. The film ladies approached the museum after its former co-host, Stony Brook University’s Wang Center, could no longer participate.
The museum works with the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council on a regular basis, which made them a perfect fit. They’ve recently obtained a new projector and sound system, and Boland is looking forward to showing films there.
“Film is a vibrant artmaking medium, and the museum will be adding even more films to see as we move forward with our expanding public programming,” said Neil Watson, executive director of the Long Island Museum. “Partnering with the Port Jefferson Documentary Series is the perfect opportunity to extend both of our organizations into this rich and diverse community.”
The documentary series wouldn’t be possible without the support of numerous volunteers. Every season, help is needed for each part of the process, from distributing flyers and running the ticket booths totracking down directors and even recommending new films. A contact page for volunteers and board members can be found at the festival’s website, www.portjeffdocumentaryseries.com.
The film ladies encourage hesitant viewers to try even one of this season’s films. Boland said that documentaries offer an extra touch of magic you just won’t find in a fictional movie.
“When you see a moving documentary, it shakes you the way a feature film does, but you have that extra level of emotion in knowing it’s all real,” she said.
The Port Jefferson Documentary Series will be held at 7 p.m. every Monday from March 14 to April 25 at Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, and the Long Island Museum, 1200 Rt. 25A, Stony Brook. For the first time this year, moviegoers can purchase their tickets in advance. General admission for each film is $7. To learn more about the PJDS, this season’s films or to purchase advance tickets, call 631-473-5220.
Film schedule
A scene from ‘The C Word.’ Photo from GPJAC
■ The spring season will kick off with “Sweet Micky for President” at Theatre Three on March 14. Winner of the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival and Best International Director Award at the Documentary Edge Film Festival, the film recounts the story of Pras Michel, Grammy Award-winning rapper and founder of The Fugees, as he returns to his homeland of Haiti postearthquake and finds a corrupt government in paralysis. Wanting desperately to turn the tides there, he becomes the backbone of a presidential campaign for Michel Martelly, aka “Sweet Micky,” Haiti’s most popular and outlandish pop star. The film is presented in English, Creole and French with English subtitles. Guest speakers for the evening will be Director Ben Patterson and Pras Michel.
■ The second film in the series, “Janis: Little Girl Blue” by Amy Berg, will be screened at Theatre Three on March 21. It follows the life and career of renowned classic rock musician Janis Joplin prior to her sudden and tragic death in 1970 at the age of 27. The film explores the private side of Joplin’s life with new intimacy. Joplin’s own words tell much of the film’s story through a series of letters she wrote to her parents over the years, many of them made public here for the first time. The screening will be followed by a live performance of Joplin’s music by Amber Ferrari and a Q-&-A moderated by Norman Prusslin, director of the Media Arts Minor at Stony Brook University, co-founder of The Long Island Music Hall of Fame and founding general manager of WUSB 90.1 FM in Stony Brook.
■ On March 28, the Long Island Museum will host a screening of “The Anthropologist,” a film that tells the stories of anthropologists Margaret Mead and Susie Crate through their daughters’ perspectives. The film highlights how people all over the world, from Siberia to the Chesapeake, deal with changes in culture and the environment. The documentary won the Best Environmental Film award at the Nevada International Film Festival. The film is presented in six different languages. Director Daniel Miller will speak after the screening.
■ “Waiting,” to be screened on April 4 at the Long Island Museum, explores the cultural experiences and adjustment of three Italians from varied backgrounds immigrating to middle-class America. The film won the Big Apple Film Festival Cityscape Award and a 2015 Spotlight Documentary Film Award. Presented in English and Italian with English subtitles, guest speakers will include Director Cristian Piazza and one of the subjects followed in the film, actor-turned-opera-singer Paolo Buffagni.
■ On April 11, you’ll rethink your perspective on cancer treatment when Theatre Three screens “The C Word.” Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the film asks one pointed question: “With all of the resources and efforts in the war on cancer, why are we still losing?” It also exposes the multilevel, systematic problems in cancer care — the habits that predispose us to disease and a fixation on treatment instead of on the root causes of our ailments. The film is presented in English and French. “The C Word” was directed by one of its subjects, cancer survivor Meghan O’Hara, who will be on hand as the evening’s guest speaker.
■ “Karski and the Lords of Humanity” will take you back in time to World War II on April 18 at Theatre Three. This film tells the little-known and amazing story of Jan Karski, a highly intelligent and multilingual Polish man who was once a prisoner of war. He then goes undercover into Hitler’s concentration camps to bear witness to the Nazi atrocities and expose them worldwide. The film received the Best Polish Film award at the The Jewish Motifs International Film Festival in Warsaw, and Jan Karski was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. The evening’s speaker will be Director Slawomir Grunberg.
■ The final film in the series, “Speed Sisters,” will be shown at Theatre Three on April 25. Set in Palestine, it follows five female standouts in a thriving car racing scene. Held at improvised tracks — a vegetable market, an old helicopter pad, a security academy — the races offer a release from the pressures and uncertainties of life on the West Bank.These women are setting a precedent in a male-dominated sport in a male-dominated country, and people everywhere are taking notice. “Speed Sisters” was awarded Best Documentary at the Adelaide Film Festival and the Audience Award at the IFI Documentary Festival. It is presented in Arabic and English with English subtitles. Director Amber Fares will speak after the film.
Village Hall is visible in the background of a basketball court at Rocketship Park. Photo by Elana Glowatz
Basketball players could soon be shooting hoops on a fresh surface in downtown Port Jefferson.
Village officials have approved a $15,000 proposal to repair the basketball courts at Rocketship Park, between Barnum Avenue and the municipal parking lot behind Village Hall.
“Our basketball courts are in disrepair out back,” Mayor Margot Garant said at the board of trustees meeting on Monday night.
But there is surplus money the village previously set aside, in the event those courts would have to be completely renovated. Instead, work simply needs to be done to repair cracks and “take away what we call the ‘birdbaths,’ or puddles,” she said.
The plan, which the board approved at its meeting, includes putting in lines for pickleball play at the courts. That sport involves paddles and has similarities to tennis and badminton.
Trustee Stan Loucks, who is the board’s liaison to the Port Jefferson Country Club, said the village feels comfortable hiring East Norwich-based Championship Tennis Courts LLC to do the basketball court project because that same company has done work on the country club’s tennis courts for the last five years.
Rocky Point board of education members voice their opinions of the bond. Photo by Giselle Barkley
After Rocky Point school district’s capital projects proposal didn’t pass last year, it was back to the drawing board.
The district presented its revised capital projects proposal on March 7, showing that while the school district is keeping many projects from its previous proposal last year, the Facilities Sub-Committee cut around $4.4 million worth of projects from the previous bond proposal.
The committee, which handles the school district’s bond proposals and revisions, got rid of extra projects like artificial turf for the varsity baseball and softball fields and outside bathrooms, among other projects. However, adding air conditioning to the Joseph A. Edgar Intermediate School and Frank J. Carasiti Elementary School cafeterias and installing another means of leaving the Middle School’s nurse’s office, were added to the $16.5 million proposal.
Projects like turf fields and outside bathrooms were removed from the initial bond proposal.
The board of education said the bond is subject to change, as it may add or delete projects before it goes to a vote later this year. The bond will still target repairs and renovations to the district’s facilities, which includes, but isn’t limited to, fixing the ceilings in various areas of the schools, installing light-emitting diode lights, renovating the bathrooms, repaving the asphalt and improving security.
Smaller items like fixing a crack in the Middle School’s masonry were also factored into the bond, but Rocky Point school district Superintendent Michael Ring said this was intentionally added to the capital projects proposal.
“These are unique — unlike other special projects, these could be recipients of state aid because [of] the nature of them,” Ring said. “So if voters are going to consider a bond, it would make sense to put it in there.”
For the past three or four decades, state aid has reimbursed 70.2 percent of the school district’s project costs. This takes some pressure off taxpayers and the school district to fund the project. Ring added that mandatory projects like new security cameras, will go into the school district’s 2016-17 budget if the bond doesn’t pass. If it passes, the average homeowner with an assessed value of $2,600 will pay $74.48 a year in additional taxes over a 15-year period.
According to Rocky Point resident Bruce MacArthur, community involvement is important when it comes to passing a bond.
“We have virtually no participation right now from the community,” MacArthur said during the meeting. “[The] larger issue is how do we get the community more involved to be educated on the projects that are being proposed.”
Around 20 people, including the board of education, attended Monday’s meeting. The board and the sub-committee hope to attract more people for its future bond proposal meetings to get more community input before residents vote in favor or opposition of the bond.
“We all came to a consensus that we have to try to sell it [to residents],” said board of education President Susan Sullivan. “One of the reasons we’re meeting is because we are looking to move on this.”
Trustee Adam DeWitt resigned from Port Jeff's BOE. File photo by Elana Glowatz
A proposed policy for Port Jefferson schools could change the way teachers interact with and accommodate transgender students.
The board of education’s policy committee crafted the proposal with help from the student body’s Gay-Straight Alliance club, and included rules for how transgender and gender nonconforming students would be referenced in school records and what bathroom and locker room facilities they would use.
According to the proposed text, students who want to be identified by a gender other than the one associated with their sex at birth could request a meeting with their principal to discuss names, pronouns and designations in school records; restroom and locker room access; and participation in sports, among other topics.
Students would be able to change gender designations in school records if they provide two official forms of identification indicating the new gender and legal proof of a change in name or gender.
Emma Martin, the president of the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, said during the Port Jefferson school board meeting on Tuesday night, “This policy could be the difference between whether a student feels safe in the school, whether their learning is hindered or it’s enriched, whether they graduate high school or even if their life could be saved.”
The proposed policy includes a provision that any student’s transgender status would be kept as private as possible, apart from necessary communication to personnel “so they may respond effectively and appropriately to issues arising in the school.”
In addition, it dictates that the district would have to accept any student’s gender identity.
“There is no medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment threshold that students must meet in order to have their gender identity recognized and respected,” the policy reads. “Every effort should be made to use the preferred names and pronouns consistent with a student’s gender identity. While inadvertent slips or honest mistakes may occur, the intentional and persistent refusal to respect a student’s gender identity is a violation of school district policy.”
Martin called the policy forward thinking.
“Even though I won’t be here to see this in place because I’m a senior — I’ll be leaving — I’m very, very proud to say that this will be in place hopefully when I leave.”
Trustee Adam DeWitt, the head of the policy committee, replied that the policy committee could not have done it without her club: “Your contributions and the students’ contributions as well as the staff were critical in the wording … so your legacy and the legacy of the students and the staff that helped us create this will live on for a long time.”
The school board accepted the policy at first reading on Tuesday and could vote to approve it, making it final, at the next board meeting. Its reception was a quiet one — there was no public comment on the policy apart from Martin’s.
That was not the case in other districts that recently attempted to make similar rules. In the Rocky Point and Smithtown school districts, discussions about accommodating transgender students turned into heated debates.
Superintendent Ken Bossert attributed the lack of controversy in Port Jefferson to the fact that the district took time to shape the policy with the help of input from many parties, and officials took up the matter on their own “without discussing any specific child.”
“That can be very sensitive when the community is fully aware of children who are involved in the discussion and that’s what I really wanted to avoid here.”
Although I never her, I was the beneficiary of Nancy Reagan’s good taste. I was invited to the White House by President Ronald Reagan’s press office, my second visit after one during President Jimmy Carter’s term. The contrast between the two visits could not be more stark.
The former first lady died this week at the age of 94, outliving her husband by nine years. In reality she had started to lose him more than 10 years earlier in what she termed “her long goodbye,” as his suffering from Alzheimer’s disease carried him into his own world. Theirs was a long marriage in which they seemed devoted to each other, and she passionately protected him and his image as he moved from president of the Screen Actors Guild to governor of California to president of the United States. She said that her “greatest ambition” was to have a “successful, happy marriage.”
She may well have yearned for that as a result of her early childhood experiences. She was born Anne Frances Robbins in 1921, the daughter of Edith Luckett and Kenneth Robbins. Her mother was an actress and her father a car dealer who abandoned them shortly after she was born. When she was 2, her mother resumed her acting career. Then, when Nancy was almost 8 years old, her mother married a Chicago neurosurgeon, Loyal Davis, and overnight her circumstances reversed. Her life was now one of stability and privilege, and she went on eventually to graduate from an elite high school and then Smith College as Nancy Davis in 1943.
She might well have endorsed Sophie Tucker’s famous maxim: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. … Rich is better.”
When Reagan was elected governor and the Reagans were expected to live in the governor’s mansion, which was at that time a run-down Victorian house on a busy, one-way street in Sacramento, Calif., she convinced her husband to lease at their own expense a 12-room Tudor house in a better neighborhood. Then, when Reagan was elected president, she decided to redo the private living quarters of the White House. She raised $822,000 from private contributors to do that, but she was severely criticized by the press.
Although she had made a number of worthwhile efforts over the years, including welcoming home former prisoners of war from Vietnam at a time when those who fought in the war were sometimes spat upon, and involving herself in a Foster Grandparents Program for mentally disabled children — according to an obit in The New York Times — she was generally regarded in the press as stylish but extravagant and aloof. She was petite, slender, exercised daily and wore expensive, designer clothing at a time when the country was still hobbled with the remains of the 1970s crushing recession. Her first public relations interest was not her own image but that of her husband.
So when she raised more than $200,000 from another contributor to buy a 220-place setting of new presidential china, the first since President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, she was most unpopular as a result. That seemed to reinforce her unflattering image.
Nancy Reagan as first lady traveled widely to speak out against drug and alcohol abuse, especially among young people, and she is the one who coined the phrase, “Just say no.” She also publicly urged women to get mammograms every year after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at a time when that disease was still whispered. And, as you might expect, she was a powerful advocate for new research into Alzheimer’s.
This is how she affected me. When our press group visited with President Carter, we were given lunch in a cardboard box that we held on our laps as we sat in a circle in the Oval Office. It consisted of two halves of different sandwiches, an apple, a bag of chips and a hardboiled egg. I clearly recall watching the president shaking salt on his egg and alternately taking bites. Although I was thrilled to be there and I appreciated the effort to project an image of austerity, I thought it seemed more fitting for a picnic on the lawn than one in the nerve center of the most powerful country in the world.
At President Reagan’s lunch, we ate in the East Wing at cloth-covered tables and were served white wine with our veal scaloppine on beautiful dishes. Now I am not particularly stylish or slender and certainly not a spendthrift, but I wanted to tell Mrs. Reagan, “Right on!”
Technology has made it possible for us to stick both of our virtual feet in our virtual mouths.
Last week, I wrote about poor sportsmanship by a father at a basketball game. Before I started the column, I asked my wife if she thought he might see the article and get upset. She said, “Wait, first, what’s the chance that he’ll look for it; and, second, it’s not like you’re going to be naming names.”
She was right. I wasn’t planning to put his name in the paper or call attention to him. He made a sudden barking noise while one of the players on the other team was about to shoot a free throw. The players on the other team, their coach and, most importantly, the referee took exception to his conduct. The referee ejected him.
Recognizing that there was something to share with TBR readers, I wrote about the incident. I’m sure this gentleman isn’t the only one to cross a line at a child’s sporting event. I’ve heard parents screaming at their kids, at their kids’ coaches, at referees and anyone who will listen in the heat of the moment. After all, these games are critically important. A loss might mean their child only gets a second-place trophy that will collect dust on a shelf somewhere, while a win would mean they would get a slightly bigger trophy that collects slightly more dust on a shelf somewhere else.
I wrote the column, sent it to my editor electronically and went about the usual business of my day. By about 6 p.m., it occurred to me that my editor didn’t acknowledge the column the way she usually does. Then it hit me, like a punch to my stomach. My breathing got shorter and shallower and my hands felt hot and cold at the same time.
With an anxious scowl on my face, I went back to my email “sent” folder and I saw it. “Oh no!” I shouted, stunned by my blunder. You see, my editor and the wife of the man who made a scene at the basketball game have the same first name. I had typed the first three letters of my editor’s name and the computer mischievously misdirected the column. I stand by what I wrote, but I had no intention of sending the column to this man’s wife.
Realizing my error, I frantically called my wife, which compounded my mistake. In the panic of the moment, I dialed my daughter’s cellphone number, who was in the middle of volleyball practice. She raced to call me back in case something was wrong. Something was, indeed, wrong, but I didn’t want to distract her. Forcing myself to try to sound calm, I said something like, “Nah-everything-all-right-bye.”
I finally reached my wife, who patiently talked me back from the ledge. She suggested I write to the man’s wife and tell her that I misfired in my email. It wasn’t the end of the world and, before long, my wife assured me I’d find it funny in a “I can’t believe I really did that” way.
I did what my wife suggested and the man’s wife said she thought I had sent her the column on purpose. I assured her it was a mistake. That’s where the conversation ended.
I have been on the other side of such emails. One of my editors wrote to someone she thought was another editor about how annoyed she was with my story. It’s about 20 years since that email reached me and I had almost forgotten about it … almost.
Each January, the governor of the State of New York puts out a proposed budget from which the legislative and executive branches will base their negotiations to determine a final budget.The budget is set to be passed by March 31; the date that marks the end of the fiscal year for the state. Just as in years before, our state legislature is in the process of reviewing the proposed budget.
There are several proposals in the budget that, if passed, will have an impact on the Medicaid program as we know it in New York State. Specifically, two in particular will affect married couples in need of care.
For the 27th year there is a proposal that “spousal refusal” be abolished in the home care Medicaid setting. Spousal refusal is the mechanism by which the spouse of a Medicaid applicant can maintain a Community Spouse Resource Allowance (CSRA) of assets above the Medicaid level as long as the spouse receiving Medicaid maintains assets below the permissible amount of $14,850.00.
The removal of this provision from our program would not only apply to spouses but to other “legally responsible relatives” including the parents of children in need of the Medicaid program to help pay for the cost of care. The fear of losing the spousal refusal option is that this will force individuals to put a child or spouse in a nursing home in order to maintain enough assets to support themselves or force divorce or separation.
Compounding the issue of the loss of spousal refusal in the home care setting is the proposal to reduce the CSRA to $23,844.00. Currently, the law in New York states that a spouse can have up to $74,820.00 while the federal maximum is $119,220.00.Many fear that reducing the CSRA would make it difficult for couples to have a large enough emergency fund, putting them one leaky roof or flooded basement away from impoverishment.
Oftentimes, the spouse requiring Medicaid may live a long life beyond that of their sick spouse. The loss of these two important parts of our Medicaid program will force the healthy spouse to spend all of their money on the sick spouse and be left without assets to take care of his or her own needs.
Nancy Burner, Esq. practices elder law and estate planning from her East Setauket office.
The author poses with Tyler Christopher, aka Prince Nikolas Cassadine, of ‘General Hospital.’ Photo by Rebecca Budig
By Kerri Glynn
“5 … 4 … 3 …”
Time to move. Walk through the beaded curtain. Pause by the table. Chat with the bearded man. Exit downstage.
But wait! What’s my motivation?Who is this man? My husband? Lover? Business partner? What was I doing here in Las Vegas — so far from Port Charles?
I was a cast member on “General Hospital.” Okay. I was an extra. But I’d dreamt about this for 39 years and it was finally happening.
Rewind to November 17, 1981. I was one of 30 million people who watched the wedding of “General Hospital’s”Luke and Laura. I was directing a high school production of “Barefoot in the Park” and my stage manager brought in a small, portable TV — the kind with rabbit ears — and we halted our rehearsal to watch the nuptials. It was the highest rated hour in American soap opera history, and the super couple ended up on the cover of People and Newsweek magazines. They were credited with taking daytime out of the closet so people were no longer ashamed to say “I watch a soap opera.”
I was never ashamed.
I’ve been watching “General Hospital” on and off since 1967. Sometimes I didn’t see it for weeks, sometimes months, even years. But I’d catch up on holidays and summer vacations, and it was pretty easy to do. So many of the same characters remained; so many story lines were recapped script after script. And there was always the Soap Opera Digest magazine to grab and peruse while waiting for my turn at the supermarket counter.
As an English teacher and Vassar graduate, many of my colleagues were shocked to hear me admit my devotion to the show. Why, I wondered? What did Charles Dickens write that couldn’t be classified as soap opera? For that matter, how different is “Downtown Abbey”? The Crawleys just have a bigger house, better clothes and cooler accents.
But I never imagined the day would come when I would join the cast of my favorite show, and it was the star of that early production of “Barefoot in the Park” who made it happen. My former student is now a writer/actor and good friend of the executive producer of “General Hospital.” When he heard I was visiting LA, he asked if I could be an extra on the soap. The answer was yes and my adventure began.
A week before filming, I was contacted by the casting coordinator. Would I be a patient being wheeled down the hospital hall? Or a barfly at the Metrocourt Hotel, swilling a dirty martini? When I was toldI’d play a guest at an upscale Las Vegas hotel, I was intrigued. A Las Vegas hotel? “General Hospital” takes place in Port Charles, New York. Which characters would be visiting Las Vegas? And what would they be doing there?
I received a list of instructions — everything from a confidentiality clause (in other words, I couldn’t share any knowledge of the plot before the episode was aired) to my wardrobe instructions. Since I don’t tweet and still carry a flip phone, the first instruction was easy to follow. The second was a little harder, but it earned me a $10 wardrobe allowance.
I was due at Prospect Studios in Los Angeles at 2 in the afternoon. Most of the cast had arrived at 7 that morning and wouldn’t leave till 7 that night. After getting my ID badge from the guard, I proceeded to the stage manager’s desk to sign in. Then on to the Business Office with my passport to fill out a W-4. I was going to get paid for this? How cool was that!
The studio has seven sound stages and “Grey’s Anatomy” is another of the shows filmed there. The space was huge and held multiple sets. I could walk past the hospital chapel and the Floating Rib to the Quartermaine mansion. I recognized each one.
The other four extras were sitting in the Green Room where we’d wait for our call. Our names were Hotel Staffer and Guests 1-4. The others were professional actors, struggling to book commercials and dreaming of their big breaks. One of them had punched Luke out in an earlier episode, another had sat at Laura’s table at the Nutcracker Ball. Who would I be acting with? Fifty three scenes were being shot that day, and the characters included Scottie, Franco, Nina, Dante — you’ll recognize all these names if you, too, watch the show. (But don’t admit it.)
Then HE walked in — Tyler Christopher, “Prince Nikolas Cassadine,” the character I’d named my favorite cat after. He’s been on the show for 20 years and I’d long had a crush on him. There he was in the flesh … holding his script and getting a cup of coffee with the rest of us. I got up the courage to do it — to introduce myself and tell him about the cat and he laughed. We talked about his long lost love, “Emily” and how I longed to have her dug up and returned to him. It could happen. Characters have been revived even after they had been shot, drowned, frozen and had their major organs given to other characters. He was joined by his co-star, Rebecca Budig, aka “Hayden,” but formerly “Greenlee” from “All My Children.” She was just as nice and welcoming as Tyler. They promised me a picture after the taping.
So, it was sit and wait, and watch the monitors as other scenes were being filmed in the building. There were two directors working that day and multiple cast members. My 10 scenes would be set in the Las Vegas hotel where Nikolas and Hayden were getting married. I couldn’t have been more excited than if I’d won that Mega Powerball.
So many things surprised me that day — the size of the crew, the speed at which each scene was taped, the actors’ voices that seemed to whisper on set but be clear as a bell on video. People may mock soap opera scripts and actors, but everyone was a consummate professional. An average television series has 13 to 22 episodes, some a half hour, some a whole hour. “General Hospital” shoots about 286 one-hour episodes a year.
When my scene was called, the primary actors walked on set with their scripts in hand. The director told them where to stand and when to move. Then two of us extras were brought in. We were given our instructions. On the count of 3, we entered through the curtain. Chatted. Left. I’ll nail it next time, I thought. I’ll create my own back story. I’ll look for the cameras. I’ll …
“Taping scene 39.”
What?
“5, 4, 3 …”
We enter again. We chat. We leave.
“That’s a take.”
Four times I was called to the set. I sat and pretended to check my iPhone. I crossed the lobby with a blond girl. My daughter? Four hours later, we were thanked and asked to leave. The others did. But Rebecca Budig (bless her heart) remembered the promise and found “Nikolas” for my picture. She even took it.
As I left the studio, I looked at all the photos on the walls — pictures of cast members. The original cast — Dr. Hardy and Nurse Jessie Brewer, the Quartermaine family … and Luke and Laura’s wedding portrait. My life had come full circle. The boy I was directing would grow into a man who made my dream come true. Three weeks later I got to see myself on TV — on my favorite show — with my favorite soap star. And two weeks after that, I received a check in the mail for $260. I’d been paid for two days work because my fourth scene appeared the following day.
I’m not ashamed to say it. I LOVE that show.
Kerri Glynn is a retired English teacher who has lived in Setauket with her husband Tim for many years. Today she is a writer and tutor as well as the director of education for the Frank Melville Memorial Park.
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