Yearly Archives: 2019

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It was the youth of the Comsewogue soccer team that delivered a gift to the senior class when freshman Angelina Ortiz retied the game at 1-1 late in the first half and delivered the go-ahead goal four minutes into the second against visiting Riverhead, senior night Oct. 21. The Blue Waves rallied back when Megan McIntosh stretched the net twice, but the Warrior’s own Gianna Gritzmacher and Alyse Then both scored for the Warriors to win the game 4-2.  

The Warriors are on a roll with their winning ways notching their 6th victory in a row, concluding their regular season at 8-5-1 in Division I.

Comsewogue is solidly positioned for the post season with their opening playoff game Oct. 28 at 2:00 p.m. Details on who and where they play was not available by press time.

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Photo from Ray Anderson

By Leah Chiappino

Setauket resident and jazz musician, Ray Anderson, is celebrating a career that has been nothing but noteworthy. And at a performance at The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook Oct. 25, music lovers will get a taste of his talent and be able to witness the launch of his archives there.

Photo by Erika Kapin

The trombonist, 67, first picked up his instrument at the age of 8, after having been inspired partly by his theologian father’s jazz records that predominantly featured the famous trumpet player, Louis Armstrong. The sound of Anderson’s chosen instrument was something that he found appealing, especially since, he said, the musicians playing trombone sounded like they were having fun.

He studied music at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools with future trombone legends such as George Lewis and was taught by Frank Tirro, the future dean of the Yale School of Music.

Anderson attended three different universities, three different times, before eventually receiving a bachelor’s degree from Empire State College in Saratoga Springs in 2010.

“I’m self-educated in a lot of ways,” he said. “Performing became my education.”

He moved to Los Angeles in 1971 to attend the California Institute of the Arts, only to find the campus was not yet open. He wound up living with Stanley Crouch, a black writer and jazz critic, frequently known for his controversial views amongst the African American community on his disillusionment with the Black Power movement.

While attending college in Minnesota and Los Angeles, he played in R&B bands and joined funk and Latin bands while living in San Francisco. While Anderson looks back with great fondness on his days where he became “moderately successful” working odd jobs and playing music in San Francisco, he said he felt the urge to discover the New York music scene, so he moved to Manhattan in 1973.

“I was 20 years old and had no real roots anywhere,” he said. “I figured I would move to New York and see what happened.”

He performed with clarinetist and saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre and drummer Barry Altschul while playing with composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton’s quartet for three years. He has since performed in a variety of his own bands, such as the Pocket Brass Band and Lapis Lazuli band.

Anderson recently returned from a European tour with BassDrumBone, a band named after its bass, drums, trombone players. He started the group in 1977 with his friends bassist Mark Helias and drummer Gerry Hemingway. It has been running ever since.

“I’ve learned so much from both of them,” he said. “They’re my age so it’s not a traditional teacher-student type of thing, but they’re both really, really wise.”

His first feature album was blues guitarist Luther Allison’s “Night Life,” before recording for Gramavision, as well as European record label Enja and others.

“I didn’t have a career where I worked as a member of a more established senior band, so I learned a lot from my contemporaries,” he said.

Anderson said he recently recorded a solo trombone piece based off of a solo performance he did in France and is currently in the process of sending it to record companies.

“That’s been a longtime dream,” he said.

Anderson describes his style as “witty” and “challenging,” and he acknowledges and respects the players who have come before him

Yet, having composed more than 100 pieces, Anderson has learned to take a lighthearted approach to music with songs titled “If I Ever Had a Home It Was a Slide Trombone,” and “Raven-a-Ning,” the latter piece being composed for his son, Raven, and a play on the classic “Rhythm-a-Ning” by Thelonious Monk.

While his calm and joyous approach to life is evident in conversation, he had to overcome tragedy when his wife, lyricist and poet, Jackie Raven, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 and passed away in 2002.

“I had two young motherless kids and my life as a touring musician had to stop,” he said.

Photo by Ssirus Pakzad

Anderson was the artist in residence at Stony Brook University for six months in 2001, and in 2003 was appointed director of jazz studies, a title he has held ever since.

“It enabled me to stay home, pay the bills and care for my kids who were 11 and 15 when she died,” he said. “I’m sure you can appreciate why I’m boundlessly grateful to this community for all it has given me over these many years.”

Anderson reports that both his kids are doing well and he got remarried last year, to Suzy Goodspeed.

The musician said his many years as a full-time performer make him the perfect candidate to mentor emerging musicians.

“I’m a performer first and teacher second,” he said. “I know what music feels like when you’re actually doing it.”

Anderson said his life as a performer doesn’t dismay his love for teaching.

“It’s so rewarding to be able to pass something on that’s useful,” he said. “It’s really tied in with the whole idea of trying to pay it forward because so many people gave me so much [mentorship].”

All of the courses he teaches revolve around performing. In the graduate program, he plays with students in a band and requires them to write their own music.

“We go through the process of editing and revising, and trying to find out what works and what doesn’t,” he said.

Tom Manuel, The Jazz Loft’s president and founder, praised Anderson’s impact in the jazz field.

“I think what makes Ray so important to jazz is not just that he’s amazingly talented in the world of jazz, but he has been recognized as one of those incredibly and creative inventive voices that is creating something that is new, which is hard to do,” he said.

Anderson will be performing at The Jazz Loft, where he serves as vice president, Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. with his Pocket Brass Band, consisting of just trumpet, trombone, sousaphone and drums.

“I’ve played a lot of big gigs, and it’s really exciting to be in an audience of thousands of people, but playing in a small place like The Jazz Loft is often better because of the intimacy between the audience and the band,” he said.

Friday’s performance will be preceded by the launch of the Ray Anderson Archives exhibit with a reception at the venue at 6 p.m.

Edward T. McMullen Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, visited Port Jeff High School Oct. 18. Photo by Julianne Mosher

By Julianne Mosher

Earl L. Vandermeulen High School welcomed the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Edward T. McMullen Jr., as its 2019 Wall of Fame inductee, adding his name to the dozens of special alumni that graduated from the district.

On Oct. 18, McMullen visited his former alma mater, where he graduated from in 1983, and walked through the halls of his former middle and high schools. He commented on what has changed and reminisced about the fun times he had in these same classrooms. 

“The great thing is nothing has changed, it still feels as warm and welcoming as it did when I was a student here.”  

– Edward T. McMullen Jr.

After leaving Port Jefferson in the early ’80s, McMullen continued his education at Hampden-Sydney College, where he earned a bachelor’s in political science. In 1995, he was selected to participate in The American Swiss Foundation’s Young Leaders program, an annual conference that works to foster mutual understanding among the next generation of leaders in Switzerland and the U.S. 

“It’s always nice to honor alumni,” High School Principal Eric Haruthunian said. “It’s great to see them grow to make positive changes in the world.”

McMullen founded McMullen Public Affairs, a corporate advertising firm, before he was appointed by President Donald Trump (R) in 2017 to serve as U.S. ambassador to the two countries.  

When he visited the school on Friday, he brought along his high school friends and was joined by former teachers. One teacher in particular, Richard Olson, who taught U.S. history for almost four decades and retired in 2002, was ecstatic to show off McMullen to passing students and administrators throughout the halls.

Edward T. McMullen Jr. in front of the Port Jeff High School Wall of Fame. Photo by Julianne Mosher

“This is one of my students,” he’d say throughout the tour. During his speech when he received his plaque, McMullen acknowledged that the education he received from Olson was partly why he ended up on the path that he did.

“Mr. Olson was an inspiration for many students because of his love of history,” he said.  

The tour ended at the library where the celebration began. McMullen was greeted by members of the school orchestra and dozens of students and teachers sat in for his inauguration to the hall of fame, which was created in 1996 and honors Port Jefferson graduates who made a difference in categories like academics, fine arts, sports and community service. 

“To think that our school district had a part in this, having an ambassador, means so much,” Superintendent Paul Casciano said. “There’s so much prestige.”

Before he left, he had one piece of advice to the students sitting in the audience. 

“Go to college, learn languages and travel the world,” he said. “The world needs intelligent, smart people like you.”

 

The 25th annual Spirits Cemetery Tour: The Unforgotten will be long remembered as a great success for Three Village Historical Society and a night of spooky merriment for both volunteers and visitors. The event, co-chaired by Frank Turano and Janet McCauley, was sold out days in advance and attracted around 340 visitors.

The actors, dressed in period garb provided by Antique Costumes and Prop Rental by Nan Guzzetta, mingled among tombstones and tourgoers at the Setauket Presbyterian Church cemetery and Caroline Church of Brookhaven cemetery. Twelve “spirits” recounted stories of lives that spanned the centuries and crossed the continents, but all connected to Setauket.  

Before embarking on the walk, groups gathered in the Presbyterian Church community room. There they enjoyed complimentary donuts and cider, time period appropriate harpsichord music from Kyle Collins of Three Village Chamber Players, an exhibit curated by archivist Karen Martin of photos and other primary source materials about the people who were depicted on the tour and an interactive photo station. The tour ended at the Caroline Church carriage shed, where guests sampled cookies and apple cider. Food and beverages were provided by Ann Marie’s Farm Stand, Stop & Shop East Setauket and Starbucks East Setauket. 

Preparations are already underway for Spirits Cemetery Tour October 2020, which will feature the Spirits of Chicken Hill! If you are interested in volunteering as an actor or in some other capacity for the next tour, please call 631-751-3730 or visit www.tvhs.org.

Photos by Anthony White and Beverly C. Tyler

 

Last week, Long Island was slammed and hit by an unexpected fall nor’easter which brought in heavy rains and gusting winds that exceeded 50 mph. 

The powerful winds from the storm caused downed power wires and felled large trees and branches. According to the National Weather Service, parts of Long Island dealt with moderate coastal flooding and about 2-3 inches of rain.   

More than 73,000 PSEG Long Island customers lost power during the storm. Within 48 hours, PSEG restored service to nearly 100 percent of customers affected by the storm on Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 16-17, according to PSEG media relations. The rest were restored by that Friday. 

By the end of the nor’easter, crews had removed a total of 1,206 trees and large branches downed by the storm.

In Port Jefferson Harbor a sailing sloop named Grand Prix slipped her moorings and drifted aground in front of Harborfront Park, according to local photographer Gerard Romano who took a photo featured on the cover of this week’s paper. Another sailing vessel called the Summer Place washed ashore in Mount Sinai Harbor.

The Town of Brookhaven Highway Department responded to nearly 250 calls during the 24-hour storm. 

“We worked directly with PSEG as they dispatched their crews to areas where trees had fallen on wires so we could safely remove the debris after the power lines were de-energized,” town Highway Superintendent Daniel Losquadro (R) said in a statement. “Crews worked throughout the night to clear the roadways swiftly and efficiently.”

 

By Irene Ruddock

I try to create art that will make the viewer smile – a cartoon in metal that tells a story.’
— Gary Garret

Huntington resident Gary Garrett, who is presently exhibiting his sculptures at the Reboli Center for Art and History until the end of October, studied advertising, art and design at SUNY Farmingdale. Having worked in various advertising industries in New York City for five years, he found that he was no longer inspired by that world, so he decided to pursue his family’s used auto parts business. While working in this industry, he recycled automotive parts to remake into the sculptures that he exhibits today. His exhibitions include Huntington Gallery, Long Island University Gallery, Mather Hospital, Reboli Center, the Salmagundi Club, the Long Island Professional Sculpture Shows and the Huntington Art League Gallery. 

Your signature piece, Who Let the Dog’s Out? is on exhibit at the Reboli Center for Art and History. What was your inspiration? 

After I saw Norman Rockwell’s painting of parents and kids going on vacation called “Coming and Going,” I was inspired to replace that vision with a depiction of a mother dog and her puppies eagerly going on vacation. 

What materials did you use for this? 

For this sculpture, I used 1948 Dodge doors that I found in the junkyard — the only “found object” in this sculpture. All the rest were sculpted by me with metal, even the eyes, hair and tongue. I tried to make the hair look as though it was bent in the wind and one of dogs eyes making contact with the viewer. I wanted all of it look as though it was moving. 

What other materials do you use to create your sculptures? 

I find components for my artwork at garage sales, farm auctions and auto salvage yards. I like to give new life to old tools, industrial gears, car parts and farm equipment incorporating them to create welded assemblages that tell a whimsical story. 

How does recycling of materials represent your view of society?

 I think it is important to save and use items from our “throw-away” society. The “found objects” that I use were made to last and I appreciate that aspect. 

What has been your most rewarding experience? 

I was thrilled to show at the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club in New York City! They showed my sculptor of President Trump on the cover of a Fifth Avenue billboard. It is a humorous piece that can be interpreted many different ways. That was thrilling! 

You choose to represent your art showing the humorous side of life. Why do you think that is?  

I have always been a storyteller                                                    to my family, friends and children. I try to take ordinary experiences from every day life that we take for granted to find the humorous side of it. We need to take time to laugh. 

Are there artists whom you particularly admire? 

I admire Norman Rockwell, Al Hirschfield and Shel Silverstein. Each saw the humor in everyday life. For instance, I love Silverstein’s book about a child who befriends a tree. I like Rockwell’s painting of all the ethnic groups working together. That one painting tells the story of how our immigration system made America. 

What are your future plans for your sculpture? 

I will be exhibiting at Deepwells Mansion in the spring. My plan is to keep doing art whenever I become inspired. I don’t know where an idea will come from next, but I am always open to it. I would also love one of my pieces to be part of a permanent collection at a children’s hospital so it could bring joy to many children. I can always be contacted at [email protected] or at 516-557-6990. 

Photo from YouTube

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Looking back at the six-game American League Championship Series, it’s clear that the Houston Astros were the better team. Tough as it is to write that when my fan allegiance is with the Yankees, the Astros had more clutch hitting, better defense, and better starting and relief pitching. Yes, the two teams were fairly evenly matched when it came to runs scored. The Yankees covered up many of their sins — and deficiencies — with a few timely long balls and some standout pitching performances from Masahiro Tanaka and James Paxton.

While hindsight is always perfect, because we know who failed and who succeeded, I want to ask an obvious question. Why was our designated hitter doing little more than striking out? It’s clear that our enigmatic catcher Gary Sánchez, who has a talent for crushing balls deep into the night, seems to disappear at big moments.

And, while we’re playing the hindsight game, it seems obvious that closer Aroldis Chapman, who has lost a few miles per hour on his fastball and now relies on an effective slider, should have avoided pitching to José Altuve with two outs, a runner on first and a defensive replacement on deck for Houston.

So, one at a time. Edwin Encarnación was a compelling pickup from Seattle Mariners during the season, offering a few moments of ball-bashing power. Perhaps because of injury, or maybe because he was trying to hit a defining titanic home run, he couldn’t do much of anything in the postseason. The same seems true for the multimillion dollar Giancarlo Stanton.

Given that both can hit huge home runs and are capable of changing the complexion of a low-scoring game, I understand the urge to put them in, but, at some point, if they are not getting it done, why not go with other options? Sure, Cameron Maybin doesn’t hit as many home runs and isn’t as physically imposing. 

If manager Aaron Boone had inserted him into the lineup, would he have taken away the possibility of using Maybin as a late-inning defensive replacement? That’s possible. OK, then, how about using Austin Romine as the designated hitter? Yes, I understand that Boone might also have been saving him to give Sánchez a break in a game where defense takes precedence.

If either of them had become an unconventional designated hitter, would fans be screaming about the panic move if they had failed? Yes, of course, they would. But at least Boone would have been trying something — anything — when he seemed wedded to a script that wasn’t working in a short series.

The same thing holds true for Adam Ottavino. The guy was a great pitcher during the season, but he ran into the postseason twilight zone. It happens. Sit him down and don’t let him affect the outcome of games.

As for Sánchez, he may have hit batting practice pitches into the next county, but that’s irrelevant. He wasn’t getting it done at or behind the plate. Maybe even a single day off would have changed his approach and would have helped. In a short series, managers can’t wait to see if something that’s not working turns around. The team — and its desperate fans — don’t have the luxury of that kind of time.

The question for next year isn’t whether the Yankees will get a starting pitcher who can throw more innings than the present incumbents, or whether Stanton will make a meaningful postseason contribution. The question is: Will Boone buy into the idea of a team game and give other players a chance? After all, the last time the Yankees won the World Series was a decade ago, in 2009.

Peter Koo. Photo by ©Gina Motisi, 2019/ CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

We built a process that works, but we don’t know why. That’s what one of the newest additions to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory hopes to find out.

Researchers have applied artificial intelligence in many areas in biology and health care. These systems are making useful predictions for the tasks they are trained to perform. Artificial intelligence, however, is mostly a hands-off process. After these systems receive training for a particular task, they learn patterns on their own that help them make predictions.

How these machines learn, however, has become as much of a black box as the human brains that created these learning programs in the first place. Deep learning is a way to build hierarchical representations of data, explained Peter Koo, an assistant professor at the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology at CSHL, who studies the way each layer transforms data and the next layer builds upon this in a hierarchical manner.

Koo, who earned his doctorate at Yale University and performed his postdoctoral research at Harvard University, would like to understand exactly what the machines we created are learning and how they are coming up with their conclusions.

“We don’t understand why [these artificial intelligence programs] are making their predictions,” Koo said. “My postdoctoral research and future research will continue this line of work.”

Koo is not only interested in applying deep learning to biological problems to do better, but he’s also hoping to extract out what knowledge these machines learn from the data sets to understand why they are performing better than some of the traditional methods.

“How do we guide black box models to learn biologically meaningful” information? he asked. “If you have a data set and you have a predictive model that predicts the data well, you assume it must have learned something biologically meaningful,” he suggested. “It turns out, that’s not always the case.”

Deep learning can pick up other trends or links in the data that might not be biologically meaningful. In a simplistic example, an artificial intelligence weather system that tracked rain patterns during the spring might conclude, after seven rainy Tuesdays, that it rains on Tuesdays, even if the day of the week and the rain don’t have a causative link.

“If the model is trained with limited data that is not representative, it can easily learn patterns that are correlative in the training data,” Koo said. He tries to combat this in practice by holding out some data, which is called validating data. Scientists use it to evaluate how well the model generalizes to new data.

Koo plans to collaborate with numerous biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, as well as other quantitative biologists, like assistant professors Justin Kenney and David McCandlish.

In an email, Kenney explained that the Simons Center is “very interested in moving into this area, which is starting to have a major impact on biology just as it has in the technology industry.”

The quantitative team is interested in high-throughput data sets that link sequence to function, which includes assays for protein binding, gene expression, protein function and a host of others. Koo plans to take a “top down” approach to interpret what the models have learned. The benefit of this perspective is that it doesn’t set any biases in the models.

Deep learning, Koo suggested, is a rebranding of artificial neural networks. Researchers create a network of simple computational units and collectively they become a powerful tool to approximate functions.

A physicist by training, Koo taught himself his expertise in deep learning, Kenney wrote in an email. “He thinks far more deeply about problems than I suspect most researchers in this area do,” he  wrote. Kenney is moving in this area himself as well, because he sees a close connection between the problem of how artificial intelligence algorithms learn to do things and how biological systems mechanistically work.

While plenty of researchers are engaged in the field of artificial intelligence, interpretable deep learning, which is where Koo has decided to make his mark, is a considerably smaller field.

“People don’t trust it yet,” Koo said. “They are black box models and people don’t understand the inner workings of them.” These systems learn some way to relate input function to output predictions, but scientists don’t know what function they have learned.

Koo chose to come to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in part because he was impressed with the questions and discussions during the interview process.

Koo, daughter Evie (left) and daughter Yeonu (right) during Halloween last year. Photo by Soohyun Cho

He started his research career in experimental physics. As an undergraduate, he worked in a condensed matter lab of John Clarke at the University of California at Berkeley. He transitioned to genomics, in part because he saw a huge revolution in next-generation sequencing. He hopes to leverage what he has learned to make an impact toward precision medicine. 

Biological researchers were sequencing all kinds of cancers and were trying to make an impact toward precision medicine. “To me, that’s a big draw,” Koo said, “to make contributions here.”

A resident of Jericho, Koo lives with his wife, Soohyun Cho, and their 6-year-old daughter Evie and their 4-year old-daughter Yeonu.

Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, he joined the Army Reserves after high school, attended community college and then transferred to UC Berkeley to get his bachelor’s degree in physics.

As for his decision to join Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Koo said he is excited with the opportunity to combine his approach to his work with the depth of research in other areas. 

“Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is one of those amazing places for biological research,” Koo said. “What brought me here is the quantitative biology program. It’s a pretty new program” that has “incredibly deep thinkers.”

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Stephen Bello

Bello appointed Executive Director

Northwell Health has appointed Stephen Bello as the new executive director of its Eastern region, which includes Glen Cove Hospital, Plainview Hospital, Syosset Hospital, South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, Huntington Hospital, Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead along with ambulatory care centers. 

“Northwell Health’s Eastern region has seen a great deal of growth in recent years and I look forward to bringing more new services and programs to Eastern Nassau County and Suffolk County,” said Bello. 

Photo from Northwell Health

GoHealth Urgent Care, together with its partner Northwell Health, recently opened a new Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care center to serve the communities of Huntington and Centerport. Located at 241 East Main Street in Huntington, next to the Huntington Crescent Club, the new center offers convenient services such as onsite laboratory and X-rays, electronic medical record integration with Northwell Health, with day/walk-in visits and short wait times, extended hours and are open on weekends and holidays.

“We’re excited that the Huntington and Centerport communities will have another Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent care center right in their neighborhood,” said Sarah Arora, New York market president. “Our centers provide unmatched customer experience and top-quality urgent care, allowing patients to stay within the Northwell Health network they already know and trust.”

“Northwell Health’s partnership with GoHealth Urgent Care will continue to provide patients with a more personalized and innovative urgent care experience,” said Adam Boll, executive director of Joint Venture Operations at Northwell Health. Call 631-812-2873 for more information.