A scene from a previous TVHS Candlelight House Tour
Like many small not-for-profits, the Three Village Historical Society has struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas in the past — from our beginnings — we were fortunate to be able to rely primarily on memberships, private donations and revenue from major events like our Candlelight House Tour — our biggest annual fundraiser. That model is not sustainable during the current pandemic.
The board of trustees has worked hard over the past 10 months in an attempt to reorganize and economize. During this time, we have developed more efficient processes, secured small grants, held fundraising events, lobbied both the town and county for support, met with local sister organizations regarding collaborations and consulted with others about possible strategies. Despite these efforts, like many other local businesses, we have a challenging 12 to 18 months ahead of us.
As of Jan. 22, day-to-day operations have been temporarily restricted. Programs will be suspended, and staff has been trimmed down. We will maintain our phone, email and social media communications and will continue to provide monthly Zoom lectures. Our primary purpose at this point is to ensure the care, protection and integrity of our collections and continue our online programming.
Please check our website (tvhs.org) and social media for announcements. We will continue to share updates throughout this period. While there is limited response by phone, we remain available to answer questions by email and work with you. We can be contacted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 631-751-3730.
We are in this together and understand many local businesses and nonprofits are suffering. We thank you for your support and understanding. Buy local. Support local.
Jaden Sayles cruises in for a layup last Sunday in Newark.
NEWARK, N.J. — A day after coach Geno Ford lamented the Stony Brook men’s basketball team’s defensive execution, the Seawolves clamped down on Jan. 24.
Stony Brook rebounded from a defeat the previous day to beat host NJIT, 56-44.
The Seawolves held the Highlanders to 13 first-half points. It was the fewest points scored by a Seawolves opponent in a half since UMBC mustered only 10 in the second half of an 83-39 loss to Stony Brook on Feb. 19, 2013.
Juan Felix Rodriguez (16 points) and Frankie Policelli (11) each scored in double-figures in Sunday’s victory, while Mouhamadou Gueye contributed a career-high 14 of the Seawolves’ eyepopping 55 rebounds.
Stony Brook trailed 36-35 after a three-pointer from NJIT’s Miles Coleman with 10:58 remaining in the game. The Seawolves then answered with a 10-0 run that included three field goals from Rodriguez.
The Seawolves (7-7, 5-3) maintained the lead the rest of the way despite shooting 1-for-19 from three-point range for the game.
Stony Brook snapped a three-game conference losing streak to stay in the upper echelon of the conference.
“It was a grind,” Rodriguez said. “Coming from the two losses from the last weekend and the loss yesterday, we needed this win. We came in with the mentality to get that W.”
Said Ford: “As a staff I felt like we were playing for our lives today. Losing stinks.”
Stony Brook held NJIT leading scorer Zach Cooks to four points on 1-for-13 shooting from the field. The 55 rebounds marked the most since producing that same number against Farmingdale State on Nov. 11, 2019.
“I was super-pleased with our defensive effort, obviously, today,” Ford said. “I know they missed some shots. But clearly we did, too. We missed almost all of them.
“It’s the first game since we’ve returned (from a two-week COVID pause) that we mentally and physically competed at a high level. That looked like our team from four weeks ago. And not because we won. We could have lost, and I would have just said, ‘Well, we didn’t shoot it good.’ But, man, we did a look of good things. Anytime you out-rebound people like we did, you know guys are playing super hard.”
With America East shuffling schedules due to COVID-related pauses, Stony Brook now will host Hartford Jan. 30 and 31 at Island Federal Arena. Start time for both games is 2 p.m.
This week’s shelter pet is regal Tiger, up for adoption at the Smithtown Animal Shelter. Can you believe that this handsome and sweet cat was left behind when his family moved?! Neither can we.
Tiger
Not only is he beautiful, with his stunning eyes, but he is also loving and outgoing. Tiger enjoys the company of humans and other cats. He would make a wonderful addition to any family! He comes neutered, microchipped and is up to date on his vaccines.
If you are interested in meeting Tiger, please call ahead to schedule an hour to properly interact with him in the shelter’s Meet and Greet Room.
The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. Shelter operating hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the weekend. For more information, please call 631-360-7575 or visit www.smithtownanimalshelter.com.
The written word has the ability to stir up emotions in ways little else can. Whether it’s a collection of zealous love poems, a thought-provoking novel or the adrenaline rush of a favorite song on the radio, words are powerful.
Like many Americans, essayist and novelist Roger Rosenblatt is heartbroken over the intense and sometimes even violent divisions in America today.
“I was really concerned with how ready people are to argue and fight with one another,” said Rosenblatt, who lives on the East End. “And I started to think, ‘Can I make a difference here?’”
Alice McDermott
An idea came quickly, and Rosenblatt fired off a letter to friends, former students and colleagues, all of them writers in some fashion. His message: Let’s come together and use our talents to encourage unity and peace.
A few days later, he had dozens of enthusiastic responses. The result is Write America: A Reading for Our Country, a free, weekly online event hosted by Book Revue in Huntington. Beginning Feb. 1 and continuing through September, authors from around the country and all walks of life will read from their work, share their thoughts, and take questions from viewers.
Book Revue last partnered with Rosenblatt in the fall, when they held a celebration and comedic “roast” for his 80th birthday. Event coordinator Loren Limongelli said they were thrilled to hear from him again, especially with such a wonderful idea.
“Roger has gathered artists from all ages, races and backgrounds to bridge the divide in our nation and reach people with the reminder that we’re all human,” said Limongelli, who will emcee the series. “We’ve had unwavering support from the community during the pandemic and we want to give back to them by providing really exciting events with well-known authors.”
The growing list of participants runs the gamut from up-and-coming authors to award-winning and nationally recognized writers, including Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Major Jackson, Alan Alda, Alice McDermott, Amy Hempel, Natalie Diaz, Tyehimba Jess, Paul Auster, and many more.
“I wanted to make sure we had representation from all parts of the country, different kinds of people, and different types of writing as well: poets, novelists, essayists, women, men, people of color,” Rosenblatt said. “They got it. Writers are generally private people and we joke that they shouldn’t let us out, but there was a unique opportunity here to do some good. We feel like we have a responsibility to reach out to the public.”
The writers were encouraged to read from works they feel are healing and inspiring for all people, regardless of differences in politics or opinion.
Alan Alda
Suffolk County local Alan Alda has spent the latest part of his career immersed in the art of communication. He has written memoirs and books exploring how we relate to one another, what’s most important in life and why it all matters.
“I think it’s great that Roger has opened a door for writers to be able to make their own special contribution to national healing through their writing,” Alda said.
“I’m not sure what I’ll be reading yet, but I have my eye on a description I wrote in my last book of the day mortal enemies took an impromptu day off from killing each other.”
Novelist Alice McDermott recalled that in his letter, Roger said that while writers don’t make many observable changes in the world, they can make a little noise.
“Is this important? I think so. Our public discourse of late has made it so easy for us to dismiss and to vilify one another, to silence and to degrade,” she said. “Maybe we can help to restore, even temporarily — we are human, after all, and full of flaws — the way we speak about and think about and even feel about our world and one another.”
Write America kicks off on Feb. 1 and will be held live at 7 p.m. Mondays on CrowdCast, a web-based meeting platform. All events are free. Registration is required by visiting www.bookrevue.com/write-america-series. For additional information, call 631-271-1442.
WRITE AMERICA SCHEDULE:
February 1
Rita Dove
Rita Dove & Billy Collins
February 8
Francine Prose & Paul Muldoon
February 15
Russell Banks, Major Jackson and Alice McDermott
February 22
Patricia Marx & Garry Trudeau
March 1
Alan Bergman & Adam Gopnik
March 8
Alan Alda & Arlene Alda
March 15
Linda Pastan, Paul Harding and Juan Felipe Herrera
March 22
George H. Colt & Anne Fadiman
March 29
Kirsten Valdez Quade & Nick Flynn
April 5
Kurt Andersen & Amy Hempel
April 12
Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones &Julie Sheehan
April 19
Natalie Diaz & Daniel Halpern
April 26
Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt &David Remnick
May 3
Carlos Fonseca & Rose Styron
May 10
Lloyd Schwartz & Priya Jain
May 17
Patricia McCormick & Michelle Whittaker
May 24
Grace Schulman & Lance Morrow
May 31
Bruce Weber & Molly Gaudry
More dates will be announced with authors … Adrienne Unger, Amy Cacciola, Cornelia Channing, Dar-Juinn Chou, David Lynn, Elizabeth Hawes Weinstock, Emma Walton Hamilton, Genevieve Sly Crane, Gregory Pardlo, Hilma Wolitzer, Jacqueline Leo, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Jennifer McDonald, Jill McCorkle, Jillian LaRussa, John Leo, Joyce Maynard, Jules Feiffer, Kate Lehrer, Kaylie Jones, Lora Tucker, Lou Ann Walker, Richard Ford, Robert Lipsyte, Robert Reeves, Roger Rosenblatt, Vjay Seshadri, Suchita Nayar, Susan Isaacs, Susan Minot, Tyehimba Jess, Ursula Hegi, and Vanessa Cuti.
This article first appeared in Prime Times, a supplement of TBR News Media, on Jan. 28, 2021.
Tom Caruso of Smithtown snapped this photo of an Eastern Bluebird at Nissequogue River State Park in Kings Park on Feb. 17.He writes, ‘There was a flock of these birds flying through the trees and they took short breaks to rest on branches, but their rest was short lived. I was lucky to catch this little guy sitting still!
Looking to make a difference? Become an Ombudsman volunteer today.
Ombudsmen provide advocacy and resources for people who reside in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes, assisted living, and adult care facilities. They advocate for and resolve problems for all individuals living in long term care communities by protecting rights, honoring dignity, and ensuring respect. Trained certified volunteers regularly visit assigned facilities so that residents may have the highest quality of life and care.
For further details, call the Ombudsman Program of Suffolk County at 631-470-6755.
Comsewogue Public Library in Port Jefferson Station presents an important online program, COVID-19 and Vaccines: Just the Facts, on Monday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m.
Get a science-based overview of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 including a discussion on the safety of vaccines, how long immunity may last, and more with Ph.D. pharmacologist Andrew Clair. Open to all. Visit www.cplib.org/a-online-programming/ for information on how to participate in this program. Questions? Call 631-928-1212 and ask for Adult Services.
You would think a global pandemic that has lasted nearly a year would have gotten New York more organized, right?
In the beginning, none of us had any idea what was going on with COVID-19. Every day was a new battle, and we had to evolve everything in our lives constantly.
That was OK. It was fair. The virus was new and we, as Americans, never experienced anything like this before. There was a learning curve.
Back in March, April and even into June, it was a little more understandable knowing that getting tested for the coronavirus was hard. We didn’t have enough testing, supplies or even gloves for the nurses and doctors to wear as they administered the swab.
Fine. But why is it almost February 2021 and we still have practically no organizational skills?
Why is it that New Yorkers are told one thing about testing and now vaccines, but when they try to take advantage of it, they’re denied?
We have co-workers, family members and friends who should be getting their vaccines. They’re in the most at-risk age group, they’re workers in a medical office but aren’t first responders, they’re out in the public, working as cashiers at grocery stores and big-box retailers taking money from people they don’t know.
Why can’t they get the vaccine yet?
Reports say that there isn’t enough available yet — and supplies, once again, are low.
We understand that. We understand that there are more than 7 million people on Long Island alone.
But what we don’t understand is why there’s little transparency, and contradicting reports. Why can some people get it and others cannot?
We have heard stories of some elderly people who cannot get an appointment at all, and no one is there to help them. We hear other stories that people waited in line for nearly five hours. Other stories say that they drove up to the site and were finished in 10 minutes.
We just want answers. We want a plan. We want a serious plan that will give us a play-by-play on what to do, what to expect and a timeline.
Curveballs will happen. We saw that a lot in 2020.
But clearly the federal, state and local governments did not have “to stay organized with anything related to COVID” on their New Year’s resolutions list.
This is not the time to go with the flow. Lives are at stake.
William Shakespeare statue in Verona, Italy. Photo from DepositPhotos
By Daniel Dunaief
Daniel Dunaief
Many years ago, Madonna, and the rest of us, were “Living in a Material World.”
Well, it seems to me that we are now living in an allegorical world.
You see, we’re on a boat that’s in rough seas. We are in the middle of a Corona storm, with howling winds that threaten to rip the sails off the masts.
At the same time, the boat has numerous leaks, while the waves from the right and from the left crash into the ship.
The modern day Montagues are blaming the waves from the left for causing the danger to our ship. Without those waves, we would be able to head off in a glorious direction toward a better sunset.
At the same time, the Capulets are shouting at the waves on the right, suggesting that they have interrupted the magnificent journey, making the ship spin and rock out of control.
Never a dull moment on that ship of ours, the former captain of the ship, who reluctantly removed his steely grip from the wheel, is facing an imminent investigation from a team comprised mostly of the Capulets, who have recruited a few members of the Montagues to engage in an extensive trial.
The majority of the Montagues have a Greek chorus that laments the terrible state of affairs and encourages the new captain, whom they don’t particularly like or trust, to make sure their way of life continues and their voices continue to be important in the search for Truth, Justice and the American Way.
At the same time, the Capulets have lined up a group of people who are just as earnest and eager in their beliefs, urging the captain to ensure the future safety of the ship and all its inhabitants.
Passing people buffeted about in life rafts, some Montagues urge the captain to move on and to focus resources and efforts on the people aboard the ship. Some Capulets, on the other hand, believe the people who built the ship in the first place were, at one time or another, adrift in life rafts themselves and would like to provide refuge and safety to these wayward travelers.
All the while, the Corona winds, which started our violently, calmed down quite a bit during the summer, and have increased in intensity following Thanksgiving and the December holidays, have increased in their intensity, tearing holes in the sails and threatening to pull at the seams of the stars and stripes.
Somewhere in the middle of the ship, people who don’t define themselves as either ardent Montagues or Capulets are tending to the wounded, preparing food for others, ensuring law and order, and making the kind of shields that deflect the wind, protecting individuals and the group.
The howling wind has made it difficult for the Capulets and the Montagues to hear each other, but that hasn’t stopped either of them from pointing fingers or from blaming the other side for the condition of the waterlogged ship.
People on this American vessel have heard that ships from other nations have made it out of the storm and are enjoying calmer seas, with warm sunshine and gentle breezes.
Some day, hopefully before too long, people on both sides will figure out a way to work together, to patch the holes in the sails, to help each other and to help take the ship to calmer waters.
The Corona storm isn’t passing on its own and the residents of the ship need to pull in the same direction to maneuver to the familiar, calmer seas, where residents of the ship can, once again, enjoy peace, good health and prosperity.
As they say in literature, it is the best of times and the worst of times. You could almost say it is also a tale of two cities. Yes, the vaccine has now been developed and produced to counter the novel coronavirus. We will require two shots, whether we get the Moderna or the Pfizer-BioNTech brand, and there may even be a third possibility, one from Johnson & Johnson, that will only be a one shot deal. That’s the wonderful news.
Less than wonderful is the distribution thus far. Despite best intentions, it has been spotty and disorganized. Locations that are supposed to be vaccination sites have had to turn people away because they have run out of the vaccine or never received the shipment to begin with. Getting an appointment, as opposed to standing optimistically for hours in a line, has become an exercise of pounding the keyboard of the computer or dialing on the phone for hours on end, looking for a slot with availability.
Just about everyone I know is being helped by their children and grandchildren in this frustrating pursuit of inoculation. Those who have received the shot are living in a different city from those who have not.
To complicate the already complicated situation, the wily virus is doing what viruses do: mutating ahead of the vaccines. So far, the pharmaceutical companies are saying that their products are effective against the new strains, perhaps a little less so against the variant from South Africa than the one from the United Kingdom.
Brazil has a variant as well. And while non-American citizens originating in those countries are, for the moment, banned from entering the United States, scientists know those mutations are already here, having arrived before the ban, from Britain and Brazil so far and most probably South Africa as well.
Worse than potentially evading the vaccines is the increased degree of contagion those viruses already possess. The knowledge that scientists are already hard at work catching up to the newer strains is comforting. Such an adjustment could take six weeks, however, according to Moderna. Or perhaps a third shot of the existing vaccine might work against the variant.
So while the vaccine may be the best of times, we still have to get there, and the worst is now upon us. Sooner or later, we hope sooner, we will get the logistics of distribution worked out, but most of us will not reach that point of inoculation until mid-summer or fall at the earliest. Meanwhile more people will become ill, especially in the poorer nations unable to buy vaccines in large quantities. And with our global interactions, what pathogens exist elsewhere in the world will also come here with their new mutations.
So what can we do to help ourselves through these next few months?
Let’s remember that a simple handful of actions we already have taken can keep the viruses at bay. Washing our hands thoroughly, multiple times a day ( I practically bathe in hand lotion after all those washings); maintaining social distancing of at least 6 feet, preferably 15 feet, inside as well as outside; and wearing masks are effective defenses, if only we follow them. Working remotely and limiting travel have further contributed to containment.
On the subject of wearing masks, and at the risk of boring you with repetition because I wrote about this last week, I want to urge you to consider wearing two masks. Since the new strains are more contagious, meaning they can spread more readily, having a double barrier for them to pass through doubles our chances of escaping the disease.
The growing recommendation is to wear a surgical mask underneath and a cloth mask on top. I have tried it and find this no more uncomfortable than a single mask, and I am happier with the thought of being better protected. I throw away the surgical mask and wash the cloth one often to preserve its effectiveness, making for myself a sort of double-bagged wall.
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