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Yearly Archives: 2023

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Pixabay photos

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Even as we study evolution, we ourselves evolve over time. No, we don’t learn to fly or to breathe underwater. We change over the decades, in part because of social pressure and in part because, well, our cells, organs and experiences align to make us different decadal versions of ourselves. With that in mind, I’d like to share some snapshots from my life.

First decade:

Likes: I adored my parents (most of the time). I also appreciated the opportunity to make new friends and to play any game that involved chasing a ball.

Dislikes: long distances running, homework, dark nights, losing electricity, sitting in the middle of a station wagon with my legs cramped under me. 

Favorite food: pizza and grilled cheese with ketchup. It’s not for everyone, but I loved it.

Favorite sport to play: basketball.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: finding parents.

Second decade:

Likes: time with friends, the freedom to drive somewhere on my own (later in the decade, of course).

Dislikes: tough teachers eager to teach me too many lessons, rejections from friends, and too many questions from parents. Waiting for parents to pick me up (until I could drive). Developing an intolerance to dairy, which removed pizza, ice cream and mac and cheese from food options.

Favorite food: Good Steer burger supremes with a root beer and ballpark hot dogs.

Favorite sport to play: baseball

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: Losing parents. Getting into college.

Third decade

Likes: getting a job where someone not only paid me to do something I wasn’t sure I was qualified to do, but also sent me on planes to do it. Spending time with friends. Going on vacations with friends and family.

Dislikes: working on weekends and holidays. Going on horrible dates with people who were a little too eager to see fights where teeth got knocked out during hockey games. Then again, some of those unsuccessful dates still bring a smile to my face.

Favorite food: Thai food at a restaurant on the Upper East Side.

Favorite sport to play: volleyball.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: Finding enough time to exercise.

Fourth decade:

Likes: enjoying the miraculous connection that comes from meeting girlfriend/wife. Listening to my wife laugh and seeing her smile. Holding my son and daughter and feeling them relax enough to go to sleep.

Dislikes: trying to figure out how to handle when children got sick, needing something we didn’t have, and packing enough stuff in the diaper bag and the car for needy children.

Favorite food: Who tastes food at this point? We inhaled it in between picking up the food the kids spilled on the floor or in the car.

Favorite sport to play: softball in Central Park.

Favorite sport to watch: my daughter’s active and exciting volleyball matches and my son’s soccer games. I knew nothing about soccer, so I could just be a supportive father and fan without offering unwelcome and unhelpful advice.

Biggest worry: How to keep kids healthy.

Fifth decade:

Likes: holidays, vacations and not needing to stand over the kids when they got too close to the water. Hooray for independent swimming.

Dislikes: driving everywhere with kids and their friends who made the car stink so badly at times that I opened windows in freezing temperatures. Watching kids disappear into their cell phones.

Favorite food: fresh fish on vacations.

Favorite sport to play: I barely played anything. I coached kids and bobbed and weaved between the entitled requests from parents.

Favorite sport to watch: daughter’s volleyball and son’s baseball.

Biggest worry: helping steer kids in the right direction.

Sixth decade:

Likes: time with family and friends, days when pain in my hip stays the same or, rarely, is less than the day before.

Dislikes: not knowing how to handle important technology, an awareness that I’m older than my friend’s parents were when I was growing up, and I thought they were old.

Favorite food: anything that doesn’t keep me up at night.

Favorite sport to play: baseball or anything that doesn’t cause pain the next day.

Favorite sport to watch: baseball.

Biggest worry: the speed at which each day, month and year passes. The prevalence of anger for its own sake and the health of the planet our children are inheriting.

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Congressman George Santos, Photo from Wikimedia Commons

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

“Then give three cheers, and one cheer more, For the hardy Captain of” … no not the Pinafore but publisher of the North Shore Leader. With an appreciative nod to Gilbert & Sullivan, that line well applies to Grant Lally, who warned us of George Santos and his preposterous resume that rivals any tall tale. But unlike HMS Pinafore of 19th century fame for innocent entertainment, Santos may be a peril for our nation.

According to the Leader, a weekly community newspaper, and also The New York Times, PBS News Hour and other first line news outlets, newly elected U.S. Congressman George Santos (NY-3) is a deeply concerning fake who has totally falsified his background, assets and contacts, and who is a wanted petty criminal in Brazil. According to that country’s prosecutors, he stole checkbooks from the elderly patients of his late mother, who was a home health care nurse, and forged checks to steal merchandise. And although he claimed to have graduated from prestigious schools, he is a high school dropout who earned a high school equivalency diploma. He portrayed himself as having worked for top line financial institutions. As to being Jewish with grandparents who escaped from the Holocaust, his mother was in fact devoutly Catholic and his grandparents were born in Brazil shortly after WWII began.

Most serious are his financial claims. He said he loaned $700,000 to his campaign from personal wealth that it turns out he doesn’t have. Lying on a resume is not a crime, but lying on federal financial disclosures is, with each violation bringing a possible five years in federal prison. So where, exactly, did that large money helping him get elected come from?

A recent report in The Daily Beast, according to the Leader, showed that Santos took $56,000 from a Russian money man, a cousin of a Vladimir Putin crony, who is under international sanctions. According to the Leader, “the fact that [Santos’s] two campaigns have received large sums of money from Russian oligarchs close to Putin is cause for real alarm in the U.S. intelligence community.” They are afraid of a potential espionage threat, that he might be a foreign agent. Jim Geraghty, writing in the National Review and quoted by the Leader, offered, “For all we know, some foreign power may have bought itself a congressman. This isn’t outlandish speculation.” 

At this point, you, the reader, are probably asking yourself how it could happen that Santos wasn’t discovered far sooner by both Republicans and Democrats. According to an extensive lead article in this past Sunday’s The New York Times, he was. Republicans at several levels knew about the problem but did nothing to unmask the candidate for various reasons: inattention, underappreciated risks, otherwise distracted by the issues rather than the biographies, the promise of another GOP vote in the House, and other speculations. And some Dems knew, too, but were distracted or underestimated the threat Santos’s campaign posed.

Rather than go deeper into this issue, I would like the thrust of this column to be a celebration of the prowess of what The NYT called, “a small weekly paper on Long Island.” Run by Grant Lally, a Republican lawyer and former House candidate, it did its job of functioning as a people’s watchdog, especially on affairs of government, and reporting courageously on its findings.

“The paper published a pair of articles casting doubt on Mr. Santos’s claims that he owned extravagant cars and homes, and labeling him a ‘fabulist—a fake’, though it did not have other specifics that would later come out about his falsified resume or his past,” wrote The NYT on Sunday. “None of the bigger outlets, including The Times, followed up with extensive stories examining his real address or his campaign’s questionable spending, focusing their coverage instead on Mr. Santos’s extreme policy views and the historic nature of a race between two openly gay candidates,” The NYT continued.

Never underestimate a weekly hometown newspaper. Indeed, four cheers.

{Santos represents the 3rd Congressional District, which includes the Towns of Oyster Bay and North Hempstead and a small portion of northeast Queens.}

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Nicholas Spano

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney announced Jan. 18 that defendant Nicholas Spano was sentenced to 2 to 4 years in prison for scamming a woman out of $200,000 of her retirement and savings funds while posing as a home improvement contractor between 2019 and 2020.

“Anyone who would take advantage of a vulnerable victim via a home improvement scam or any other type of scam should be forewarned,” said District Attorney Tierney. “We take all consumer crimes seriously at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. “We will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and send you to upstate prison for scams such as this.”

According to the investigation and his own admission at the guilty plea proceeding, Spano, 59, exploited the victim from September 2019 to December 2020. Spano had been recommended to the victim by another contractor, and in September 2019 he gave an estimate for home improvement work on the victim’s Huntington residence. Upon gaining the victim’s trust, Spano manipulated the victim into giving him money for different reasons. His behavior escalated to the point where he made threats of violence against the victim, her family, and her associates. This conduct continued for more than a year, until the victim’s retirement and savings accounts were depleted.

When officers from the Suffolk County Police Department, Second Precinct, arrested Spano on April 24, 2022, he exclaimed, “She’s doing this because I took her for the money.”  Spano, pleaded guilty in November 2022, to Attempted Grand Larceny in the Second Degree.

Anyone who believes they may be a victim of any home improvement scam in Suffolk County should contact the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office at (631) 853-5602.

Criminal complaints and indictments are merely accusatory instruments. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. No one is above the law.

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Rocco
Rocco
Rocco

MEET ROCCO!

This handsome boy is a three and a half year-old Male Lab/Shar Pei/Pit Mix who arrived at the Smithtown Animal Shelter with his siblings after their dad unexpectedly passed away. Rocco is having a difficult time adjusting to his new surroundings and can be slow to come out of his shell, but when he opens up to you, you’ll see just how energetic and friendly he can be. He enjoys running around the dog park and going for walks on a leash. He has mild allergies and some chronic ear infections, and will need a home that can help manage these properly. Rocco gets along with all adults and has experience living with other dogs.

If you are interested in meeting Rocco, please fill out an application to schedule time to properly interact with him in a domestic setting, which includes the shelter’s Meet and Greet Room, the dog runs, and a Dog Walk trail.

The Smithtown Animal & Adoption Shelter is located at 410 Middle Country Road, Smithtown. Visitor hours are currently Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Sundays and Wednesday evenings by appointment only). For more information, call 631-360-7575 or visit www.townofsmithtownanimalshelter.com.

Additional Foster Opportunity:

If you have no other pets or young children at home, and are looking for a way to serve your community, please consider signing up to be a foster. Foster parents provide temporary care for cats, kittens, and dogs in their own homes. Some animals need as little as two weeks of care, while others may need care for extended periods of time.

Download the Foster Application at:

https://www.smithtownny.gov/DocumentCenter/View/4325/Foster-Application

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Kevin LaValle, above. File photo by Raymond Janis

In a special election held Tuesday, Jan. 17, Town of Brookhaven Councilman Kevin LaValle (R-Selden) was elected as Brookhaven town clerk.

Former Town Clerk Donna Lent (I) retired in November, prompting a special election to complete her unexpired term ending in 2025. An unofficial tally from the Suffolk County Board of Elections indicates LaValle secured victory handily, defeating the Democratic candidate, Lisa Di Santo of East Patchogue. So far, he has received 6,396 votes to Di Santo’s 4,940.

In an exclusive phone interview, LaValle reacted to the election outcome. 

“I’m really excited that the residents of the Town of Brookhaven put their faith in me to run a very critical department,” he said. “I’m excited about the opportunity ahead of me. Once I get sworn in, I look forward to taking on that challenge.” To his opponent, he added, “It was a great race. I wish her the best.”

Upon assuming this townwide position, LaValle will oversee a more than 25-person staff. In the meantime, he said he intends to speak with staff members, get an idea of the day-to-day operations and “start to see the office as a whole and see what we can improve.”

“I think that that’s going to be a little bit of a process to get that all together, but I’m excited to sit down with everybody,” the town clerk-elect said, adding, “It’s going to be a bit of a challenge, but I’m excited for it.”

New state election laws require at least a week for the election results to be certified. LaValle will vacate his seat on the Town Board when he is sworn in as clerk, triggering another special election — this time for his Brookhaven 3rd Council District.

The outgoing councilman pledged to remain active in the eventual transition process. “I think there are some people out there,” he said, referring to prospective candidates. “The leadership of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, they’re going to have to make the decisions on that.”

He added, “The 3rd District has been my home my whole life. It’s been a great honor to be able to represent it over the last nine years, so I’m certainly going to take a keen interest in who’s going to take over after me and certainly be a helping hand in that transition.”

LaValle could be sworn into office as Brookhaven town clerk as early as Wednesday, Jan. 25. Under town code, the board must set a special election between 60 and 90 days from the opening of the vacancy.

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Suffolk County police car. File photo

Suffolk County Police arrested a Flushing woman on Jan 17 for alleged unlawful practice of a profession during a massage parlor raid in Mount Sinai.

In response to community and quality of life complaints, Suffolk County Police Sixth Precinct Crime Section officers and the Town of Brookhaven Fire Marshal and Building Inspector conducted an investigation into New Blue Sea Relaxing Spa, located at 331 Route 25A, at approximately 4 p.m.

Following an investigation, Lan Li, 35, was charged with Unauthorized Practice of a Profession. She
was  released on a Desk Appearance Ticket and is scheduled to appear in First District Court in
Central Islip on a later date.

A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

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The award-winning, visual music journey Mesmerica has returned to the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Reichert Planetarium, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport with showings each week on Fridays and Saturdays at 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. The hour-long show features 360-degree projections and stunning 7.1 surround sound.

The program brings the music of James Hood, an award-winning composer and percussionist, together with visually hypnotic, animated 3D art curated from artists around the world. Mesmerica is designed to transcend time, relax, and soothe while simultaneously stimulating the senses.

“The power of immersive music and art is like no other art form,” Hood said. “It has the ability to create unique moods and brain states. The result is an experience that is simultaneously an epic immersive visual journey and an opportunity to de-stress.” The soundtrack, taken from Hood’s album Mesmerica, is based around the sound of a uniquely soothing percussion instrument called the “Hang.”

James Hood is renowned as a vital and versatile musical pioneer. His lengthy and varied musical resume includes playing drums in The Pretenders; an ongoing two-decades-plus run as mastermind of the visionary ambient/electronica act Moodswings; and an expansive array of production and soundtrack projects. His album Ceremony reached number one on World and New Age charts in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the UK in 2014, then repeated that success with the release of Pure Ceremony in 2015.

Tickets can be purchased directly through Hood’s Mesmerica site: PURCHASE TICKETS

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Do you recognize this man? Photo from SCPD

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Fourth Precinct Crime Section officers are seeking the public’s help to identify and locate the man who allegedly stole from a Commack store in December. 

A man allegedly stole two Dyson vacuums from Target, located at 98 Veterans Memorial Highway, at 12:14 p.m. on December 7. The merchandise was valued at approximately $900.

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 1-800-220-TIPS, utilizing a mobile app which can be downloaded through the App Store or Google Play by searching P3 Tips, or online at www.P3Tips.com. All calls, text messages and emails will be kept confidential.  

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Suffolk County Police Sixth Squad detectives are investigating a single-vehicle crash that critically
injured a woman on Jan. 16.

Susan Denise was driving a 2002 Jeep Liberty on the Long Island Expressway approximately 1⁄2 mile
west of exit 62 when the vehicle struck the center median, flipped on its side, and caught fire at
approximately 12:05 p.m. Multiple good Samaritans flipped the car right side up and extracted Denise,
who was getting burned, from the vehicle and over to the right shoulder.

Denise, 56, of Farmingville, was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital via Suffolk County Police helicopter in critical condition. The vehicle was impounded for a safety check.

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Jump ball. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Hannah Ellis drives the lane. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Maria Stamatopoulos shoots. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Annie Sheehan drives to the basket. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Hannah Ellis lets a three-pointer fly. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior GraceAnn Leonard lays up for two. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Mia Fernandes and Haylie Abrams look for the rebound. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Annie Sheehan drives the lane for the Wildcats. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Lindsay Radman and Kelsey Hughes look for the rebound. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Mia Fernandes fights her way to the rim. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Kyra Allgaier fights her way to the rim. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Hannah Ellis takes flight. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Hannah Ellis fights her way to the rim. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Kyra Allgaier boxes out GraceAnn Leonard. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Sophie Costello drives the lane. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Mia Fernandes fights her way to the rim. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Colleen Ohrtman nails another triple for the Wildcats. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Jalynn Kirschenheuter drains a three-pointer. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Colleen Ohrtman nails a triple. Photo by Bill Landon
Comsewogue’s Lindsay Radman drives to the basket. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River junior Juliana Mahan scores for the Wildcats. Photo by Bill Landon
Shoreham-Wading River senior Sophie Costello scores for the Wildcats. Photo by Bill Landon

The Comsewogue Warriors had their hands full when the undefeated Wildcats of Shoreham-Wading River came knocking Friday, Jan. 13, in a Div. IV matchup.

Looking to keep their perfect record intact, the Wildcats did just that. Their success hinged upon the senior quartet of Sophie Costello, GraceAnn Leonard, Colleen Ohrtman and Annie Sheehan, who put on a scoring fest to win the game, 86-21. 

Comsewogue’s Jalynn Kirschenheuter did what she’s done all season. A long-range scoring threat, she drained three triples and two free throws for 11 points, and Hannah Ellis banked eight.

The win lifts SWR to 6-0 in league and 13-0 overall. The Wildcats now look to overtake Westhampton for the top spot in the division.

The Warriors — at 5-2 in league, 6-4 overall — are back in action Wednesday, Jan. 18, with a road game against Mount Sinai. The Wildcats retake the court Monday, Jan. 16, when they host Miller Place. Both games tip off at 4:45 p.m.

— Photos by Bill Landon

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