The vodka martini was popularized by James Bond movies in which the super spy requested his “vodka martini” be served to him “shaken, not stirred.”
The martini, like many other cocktails’ origins, is shrouded in mystery. One theory suggests that Martinez was the original name of this popular drink, first introduced in 1860 by Professor Jerry Thomas, a bartender in San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel. It was named after nearby Martinez, a local tourist stop for travelers.
The local citizens of Martinez were so convinced that their town was the birthplace of the Martini, they installed a brass plaque to lay claim to that fact. The plaque reads in part, “On this site in 1874, Julio Richelieu, bartender, served up the first martini when a miner came into his saloon with a fistful of nuggets and asked for something special. He was served a Martinez Special.” The drink consisted of 2/3 gin, 1/3 vermouth, a dash of orange bitters, poured over crushed ice and served with an olive.
The first Martinez recipe known in print is the 1884’s “Modern Bartender’s Guide,” by O.H. Byron, which states “same as Manhattan, only you substitute gin for whisky.” In addition, Jerry Thomas’ 1887 “Bartender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks,” lists a recipe for the Martinez as “one dash bitters, two dashes Maraschino, one pony of Old Tom gin, one wineglass of vermouth,” shaken, strained, and garnished with a lemon slice.
At the Knickerbocker Hotel in Manhattan, in 1912, bartender Martini di Arma di Taggia reportedly served a cocktail he referred to a martini, made of equal parts of gin and dry white vermouth, to John D. Rockefeller.
Other origins of the martini cocktail include the Italian version, which assumes the name comes from Martini & Rossi Vermouth, an indisputable ingredient. The British claim the name originates with the Martini & Henry rifle (used between 1871 and 1891), known for its strong kick.
How and when the name changed from Martinez to Martini remains unclear.
Classic Martini Cocktail
INGREDIENTS:
2 ounces gin or vodka
Dash of dry white vermouth
Garnish: Lemon peel or green olives
DIRECTIONS:
Use a large stainless-steel cocktail shaker. Add plenty of ice cubes, then add the gin or vodka and a dash of vermouth. Either strain the martini into a cocktail glass or pour over ice in an old fashioned glass. Garnish with lemon peel or green olives.
Note: If a pearl cocktail onion is substituted for the lemon peel or green olives, the drink then becomes a “Gibson.”
Bob Lipinski is the author of 10 books, including “101: Everything You Need To Know About Whiskey” and “Italian Wine & Cheese Made Simple” (available on Amazon.com). He consults and conducts training seminars on Wine, Spirits, and Food and is available for speaking engagements. He can be reached at www.boblipinski.com OR [email protected].
What is your favorite childhood memory? Going to the beach, strawberry picking, holidays, road trips? From April 22 to May 20, the Smithtown Township Arts Council’s Mills Pond Gallery in St. James will present Childhood Memories, an exhibit featuring 74 works from 69 artists who were asked to explore the early rituals, the rites of passage, and the innocence of early life experiences that celebrate the passionate world of childhood.
Juried by Seung Lee, the exhibit reveals that many artists integrate their life experiences into their work either consciously or unconsciously, often incorporating what they see and sense in the present with their memories.
“Memories are often the inspiration for art. Artists give life to the characters and environments of our childhood memories, recording fragments of dreams, snippets of passing time, and experiences that have shaped our lives,” said Lee.
Some works evoke happy memories with vibrant colors that portray the playfulness of childhood, while others echo personal struggles in the artist’s inner emotional world of their childhood. Visitors will see artwork in a wide array of mediums including photography, painting, drawing, sculpture and more.
Participating artists include Nari Ahn, Kirsten Angel-Lambert, Brenda L. Bechtel, Michelle Bond, Renee Caine, Al Candia, Steve Caputo, Linda Ann Catucci, Cynthia Celone, Rocco Citeno, Linda C. Clune, Jane Corrarino, Donna Corvi, Robert Crawford, Daniela Crimi, Eleanor Day, PatriciaDiGiovanni, Beria Dumankaya, JoAnne Dumas, Paul Edelson, Barry Feuerstein, Noah Hanselman, Gia Horton, John Hunt, Genesis Johnson, George Junker, MoritzKellerman, LynnKinsella, Susan Kozodoy Silkowitz, Mark Levine, Ellie Liu, Bobbie Ludwig, Caitlin Marx, Suzanne McLeod, Avrel Menkes, Jonathan Mills, Alison Mosher, Frank Musto, Monica Nask, Loretta Oberheim, Raissa Oliveira-Silva, Eileen Palmer, Paula Pelletier, Rima Potter, Kelly Powell, Linda Prentiss, Natalie Preston, Toni Raiten-D’Antonio, Jesse Ramirez, William Dunham Reed, Jairid Rossow, Irene Ruddock, Michael Sapone, Gisela Skoglund, Mike Stanko, Robert Stenzel, Christine Kane Stevens, Judy Stone, Angela Stratton, Tracy Tekverk, Terry Tramantano, Robert Tuska, Carlos Vega, Daniela Velez, Judy Vine, Mary Waka, Steve Walker, Patty Yantz and Tianzhou Zhao.
The community is invited to an opening reception on Saturday, April 22 from 1 to 4 p.m. to meet the artists and view their work.
Mills Pond Gallery, 660 Route 25A, St. James is open Wednesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Please note the gallery will be closed on May 14. Admission to the gallery is always free. For more information, call 631-862-6575, or visit www.millspondgallery.org.
Grace Mehl, far right, at the Association of the United States Navy Dining in 2019.
By Daniel Dunaief
Grace Mehl had made it onto her first navy ship, passing through a fiercely competitive process in which the U.S. Navy only had openings for two out of 60 women.
Her first boss, who was a warrant officer, made his feelings about her presence on the ship known. “I don’t believe women belong on a ship,” he told Mehl in 1980. “I don’t believe they belong in the navy. If you do your job, we’ll get along fine.”
Grace Mehl with a junior officer on the Gunston Hall. Photo from John Harrington
That conversation, however, was among the only ones Mehl, who grew up and now lives in Smithtown, had with people about whether her gender could affect her ability to serve. At the same time, members of the navy sometimes grumbled about the expanding role of women in the armed forces.
“I heard a lot of gruff from older guys talking about having women in the navy,” said Troy Wussow, an enlisted man who served aboard the USS Shenandoah with Mehl after the ship was christened in 1983. “The old salt saw it as problematic.”
Mehl often won over others with her professionalism, talent, and willingness to work.
When he met Mehl, Wussow and others were building an office that they wouldn’t complete by a deadline because supplies hadn’t arrived. When he presented the situation to Mehl, she told them to get lunch. While the others ate, Mehl redesigned the building with the supplies on hand. Wussow was grateful for her solution, which enabled him and the rest of the crew to execute their orders.
“She solved the problem for us, which was an extraordinary beginning,” Wussow said.
Indeed, Mehl also impressed her superiors, rising through the ranks to become one of the first five women to command a navy combatant ship. For 14 years of Mehl’s career, women only joined navy combat ships when they volunteered. In 1994, however, the navy started assigning women to ships the way they had men. The executive officer sent some of those frustrated female navy crew to see Mehl.
“When they walked into my state room and looked at me, they just stopped” being upset, Mehl said. They couldn’t tell Mehl how unfair it was when she had been living that life.
“After they got there, they started to learn that it wasn’t so bad and it was just another job,” she said, “although you were floating around while you were doing it.”
Commanding respect
A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, Mehl, who grew up on a chicken farm, had a desire to get a job that makes a difference and to see the world. Her sister Jane and her college roommate had also joined the military, so she already had examples of women who had gone into the service.
Her father John Albert Mehl had also been in the Army Air Corps during World War II. A tail gunner, the Mehl patriarch had been stationed in England and France and had been on 65 missions. Her sister was an Army nurse.
Despite the army family connection, Mehl entered the navy because she didn’t want her sister to have the ability to boss her around.
“The army wasn’t big enough for both of us,” Mehl said.
Wussow suggested that Mehl had an effective approach with those under her command and with superior officers. Officers either commanded or demanded respect, Wussow suggested. Mehl was in the former category, listening to problems, working with people to solve them, and following and enforcing rules.
Dave Gellene, who was her executive officer when she was the commanding officer of the Gunston Hall, appreciated her naval skills. “She was able to maneuver the ship the best I’ve seen,” he said.
Gellene, who served on active duty in the Navy for 23 years and has been a government civilian for the navy for 15 years, said Mehl maneuvered the ship expertly through all kinds of weather and in densely populated areas where other boats were nearby.
Her ability to control the ship “gained the crew’s confidence,” Gellene said. Even early in Mehl’s tenure as commanding officer, Gellene could tell that the spirit of the ship improved dramatically the day after she took command.
The Bronze Star
Grace Mehl addressing the new Chief Petty Officers on the Flight Deck of the Gunston Hall during 1999 deployment. Photo from John Harrington
The navy awarded Mehl the Bronze Star for her work in 1999, when the armed forces provided support during the humanitarian crisis in the former Yugoslavia.
“I was very proud of the people on the ship,” Mehl said. “I got to wear the Bronze star, but I didn’t earn it: my crew earned it.”
Gellene recalled that the marines who were disembarking for the peacekeeping mission had to get ready each day, only to learn that the mission encountered additional delays.
Mehl, whom Gellene said kept everyone informed of orders and important information, had agreed to play bagpipe music on the day the mission would occur which was “very motivating.”
Mehl and the crew of the Gunston Hall also provided critical assistance in 1999, when an earlier enormous earthquake rocked Turkey, killing over 17,000 people. With Mehl at the helm, the ship tied up at a dock and the crew put up tents for displaced residents.
“The crew would have stayed forever if they could,” Gellene said. “Under her leadership, she kept everyone motivated and focused.”
In a less stressful but important moment for the ship, Gellene also recalled how the Gunston Hall was stationed in North Carolina during the Super Bowl in 1999. Before the widespread use and availability of cell phones, the ship had to face a particular direction to get a good satellite feed to watch the game. Mehl stayed at the helm, keeping the ship at the right angle so the crew could watch the Broncos defeat the Falcons in Super Bowl 33.
“You could imagine the morale boost,” Gellene said.
Grace Mehl speaks at a Memorial Day service at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Bald Hill in Farmingville. Photo by Ron Pacchiana
Current contributions
Mehl has established numerous connections to the Long Island community. Having given talks to students in elementary and high schools, she said people know her as “the Navy lady.”
She volunteers with Vietnam Veterans of America, is on the Board of Directors of the United Veterans Beacon House, and serves on Veterans Court.
Mehl also earned a certification as Eastern Apicultural Society Master Beekeeper and is the Education Director of the Long Island Beekeepers club.
Looking back on her service, Mehl believes she did something important during her two decades in the navy.
“I feel like I opened a door for women to be able to follow in the path that I broke for them,” she said. “I feel that we have come a long way in the military.
This column is generously sponsored by Bryant Funeral Home, 411 Old Town Road, East Setauket
Ideally, doctors would like to know about health threats or dangers such as diseases or chronic conditions before they threaten a person’s quality of life or expected lifespan.
On a larger scale, politicians and planners would also like to gauge how people are doing, looking for markers or signs that something may be threatening the health or safety of a community.
Researchers in computer science at Stony Brook University have been designing artificial intelligence programs that explore the language used in social media posts as gauges of mental health.
Recently, lead author Matthew Matero, a PhD student in Computer Science at Stony Brook; senior author H. Andrew Schwartz, Associate Professor in Computer Science at Stony Brook; National Institute on Drug Abuse data scientist Salvatore Giorgi; Lyle H. Ungar, Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania; and Brenda Curtis, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania published a study in the journal Nature Digital Medicine in which they used the language in social media posts to predict community rates of opioid-related deaths in the next year.
By looking at changes in language from 2011 to 2017 in 357 counties, Schwartz and his colleagues built a model named TrOP (Transformer for Opioid Prediction) with a high degree of accuracy in predicting the community rates of opioid deaths in the following year.
“This is the first time we’ve forecast what’s going to happen next year,” Schwartz said. The model is “much stronger than other information that’s available” such as income, unemployment, education rates, housing, and demographics.
To be sure, Schwartz cautioned that this artificial intelligence model, which uses some of the same underlying techniques as the oft-discussed chatGPT in coming up with a model of ordered data, would still need further testing before planners or politicians could use it to mitigate the opioid crisis.
“We hope to see [this model] replicated in newer years of data before we would want to go to policy makers with it,” he said.
Schwartz also suggested that this research, which looked at the overall language use in a community, wasn’t focused on finding characteristics of individuals at risk, but, rather at the overall opioid death risks to a community.
Schwartz used the self-reported location in Twitter profiles to look at representation of a community.
The data from the model, which required at least 100 active accounts each with at least 30 posts, have proven remarkably effective in their predictions and hold out the potential not only of encouraging enforcement or remediation to help communities, but also of indicating what programs are reducing mortality. Their model forecast the death rates of those communities with about a 3 percent error.
Both directions
Schwartz explained that the program effectively predicted positive and negative changes in opioid deaths.
On the positive side, Schwartz said language that reflected a reduction in opioid mortality included references to future social events, vacation, travel and discussions about the future.
Looking forward to travel can be a “signal of prosperity and having adventures in life,” Schwartz said. Talking about tomorrow was also predictive. Such positive signals could also reflect on community programs designed to counteract the effect of the opioid epidemic, offering a way of predicting how effective different efforts might be in helping various communities.
On the negative side, language patterns that preceded increases in opioid deaths included mentions of despair and boredom.
Within community changes
Other drug and opioid-related studies have involved characterizing what distinguishes people from different backgrounds, such as educational and income levels.
Language use varies in different communities, as words like “great” and phrases like “isn’t that special” can be regional and context specific.
To control for these differences, Schwartz, Matero and Giorgi created an artificial intelligence program that made no assumptions about what language was associated with increases or decreases. It tested whether the AI model could find language that predicted the future reliably, by testing against data the model had never seen before.
By monitoring social media in these specific locales over time, the researchers can search for language changes within the community.
Scientists can explore the word and phrases communities used relative to the ones used by those same communities in the past.
“We don’t make any assumptions about what words mean” in a local context, Schwartz said. He can control for language differences among communities by focusing on language differences within a community.
Schwartz recognized that fine refinements to the model in various communities could enhance the predictive ability of the program.
“If we could fully account for differences in cultural, ethnic and other variables about a community, we should be able to increase the ability to predict what’s going to happen next year,” he said.
With its dependence on online language data, the model was less effective in communities where the number of social media posts is lower. “We had the largest error in communities with the lowest rates of posting,” Schwartz explained. On the opposite side, “we were the most accurate in communities with the highest amounts” of postings or data.
Broader considerations
While parents, teachers and others sometimes urge friends and their children to limit their time on social media because of concerns about its effects on people, a potential positive is that these postings might offer general data about a community’s mental health. The study didn’t delve into individual level solutions, but these scientists and others have work that suggests this is possible.
As for his future work, Schwartz said he planned to use this technique and paradigm in other contexts. He is focusing on using artificial intelligence for a better understanding of mental health.
“We hope to take this method and apply it to other outcomes, such as depression rates, alcohol use disorder rates,” post traumatic stress disorder and other conditions, Schwartz said. “A big part of the direction in my lab is trying to focus on creating AI methods that focus on time based predictions.”
This spring, the Town of Smithtown Stream Team kicked off an annual stream cleaning of the Northeast Branch of the Nissequogue River. This project began on the morning of Tuesday, April 11, and continued through Friday, April 14. Multiple levels of government worked together to conduct a thorough and efficient cleanup of our town’s waterways for the second year in a row.
Crews started working on sections of the East Branch from Route 347 to Stump Pond in Blydenburgh Park by removing fallen branches and debris that had accumulated, slowed the flow and created stagnant water. Other regions focused on included near Harrison Pond in Kings Park and near Hunts Pond in Hauppauge. Many areas that were cleaned as part of the 2022 stream cleaning were checked and cleaned again as needed.
There are multiple environmental benefits to stream cleaning. Removing debris prevents standing water that attracts more mosquitoes to the area. Additionally, with reduced flow of the stream, water cannot flow away, so potential flooding by surface or groundwater can be reduced with cleaning.
Workers from the Town of Smithtown Parks Department, Town of Smithtown Municipal Services Facility, Suffolk County Vector Control, Suffolk County Parks, Village of the Branch, and Town of Smithtown Highway Department participated in this effort. The cleanup was organized by the Town of Smithtown Department of Environment and Waterways and Environmental Protection Director David Barnes.
About the Stream Team:
In search of proactive measures to address flooding, high water table issues and reducing pollution caused by stormwater runoff, the Highway Department teamed up with department experts in Environment and Waterways, Engineering and Parks to create a Stream Team. This group works together to study and inspect the small streams beneath us for blockages, sediment and invasive species. The team will create a database, mapping out areas where water struggles to flow through, and will create a plan to remove harmful debris, invasive species and other blockages, which prevent the natural filtration and movement of water. This is a game changer for our local ecosystem and water quality.
The Stream Team engages with various neighborhoods, residents and each other to clean and maintain areas where sediment buildup and poor water flow causes flooding issues for residents. The plan moving forward is to maintain these clean streams through proper management and partnership, giving local residents peace of mind during significant rain events.
This program is spearheaded by department leadership; Parks Director Joe Arico, Assistant Town Park Maintenance Director Tom Heester, Environmental Protection Director David Barnes, Town Engineer Mark Riley, Highway Superintendent Robert Murphy and Deputy Superintendent Jim Deutsch.
The Four Harbors Audubon Society kicks off spring with a lecture on bird banding at the Bates House, One Bates Road, Setauket on Tuesday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m.
What have we learned from bird banding? How do you band a bird? Guest speaker Darlene J. McNeil will answer these questions and more.
McNeil got her start birding in 2004 after taking a master birder course in GA. She got her first camera in 2007 and became a “birder who holds a camera” to document her rare bird sightings. In September of 2011 she began volunteering at a bird banding station in TX and attended several bird banding courses to learn banding skills for her sub permit at Powdermill in PA, Braddock Bay in Rochester, NY, Appledore Island in NH and Belize.
Currently she holds a subpermit to band birds only in CT. To date she has handled over 1,500 birds in the banding process and has had the unique opportunity to hold every eastern warbler. Although Darlene does not band birds in New York, she is an avid birdwatcher and can be seen in the field often. Currently she works as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, and is a mom to 2 adorable Siberian Huskies, one whom is a certified Pet Therapy Dog.
All are welcome. There is no fee to attend this lecture. Masks are recommended.
The Suffolk County Police Department will hold a property auction on Wednesday, April 26 at the Property Section, located at 30 Yaphank Ave. in Yaphank.
The auction will begin at 9 a.m. and will be held rain or shine. There will be a preview of the jewelry and select property on Tuesday, April 25 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Among the items being auctioned include jewelry, bicycles, tools, landscaping equipment, electronics, iPhones and more.
Participants must be at least 18 years old to bid. All items are sold in “as is” condition and must be purchased with cash.
Imagine an old-fashioned dessert that is reminiscent of a simpler time … an airy, buttery vanilla cake with a beautiful caramelized brown sugar topping sweetened with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. Of course I’m referring to the classic Pineapple Upside Down Cake, the bright flavored spring and summer dessert perfect for casual family dinners and special occasions.
The cake became popular in the United States in the mid-1920s after Dole Pineapple Company sponsored a contest for pineapple recipes and received over 2,500 submissions. The winner was a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe submitted by Mrs. Robert Davis from Norfolk, Virginia. Dole published the recipe in an advertisement, which increased the cake’s popularity.
In honor of National Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day on April 20, here is a recipe for the retro classic dessert that is as delicious today as it was decades ago. The directions call for a large cast-iron skillet. However, you can use any non-stick baking round pan. The cake can be served warm or cold.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
YIELD: Makes 8 servings
INGREDIENTS:
2/3 cup margarine, divided
2/3 cup packed brown sugar, divided
1 can (20 ounces) Dole Pineapple Slices
10 maraschino cherries
3/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
2 eggs, separated
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
DIRECTIONS:
Heat oven to 350° F. In 10-inch cast-iron skillet, melt 1/3 cup margarine. Remove from heat. Add brown sugar and stir until blended.
Drain pineapple slices; reserve 2 tablespoons syrup. Arrange pineapple slices in sugar mixture. Place cherry in center of each slice.
Beat remaining 1/3 cup margarine with 1/2 cup granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, lemon peel, lemon juice and vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Blend into creamed mixture alternately with sour cream and reserved pineapple syrup.
Beat egg whites to soft peaks. Gradually beat in remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar to make stiff meringue. Fold into batter. Pour over pineapple in skillet.
Bake 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, then invert onto serving plate.
The cast of 'The Comedy of Errors'
Photo by Julianne Mosher/TBR News Media
By Julianne Mosher
The theater department at Suffolk County Community College’s Ammerman campus does not disappoint with their latest production of William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
A scene from ‘The Comedy of Errors’ Photo by Julianne Mosher/TBR News Media
This classic slapstick comedy follows two sets of identical twins who were separated as infants during a storm at sea. Set in the Greek city of Ephesus, we meet a merchant named Aegeon, played by SCCC student Stefan Pallotta, who’s monologue tells the audience of his arrest and the tale of the shipwreck that separated his family — his twin sons, both named Antipholus, his wife, Amelia, and two twin servant boys, both named Dromio.
Eighteen years later, Aegeon allows his son and servant to travel to Ephesus to search for their long-lost twins but they too disappear. Now, Aegeon has come to the city to find them, but is arrested due to the animosity between the citizens of Ephesus and Syracuse (where the merchant is from).Pallotta’s early monologue is not an easy one to remember,but he does so impressively.
Later on, we meet Antipholus (of Syracuse) played by Cara Macedonio along with servant Dromio played by Meredith Reed. When the two Syracuse-ians are off and about, we meet their long-lost brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus, played by Kayla Bruno, and his Dromio played by Jerry Ewald.
A scene from ‘The Comedy of Errors’ Photo by Julianne Mosher/TBR News Media
The cast does a great job getting into their characters. Not only did they have to learn the rhymes of Shakespeare and ye-old language, but they also have to convince the audience of who they were — and they were funny! The performances of the two Dromio’s had the audience laughing during their performance last Saturday night. While Shakespeare might be hard to understand, the actors made the whole show completely coherent.
But we mustn’t forget the leading ladies of the show — Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, Adriana, played by Madison Dodge, and her lovable sister Luciana, played by Kayla Pisano. While the two characters are completely different in personality, both Dodge and Pisano shine during their scenes.
Adriana, the tougher of the two, proves herself with her wit and no-nonsense attitude when faced with her “husband” acting oddly (surprise, it was the wrong Antipholus she was inviting to dinner). Then Luciana, the beauty who unintendedly seduces her “brother-in-law” will have you roar when you see the interaction between her and Antipholus of Syracuse.
But that’s just the beginning. For an hour-and-a-half, you’ll see the two sets of twins unknowingly interact with each other on several occasions that will make your skin curl with embarrassment for what is going on, but also laugh out loud.
A scene from ‘The Comedy of Errors’ Photo by Julianne Mosher/TBR News Media
Other standout performances include Brooke Morabito as Luce, the greasy kitchen wench, the alcoholic officer played by Malachai Casanova, Duke Solinus portrayed by Krystyna Plesnik, Hailey Wenke’s Amelia/Courtesan and Gabriel Patrascu’s Pinch/Angelo.
However, the show would not have been complete without the fantastic set design and costumes which really set the tone of the show.
Director Steve Marsh said that he wanted to bring a bit of an edge to the show, which has been known as a slapstick comedy for centuries. While it was filled with humor, it had the underlying, more somber, tone of what a trade war and immigration can do to a community which made it almost more real.
“The program here at Suffolk and the students are so fantastic,” Marsh said. “I’ve been coming here for over 40 years — this is where I saw my first show and what got me interested in acting.”
Suffolk County Community College, 533 College Road, Selden presents The Comedy of Errors at the Shea Theatre inside the Islip Arts Building on April 21 and 22 at 7:30 p.m. and April 23 at 2 p.m. General admission is $15. Veterans and students 16 years of age or younger is $10. Suffolk students with current ID receive two free tickets. To order, visit sunysuffolk.edu/spotlight or call 631-451-4163.
High school students become model bridge engineers in annual contest
Jacqueline Seifert, a senior at Commack High School, won first place in the 2023 Bridge Building Competition hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory on March 30.
The annual contest puts model bridges constructed by Long Island High School students to the ultimate pressure test. Students apply physics and engineering principles to build basswood structures to a set of specifications. Then, their bridges are judged based on efficiency, which is calculated using the mass of the bridge and the amount of weight it can support before breaking or bending more than one inch.
“This competition is an introduction to the world of engineering,” said Scott Bronson, manager for K–12 programs at the Lab’s Office of Educational Programs (OEP). “At Brookhaven Lab, engineers of all types support our science goals at world-class facilities and the DOE mission. We hope this contest inspires students to explore paths in science, technology, math, and engineering and to return to the Lab as interns and future employees.”
OEP received a total 142 bridges, of which 91 qualified for testing, captured below.
An awards ceremony to honor the winners was held at Brookhaven Lab on April 6. The top two winners in this regional competition qualify to compete in the International Bridge contest on April 29 in Chicago, IL.
Seifert, who earned second place in last year’s local competition and placed 16th in the previous international contest, designed a bridge that weighed 23.47grams and recorded an efficiency of 1342.22. As the testing machine slowly added more and more weight to Seifert’s W truss design, the Science Learning Center erupted in impressed “oohs” as the load hit close to 70 lbs. Retired Brookhaven Lab engineer and longtime competition supporter Marty Woodle noted right away “that’s an international contender.”
Seifert, who will pursue civil engineering at Vanderbilt University, said it was rewarding to watch her design hit that high bridge load. “The most exciting part was the experimentation and seeing what works and what doesn’t, finding the weak points in my bridge so I could continue to make it better,” she said. “I’ll see how it goes in the international competition.”
Katherine Liang, a junior at Ward Melville High School, who garnered first place in two previous contests and 9th and the last international competition, placed second this year with a design that realized an efficiency of 1094.44.
Third-place winner Jonathan Thomas, a junior at Walt Whitman High School, constructed a bridge that recorded an efficiency of 1048.18. After conducting bridge demos in a physics lab at school, Thomas learned his design needed more horizontal support and looked to previous competition winners for potential engineering ideas.“It’s definitely a career path I want to go into,” he said.
Aidan Quinn, a junior at Smithtown High School East won this year’s aesthetic award. Quinn’s double arch design was neat with clean lines, inspired by a photo his father showed him that captured a historical moment when a pilot flew a biplane under a bridge that once crossed the Niagara River.
“I would love to major in biomedical engineering,” Quinn said. “I’m glad I was able to participate in the competition. It was a great experience.”
Classic Martini Cocktail
A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, Mehl, who grew up on a chicken farm, had a desire to get a job that makes a difference and to see the world. Her sister Jane and her college roommate had also joined the military, so she already had examples of women who had gone into the service.
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