Model Train Show at MCPL 2/15/25. Photo courtesy of MCPL
Model Train Show at MCPL 2/15/25. Photo courtesy of MCPL
Model Train Show at MCPL 2/15/25. Photo courtesy of MCPL
Model Train Show at MCPL 2/15/25. Photo courtesy of MCPL
Train enthusiasts had a “choo choo” of a fun time when they visited the Railroad Museum of Long Island’s toy train display at Middle Country Public Library in Centereach on Feb. 15 and Feb. 16. With 1,400 in attendance, patrons enjoyed watching a variety of trains running in addition to interacting with museum staff and volunteers who shared their expertise. One of the highlights was the toy train clinic that was offered.
For more information about programs and classes held at Middle Country Public Library, please visit https://www.mcplibrary.org or call at 631-585-9393.
The Resurrection Byzantine Catholic Church, 38 Mayflower Ave., Smithtown will host its annual Pysanky egg decorating class in the Church Hall on Sunday, March 23 from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Make a traditional Ukrainian egg to take home!
Designed for all skill levels, each participant will be required to bring an unscented candle in a holder, pencils and paper towels. Starter kits must be purchased for $15. Other supplies such as styluses, wax, etc. will be available for purchase. Class fee $20.
Registration is due by March 10. To reserve your spot, please call Joanne at 631-332-1449 (leave a message).
Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism presents its annual Marie Colvin Distinguished Lecture in the Wang Center Theater, 100 Nicolls Road Stony Brook on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. with a reception at 5:30 p.m.
Guest speaker Rhona Tarrant, Executive Editor of CBS News Confirmed, will present a lecture titled The New Battlefield: Open Source Investigations Into Conflict and Disinformation.
Social media has transformed conflict reporting, elevating open-source investigations to a core part of modern journalism. These techniques allow journalists to verify events in real time, supporting the indispensable work of on-the-ground reporting.
At the same time, state-backed disinformation campaigns have become increasingly sophisticated, blurring the lines of reality and driving greater demand for rigorous fact-checking and verification.
Tarrant will examine the rising prominence of open-source verification in conflict reporting and outline the critical tools required for the next generation of journalists.
The event is free and open to the public. All are welcome. No reservations necessary, but encouraged by clicking here. For more information, call 631-632-7403.
The Bad Little Big Band, a staple at The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, has announced that in 2025, the band will be performing on the third Thursday every other month with themed shows, featuring the 12-piece band, directed by composer, arranger and pianist Rich Iacona, and featuring vocalist Madeline Kole.
The band’s first performance of 2025 will be “Our Kind Of Broadway” on Thursday, February 20 at 7 p.m. The BLBB will perform the classic Broadway repertoire done in the BLBB swinging fashion, with all music arranged and conducted by Iacona. Other themes for the coming year’s schedule include: Movie Songs We Get to Hear”; “The Music of Harold Arlen”; “The Music of George Gershwin”; “Slightly Latin” ( Bossas, Rhumbas and Jobim); “Pop Goes the Jazz Tunes” (great pop favorites done in jazz style).
Kole a vocalist, bassist and bandleader, recently completed her latest recording, DON’CHA GO ‘WAY MAD… which is a collection of 14 of her favorite standards.
The Bad Little Big Band was started in 1979 by Iacona, who arranged and composed the band’s repertoire. The group made two recordings in the 1980’s- “Painter of Dreams” and “A Long Way to Go,” which received much airplay and notoriety over the years. Many of the original musicians are still with the group and Iacona has added to the repertoire with many new and fresh compositions. The Bad Little Big Band has featured many great soloists, with Kole being one of the band’s favorites. Fans can look forward to a new collection this year from Iacona.
The Jazz Loft is home to not one, but THREE big bands in residence that perform monthly. The Bad Little Big Band appears on the third Thursday every other month throughout 2025.
Tickets for the Jazz Loft Bad Little Big Band performance are $30, $25, $20 $15. The Jazz Loft is located at 275 Christian Avenue in Stony Brook.
St. Charles Hospital, 200 Belle Terre Road, Port Jefferson will hold a free patient education seminar on acid reflux in the St. Raphael Conference Room, 2nd Floor, on Wednesday, Feb. 26 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Want to reduce dependency on medications? Concerned about side effects of medications? Regurgitate in spite of medications? Dr. Arif Ahmad, Director, Acid Reflux and Hiatal Hernia Center of Excellence at St. Charles Hospital, will discuss permanent solutions for acid reflux with minimally invasive surgical procedures that will improve your quality of life. Light refreshments will be served.
The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF) in Stony Brook has announced that Judi Lach Veeck, from Hampton Bays, has joined the organization as Executive Director.
“It’s an honor to lead an organization that celebrates Long Island’s rich musical heritage,” said Lach Veeck. “I’m thrilled to contribute to the growth and outreach of our mission, alongside our dedicated board and volunteers! My goals are to diversify funding and to increase awareness of our mission and outreach programs.”
Lach Veeck is a highly accomplished nonprofit executive with proven expertise in fundraising, marketing, image enhancement, and government relations. Her responsibilities for LIMEHOF will include overseeing operations and fundraising activities, organizing and applying for grants, and working with the board of directors to identify prospects.
“We are thrilled to have Judi on our team” said Ernie Canadeo, Chairman of LIMEHOF. “Her experience and expertise will create tremendous opportunities as we continue to grow and fulfill our mission of supporting education and preserving Long Island’s music heritage for future generations.”
A long-time board member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals of LI (AFPLI), Lach Veeck has over thirty years of experience in working with nonprofits and fundraising. She also has a strong track record of identifying organizational needs and developing specific campaigns and initiatives.
Prior to joining LIMEHOF, she served as Administrator for the Education Foundation for Suffolk County Extension, Inc., and as Director, Development & Public Affairs for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County.
Exercise helps build long-term physical and mental health, but regular exercise is often a challenge. Even with all the fitness-related apps to prompt us, modern society has an equal number of tech demotivators. It’s just too easy to let the next episode of our favorite series autoplay or to answer those last few emails.
Even if we want to exercise, we “don’t have time.”
I have good news. There is an easy way to get tremendous benefit in very little time. You don’t need expensive equipment, and you don’t have to join a gym. You can even sharpen your wits with your feet.
Esther Tuttle was profiled in a New York Times’ Science Times article a few years ago, when she was 99. Esther was sharp as a tack and was independently mobile, with no mobility aids. She remained active by walking in the morning for 30 minutes and then walking again in the afternoon.
Of course, this story is only anecdotal; however, evidence-based medicine supports her claim that walking is a simple way to get exercise that shows incredible benefits. One mile of walking a day will help keep the doctor away. For the step-counters among you, that’s about 2,000 steps a day for an adult with an average stride length.
Does walking improve mental acuity?
Walking has a dramatic effect, preserving brain function and even growing certain areas of the brain (1). Study participants who walked between six and nine miles a week, or just one mile a day, reduced the risk of cognitive impairment over 13 years and actually increased the amount of gray matter tissue in the brain over nine years.
Participants who had an increase in brain tissue volume also experienced a substantially reduced risk of developing cognitive impairment. Interestingly, the parts of the brain that grew included the hippocampus, involved with memory, and the frontal cortex, involved with short-term memory and executive decision making. There were 299 participants with a mean age of 78. All were dementia-free at the trial’s start.
In another study, moderate exercise reduced the risk of mild cognitive impairment with exercise begun in mid-to-late life (2).
If you’re pressed for time or building your stamina, you can split a mile into two half-mile increments. How long does it take you to walk a half-mile?
Does walking affect one’s mood?
Researchers performed a meta-analysis of studies related to the relationship between exercise and depression. They found that adults who walked briskly for about 75 minutes per week cut their risk of depression by 18 percent (3).
If you ratchet up your exercise to running, a study showed that mood also improves, reducing anger (4). The act of running increases your levels of serotonin, a hormone that, when low, can make people agitated or angry.
How do I build better habits?
A common challenge I hear is that working from home reduces much of the opportunity to walk. There’s no walking down the hall to a meeting or to get lunch or even from the car or train to the office. Instead, everything is only a few steps away. Our work environment is working against us.
If you need a little help getting motivated, here is a terrific strategy to get you started: set an alarm for specific points throughout your day and use that as a prompt to get up and walk, even if it’s for only 15 minutes. The miles will add up quickly.
A client of my wife’s schedules meetings for no more than 50 minutes, so she can walk a “lap” around her house’s interior between meetings or even do some jumping jacks. She also looks for opportunities to have an old-fashioned phone call, rather than a video call, so she can walk up and down the hallway while she’s meeting. Of course, this is one person, but it might prompt some ideas that will work for you.
Walking has other benefits as well. Weight-bearing exercise helps prevent osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures. Sadly, if you don’t use them, bones weaken and break. Walking is a weight-bearing exercise that helps strengthen your joints, bones and muscles.
Remember to use your feet to keep your mind sharp and yourself even-tempered. Activities like walking will help you keep a positive attitude, preserve your bones and help increase the plasticity of your brain.
Dr. David Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management. For further information, visit www.medicalcompassmd.com or consult your personal physician.
Smartphones are an attractive nuisance not just during family time, when parents might otherwise struggle to see anything other than the top of the heads of their children, but also during school.
Lauren Hale. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Medicine
In a recent research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics, scientists led by Lauren Hale, Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University, found in a study of 117 students from the ages of 13 to 18 that smartphone use during school hours typically consumed an average of about 1.5 hours. That’s about 23 percent of a typical school day.
“School time should be a time for being present,” said Hale. It should involve interacting with peers and learning from teachers. “When a quarter of your day is spent with your finger on the phone” students are missing opportunities for academic and social growth.
The study, which was funded by the Della Pietra Family Foundation, comes as Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has unveiled a plan to restrict cell phone use during the day for students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The governor’s plan allocates $13.5 million for pouches, cubbies and other storage devices and comes as other states and countries seek to limit the kinds of distractions that diminish learning and that prevent face-to-face social interactions.
The JAMA study “really does underscore the need to help children reduce their screen time, both at school and at home,” said Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.
At this moment, “we are seeing a crisis in childhood that is highly correlated with the introduction of the smartphone and social media platforms,” Perry added.
In the JAMA Pediatrics study, the researchers found that a quarter of the participants spent more than two hours on their phone during school.
The top five most used apps or categories, other than internet browsing, were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.
The study may underestimate the amount of time typical students spend on their phones, in part because the participants in the research knew that their phone use was being tracked.
Study design
The students in the study, who were divided almost equally between boys and girls and who came from a representative sampling of different backgrounds, completed a 15-minute smartphone-based survey and installed RealityMeter to measure their smartphone use.
The researchers examined data from these students, whose phones sent signals throughout the day about the time they are using the phone.
The average number of hours these students were on their phones during the day was 5.59, which excludes other electronic devices such as video games, desktop computers or laptops.
To be sure, the survey didn’t analyze the times during the day that these students were on their phones. Some of these participants, for example, could have used their smartphones during their lunch or free periods rather than during calculus classes or lectures about American History, French or any other subject.
“We didn’t have the granularity of each student’s schedule to know” when the phone usage was the highest, Hale said.
Still, using the phone instead of interacting directly with students in the room, at a lunch table, or in a hallway is a “missed opportunity for eye-to-eye contact in real life,” said Hale.
In the study, about 22 percent of the participants indicated that their parents restricted their phone use when they are at home.
The data for this group during school tracks, however, closely with the students who said they didn’t have any such similar phone restrictions at home. The study also compared phone usage for students whose parents attended college with those who didn’t attend or finish college.
The children of college graduates used the phone about 30 minutes less per school day.
Combination of factors
Several factors may have contributed to any potential increase in the use of smartphones in school.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown and remote learning, students relied on technology to log in to their classrooms. Adolescents who couldn’t interact with each other in person also spent considerable time texting and interacting with each other on social media.
Additionally, various apps have enhanced their platforms to encourage users to stay on them for longer periods of time.
“The algorithms know that I like Shih Tzus, so I keep getting reels for tiny white dogs doing tricks,” said Hale. “If they put up cats, I wouldn’t watch.”
The same is true for adolescents, who see sports clips or other content regularly that compels them to stay online and that may interfere with their ability to learn in class or to socialize with people around them.
These apps and the devices adolescents use could provide information about usage patterns.
“I would love to see social media platforms share more information,” said Hale.
Perry added that parents act as important role models for their children when it comes to screen time. “What you’re modeling is going to be replicated,” she said. “Things that adults do without thinking, their children are copying.”
Next steps
Hale indicated that the research team has just finished collecting a second wave of data on the same participants. The scientists will be following up to see screen use patterns as well as any observed changes in mental health and physical well being.
The recent work published in JAMA Pediatrics is a “descriptive baseline” of smartphone usage in school, said Hale. She suggested that researchers need to conduct further research to understand the impact of phone usage patterns on education. “We need replication in science” to uncover more details over a larger population for smartphone use.
Like Gov. Hochul and others who have focused on this issue, Hale believes these personal electronics may hinder the learning process.
“I’m concerned about kids losing precious school hours to distracting devices,” Hale said. When students go to school, they should “be ready for learning and social time. That’s what’s going to make a difference in their education.”
The historical structure at Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe underwent significant structural damage after a fire on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Photo courtesy Tesla Science Center
The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham was recently awarded $500,000 from New York State Parks to support the restoration of Nikola Tesla’s only known surviving laboratory in the world. This crucial funding provides a much-needed boost to recovery and rebuilding efforts following a devastating fire in November 2023.
The grant comes at a pivotal moment as Tesla Science Center launches a renewed push for its Capital Campaign to restore the laboratory and complete its transformation into a world-class educational and innovation hub. The total cost of the project, originally estimated at $20 million, has risen to $24 million due to additional fire damage and adjustments for inflation. To date, $14 million has been raised toward this goal.
“This grant is a tremendous step forward in our recovery journey,” said Marc Alessi, Executive Director of Tesla Science Center. “We are deeply grateful to New York State Parks for their support in preserving this iconic site and advancing our vision for its future.”
Update on the Fire Investigation and Insurance Dispute
The 2023 fire caused extensive damage to the historic 10,000-square-foot laboratory, destroying critical features of the 1901 building, including its roof, chimney, and iconic cupola, with damages exceeding $3 million. Nearly a year after the blaze, its official cause remains undetermined, though evidence points to contractor error. Sparks from contractors using blowtorches likely ignited the fire, according to Alessi.
While the nonprofit organization’s insurance company has issued a payout, it falls short of covering the damage. Tesla Science Center has removed the contractor responsible for the work and is actively appealing the contractor’s insurance denial of liability.
Steps Toward Recovery and Restoration
Despite these challenges, Tesla Science Center is making steady progress in restoring the site and advancing its mission. Immediate priorities include clearing debris, assessing the building’s structural integrity, and protecting it from further weather-related damage. The $500,000 grant from New York State Parks provides critical support for these efforts, allowing the organization to stabilize the site and preserve its historic significance for the local community.
Tesla Science Center is also working closely with the Town of Brookhaven to secure permits for the new welcome center, which will include exhibit space and a classroom. Construction is expected to begin in 2025, offering new educational opportunities for students across Long Island.
Join Them in Securing Tesla’s Legacy
Once fully restored, the 16-acre Tesla Science Center campus will become a global hub for innovation, education, and imaginative thinking, featuring a museum, science labs, and a business incubator. The restoration is expected to bring significant economic benefits to Long Island’s North Shore, creating new opportunities for local businesses and revitalizing the region’s tourism sector.
The site’s transformation will benefit nearby restaurants, hotels, shops, and service providers, while also generating jobs, attracting new investment, and enhancing the region’s visibility as a premier destination for cultural and educational tourism. By preserving this iconic landmark and sharing Tesla’s legacy with the world, the project will foster a stronger, more vibrant local community while inspiring future generations to pursue advancements in science and technology.
“Preserving Tesla’s legacy right here in Shoreham is not only an opportunity to inspire future generations, but also a way to drive economic growth and strengthen our community,” said Alessi. “We invite Long Islanders to join us in this effort to restore a global treasure.”
Individuals, organizations, and communities can support Tesla Science Center by donating to the Capital Campaign, attending upcoming fundraising events, and spreading awareness of this important initiative.
To join the Capital Campaign or learn more about Tesla Science Center’s recovery efforts, visit www.teslasciencecenter.org.
Up next at Gallery North, 90 North Country Road, Setauket is an exhibit titled Contours & Currents: Recent Works by Edward Acosta, on view from Feb. 20 to March 30.
Contours & Currents is Edward Acosta’s first solo exhibition at Gallery North. The exhibition features a selection of large and medium-scale acrylic paintings inspired by views of sunrises and sunsets on Long Island.
‘United in Division’ by Edward Acosta
Influenced by Pop Art, Street Art, and Geometric Abstraction, Acosta’s work is defined by vibrant and dynamic compositions with precise linework and layered refined organic forms. His bold designs appear to place the viewer on expansive topographic contours of an island or within the strikingly prismatic currents of the atmosphere and ocean. Acosta’s juxtaposition of shapes and tones are used to create regions of tension, tranquility, motion and harmony.
Born in Puerto Rico, Edward Acosta is a New York-based visual artist whose paintings have been exhibited at notable institutions, including the Heckscher Museum of Art and The Long Island Museum, where one of his works is part of the permanent collection. He has also collaborated with leading brands to create innovative, immersive art installations. Acosta currently works from his studio in Commack.
An opening reception will be held on Feb. 20, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. As a complement to the exhibition, Gallery North will host an ArTalk on March 15 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition, reception and ArTalk will be free and open to the public.
This exhibition is generously sponsored the Field Family, Pet ER, Jefferson’s Ferry, and Suffolk County’s Department of Economic Development and Planning.
For more information, call 631-751-2676 or visit www.gallerynorth.org.
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