The Ward Melville Heritage Organization welcomed the Just Sixties Band to its Summer Concerts on the Green series last Sunday night. Hundreds of music lovers came out to enjoy the evening, which kicked off with a rousing Woodstock tribute and concluded with songs from The Monkees, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Mamas & the Papas and more. Concertgoers danced, had a picnic dinner, enjoyed a glass of wine and were treated to a beautiful sunset. Even drummer Robert Gerver commented, “This is one of the most picturesque settings on Long Island.”
The free series continues with the NY Exceptions in concert (50s music) in front of the Stony Brook Post Office, 111 Main St., Stony Brook on Sunday, Aug. 11 at 7 p.m. For more information, call 631-751-2244 or visit www.wmho.org.
The elder law and estate planning firm Genser Cona recently participated in two initiatives to help combat hunger on Long Island, donating a total of $3,000 to Island Harvest, the largest hunger relief organization on Long Island. The firm conducted a series of in-house fundraisers and sent a team to the 18th annual Ellen Gordon CPA 4(a) Cause 5K Run/Walk to End Hunger at Eisenhower Park to benefit Island Harvest. A check was presented on July 16.
The dual effort was a part of the Melville firm’s ongoing commitment to community involvement and charitable giving.
“We’re fortunate to be in a position to give back to the community and we are proud to support Island Harvest in its mission,” said Jennifer Cona, managing partner of the firm. “Island Harvest makes a commitment to helping anyone in need on Long Island, including low income seniors and veterans through specialized programs such as Operation: HOPE and the Senior Mobile Food Pantry. ”
Pictured from left, firm Managing Partner Jennifer Cona, Chief Operating Officer Julie Wyetzner, Joan Flynn of Island Harvest and firm paralegal Christa Duerr.
Photo by Peter Lanscombe, Theatre Three Productions Inc.
The final two shows for “Cinderella” at Theatre Three, 412 Main St., Port Jefferson will be held on Aug. 8 at 11 a.m. and Aug. 9 at 1:30 p.m. The classic love story finds its power in a pumpkin a palace, a prince—and a young girl whose belief in herself can overcome any obstacle. When her Fairy Godmother adds a dash of excitement, the magical possibilities are endless. Don’t miss this musical enchantment for the entire family!
Children’s theater continues with “Pinocchio” from Aug. 2 to 10; and “A Kooky Spooky Halloween” from Oct. 5 to 26. All seats are $10. For more information or to order, call 631-928-9100 or visit www.theatrethree.com.
Read the review here:https://tbrnewsmedia.com/theater-review-theatre-threes-cinderella-is-a-fairy-tale-for-the-ages/
Grounds & Sounds Cafe at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 380 Nicolls Road, East Setauket will present a Woodstock Tribute concert on Friday, Aug. 9 at 8 p.m. Relive the moment! Featured artists include Toby Tobias, Christine Sweeney, Rich Lanahan and The Claudia Jacobs Band. 1960s attire encouraged. Tickets are $15 at www.groundsandsounds.org or at the door. For further information, call 631-751-0297.
Walking routinely can reduce your risk of dialysis.Stock photo
Taking an active role can reduce your risk significantly
By David Dunaief, M.D.
Dr. David Dunaief
Heart disease is so pervasive that men who are 40 years old have a lifetime risk of 49 percent. In other words, about half of men will be affected by heart disease. The statistics are better for women, but they still have a staggering 32 percent lifetime risk at age 40 (1).
The good news is that heart disease is on the decline due to a number of factors, including better awareness in lay and medical communities, improved medicines, earlier treatment of risk factors and lifestyle modifications. We are headed in the right direction, but we can do better. Heart disease is something that is eminently preventable.
Heart disease risk factors
Risk factors include obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking and diabetes. Unfortunately, both obesity and diabetes are on the rise. For patients with type 2 diabetes, 70 percent die of cardiovascular causes (2). However, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking have declined (3).
Of course, family history also contributes to the risk of heart disease, especially with parents who experienced heart attacks before age 60, according to the Women’s Health Study and the Physician’s Health Study (4). Inactivity and the standard American diet, rich in saturated fat and calories, also contribute to heart disease risk (5). The underlying culprit is atherosclerosis (fatty streaks in the arteries).
Another potential risk factor is a resting heart rate greater than 80 beats per minute (bpm). In one study, healthy men and women had 18 and 10 percent increased risks of dying from a heart attack, respectively, for every increase of 10 bpm over 80 (6). A normal resting heart rate is usually between 60 and 100 bpm. Thus, you don’t have to have a racing heart rate, just one that is high-normal. All of these risk factors can be overcome, even family history.
The role of medication
Cholesterol and blood pressure medications have been credited to some extent with reducing the risk of heart disease. The compliance with blood pressure medications has increased over the last 10 years from 33 to 50 percent, according to the American Society of Hypertension.
In terms of lipids, statins have played a key role in primary prevention. Statins are effective at not only lowering lipid levels, including total cholesterol and LDL — the “bad” cholesterol — but also inflammation levels that contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease. The Jupiter trial showed a 55 percent combined reduction in heart disease, stroke and mortality from cardiovascular disease in healthy patients — those with a slightly elevated level of inflammation and normal cholesterol profile — with statins.
The downside of statins is their side effects. Statins have been shown to increase the risk of diabetes in intensive dosing, compared to moderate dosing (7).
Unfortunately, many on statins also suffer from myopathy (muscle pain). I have a number of patients who have complained of muscle pain and cramps. Their goal when they come to see me is to reduce and ultimately discontinue their statins by following a lifestyle modification plan involving diet and exercise. Lifestyle modification is a powerful ally.
Lifestyle effects
There was significant reduction in mortality from cardiovascular disease with participants who were followed for a very long mean duration of 18 years. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, a prospective (forward-looking) study, investigated 501 healthy men and their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. The authors concluded that those who consumed five servings or more of fruits and vegetables daily with <12 percent saturated fat had a 76 percent reduction in their risk of dying from heart disease compared to those who did not (8). The authors theorized that eating more fruits and vegetables helped to displace saturated fats from the diet. These results are impressive and, to achieve them, they only required a modest change in diet.
The Nurses’ Health Study shows that these results are also seen in women, with lifestyle modification reducing the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD). Many times, this is the first manifestation of heart disease in women. The authors looked at four parameters of lifestyle modification, including a Mediterranean-type diet, exercise, smoking and body mass index. There was a decrease in SCD that was dose-dependent, meaning the more factors incorporated, the greater the risk reduction. There was as much as a 92 percent decrease in SCD risk when all four parameters were followed (9). Thus, it is possible to almost eliminate the risk of SCD for women with lifestyle modifications.
How do you know that you are reducing your risk of heart disease and how long does it take?
These are good questions. We use cardiac biomarkers, including inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein, blood pressure, cholesterol and body mass index. A cohort study helped answer these questions. It studied both high-risk participants and patients with heart disease. The results showed an improvement in biomarkers, as well as in cognitive function and overall quality of life.
Participants followed extensive lifestyle modification: a plant-based, whole foods diet accompanied by exercise and stress management. The results were statistically significant with all parameters measured. The best part is the results occurred over a very short period to time — three months from the start of the trial (10). Many patients I have seen have had similar results.
Ideally, if patient needs to use medications to treat risk factors for heart disease, it should be for the short term. For some patients, it may be appropriate to use medication and lifestyle changes together; for others, lifestyle modifications may be sufficient, as long as patients take an active role.
Dr. 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.
The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport recently appointed David Bush director of its Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium. Bush, who has served as the planetarium’s technical and production coordinator since 2000, is an astronomy and earth science educator.
“Dave’s depth of knowledge, his experience as both an astronomy educator and as planetarium director for school districts, plus his skills as a technical pro and production artist make him uniquely qualified for this job,” said Lance Reinheimer, executive director of the museum.
In his new post, Bush will hire and manage planetarium staff, collaborate with development staff on grants and fundraising events, work with the administration on strategic planning, and acquire and maintain planetarium technology. He will also work with the Education, Curatorial, and Communications departments on programs that promote the museum’s mission and collaborate with regional planetariums, science centers, observatories and museums to share ideas and to develop and deliver quality programming.
“I am thrilled and ready to take the planetarium in some new and exciting directions,” said Bush. “We have an incredible staff of talented educators and astronomers. I want to facilitate the growth of our team to create fresh content for the public and for visiting school groups from all over Long Island and beyond.
Bush said he wanted to focus on the visitor experience. “We want audiences to have a fun, memorable time that will leave them with a sense of awe and appreciation for the astonishing beauty of the night sky. Observing the heavens at night can spark some of our deepest questions about life and the universe.”
“The planetarium specializes in astronomy education, but we also do much more,” he said, continuing, “Our entertainment offerings include laser light shows, live concerts under the dome, plays, poetry and other creative ventures that use the amazing visual capabilities of the domed planetarium theater. We want to expand those offerings.”
Grace Tesoriero of Port Jefferson snapped this balance challenge photo of her daughter Kristen, son-in-law Connor and grandchildren Gracie and Jacob at West Meadow Beach in Stony Brook while they were up visiting from Delaware in July. She writes, ‘I snapped the picture just in time as right after the challenge was no longer balance, but dusting off a lot of sand!’
Wishful thinking is part of our lives. As a guide to our hopes, it often is realized and that might mean a happy marriage, a successful occupation and a healthy mind and body.
But reality often thwarts these ideals and desires. This may be through our faults as well as by bad luck. Scientists hope for success when exploring the unknown, but they are taught not to trust wishful thinking.
In my fields of genetics and biology I have witnessed wishful thinking when science is applied to practical ends. The tobacco industry used wishful thinking for over 50 years, denying that tobacco smoke caused cancers, emphysema and heart disease. They blamed instead an unhealthy lifestyle, an unhealthy work environment or stress itself.
Similarly, nuclear reactor companies used wishful thinking (and still do) to minimize or deny hazards of radiation except at very high doses of exposure. Most geneticists use a linear relation of dose received to gene mutations produced. They have based this on dozens of peer-reviewed publications. Wishful thinking by those who deny harm to a population from low doses of radiation include a belief that at worst small doses of radiation lead to resistance of radiation or that small doses of radiation are negated by strengthening the immune system to repair any damage done to the DNA.
In our generation wishful thinking has appeared in discussions of severe and more numerous instances of climate change. Here, opponents of ecological response by international treaty argue that such changes are just normal responses to Earth’s cycles of warming and cooling leading to ice ages or long arid climate or that unpredictable ocean currents might shift and bring about these changing weather patterns.
Critics of government regulations downplay the discharge of waste into rivers, lakes and oceans, and they use wishful thinking in their arguments, claiming “nature repairs itself” whether it is chopped down forests, over farmed land, open pit mining, fracking for natural gas or lands saturated with pesticides and herbicides. They call scientists raising alarm “tree huggers.”
It would be a wonderful world if everything we did had no harmful long-lasting unintended consequences of what we do. Wishful thinking saves money and effort to prevent toxic products from entering the environment. It allows abusers to create erosion from bad practices clearing land for agriculture. It allows the discharging of massive quantities of carbon dioxide, believing a dwindling ecosystem will sop up the atmospheric carbon dioxide, producing luxuriant plant growth with massive emissions of oxygen.
What scientists know is that environments are more complex, and we can disturb it with bad consequences for both local and global environments. The needs of 7 billion people can create substantial changes to Earth and we (thanks to wishful thinking) tend to be unaware or choose to deny such bad outcomes.
Elof Axel Carlson is a distinguished teaching professor emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University.
The graphic novel ‘Twitcha’ was co-written by Smithtown’s Mary Gregorian.
There’s a new superhero entering the comic book world and she’s a teenage girl with Tourette syndrome. “Twitcha” is the brainchild of three teenage girls who illustrated and wrote the book based on their own experiences with the neurological disorder. NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders (NJCTS) published the book this spring.
During the summer of 2017, Sarah Baldwin of Mantua, New Jersey, Mary Gregorian of Smithtown, and Julie Nemerson of Northbrook, Illinois, attended the NJCTS Tim Howard Leadership Academy at Rutgers University.
The academy is a four-day training for high school students that promotes self-advocacy, self-leadership, resilience and grit — all important skills to succeed while living with TS. As part of the academy, each teen completes a group project. Together the teens dreamed up a superhero that would be living with Tourette syndrome and facing the same struggles that they were, both emotionally and physically.
“We spent hours each night in the dorms at Rutgers trying to create a character and a story that would empower other kids with TS,” said Gregorian who is a rising junior at Long Island University–Post. “It’s wonderful that our dream was able to take off into a reality.”
Twitcha’s tics are represented by the villain-turned-hero Misfire, who teams up with Dr. Sitstill to destroy anyone who wouldn’t conform to his idea of “normal.” But after their defeat, Misfire sees the error of her ways and teams up with Twitcha. The book will be used by NJCTS during Education Outreach presentations to elementary students, and lesson plans will be created so teachers can add “Twitcha” to their curriculum.
“When we saw the first rough copy of ‘Twitcha,’ we loved the message,” said Faith Rice, executive director of NJCTS. “It’s truly a labor of love by three young ladies who understand the pain of stigma and isolation that many of our young people with Tourette syndrome face.”
A digital copy of “Twitcha” is available on Amazon and hard copies are available for classrooms and libraries. Contact NJCTS at [email protected] or 908-575-7350 to request copies or visit www.njcts.org/twitcha.
In July 2015, New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman made permanent the Commission to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York. To measure the impact of the justice gap on vulnerable litigants and others, a task force had been created in 2010 to assess the extent and nature of the state’s civil legal services crisis.
It held public hearings with civil legal providers, law firms, law schools and other stakeholders statewide and determined that the chronic lack offree and low-cost legal assistance has led to a crisis in the courts, reflected by the ever-rising number of unrepresented litigants in these cases whose incomes are too low to pay for legal representation (a low-income family of four in New York State earns about 125 percent of the poverty level of $25,750).
The mission of the commission is to ensure access to justice for all by using every resource, including self-help services, pro bono programs, technological tools and adequate funding (now $100 million of dedicated state funds annually for civil legal services throughout New York State). In order to add more pro bono attorneys, the commission amended the Rules of Professional Conduct to recommend an increase of annual pro bono hours for lawyers and for law school graduates seeking admission to the New York State bar from 10 to 50.
The commission sought a site for a local pilot in which a strategic action plan could be developed; its goal would be providing effective assistance to all the persons in need and its success could then inform similar efforts in communities statewide.
Looking at Suffolk County it found significant assets: a supportive judiciary, engaged providers, an active bar association and an involved law school that provides a variety of legal clinics for residents and trainings for legal service providers are significant assets.
Suffolk’s challenges include its geography, the highest number of veterans in the state, a high percentage of homeless persons and many unaccompanied minors. A substantialpercentage of the population speaks a language other than English at home.
Because the needs of many community members were still unmet, Suffolk was selected as a pilot. The gaps in legal services in Suffolk County are largest in three areas: family law, immigration and re-entry of veterans and formerly incarcerated individuals. Housing and health care also loom high in need for legal help.
With funding from the Public Welfare Association, under the leadership of Administrative Judge C. Randall Hinrichs, Suffolk County launched its program with the Suffolk Planning Group, including civil legal aid providers, the judiciary, the Suffolk County Bar and Touro Law Center. Prior to starting the program, they held listening sessions, attended by 70 of the community organizations that are points of entry for people seeking help.
Despite the number of service providers, many recognized that they were unfamiliar with each other’s services and that gaps exist that present opportunities for community integration and resource awareness. Training will be provided for these organizations and nonlawyer volunteers on how to make effective referrals. Recognizing the importance of talking to people in their own language, and at their level, these organizations can provide assistance to people in need that can prevent the escalation of issues into court matters.
To publicize the legal resources that exist in Suffolk, and make it easier to navigate the system, the Suffolk Planning Group is soon to launch a website that would include offerings of the many legal service providers and advocacy groups. The two centers for help are Brentwood Public Library, 34 Second Ave., Brentwood, and Middle Country Public Library, 575 Middle Country Road, Selden. Suffolk residents may call 631-822-3272 for appointments with attorneys who provide advice in areas of law to persons in need. Informational materials are available at the centers, as well as training videos.
The intersections between individuals and the civil justice system are complex. As we begin to break down barriers, we can enable everyone to access the information and effective assistance they need, and in a form they can use. With an integrated system where communities are empowered; courts participate and support access to justice initiatives; and legal service providers are dedicated to serving those in need, the provision of effective assistance will help people improve their lives.
To view copies of the Community Legal Help Project information flyers in English and in Spanish, visit https://www.lwv-suffolkcounty.org/TakeAction.html.
Nancy Marr is first vice president of the League of Women Voters of Suffolk County, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.lwv-suffolkcounty.org or call 631-862-6860.
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization welcomed the Just Sixties Band to its Summer Concerts on the Green series last Sunday night. Hundreds of music lovers came out to enjoy the evening, which kicked off with a rousing Woodstock tribute and concluded with songs from The Monkees, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Mamas & the Papas and more. Concertgoers danced, had a picnic dinner, enjoyed a glass of wine and were treated to a beautiful sunset. Even drummer Robert Gerver commented, “This is one of the most picturesque settings on Long Island.”
character and a story that would empower other kids with TS,” said Gregorian who is a rising junior at Long Island University–Post. “It’s wonderful that our dream was able to take off into a reality.”
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