The Terryville Fire Department will hold an Open House on Friday, Oct. 27 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Join them at the Main Fire House, 19 Jayne Boulevard, Port Jefferson Station for free health screenings, child IDs, Halloween costume contest, candy and much more. live firefighting demonstrations at 6 p.m. Meet your volunteers and see the fire trucks. For more information, please call 631-473-1224.
By Rita J. Egan
Five years after Hurricane Sandy hit the shores of Long Island, and as our country continues to recover from recent hurricanes, the new exhibit, In Harm’s Way, at The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook delves into the effect such storms can have on communities.
Nancy Solomon, executive director of Long Island Traditions, an organization dedicated to preserving local traditions and heritage, curated the exhibit. Through artifacts, hands-on activities, photographs and paintings dating back to the 1938 hurricane nicknamed “Long Island Express” and earlier, Solomon has created various vignettes where museum visitors can discover how residents and government agencies prepared and recovered from natural disasters through the decades.
“It’s really about how we have coped and prepared for storms both on a personal level and on a community level through history up to the present and looking forward,” Solomon said.
The curator said In Harm’s Way is an exhibit she’s been working on for a few years. Before Sandy hit Long Island, she was working on an exhibit about boaters and boatyards and talking to those who worked and lived along the coastlines.
“During Sandy I said to myself these people are going to have to cope with a lot of damage and to think forward to how they are going to prepare for this [in the future] since these storms are becoming more frequent,” she said. “And I thought of that while [Sandy] was happening. Chances are there are things they know that other people might benefit from, as well as things they don’t know that we might learn from that have happened over the last 100 years.”
Solomon, who has a M.A. degree in Folklore and American Studies from George Washington University and is an active member of the American Folklore Society, said the title of The Long Island Museum exhibit came about after talking to a fisherman who explained to her that those who work on the water have many ways of monitoring conditions to get out of harm’s way. “Ordinary people have tremendous knowledge, and we can learn from those things,” she said.
Solomon said one story she was told was about a boat captain who noticed the barometer went down one full point in an hour, signifying a tremendous drop in atmospheric pressure, during Hurricane Carol in 1954. While he used a ham radio to alert other captains to head back to shore, they didn’t heed his warning. While his crew made it back safely to Jones Inlet, the others didn’t. Solomon said the story had a big impact on her.
“That was my first major understanding that there are things that you have to pay attention to,” she said. “You have to pay attention to bird migration. You have to pay attention to fish migration because they are natural warning signs that fisherman are keenly aware of as well as people who live in places like Fire Island.”
Visitors to the exhibit will find it separated into three sections. The first — Looking Backwards — includes museum objects and items from personal collections from the 1938 Long Island Express to the 1991 Halloween nor’easter. Among the pieces are damaged items from 1938 including a clock that was mounted high on a garage wall that still bears the watermark from the Long Island Express hurricane.
A second section is dedicated to the hurricanes Irene, Lee and Sandy that occurred in 2011 and 2012 and their impact on Long Island and upstate New York. A featured artifact is a piece of the Long Beach boardwalk. Another piece that is a favorite of Solomon’s is a bay house, built by museum staff member Joseph Esser, where visitors can see what measures one can take to protect themselves when in harm’s way, including the use of bags filled with sand or clamshells.
The last section of the exhibit, Looking Forwards, focuses on solutions such as flood-proof homes and new technologies. There is also an interactive table where museum-goers can build their own home or community, taking into account safety measures for those who live along the coastline.
The museum’s curator Joshua Ruff compared the timely subject of battling storms to how generals and military planners talk about how the last war is still being fought as a new one is starting.
“I think that the exhibition really does a wonderful a job of looking at recent memory and looking at how memories have been guiding experiences for Long Islanders storm after storm after storm,” Ruff said.
Neil Watson, director of the museum, said he is pleased with the collaboration with Long Island Traditions and the exhibit that he said is informative and entertaining due to being visually stimulating. “For our museum to do a show that is focused on Long island and has a global overreach, I think is really terrific,” he said. “It’s what we do. It’s the mission of the museum to have an exhibit of this caliber, especially at this time given what’s happened recently, it’s become almost a timeless problem.”
Watson said the narrative is personal for everybody and the objects included in the exhibit are varied and effective. “They really give you a sense of place,” he said. “They put you in the moment as opposed to looking at a photograph of a house. So, I think in that way it’s a very ambitious installation of the exhibition, and it’s very effective. It’s pretty wonderful in that way.”
Solomon hopes that visitors will think about how waterfront and coastline communities are changing after viewing the exhibit. During her research, she said she learned a lot about the importance of high dunes and how hardening the shoreline may not be the best approach. “I hope they start asking questions of planners and our public agencies about the rationale for doing things and when there might be some better ways,” she said.
The Long Island Museum will host In Harm’s Way until Dec. 31. Special programs include the symposium “In Harm’s Way: Past, Present and Future” Oct. 28, a panel discussion “Learning from our Neighbors” Nov. 12 and the curator’s gallery tour Dec. 3. The museum is located at 1200 Route 25A in Stony Brook. For more information call 631-751-0066 or visit www.longislandmuseum.org.
By Irene Ruddock
Artist’s statement: I hope that my paintings create a deeper sense of the relationship between ourselves and the splendid world in which we live, and are moving through too quickly. — Al Candia
Al Candia, a Stony Brook resident, has been interested in art since childhood. He began painting seriously while teaching English at Commack High School, continuing his studies of art at Stony Brook University. His workshops and private study included courses with many noted artists, including Joseph Reboli. Candia has become an award-winning artist exhibiting extensively in galleries all over Long Island. Chosen as Honored Artist by the Setauket Artists in 2015, Candia is October’s Artist of the Month at The Long Island Museum.
Can you elaborate on your artist’s statement?
I concentrate on the immediate world around me. I try to avoid “grand” subjects and tend to focus on the common, ordinary things that I find meaningful, but that we are sometimes too busy to notice: a farm fence in an open field, ancient beach chairs frozen in the snow, a jetty marching down into the ocean, flowers stuck in an old bucket, a small pumpkin on the steps.
How did you learn to paint?
The most important teacher is “the doing.” I can’t tell you how many acres of canvas I went through to arrive at a level where I began to consider myself as an artist.
It has been said that your paintings ‘touch the heart’ and are soulful. Why do you think that is?
Perhaps by going through life so fast, people might secretly yearn for a simpler way of life. They may enjoy slowing down a bit to “take a breath” and see the ordinary and realize it can be extraordinary.
You were an English teacher for 36 years before becoming a full-time artist. How did teaching influence your work?
For me, there is wonderful connection between fine art and literature. Writers and poets deal very much in the creation of images. An image can haunt us, fill us with joy. It is what makes a written work alive and vivid. It is what made me want to become a painter. I would see something — a broken seashell, a window in the late afternoon shadows — that would move me deeply and would be heavy with meaning. I very much wanted to celebrate that in a painting.
How do you find inspiration for a painting?
Robert Frost said that a poem begins with a lump in the throat. He was talking, of course, about being moved or shaken by something — an idea, an experience, an object — that needs to be expressed. That is true for me also. Recently, I came across a pumpkin on the worn steps of a back porch. I was so taken with this simple object that hardly anyone would see. I thought of the person who placed it there out of a some personal gesture. I thought it would make a touching painting that reveals some small aspect of our humanity.
What is your method?
I usually begin with a bunch of photos. I take these back to my studio and begin to work up a drawing idea for the painting. This is an important step where you design the composition, simplify, arrange the elements, and begin to think of color and light. From there, I proceed as many oil painters do by washing the canvas with a thin mixture of warm color diluted with mineral spirits. Next I begin to lay in the large shapes. Essentially I am carrying on a dialogue with the canvas, finding out what is working and what is not.
Why have you chosen oil painting over other mediums?
I think the medium choose me. It somehow fits my personality. Oil painting is slow moving and deliberate. It often will take a few days to allow the painting to dry before moving on to the next step. During these intervals the painting is percolating in my brain, trying to make the painting as good as it possibly can be. I compare it to a child with a wind up toy, winding that toy as tight as possible in order to release it to its maximum effect.
What is the biggest difficulty you encounter in the creation of a painting?
After working with a painting for a couple weeks, you can lose the sense of it, you lose perspective. You can begin to doubt yourself: did I make all the right decisions, is the color just right, did I overwork it, does it still capture what you set out to do? At this time, for me, it is important to have honest feedback from others. My wife is an important part in keeping me on track.
After all that work and effort, it must be difficult to let a painting go.
Not at all. I love the entire process of painting from the initial moment of finding a subject, to creating a design, through the struggle of execution. And hopefully someone will come along and appreciate the painting enough to buy it and hang it in their home. For me that completes the cycle, and the painting begins its life.
Beside the Visitor’s Center at The Long Island Museum in October, where can we see your work?
I will be exhibiting at the Setauket Neighborhood House in the 37th annual Setauket Artists exhibit from Oct. 22 to Nov. 20. People are always welcome to visit my studio by appointment. You can contact me by visiting my website at www.alcandia.com.
By Nancy Burner, ESQ.
If you have been named as a trustee of someone’s trust, you may be wondering what you are supposed to do. It is important that the trustee understand his or her duties and responsibilities. The most important thing to remember as a trustee is that the trust assets are not your assets. You are safeguarding them for the settlor and/or beneficiaries, who will receive them after the settlor dies.
As a trustee, you stand in a “fiduciary” role with respect to the beneficiaries of the trust. As a fiduciary, you will be held to a very high standard. The trustee must read the trust document carefully, upon acting initially and when any questions arise. The trust is the road map and the trustee must follow its directions in administering the trust. A trustee should be aware that failing to abide by the terms of the trust document and mismanaging the assets can have serious financial repercussions for the trustee personally such as forfeiture of commissions and surcharge.
This very issue came up in the recent Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court case of Accounting Proceeding the Schweiger Family 2013 Irrevocable Trust decided on Sept. 7, 2017.
The subject trust stated that during the lifetime of the settlor, the trustees in their sole discretion may pay the net income to or for the benefit of the settlor’s beneficiaries or accumulate such income. With respect to principal, the trustees were given the discretion to pay so much of the principal to or for the benefit of the settlor’s beneficiaries. The trust did not require equal principal distributions and same may be made to any or all of the settlor’s beneficiaries.
Distributions made to any beneficiaries during the settlor’s lifetime shall be considered as advancements in determining the beneficiary’s respective share, unless waived by the remaining nonrecipient beneficiaries in writing. The trustees had no authority to pay principal to the settlor.
Despite the language in the trust document, the trustees made distributions to themselves and to individuals that were not beneficiaries, namely the settlor, their children/grandchildren and the spouse of one of the trustees.
In addition, the trustees indicated in their accounting that several of the distributions that were made to themselves as “per settlor’s request.”
After a review of the facts and the language of the trust document, the court held that even if the distributions to the trustees were at the settlor’s suggestion, those distributions were either impermissible gifts of trust assets by the settlor or distributions that the trustees should have assessed against their respective shares as advancements.
With respect to commissions, the court held that intentionally making distributions to individuals who were not beneficiaries of the trust is, in and of itself, a basis to deny commissions. Further, with respect to their self-dealing, either the trustees were in fact aware of the language regarding offsetting advance distributions and chose to disregard it or they were grossly negligent in their failure to seek professional advice to assist them in understanding the duties and responsibilities associated with being trustees. In the end, the trustees were surcharged approximately $230,000 for their self-dealing and failure to abide by the terms of the trust document.
The take away from all of this is that a trustee must follow the terms of the trust instrument and put the interests of the trust beneficiaries before their own. If this is not done the trustee is at risk of personal liability for any breach of duty in the form of denial of commissions or surcharge.
In addition, if you are the trustee of a Medicaid-qualifying irrevocable trust and fail to abide by the terms of the trust, not only do you run the risk of denial of commissions or surcharge, but you can also nullify any protections that the trust provides to the assets held by the trust. This would make all of the assets in the trust be considered an available resource when determining Medicaid eligibility for the settlor and could result in a denial of Medicaid benefits.
With a trustee’s personal liability at stake, it is advisable to retain an attorney to provide advice regarding the trustee’s fiduciary duties and obligations in administering a trust.
Nancy Burner, Esq. practices elder law and estate planning from her East Setauket office.
By Donna Newman
Spirituality has new resonance at Temple Isaiah in Stony Brook.
It comes in the voice of Marcey Wagner, who joined the Reform Jewish congregation last July, filling the dual roles of cantor and education director. The congregation will officially welcome her with an installation ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 29.
“I embrace the idea of new beginnings,” Cantor Wagner said during an interview in her temple office, “and I look forward to joyful things.”
Wagner said she is pleased that many of her friends and colleagues gathered over her career will be present to celebrate and that the installing officer will be Dr. Cindy Dolgin, former head of the Solomon Schechter School on Long Island.
The addition of Cantor Marcey, as she likes to be known, is truly a joy according to her co-workers. Interim Rabbi David Katz views her as a valuable asset — both in the sanctuary and in the classroom.
“Cantor Wagner brings her vibrant nature to the bimah [clergy platform] and years of experience to the position of educational director,” he said. “She is a great addition to our staff, bringing beauty to our worship and creativity to our school.”
Temple Administrator Penny Gentile also sings Wagner’s praises. “It is a pleasure to work with Cantor Marcey,” said Gentile. “She is such a vivacious person — so full of energy that it’s absolutely contagious. I’ve heard so many positive comments from the Hebrew School students and their parents. She is truly a team player with a gift for identifying and nurturing strengths in everyone. And what a beautiful voice!”
Although ordained as a cantor, Wagner said she has not been “on the bimah” (i.e., she has not held a cantorial position) for eight years. Instead she has been focused on teaching, but she said that returning is like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed it,” she said. “The audition felt like coming home.” Wagner said she loves seeing the children and hearing their voices and their laughter. For her it makes a synagogue come alive, which is why she has pursued education along with cantorial duties.
“Cantors spend more hours teaching than singing,” she said.
Wagner has been involved in all facets of Jewish education — teaching students from preschool through senior citizens. Before coming to Temple Isaiah she served as director of Youth and Family Education at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. Her career included four years as principal of the Lower School of the Schechter School of Long Island and a decade as cantor and educator at the Jewish Congregation of Brookville in Nassau County.
Wagner received her investiture as hazzan (cantor) from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, at which she also earned a master’s degree in sacred music with a concentration in education. She was selected to attend The Principals’ Center leadership seminar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
The board of directors at Temple Isaiah unanimously approved Wagner’s hiring and has been extremely pleased with her performance to date.
“Cantor Marcey is a breath of fresh air,” said President Jay Schoenfeld, “both on the bimah and in the religious school. Her energy is boundless and her warmth is evident in all the connections she’s already established with congregants, lay leaders and community members. A collaboration with Rabbi Katz to offer children’s services for the High Holy Days — open to the public and free of charge — demonstrates her devotion to Judaism. We are delighted to have her at Temple Isaiah.”
Cantor Marcey is delighted, too, and said she already knows she’s found a new home.
“It’s wonderful meeting people and seeing how warm and welcoming [the Temple Isaiah] community is,” she said. “I’m planning on staying a long time. I’ve been impressed with everyone’s organization and efficiency; I have a very positive feeling about this place. Everything has lived up to my expectations. It’s exciting when there’s a path to go on and you have congenial, capable partners with whom to make the journey.”
Wagner is committed to shaking things up, she said, to prove that Hebrew school can be fun. To elucidate she described last month’s opening session of the school program. Using a film clip from the movie “Babe’” in which the title character, a piglet, arrives at the farm, she led a discussion about new beginnings, which are exciting and scary — and complicated. The unconventional, unkosher protagonist, she said, was intended to make people think — and laugh. The session included students alongside their parents, and Wagner said she made sure everyone present took away at least one new bit of knowledge, to encourage discourse.
“One of the strongest ways to promote Judaism,” she said, “is to provide a venue for parents and children to discuss the important questions; to have the important conversations.”
By Fr. Francis Pizzarelli
Once again our nation is in shock after the worse gun violence massacre in American history: 58 innocent people killed and more than 500 people severely wounded and/or injured during a Las Vegas concert.
At the time of this horrific attack, the nation was in the midst of recovering from three catastrophic hurricanes that left major areas of our country, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands overwhelmed and powerless.
Each tragic circumstance brought out the best in our American spirit. Countless heroes risking their lives to save others; the spirit of selflessness and compassion has been inspirational. If only those in elected office learned from the power of their example!
These past few months the public discourse across the country has bordered on disgraceful. The demeaning rhetoric is fueling the heat and violence that is erupting across our nation.
The recent debate around the actions of many NFL football players regarding the appropriate posture during our national anthem has sparked a national conversation that all Americans should be attentive to. No matter what your politics, the conversation it has provoked around racism, police violence and hatred is vital. We need to discuss these issues with passion, commitment and open hearts but grounded in a profound respect for one another.
So many of the events that have erupted since January have underscored that there are many serious social issues that as a nation we must confront. They go beyond the scope of our differences around health care and tax reform.
Our criminal justice system is in dire need of reform. The way we treat drug addicts who commit nonviolent crimes is scandalous and needs to be addressed. The growing incidences of discrimination based on race, religion and sexual orientation need to take center stage as part of the national agenda.
The social indifference that has become so infectious is counterproductive. By our silence, we affirm the destructive behaviors and destructive rhetoric that have become a cancer among us.
We need to be more proactive on every level. Our students need to be a part of these important conversations. The average citizen needs to become more involved in our political process and understand that his/her voice does matter and does make an important difference.
The people’s voice needs to be heard. Those who have been elected must be held accountable to the people who elected them — not to a specific political party.
These are challenging times; however, we are all part of the challenge. We must lead by example. Our churches, synagogues and mosques must address the social issues and become a part of the national conversation. Our clerical leadership must urge their congregants to take a more active role in the political landscape of our communities.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world!” Hope must be the anthem of our souls.
Fr. Pizzarelli, SMM, LCSW-R, ACSW, DCSW, is the director of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson.
By David Dunaief, M.D.
Vitamin D is one the most widely publicized and important supplements. We get vitamin D from the sun, food and supplements. With our days rapidly shortening here in the Northeast, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore what we know about vitamin D supplementation.
Vitamin D has been thought of as an elixir for life, but is it really? There is no question that, if you have low levels of vitamin D, replacing it is important. Previous studies have shown that it may be effective in a wide swath of chronic diseases, both in prevention and as part of the treatment paradigm. However, many questions remain. As more data come along, their meaning for vitamin D becomes murkier. For instance, is the sun the best source of vitamin D?
At the 70th annual American Academy of Dermatology meeting, Dr. Richard Gallo, who was involved with the Institute of Medicine recommendations, spoke about how, in most geographic locations, sun exposure will not correct vitamin D deficiencies. Interestingly, he emphasized getting more vitamin D from nutrition. Dietary sources include cold-water fatty fish, such as salmon, sardines and tuna.
We know its importance for bone health, but as of yet, we only have encouraging — but not yet definitive — data for other diseases. These include cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases and cancer.
There is no consensus on the ideal blood level for vitamin D. The Institute of Medicine recommends more than 20 ng/dl, and The Endocrine Society recommends at least 30 ng/dl. More experts and data lean toward the latter number.
Skin cancer
Vitamin D did not decrease nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSCs), such as squamous cell and basal cell carcinoma. It may actually increase them, according to one study done at a single center by an HMO (1). The results may be confounded, or blurred, by UV radiation from the sun, so vitamin D is not necessarily the culprit. Most of the surfaces where skin cancer was found were sun exposed, but not all of them.
The good news is that, for postmenopausal women who have already had an NMSC bout, vitamin D plus calcium appears to reduce its recurrence, according to the Women’s Health Initiative study (2). In this high-risk population, the combination of supplements reduced risk by 57 percent. However, unlike the previous study, vitamin D did not increase the incidence of NMSC in the general population. NMSC occurs more frequently than breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancers combined (3).
Cardiovascular mixed results
Several observational studies have shown benefits of vitamin D supplements with cardiovascular disease. For example, the Framingham Offspring Study showed that those patients with deficient levels were at increased risk of cardiovascular disease (4).
However, a small randomized controlled trial (RCT), the gold standard of studies, calls the cardioprotective effects of vitamin D into question (5). This study of postmenopausal women, using biomarkers such as endothelial function, inflammation or vascular stiffness, showed no difference between vitamin D treatment and placebo. The authors concluded there is no reason to give vitamin D for prevention of cardiovascular disease.
The vitamin D dose given to the treatment group was 2,500 IUs. Thus, one couldn’t argue that this dose was too low. Some of the weaknesses of the study were a very short duration of four months, its size — 114 participants — and the fact that cardiovascular events or deaths were not used as study end points. However, these results do make you think.
Weight benefit
There is good news, but not great news, on the weight front. It appears that vitamin D plays a role in reducing the amount of weight gain in women 65 years and older whose blood levels are more than 30 ng/dl, compared to those below this level, in the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (6).
This association held true at baseline and after 4.5 years of observation. If the women dropped below 30 ng/dl in this time period, they were more likely to gain more weight, and they gained less if they kept levels above the target. There were 4,659 participants in the study. Unfortunately, vitamin D did not show statistical significance with weight loss.
Mortality decreased
In a meta-analysis of a group of eight studies, vitamin D with calcium reduced the mortality rate in the elderly, whereas vitamin D alone did not (7). The difference between the groups was statistically important, but clinically small: 9 percent reduction with vitamin D plus calcium and 7 percent with vitamin D alone.
One of the weaknesses of this analysis was that vitamin D in two of the studies was given in large amounts of 300,000 to 500,000 IUs once a year, rather than taken daily. This has different effects.
USPSTF recommendations
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends against giving “healthy” postmenopausal women the combination of vitamin D 400 IUs plus calcium 1,000 mg to prevent fractures (8). It does not seem to reduce fractures and increases the risk of kidney stones. There is also not enough data to recommend for or against vitamin D with or without calcium for cancer prevention.
Need for clinical trials
We need clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of vitamin D in many chronic diseases, since it may have beneficial effects in preventing or helping to treat them (9). Right now, there is a lack of large randomized clinical trials. Most are observational, which provides associations, but not links. The VITAL study is a large RCT looking at the effects of vitamin D and omega-3s on cardiovascular disease and cancer. It is a five-year trial, and the results should be available in 2018.
When to supplement?
It is important to supplement to optimal levels, especially since most of us living in the Northeast have insufficient to deficient levels. While vitamin D may not be a cure-all, it may play an integral role with many disorders.
References: (1) Arch Dermatol. 2011;147(12):1379-1384. (2) J Clin Oncol. 2011 Aug 1;29(22):3078-3084. (3) CA Cancer J Clin. 2009;59(4):225-249. (4) Circulation. 2008 Jan 29;117(4):503-511. (5) PLoS One. 2012;7(5):e36617. (6) J Women’s Health (Larchmt). 2012 Jun 25. (7) J Clin Endocrinol Metabol. online May 17, 2012. (8) AHRQ Publication No. 12-05163-EF-2. (9) Endocr Rev. 2012 Jun;33(3):456-492.
Dr. Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management. For more information, visit www.medicalcompassmd.com.
By Javed Butler, MD
Stony Brook Medicine has opened the new Cardiac Catheterization (Cath) Laboratory at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital to improve access to lifesaving heart care for residents of the East End of Long Island.
The lab provides emergency and elective treatments delivered by Stony Brook University Heart Institute specialists, for easier, faster access to the highest standards of cardiac care. The standard of care for a person experiencing a heart attack is that the blocked artery should be opened within 90 minutes of contact with medical care. That procedure can only be done in a cardiac catheterization lab by highly trained personnel.
For the rapidly increasing population of the East End, the nearest cath lab was previously located at Stony Brook University Hospital, up to 70 miles and a 60- to 90-minute drive. Even transportation by ambulance or helicopter could result in a life-threatening delay.
The new cath lab, led by interventional cardiologist Dr. Travis Bench, is currently the only facility in the East End capable of providing clinically complex care to critically ill heart patients. Bench and his partner, Dr. Dhaval Patel, have East End cardiology practices in Southampton and Center Moriches.
The lab will save lives by providing more immediate intervention for serious heart events such as myocardial infarctions (heart attacks). A delay in restoring blood flow through an artery increases the likelihood for significant damage to the heart. By allowing physicians to open a blocked artery in Southampton, without having to first transport a patient to Stony Brook, damage to the heart can be minimized and total heart failure may be prevented.
At the Southampton cath lab, doctors will be able to perform percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a nonsurgical procedure in which a physician inserts catheters through the skin to reach affected structures. The PCI treatments at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital include emergency and elective procedures.
The Southampton lab is staffed every day, around the clock, by Stony Brook Heart Institute’s interventional cardiologists with the most up-to-date knowledge and skills to diagnose and treat patients with heart disease.
For patients who need emergency catheterization, Stony Brook’s “Code H” protocol has produced an average “door-to-perfusion” time of 56 minutes, almost 45 minutes below the New York State regulated treatment guidelines. That is the level of care we strive for at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. The systems and processes are in place and we look forward to taking care of our patients out east with that same dedication to quality and excellence.
To view a video and learn more about the Cath Lab at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, visit www.heart.stonybrookmedicine.edu.
Dr. Javed Butler is the co-director of the Heart Institute and chief of the Division of Cardiology at Stony Brook Medicine.
By Kyrnan Harvey
“It’s fall, right?” my 7-year-old just asked. And I was like, “Um, yeah?” Notwithstanding a few weeks of unseasonably balmy, if not muggy, days, it is October and the first noticeable autumnal tints are seen in the American dogwoods that grow along the margins of the Laurel Ridge-Setauket Woods Nature Preserve on Belle Mead Road.
You needn’t be a gardener — nor ferry up to New England — to enjoy the weeks of glorious colors in the maples and the oaks in random woods and suburban roads: the yellow Norway maple, the red-orange of sugar and red maples, the russet-reds of the oaks.
There are many kinds of shrubs too, of course, that present fall color. These typically color up best in sunnier locations, but the native spicebush (Lindera benzoin), ubiquitous in our woods because the deer leave them alone, are beginning to yellow even in heavy shade. Last Saturday I was driving on Mt. Grey and West Meadow roads in Old Field, where homes are nestled into our native oak woods. Naturalized in the understory are the native mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, and planted rhododendrons that had grown massive before the deer population exploded.
If you live under a high canopy of oak trees, but want some great fall color, Japanese maples are a superb understory tree: They prefer some shade and will color up well despite it. Japanese maples are not limited to the popular weeping lacy trees. They are primarily Acer palmatum, but they also refer to Acer japonicum and Acer shirasawanum.
The grafted cut-leaf Japanese maple is justifiably popular but not inexpensive. These are propagated vegetatively, i.e., not by seed; they are called cultivated varieties (cultivars, in the trade), meaning they have specific genes; and they are identical to one another in leaf shape, size and color and also in rate of growth and habit, by which is meant the shape of the crown, whether pyramidal, weeping or columnar.
The spectacular cut-leaf Japanese maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum), red-leafed or green, is better used singly, as a specimen. Mature tress will get to be 15 feet in diameter, so do not make the common mistake of planting it too close to your driveway or front path or up close to your house. It is always a shame to have to restrict with pruning the natural form of these.
If you have the opportunity to plant a grove of Japanese maples, maybe for screening or to start a woodland garden, then the most expedient way would be to find a source of random Acer palmatum seedlings. Young trees, cheap. Don’t overly favor the showy red-leaved ones; select if you can a mix of green and red. In Joe’s garden, a client, there were three or four mature Japanese maples. We had many dozens of seedlings, offspring from the mother trees, growing out of the compost of years of leaf-blowing.
Many years ago Joe and I potted up a few of the younger ones, from 3 to 7 years old, and on a sunny Saturday morning in late October loaded them into the 8-foot bed of my ’68 Chevy. We parked on 5th Avenue in Park Slope in Brooklyn and presented a sidewalk sale. They were gorgeous in their variety of fall reds, oranges and even yellows. Fifteen years later and there are many dozens more seedlings, I just can’t bring myself to pull them up and throw them in the compost pile.
True, the deer will nip them as long as they can reach the branches. It is worth the effort to spritz a little deer repellent, especially in April, May, and June, for the first couple years until the branches are up and out of their reach. There is a blight on them, a soil-borne fungus called Verticillium wilt, that causes branches to die. Cut them back to the trunk. Sometimes the whole tree dies. If you have a dozen or more trees, as I recommend, and they are seeding themselves around, then it’s easy-come-easy-go. You don’t have to mourn the loss of a tree if there are many more healthy ones about.
It’s okay to start with unnamed seedlings of Acer palmatum. They are always gorgeous, leafing out in spring with their iconic leaves, or changing color in fall, they are never out of scale in the garden and comport well with companion shrubs and perennials. You could order a dozen and supplement them with a few choice named cultivars that you gradually collect at the garden center or through mail-order sources; or you could start right off with the choice varieties.
It would be preferable to have some of these splendid cultivars because some of their offspring seedlings will carry their desirable traits. Japanese maples are prolific self-sowers, so you might want to plant two or three of the great, well-known varieties: Invest in a few large trees, sourced at a nursery. Have them planted in locations that establish the structure and articulate the paths of a new woodland garden, underplant them with perennials and start looking out for seedlings next year!
Kyrnan Harvey is a horticulturist and garden designer residing in East Setauket. For more information, visit www.boskygarden.com.
By Daniel Dunaief
Counting penguins is like riding the highs and lows of Yankees rookie Aaron Judge’s home run streaks, followed by his series of strike outs. He’s not as bad as his strike outs suggest, although he’s also not a sure thing at the plate either.
Similarly, in local populations, the Adélie penguin, which waddles to and fro squawking on land and gliding gracefully through the water, isn’t as clear a barometer of changes in the environment. Also, like Judge, when populations rise and fall, people are eager to offer their explanations for exactly what’s happening, even if the sensational explanations — he’s not that good, no, wait, he’s the greatest ever — may overstate the reality.
“We have to be careful not to be overreactive,” said Heather Lynch, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University. “The concern is that, when we see increases or decreases, the implication is that there’s a miraculous recovery or a catastrophic crash.”
That, however, is inconsistent with Lynch’s recent results, which were published in the journal Nature Communications. Examining penguin data from 1982 to 2015, Lynch, Christian Che-Castaldo, who is a postdoctoral researcher in Lynch’s lab, and nine other researchers looked to see if there’s a way to connect the size of the population to changes in the environment. The study involved two teams of researchers, one supported by NASA and the other backed by the National Science Foundation.
“It’s a noisy system,” Lynch concluded. Managers of the populations of krill, small crustaceans that are the mainstay of the Adélie diet, try to use time series of key indicator species to understand what’s going on in the marine realm. In this article, Lynch said, local Adélie penguin populations may not be a clear signal of the health of the krill stocks because penguin abundance fluctuates for reasons she and her team couldn’t pinpoint.
These penguins, which Lynch has counted during her field work in the Antarctic, exhibit changes in population that can run contrary to the health, or stressed condition, of the environment.
“You can’t have your finger on the pulse” with the available data, Lynch said. “Part of our inability to model year-to-year changes is because we can’t measure the right things in the environment.”
The drivers of abundance fluctuations likely involve other animals or aspects of the krill fisheries they couldn’t model, she suggested.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about what penguins do under water, where they spend a large portion of their time and where they feed,” Grant Humphries, who was in Lynch’s lab for a year and now runs his own data science company in Scotland called Black Bawks Data Science Ltd, explained in an email. “The signals that drive year to year changes might actually lie there.”
Tom Hart, a researcher of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford who was not involved in this study, explores local scale variation in penguin populations. Locally, Hart said in an interview by Skype, “Things are incredibly noisy. When you aggregate, you get good signals, but with some error.” He suggested that this research drives him on further, showing that “local influences are important” because there’s so much variance left to explain. Lynch’s research is “a really good study and shows very well what’s happening on the regional scale, but leaves open what happens below that,” he said.
Indeed, Lynch suggested that by putting sites together, researchers can look at larger areas, which provide a clearer picture on shorter time scales.
Michael Polito, an assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University who was not involved in the study, suggests that this extensive analysis indicates that “you can still look at the relationship between the abundance of penguins and the environment in a robust way. Even though any individual time series may not be the best way to understand these relationships, in the aggregate you can use them.”
Managers who set fishery policies in Antarctic waterways are often concerned about harvesting too much krill, leaving the penguins without enough food to survive and feed their chicks.
The challenge with this result, Lynch acknowledges, is that it makes setting krill boundaries more difficult.
A strategy that involves resetting conservation targets based on annual monitoring appears unrealistic given these results, Lynch said. “From a practical standpoint, we threw in everything we could and could explain only a tiny fraction of the variation,” she said.
Hart added that this is “not an argument to fish away,” he said. “We need to understand what’s going on at a local scale and we’re not there yet.”
To get people involved, Lynch and her team created a science competition, called Random Walk of the Penguins, to see who could predict the overall penguin populations for Adélie, gentoo and chinstrap penguins from the 2014 to 2017 seasons.
The competition, which was a collaborative effort with Oceanites, Black Bawks Data Science and Driven Data included $16,000 in prize money, which was donated by NASA. Entrants could use data from the 1982 through the 2013 seasons. The contest drew competitors from six continents. Of the five winners, all were from different countries.
Humphries, who was the lead on the data science computation, said the results were “somewhat humbling” because competitors were able to make “decent predictions” using only the time series. “With long-term predictions and for determining the tipping points, there is still a lot of work to be done.”
Lynch is relieved that her co-authors supported the direction the article took. “I’m a skeptic by nature and more than happy to throw orthodoxy (or even my own previous work) under the bus,” she wrote in an email. “I do hope that others will use our model as a starting point and we’ll never go back to the old days where everyone looked only at ‘their sites.’”
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