Holidays

Patricia Paladines teaches a child the art of seining during Setauket Harbor Day on Sept. 28, 2019. Photo by Maria Hoffman

By Patricia Paladines

Patricia Paladines at West Meadow Creek. Photo by Carl Safina

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 catalyzed the modern environmental education movement. A few months after that first official celebration of the Earth’s natural environment, the Congress of the United States passed The Environmental Education Act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on October 30, 1970. Later, Nixon noted that it is “vital that our entire society develop a new understanding and new awareness of man’s relation to his environment – what might be called ‘environmental literacy.’” 

The Act states that “The Congress of the United States finds that the deterioration of the quality of the Nation’s environment and of its ecological balance poses a serious threat to the strength and vitality of the people of the Nation and is in part due to poor understanding of the Nation’s environment and of the need for ecological balance; that presently there do not exist adequate resources for educating and informing citizens in these areas, and that concerted efforts in educating citizens about environmental quality and ecological balance are therefore necessary.” 

The Environmental Education Act encouraged and provided financial support for the development of curricula that improved American’s understanding of policies that enhance environmental quality and maintain ecological balance. It called for the use of such curricula in model educational programs at the elementary and secondary school levels, the development of training programs for teachers, other educational personnel, public service personnel, community, labor, industrial and business leaders, and government employees at State, Federal and local levels. 

It supported the planning of outdoor ecological centers that would provide community education programs on preserving and enhancing environmental quality and maintaining ecological balance, and the preparation and distribution of material by mass media in dealing with the environment and ecology. 

In 1971, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, Sidney P. Marland Jr. wrote an article titled Environmental Education Cannot Wait in American Education. In the article he stated, “Environment as a high priority educational theme has also been assisted by strong student concern for the decline in environmental quality. Youth is more concerned with the future state of the environment than is the older generation because young people are, for one thing, going to spend so much time inhaling that future environment, swallowing it, and finding their way through it. Environmental concern offers an attractive neutral ground in which to work out the ‘alliance between generations’ which President Nixon spoke of at the University of Nebraska in January.”

Many of us were the “youth” Mr. Marland refers to in his article. We grew up inhaling, swallowing and finding our way through the environment our leaders at the time sought to protect. We raised our children on a less polluted planet than what we had begun to experience in the 1950s and 60s when we were children. 

Opportunities for learning about the natural environment that surrounds us are readily available around Long Island through nature centers, aquariums, universities, and our protected forests and beaches. 

On this 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, the world is on lockdown due to a pandemic which is believed to have originated from disturbance to wildlife and habitats. It is an opportunity to give us pause and reflect on how we now should work out an “alliance between generations” for preventing future Earth Days experienced in lockdowns caused by environmental illiteracy. 

Patricia Paladines is an environmental educator and photographer living Setauket. She works as a consultant for an organization that funds UNICEF’s Let Us Learn projects in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Liberia, Madagascar and Nepal. Patricia is on the board of various local environmental organizations including the Four Harbors Audubon Society and the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery in Brookhaven, and in the warm months enjoys leading trips around Stony Brook’s West Meadow Creek aboard the Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Discovery tour boat.

Dr. Jane Goodall Photo courtesy of National Geographic

National Geographic commemorates Earth Day with a special screening of the new two-hour documentary Jane Goodall: The Hope on April 22 starting at 9 p.m. The film, which will air globally in 172 countries and 43 languages on National Geographic, Nat Geo WILD and Nat Geo MUNDO channels, takes viewers through chapters of Dr. Goodall’s journey, highlighting how she inspires hope for our planet, love for its animal inhabitants and actions of stewardship for this generation and those to come.

Dr. Jane Goodall and Prince Harry at Windsor Castle for the 2019 global leadership meeting of Roots & Shoots. Photo courtesy of National Geographic/Hitesh Makan

Featuring an extensive collection of photographs and footage that spans over seven decades, the special depicts the formation of the Jane Goodall Institute’s “Tacare” community-centered conservation approach and Roots & Shoots youth empowerment program, her remarkable advocacy and leadership on behalf of chimpanzees and humanity. 

“Being out in the forest of Gombe, I had a great sense of spiritual awareness; I began to realize that everything is interconnected,” says Goodall. “Since then, every day, it’s become clearer that climate change is an existential threat to our natural world, and if we destroy this world, we destroy our own future.”

Dr. Jane Goodall signing book for young girl at Esri Conference in 2019. Photo courtesy of National Geographic/Michael Haertlein

“Each day, every single person has the chance to make an impact through small, thoughtful choices, and when billions of people make the right choices, we start to transform the world,” added Goodall. “Don’t give up; there’s always a way forward.”

The documentary includes appearances by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, among others.

“The need to protect our planet has never been more urgent, and we’re using Earth Day’s 50th as an opportunity to inspire viewers through the wonders of our planet and its incredible species for viewers around the world,” said Courteney Monroe, president, National Geographic Global Television Networks. “With the Earth Day takeover across all of our networks and platforms, we are able to reach the largest audience possible to celebrate this momentous day and ensure that viewers fall in love with our planet and act to protect it.”

Photo by Drew Biondo

Looking for a fun dessert to brighten up your holiday table this weekend? Why not go old school and make this blast from the past bunny cake? We printed this recipe back in 2016 but our readers had so much fun making it we thought we’d bring it back for an encore. Not only is this cake easy to make and delicious, but it is also fun for kids as they can help decorate and bring out their creative side. 

Devil’s Food Bunny Cake

INGREDIENTS:

1 and 3/4 cups sifted cake flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/3 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

3 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

white frosting (about 4 1/2 cups)

1 bag sweetened coconut flakes

red food coloring

assorted jellybeans

pink gel frosting

DIRECTIONS:

Sift the flour with soda, salt and sugar. Soften the butter. Add flour mixture and 3/4 cup milk to the butter. Mix to dampen flour and then beat for two minutes at medium speed. Add the vanilla, eggs, chocolate and 1/4 cup milk. Beat 1 minute longer. Pour the batter into two 9-inch layer pans, lined on bottoms with paper. Bake at 350 F for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool in pans for 10 minutes and then remove and cool on racks. 

Cut one cake into 3 parts, making two ears and a bow tie (see diagram). Assemble the other cake as the head. Frost the entire cake. Line the inside of the ears with pink gel frosting. Tint 1/4 cup coconut with red food coloring to make it pink. 

Sprinkle pink coconut in the centers of the ears and in the mouth area. Sprinkle white coconut over the rest of the cake. Use black jelly beans for the eyes and nose and assorted jelly beans on the tie. As a grand finale, add three whiskers on each side of the mouth with pink gel frosting.

Now who wants some cake?

A scene from the annual Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick's Day in 2019. This year's parade has been postponed due to coronavirus. Photo by Kyle Barr

Local St. Patrick’s Day Parades have been postponed due to ongoing concerns of the spread of coronavirus. Some of these local events have not had to cancel a parade in their multi-decade lifetimes.

The reports of cancellations came through after a March 12 Suffolk County press conference, where county Executive Steve Bellone (D) and county health commissioner Dr. Gregson Pigott said it would be safer for all parades taking place on the 14th and 15th to postpone their events.

The New York City parade, which often draws thousands upon thousands in crowds, also announced March 11 it would postpone its parade. It was the first time in more than 250 years that the parade has been cancelled.

The Friends of St. Patrick, the nonprofit organization that puts on the Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade, announced it would be postponing the 70th annual 3-mile parade, which was originally scheduled for March 15. 

“We want to thank all of our sponsors and participants for their continuing support of the parade,” the Friends posted to Facebook. “While the Friends of St. Patrick are naturally disappointed to have to make this decision, it is the right decision. We know how important the event is to our community and the decision was not made lightly. We will be back bigger and better than ever at our next parade and will celebrate twice as much next time.”

James McElhone, the treasurer of the Friends of St. Patrick, said the organization would be holding a meeting the night of March 12 to discuss if the date would be pushed to later or if it would be safer to wait until next year.

“This is the first time in 70 years we’ve had to do this,” McElhone said. “Then again for New York City, it’s the first time in over 200 years.

On Thursday morning, the St. James Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the St. James St. Patrick’s Day Parade also announced it would postpone “for a later date” over concerns of exposure. 

Despite the calls for postponement, the 30th annual Ronkonkoma St, Patrick’s Day Parade is, as of writing, still planned for March 22 along Hawkins Avenue in Lake Ronkonkoma.

Suffolk officials said there are currently 16 confirmed cases within the county, with 49 others in mandatory quarantine and 76 others who are be in monitored in “cautionary quarantine,” having recently travelled.

by -
0 1230

Every 10 years, the people at the head of the annual Miller Place-Rocky Point St. Patrick’s Day Parade honor all the past community members who were lucky enough to be named grand marshal.

As the annual parade looks down the barrel of its 70th anniversary, the people who run the second oldest parade in Suffolk County have the task of respecting the past while looking to continue its run into the future.

The Friends of St. Patrick, a group of volunteers who have helped put on the parade for the last seven decades, hosted its third annual Luck of the Irish Casino Night March 6. During the group’s biggest yearly fundraiser, members said they were not only acknowledging the past, but trying to look toward the future.  

“It costs about $40,000 to put this parade on, so fundraisers like this really help.”

— Hugh McCarrick

Unlike previous years when members would nominate a queen and her court, along with a grand marshal, this year members announced instead they would be supporting a local student with a $1,000 scholarship. 

“The applications for [the queen and her court] were going way down, and we were seeing it as sort of a bygone era,” said James McElhone, the recently installed treasurer of the Friends of St. Patrick. “We decided to make it a scholarship that would be rotating between several local high schools to encourage people to write an essay on their Irish heritage.”

This year, Alexa Zichinelli, a senior at Miller Place High School, won with her essay about her Irish heritage, particularly of her great grandmother on her father’s side who came from Ireland during the Irish Potato Famine. 

Her grandmother often talks about that history, of when her own mother was in County Clare in Ireland. Zichinelli wrote about the Irish folklore her grandmother loves to talk about, along with the family she left behind.

“Going to where my great-grandmother was from in Ireland, she lived by these rocks that she described looked over a cliff, so it was just kind of magic, where she was from,” she said.

Zichinelli said she will put the scholarship to use, as she intends to go to college for premed, particularly on the path toward being a pediatric heart surgeon. 

Those who have been grand marshal in the past see the parade differently than most. It’s a tradition, yes, but it’s also been a way to celebrate and even define the North Shore communities along the Route 25A corridor. With 70 years of history, grand marshals have included noted community members like state Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), who was named grand marshal in 1989.

One family sticks out among those in the Rocky Point area. The McCarrick family owns property in the Rocky Point shopping district that once included the famed McCarrick’s Dairy before it closed in 2017 and later became a 7/11. Hugh McCarrick, one of the officers of the Friends of St. Patrick, said nine separate members of the McCarrick clan have been named grand marshal over the years. He and his brother Kevin, along with a slew of other past marshals, were both honored at the casino night March 6.

“Seventy means a tremendous amount.”

— Walter Colleran

Hugh McCarrick, who was named grand marshal in 1997, said going forward the objective is to make the parade more interesting every year, but with around 85 units in the parade this year, he added they are going strong. He thanked East Wind for hosting the fundraiser, which is easily its biggest of the year.

“It costs about $40,000 to put this parade on, so fundraisers like this really help,” he said.

Mike Tatilian, a grand marshal in 2015 and past president of the Friends of St. Patrick, said times have changed and they are always trying to bring in flesh blood to help out. Nothing else says that times have changed in seven decades than the number of St. Patrick’s Day parades around Suffolk County. While the Huntington parade is in its 86th year, hamlets like Kings Park and Jamesport are celebrating only their 10th and seventh years, respectively, of the annual parade. Tatilian said they’re always trying to compete for spectators, of which the MP-RP parade usually gets 25,000-30,000 along its 3-mile run. 

“There’s competition — you’re competing for fans,” he said. “When there used to be a few parades, now there’s many.”

Walter Colleran was named grand marshal in 2013 and said 70 years means a lot to a parade, also helping to display how its changed.

“Seventy means a tremendous amount — [the parade] started out years ago as an opportunity for everybody to hang out on the street and drink beer, but over the years it’s turned into a very family-oriented affair.”

Stock photo

Visit participating restaurants throughout the Village of Port Jefferson for a taste of the green during the Luck of Irish Breakfast Crawl on Saturday, March 14 from 9 a.m. to noon.

This year’s theme is ‘Luck of the Irish’ and each local purveyors (17 participating locations) will provide food and/or drinks to a taste of Ireland! Come  enjoy Bangers, Irish Tea, Rashers, and more and shop at the local retailers for special offers/discounts! Look out for the large shamrocks displayed on their window. *Provided by the Port Jefferson Retailers Association*

Rain date is March 21. Tickets are $30. TICKET PICK-UPS are at the Port Jefferson Chamber Office, 118 West Broadway, Port Jefferson.

Hours for pick-up: Monday – Friday 10:30am – 5pm

**Each ticket holder is allowed one tasting per participating purveyor and will need to get their ticket stamped at each stop they visit.**

To purchase, call 631-473-1414 or email: [email protected].

Sponsored by Pro-Port Restaurant Group and the Port Jefferson Chamber of Commerce.

 

 

Walt Whitman Birthplace, 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station presents an afternoon of Irish dancing on March 1 at 1 p.m. Children of all ages will enjoy an interactive performance by the Mulvihill-Lynch Studio dancers who will answer questions and teach some Irish dance steps. Followed by a guided tour of the museum. $9 per child, chaperones free. Visit www.waltwhitman.org or call 631-427-5240.

The George Washington portrait. Image from Vanderbilt Museum

CENTERPORT: The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is displaying two artifacts in honor of Presidents Day, Feb. 17 – an oil portrait of George Washington and a letter to the mayor of New York City from Abraham Lincoln. The pieces are on view in the main hallway of the Vanderbilt Museum Nursery Wing through the end of February.

President Lincoln wrote the letter to Fernando Wood, then mayor of New York City, just after the start of the Civil War on May 4, 1861. Wood (1812-1881), who built a successful shipping enterprise in New York City, served several terms in Congress and was mayor of New York for two terms, 1854-58 and 1860-62.

The letter was in response to a letter Wood wrote to Lincoln shortly after the Fort Sumter attack, offering him whatever military services he, as mayor, could provide. Lincoln’s reply to Wood was in gratitude for his offer of assistance.

The Vanderbilt Museum Curatorial Department has no record of how this letter came to be in William Vanderbilt II’s possession. Originally, it may have been the property of his great-grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was an acquaintance of Wood, and could have been passed down through the Vanderbilt family.

The Vanderbilt’s framed oil portrait of George Washington, though unsigned and undated, was believed to have been painted by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), widely considered one of America’s foremost portrait artists. 

Stuart produced portraits of more than 1,000 people, including the first six presidents of the United States. He painted a number of Washington portraits. The most celebrated is known as the “Lansdowne” portrait (1796), and one large-scale version of it hangs in the East Room of the White House. 

Stuart’s best-known work is an unfinished portrait of Washington begun in 1796 and sometimes called “The Athenaeum.” This image of Washington’s head and shoulders is a familiar one to Americans — it has appeared for more than a century on the U.S. one-dollar bill.

The Vanderbilt’s Washington portrait, found in the basement of the Suffolk County Welfare Department Home in Yaphank, was restored and presented to the Vanderbilt Museum in 1951. While the artist did not sign the work, a specialist reported that year that the painting was an authentic Gilbert Stuart.

In 1981, however, two curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art studied the portrait and advised the board of trustees that the work was not created by Stuart. As a result, the portrait, oil on panel and measuring 21.25 by 33.5 inches, is described in the archival records as “After Gilbert Stuart.” The curators’ closest estimate was that the painting was made sometime in the 1800s.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport. Winter hours for the museum, mansion and grounds are Saturdays and Sundays from 11:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Tuesdays from noon to 4 p.m. with special winter recess hours from Feb. 17 to 21 from 11:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

Photo courtesy of WMHO

Here are some fun and educational ways for your kids to enjoy winter break:

Benner’s Farm

Ever wonder what it’s like to be on a real working farm in the winter? Kids ages 7 to 14 can enjoy winter break at Benner’s Farm, 56 Gnarled Hollow Road, E. Setauket on Feb. 17 and 18 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Learn how to make maple syrup, help care for the animals and more. Snacks provided. Bring lunch. $60 per day, $100 for both days. To register, call 631-689-8172 or visit www.bennersfarm.com.

Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery

Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery, 1660 Route 25A, Cold Spring Harbor will hold several winter break events from Feb. 17 to 21 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Make snow that won’t melt, make homemade ice cream and create slippery, sticky slime. Admission is $7 adults, $6 seniors, $5 kids ages 3 to 12. Call 516-692-6768.

Huntington Historical Society

Kids in grades 1 to 6 can join the Huntington Historical Society at the Conklin Barn, 2 High St., Huntington for a variety of hands-on history activities, including learning traditional weaving techniques and Presidents Day-themed crafts, games and activities on Feb. 17 and 18 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Campers will go home with a piece of their very own hand-woven fabric. Fee is $35 per day. Call 631-427-7045.

Smithtown Historical Society 

Enjoy February break with the Smithtown Historical Society,  239 E. Main St., Smithtown from Feb. 18 to 21 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Enjoy a different theme each day including Kaleidoscope Fun, Mid Week Mardi Gras, Snow Day and National Biscuit Day. Fee is $30 per day. To register, call 631-265-6768.

Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum

From Feb. 17 to 20 from 10 a.m. to noon children in grades K through 3 can take part in several workshops at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum’s Learning Center, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. Participants will take tours of the museum’s collections and then create a related craft including an owl diorama, animal portrait and a mixed-media deep-sea collage. $20 per child. To register, call 631-843-5539.

Ward Melville Heritage Organization

On Feb. 18 to 20 from 10 to 11:30 a.m., the WMHO’s Educational & Cultural Center, 97P Main St., Stony Brook hosts a Puppet Making workshop for ages 6 to 11 with acclaimed artist Liz Joyce ($100 for all three days) and Music Mornings with Johnny Cuomo for ages 3 to 5 ($85 for all three days, $30 per day). To register, call 631-751-2244.