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The memorial sits above the USS Arizona, a sunken battleship, in Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. File photo

There are moments in American history that change the course of our democracy, and our lives. Several have come out of a clear blue morning sky.

Dec. 7, 1941 in Hawaii began with just such a morning..

But it was not just “a date that will live in infamy,” in the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D), which he used to begin a speech to Congress and the American people the day after the surprise bombing on the naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was also a day that marked a major transition for the United States of America.

“I think December 7, 1941, is perhaps the most important day in American history,” Paul Sparrow, director of the FDR Library in Hyde Park said in an interview aired on CBS Sunday Morning television last weekend. “It is the transition day when we shifted from being an isolationist nation to being a global superpower.”

Roosevelt initially did his best to keep the country out of World War II. The Great Depression had taken a toll on the American people, and the memory of the destruction and lives lost in World War I still lingered.

When faced with the mass destruction that took place at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt knew he had to make a swift and decisive response to an attack he called “unprovoked and dastardly.”

Roosevelt’s rallying cry was met with an immediate response from a unified and committed nation. America retooled, fought and took on a leadership role in the world it has maintained ever since.

Seventy-five years later, we might be experiencing another total policy realignment. Will the new administration, with its America-first doctrine, lead us back to pre-Pearl Harbor isolationism? One of the most important parts of American tradition since 1941 is our willingness to lend a hand to other countries and support them. Though it remains to be seen what values our new commander in chief will maintain, we must not forget our history.

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This is a big THANK YOU to the Village of Port Jefferson and all those who worked hard to transform the village into the Charles Dickens Festival. For the 21st year in a row, the seaside village came to life in the time of Dickens, with decorations, lights, greenery and especially costumed characters roaming the streets and welcoming visitors. This year, a second THANK YOU for naming us, Times Beacon Record News Media, the honoree for the event.

The entire weekend was a thrill, for us and for the thousands of people who chatted with the characters, shopped in the many varied stores, ate in the wide selection of restaurants, rode in the horse-drawn carriage, enjoyed the festival of trees and took in the harbor views. How do I know? I asked the festivalgoers, because I was there every day from Thursday to Sunday, and they told me how they decided to come into the village. Some came from Connecticut, enthusiastic about the magical event because they had visited before and knew of the many fun activities. It also helped that Port Jefferson ferry general manager, Fred Hall, offered a two-for-one price special during the weekend. The 10:30 a.m. boat on Saturday morning had 300 walk-ons alone, and they came without cars so no parking problems, and they had money in their pockets to spend for a good time. And people came from towns to the east and west, responding to the publicity and reputation surrounding the annual fantasy on the Long Island Sound.

Everyone might take the festival for granted after all these years, but I know how it came about because I was also there at the beginning. It was the brainchild of Jeanne Garant, the mayor at the time and mother of the present mayor, Margot Garant. Jeanne, a woman of vision, wanted the many organizations and groups to come together and work as a whole on a project to strengthen the sense of community and to celebrate the village. And she figured it wouldn’t hurt if the project helped the local businesses. So the first weekend in December was designated as the ideal time to capture some of the holiday shopping, and the theme was to be the Dickens stories and characters, who would come alive during those couple of days. And so it happened.

This was no small project to get the organizers’ arms around. Among those invited to offer their talents and to hold special events was the Greater Port Jefferson-Northern Brookhaven Arts Council, which would become the managing body alongside Port Jefferson Village, the historical society, the school district, the churches, various cultural paeans like Theatre Three (“A Christmas Carol”) and Harbor Ballet Theatre (“The Nutcracker”), the chamber of commerce and the civics, the constables, the ferry company, music groups, the harbormaster, the individual businesses and the residents just for starters. Events were designed for all age groups.

Eventually the Currier & Ives-like ice skating rink — another Jeanne Garant idea — joined the enchanting picture. And a special THANK YOU to nationally famed and charming confection artist, Pat Darling, for once again creating the whimsical Santa’s Workshop in the historic Drowned Meadow Cottage on West Broadway.

There are new offerings each year, and this past weekend Mrs. Cratchit’s Colorful Christmas Crafts was one such in the Village Center, along with an expanded Festival of Trees that each sponsor creatively decorated.

Port Jefferson Village was rich with events running through Saturday and Sunday. Indeed, it required more than two full pages in our Official Festival Guide just to list them in their many different locations hosted by the various community groups. So the original vision of a unified village has once again been realized. And the businesses were delighted with the results. “Never had an empty table all weekend,” one restaurateur said. “Shoppers buying all afternoon,” a jewelry store owner said.

Dickensian pleasure will go on throughout December this year, with the decorations and specials. And I would like to end on a personal note. I have watched countless parades in my lifetime as a child, a mother and a grandmother, but until this weekend, I had never been on a parade float. As the honoree of the Dickens weekend, I got to ride atop the ferry float and to wave at the thousands of people and shower them with (artificial) snow as they waved back, calling out greetings. What fun! We are deeply honored to have been appreciated in this way.

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The first time we hold them, they fit into the corner of our arms with room to spare. Their impossibly small pink toes fit neatly in our eyelids as we kiss their wiggling feet.

We lower their grocery-sack-sized bodies gently into their cribs. During the day we bring food to their toothless mouths, and their bodies process the food as they take what they need and leave the rest for us to clean and remove.

Suddenly they are coasting, looking into the side of a couch, a chair or our legs, standing for the first time. Amid the cheers and squeals, they fall and we rush to the floor near them and congratulate them. Before long we’re bending down, gently holding tiny hands engulfed in our oven-mitt-sized palms.

From their first walking steps, they progress to trotting. It’s a wonderful yet terrible transition, as their developing minds can’t process dangers at the same rate that their feet propel them. We keep up or race ahead, making sure they don’t step off a curb until all movement on the street has stopped.

They no longer want to sit in the car seat. They arch backs that are shorter than our arms, making it impossible to buckle them in. We distract them enough to close the clasps, run to the front seat and bring the car to a high enough speed that they sleep.

We take them roller skating, skiing or ice skating. We start them early so they’ll become naturals. Brilliant idea, except that they need us to put our hands under their armpits to keep them upright. After a time far too short for our kids’ liking, our backs scream to stop. We can’t bend down or our spines will go on strike. At that point, these small people want hot chocolate or the chance to try skiing, snowboarding or rollerblading on their own.

We stand on a field, tossing a ball lightly near their gloves. They throw the ball back in our general direction, discouraged that they haven’t discovered the magic of a catch. We get down on one knee, look them in the eye, pull up their small chins and smile, hoping we can teach the mechanics of throwing before they become too upset to keep trying.

We protect their heads from colliding with the tops of tables, reach for glasses from the cabinet, and help them into the seats at restaurants where their feet dangle far from the floor.

Pretty soon, they want to ride a bike. We promise to hold on but our backs, yet again, have other ideas. They shout at us for letting go or, maybe, they decide they want to do it on their own because they saw Timmy down the street on his bike.

Their faces, arms and legs get longer, they pick up speed everywhere they go and, before long, their heads are above the level of the kitchen table. They reach down to pet the neighbors’ big dog, and they sit in restaurant chairs with enormous feet that rest on the floor and which we wouldn’t dare put anywhere near our eyelids.

We no longer have to bend our necks to kiss the tops of their heads. In fact, with their braces gleaming in the sun, they stare or glare from under the long hair of adolescence directly into our eyes. Pretty soon we hope, as we go to sleep each night, they will be taller than we are.

Wonderful as that moment is, maybe — just for an instant — we remember that the head perched atop this growing body is the same one that fit so snugly into our arms all those years ago.

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By Tracey Farrell

I was honored to be named a Person of the Year by Times Beacon Record News Media for 2015.

While I was truly honored, I was more excited at the prospect of getting the word out about the work I do with my group: North Shore Drug Awareness.

After losing my son to an accidental overdose in 2012, I was given a voice I chose to use to help other families who are struggling with addiction — to share my failures and successes, and the resources I have found and acquired through networking.

The absolute most poignant part of this story is that my story was published. The original story — in which I was named a person of the year — was seen by a woman who recognized me in my photo that accompanied the article as a client in her accounting office. She immediately shared the story with her best friend — a friend who desperately needed help with her addicted children.

A message I received from her changed a life. Linda Cirone was absolutely paralyzed by her children’s addictions. Not only did she enable her adult children, but she hid in shame. She could barely function or participate in her own life, and in her message in my Facebook inbox, she used that key word — Help.

Tracey Farrell with Linda Cirone at TBR News Media’s honorary dinner. Photo from Tracey Farrell
Tracey Farrell with Linda Cirone at TBR News Media’s honorary dinner. Photo from Tracey Farrell

I brought her with me to the honorary men and women of the year dinner, because her story of how she reached out to me was too important not to share. The power of that article could potentially save a life. And it did … her own.

This past year has been a roller coaster of change for her.

She chose to finally open up and share beyond the confines of her best friend and family members who would listen. She reached out through social media to the different parent groups that she learned of and began to realize she was so not alone. She began to share her story, which, like mine, has helped others.

Her children are still struggling, and while one is improving, Linda has grown in her own recovery. Yes, her own.

Addiction is a family disease and, as a parent, you too must learn to cope, or you will lose yourself in the process. She has learned to no longer enable like she did in the past. She has also followed a dream. She moved away from her children to the warmth of Florida, and now has a lovely condo on a small waterway. While she still feels the pull of her children’s addictions, she has also started to feel some freedom. Freedom to feel the sunshine, enjoy a nice day out with friends and family she has near her. This was not even an option to her a year ago — just a dream.

While her son was in Florida after we came up with a plan for him to seek outside-of-state rehabilitation, she met a woman who is the guardian angel for parents who send their kids to Florida for rehab.

The other day, as I opened my Facebook feed, I saw a post.

Linda checked in to the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County with that angel I spoke of. She attended her first task force meeting to help fight for positive changes in addiction services and housing in that area.

She has grown exponentially over this past year. She needed to. She was sick of hiding, but didn’t know where to look for help. And she found it. All because of an article in a local newspaper.

Tracey Farrell, previously Tracey Budd, is a Rocky Point resident who, since her son’s passing, educates others on drug abuse and assists in finding help for those who are struggling or know someone who is struggling with addiction. She is the founder of North Shore Drug Awareness Advocates and also a 2015 TBR Person of the Year.

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There were two extra place settings during our Thanksgiving weekend. They were for a couple we met when my husband and her husband were serving at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, some 50 years ago — a golden anniversary of sorts. The idea that we met half-a-century ago and have maintained our connection is astonishing and lovely because we were quite fond of them then and are happy to still be friends now. When they left the service, about a year before we did, they returned to their home state of North Carolina, and we, of course, returned to New York. Over the years, we have kept up sporadically through Christmas cards stuffed with letters about our lives.

Our family wound up at Sheppard because we made the right decision for the wrong reasons — as so often happens in life.

Just after my husband began his internship at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, he came home one evening somewhat puzzled. “Look,” he showed me paperwork, “if I agree to enter this lottery called the Berry Plan, I will be allowed to finish my residency in the specialty I choose, but then I will have to go into the military for two years. The benefit is that I will not be drafted out of my training before I finish, but I will delay starting my practice two years while I am serving Uncle Sam. What should I do?”

“Do it, do it!” I urged. “They will send us to Germany or Japan and we will get to see the world.” I yearned to travel and we had not had the chance or the means. The year was 1963, and aside from a few military advisers in Vietnam, there was no war involving the United States. There was a draft but we were at peace.

“OK,” my husband said, still seeming dubious. “But only about 5 percent of those who apply are selected.” He went off the next morning with the completed paperwork and the two of us promptly forgot about the whole matter. That is, until the next spring when he came home and announced, still unsure what he had gotten us into, that he had been selected. I was happy at the prospect of travel in our future.

With the benefit of hindsight, you know that by 1965, we were in a hot war and I will tell you that many physicians were drafted out of their specialty training and sent to Vietnam as general medical officers. Some of them never returned.

We, meanwhile, now had one child and a second on the way when we were sent to Texas. It was not Germany or Japan, it wasn’t even California or New Jersey, as we had requested when asked by the Air Force, but it was — just by dumb luck — stateside, which meant we could be together. In fact, we had a house to live in, our first, with a washer and dryer, and each child had his own room. Wichita Falls is not a particularly beautiful place, as far as scenery goes. There were no real trees, little grass, no bodies of water and only an occasional bit of mesquite shrub blowing across the brown dirt. But it was heaven for us, and we were thankful to be there for the duration of the two years. We learned to eat chicken fried steak and barbecued beef on a bun, and before too long our third child was on the way.

It was on the base that we met our friends, who were serving under similar circumstances. He was a pediatrician who worked alongside my husband at the hospital, and with his wife they also eventually had three children, went home and started their professional lives together. But we stayed in touch, as I have explained, and they have rejoined my family with lots of conversation and laughter.

Old friends are treasures because they are irreplaceable. We are older now, quite a bit older, and we might not have recognized each other immediately on the street. But the basic persons that we were are intact.

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Verbs await like a collection of colors, quivering, shaking and jumping on their palettes to define and describe the unfolding scene.

What verbs will we use to describe the future president of the United States, whose name itself can be a verb?

Well, for starters, he tweets. We know that fact through his candidacy and it’s a pattern that continues now that he is assembling a cabinet and as he awaits his turn as president. His tweets represent his direct-to-the-people message, cutting out the middle man of the media. As with pharmaceutical companies that market their products directly to consumers, sometimes Trump’s tweet messages, which crackle like thunderbolts from his fingers, should come with a warning. For example, “Don’t operate heavy equipment while listening to these tweets, which may cause shortness of breath,” or, “If you find yourself shouting approval or disapproval in response to these tweets, try not to read them in church, in a library or any place where shouting could cause a crisis.”

When he communicates with the populace, with American leaders or with foreign leaders, what verbs will fill the canvas?

He often seems to warn, to threaten and to demand. Maybe he believes American greatness starts with a tough president who insists America and its interests go directly to the front of any line.

In recent days, he has weighed in on the discussion about the election, claiming widespread voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote “beauty contest.”

Through his tweets, he also leveled attacks against reporters he derides for disagreeing with him.

I get it: As an agent of change, Trump may feel it’s his job not to highlight everything that’s going well with the country or to shout encouragement. That, he may believe, would be like telling a kid who has struck out continuously that he’s having a great game.

Shifting from the visuals of colors on a page to the sounds at a pep rally, will the Trump presidency repeat similar notes with a single tone? Will he continue to castigate, to criticize, to claim and to attack? Those are just a few of the verbs that describe the approach Candidate Trump took on the contentious campaign trail.

At some point, does President Trump become like a strong-willed character in a compelling novel? Will his experiences enable him to make a transition to becoming a president who emits a different tone and who leads to a symphony of greatness that comes from every part of the country?

Will the cajoling, the criticizing and the arguing transition to educating, inspiring and elevating? Yes, I know his approach and policies may help educate more Americans and may help bridge the gap between the testing levels American students reach compared with students in other nations.

Certainly, as Trump demonstrated during his campaign stops, he can and has rallied people. What actions, what verbs, will describe the way Americans and, indeed, people around the world, react to his message? As an agent of change after the polished rhetoric of President Obama, Trump may not want to compete and, indeed, may sprint away from the pontifications his predecessor proffered.

That, however, doesn’t preclude Trump from the kinds of verbs we hope we can employ to fill the pages of the next four years. Will he encourage, empower and reassure Americans about the government that supports, protects and serves them?

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Thanksgiving is arriving at the right time. With so much to be thankful for, it should be hard to remember one’s passions about the outcome of the recent presidential election. Yet there is talk about families who are calling off their Thanksgiving reunions around grandma’s richly laden table because they don’t want to talk politics with relatives who were on the “other” side. What a travesty, as if anything were more important or enduring than the safety net of family.

People have a right to think differently, even if they are related. There is, after all, no accounting for the distribution of genes, and anyway that’s not important in the scheme of things. What is important is the love family members feel for each other and the security that they have each other’s backs. If that is not the relationship one has with one’s family, I guess differing political opinions are a good enough reason to break off what was a meaningless business of just going through the kinship motions to begin with.

Even though the present situation is not nearly as dire, I am reminded of the Civil War or the War Between the States, which pitted brother against brother on the battlefield. That was a tragedy of deepest proportions. Right now, we are merely dealing with the outcome of an election whose consequences are perhaps feared or cheered but have not been actualized. If matters do get worse in our nation, we are going to need each other all the more to manage. And if they get better, then we can all cheer together.

Let’s wait and see — and break bread together, treasuring the love that binds us rather than the rhetoric that divides us.

As we go forward, we should remain vigilant about what is happening in our country and speak truth to those in power. The end of the election, at long last, is but the beginning of the next chapter. We have the right, as Americans, to speak our minds and expect those who represent us to hear us. Indeed, we have the obligation to remain active in our society, letting our lawmakers know how we feel even as we set an example of staying informed and engaged for our children and grandchildren.

What we should take great care to do, however, is work to separate fact from fiction. Communication in today’s world is infinitely more complicated than when our founding patriots read newspapers to learn what was happening. And even then, they had to be sure whose words they were reading and whether the writers could be trusted. By comparison today, there are so many different vehicles claiming to give the “facts.” Newspapers, radio and TV networks have been joined by cable, the Internet and dangerously, social media, where anyone can say anything without the benefit of fact-checking and their words can be transmitted to literally millions of people.

This is how jihadists woo recruits. This is also how politicians’ supporters win voters. So how can one tell if what one is reading is fact? The answer is obvious but hard. We must use that same Internet to check out what we have read on social media, not just assume that what we are told is correct because it comes from a good friend or loved one. Facts must be corroborated by multiple news sources, not just by opinions. Indeed, the more dramatic an assertion, the more likely it will be published in many places, not just on Facebook or Twitter.

Also, we need to talk with more than each other, by which I mean those with similar views. We need to talk to people on the “other” side of issues and ideology. At the least, we may learn how they come to the conclusions they do. And maybe we can hear something we might agree with, creating a bridge and not a wall. Some of those we talk with might even be our relatives. But that brings me back to grandma’s dining room table: Wait until everyone has finished and enjoyed dinner first before discussions commence.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I’m going to blend the holidays, and make a naughty and a nice list of those things for which I’m thankful. I’ll start with the nice.

I’m thankful for inspirational teachers. Every day, some teachers devote so much time and energy to their work that they ignite a passion for learning, a curiosity or a determination in their students that has the potential to pay dividends for decades. An inspired student reflects and emanates an educational light that, in turn, can have a multiplier effect, encouraging their siblings, their friends and even their parents to learn and grow.

I’m thankful for the police who patrol our streets and who protect and serve us. They can and do tackle everything from delivering a baby on the Long Island Expressway to racing toward reports of someone with a weapon.

I’m also thankful for the firefighters, who rescue people trapped in burning buildings and who suffer through cold wind, rain and snow while doing their job.

I’m thankful for all the soldiers who, regardless of which president is in office, accept their responsibility and protect America’s interests wherever they serve.

I’m thankful for the scientists who dedicate themselves, tirelessly, to the pursuit of basic knowledge about everything from quarks and neutrinos, to the researchers who are on a mission to cure cancer, to understand autism, or to defeat fungi or viruses that threaten the quality and quantity of our lives.

I’m thankful for the sanitation workers who appear during the wee hours of the morning, clear out our garbage and move on to the next house.

I’m thankful for the First Amendment. I’m grateful that our Founding Fathers decided we have the right not to remain silent. Our constitution guarantees us the kind of free speech that allows us to express our views, even if those opinions are contrary to those of our government or our neighbors.

OK, here’s the nasty list.

I’m thankful for the Internet, which prevents anyone from being wrong about anything, ever. Well, information on the Internet may also be inaccurate, but who cares? If it’s there and we repeat it, at least we’re echoing something someone else wrote, even if that person is an 8-year-old who is just learning to type and is posting something that looks like it could be right.

I’m thankful for all those people who honk at me when I don’t hit the accelerator the moment the light turns green. They remind me I should be efficient for all of our sakes and that I could be doing something much more important, like looking up stuff on the Internet rather than sitting at a light.

I’m thankful I can roll my eyes in my head. How else could I deal with those events around me that I find insufferable, from listening to our political leaders rip into each other to engaging in arguments with people who know better and can show me all the information they use to back up their arguments on the Internet.

I’m thankful for the rain and the cold and the snow. OK, so this is in between a naughty and nice one, because I believe varied weather presents something for everyone. Sure, people don’t tend to like it when the temperature falls too far, but I enjoy the cold. Besides, the winter provides a contrast to seasonable weather.

Finally, I’m thankful for prognosticators of all types, including the recent ones who seemed so sure of themselves about the results of the election. They are a reminder that sure things don’t exist in any arena, even those with a preponderance of pontificators.

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Mount Sinai’s girls’ soccer team celebrates its Suffolk County title win. File photo by Desirée Keegan

Success isn’t given, it’s earned, and our North Shore teams this fall have earned it.

Our student-athletes aren’t just building character through lessons of teamwork, or gaining strength and endurance, or learning about winning and losing — they’re leaving legacies.

Port Jefferson’s varsity girls’ soccer team celebrates a second consecutive state championship. Photo from Port Jefferson school district
Port Jefferson’s varsity girls’ soccer team celebrates a second consecutive state championship. Photo from Port Jefferson school district

Some teams may have seen their losses as failures, but we can’t forget the history that was made this season. Centereach’s football team made the postseason for the first time since 2002; Ward Melville’s field hockey faced off in the state finals for the second straight season; and Mount Sinai’s girls’ soccer team made it to the Long Island championship after claiming the program’s first county crown.

Newfield’s soccer team also made big moves this season. The boys played in the county finals for the first time, and the girls, who were part of a developmental league in 2012 — designed for weaker teams to play competitive games without the possibility of postseason play — won 11 games this season and made it to the Suffolk quarterfinals. Smithtown East’s girls’ volleyball team had a near-perfect season. They lost just one game heading into the Suffolk finals. Northport made it back to the girls’ soccer county finals after two seasons, getting over the semifinal hump. And Ward Melville’s football team will be playing in the county finals for the first time in three decades this weekend, after upsetting No. 1-seed and previously undefeated Lindenhurst last week.

And then there was total dominance by teams like the Port Jefferson’s girls’ soccer team, which brought home back-to-back state titles after its third-straight almost perfect season. Kings Park’s girls’ volleyball team cruised to its sixth straight county and Long Island titles, and plays in the state finals this weekend, and Smithtown West’s boys’ volleyball team, which brought home the school’s first county and Long Island titles this year, will also play in the state tournament this weekend.

We have fully enjoyed covering our sports teams this season and are proud of their success. Of course it’s fun to watch and write about victory, but it’s also gratifying to see the student-athletes in our coverage areas working hard to make their communities proud.

We also would like to commend all of the hardworking coaches — who are volunteers, in some cases — for their dedication to bettering our youth. With so many opportunities available for kids to stray down the wrong path, it is a breath of fresh air to see our athletes thrive.

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When I was a child, my parents would sometimes take me out of the city and to the Catskill Mountains where my father was raised. There, in rustic accommodation, we would spend some weeks during the summer, happy to be out of the heat and humidity. But for a child used to the protective shield of tall urban buildings, I would be fearful when a summer storm, with high gusts, thunder and lightning would rage across the country horizon and pelt the windows and roof of our cabin.

Seeing my fright, my mother would leap into action. “Oh good,” she would say. “It’s a perfect day for pancakes.” As I would watch, she would whip eggs and milk from the antiquated refrigerator, then heat some cooking oil in a pan. She would ask me to beat the eggs while she measured out the flour and in short order the divine smell of frying pancakes would fill the kitchen. The storm outside now merely made the feast inside more cozy and safe, and by the time my mother, sister and I finished eating and looked up from the table, the summer squall would be gone.

Security, thy name was silver dollar pancakes.

In these unsettled times of postpresidential election, how I wish I could cook up some pancakes to help calm the people around me. My neighbors, my friends, our readers, many of them seem anxious, even afraid. Whether they voted for Clinton or Trump, they don’t like what they are hearing about bullying, demonstrations that can turn violent and slurs that seem to have been unleashed by the election. With each possible pick for the new administration, from chief strategist to possible EPA chief to a trial balloon for secretary of state, a shudder goes through the minds of many. Our outgoing president urges us to give some space to the incoming one, and then leaves the country for his last overseas trip. He has already visited Greece with Germany and Peru to follow, undoubtedly to try and calm those unsettled by the election in distant capitals. Anxiety, it seems, is global, but not entirely.

The stock markets are celebrating. The prospect of government spending on infrastructure and tax cuts that will stimulate the economy has sent the markets around the world on a tear as they hit all-time highs. Monetary policy is out — fiscal stimulus is in. At least that is the presumption at this first blush of transition to a new administration.

Meanwhile we have a country that is equally divided. What could be better proof than to have the razor-thin popular vote go one way and the Electoral College go the other way. How do we deal with that?

Despite the closeness of the election, the fact remains that the GOP won and won across the board: senators, representatives and governors. At least the next two years of political party leadership have been determined, and there is no further contest for now. But we also, as a democracy, are obligated to protect the rights of the minority — all minorities. That’s the part of the definition that some majorities don’t get. If we could all acknowledge and teach that point, those who feel threatened because they are in the minority could stop being afraid.

Further, the GOP is not a monolithic bloc — there is not just one shade of red. Nor are the Dems just one color blue. There is enough potential for bipartisanship as long as neither side digs in and vows to prevent cooperation between the parties. We Americans want our elected leaders to work actively on our behalf, not just to abdicate and coast in office. It will take the best of both sides to steer our nation through these challenging times. And by the way, the times have always been challenging.

We, on Long Island, have set a pretty good example with our state, county and town legislators often working together for the regional good, regardless of party. So there is hope. That’s my impression — and I’m not just serving up pancakes.

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