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I am you and you are me. We, the people of this country and this planet, share something people hundreds of years before and hundreds of years hence can’t possibly have in common with us: now.

What defines “now”? Labels. We are tremendously caught up in them. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And then, something happens, something unimaginable in Florida, and it’s clear at least one person directed his hatred toward one particular group.

This was an attack on the gay community. Other labels will undoubtedly stick and motives will undoubtedly be uncovered, but it was an attack on gay America. Sure, it was terrorism, because it was terrible and it was shockingly violent, but it was, first and foremost, an attack on a community.

There’s a moving scene at the end of the Kevin Kline film, “In & Out,” at a high school graduation in which everyone stands up and says they are gay in support of Kline, who is on the verge of losing his job because of his sexual orientation.

As we watched a moving Tony Awards ceremony, I hoped someone would step to the microphone and say, “I’m gay and anyone else who is gay today, please stand with me.” I’m sure the entire audience would have stood up.

For today, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future, we are all gay. We are all lesbian, bisexuals and transgender. We are like the Danish people who, legend has it, put yellow stars on their clothing to make it impossible to distinguish Jewish Danes from fellow Danes during World War II. There is some debate about whether Christian X, the king of Denmark, put the Jewish star on his clothing. What is clear, however, is that the Danes did what they could in a horrible time to save their citizens from discrimination and death by helping them escape to Sweden.

In the here and now, with so much blood, so many tears and such incomprehensible loss, there is something we can do for our fellow Americans: We can be gay. I’m not suggesting we all need same-sex partners, merely, that the label that seems so toxic to some applies to all of us.

We live with such random acts of terror and violence. Far too often, the president of the United States has become the Mourner in Chief. Maybe, instead, he should be gay, too.

Let’s not wait for a reluctant and divided Congress to act and to take action on guns, or on hate, or on love. Let’s embrace and understand each other.

There will be plenty of people pointing fingers. The FBI was watching this killer through different points in his life. Did they miss anything? I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people who will suggest that if the clubgoers had had guns, this killer wouldn’t have been as effective because someone would have been able to take him out before he did all that damage. Is that really what we want, a bunch of people in a club with guns? Would that really make us safer? It’s a bit like the mutually assured destruction argument during the Cold War. Maybe it was so irrational to consider destroying the world that no one pushed the button, but we still have all those weapons and there is still plenty of hate and fear. We and the former Soviet Union spent billions on weapons when those resources might have cured cancer, improved food crops or developed cheaper, cleaner energy.

So, how do we stop the hate? We stand up, we unite, we share — and we recognize that I am you and you are me.

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If there is but one positive to come out of the contentious primary season for both the Democratic and Republican nominations for U.S. president, it has been a spotlight on the issue of money in politics.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made “political contributions from the millionaire and billionaire class” a cornerstone target of his campaign, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been forced to respond to her clocking in millions of dollars in compensation for speeches she had given to Wall Street bankers and others while not holding public office. On the Republican side, presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump made it a public point of pride that he was not accepting money from other corporate bigwigs, but instead was self-funded or relying on small grassroots contributions.

Clearly, the electorate is sensitive to big money’s influence on politics. Ask anybody on the street if they feel that gigantic chunks of money are perverting American democracy and, chances are, they will agree with you. And here we are.

New York State watchdogs stood in front of the Smithtown office of state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) on Tuesday to make some noise over his stance on the Senate Republican Campaign and Housekeeping committees accepting some $16 million in contributions, thanks to a loophole in campaign finance law that allows limited liability companies to use a much higher contribution limit than corporations do. With the clock ticking before the legislative session comes to a close on June 16, groups like MoveOn.org and Common Cause New York called on Flanagan and his Republican colleagues who control the Senate to bring a bill to a vote that would close that loophole.

Flanagan did not speak at the press conference, but he did say in a statement that the legislation to close the loophole was a “red herring,” and instead said the state had bigger fish to fry if it was serious about addressing campaign finance reform, like addressing straw donors, for example.

We agree that this LLC loophole is not the end-all solution to campaign finance reform, but it is certainly a piece of it.

There is no doubt about the influence money has on elections and, later on, the votes of those who are elected. Perhaps the problem is so deeply rooted that holding press conferences like the one on Tuesday ends up being more like preaching to the choir than anything else. Some may go into office wanting to remain completely independent, but find that difficult under the pressure of the way our campaign contribution system works.

Whatever it may be, though, We the People have to find ways to unite with bigger numbers behind a common cause if we expect our elected leaders to rehabilitate their addiction to political money.

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We all have addictions. I don’t mean we’re all addicted to a narcotic, to alcohol or to something that can cause harm to us, to our families or to our communities.

We think of addictions as negatives, because they suggest a dependency or a need for something without which we find ourselves unbalanced, uncomfortable or unhinged.

There are plenty of positive addictions. Many of us are, for better or worse, addicted to our children. We want them to succeed, to be happy, to live better lives than we’ve had and to have every opportunity to find their niche.

When they’re born, we become addicted to the sound of their giggling and laughter, which helps us get through those sleepless nights just as effectively as a caffeinated beverage. That sound is more pleasant than the most magnificent music we’ve ever heard, than the calls of birds outside our windows in the morning, or than the school bell that signaled the end of another week and the start of a much-anticipated weekend.

Outside of the home, we can become addicted to victory, whether it’s at work, on a softball field where we are competing against a group of people from another company, or at a traffic light where we want to beat the car next to us to the on-ramp for the Long Island Expressway.

Our bodies become accustomed to these addictions. Runners receive chemical endorphins in the brain that give them a high, allowing them to run much longer than someone whose would-be endorphins are knocked unconscious by alcohol or are far too overwhelmed from sugar overload to become active. When you’re driving in extreme heat or cold and you see runners pushing themselves up a steep hill, they are feeding that addiction.

Speaking of feeding, we are addicted to particular foods, or food groups. If we eat cookies every night, our bodies send signals to our brains to find those chocolate chip cookies. We can also become addicted to foods that are healthy for us, like broccoli, blueberries or gluten-free kale pizza.

We can also become addicted to long days of summer sun. When the fall and winter come, we might miss the light, craving it the way we would another cup of mid-afternoon coffee when we’re feeling run down through the day.

But is addiction really the right word? Aren’t these habits and not addictions? I see addictions and habits as a spectrum, somewhat akin to the discussion about what is normal. We all tend to believe we’re normal, but as we know from our own families and from the families we marry into, the range of normal is broad. Every family has its crazy uncles, its eccentric aunts and its oddball distant cousins. Much as we might like to believe the grass is greener with other families, we know that the more we interact with extended family groups, the more likely we are to observe behaviors that fall outside the range of what we consider normal.

So, if we recognize our addictions, can we change them?

Like any addiction, change is challenging. Plenty of support groups offer help, especially with addictions to alcohol, drugs or other substances. There are also groups like Jenny Craig, which offer to provide balanced meals that help people transition to a different diet.

Even without support groups, though, people can fundamentally change some of their addictions, often when they are so concerned with the happiness of someone else — a spouse, a child, a niece or a parent — that their own needs no longer come first.

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The column I intended for this week has been put aside. This is a historic moment, and as a journalist, with a front row on history, and as a woman in what many still think is a man’s job, I cannot let the moment pass without offering the recognition it surely deserves. Finally, in my lifetime, a woman has become the presidential candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States of America.

Although I have voted for candidates of both parties in different presidential elections, depending which one I thought was better, this has nothing to do with party affiliation. I would never pick party over country. The triumph of this moment does have to do with a struggle for equality in governing that is as recent as my mother’s hard-won right to vote in the 1920s. Can you imagine a time, not prehistoric but merely one family generation back, when women could not even vote? Or earn careers in medicine, law, business, literature or the arts?

This has nothing to do with whether I like Hillary Clinton or don’t like Hillary Clinton, any more than whether I am a Republican or a Democrat. This turn of events feels like we are emerging from the dark ages and into the sunshine of the 21st century. And to be honest, I am surprised at how powerfully this moment affects me.

Yes, I came of age during “women’s lib,” graduating from college at the time Betty Friedan’s book, “The Feminine Mystique,” was published. And yes, I was one of the early wives and mothers in our social circle to balance the needs of a family with those of a business, but frankly I never thought of myself as a member of “the second sex,” or as a revolutionary. I was merely doing what for me “came naturally.” But throughout my life working these dual jobs, I have felt the contradictions within society about a woman’s “role.” Indeed, my own mother was dead set against my starting a newspaper, accusing me of “abdicating my responsibilities at home.” But I thought all that was long past.

Why shouldn’t a woman lead her party in a run for the presidency? If the population feels she is qualified, why shouldn’t she lead her country as president? Now there is a lot more going on during this vindictive presidential campaign than women’s rights. In fact, I wasn’t so aware that the issue of women’s rights was playing a part. So much of the population is angry, frustrated, even frightened with how they are being governed by an obstructionist Congress and a rapidly changing economy.

Thus my surprise by my own reaction on the level of gender equality. I still remember when Geraldine Ferraro, who came to the New York Press Association as the keynote speaker when I was its president in the 1980s, declined my husband’s offer of a corsage. He had bought one for her and one for me, but she explained she “couldn’t look too feminine.”

I also recently remembered with a laugh, as I was recalling early history to my 21-year-old grandson, that I had been propositioned while eating alone in a dining room of a hotel before a convention was to begin there the next day. “Good girls don’t do that,” I was admonished, for dining solo. Lest I chalk up that encounter to a fluke, it happened again on the train trip home.

The past may be past, but it surely isn’t forgotten. And when I looked around the table last month at the board of directors meeting of the NY Press Association and realized that there were only two other women publishers in a room of 28 board members, I realized that the past isn’t even past. But clearly there is hope.

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For many, summer is the most exciting part of the year, bringing warmer weather and fewer worries. However, as you gear up for a weekend at the beach or a barbecue at a friend’s house, it’s more important than ever to remember the safety precautions you were taught when you were young — lock it up.

The Times Beacon Record Newspapers’ police blotter typically has a fair share of theft incidents that are completely avoidable, with perpetrators stealing wallets and other valuables from unlocked cars and sheds, and sometimes even houses.

Although this may seem like a no-brainer, week after week, month after month, residents continue to lose cash and property left in unlocked places.

Police have said summer months are among their busiest, with spikes in criminal activity and arrests. But it’s not only serious crimes that see a bump — petit crimes become more frequent as opportunity presents itself, which is where we see residents losing out on cash, jewelry and other valuables that may not be properly fortified.

As we head into summer and start planning family trips and getaways, take time to secure against what could potentially impact your summer fun. Lock your front doors, sheds, garages and cars, and close and lock your windows when you’re leaving your house empty for prolonged periods. Make it that much easier to have a worry-free summer.

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It has been more than a quarter of a century since I was married, but nonetheless I read, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” a front-page piece in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times this week, with great interest. Before my husband died, I had been married just shy of 25 years, so I figured I had a dual perspective on the issue.

I was not surprised to learn that the article had one of the highest “hits” in the entire Sunday paper, from those who read online. Marriage is a fascinating subject, both for those who are, those who never were — and those who are no longer. There is some magic in the whole process of falling in love and of deciding that this is the person one wants to spend the rest of one’s life with. By the same token, that was not always the primary criterion for marriage: financial security, international alliances, duty — these are but some of the other motivators. My grandfather, for example, was widowed at a young age when my grandmother died in a wagon accident at the turn of the last century, leaving him with three young children. The family expected him to marry his wife’s younger unmarried sister, which he obediently did, to keep the clan intact and provide loving care for the children, who were after all her nieces and nephew. There are countless instances of royals who were married off to other royals in order to cement strategic alliances — between countries, between tribes, between sects.

Marrying for love is a fairly recent and novel idea that is even today not always practiced around the globe. Marriages can be and still are “arranged.”

But this article last Sunday dealt only with a marriage that is made by mutual choice of the couple involved. So what are the problems the couple will face? Alain de Botton, the author, attempted to list them. “We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well,” is definitely one of his better lines. He continued, “In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: ‘And how are you crazy?’” He doesn’t say this, but when one buys a house or a car, one asks,”What are the problems here?” Certainly the choice of spouse is far more critical, and all liabilities and drawbacks should honorably be revealed.

Even in today’s lenient “shacking up openly” culture, something new by the way with only the past couple of generations, couples may not know all that they should about one another. “One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with,” the author said.

“Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating,” de Botton asserted. He certainly hit the nail on the head for at least my generation. We all became engaged as casually as picking a partner with whom to go to the prom. We dated for two months, two years, whatever the case, but always on our best behavior and in settings like concerts and parks that surrounded us with beauty. Perhaps today’s greater intimacy lessens the surprises.

The author makes a key point: That what we seek in marriage is supposedly happiness but in fact is familiarity. We seek to recreate relationships we experienced or yearned for that were out of reach in our childhoods. Those are not the relationships most conducive to happiness.

Also people who feel terribly lonely, who find the thought of being alone throughout their lives terrifying, “risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate.”

And then there is custom. Everyone married when they finished their schooling, or shortly thereafter, it seemed to us of a certain age. Indeed, my mother told me on my wedding day that I had barely managed to avoid being “an old maid.” I had just turned 22.

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All the world’s a stage.

I read those words long ago, but didn’t appreciate the stage itself until recently. As a child, I struggled to wade through school books rife with flowing descriptions. Who cares what kinds of trees are outside the house, if there is a swing set near someone’s first kiss or if a fog sits heavy on a town?

When I was my son’s age, I found those details as relevant as the cars that drove by me on my walk to junior high school. Action and dialogue meant so much more. I wanted to hear what people said or know what they were thinking.

I now appreciate the stage more than ever. In fact, I’d like to go back to Ward Melville High School and thank the stage crew for building sets that turned the stage into the Upper West Side in the 1950s or a yellow brick road.

My appreciation for a setting, however, extends beyond the actual stage. It’s in the seats of an auditorium, where a shared armrest becomes the location for the first tentative effort to hold hands.

The setting continues through the wooden doors that, like eyes focusing from a distance, have opened simultaneously, allowing an appreciative audience its first glimpse of the land that awaits. It’s a part of the marble hallway, where the chatter of birds on nearby trees supplants the chitchat of children, who seem to race out through a revolving glass door that allows the nearby rays of the sun to pour inside.

We can shift our attention to blades of grass on the playground, where an undersized third-grade transfer student catches a fly ball for the first time and suddenly feels as if everything will be OK in his new town. That same blade of grass can provide cover for an earthworm as it looks to go back underground after a heavy rainstorm, lest the birds circling overhead stop to bring the worm back to a nest of hungry birds waiting at the top of an awning on a boarded-up house the children believe is haunted.

A setting can become altered the way a police siren appears to change from the Doppler effect. Even though the alarm wails at the same frequency, its pitch seems different as the sound approaches. The basketball net that appeared to be impossibly high when we were in first grade is remarkably close to our hands as we age, making us feel as if we’ve become Gulliver in our own lives.

Nostalgia can imbue a setting with emotion. I recently drove down my old block. I saw a version of me that was younger than my children are now. I could see myself staring out the side window of my room across a row of evergreens, letting my eyes become blurry to soften the colors of the red, green, purple, yellow and white Christmas lights down the block. If we were lucky some evenings, the snow would cause the lights to flicker.

Down below those tall evergreens and just outside my front window were several bushes. During the fall, with a full moon and a violent wind, the needles on those bushes transformed into a man with a mohawk hairstyle swaying back and forth.

One morning, those bushes disappeared. I tentatively pulled back the shade, where a dump truck of snow buried my menacing friend. The bushes bent over double, as if the man with the mohawk had taken a hard punch to the gut.

As I squinted at the scene, I knew that I had aged but the man with the mohawk hadn’t.

Yes, each setting is alive with possibilities.

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Reclaim NY is requesting various public documents from governments and school districts across Nassau and Suffolk counties, including Port Jefferson Village and Commack school district. File photo by Elana Glowatz

By Brandon Muir

Long Islanders deserve better than excuses from politicians, and bureaucrats. It’s time they took the lead on making government more open. That’s why Reclaim New York launched our transparency project.

Using the Freedom of Information Law to open spending records from governments across Long Island is the first step toward ensuring all citizens can hold their local government accountable.

This effort may ruffle some feathers. It seems this happened with Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant. Rather than just fixing Port Jefferson’s FOIL failures, we saw a smoke screen.

On March 7, we filed a FOIL request for the 2014 village expenditures, since this public record is not posted on the village website. We intend to share this information publicly to empower citizen-driven oversight of government.

The documents did not arrive.

Excuses don’t make up for not following the law’s timelines, or completing a FOIL request late. The law provides for extensions; a government simply has to ask for it. When this doesn’t happen, the FOIL is considered denied.

The mayor recently claimed we never filed an appeal and didn’t reach out to the village. Both statements are incorrect. The appeal is documented, and was sent on April 11, to the mayor’s own address, exactly as Port Jefferson asked.

We simply followed the law, as anyone can see at our transparency project portal: NYtransparency.org. If the mayor does not like FOIL’s requirements, she should attack the law, not Reclaim New York.

To be clear, the village has now sent the records. But more than 75 percent of Long Island localities fulfilled their legal obligations on time. We’d like to work with the village to improve their transparency process.

Here’s how we can make that happen: The village can post the names and contact information for the Records Access Officer, and Records Appeals Officer online. These designations are required by law, and this would clear up confusion.

When a FOIL request is denied, or ignored — as in this case — the law allows for an appeal, sent to the Appeals Officer.

If the village says the mayor fills this role, and tells a FOIL filer to use a particular email address to submit an appeal to her, the mayor should not publicly claim she hasn’t received an appeal and blame it on the sender.

Additionally, ensure village employees understand the time limits for FOIL requests.

The first response, within five days, should acknowledge receipt and indicate when the request will be completed. If you need more time, request an extension.

In the initial response to Reclaim New York, the village said they would outline production costs for fulfilling the FOIL request. Then they stopped responding to our requests without providing a clear timeline.

It’s important to note that it’s not the filer’s responsibility to follow up with calls, though in this case Reclaim New York did. But the law does require that a village respond within 10 business days to an appeal.

The ultimate transparency goal for any government: proactively posting information in a searchable format online.

Every citizen should be able to see how government is spending public money. There’s no need to wait for someone to ask. Provide this information openly, and Port Jefferson will truly be leading the way toward open government.

Brandon Muir is the executive director for Reclaim New York.

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Councilwoman Jane Bonner recently went above and beyond the call of duty as a public servant, donating her kidney to a friend she has known for almost 40 years.

Her friend had already undergone two organ transplant surgeries and was in desperate need of a new kidney when Bonner stepped up.

He is not the only American who has been in desperate need of an organ. Many are not as lucky.

The National Kidney Foundation said that more than 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list every month, and 13 people die every day waiting for a kidney transplant.

Bonner is helping to raise awareness for a topic that many people may not be thinking about. With all the advancements medicine makes every year, and with the U.S. having literally double the number of kidneys needed to keep the population alive, it should seem shocking that people still die from kidney failure in this day and age.

Of course, donating a kidney is certainly no small feat. Anytime one undergoes surgery there is a risk. But the conversation is important to have, even with yourself. If you have two healthy kidneys, you may be able to help save another person’s life.

The Living Kidney Donors Network said that more than 80,000 people are currently on the waiting list, where most people remain for more than five years waiting for a life-saving donation while on dialysis.

The waiting list would become exponentially longer if we were to also consider all the other organs people are waiting on, such as hearts, livers and bone marrow.

Just bringing this topic more into the spotlight may spare a life. We commend Jane Bonner for having the guts to do something so huge to save another person’s life, and for sharing her story.

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Back to business as usual now, but last Thursday night, May 19, was magical. As some 300 community members, advertisers and readers know firsthand, we had a 40th anniversary party aboard the P.T. Barnum, one of the ferries of The Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat Company. There are three vessels in its fleet that sail between the two shores of the Long Island Sound, and the reason we reserved that particular one was its wide center aisle, which we converted into a dance floor after we ate.

Speaking of eating, the food was simply delicious, if I do say so myself. Catered by Elegant Eating of Smithtown, owned by Myra Naseem and Neil Schumer, the supper was a choice of Thai chicken, orange salmon, a vegetarian and a vegan meal. Each guest was handed a shopping bag with the entrée of choice inside as he and she came aboard. It was like being given a grab bag with surprise contents to be pulled out, one at a time, once the passengers were seated. Included were a small tray of appetizers, a fun salad, a larger box with the main course and sides, and a little bag of scrumptious mouthfuls of desserts. Bars at either end of the boat provided white or red wine — or water — to accompany the meal.

All of this played out against a backdrop of quiet dinner music from our talented DJ, who was able to stop and get a bite to eat himself when he was temporarily replaced by the High C’s, a delightful a cappella act. Drawn from Stony Brook University students, the group harmonized beautifully and was widely praised throughout the evening.

We also viewed a short video of different staff members at work and a slightly longer film clip previewing seven dramatic episodes we will be releasing in two months about the Setauket-based Culper Spy Ring. The video action came to life, as actors in Revolutionary War costumes seemed to leap from the film and began dueling across the ferry’s main cabin. Unlike the AMC popular cable drama, “Turn,” ours will be authentic and will be accessible through a QR code — that is, a matrix barcode — on our Three Village map. Wait for it until July.

As soon as the formal, albeit brief program was over, we turned the floor loose for dancing. The DJ encouraged guests to rise and “cut the rug,” with his lively music. Some guests drifted outside to the stern or up to the top deck to watch Nature’s spectacular show. While we gladly take credit for the many other logistics of the party that worked, we can only give thanks for the turn the weather did that afternoon. What dawned as a gray and uninspiring day, with a damp chill and the distinct possibility of rain, became sunny and warm. The skies cleared to allow a Hollywoodesque sunset.

As the ferry slowly turned around from its “cruise to nowhere” and re-entered the harbor, we were honored to have state Assemblyman Steve Englebright and Suffolk County Comptroller John Kennedy Jr. offer some deeply appreciated kind words about our newspapers. Comptroller Kennedy brought a proclamation marking the occasion and Assemblyman Englebright, who has been in public office about as long as we have been publishing and hence knows us well, talked about our track record over the years. It was a lovely finale to what was for us a memorable evening.

Other officials have sent proclamations as well, including Town Clerk Jo-Ann Raia on behalf of Huntington, and members of the government of Brookhaven Town, led by Supervisor Ed Romaine. We will be proud to publish them over the next couple of weeks as space allows. As always, news comes first.

I want to offer heartfelt thanks to others who generously contributed to making our party a reality, including our law firm Glynn Mercep and Purcell; John Tsunis, the spark plug behind both the Holiday Inn Express Stony Brook and Gold Coast Bank; and our accountants, Covati &d Jahnsen. Fred Hall, the general manager of the ferry company, is himself celebrating his 40th anniversary with the company and deserves our admiration for his steady hand over those years.

And, finally, to you — our readers and advertisers — who have supported us over four decades, and to our dedicated staff, past and present, who make the newspapers and websites trustworthy sources of news week after week, my profound gratitude.

Thank you! Hope to see you at our 50th party.

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