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You’ve got a friend in me.

You ain’t never had a friend like me.

You want a friend in this town? Get a dog.

You’re not my friend anymore.

And, perhaps, one of history’s deepest friend cuts, “Et tu, Brute?” Then again, I’m not sure how much Julius Caesar considered Brutus his friend on that fateful day.

We’ve all heard about or had unusual, spectacular and backstabbing friends. These people, who aren’t our relatives but with whom we voluntarily spend time, are in a category of people that distinguishes them from strangers who push past us on the freeway, along the sidewalk or the line at the cafeteria.

And while we’re certainly aware of the dangers of unrequited love from literature and history, are there unrequited friendships?

If you believe a recent study out of Tel Aviv University in Israel, the answer is a resounding “yes,” and it happens more often than we might hope. This research found that only half of those other people called their friends returned the favor. That means if you like John and Joe, chances are John might like you, but Joe could be somewhere between indifferent to you or annoyed at the way you tap his arm each time you say something too insignificant to break physical boundaries to share.

So, that left me in a quandary. How do I know who I want to be my friends and who wants me to be his or her friend?

Maybe, I thought, as my wife and I went out to dinner for the first time with another couple, we would become friends with two people at once. Could this, like that famous line in “Casablanca,” be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

I had no such dramatic hopes, focusing instead on the little stuff: What should I wear, what would we discuss, did we have anything in common — and should I try to order quietly with the waiter while my wife distracted the couple so they didn’t know I was lactose intolerant?

A few moments after we sat down, I realized I didn’t have to speed read through the menu looking for items that my children would tolerate.

The woman from the other couple did the equivalent of shooting layups, as the rest of us listened. She shared stories about the academic and extracurricular interests of her children. That, I thought as I nodded politely at everything she said, was friendly enough.

Gradually we worked into a comfortable rhythm, even venturing into the potentially treacherous area of national politics. When I brought it up, I knew I ran the risk of talking with someone with incredibly strong opinions that conflicted with my own. Within seconds, however, it was clear that all four of us held similar political views.

When the evening ended, the men shook hands and gave social air kisses to the wives. The evening went well; I don’t think I embarrassed myself, my children or my wife. Now, are these people our friends? Not yet, I suppose, but the four of us are, perhaps, friendlier.

As we drove to pick up our son, who was at a late-night party with around 100 of his closest friends that would undoubtedly make him irrational and irascible the next day, I recalled the warnings about the dangers of becoming friends with our kids. They don’t need friends. Rather, what they need are authority figures who can tell them what they don’t want to hear, or so the advice goes.

But, wait, like a good movie where the solution is right in front of my face, I recalled a friendly tip from long ago: It’s important to be friends with the person you are dating. That, I realized, was excellent advice. It’s much easier to share a life with the one out of two people who reciprocates a friendship.

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Port Jefferson Village Hall. File photo by Heidi Sutton

By Margot Garant

I am writing in response to statements made by Reclaim New York in a recent article in the Port Times Record (“Report: Long Island public agencies fail to comply with FOIL requests,” May 18). Reclaim New York, the self-anointed guardians of public transparency, claim the Village of Port Jefferson ignored “the appeals and our phone calls” to release public records on vendor information and purchase orders. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We accepted Reclaim’s request in March. It was not a simple inquiry for documents, but a blatant transparency test sent to every government agency on Long Island. They requested every single vendor, its address, payment listing, check numbers, banking routing numbers, etc. The village treasurer did contact Reclaim staff on two occasions and asked for clarification on their blanket request to help them tailor a more focused request which would better meet their needs. Reclaim’s representative never attempted to work with the treasurer to fine-tune the request. Several village employees have spent significant time away from their duties in order to gather these records. So far, approximately 4,500 pages of documents have been identified and are in electronic format and the work goes on. Other municipalities have provided thin responses to Reclaim’s request for vendor records. Is our village to be punished because it strives to provide comprehensive responses to records requests? Would it have been better to provide a quicker response with fewer records and missing documents just to be able to say we responded? I think this would defeat the very purpose of public transparency.

Contrary to how they misled our local newspaper, Reclaim did not reach out to us to check the status of their records request after it was accepted, nor have they ever submitted the legally required appeal challenging the timing of our response. Had Reclaim simply picked up a phone or emailed me or the village clerk, they would have learned that we have been working on a detailed and comprehensive response to their request, more accurate and more complete than what many other municipalities have provided. This was an agenda-driven fishing expedition and it is unfair to criticize our village as part of their statewide campaign.

As the mayor, I have always pushed for increased transparency on the village budget and public records. Our record on this issue is unmatched. We should not be punished for providing more transparency. I ask that in the future, Reclaim reach out to us before they attack our village in the press and on social media.

Margot Garant is the mayor of Port Jefferson Village.

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Sometimes common sense gets lost in arguments about transgender people using public bathrooms. File photo

Long before communities started talking about transgender people using bathrooms of the genders they identify with, our society has operated on a policy of privates being private. When someone walks into a male or female bathroom, no one already inside asks to inspect appendages or for legal proof of sex. And if urinators use separate, closed stalls, why does it matter what organs they have?

This apparently does matter for some, given the debates taking place on our local, state and national levels regarding transgender people and which bathrooms are safe or appropriate for them to use. Those debates, however, often lose sight of common sense.

There are those who want to prohibit anyone from using a restroom built for the sex other than the one they are legally labeled with, usually citing fear of predators posing as transgender to gain access to a different bathroom for nefarious purposes. We would like to ask those people two things: When has a legal limitation stopped a pervert from doing perverted things, and why would someone pretend to be transgender for a long period of time, enduring common things like public humiliation and bullying, just to one day enter a bathroom of the opposite sex and attack someone?

If the latter were ever to occur, it would certainly be a rare instance — too rare to make the legislation, which is impossible to enforce, worth the cost of further alienating a group that is already marginalized and just wants to be accepted for who they are.

It’s not like transgender people are using a toilet in front of others. In women’s public bathrooms, there are only private stalls, and a female transitioning to male would still use a stall in a men’s public bathroom.

The least controversial solution is, of course, to have only unisex, single-person bathrooms. To that end, we would encourage developers on new projects, wherever possible, to construct those kinds of bathrooms as opposed to shared bathrooms. They are simply more comfortable for everyone anyway — who doesn’t like to be alone in a bathroom?

But that isn’t necessarily a feasible fix for existing public spaces, not that we think they need to be fixed in the first place. In fact, the argument of transgender people using specific bathrooms opening a door for perverts reminds us of people who once feared homosexuals, contending that they were more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexuals.

The details are different but the message is the same — they seem to think accommodating or accepting LGBT people will put their society at risk.

We need to move forward in our thinking and understand that transgender people want the same thing in a public bathroom that the rest of us want: to pee in peace. Let’s not start a war over public toilets.

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Does it annoy you too when the pitchman in the commercial urges negotiating with your credit card company, with the advertiser’s help of course, to pay less than you owe? It’s the same message when it comes to “settling” with the IRS. “You don’t have to pay all that you owe,” encourages the adman’s voice. “Call us and we’ll reduce your amount to a third without bankruptcy.”

What about us poor schnooks who paid every last penny of what we owed? Were we incredibly stupid when we could have gotten off with far less cost? Maybe it’s only the rich who pay everything they owe, but I know that’s not true. Men and women will work two and three jobs to be able to meet their expenses, especially those incurred for their children. They must not know that all they had to do was run up the bills — the higher, the better — then declare that they couldn’t afford them, and they would get a reduction of their debt.

What has happened to honor? Maybe it is just those of us of a certain age who still carry these old-fashioned ideas in our heads. “Pay as you go” was my parents’ adage. The idea of a credit card puzzled them. If you couldn’t afford to buy a car when you wanted one, then wait until you had the money and you could buy it. Delayed gratification was admired. They were even dubious about a mortgage, although that became the American way after World War II.

But the thought of not honoring one’s debts was anathema. In essence you gave your word when you accepted credit, and “your word was your bond.” People who walked away from their debts expected to go to prison, certainly not to call a “negotiator” who would beat down your creditor into accepting less — or nothing at all.

Donald Trump raised the possibility of our nation reducing its national debt by bargaining with our creditors, an unwelcome but nonetheless real technique in business. These creditors of American debt would include other nations, as well as widows and orphans who buy U.S. government bonds because they believe in our creditworthiness — our honor to repay. People who cannot repay, while they no longer are imprisoned in a jail, are imprisoned by their actions. They are never trusted to the same extent again, and if they have to borrow in the future they pay a significantly higher rate of interest on the borrowed money, if they can get a loan at all.

The same holds for nations. Those countries whose economies crashed have had to pay exorbitant interest on their bonds to entice new capital, and their people have been impoverished in the long run, leading to disastrous social unrest. History is rife with such examples.

So what is a person, whose intentions at the time of borrowing were honorable but whose circumstances have dramatically changed through no fault of his or her own, to do with that debt? Borrowers may lose their jobs; they or a family member may get sick and require ruinous financial support; insurance on property or health may be insufficient or nonexistent — and so forth. As the expression goes, “life happens.”

Most commonly, the terms of repayment can be changed. A longer time in which to repay the borrowed money can be arranged, allowing the borrower a chance to recover from whatever the disaster. This lowers the monthly rate of repayment although it does increase the total cost of the debt. But it does preserve creditworthiness — and reputation. That solution only works, however, if there are good prospects down the line and a willingness on the part of the debtors to assume responsibility for their actions. In circumstances where there is no hope for recovery, then bankruptcy is the only choice.

But the idea of those who know how to play the system bouncing from one loan to the next with little consequence is unacceptable and makes fools of us all. And those who make a business out of helping such individuals run off with other people’s money are worse yet.

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I can’t see anything up close with my glasses on and I can’t see anything at a distance with my glasses off. I know, I know, welcome to getting old. Well, I’d like to give that aging process a big fat Bronx cheer.

But, wait, technology can come to the rescue. No, I’m not talking about laser surgery and I’m not looking for a special blended form of bifocal, trifocal or whatever. No, you see, technology makes it possible for me to use my state-of-the-art smartphone without needing to see it.

“Siri, send a text message to my wife,” I can say.

To which the automatic voice activation feature will reply, “What is your wife’s name?” And then, when I don’t reply in time, the voice will say, “I’m not sure what you said there.”

But assuming Siri and I can get on the same page about the desired recipient of my intended message, I can start talking into the phone and she will take dictation. No need for an administrative assistant like Mrs. Wiggins, courtesy of Carol Burnett, to take a memo.

Except that, like Mrs. Wiggins, there are some potential comedic kinks in the system. For one thing, whenever I start a text or email with the word Hi, Siri only seems to hear the letter “I.” My texts start out with “I Dr. Smith.” It’s a poor start to have a missing letter at the beginning of a text or email that I can’t check because I can’t see well with my glasses on and I can’t take my glasses off in that moment.

While Siri gets most of the words right, sometimes she struggles with grammar and words that are pronounced alike — such as to, too and two. Or what I mumble. I admit that I don’t always speak clearly. In fact, when I say, “This is Dan,” people sometimes hear, “This is Stan,” because I don’t pause long enough before saying my name.

I was discussing this problem with a friend of mine, who spends a considerable number of hours in the car each week, traveling from one job to another. He said he dictates emails and text messages on his phone constantly to make use of his travel time.

“Hey, be careful when you’re dictating, particularly when you’re driving,” he cautioned.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, you know that thing picks up everything you say, right?”

“Yeah?” I asked, tilting my head to the side and waiting for a punch line.

“The other day I was driving and I sent an email that went something like this:

“Dear Mr. Jones, I got your response to my invoice and … oh, so you thought cutting me off in my lane was a good idea? And you didn’t even use your blinker. Where’d you get your license? … I was wondering if we might discuss the additional cost of gas which, as you know, is … that’s how I would drive if I had a death wish, too … climbing. Anyway, I’m happy to discuss by phone or at a … thanks for sharing your music with us. That’s what we all want to hear when we’re at a traffic light, your music. Isn’t that how we got some dictators to surrender, by playing that kind of music outside their presidential estates? … meeting. OK, so give me a call when you have a chance.”

While he said that was a slight exaggeration, he realized something was amiss when someone wrote back, “OK, next time I’ll use my blinker.”

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People at an anti-drug forum stay afterward to learn how to use the anti-overdose medication Narcan. Above, someone practices spraying into a dummy’s nostrils. Photo by Elana Glowatz

We’ve been hit with some staggering figures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 28,000 overdose deaths in 2014 as a result of heroin or opioid abuse, the highest number on record. Last year alone Suffolk County suffered 103 fatal heroin overdoses. Suffolk tallied more heroin-related overdose deaths than any county in New York from 2009 to 2013, according to the New York State Opioid Poisoning, Overdose and Prevention 2015 Report.

Although local and national initiatives have come from all different angles to try to combat the rise in heroin and opioid abuse, we think lawmakers lack focus.

Most recently, U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) endorsed a large legislation package that would review and update guidelines for prescribing opioids and pain medication and require a report to Congress on the availability of substance abuse treatment in the country, among many other provisions. While we applaud any earnest effort to combat the widespread problem, there needs to be more focus from one specific angle: prevention.

With treatment and recovery options across the North Shore and with the rate at which the county is now taking down drug dealers, enforcement and rehabilitation are not our biggest problems. Instead, more needs to be done to deter kids from ever considering to try drugs in the first place. While some schools have begun to work on this, working with police to hold Narcan training sessions and informational forums, students should be seeing more than just numbers and figures, police officers or counselors.

Tracey Budd, of Rocky Point, helped Suffolk County create a public service announcement, “Not My Child,” that has been shown in schools. Budd lost her son to a heroin overdose and her message is powerful. Kids need to see the struggles that addicts and their families go through to help hammer home how dangerous drugs are.

We also urge parents to be more aware and involved. You know your child — look, listen and ask questions. There are signs in mood, behavior, habit and appearance that could warn you that there’s a serious problem. And don’t be afraid to set boundaries or to talk both about drugs and other topics that may seem difficult or awkward. Many people are drawn to drugs because of an underlying emotional issue, but letting a teenager know that nonjudgmental ears are listening could be a solution.

Frederick Douglass once famously said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Building those stronger children is how we should tackle our country’s growing drug problem.

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One of the more curious footnotes to World War II occurred 75 years ago this week. On a May evening in 1941, Rudolph Hess, deputy führer of the Third Reich and No. 3 man in line of succession after Hitler and Hermann Göring, flew solo from Germany to Scotland and parachuted into the waiting arms of the British.

So who was Hess and why did he make this bizarre wartime flight? He was born into a prosperous German merchant family living in Egypt just before the turn of the 20th century. The oldest of three children, he was by inclination a warrior and immediately after World War I broke out, he joined the infantry. He was wounded several times during the war, always returning to the front when he recovered and earning medals that included the Iron Cross in 1915. Toward the end of hostilities, he trained as an aviator.

In 1919 he continued his education at the University of Munich and attended a class taught by Karl Haushofer, a proponent of the principle of lebensraum (“living space”), which urged the need for more land. Postwar life in Bavaria at that time was chaotic, with fights erupting between right-wing groups and Communists, and Hess was drawn to battles in the streets as a member of the Thule Society, an extreme anti-Semitic gang.

In 1920, after hearing Hitler speak at a Nazi rally in Munich, Hess became totally devoted to him and joined the Nazi Party. From then on Hess was almost inseparable from Hitler, being at his side in the abortive Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 when Hitler tried to stage a coup d’état, and was in prison with him subsequently where he talked to Hitler about the lebensraum idea that became a pillar of the Nazi platform and justification for conquering lands in Eastern Europe. And while in prison, Hess helped Hitler write his “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”). After they were released, he was even subsequently injured protecting Hitler from a bomb planted by a Marxist group.

When Hitler and the Nazis finally did seize power in 1933, Hess became a cabinet member and was frequently the one who would introduce Hitler at rallies and speaking engagements. If Hitler could not attend, Hess would be his surrogate, addressing the crowds. Part of his cabinet responsibilities was to cosign every law decreed by Hitler, including the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of their rights as German citizens and set the stage for the Holocaust.

Meanwhile Hess regularly took lessons, becoming ever more skilled as a pilot. When war broke out in 1939, he asked Hitler if he could join the Luftwaffe but Hitler forbade it, telling him he couldn’t fly again until the end of the war but eventually limiting the ban to one year. Hess had been Hitler’s private secretary for years but was replaced by Martin Bormann, who gradually surpassed Hess in his relationship to Hitler.

About the time his flying ban was lifted, Hess confided to his son that he wanted to arrange peace negotiations between Hitler and Churchill. He talked about flying to meet with the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland, who was known to Albrecht Haushofer, the son of Hess’ professor and with whom Hess had become a good friend. They believed, mistakenly, that Hamilton was a leader of the opposition against the war. Hess began outfitting a sophisticated airplane with the necessary equipment to reach Scotland, including auxiliary fuel tanks, and after abortive tries due to weather or mechanical limitations, finally took off on May 10, 1941. That was six weeks before Hitler planned Operation Barbarossa, the surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. Hess was distressed at the prospect of two fronts and was determined to get Britain to sit out the rest of the war.

Hess was able to get to the coast of Britain before the radar picked him up, and before fighter planes sent up to intercept him could shoot him down. He flew at extremely low altitude and when he was near his destination, he parachuted out of his plane and landed within a few miles of Hamilton’s home. Churchill was not interested in his plan and the British held him as a prisoner of war. Hitler was reportedly enraged by Hess’ action and, disavowing any such knowledge on his part, stripped Hess of all his offices and decorations, fearing the response of Mussolini and the Japanese to such a unilateral move. Ultimately Hess was tried in the first round of prisoners at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life. He died in Spandau Prison in 1987 at age 93 by suicide.

The question will always remain for historians to argue: Did Hitler send Hess on his doomed mission?

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Words mean everything. Words mean nothing.

What’s going on in the world of words? Well, for one, we’ve become hypersensitized to words. Or, wait, maybe we’re desensitized.

We fling words across the aisle at our enemies, becoming both a victim and a perpetrator. We are more sensitive than the other guy until he seems absurd, and then we claim that his hypersensitivity is triggering our insensitivity.

And therein lies the tricks of the trade. Shakespeare would have a field day with a world so preoccupied with gender. The Bard focused on gender identity and gender issues through many of his writings and musings.

Are we the gender we choose, or do others have too much to lose, if we allow people to use the restroom of their gender identity?

Now that it looks like it’ll be Trump versus Clinton, the epic battle will no doubt become a war of words, wills and wallets. Who has the most money, where did it come from — and how will these people who have millions and billions help those with big dreams but small bank accounts?

Bernie Sanders isn’t going gently into that good night, nor should he. He’s forced Clinton to focus on the unequal distribution of wealth and he seems to be having a jolly time through a primary season that has brought pain and suffering to so many Republicans.

Whither Jeb Bush? The poor establishment candidate had the money but not the votes, while Trump directed verbal daggers at everyone else in the field. Whether Cruz was a lyin’ guy or not, Trump stuck that label on him the way novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne attached the scarlet “A” (for adulteress) to Hester Prynne in “The Scarlet Letter.”

Now that he’s no longer in the race, will Cruz decide to play the lyre, or will he retire from the national scene?

You have to imagine Trump is preparing memorable one-liners for the woman who wants a shot at the White House. When you don’t have anything else to say this year, make sure you point an angry finger in the direction of your adversary for whom you have abundant animosity.

Will Hillary deflect the disparaging dialogue the Donald directs, or will she flutter and stutter like so many of Trump’s other adversaries who have become political roadkill? Will he focus on her face as he did with Carly Fiorina?

Leaving the political realm, how about those Yankees? I know the better bet is the Mets. The team from Queens is proving that last year was no aberration, and it has the pitching and the hitting to play deep into October. But I’m a Yankee fan through and through which means that, these days, I’m feeling blue. I suspect the cast of “Gilligan’s Island” might even feel sympathy for a team that’s discovered a myriad of methods to strand runners every game, with nary a chance to cross the plate and return home.

The Bronx Bombers are playing like Bronx Bummers. This team, with its expensive, aging veterans and its floundering youngsters, may finish below .500. Even in a world where one out of three isn’t bad for a hitter, one out of two wins is horrific for any team.

And then there are the movies, those sweet escapes from the political jungle and the athletic battlefield. But wait, the top-grossing movies of last weekend were “The Jungle Book” and the Civil War movie with Captain America, which means that even in our movie dreams we are escaping to familiar themes. Maybe we enjoy our imaginary characters going to battle, allowing us to turn our words into swords.

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New jobs in new industries are constantly coming up. There is no college major that fits to these yet-to-exist jobs, so students can take comfort that their success is not bound by their decision to study art history or physics. Photo from Ryan DeVito

By Ryan DeVito

You are not defined by your college major. High school students often struggle under the pressure of not only choosing a college but also pre-selecting a major that will lead to a certain career. Fortunately, there is no definite pathway to most jobs.

A college major is simply a medium for greater exploration of something. With few exceptions, college curricula are designed to expose students to a wide variety of coursework. The major itself can constitute as little as one quarter of a student’s credits over the course of their college career. Those credit hours are focused on one particular field of interest that may or may not have any bearing on a student’s future career goals.

I majored in political science in college. Instead of viewing my college experience as a means for securing a job after graduation, I approached college as an opportunity to learn widely. Political science was, and still is, interesting to me, so I chose to focus my studies in that field. However, I never had any intention of pursuing any of the assumed paths of a political science major: law school, political campaigning or lobbying.

Political science formed the foundation of my college education, but it in no way defines who I am or where I hope to take my career. My story isn’t uncommon, either. College graduates nationwide are increasingly departing from their college majors to pursue jobs that are sometimes completely unrelated. After all, the modern economy is constantly changing and the opportunity to discover new passions and interests is ever expanding.

High school students may be surprised to learn how little bearing a college major has on a lifetime trajectory. Medical doctors are often examples of how your college major can be unrelated to your endgame. An increasing number of medical students have undergraduate degrees that are outside of the sciences, and many medical schools look for candidates with nonscience backgrounds. Why? Because medical schools want to produce well-rounded doctors who can better connect with their patients.

This is an age when people need to be adaptable. Essentially gone are the days when you could graduate from college and assume that a lifetime job would be waiting for you. Instead, today’s college students need to be versatile and innovative.

Not only is the job landscape constantly changing, but so are your personal interests. In a widely referenced statistic, the average young person today changes careers more than three times in their lifetime. That’s careers, not jobs.

A college major should allow you to feed a passion. Selecting a major based on career prospects is a losing proposition. And what really matters is not your major but your drive. The research of economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger suggests that college major is much less important than the student’s inherent ability, motivation and ambition. Studying art history or horticulture are not death sentences for your future. Just the opposite is true if you are motivated to search out the opportunities you want. Also, every experience can be translated into a desirable job skill. From interpersonal communication to organization to management, any major can be effectively pitched to be a desirable package for potential employers.

High school and college students shouldn’t feel as though their future is at stake when they choose a major. Rather, they should think about how they can use their academic interests to reach their goals. There is no set path. With some inventiveness and innovation, today’s students can create opportunity regardless of what they study in college.

Ryan DeVito is a Miller Place native and a graduate of SUNY Geneseo. DeVito is a counselor at High Point University and also started his own college advising company, ScholarScope, to help Long Island students and their families.

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Farm workers’ advocates are preparing to march 200 miles up to Albany in the name of better labor conditions, and we think lawmakers should listen.

A group called the Rural Migrant Ministry organized the annual March for Farm Worker Justice, which sets off on May 15 this year, as part of its lobbying efforts for better working and living conditions, overtime pay and more for farm workers across the region. One member of that group described farm workers as “living in fear” of the “strongholds” farmers have on them, and the group has accused state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) of failing to address their concerns since becoming majority leader.

But an anonymous website, nyfarmworkerprotectionbill.com provided the farmers’ perspective.

“RMM and others have recruited various celebrities and foodies to support the bill, as well as downstate and New York City legislators, most of whom have never even been to a farm,” the site said. “We believe these individuals have been misled and have not done the proper research to find out the truth about farms, growers, farmworkers and the challenges we face to bring fresh food to as many tables as possible.”

We understand there are different angles to this debate, but we also firmly believe workers of any type, whether they are legally employed or paid off-the-books, should be allotted some basic rights that lawmakers must find ways to put in placew. We are calling on our elected officials to engage stakeholders in this debate and hold a public hearing in which all parties can contribute to the dialogue.

There can be no mutual understanding without communication, and there appears to be a disconnect between farmers and their workers, or even between legislators and the agricultural sector. If everyone sits down together and has a respectful discussion, they may find fertile ground for compromise.

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