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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

It’s been a long time since I took a child to a playdate or to the first day of a kindergarten class. And yet, I felt as if I had gone through a time warp recently when my daughter, who is home for spring break, and I took our three-year-old dog Bear for his second visit to a dog run.

While I’m sure many dog owners are familiar with the process, I found the collection of dogs circling trees, bushes and owners fascinating and familiar.

When we arrived, several dogs played in groups of shifting sizes while their owners, like anxious parents hoping their children play well together, stood by, observing the action and preparing to intercede.

Dog owners looked back and forth at my daughter and me, trying to figure out which of the collection of pets straight of a Dr. Seuss book filled with colorful illustrations of dogs of all shapes and sizes was ours.

That process isn’t as obvious as the genetics of trying to match the faces of young children with the parents standing by, waiting for the bell to ring and a teacher to bring their children inside.

Like protective parents, many of the dog owners watched their pets carefully, not only to make sure they were behaving, but also to ensure that none of the other dogs was threatening them.

Some dog owners shared stories about their dogs, much as my children’s classmates had done over 15 years ago, talking about what their dogs like to do and how eager they are for their dogs to get out all their energy now, so they’ll sleep well. Just as it does for young children, a day of healthy activities means a good night’s sleep.

A medium-sized dog paused in a puddle, stomping in the squishy mud. Her owner raced over and barked at Roxy to “stop,” annoyed that her paws looked like they had brown booties.

Meanwhile, a giant dog with the name Zeus written on a horse collar lumbered from one group to another, his head held higher than other dogs who came up to his shoulder.

Bear shifted from one group to another, awed by the athletic prowess of two huge dogs that vaulted onto a picnic table. 

At one point, Bear trotted to the other extreme end of the park, almost out of sight. I whistled for him and, despite his tendency to ignore me at home, he immediately picked up his head and pitched his ears forward. I signaled for him to come back and, to my amazement, he jogged the length of the field, where my daughter and I pet him appreciatively.

While Bear played with the other canines, he also visited every pet owner, thrusting his head towards their knees and staring up at them with his best “I-know-you’re-a-dog-person-so-please-pet-me” face.

An aggressive dog barked and nipped at the others who had been playing peacefully. After the newcomer lunged at Bear three times, he trotted to the exit, glancing over his shoulder periodically to make sure we were coming. We obediently followed.

Once we were near our car, an unleashed dog raced around the lot, as his owner shouted for Oliver repeatedly to come back and to stay away from cars moving slowly enough to avoid loose dogs.

As we drove home, with our dog panting from the exertion in the back seat, I glanced at our daughter and appreciated the brief trip down memory lane when we brought her home from playing with her peers.

Our dog has no intention of trekking off to college, even if he’s eager to explore the world of our neighbors’ houses, where the grass sometimes seems greener.

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Endurance. Wikipedia photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Like a hand reaching out from its watery grave, the stern of the ship with the name “Endurance” became visible in the underwater drone’s searching beacon of light. A century after the ice crushed and sank the vessel, along with the hopes of explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew for being the first to walk across Antarctica from sea to sea via the South Pole, the biggest shipwreck discovery since the Titanic connected us with those men a century ago. For many of us, the find was thrilling.

The three-masted ship is remarkably preserved in 10,000 feet of water below the surface ice, and from the photos, even the spokes on the wheel in the stern are hauntingly intact. Armed with the latest undersea equipment, marine archeologists, engineers and scientists, using the last data recorded when the ship sank, were able to find the wooden Endurance, survivor of one of the most heroic expeditions in history, at the bottom of the Wendell Sea near the Antarctica Peninsula. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s group Endurance 22 announced the news. The darkness and frigid temperatures had made such search efforts in the past impossibly difficult but also created an inhospitable environment for bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that might have devoured the ship. Instead it stands at attention since 1915 on the sea floor.

After the ship sank, Shackleton and his crew of 28 loaded food and anything else they could into three lifeboats and set up camp on ice floes, and when those disintegrated, camped on Elephant Island. 

The Endurance. Photo from Wikipedia

Recognizing that they had somehow to get help if they were to survive, Shackleton, his captain, Frank Worsley and four other carefully selected men sailed across 800 miles of treacherous waters in a 22-foot boat to the nearest place of habitation, a remote whaling community on the island of South Georgia. Once they arrived, they had to scale steep mountains to get to the station on the other side. Shackleton’s decisive and heroic leadership ultimately saved the entire crew and is studied in business schools and management programs to this day. His planning and improvisation made the escape possible.

Shackleton died in 1922. Curiously the wreck’s discovery happened exactly 100 years to the day that Shackleton was buried. And while Endurance was photographed and filmed, nothing was removed or disturbed, and it is protected as an historic monument.

An Anglo-Irishman, Sir Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare, Ireland, and moved with his family to south London. His story seems a fitting way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. He led three different English expeditions to the Antarctic, walked to within 97 miles of the South Pole during the previous Nimrod expedition of 1907-09, and climbed Mt. Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. For those feats, he was knighted by King Edward VII on his return. Ultimately he led a final expedition in 1921 but died of a heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. He is buried there. 

Despite the fact that he was largely unsuccessful in business ventures and died heavily in debt, Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons in 2002. He was to be the one others prayed to have lead them when under extreme circumstances.

The saga of Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance captured my imagination when I worked for Editor Alfred Lansing at Time Inc. I was 22 and had never met anyone quite like Al before. A volunteer in the Navy when he was 17 (he lied about his age and somehow got in), Al had a reddish-blond crew cut, bright blue eyes, a huge smile and a tattoo on his right forearm well before tattooes were a common occurrence. He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes, was one of the best storytellers I had ever met, and wrote adventure stories on the side for what were then called men’s magazines.

It was Alfred Lansing who wrote the book “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” four years earlier which had received a National Book Award nomination. Listening to him tell the story, I was hooked for life on that adventure and the marvel of Shackleton’s leadership. Sadly, both men died at an early age.

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Donations collected on March 3 at the offices of county Legislator Stephanie Bontempi and Dr. David Buchin. Photo by Raymond Janis

The response of Long Islanders to help Ukrainians has been encouraging.

On March 3, Suffolk County Legislator Stephanie Bontempi (R-Centerport) and Dr. David Buchin headed up the Long Island Ukrainian Emergency Response Drive at their offices, located at 224 Wall St. in Huntington. Local elected officials and community members joined them to gather items such as blankets, medical supplies, sleeping bags and other essentials to send to the embattled country.

On Monday, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. (D) announced the addition of nearly 450 pieces of bulletproof body armor from his office to the items already collected in Huntington. The College Hunks moving company assisted in delivering the items to the New York City processing center and from there the items will be shipped to Ukraine.

Donation drives similar to those of Bontempi and Buchin along with rallies to support Ukrainians have taken place all over the TBR News Media coverage areas. The message sent across the globe is that we stand with the country in their fight against Russia.

TBR News Media readers have also reached out with letters to the editor condemning Russia’s actions, and another reader shared the struggles his Ukrainian family faced in the past. He hoped that history would not repeat itself, but he was ready to help any relative who needed his assistance.

The last few years have been divisive ones for the United States. Between the political divide and our battle against COVID-19, it seemed as if we couldn’t look past our own borders. Now we see Americans uniting once again for a cause.

It’s a shame it took such a tragedy to bring us all together. It may have taken a war, but Americans seem once again united behind a common theme: the cause of freedom, democracy and the right of a free people to self-determination.

As U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY3) said on March 3 in front of the offices of Bontempi and Buchin, “We have to follow the old idea that partisanship stops at the water’s edge. We have to all hold together like we are today.”

As we watch Long Islanders work together to help people struggling on the other side of the globe, let’s remember what it’s like to be united as Americans, not only past the water’s edge but on our own island.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

When my daughter was young, one of her favorite songs was “Old MacDonald.” Maybe she loved it because it was a song about farm animals and we lived in Manhattan, where most of our non-human wildlife consisted of squirrels and pigeons.

When she was an infant, she could make an incredibly convincing pigeon coo, thanks to hearing them all day long outside her window.

Maybe she also liked the song because, unlike Bette Middler’s “The Rose” and “One” from “A Chorus Line,” my wife and I couldn’t butcher the relatively simple melody with our unimpressive singing skills.

Anyway, she liked to say “duck” when we got to the animal on the farm. She liked ducks, or maybe the “quack quack” sound so much that she’d protest when we told her the farm already had a duck. She would say, “another duck,” to keep us quacking. The song and the quacks made car rides more palatable.

The song popped into my head recently when a friend told me that his second daughter was pregnant with their fourth grandchild. My friend has three daughters. His fourth grandchild is a girl, which means he’ll also have four granddaughters.

He was extremely pleased to share the news by email about “another granddaughter,” and he has every right to be. He is preparing for the seventh consecutive girl in his immediate family.

Then again, I couldn’t help thinking how he or the rest of the world would have felt if he had a grandson. Would that be a greater cause for celebration because they had a boy in their midst? I suspect he doesn’t, and didn’t, care.

For so many people, the gender doesn’t matter as long as the baby and mother (and somewhere in there, hopefully, the father) are healthy.

When my daughter was born, the big surprise was that I, unlike my parents or my older brother, could have a girl. As I told my wife, as the second of three boys and an uncle to two nephews, I expected to continue the male tradition.

My daughter started out proving me wrong and, thankfully, continues to do so regularly.

Once I’d broken the ‘all boys’ pattern, I was convinced my son was a girl, so, he, too, defied our expectations.

So, what is it with gender reveal parties? Is it another way to celebrate a coming birth? Is it a way to unveil one of the few mysteries left before birth?

In an era that increasingly understands and supports the transgender population, gender reveal parties seem anachronistic, celebrating a birth gender that may conflict with a person’s developing identity.

Like so many other events, such as a first birthday party that a child will never remember, a gender reveal party may be a way to celebrate the parents, giving them a chance to anticipate the coming birth and to imagine life as the parent of a boy or girl.

Gender reveal parties have received bad press because of the injuries from pyrotechnics and other exploding blue or pink streamers or images. But maybe beyond the danger from these explosions, the gender reveal also pigeon holes children into specific color patterns.

Don’t we want our children to think for themselves, even about their favorite colors, instead of limiting them to blue for boys or pink for girls?

Maybe, instead of colors or gender, we can celebrate the sounds of their heartbeat, the Alien-like moments when we can see their feet in their mom’s abdomen, or the foods their mothers crave during pregnancy.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

The idea was that if European nations were interdependent for their economic welfare, then they would not make war on each other, but would rather work together for their greater good. And for more than 70 years, the concept held. Where wars were the way for nations, and before there were nations, for regions to enrich themselves by raiding their neighbors, stealing their treasures and claiming their land, now that was eschewed. Finally, there was to be peace.

England and France, France and Germany, Spain and England among others, all put their guns and their history away and did business with each other. This was the vision articulated by the United Nations after World War II ended, and it came to pass. The economists and philosophers were right. No one would make war on neighbors who were making them money. And for the most part, nations realized unprecedented wealth and the security that peace brings.  Economics was to be the field of battle, not the military. And with unrestricted trade, globalization took hold. War was a distant memory.

Until now. Incredible as it seemed to the rest of the world, Russia invaded the Ukraine less than two weeks ago with the aim of annexing that country. Such action, as Russian military surrounded Ukraine on three sides, would be an ill-conceived throwback to a more appalling and unwise time. Or so we thought.

As the Ukrainians defiantly rise to meet the invaders with military weapons, the rest of Europe and countries elsewhere in the world are responding with their weapon of choice: economics. It is a testament to the thinking and planning of those leaders seven decades ago. And so, with remarkable unity, the European Union is striving to blow up Russia’s economy rather than blowing up Russia’s cities. The pain for the Russian leaders and the Russian people is to be felt in their pocketbooks and not in their cemeteries. At least, that is the intent.

But of course, as in every war, it’s the civilians who most suffer and pay the price for their leaders’ actions. If they aren’t shot to death, they may be starved to death, as their money becomes worthless and their businesses are ruined. Still, the Russians will do better without Coca-Cola than the Ukrainians without water.

And that is another remarkable consequence of attempts to isolate Russia. Not only are governments withdrawing trade and financial dealings in this siege, but also international corporations are cutting ties with the invading country, even if the companies bear the price. McDonald’s, which employs some 62,000 workers in Russia, Starbucks and Apple have closed their stores, among numerous others. Americans have indicated overwhelmingly in a recent Quinnipiac University national poll (71%), that they will tolerate the increased price of gasoline if Russian imports of oil and gas are ended. The Biden administration has heard them and is closing off those imports. Of course, the prices at the pump were going up anyway due to considerable current inflation. Why not put the blame on the Russians!

So do shared economic interests prevent wars?

There should have been a corollary put into that concept: assuming all the governments are made up of reasonable persons. Much now is being made of President Vladimir Putin’s mental state because most of the rest of the world cannot understand why he is embracing this “special military operation.”

He did not even tell his lower rank soldiers that they were about to engage in a war. Who knows how the Russian leader thinks? Is he unreasonable or is this merely the opening salvo he, and perhaps his “friend,” Premier Xi Jinping of China, are plotting for a long game?

Of one thing the world can be certain. When autocrats are planning something that surely would be roundly condemned, one of the actions they take is to close down the media and crack down on free speech. Signing a new censorship law, Putin has now criminalized independent journalism for reporting “fake news.” 

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Photo from Pixabay

By Jim Hastings

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia sent shockwaves around the world. The images of troops, tanks and bombed-out buildings have left many feeling enraged, frustrated and helpless. TBR News Media took to the streets of Port Jefferson and Stony Brook Village to get local residents’ perspectives on the situation. 

 

Photo by Jim Hastings

Debra Saparito, Mount Sinai

“It’s going to affect us as a country, because we can’t have someone just bow to another. We allow that to happen in one portion of the world, then everybody’s going to think, ‘Well, we can do that too.’ We have to step up as a world, whether they’re part of NATO or not. We have to do what’s right for the people. After what we’ve been through in the world in the last two or three years, we have to humble ourselves and look at each other as people.”

 

 

Brian Israel, Setauket

Photo by Jim Hastings

“It’s unbelievable that a sovereign country can be attacked, really, with no real consequences. Understanding that, you know, any military action could cause a larger conflict, but it’s just unbelievable that it was allowed to get this far.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Jim Hastings

Kathryn Schoemmel, Setauket

“It’s scary. I have a family member over there. She’s still in Ukraine. She’s hoping she has a home to go back to.”

Pictured with husband Leon.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Jim Hastings

Ernesto Cruz, Coram

“It’s pretty senseless. It just seems like there’s no real reason to be doing this. We’re getting to a stage where, through social networking and all that, the world’s becoming that much more interconnected and it’s like, we can feel each other’s pain. It’s no longer what the government tells us or what the news tells us. We can see what each person is feeling, truly, through their words and their actions.”

 

 

 

Photo by Jim Hastings

Clara Rosenzweig, Poquott

“I definitely feel horrible for the people going through it. I think it’s completely unnecessary what’s happening over there and I hope that everything gets resolved.”

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Metro photo

As COVID-19 infection rates and deaths begin to decline, more attention to the pandemic’s effect on mental health is needed.

In “Amid declining COVID infections, worry about mental health remains” by Daniel Dunaief featured in the Feb. 24 TBR News Media newspapers and online, Dr. Gregson Pigott, commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, cited two Centers of Disease Control and Prevention studies.

The research shows that the children’s mental health crisis alone has gotten worse during the pandemic. The CDC’s Household Pulse Survey also shows 39.2% of people nationally aged 18 to 29 had indicators of anxiety or depression between Jan. 26 and Feb. 7 of this year. As the group members increased in age, the percentage decreased, with 9.3% of those 80 years and above reporting mental health issues.

We have heard many times throughout the pandemic that the isolation and precautions needed to slow down the infection rate could increase anxiety and depression in people. At a press conference last week, held at the Smithtown Senior Center, elected officials discussed the importance of seniors returning to the activities they love and spending time with family and friends, which is vital for their overall well-being.

People need interactions with others to stay healthy and have someone to remind them that they are a good person and that the world is a better place with them in it. As we begin to remove our masks, it’s time to smile again and have conversations with those we encounter in our everyday lives.

Understandably, getting the virus under control during the height of the pandemic was a priority. Now, it’s more important than ever to talk about mental health and stop sweeping things under the carpet.

For most people, that could mean checking in with loved ones. Even if an in-person visit isn’t an option for some right now, a phone call or text message can make a difference.

While it was innovative and necessary to hold doctors’ visits, including those with psychiatrists and therapists, over Zoom during the pandemic, this is not the best option for everyone. Just as some students don’t do well with remote learning, many people don’t respond well to remote therapy.

Sometimes a person needs a one-on-one conversation face-to-face, not only with someone who isn’t judging them or doesn’t have an agenda, but also a professional who can see if they are making eye contact or fidgeting or not responding well to medication. Sometimes body language needs to be read to see if a patient is being truthful or just going through the motions.

While a conversation with a mental health professional is always a wise thing to do — whether in person or online — sometimes, for the real work to be done, it needs to be one-on-one in an office. So, if you need it, don’t hesitate to ask for an office visit. Most therapists are beginning to offer them again.

During the pandemic, people learned new ways of doing things to stay healthy, and some of those ways may be better. But meeting up with a friend and talking while eating or drinking coffee, or sitting on the couch in a therapist’s office — truly connecting — that can’t be beaten.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

If I knew exactly when Russian president and peace shatterer Vladimir Putin were planning to attack Ukraine, I could be spectacularly rich.

Putin, however, knew exactly when he was going to give the order to start shooting, causing markets around the world to plunge.

No stranger to making a buck or two, Putin, whose wealth is estimated in the billions, may have seen the opportunity to create suffering for everyone else, while making himself even richer.

Have options markets around the world checked the trading just before the day he started killing people in Ukraine? Does anyone know whether he, through shell companies or, perhaps even more directly, through trades he holds in his own name, made a financial killing by destroying neighborhoods and shattering peace on a scale not seen since World War II?

Maybe he positioned his portfolio just as he was moving his military. He could have also dabbled in the commodities markets, where wheat, aluminum and gold prices have soared.

While the Russian president may not need the money personally, he could offset some of the effect of sanctions through the equivalent of his own “big short” on stock markets, betting in a game he helped control that the markets would fall.

Putin could have gone to stock markets outside of Russia, where he could have set up huge trades just a few days before a move the previous president of the United States described as “genius.”

Perhaps Donald Trump, who is also no stranger to capitalizing on financial opportunities, recognized the financial move Putin was making. Putin doesn’t appear to care much about the people he’s displacing or the Russian soldiers who may no longer return to their families to pursue a war against a neighbor whose biggest offense seems to be that they live in a democracy and want to join NATO, whose members consider an attack against one of them as an attack against all of them. As the “Between You and Me” column in these papers from last week made clear, Ukraine has abundant natural resources, which raise its appeal to Putin. At the same time, though, maybe he also saw this move as a chance to make money and to stay relevant.

It’s not every day that people write your name, even if it’s for nefarious actions, in papers throughout the world. Sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons that could easily turn Global Warming into a distant afterthought if he and his intended targets used them, Putin is dominating news coverage around the world, displacing COVID. Too bad there’s no vaccine for the world’s population against Putin.

By putting his nuclear forces on high alert after disrupting peace with his attack on Ukraine, he also gets to play bully and victim at the same time. He’s a bully for sending his armed forces into a neighboring country and killing men, women and children. Bullets don’t discriminate between innocent civilians and members of an opposition’s armed forces.

He is also a victim, claiming the heated rhetoric against his military’s unprovoked attack is enough of a threat to him that he needed to put his nuclear arsenal on high alert. His despotic desperation suggests maybe he needs a hug or some counseling.

He also defies logic by calling the Jewish president of Ukraine, Voldymyr Zelenskyy a “neo-Nazi,” when some of Zelenskyy’s own ancestors died in the Holocaust.

Putin may not make sense, but, at least in the first few days after his unjustified attack, he may be making tons of money.

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John Landy (right) with Roger Bannister in 2004. Photo from Wikipedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

These are difficult times, but we’re not going there. As President Joe Biden pointed out in his State of the Union Wednesday night, the war in Ukraine, inflation, Covid and climate change are some of the troubles before us. Further, for Pete’s sake, the owners and the players of major league baseball are so far apart in their negotiations that we don’t even have an opening day. And it seems that potholes on local roads multiply overnight. Let’s talk about other things.

Have you ever heard of John Landy? I had, but not by name. Many of us know who Roger Bannister was. It was breathtaking news when he broke the four-minute mile at 3:59.4 as a runner on May 6, 1954. Until that day, humans were not expected to run that fast. Bannister always gave credit to the guy behind him, and in the subsequent race billed as the Mile of the Century, on August 7, it was John Landy.

Landy, an Australian academic, was also a runner. Graduating from Melbourne University that famous year with a degree in agricultural science, Landy and Bannister, an Englishman and medical student at Oxford at the time, ran against each other on Aug. 7 at the British Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was to be the first time two men would better four minutes in the same race. Landy had previously run on June 21, in Turku, Finland, scoring 3:57.9. (The current record, by the way, is 3:43.13, held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.)  

They were the only two who had individually broken the four-minute mile record earlier that year, and their race generated huge excitement. Bannister finished first. Eight-tenths of one second separated the two. Bannister saluted Landy for offering the fierce competition that pushed him just a little bit harder to win. You might wonder how I know all this. Landy died last Thursday in Australia at the age of 91, and there was an appropriately in-depth obituary about him in Sunday’s The New York Times, so I attribute all this information to obit writers Frank Litsky and William McDonald.

“As expected, Landy led from the start, building a 15-yard lead. But Bannister … closed in on the last lap and Landy could sense him coming. Rounding the final turn, he peeked over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was. But Bannister was on his right, and as Landy’s head was turned, Bannister stormed by him, and won in 3:58.8. Landy came in second, in 3:59.6

“Only later was it learned that Landy had run the race with a wounded foot. By his account, he could not sleep the night before the race, so he got up and, barefoot, walked the streets — only to gash a foot on a photographer’s discarded flashbulb. He allowed a doctor to close the wound with four stitches, but only after the doctor swore that he would keep the incident quiet,” according to The NYT.

It was Dr. Roger Bannister, however, whose name “became synonymous with singular athletic achievement,” according to Wikipedia. He died in 2018, making Landy the winner in longevity.

A testament to Landy’s sportsmanship occurred in 1956 at the Australian track and field championships in Melbourne. (Bannister, by the way, retired from competitive running in 1954, to concentrate on medicine.) As Landy was running in the race, hoping to break the record again and participate in the coming Olympics there, a 19-yeaar-old competitor, Ron Clarke, was bumped and fell down ahead of him. When Landy leapt over his body, he inadvertently spiked his right shoulder. 

Landy stopped, ran back to Clarke, brushed cinders from Clarke’s knees and said, “Sorry.” “Keep going,” Clarke said. “I’m all right.” Clarke got up, and he and Landy started after the others, who by then were 60 yards ahead. Landy caught them and won in 4:04.2, according to The NYT.

Landy, in his own words, had “an extraordinarily interesting life.”  I hope you find his story uplifting in what is today a darker time.

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Pixabay photo

Over the course of the last month, local elected officials were speaking out against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) plan to allow, potentially, accessory apartments to every home throughout the state. 

Members of Congress across Long Island bashed the idea, state senators and assembly members did, too. It even got to the hyper local level when Brookhaven and Huntington towns both held press conferences asking Hochul to reconsider the plan, saying that it would not fit into the landscape of Long Island. The Town of Smithtown strongly objected, too.

It was bipartisan. Members from both parties said that it would impact the way we live here, parking would be terrible, property values could decrease and the already concerning sewage issues we have on Long Island would worsen. It simply wouldn’t work. 

And just this week, it looks like all that kicking and screaming had an impact. Hochul decided to pull the plan from the state budget. 

So, what does this mean? 

The events that led up to her decision were important. All of those press conferences hosted by our elected officials were worth the time and effort. The stories that the media reported on got other people talking, thinking and writing. 

This shows how important it is to reach out to our local representatives. Tell them what you want and ask them to help make a change. That’s their job. 

Reach out to us, your local media and write letters to the editor. Voice your concerns and demand action. 

Some things cannot be changed or might take longer than desired. But there are other opportunities that can be fixed before they take flight. 

If it wasn’t for our local elected officials looking over the state budget and noticing the line about the apartments, some of us might not have known about the issue until it was too far along to be stopped. 

That’s when people begin to complain, but sometimes not much can be done. 

Stay vigilant and be proactive instead of reactive. Use what resources are available to us now to make continuous changes that will benefit us and our families.

We’re all in this together and the more we communicate, the better. But we should remember to say “thank you” to those who made it possible when you finally get your way. 

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