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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

As we trudge through the last quarter of a year filled with challenges, I wanted to share some light hearted, ridiculous and truly 2020 fortune cookie message ideas. Enjoy!

• A vaccine may be in your future. Whether you take it is up to you.

• You will Zoom again some time soon.

• You will continue to see toilet paper in a whole new light.

• You will have another opportunity to learn an academic lesson you missed years ago.

• You don’t have to look hard to find heroes.

• The four walls around you will look better at some point.

• You will save money on gas this year.

• The election will end, hopefully.

• If you get off the couch and do some push ups, your body will thank you.

• This is the only 2020 you have. Make the most of it.

• It’s okay to lose track of the day: don’t lose track of your goals.

• Watch one fewer episode. You can make better use of your time.

• Use a shower to wash away your cares, and your stench.

• Don’t use a mask to hide from the truth.

• One person’s monster is another person’s savior.

• Feel free to pat yourself on the back. Don’t break your arm doing it.

• Petting the dog will bring you relief. Taking him out will bring him relief.

• Sometimes being odd is the only way to get even.

• Keep your enemies at bay. Six feet should work.

• Even while social distancing, do your best to stay connected.

• Love conquers hate, but hate can’t defeat love.

• Don’t forget to floss. Your periodontist will thank you.

• Lock your doors at night, but open your heart.

• Mythology occurs when we dare to dream.

• Take chances, but make sure you wash your hands.

• Consider what the younger version of yourself would do.

• Your children are not a younger version of you.

• Remember which days your kids are in school and make the most of them.

• Mute your computer before the dog starts barking. Your colleagues will thank you.

• Our editor is quarantined because he started coughing, so the gloves are off.

• When people calm down, they are better at solving their problems.

• When people stop telling other people what to do, they become more tolerable.

• Don’t expect a fortune cookie to change your life.

• Wow, you’re going off the rails there, George. Are we allowed to do that?

• Yes, Alissa, our editor is gone and we have to fill these cookies with something.

• Love has no statute of limitations.

• What, so you’re now a lawyer?

• I could have been, Alissa.

• Did you read about the shower? That one was for you.

• Perfect effort means giving 110 percent.

• You can’t give 110 percent. It’s not possible.

• Then why do these athletes say it?

• They’re talking about how hard they’re working. It’s an exaggeration.

• Your intelligence is an exaggeration.

• Get us out of here. They don’t even let us order Chinese food.

• Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

• You got that from the Airplane sequel. You can’t put it in a fortune cookie.

• In a fortune cookie? I don’t think someone from Airplane the Sequel is going to find us.

• That’s your problem. You don’t think.

• Thinking alone never cured anything.

• You’re wrong and you never tried thinking.

• I have to get out of here. That’s not the voice in your head. That’s me, George.

• Stop whining and start winning.

• You’re not a victim, you’re a survivor.

• That’s not bad, Alissa.

• How about ordering Italian next time?

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Finally, we are in the home stretch, with Election Day soon upon us. Of course this has been no ordinary election experience for Americans. In addition to the usual barrage of electioneering from local and national candidates, we are forced to work around COVID-19 in deciding how to vote.

Some residents, in record numbers, have chosen to mail in their ballots, some have decided to vote early in-person, a novel situation forced into existence by the virus to spread out the voting population and avoid crowds. And some will just show up at their normal polling places at their usual time and do what they always do to cast their ballots.

Whatever you may think of our president, Donald Trump has certainly supercharged the electorate. Voters are out in record numbers, whether to vote for or against him. Joe Biden has not pulled any punches. His main goal in running is to keep President Trump from a second term. And that also seems to be the goal of the voters: either for the man or against him.

I have to confess that I would feel a little envious when I would see pictures of residents, in countries newly emerging from dictatorships, who lined up for hours and miles to cast their votes in their first exercise of democracy. Many in the United States were generally uninspired to vote, often letting the minority who came to the polls decide who would govern us. We were often apathetic about voting and about politics in general. But not this year. So that’s a good thing.

A not so good thing is that we stand in red vs. blue partisan formation, aggressively shouting our views and often disparaging the other side’s beliefs. Dialogue is one matter, screaming matches are something else, something totally unproductive and ultimately injurious to those others with whom we are otherwise proudly united into one country.

In an attempt to simplify the positions of the local candidates, we are dedicating much of this issue to their views. We as journalists are in the unique and privileged position of having access to them. We invite them, individually for each race with their opponent(s), to a Zoom meeting to answer questions put to them by our editorial board. This typically takes about an hour and a half. We then write up their answers as informational articles, passing on what we have learned. Those stories can be found in a separate section elsewhere in this paper.

In our usual end pages for opinion, we offer our endorsements of the candidates. These can be found on the page opposite this column and are based on the interviews and whatever else we might know about them after following them as we covered the news. Of course, these are only our opinions, and we urge you to learn about the candidates and make your own decisions as to whom you will give your vote. We merely share our impressions with you, feeling it our duty since we have personally interviewed them.

The following is a list of local races for which we have held interviews with the candidates:

1st Congressional District

Nancy S. Goroff (D) & Lee M. Zeldin (R)

3rd Congressional District

Thomas R. Suozzi (D) & George A.D. Santos (R)

State Senator 1st Senatorial District

Laura A. Ahearn (D) & Anthony H. Palumbo (R)

State Senator 2nd Senatorial District

Mike Siderakis (D) & Mario R. Mattera (R)

State Senator 5th Senatorial District

James F. Gaughran (D) & Edmund J. Smyth (R)

2nd Assembly District

Laura Jens-Smith (D) & Jodi Giglio (R)

4th Assembly District

Steven Englebright (D) & Michael S. Ross (R)

8th Assembly District

Dylan G. Rice (D) & Michael J. Fitzpatrick (R)

10th Assembly District

Steve Stern (D) & Jamie R. Silvestri (R)

12th Assembly District

Keith Brown (R) & Michael Marcantonio (D)

We hope we have helped. Whatever you decide, please vote.   

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A caravan of cars rolled through Port Jefferson Oct. 17 in support of President Donald Trump. Photo by Kyle Barr

Beyond the interruption to Saturday business for stores, some of whom are hanging on for dear life by their pinkie, beyond the traffic and the noise, where is this going?

Because we are two weeks before an election, likely one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and the Trump caravans taking over roads not just on the North Shore as they did last weekend, but from both east and west, have told us one thing: There are real efforts to take the general antipathy seen on the national stage and transport it to here at home.

Seemingly in response to a single Black Lives Matter march in Port Jefferson back in June, local right-wing group Setauket Patriots has hosted three events since July. One was a sanctioned car parade for Fourth of July. Another was an unsanctioned parade for 9/11. Now we have the most recent caravan supporting the reelection of President Donald Trump (R) last Saturday. All these events have contained many examples of people waving flags supporting Trump, but this latest parade finally dropped any pretense.

In videos shared online, some patriots members have displayed animosity to local officials, to neighbors or effectively anyone who doesn’t agree with them. One video highlighted an actor portraying Trump calling Port Jeff Mayor Margot Garant “evil” for issuing the group a summons for marching without a permit. In another, a member of the caravan jokes about shooting counterprotesters.

Grown men and young children got into public shouting matches on the side of the street. There were reported examples of people in the caravan using gay slurs at any who showed disagreement. And, of course, not every example of bad behavior was carried out by Trump supporters. One counterprotester flipped the bird at all those gathered at the street corner, drawing jeers from the crowd.

Are these examples just small bites of a larger, more intricate context? We hope so, but there’s a real danger to thoughts like these. Yes, you can and should disagree with the decisions of public officials like the mayor of a small incorporated village, but what is the point of pejoratives? Where is this going? Is there going to be something like the planned armed coup by residents against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D)? Not likely but, then again, officials like U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) have joined in on attacks against the mayor seemingly on political grounds. These attempts at further dividing a local community are not welcome.

And beyond that, if you joke about shooting your political opponents, no matter if they are protesters, officials or police, you no longer deserve the kind of public platform you currently enjoy.

Divided. That’s what we call ourselves now. We say we are polarized and distinct, with one red America and one blue America. Why? Why do we push this polarization as if it’s inevitable?

This month, TBR News Media has been hosting debates with candidates running for local elections. Would you be offended or glad to know just how often these people from two separate parties actually agree on local issues? Both Republicans and Democrats agree with how important it is to maintain our North Shore bays and the Long Island Sound in general. Both parties understand the issue of Long Island’s brain drain and the need to keep both old and young here. They might disagree on the particulars, but that is why we have the debates in the first place, isn’t it?

Even on the so-called hot-button issues like police reform, there is real nuance and ideas from candidates you likely won’t see on any nationally televised debate stage.

There are people, even in our local community, who are trying to twist us and divide us. We ask that we all look past that and attend to the facts to guide our political decision-making. Check back with TBR News Media Oct. 29 for our upcoming preelection issue.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Jill has been cutting hair for 38 years. She has owned a few salons, but these days she has been scheduling hair cutting appointments at people’s homes.

She wears a mask, asks her customers to do the same and does her work outside or in the shelter of a garage, where the wind isn’t as strong.

An immigrant from Lebanon, Jill is completely professional, asking for extension cords through the garage, setting up a chair for her customers, and carrying her sterilized scissors, electronic clippers and comb.

Reflecting on the decades she’s spent chatting with customers while she works, she has an easy, purposeful manner about her efforts, while she rolls her “r’s,” sharing linguistic hints on her life.

These days, she lives with her daughter, son-in-law and her three grandchildren. She has her own space in the house, but is hoping, before too long, to rent or buy a small place where she can call the shots.

She shared a story with me that offers some perspective about life and our reactions in the moment to our wins and losses.

Back in February, Jill had decided it was time to own a salon again. She pooled all her savings and placed a bid on a property. She was excited about the prospect of serving more customers, hiring staff and growing a business that would help her make money and increase her savings towards retirement.

She knew she was close to winning the bidding and had started imagining how she’d reinvent the space and the people she’d hire. But, then, the people selling the property informed her that they had chosen another bidder, who had deeper pockets and was a part of a larger chain. She was incredibly disappointed and felt as if she’d lost out on a business she knew she could run. She spent several weeks irritated by the situation.

A month after she lost the property, she joined the rest of the world in the pandemic-triggered lockdown. Initially, she couldn’t get out much.

As the days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, she realized how lucky her loss on that property had been. She would have had to carry a $4,000 monthly mortgage for a location that was producing no revenue for months.

She considers herself an incredibly lucky loser. Back in February, of course, a mere month before the virus changed the United States, she had no way of knowing that her loss would save her from a mountain of unmanageable debt.

She feels as if a force from up high was looking out for her, protecting her from a financial burden and responsibility that would have been hard to manage, even with whatever government program she might have turned to for help.

Down the road, when the world returns to something resembling the experiences of 2019, she may, once again, consider buying a salon. Until then, however, she’s perfectly happy without the debt and the uncertainty of managing through a difficult small business and economic environment.

In the meantime, she will continue to show up at people’s homes, brushes, clippers and scissors in hand, ready to provide on-site haircuts to people who prefer, or can’t, leave their properties.

The challenges and obstacles that disappoint also sometimes protect us, even if we can’t see that in the moment, particularly when we know how much we want something.

Many of us will confront those frustrations in the future over which we have no control. Sometimes, we may gain perspective on what, at first, appears to be an unfortunate outcome.

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By Leah Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

A friend is planning to retire at the end of the year. His wife is already retired, and we three talked about the future. Since none of us has jobs with pensions, they are understandably trying hard to discern economic trends for the investments they hope will carry them through their golden years. Currently their money is mainly in stocks, which are doing well enough, but they, and the rest of us, have duly noted the disconnect between the stock market and the economy.

The stock market, of course, is not the economy but rather is thought to be one predictor of future economic trends at least six months ahead. There are others as well, and one place to get some insight is the PBS program, “Consuelo Mack WealthTrack.” Mack is the host of this weekly financial program, and in the tradition of “Wall Street with Louis Rukeyser,” which ran on the same channel (13) and in the same time slot (Friday, 7:30 p.m.) from 1970 to 2002, a guest each time discusses with her their area of expertise.

Originally broadcast on Oct. 9, a recent guest was economic guru Nancy Lazar, who spoke of four forces she sees as driving the economy to a powerful comeback. The first is, as you may have guessed, technology, which helps make companies more profitable. Lazar emphasized the importance of reinvestment in their companies by executives in order to stay up to date and to increase productivity.

As an example, she offers the sad story of Sears vs. the strong growth of Amazon. Businesses must keep up or be left behind. Technology, especially software, is a critical driver in a strong recovery. Banks are another example. Their movement to online services has been enabled by software developments and now COVID considerations using that software. And as she points out, the United States is the technology leader.

A second driver is housing, which brings with it so many related businesses and jobs: carpenters, painters, spacklers, roofers, plumbers, electricians, cesspool servicers, landscapers, driveway pavers, furniture and carpeting salesmen, and on and on. Housing is doing well, driven by exceptionally low mortgage interest rates, demand from millennials and now single family homes for COVID refugees from the cities.

A third driver for Lazar is manufacturing. She refers to the Rust Belt as her “favorite emerging market.” Disruption in the supply chains due to the pandemic have made companies aware of how much safer it is to make it here if they are going to sell it here. This has even become something of a national security issue. She counts 176 companies that have moved back to or started up in the United States since the beginning of 2020. States like South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama have benefited.

And the fourth is capital spending. Lazar believes that the reinvestment that companies have made in their businesses as a result of the huge tax cuts has been underreported and underappreciated. While many companies have indeed increased their dividends and bought back shares, she has tracked reinvestment from some of that windfall and feels that will result in higher productivity, higher profits and more jobs. In order to grow, companies must reinvest, and when they do, the economy grows. A business cycle spurred by reinvestment — building new plants, hiring and training new workers -— lasts 30 years.

Meanwhile, many are out of work and there is a lot of pain. Lazar also recognizes that in every recovery, not all sectors improve. But she advocates for more business reinvestment to produce more jobs and believes that will lower unemployment to half by next year. Without a further stimulus package, she envisions a handoff from government to the private sector as a driver for healing unemployment. Consumers, meanwhile, are turning more conservative, having been hit by two shocks in the last decade: recession in 2008 and COVID now.

While Nancy Lazar is not an investment advisor, but rather an economist, she has pointed out areas that might be ripe for investment. Good luck to us all!

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Stony Brook University. File photo

In 2016, Stony Brook University rebranded itself to a new campaign called Far Beyond.

The idea behind the campaign was to highlight the wide range of programs and activities the school offered, since everyone normally acknowledges the university for its medicine, science and technology specialties.

But this year in 2020, the institution proved that it indeed has gone “far beyond” with protecting public health.

Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House’s coronavirus task force, visited SBU last week, a stop in a several-month-long tour of different colleges and universities across the United States. But her visit to the local university was different, and she made that clear.

During her press conference, she spoke highly of how Stony Brook has handled the COVID-19 crisis. She said from the start, it was going, well, “far beyond” what other schools, and even hospitals, were doing.

She said that back in March when the university shut down and patients with the virus were filling the rooms, Stony Brook did something different from other institutions — it actually collected data, while continuing to take care of the patients.

“I was listening to the research activities that they started from day one,” she said during the press conference. “And it thrilled my heart to hear from them that their number one thing was collecting data and collecting information in real time.”

It’s right to give credit where its due, and Stony Brook, both on the medical and campus side, has done good work in keeping the number of cases down. The university’s COVID dashboard reports just two students, one university employee and four Stony Brook Medicine employees have currently tested positive as of Oct. 11. Better yet, the school has been upfront in where those cases are located and how it is handling them.

This is compared to places like SUNY Oneonta, which had to close back in August after hundreds of students tested positive after a large super-spreader party. The Oneonta dashboard reports 712 confirmed cases among students since the start of the fall semester.

It’s also not to say that SBU has not made stumbles, especially in communicating with students.

Right off the bat during the start of the pandemic, students were rightfully upset at how the university handled the virus. In March, dorming students were shocked when each received an email saying they needed to move out, go home or find shelter elsewhere because the campus was officially closed.

Students said they felt rushed, and felt the university wasn’t being truthful or transparent with everything being so abrupt. Some international students couldn’t even go home since their countries were in lockdown.

But the students are back, and cases remain low. Is it because of the incentives the university has taken with social distancing guidelines, removing of sports and recreational activities, hybrid learning and sanitizing stations? Or is it just because Stony Brook is not a “party school” and the students there really don’t congregate as at some of the schools upstate, like Oneonta. It’s also important to note the number of students living on campus has fallen from 39% in 2019 to 17% this fall.

With a new president installed at SBU, Maurie McInnis, we think that communication with students has improved. Every person, every institution has been impacted by the pandemic. The students, who feel they are paying a lot for what at times must feel like a mostly online education, need that person-on-person interaction to let their voices be heard, even if it’s behind a clear plastic barrier.

Nonetheless, Stony Brook gets high praise from both us and those involved in the national response to COVID-19, as well as Birx, for going “far beyond.” We kindly ask that the university keeps it up, for the sake of both your students and the wider community.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Three years and a different world ago, I attended a scientific conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on a gene editing technique called CRISPR, or more technically CRISPR-cas9.

I rubbed elbows with some of the many talented scientists at an internationally renowned institution. In a casual atmosphere filled with high-powered talks from people who speak the language of science with accents from all over the world, the grounds at CSHL, with its winding roads and personalized parking spaces, offers a tree-lined backdrop for new collaborations and discoveries.

Back then, I invited one of the conference organizers, Jennifer Doudna (pronounced Dowd nuh), who is a Professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, to lunch.

After a talk she gave to a packed Grace Auditorium, she and I strolled to the cafeteria to discuss a gene editing tool that has the potential to change the world.

Indeed, even today, labs around the world are using a technique based on the way bacteria recognize and fight off viruses to combat the effect of SARS-CoV-2, or the virus that causes COVID-19.

During that sunny July day in 2017, however, we were blissfully unaware of the challenges to come in 2020. We sat down at a central table outside, with people passing, nodding and acknowledging my tall and talented lunch guest.

While she responded to an appreciative crowd of casually dressed researchers, she was present and focused on the many questions I’d prepared for an upcoming Power of 3 column (see page B9 for another look at that column).

Like many revolutionary technologies and inventions such as splitting the atom, CRISPR is neither all good nor all bad. Editing genes creates opportunities to cure or prevent diseases and to disarm a range of miniature invaders.

At the same time, gene editing puts the power of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein into the hands of scientists or doctors, offering the kind of tool that requires careful ethical considerations.

Indeed, just last year, a Chinese court sentenced a researcher to three years in prison for using gene editing in unborn babies.

Doudna, who moved to Hawaii when she was seven and is a passionate gardener, is in the third year of a four-year $65 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which monitors security concerns for the intentional or accidental misuse of the technology.

Eating with Doudna on a breezy, bright summer day, I appreciated how ready she was to tailor the conversation to my level of understanding of this technology, offering details about gene editing and making sure I understood her.

While she was impressive and articulate, she certainly didn’t seem as if she were speaking to me from on high. She shared a deliberate and directed intelligence, blending a combination of an explanation of what she’d done and thoughts on the next scientific steps.

Doudna, who lives with her husband Jamie Cate, who is also a Berkeley scientist, and their high school senior son Andrew, shared an appreciation for the history of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she’d visited at different points in her career.

Back in 1987, she spotted a woman walking towards her. Nobel prize winner Barbara McClintock, whose name still comes up regularly in conversations with scientists at the site, strolled by, giving Doudna a thrill.

The next time someone spots or interacts with the Berkeley Professor at CSHL, they will likely feel the same excitement, as Doudna was recently named a recipient of the Nobel Prize.

Then again, it was clear from the way the attendees at the conference reacted to Doudna three years ago that, Nobel prize or not, she was already a rock star in the scientific community whose foundational work may, one day, lead to the kind of breakthroughs that extend and improve life.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief 

Blame it all on the pandemic, but in an effort to practice social distancing from my refrigerator, I have seriously begun to binge. On what am I binging? I plead guilty to the following definition of binging from my cell phone browser: “watching multiple episodes of a television program over a short period of time.”

Now I am not exactly an innocent when it comes to watching a serialized story all at once. Given the opportunity, I did just that with the last year of “Downton Abbey.” I got all the coming installments at once in return for a donation to PBS, and I stayed up past three o’clock in the morning, too hypnotized to turn off the TV until the series had ended. I guess that was the tip off to my plot-addicted personality. The reveal is that I love stories, and like the monarch lover of Scheherazade, Persian King Shahryar, in “One Thousand and One Nights,” I cannot leave a tale in the middle when I have the opportunity to see how it ends, regardless of my fatigue.

So on a recommendation, I started watching “The Crown,” and you guessed it. This marvelous series, a historical drama about Elizabeth II, the Windsors, and some of the events that have marked her reign, captivated me.

The first season starts with the marriage of Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947, to the end of her sister Margaret’s involvement with Group Captain Peter Townsend in 1955. After dinner each night, I turned on the television and watched all the stories filmed to this point until I fell asleep in my chair.

I eagerly await the start of the fourth season, which I believe will happen Nov. 15 and include Margaret Thatcher’s premiership and more on Lady Diana Spencer. The fifth and sixth seasons are to cover the years in the 21st century. Sadly, though, I will be limited only to one episode at a time because I am caught up.

The problem with a series is that sooner or later, they end. I guess they just run out of juice or the talented people involved want to move on to something else. Having gone as far as permitted with “The Crown,” I started casting around for another compelling show and stumbled upon “Grace and Frankie,” with an incredible cast: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sam Waterston, Martin Sheen and a seemingly endless list of talented actors.

Far from being an historical drama, this series could only run in today’s world. Begun in 2015 and scheduled to finish in 2021, after filming resumes, the story begins when the lawyer husbands of Grace and Frankie announce that they are not only business partners for the past 40 years but also have been lovers for the last 20. They are “coming out” and wish to be married. The two couples, their relationships redrawn, now have to deal with their revised circumstances, and as they move forward in this comedy-drama, their lives touch on so many current themes with sympathy and occasional belly-laughter results.

Both couples, forced to recognize their advanced years, deal with physical limitations, retirement issues, health insurance frustrations, bigoted elderly parents, interracial relationships, sexual needs and computer challenges. Both couples have adult children, who bring into the plots some of the pain and satisfactions of the twenty-somethings: raising young children, not wanting children, addiction, being able to afford buying a home, and worrying how to take care of older parents who don’t want to acknowledge aging.

It is primarily the story, though, of two women, Grace and Frankie, who could not be more different. They cannot stand to be in the same room with each other at the start, yet we see how they slowly come together in trying to deal with their mutually altered circumstances. The characters are well drawn by the authors and actors, and they ultimately reveal much about the value of supportive friendships between women. Can Grace and Frankie, two women in their 70s, survive being outcasts? The answer is a resounding YES!

Be assured, there are already 78 episodes with more on the way, enough for a great binge.

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We weren’t surprised when business owners in the wedding industry held a press conference Oct. 2 to appeal to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D). For months, while restaurants have been able to operate at 50% capacity, reception locations can only allow 50 guests at an event.

The 50-guest cap and arbitrary state guidelines have been concerns of several business owners in the wedding and party industry. These locals have shared their experiences with TBR News Media for articles in the last few months, and vendors weren’t quite sure what they could do or not do, as they have had little direct communication with the state.

While we understand the need for Cuomo’s administration to keep gatherings down to a minimum, there needs to be more continuity and empathy in the guidelines. With the support of legislators, a class-action lawsuit is being filed by caterers. Business owners at the press conference said they feel they can provide a safer party than those being thrown in homes and backyards since they have more space to social distance and need to follow higher cleanliness standards. Owners said they realize following the guidelines is imperative for not only safety but to keep their licenses — something a homeowner doesn’t need to entertain.

The business owners may have a chance. This summer a federal judge issued a temporary injunction to allow an upstate golf club to operate at 50% capacity for two weddings after the couples and co-owner of the club sued New York State. That owner said his restaurant had the capacity to seat 438 people, but while operating as a restaurant one night he could have more than 200 people, on a wedding night he could only have 50.

This example may leave one wondering how a person visiting a restaurant could potentially be around more than 50 strangers, but cannot sit with more than 50 family members, friends and acquaintances at a party, especially since many wedding venues are committed to following current public health guidelines, including discouraging dancing.

Like so many businesses, COVID-19 has had a tremendous negative financial effect on the wedding industry and many are hoping to get back on track or else they may have to close their doors forever. During the shutdowns, venues had no money coming in while still needing to pay rent and utility bills. This has had a trickle-down effect where photographers, videographers, DJs and bands are called for less work, and while bakeries may have made some wedding and other celebratory cakes, the orders are smaller in size than usual.

If venues get their way, it’s imperative that owners and employees follow public-health guidelines such as 50% occupancy, social distancing, banning dancing and enforcing mask wearing when people are not seated. Seeing how restaurants in our coverage areas have been able to come up with creative ways to serve their patrons safely, including turning parking lots into outdoor dining areas, using tents — even small ones for individual parties — we believe wedding venue owners will do the same.

Of course, keeping our local businesses open works both ways. It will take more than residents signing a petition to help these businesses stay afloat, it will also require people to follow public health guidelines. So, we implore individuals to be responsible as well. It’s up to all of us to stay 6 feet away from each other, wear a mask, wash our hands regularly and stay home when we are feeling ill.

There’s a certain positive energy in the air when people come together to celebrate, and even if they can’t hug, kiss or show off their moves on the dance floor, we’re sure the majority will appreciate being there for their loved ones just as much as having dinner at their favorite restaurant.

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

We are one of the loudest families on the block, and there are only four of us when we’re all home. Well, five, if you count the dog, and you should definitely count the dog.

Every so often, my dog gets on one of his benders where the entire neighborhood has to hear him. He races into the backyard and barks at shadows that my eyes, and the eyes of my son, who runs to the back door and turns on the light, can’t see either.

Every neighbor presents his or her unique challenges to a block where we continue to spend a large percentage of our time. There’s the guy who drives too fast. We all glare at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He probably can’t see us because he’s moving too quickly and exists in a different space-time continuum. Don’t you love a word like continuum that dares to have two “u’s” in a row?

Then there’s the neighbor whose house is under constant construction. No matter what season, time of the month, or time of day, construction people are always there, digging, pulling, pushing, installing, removing, re-laying, resurfacing, ripping up, putting back down.

Who needs all that continuous fixing? I don’t even live in their house and I’m exhausted by the constant change. Sure, it’d be nice if that bulb above my wife’s head in our bedroom actually worked, but my arms are too short on the ladder and the bed is in the wrong place. I put my son on my shoulders and he reached up and turned, but the bulb and the fixture kept spinning.

On the other side, we have a lovely neighbor who is so nice that even the people who frown at the bunnies and deer, which prance through our neighborhood as if they were responding to a cue from a Disney director, smile at her. Her smile and laughter seem like a starter’s gun, waiting for a small cue to explode to the surface.

Anyway, the rest of her family is friendly enough, but doesn’t share her ebullience. They do, however, love their cars. The louder the sound, the more impressive the car, or so it seems. Their driveway hosts regular revving contests. Okay, how many columns have words with two consecutive “u’s” and two consecutive “v’s” in them? Revving continuum, anyone?

Somehow, despite the constant cacophony from the driveway, their house attracts an abundance of magnificent birds, even when they use the leaf blower to keep their immaculate backyard free of the few leaves with the temerity to fall on their property.

Then there is the talker. She’s incredibly sweet, insightful and intelligent. The two challenges are that the polite banter doesn’t seem to have a natural end, and she is so soft spoken that I find myself nodding and raising my eyebrows, hoping I’m offering the proper response to questions I can’t hear. I can’t move closer to her because we react to people as if they were porcupines, with six foot quills.

Then there are the adorables. These are the families that have young children who giggle, laugh and play, blissfully unfocused on the pandemic and thrilled that they are out on a bike or that they can identify a bird that passed overhead. They race each other on tiny bikes, ask me why I’m wearing the same sweatshirt again, and skip to the sound of music I can’t hear. They also see the nonstop trucks delivering materials to the construction house as a source of entertainment. One of our young neighbors was on her way to school on a recent morning. Her mother stopped her car and rolled down the window so she could tell me about Mrs. Cathy and Ms. Mary. Those happy adorables are the block winners.

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