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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I just celebrated an incredible birthday, thanks to the thoughtfulness of friends and family who took the time to talk with me and shop for greatly appreciated gifts.

Each year, these birthdays have the potential to be challenging, especially given that mine often comes some time around school midterms. Even though I’m no longer watching the calendar to see how many days I have left before I have to take a big test, I still ride that roller coaster vicariously with my children. This year, however, enormous and difficult tests didn’t hang over us, like the academic sword of Damocles.

For starters, before my birthday celebration kicked in, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law sent me AirPods. I knew I was supposed to open the gift on my birthday, but I’m not exactly the most patient person when it comes to opening presents. Gee, I wonder where my kids get that trait?

Anyway, the reaction from my son was almost as enjoyable as the present itself. When he saw me wearing them, he said, “How did you get those?” as if the question were an accusation. “My friends all have them.”

My daughter did a test run with me, chatting with me on FaceTime while she stared at my ears instead of at my uneven sideburns or the hairy bridge connecting my eyebrows. It’s increasingly rare these days for anything I do, say or wear to be considered “up to date,” so this wonderful gift hit the mark.

I’m enjoying using the AirPods at the gym, where I don’t have to worry about the wire bouncing around when I’m running or after I’ve exercised, when I’m panting as I lean over the water fountain.

The best part, though, is that they allow me to talk with someone while I’m walking my dog and picking up his droppings. I don’t have to worry about the wire coming lose when he suddenly pulls hard on the leash to chase a rabbit or to run away from the sudden noise a desiccated leaf makes when it blows in the wind behind us. Yes, despite his 90-pound body, he finds the unexpected noise from leaves threatening.

While I insisted to my wife that she didn’t need to buy anything for me, she purchased several items of clothing, like shorts and shirts that fit, look good and are incredibly comfortable. She also got this terrific jacket that repels the white dog hair that has rendered the rest of my outerwear ridiculous when interacting with members of the general public.

This birthday we ventured to the Big Easy, where the ubiquitous music still resonates. We took a paddleboat ride and heard about the Mississippi River and the site of the Battle of New Orleans. The oak trees lining the bank are about 250 to 300 years old, which means that the same trees stood in the same spot during the battle. 

My teenage son, who isn’t always the picture of patience with his demanding dad, played with me and allowed me to hug him in public during the weekend. That was better than any gift he could have purchased. My daughter, meanwhile, celebrated vicariously from college. A few of her friends wandered into the screen and wished me the best.

Finally, I connected by phone with college roommates, nephews, brothers and my mom, who was a critical part of that day so many years ago. Birthdays have, at times, made me feel older and displaced. This one, with the meaningful conversations, the laughter with my wife and children and the chats with friends and relatives, as well as the “cool” gifts, made me feel so young.

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Photo courtesy of Museum of the American Revolution

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

In this year of celebrating a century since women were granted the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, I will tell you a true tale from the dustbin of history.

Women voted for three decades after the American Revolution. They voted from 1776-1807 alongside men in, of all places, New Jersey. How do I know? Jennifer Schuessler tells me so in the Feb. 24 edition of The New York Times.

The women were only stopped from voting after “rampant fraud and corruption.” For example it seems that some men put on dresses to vote multiple times. New Jersey passed a law then, limiting voting in 1807 to white men.

Was it an early expression of gender equality or a legal loophole that enabled women — and African Americans — to vote at the dawn of our country? Or was that a myth?

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia located new-found poll lists that show women voted in “significant numbers” before they were denied. In August of this year the museum will open an exhibit called ironically, “When Women Lost the Vote,” featuring those documents. This is a great triumph for the museum and the tale.

While other states limited the vote to “freemen” or male inhabitants, New Jersey gave the right to vote to all “inhabitants” as long as “they” could show they had property worth 50 pounds. That ruled out most married women, whose property or income went to their husbands when they married. However, the law enfranchised many women, regardless of race, in New Jersey — or so the early story went. But where was the proof?

Then, an 1801 poll list from Montgomery Township, found in the New Jersey State Archives in Trenton, was the first real modern-day evidence of numerous women voters. The state archives had acquired the lists in 2016 “from the descendants of a long-ago county clerk.”

Now there are 18 poll lists from four New Jersey townships from 1797-1807 that have been found. Nine of them include 163 unique women’s names. The women had cast about 7.7 percent of total votes. On some lists, it was as much as 14 percent.

An interesting corollary is that the women’s names almost always appear in bunches, suggesting that women came to the polls in groups. Maybe that had something to do with the polls often being located in taverns “awash with drunkenness and guns,” according to The Times.

Philip Mead, chief historian at the Museum of the American Revolution, explained that there was difficulty in determining who met the property requirements, which contributed to the end of gender and race equality in New Jersey.

Still, Mead sees a positive message in this research for the museum’s exhibit: “In early New Jersey, we have women voting and African Americans voting. This is a story both about what we might have been, and about who we’ve become.”

It is a fitting tale to mark the end of Black History Month and the beginning of Women’s History Month.

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The late Joe Rella, pictured in June of 2019 with Comsewogue School District Superintendent Jennifer Quinn. Photo by Kyle Barr

There are only so many people who could have done the job that Dr. Joe Rella, the former Comsewogue superintendent, did — teacher, principal and finally head of schools. If the scores of affectionate tributes posted to social media are anything to go on, Rella is one of the few folks you could point to that has made the Port Jefferson Station/Terryville community what it is today.

Rella died last Friday at the too-young age of 69. He had been dealing with a diagnosis of bile duct cancer for the last few years, but still he kept at the job until he finally retired last year. Community members know there wasn’t a day that went by where Rella did not put himself forward for the benefit of the community, whether it was his weekly online story times or his constant attendance as the “piano man” at district concerts. Many in the community can point to examples of outreach and help he bestowed upon employees and students in the district.

North Shore residents often rightfully complain of their high taxes, the majority of which stem from school districts, but Rella showed that a school district can become the heart of the local hamlet and the epicenter for every goings-on in the area. It can become the source of pride and culture for residents, not only the entity that simply teaches students for 13 to 14 years at a time.

What we found in reporting on Comsewogue is that doors were always open. Most of the time, officials did not hesitate to speak on either positive events or district issues. In an age where there seems to be more and more red tape between district/school administrators and both journalists and the public, Comsewogue, under Rella’s guidance, showed just how effective being open to public comment could be. In a final interview with Rella before he retired, he spoke to one newbie editor of how important it was to listen to community feedback, no matter if it was negative and no matter if you may disagree with it. As a former music teacher, who brought music into everything he did, he said the important thing was to listen.

Rella was named one of TBR News Media’s People of the Year in both 1995 and 2010 for music and education, respectively. Though the papers have changed editors since then, the editorial staff was amazed reading those old articles, seeing just how much of the same man was in stories 25 years old as he was in articles written about him little more than half a year ago. There is a sense of compassion, of simply wanting to be there, to spread an awareness of purpose amongst students and staff and to act selflessly and to help define a community around a sense of selflessness and compassion.

Other supers have also made the list of People of the Year, including Elwood’s Ken Bossert — formerly Port Jeff superintendent — who has shown a similar sense of community engagement. 

Of course, we do not wish to diminish the hard work of the many heads of schools in our coverage areas, and we know many who have shown strides in district leadership. What we instead ask is for more people to look at the example Rella left in not just defining a school district, but defining neighborhoods and neighbors, of being the precedent which every student and even most residents could look toward. He was the one who looked to building trust not by demanding loyalty, but by creating a space everybody feels they’re on the same side and that all are working toward goals that benefit everyone. 

Rella will be missed, but his example remains one that all should live by.

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The White House

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I want the weakest possible president in 2020.

As a representative democracy, the United States uses a system of governance that relies on checks and balances. Everything about the history of the country makes it clear that a collection of leaders, each with limited power, should reflect the diverse nature of the country, with states that have small populations getting equal representation in the Senate.

Whenever one of the three branches of government oversteps its bounds, the other two have the opportunity to keep that one in check. If, for example, the executive branch, through the president of the United States, takes actions that the legislative or executive branches find objectionable or questionable, Congress or the Supreme Court can hold that president accountable.

So, how do we ensure those checks and balances? Where do we find exactly the right kind of weak president who can do just his or her job without trying to tell the courts what to do or legislate new laws favorable to the officeholder?

Most presidents, including every candidate who seems to be running now, appear to be convinced that he or she will be a strong leader with a vision for the country that takes us to greater heights or that makes us a better nation.

That’s lovely, but no president can do it alone. The government should be a team effort, pulling together people with a drive to contribute to the world through public service and to represent not only personal opinions, but the values, goals and concerns of the entire nation.

That seems almost impossible, given the divided nature of the country as we enter the 2020 election, right? Someone is always winning and someone is always losing.

That doesn’t have to be the case if a president sees and understands the limits of their power.

While this may seem like a direct rebuke of President Donald Trump (R), it is not. If Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), who seems to be gaining momentum with each passing primary, wins the Democratic nomination and then becomes president, I don’t want him to be powerful, either.

Some of his ideas, like free college and Medicaid for all, seem compelling on the surface, but many Democrats, Republicans and Independents wonder how exactly he’ll pay for all of those ideas. I enjoy reading dystopian fiction, like “1984,” “The Giver,” and “Fahrenheit 451,” to name a few. The conclusions of all of them are that utopia doesn’t work and big government creates even bigger problems, particularly for the individual.

The idea of Medicaid for All may seem appealing because of the frustration so many people feel with their medical insurance, until they imagine the bureaucratic machine known as the federal government making decisions about their medical coverage. Many of us want to make informed choices.

That brings me back to the choice for president. In the next eight months or so, as we prepare for the onslaught of advertisements telling us how and why the other candidate may ruin our lives, We the People can do something about it. If we truly believe a Democrat will win the White House, we can vote for Republicans in Congress. If we believe Trump will continue to share his inspirational Twitter messages wishing everyone well — just a bit of sarcasm here — we should vote Democratic in all the other races.

I don’t want Sanders expanding government and running up a tab that even higher taxes seem incapable of paying, while I also don’t want Trump getting a free pass to follow his impulses where they take him and the rest of the country. For me, the best 2020 choice is a weak and controlled president.

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Regina Miano and Karen Romanelli, pictured with publisher Leah S. Dunaief, accept the Reader's Choice Award on behalf of the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook. Photo by Beverly C. Tyler

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

As many of you know, because we have been publicizing it and because it created a bit of a buzz in town, we recently had a reception at the Three Village Inn for well over 100 guests. The purpose was to celebrate the winners of the Readers’ Choice contest in which their customers voted these select businesses the best in their business categories. It was a relaxed and fun evening where everyone seemed delighted to be there and party together and, in some cases, even to do business with each other. We had our talented videographer filming the proceedings.

What you may not know is that the video, with the winners walking the red carpet to accept their awards and to explain how they got into their respective businesses, is now up on our website for viewing. Just go to our website tbrnewsmedia.com and you will find the window, labeled TBR Readers’ Choice 2019 Reception Videos, on the top right-hand side of the home page. When you click on that, it will open to reveal a choice. You can just watch the film in its entirety, fairly long, or by clicking on the prompts you can bring up the playlist and advance to any one of the recipients or hopscotch throughout the video. You can also pause anywhere to watch the rest later or to share.

I hope you enjoy this second look if you were there — or perhaps first look if you weren’t — at this jolly community event, which we will make an annual. It is an index of some of the best businesses in the local area and, I hope, an encouragement to shop locally.

We are now clearly in the events business. Readers’ Choice was our third theme, the other two being the longstanding reception for People of the Year, our 44th, coming up March 22 at the Three Village Inn, and Cooks, Books & Corks, our other annual event, at which we have delicious tastings from local restaurants combined with books presented for sale by local authors. “Corks,” of course, refers to the libations that accompany the meals. CB&C will again be held in September at the Bates House in Setauket.

Now you might be surprised that we have wholeheartedly embraced the events business. It certainly is a wonder to me. We started our professional life here on the North Shore of Long Island as a community newspaper. I liked to write, didn’t like to be edited up the line, as I was when I was working at Times Inc. in New York City, loved the villages and meeting residents, and felt we had something to offer that wasn’t already here. Over the past four-plus decades, we have taken pride in advancing the interests of our hometown, communicating the news, issues and entertainment offerings, and strengthening the sense of community. We have also struggled mightily to stay afloat financially so that we could do all those things.

We all know that newspapers — and other news media as well — have been totally disrupted by progress. The publishing industry has changed; retail, the backbone of newspapers, has been disrupted by the digital world, and we have had to grow and change, too. Those who resist change are left behind.

So just as we are now in the moviemaking business (“One Life to Give,” prequel to the Culper Spy story — be sure to see it when it screens next as it’s quite a story and will make you proud of where you live), and the video business, we can assert that we are in the events sector. These activities fit with our mission to inform our residents because they offer something of interest, and they enhance our sense of community. They also help us to do our main job of relaying the news and to pay our bills. Therefore, we are beginning to plan for our next event, Rising Stars, and you will be hearing and reading more about that soon. Please stay tuned.

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Installation of the pre-treatment septic tank at Tom O'Dwyer's home in Strong's Neck. Photo from Tom O'Dwyer

By Perry Gershon

Suffolk County has a water crisis. We must do all we can to control our nitrogen waste to protect our drinking water, our soil, our rivers and our bays. The county and many of our towns have initiated rebate programs to encourage homeowners to install clean, nitrogen-removing septic systems. Suffolk County’s program, known as the Septic Improvement Program, or by the acronym SIP, has become a political football, and it’s the public and the environment that are the losers.

Perry Gershon. Photo from SCDC

SIP was designed to direct county payments directly to contractors, bypassing individual participants so their rebates would not be taxed as income. Suffolk County’s tax counsel delivered an opinion to the county attorney ruling that 1099 forms from SIP should go to contractors and not to consumers. This should have been the end of the story. However, Suffolk County Comptroller John Kennedy (R), while engaged in a campaign against County Executive Steve Bellone (D) during the elections last year, disagreed with the tax opinion and inquired of the IRS if county payments might be taxable to homeowners? Despite protestations from the county and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the IRS, always in need of funds, said yes, why not? The ruling was issued earlier this month. So now unsuspecting homeowners are receiving 1099 forms reporting unforeseen additional taxable personal income. What is essentially a new tax is sure to both impact those who already participate and dissuade future participants.

What can be done? Bellone and his administration are working to come up with alternative structures for the SIP program. Perhaps more can be done to clarify that transactions are between the county and the contractors to satisfy the IRS? Or perhaps an offsetting tax rebate can be legislated? Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-NY3) has written a letter to the IRS demanding they reconsider the decision. But Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) remains silent. Instead of joining Suozzi, Zeldin seems to support his fellow Republican Kennedy and once again ignores ways to save money for his constituents.

Does this surprise you? It should not, given Zeldin’s poor record historically on environmental and financial matters. Or that Zeldin has recently worked against New Yorkers on the repeal of the SALT cap and on Trump’s retaliation against the state by suspending New York applications to the Trusted Traveler program. Zeldin’s Twitter feed offers perpetual praise of the president, attacks on our governor, but not a word on the septic taxation issue. Long Island needs representatives who will work for us — who have our back when the federal government takes shots at us. Zeldin doesn’t fight for us. We have a chance in November to show him how wrong that is.

Perry Gershon is a national commentator on business, trade, policy and politics. A congressional candidate for New York’s 1st District, he holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a master’s in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Photo from METRO

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

She could feel the tension mounting. She had been down this road, or, more specifically, on this runway, numerous times before.

Flying didn’t bother her. She had taken many flights before she met her husband. Since they’d been married, they had also taken trips each year.

That’s when the trouble started. He didn’t blame her, but as someone who shared his feelings and wanted to help him when she could, she often felt at a loss as this moment approached.

She looked at the stranger next to her, eager to encourage a new person to enter the dialogue and distract him from his frustration.

At first, the stranger didn’t engage in conversation, preferring to read his book and to look through the movie offerings on his phone.

The ride around the airport took a while, as the plane stopped a few times to let other flights land.

Unable to break the ice with the man on the other side of her, she turned to her husband and hoped the game they’d developed might help.

“Hey,” she said, “how long do you think it’ll take this time?”

He grumbled something between his gritted teeth.

“Well,” she said, not bothering to ask him to repeat himself when she felt that the words were less relevant than the angry emotion that built up inside of him. “I’m going with eight.”

“Eight?” he spit back at her incredulously. “No way! It’s going to be at least 12.”

When the plane stopped and the Jetway came out to meet it, the man started his stopwatch, holding it up so she could see.

After three minutes, the passenger on her other side, who had heard the abbreviated conversation and could feel the tension rising between them as the man glared, unblinking, at the front of the plane and all the passengers between him and the next step on his trip, decided to break the frustrated silence in their row.

“Are you guys guessing how long it’ll be before you get off the plane?” he asked.

“Yes,” she sighed, grateful for the relief from watching and taking care of her husband.

A flight attendant made an announcement.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, we’re waiting for a gate attendant to fix the lock on the other side. It should only be a few minutes,” she said.

The man near the window shook his head. The woman shrugged at what she hoped was her new ally.

“Well, we’ll just start now,” she offered, as she set her own stopwatch on her phone and encouraged him to follow the new timing.

“You see,” she said, “he gets angry when people aren’t ready to go after the
plane lands.”

He turned away from the front of the plane long enough to explain himself to the stranger near the aisle.

“They turn off the seatbelt sign and people don’t get their luggage,” he snarled, gesturing with his palm at all the offending passengers between the door to the rest of his travels and the seat that barely contained his irritation. 

“Look at them, sitting there. It’s going to take each of them a while to get off. They have to find their bags, pull them out and get off the plane.”

The stranger offered the weary wife a supportive look. She appreciated the gesture, even as she made sure all her items were ready to go.

“These things are beyond your control,” the stranger offered.

“That’s true, but it still bothers him,” she sighed as she held her bags tightly in her hand.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

This coming Monday my husband and I would have celebrated 57 years of marriage. Except we won’t because he died 32 years ago, just shy of our 25th anniversary. This means that I have been unmarried longer than I was a wife, which makes me something of an expert-of-one on the subject of marrying or being single. It also explains my riveted reading of “They’re More than Happy Not to Get Married,” in the Sunday Styles section of this past week’s New York Times. Say, what?

First, we ought to consider how the idea and institution of marriage have incredibly changed over the last century. Indeed, we have lived through a marriage revolution. I was 22 when I became a bride, considered young today. At the time, my mother told me just before the ceremony, as she was helping me get into my gown, that “I had just missed being an old maid.” After all, she was entitled to that perspective since she married in 1925 at 17.

There was never any question that I would marry. Pretty much all of us in my class expected to marry shortly after graduation. The only question was whom we would marry, and the answer was usually whoever we had been dating — usually chastely — for the preceding couple of years. And we certainly wanted to have our children before we turned 30 and, as women, our reproductive prospects began to dim. One close friend even married before senior year ended and was already pregnant as she crossed the stage to receive her diploma from the college president.

It was the same expectation for men. My husband-to-be was in his last year of medical school. Yup, time to get married. We followed the script, set down by our respective parents and society. The one or two people we overheard saying that they didn’t want to get married or to have children were dismissed as simply being odd. Looking back on it now, it took courage to make either declaration in most of the 20th century.

Welcome to the 21st century, where marriage is considered something of a quaint option. Living together? How romantic! Been together 10 years? You must like each other. Have two children together? How nice. No one thinks to call them by a derogatory name. There is no shame in their unmarried parental state. Oh, decided to marry after these many years? Lovely. Your younger daughter can be the flower girl, your son the ring bearer.

In fact, according to the NYT article written by Hilary Sheinbaum, we’ve gone even further from the centuries’ old norm. Many women are opting out of relationships and finding they prefer to be single, is the latest word on the subject. “Instead of moping over singledom or aggressively trying to find partners with arbitrary deadlines in mind, they are declaring to be happily unmarried and proudly find solace in living solo,” she said. This is despite the many dating apps, matchmakers and sometimes astonishingly frank and graphic love advice out there in magazines, books or Google. And despite raging hormones.

“When you’re not seeking partnership, you are in a very relaxed calm inner space and generally more comfortable with who you are,” said Carla Manly, a clinical psychologist who specializes in relationships and self-awareness and was quoted in the Times. 

“A lot of times in relationships, you need to make sacrifices. You don’t have any sacrifices to make when you are on your own. You make all the decisions,” said Genesis Games, another therapist. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as recently as 2016, 110.6 million U.S. residents at least 18 years old were unmarried. That is about one-third our population. Women made up 53.2 percent of that number. Many of them might agree with that sentiment.

So, being the self-proclaimed expert on the subject, how do I feel? Yes, being in complete control of one’s own life, at least as far as relationships go, has its satisfactions. It makes for a wonderfully selfish existence. Best of all, however, is to have a choice. 

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By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Twenty years ago this week, my wife and I got married.

Over the course of the next two decades, we have gone through numerous changes and challenges together, providing a united front for our children, hosting relatives during birthday parties and celebrating landmark occasions.

As I think about the many roles we’ve played in each other’s lives I am grateful for my wife, the teacher. In addition to taking time to help educate our children, she has also been an extraordinary educator for me.

Starting with something easy, she taught me to relax. Before I met her, I felt the need to move, almost all the time. Sitting on a beach, a bed or a rock at the top of the mountain seemed like a waste of time. Over the years, taking a moment to soak in the sun, to observe the trees and birds around us, or to talk and laugh about the events of the day have become increasingly enjoyable ways to spend time and connect.

While my wife has taught me the fine art of relaxing, she has also demonstrated an incredible work ethic, balancing between the needs of our family and the demands of her job. She finds time to respond to work emails, to read work material and to answer important calls, all while supporting our children at everything from sports scrimmages to concerts to graduations.

Neither of us is particularly fond of shopping. She has, however, demonstrated how to speed-shop in a store. She has a gift not only for finding what she or any member of our family needs — a black shirt for a coming concert, a white dress for a party or specific socks that are cool enough for school — but also doing it in the most efficient manner, enabling the four of us to race back to the car and on to other activities.

She has also taught me how to laugh. Of course I laughed before I met her, but the laughter wasn’t as frequent and it didn’t continue to help cement my relationship to someone as well as it does with my wife. The absurd surrounds us, if you know what to look for and how to find it.

Of course, I don’t necessarily cherish every lesson the same way. You see, my wife is a cat person, a trait she shares with her mother and siblings. When my wife was pregnant and during the months when she breastfed, I learned the fine art of scooping cat litter and, once a week, changing the pan. I learned how to do this unpleasant but necessary maintenance task as quickly as possible, leaving me with only a slight scent of cat litter on my clothes. Our young children enjoyed watching me expectorate for a full minute after the process ended.

She also taught me the sheer joy of walking the Earth with someone. Before I met her, I was an avid walker, trekking up and down West Meadow Beach, walking around neighborhoods in Manhattan and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Ever since then, we have covered thousands of miles in all types of terrain as we share our observations of everything from nature to the events of the day or week. Walking together in stride, I have felt a part of something larger and more meaningful than my own existence.

Ultimately, however, my wife taught me how to turn my dreams into a reality. When I was 13, I read about the Galapagos Islands. When I heard about how all the marine and island life ignores people, I knew I had to visit. Spurred on by my wife, we planned this journey, which in 2013 far exceeded my lofty expectations, just as each year does with the woman I married two decades ago.

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

This is a happy tale about a lifesaving rescue that particularly pleases me. It must also have pleased The New York Times since the paper gave it a full-page spread under the National news banner this past Monday. The hero is an unlikely 71-year-old retired computer programmer and labor economist named Carl Butz. A fourth-generation Californian, he was aware, like the some 300 other residents of Downieville in the mountainous northern countryside, that the local newspaper, the state’s oldest weekly, was folding with the retirement of its publisher. We know that newspapers across America have been dying, especially in rural areas, and this Sierra County town, like a movie set preserved from the Old West days, was about to become the latest “news desert.”

Downieville’s weekly, The Mountain Messenger, was founded in 1853 and was as constant a fixture over the years as a Thursday is in every week. Mark Twain wrote several articles for the paper that were “a few unremarkable stories,” according to the Messenger’s former publisher, Don Russell, who had run the paper for nearly 30 years and read Twain’s stories on microfilm before he sold it to Butz. “They were awful. They were just local stories, as I recall, written by a guy with a hangover.” Twain was reportedly hiding out there from the law, or so the legend goes.

Then one night Butz, a recent widower, was watching “Citizen Kane” on cable, and had an epiphany. “I can do that,” he decided. He made a deal quickly with Russell, who was a good friend, to pay in the “four figures,” plus assuming some of the paper’s debts, and he never looked at the books. Russell told him he was “a romantic idealist and a nut case,” because the paper was a losing proposition “and someone who would want it would be crazy.”

So why did he do it?

In a letter to the readers of the first edition, Butz explained. “Simply put, the horrible thought of this venerable institution folding up and vanishing after 166 years of continuous operation was simply more than I could bear.” The newspaper was “something we need in order to know ourselves.” The rest of the residents felt the same way, apparently, and the editor of an online news site in town said, “It was devastating for everybody that we were going to lose The Mountain Messenger.”

The paper’s publishing software, Butz learned, was from the mid-1990s. There was no website, no social media platform. The only other employee, Jill Tahija, has been with the paper 11 years and takes to work her small black-and-white dog, Ladybug. Tahija’s
business card reads, “She who does the work.” 

The paper relies mostly on legal notices, from the county and other government offices, which bring in about $50,000 for the bulk of its revenue, has about 700 subscribers throughout the county and a print run of 2,400. “I’m not going to lose a million dollars but I know I’m going to have to subsidize some of it,” the new owner said. “My daughter is already aware that her inheritance is shrinking.”

Butz’s first edition was filled with the usual complement of local news stories: a supervisor’s meeting, wildfire prevention, the upcoming census and a local poetry competition. Russell, meanwhile, was on vacation with his wife, driving his RV up the coast — probably his first time off in three decades.

Downieville has become a popular destination as an old Gold Rush town at a fork of the Yuba River in distant western Sierra County. It has a corner saloon, one-lane bridges over the river, and the newspaper is located in a second-story office above a beauty salon on Main Street and next to the fire department, whose sign on the door reads, “Oldest volunteer fire department west of the Mississippi.” Gold mining and sawmills were once the economic engine. Now it relies on mountain biking and fly fishing. And the paper is a repository of the county’s history, with its vast archives. 

Carl Butz has become to the The Mountain Messenger what Jeff Bezos is to the The Washington Post: A savior who cares who we were and where we are going. 

I understand him.

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