A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
A scene from the 2023 Wet Paint Festival. Photo by Julianne Mosher
By Julianne Mosher
On June 17 and 18, visitors from across Long Island headed to Old Field Farm in Setauket for Gallery North’s 19th annual Wet Paint Festival, a fun-filled weekend to not only admire local artists practicing their craft en plein air, but to see the excitement of a derby. According to Sally Lynch, owner and farm operator, the festival couldn’t have come during a better weekend.
The 2023 Seaside Hunter Derby took place on June 18 on the campus and as the riders competed, over 40 artists took to their canvases to paint and sketch the local scenery and content.
“All the horse people are thrilled to see their horses painted,” said Lynch. “There’s a reason why the horse remains a constant subject of the arts.”
She added that the day before, the farm hosted vintage riders (ones who ride side saddle) in full old-school costume who also modeled for the artists on-site.
The two-day festival also featured nature walks courtesy of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, live music by Tom Killourhy and the Keenan Zach Trio, plein air art tours with Jim Molloy and Nancy Bueti-Randall, a history tour with Margo Arceri of Tri-Spy Tours and an animal presentation by Sweetbriar Nature Center.
The event was sponsored by bld Architecture, Jefferson’s Ferry and Suffolk County’s Department of Economic Development and Planning.
All of the artwork created at the festival will be on display at the Reboli Center for Art and History, 64 Main St., Stony Brook on July 5 through August 27. The public is invited to an opening reception on July 21 from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
Over the years, this paper has had the pleasure of telling countless stories of members of our community going out of their way to give back and take the time to volunteer. Readers will see in our papers this week that the Guide Dog Foundation is looking for puppy raisers, surely a rewarding and noble role for animal lovers.
We encourage anyone inspired by that story to, as always, consider volunteering. Realistically, we know that most of us do not have the time and bandwidth to raise a puppy for someone else. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all do our part to make the world a better place.
Help someone in the grocery store who can’t carry their bags. Offer to shop for an elderly neighbor or simply stop in to check on them. Volunteering can take many of these forms.
Volunteering is meant to benefit others, and that should be the goal. Signing up for something simply to make oneself feel better, or pat oneself on the back won’t benefit anyone. However, it is often us who feel better, fulfilled and rewarded after doing something for others.
We are lucky to live in a prosperous area. Many of us have been fortunate enough to never know the struggle of not being able to feed our families or pay for gas. Several members of our community aren’t that lucky. The old saying, “We rise when lifting others,” applies here. The more time we take to help those less fortunate, the better off we will be.
It can be difficult to find the correct opportunity for volunteering, in trying to figure out what speaks to our passions. Keep a watchful eye in our papers, social media and among our neighbors for new opportunities, and as mentioned make our own.
To all of the members of our community that already volunteer, we thank you. We know it can be difficult to find time for ourselves, let alone others. We also know that it’s worth it.
As summer comes near, we hope our readers will see volunteerism as another regular activity to do with our kids, and other friends and family. All we need is ourselves. Start by thinking about what drives us, whether that be animals, hunger, children, the arts, education, the environment and so on. Once we establish that, volunteering for a dedicated cause will connect us with other like-minded neighbors, another added benefit to signing up to volunteer.
We hope readers will consider the benefits we have outlined as to exactly what volunteering affords us. We look forward to the possibility of sharing the stories of generous volunteers, old and new.
Above, a photo of Turkana taken from a single engine plane shows the Koobi Fora spit and Lake Turkana alongside a time map. Photo from Bob Raynolds
By Daniel Dunaief
In a wide-ranging interview, Louise Leakey, Director of Public Education and Outreach for the Turkana Basin Institute and a Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University shared her thoughts on numerous topics in the field of paleontology.
Louise Leakey at the Richard Leakey Memorial Conference on June 5. Photo by John Griffin/SBU
Leakey, who earned her PhD at the University College London, suggested that the process of finding fossils hasn’t changed that much, although other options beyond scouring a landscape for fragments of the world’s former occupants may be forthcoming.
“It may very well change if we can implement machine learning with high resolution imagery, using drones,” she said. “That’s one of the things we’re looking at the moment.”
What’s really changed, however, is the accuracy field scientists have in marking where, and, importantly, when new discoveries originated, she said.
Geologists like Bob Raynolds, Research Associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, have created time maps that indicate the approximate age of sediments around a fossil in some select areas of the Turkana Basin.
These maps “can be uploaded onto an iPad app for use in the field that shows you in real time where you are on the geological map,” Leakey explained. “This is a game changer for field work in the basin.”
A time map created by Bob Raynolds in collaboration with Geologic Data Systems, a Littleton, Colorado company.
The maps represent the work of many people, Raynolds explained.Originally, teams of Master’s students used air photographs, tracing paper and ink to make a map. These students spent many weeks walking systematically on the ground and tracing the patterns on the photos.
The rugged and isolated nature of the ground in Northern Kenya makes the work done on foot difficult, Raynolds explained.
The original maps, which were made in the 1970’s, took months to make and were presented as paper copies in unpublished Master’s theses. After numerous enhancements, Raynolds, working with companies including Geologic Data Systems in Littleton, Colorado, created time maps.
The internal GPS on an iPhone enables a blue dot to indicate a person’s location on the map.
“I have worked on the maps to make a new set of derived products that are maps of the age of the rocks,” said Raynolds who created these time maps earlier this year. “The resolution of the time maps is 100,000 years” which is an “astonishingly detailed resolution for us who are accustomed to million year packages of time.”
The maps cover the entire Turkana Basin at various scales, Raynolds added.
More broadly, Bernard Wood, University Professor of Human Origins in the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleontology at George Washington University and the first speaker at a recent Stony Brook University conference to honor Richard Leakey, explained that dating fossils has become increasingly accurate.
The first dates of fossils in the KBS Tuff, which is an ash layer in the Koobi Fora Formation east of Lake Turkana, was estimated within 260,000 years of a specific date. Using improved methods, a study published this year has reduced that range to 600 years.
Publishing pace
In the meantime, the pace of publishing has slowed considerably.
“There’s so much more material” that can serve as a frame of reference for new discoveries, Leakey said. “The rate of publication is frustratingly slow for some of these specimens.” This contrasts dramatically with the experience of Leakey’s father Richard.
When the elder Leakey submitted his letters or paper to the prestigious journal Nature, the late editor John Maddox never sent them out for review. “[Maddox] explained that he couldn’t see the point, because they concerned fossils so recently discovered” that few had seen them, Wood explained in his presentation.
Louise Leakey also differed from Richard in earning her bachelor’s degree and PhD, while her father dropped out of high school and never received any additional formal education.
Wood suggested that, next to marrying Meave, the elder Leakey described leaving school as one of the best decisions he’d ever made.
For his daughter, though, Leakey “encouraged me to go and do that,” Louise Leakey said. The education helped “in terms of being able to be [principal investigator] on grant applications,” she said.
Leakey suggested it was a “real privilege to be able to spend time” earning her PhD. She also found that the educational experience gave her the opportunity to “stand on my own two feet” in her research.
Like her father, Louise Leakey is concerned about conservation and declining biodiversity. When she was younger, she saw areas that were teeming with wildlife. On a recent three-hour drive, she only saw a golden jackal and a dik-dik, which is a type of small antelope, compared with the much wider variety of creatures she would have seen decades ago, such as Grévy’s zebra, Burchell zebra, lesser kudu, ostriches, warthogs, topi, gerenuk, oryx and, possibly lions and cheetah.
She attributes this decline to hunting as some have exterminated these species as result of competition for grazing areas and hunting the animals for meat. Record droughts are also threatening their survival.
Leakey is working with the next generation to get “kids to care about nature” so they can “think about what they’re doing and the real impact it has.”
In addition to preserving biodiversity, Leakey remains passionate about studying the past, which could help the current and future generations tackle climate change. “We might be able to learn lessons” from those who survived during such challenging conditions, she said.
Leakey is able to maintain her involvement and commitment to numerous efforts by working with talented collaborators.
“If you don’t have teams to really hold it together, you can’t do any of it,” she said.
Jefferson’s Ferry President and CEO Bob Caulfield (center) snips the ribbon to commemorate the
opening of the Life Plan Community’s fully renovated and expanded Community Center. Joining
Caulfield are (left to right) Jefferson’s Ferry board members James E. Danowski, CPA, Vice Chair; John R.
Sini, CPA, Treasurer; Gloria Snyder, Chair; along with Jefferson’s Ferry Resident Council Chair Pat Boone,
and Construction Project Manager Matthew Moroney. Photo from Jefferson's Ferry
Jefferson's Ferry residents and staff filled the lobby of the new Commons building to witness the ribbon cutting and take a tour of the new building. Photo from Jefferson's Ferry
Jefferson's Ferry Board Members joined Jefferson's Ferry President and CEO Bob Caulfield (center) to commemorate the opening of the Life Plan Community's new Commons building. Pictured with Caulfield (l-r) are trustees Kenneth Roberts, John R. Sini, CPA, Treasurer; Gloria Snyder, Chair; and James E. Danowski, CPA, Vice Chair. Photo from Jefferson's Ferry
The lobby of Jefferson’s Ferry community center was abuzz on June 5 as residents, employees and guests packed in to witness the ceremonial ribbon cutting of the Life Plan community’s new commons building. The mood was buoyant as residents and friends prepared to embark on tours of the spaces.
The audience joined in on the countdown as scissors wielded by Jefferson’s Ferry’s President and CEO Bob Caulfield; Board of Directors Chair Gloria Snyder; Vice Chair James Danowski and Treasurer John Sini; Resident Council Chair Pat Boone and Construction Project Manager Matthew Moroney cut the ribbon to enthusiastic applause.
Addressing the crowd, Bob Caulfield thanked the residents and staff for their patience and support during the renovation process, dubbed Journey Toward Renewal, which has taken place in stages over the past several years. Additional renovations and expansions are currently underway in Jefferson’s Ferry’s Vincent Bove Health Center, including a new Memory Care Unit which is expected to open in the fall.
“This is a landmark day for us, as our new commons building adds beautiful new spaces to our community center, the heart of Jefferson’s Ferry,” said Caulfield. “We’ve all been patiently awaiting this day, and I thank every one of you who has been as eager as I have been to celebrate this major milestone. This includes the Board of Trustees, who had the strategic foresight and financial oversight of the ambitious project, our construction team, who labored to complete this phase of the project, and of course, our residents and staff.”
Among the latest updates and additions to the social and recreational aspects of the community center are a variety of new gathering spaces, including a larger and redesigned creative arts center, expanded card rooms for the popular bridge and gin rummy tournaments, and a game room with billiards, ping pong, shuffle boards and large screen television.Another bright open space is dedicated to puzzling, newspaper reading and socializing.The fitness center, which can be accessed 24-7 through a separate keypad operated entrance includes a full complement of exercise machines, a dance/yoga studio and separate locker rooms with showers for men and women.Right down the hall, a salon offers hair cuts and styling, manicure and pedicures by appointment.
Earlier this year, six new dining venues opened, each one offering a distinct menu to suit a variety of tastes and preferences. Options range from grab and go to casual, and from pub dining to a more formal dining room.
Adjacent to the workout rooms is a new physical therapy and rehabilitation suite that includes a replica of a Jefferson’s Ferry apartment that enables residents to easily transfer what they’ve learned during rehabilitation to their own home.The rehabilitation suite also features an outdoor therapy courtyard with different surface areas and slopes to help residents fare better in a variety of indoor and outdoor environments post rehab.
The addition of the commons building has made room for an expansion of the Health and Wellness Program.Residents can now schedule in-house physician visits with doctors and a nurse practitioner who offer office hours at Jefferson’s Ferry.
“Since its opening in 2001 as the first not for profit Life Plan community on Long Island, Jefferson’s Ferry has set the standard for continuing care for older adults, providing a vibrant, caring community and peace of mind to its residents,” concluded Caulfield. “Over our more than 20 years in operation, Jefferson’s Ferry has continued to evolve to meet the changing needs of the people who have made Jefferson’s Ferry their home. Journey Toward Renewal is evidence of our commitment to excellence.”
Jefferson’s Ferry, a not-for-profit Life Plan Community for active adults aged 62 and above, is located at One Jefferson’s Ferry Drive in South Setauket. For more information, call 631-650-2600 or visit www.jeffersonsferry.org
I don’t intend to describe it, compare notes, or ponder the meaning of bending over after our dogs relieve themselves to take their excrement and dump it in our garbage cans or, perhaps, to ship it to Mars so Matt Damon will have fertilizer for a crop of potatoes.
It’s the whole picking up of the steaming logs that I’d like to address.
You see, the other day, my son and I took our 95-pound dog for a walk. Yes, bigger dogs make larger and, often, smellier poops. I know because I’ve walked smaller dogs recently and am amazed at the delicate little pebbles they gingerly push out of their smaller digestive systems.
So, there we were, the three of us, on our happy stroll, with my dog smelling everything and nothing and my son and I talking about, shocker, sports!
My dog did his thing. At that point, I reflexively leaped into action, opening a small plastic bag that I turned inside out so I didn’t have to come into contact with, you know, it.
I bagged it up, the way I always do, tied the bag twice, as is also a part of the routine, and gently lay the bag near a tree, preparing, as I have for the last five years, to retrieve the bag on my return trip.
That’s when a bald, angry, younger man honked at me from his car and threw out his hands in a frustrated “are-you-kidding-me-right-now” pose.
I shrugged and kept walking because other people’s anger, particularly when I don’t feel responsible for it, isn’t about me.
But the gentleman didn’t leave well enough alone. He circled around and found my son, my dog and me, rolled down his angry window and demanded to know if I was planning to pick up the poop.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’ve been walking him for five years, and I pick it up every time.”
My son seemed more than a bit amused.
“Are you the dog poop police?” he asked.
“Yes,” the man in the pickup truck replied without a touch of irony.
“Can I see your badge?” my son asked.
This was heading in the wrong direction.
“I hate it when people leave their dog’s poop all over the neighborhood,” the gentleman, who was coming across as anything but gentle, said. “Are you sure you’re going to pick it up?”
“Yes,” I said. “I always do.”
“Do people leave poop everywhere?” my son asked.
“Yes, they do,” the man said.
The stare down lasted another few minutes. Why, I thought later, would I bother to bag up his poop as if it were a holiday present if I intended to leave it? Wouldn’t I continue walking, ignoring the doggy remains of his dinner?
The man drove off. No, he didn’t spin his tires. When I picked up the bag, I looked around to see if he was hiding, waiting to catch me in a dog-faced lie.
Alas, despite the numerous pickup trucks that sped by, none looked like his truck or had his scowl leaning out of the window.
We sure are an angry and confrontational society these days, aren’t we? This man took time out of his day to confront me about a bag of poop.
I guess the good news is that he’s protecting us from dog poop scofflaws. The sad part, however, is that he figured I was prepared to bag it up and leave it behind. He didn’t know me and quickly assumed the worst.
I wonder if he feels the same level of concern for, say, the wrappers people toss out of their car windows. Does he knock on car doors to ask people sitting with their engines on to turn them off so they don’t pollute the air?
Now, that’s an idea that makes sense to me. Then again, the dog poop patrol probably made sense to him. If my dog had any idea what was happening, he’d have quite a tale to share with his canine companions.
Prom season has arrived. It’s that wonderful, fairy tale time when Cinderella goes to the ball. It’s when fathers suddenly realize that their daughters, beautifully gowned, have now grown up. And mothers are proud to see their tuxedo-wearing sons have become men. The hairstyles, manicures and pedicures are in place, the dress has been selected, the shoes to match, the dangling earrings, the special makeup and perfume—the scene has been set. The tuxes are rented, the flowers selected, the shoes polished, the cummerbunds and bow ties fastened, the haircuts fresh, and they pose for the cameras.Boys and girls, now ladies and gentlemen, go off in their borrowed or leased coaches for a night of celebratory fun to memories they will create for the rest of their lives. It is a coming-of-age moment.
It is the magical Senior Prom.
There can be a darker side to this brilliant affair. Decades ago, shortly after we started the first newspaper in 1976, prom nights ended with a string of terrible car accidents caused by drunken driving. It was a time when MADD was founded — Mothers Against Drunk Driving. This non-profit organization “seeks to stop drunk driving, support those affected by drunk driving, prevent underage drinking and strive for stricter impaired driving policy, whether that impairment is caused by alcohol or any other drug.” It was a movement founded out of grief by those who had lost their children to horrible accidents. Today, more than 40 years later, there is at least one MADD office in every state.
We, at the newspaper, responded to the crisis on a local level. We wrote a short paragraph pledging that the signer of this petition would think about safety on prom night and not drive drunk. We then placed those words at the top of a sheet of yellow lined paper, carried the pads up to Ward Melville High School toward the end of June, waited outside until an assembly involving the senior class had ended, and asked the seniors as they emerged from the hall to sign on the lines. In return, we promised to reprint that page in the newspaper with their signatures just as they wrote them.
We didn’t know how they would react, of course, whether they would laugh us off and continue to the exit or otherwise ignore us. But they didn’t do either of those. Instead, they lined up to sign. And we wound up, as I recall, with five legal pad pages of signatures. We printed the pages, just as we promised, each full page as a page in the newspaper. That year, there were no accidents.
Not long after, Dorothy Melville, widow of the late philanthropist, called our office and invited me to breakfast at her home in Old Field the next day. I appeared on her doorstep at the appointed time, not a little curious. She greeted me at the kitchen door with a big smile, showed me to a kitchen chair, asked me how I liked my eggs, donned an apron and proceeded to cook.
When we finished, she stood up, left the room, then returned with her checkbook. She explained how important it was to combat drunk driving, especially among young people who thought driving buzzed was “cool.” She then wrote out a check to The Village Times and smiled as she handed it to me.
“I want you to use the interest from this money to finance those signature pages of students pledging not to drive drunk every year at prom time.”
I looked at the check and was amazed. It was for the sum of $10,000. In today’s money, that would be somewhere between $60,000-$70,000. I stammered my thanks and said something idiotic like, “Can you really do this?” She smiled and nodded, and I left the kitchen.
For years after, we repeated the project. There were no more local car accidents on prom night. Some 45 years later, we ask the same.
Village of Poquott residents chose two incumbents and one newcomer as they voted for two trustees and village justice June 20.
Incumbent trustee John Musiello Jr. and newcomer Jeremy Flint won the two trustee seats with 202 and 212 votes, respectively. Challenger Jim Ma received 118 votes and write-in candidate Felicia Chillak had 2 votes.
In the race for village justice, incumbent Paul Edelson received 158 votes. Trustee Darlene Mercieca challenged Edelson and garnered 131 votes.
This will be the second term for Musiello and third for Edelson. Mercieca, who ran for trustee for the first time in 2022, has one more year remaining of her first term.
According to the village, 211 in-person ballots and 81 valid absentee ballots were cast for a total of 292.
The Jazz Loft, 275 Christian Ave., Stony Brook kicks off summer with a Guitar in the Garden concert on Wednesday, June 21. Enjoy an evening of guitar performances, a glass of wine and a chance to take in the beautiful Count Basie Garden. The performance starts at 6 p.m. Friends Circle members get the first drink on the house!
The first Summer of 2023 Guitar in the Garden will feature Steve Salerno. Salerno is an active performer of Jazz and Classical music. He has performed in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, China, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Cuba, Haiti, Russia and throughout the United States. He is a member of the Ray Anderson Organic Quartet (with Gary Versace and Tommy Campbell), Paul Smoker 4-Tet (with Drew Gress and Phil Haynes), Mala Waldron Quartet (with Miriam Sullivan and Michael T.A. Thompson), Blue Pipa Trio (with Min Xiao-Fen & Dean Johnson) a duo with the MET’s lyric soprano, Susanna Phillips, a duo with NY Philharmonic’s principal percussionist, Christopher Lamb and leads a variety of groups, including his Jazz quartet, Exiles.
Michael J. Winfield Sr. Photo from Marquis Who’s Who
By Aidan Johnson
Being a teacher can mean more than just helping kids learn arithmetic and reading. Teachers have the power to leave a lasting impression on the lives of their students. Such is the case with Michael J. Winfield Sr.
Winfield, who has been an educator for over 25 years, with teaching and administrative posts at Shoreham-Wading River, Riverhead and South Country school districts, among others across Long Island, currently serves as a sociology instructor at St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip.
Though an accomplished educator and administrator, he did not originally intend to go into that field.
“I kind of backed into it,” Winfield said in an interview. “I was transitioning from my business … and I went back to school, and I was going to stay in security.”
While Winfield was working in the security sector, he wanted to get his master’s in sociology. However, after a deal for the security company to pay for his master’s did not pan out, he left and began working as a substitute teacher.
Although substitute teaching was supposed to be only temporary, he found himself enjoying the work.
Teaching was “something that I just kind of warmed up to,” Winfield said. “Before you know it, I was in my master’s program, and I was taking additional courses to get my teacher’s certificate.”
As an educator, Winfield knew it wasn’t just his job to know what to teach kids; he also needed to understand how to teach them. He described how if his students needed help understanding a particular subject or concept, he wouldn’t automatically fault them. Instead, he would ask himself what he could do better to help register with them.
“I think the students appreciated that because they needed those opportunities, those extra looks at things,” Winfield said. “I always learn from them how I can be a better teacher [and a] better person.”
While students may forget their teachers are still humans, they can still make mistakes. Winfield never felt afraid to admit or apologize to his students if he was having a lousy day.
But Winfield’s efforts continue beyond the classroom. While at Spring Valley High School, his supervisor tasked him with creating a Black History Month program that also included all members of the community.
To achieve this, Winfield focused the celebration on community member Edmund Gordon, a well-known psychologist and mentee of W.E.B Du Bois (an American sociologist, socialist, historian and Pan-American civil rights activist), and created a community service award for him and his wife, Susan Gordan.
Winfield also partnered with community-based organizations to bring his diverse community full of different ethnic backgrounds together during a single event.
“We just had so many different people that all came and participated, and really that’s the goal: to share the history with everyone,” he said.
While these types of celebrations can help expand a community’s knowledge of Black history in America, Winfield still feels that the U.S. slipped in instructing what Black people have contributed to American history.
“There are some periods of history, as you must be aware, that were not so good,” he said. “But we have to learn from them. We can’t hide them.”
“I think there are some people in the educational world that feel as though these things are divisive, and they’re not divisive,” he added. “They help us learn from it, and they help us grow because history is instructive.”
Winfield’s dedication to his career shows in his continued advocacy work. He still has students reach out to him and give him updates on their lives.
“I had a couple of students this year that sent me cards, and in one card, the student said that she thanked me for creating a safe space to learn,” he said.
Winfield, who has authored “Mentoring Matters: A Practical Approach to Fostering Reflective Practices,” a book that advises teachers in their formative years, among other books, has successfully left his mark on the community around him. For that, he is invaluable.
Michael J. Winfield Sr. is also listed in “Marquis Who’s Who.”
Do you recognize this couple? Photo from SCPDDo you recognize this couple? Photo from SCPD
Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Sixth Precinct Crime Section officers are seeking the public’s help to identify and locate two people who allegedly stole from a South Setauket store.
A man and a woman allegedly stole assorted clothing and beauty supplies from Target, located at 255 Pond Path, at approximately 5:20 p.m. on May 23.
Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 1-800-220-TIPS, utilizing a mobile app which can be downloaded through the App Store or Google Play by searching P3 Tips, or online at www.P3Tips.com. All calls, text messages and emails will be kept confidential.