On December 5, a Good Samaritan brought a stray cat to the Brookhaven Town Animal Shelter and Adoption Center after caring and feeding her for the past three months. Upon examining “Mimi,” the Animal Shelter Veterinarian tech found she had a microchip that traced her back to a family in East Setauket. When they contacted the owners, they couldn’t believe what they heard since “Mimi” had been lost 10 years ago. The owners had looked everywhere for “Mimi” and they thought she was never to be found. They have since moved to Spain with their three other cats and are now arranging an animal transport company to fly “Mimi” back to Spain with them.
The Town of Brookhaven Animal Shelter and Adoption Center is celebrating the holiday season with its “Home for the Holidays” promotion, featuring free pet adoptions now through the month of December. Each adoption includes free neuter or spay, vaccinations, microchip, heartworm test, flea and other tests. The normal adoption fees are $137 for a dog and $140 for a cat. All adoptable pets are looking for a forever home this holiday season.
If you are interested in adopting a dog or cat, visit the Brookhaven Animal Shelter and Adoption Center located at 300 Horseblock Road in Brookhaven. It is open Monday through Friday from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, Saturday from 10:00 am to 3:30 pm and Sunday from 11:00 am to 3:30 pm. For more information, visit the Town website or call 631-451-6950.
TBR News Media is endorsing Sen. Mario Mattera for this year's election. File photo by Raymond Janis
In an effort to influence the upcoming state budget, Republican officials in the New York State Legislature joined policy advocates at the Perry B. Duryea State Office Building in Hauppauge Thursday, Dec. 15.
The officials called the press event to raise public awareness about the lack of child care services on Long Island, hoping to pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who is preparing the state budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
Child care on Long Island “is not a problem, it’s a crisis,” said Dean Murray, state Sen.-elect (R-East Patchogue), who organized the event. “We are at a crisis level on Long Island when it comes to child care, and there is no simple solution.”
Murray regarded the issues associated with child care as threefold. For him, the state government can remedy the problem by addressing its affordability, availability and accessibility.
While Murray applauded Hochul and the Legislature for targeting the issue in last year’s budget, he said the changes do not adequately account for regional economic differences throughout the state.
“The cost of living here on Long Island does not compare to areas upstate,” he said, “So when you have a statewide standard, it simply isn’t fair to regions like Long Island.”
He added that the child care is underfunded, arguing, “We need to do what we can as a government to help to create more availability, helping to build more facilities, helping to encourage employers to offer on-site child care.”
The state senator-elect regarded child care service as “a profession, not a job.” However, he said these professionals are often underpaid.
“Can you think of a job that’s more important than caring for our kids?” he said. “This is a professional job. [The workers] need to be treated as such, and they need to be compensated as such.”
State Sen. Mario Mattera (R-St. James) explained the problem similarly. He detailed the underinvestment in child care personnel, saying the incentive is to pursue other industries.
“The people right now with child care are leaving because they’re getting other jobs,” Mattera said. “They’re getting better [paying] jobs even in McDonald’s. That’s a problem.” He added, “They are watching our kids and protecting our children, but they’re not getting paid properly.”
Mattera also addressed the need for more child care training programs. If child care is to be a profession, he said these service providers deserve similar specialized teaching to those of other fields.
“We need to educate,” the state senator said. “We need to make sure [institutions] like Suffolk Community College, a perfect example, have some kind of a course … to have qualified people watching our children.”
Jennifer Rojas, executive director of the Commack-based Child Care Council of Suffolk, discussed the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child care industry. While these essential services remained operational throughout the public health emergency, the industry has struggled since.
“When everything shut down in March of 2020, child care remained open because we knew how important it was for our essential workers to continue to work,” she said. “Unfortunately, our industry is in a crisis. … It’s expensive for parents, and the workforce is making poverty wages.”
She added, “It’s because you cannot raise the cost on parents in order to pay your staff more, so we’re stuck in this bubble where providers are not able to pay their staff and, therefore, not able to recruit.”
Without sufficient staff, Rojas said some child care programs are cutting back resources and, in some instances, shutting down altogether. “This is a crisis like we have never seen in this industry, and it’s always been an industry that has operated on razor-thin margins,” she added.
Above, state Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio (R-Riverhead). Photo by Raymond Janis
State Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio (R-Riverhead) echoed Rojas’ sentiments about the crippling effects of COVID-19 on child care service providers. To Giglio, the lockdowns generated conditions where child care was less necessary for parents.
“Because the moms couldn’t go to work and everybody was expected to stay home, a lot of these facilities closed down,” she said. “It costs a lot because your payroll is not going down and you’re still turning the lights on every day.”
Also in attendance was Ryan Stanton, executive director of the Long Island Federation of Labor, who emphasized the inordinate expenses associated with child care and the need for state support.
“In both Nassau and Suffolk counties, the cost of care is about $30,000 a year,” he said. “That is more than going to the State University of New York for an entire year. You have working families struggling to make ends meet. In order to go to work, [they] must have care in many instances. And we’re asking them to pay for a college tuition bill or more.”
Giglio, a member of the state Assembly’s Labor and Economic Development committees, suggested funding child care to remediate labor shortages, viewing such an investment as an economic development tool.
“We have warehouses out there that are full of materials, waiting to be delivered to customers, and those items are not getting delivered because they don’t have the drivers,” she said. “We need to get people back to work. Employers are looking for workers, and parents are looking for a better life for their families.”
Concluding the press conference, Murray outlined some possible solutions. He recommended removing the statewide eligibility standard to resolve the regional economic differences between Long Island and the rest of the state.
“Because of our economic diversity here, [the statewide standard] doesn’t serve Long Island like it should,” the state senator-elect said. “Rather than a statewide eligibility level, we should break it into the 10 regional economic development council regions.”
With different standards for different regions, Murray maintained that Long Islanders could qualify for additional state aid for child care, reflective of their higher cost of living. “This is a fairer way, especially for Long Island families,” he said.
Murray said another way to improve the issue is through employer-based on-site child care. He offered that expanding these benefits could assist working families and employers alike.
Speaking to employers directly, he said, “If you offer on-site child care as a benefit to your employees, I guarantee you that will put you above your competition in the game of recruitment,” adding, “What we want to do is incentivize that.”
Lastly, he suggested exploring any changes in state regulations that may be holding up the construction of new child care facilities. “We also need to sit down and look at whether or not there are regulations slowing down the building of health care facilities,” Murray said.
He added, “Let me be very clear: We will never change any regulations that deal with the health, the safety or the well-being of the children. But we should take a look at the regulations otherwise and see if they are slowing them down.”
Hochul is expected to release her proposed FY 2024 budget next month.
A view of the Stier family’s 2021 holiday display that won them a $50,000 prize in “The Great Christmas Light Fight.” Photo from the Stier family
Local viewers of “The Great Christmas Light Fight” may have recognized one of the families in a recent episode.
The family received a trophy from the show. Photo from the Stier family
Many residents in St. James and the surrounding areas are familiar with the Stier house on Arlington Avenue. Each year Ashley and Chris Stier, along with their children Serenity and Storm, fill the lawn with children’s playhouses that they decorate with lights plus handcrafted and hand-painted accents. Each structure is dedicated to a specific theme, such as the movies “Miracle on 34th Street,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and more. Traditional Christmas decorations complement the playhouses and an arch of lights decorates the driveway.
In 2021, a friend sent a video of the Stiers’ annual display, and the show’s producers interviewed the family after seeing the submission. The Stiers were thrilled when they were told they were chosen and filmed an episode last year over four days that aired this Dec. 12. While the family was notified that they had won the contest, they weren’t able to tell anyone and couldn’t collect the $50,000 prize until after the show aired.
Ashley Stier said while it was difficult, they were able to keep the secret. They also had yet to learn who they were up against while filming.
“The moment it airs, that’s the time we see it, too,” she said. “So we had to wait a whole year to see the outcome and who we competed against.”
The Stiers were up against stiff competition, including one family spreading their holiday display throughout more than 3 acres of land in Bainbridge, Georgia, and an Orlando, Florida, couple decorating their home with lights to honor those around the world who succumbed to COVID-19.
On the episode, when judge Taniya Nayak awarded the Stiers their Light Fight trophy, she said, “You can feel the love and all of the creativity in every piece of the display that you guys put together.”
To get ready for the competition show, the family began in September 2021 as they had 58 days to complete the setup before filming started.
“Everyone was, like, what’s going on,” Ashley Stier said.
The Stiers decided to go with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” theme, which would be fitting for Halloween, too. The passersby could see Santa Claus battling the character Jack as well as skeletons fighting each other.
“We had to figure out how to correlate the two holidays,” the mother said.
The Stiers’ display not only features Christmas favorites of the family but also plays into their interests and careers. Ashley Stier is a real estate agent and enjoys craft, and Chris is a sheet metal worker who co-owns Trio Sheet Metal Works Co. with his brother. The 16-year-old Serenity also enjoys the do-it-yourself projects, while 8-year-old Storm loves sitting in one of the houses handing out candy canes to visitors, in addition to helping put everything together like his sister.
The annual setting was inspired by a Dickens village that Ashley Stier’s grandparents once displayed in their home and her late grandmother passed on to her. Ashley’s grandfather Thomas Taravella also appeared on the show.
A close-up of one of the playhouses. Photo from the Stier family
In addition to fully decorating their lawn, the Stiers also host their extended family for Christmas yearly.
“As everyone started passing away, it was like now we are the ones who have to carry on the torch,” the mother said.
Ashley met Chris when she was a student at Ward Melville High School in East Setauket. They married and had their daughter young. As Ashley attended college, Chris and his brother began running their father’s business.
“We sort of grew up together,” Ashley said, adding through the years both have developed a deeper love for Christmas.
When Ashley was younger, she and her family would go every year to see the houses decorated in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, and once they started dating, Chris would join them.
“When I was little, that was a big deal for me,” she said.
The day would include a visit to the attractions as well as watching the movies “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” and drinking hot chocolate. The tradition inspired the two playhouses in their outdoor display dedicated to the holiday movies.
Before the couple moved to St. James, they would set up an outside display at their East Meadow home. Chris Stier and daughter Serenity used one of her playhouses one year.
“My husband was always obsessed with the Christmas stuff with her,” Ashley Stier said.
Through the years, helping their parents with the holiday tradition and their father with projects, the children have learned various skills, including Serenity knowing how to weld and being knowledgeable about plumbing.
Although the family has lived in St. James for several years, they started going big with the display in the past few years. Ashley Stier said the presentation gets bigger every year with people, especially local moms, dropping off playhouses and other items.
Usually, it takes the Stiers a month to decorate, but this year it took approximately six weeks, because last year when it was time to pack up, Ashley Stier said they were tired, and they rushed to get everything put away.
However, the lawn is decorated once again, and people get out of their cars to check out the holiday display, and her son gives out candy canes when he can. Every once in a while, they push the button on their snow machine, depending on how many people are around.
They have a pathway up to each house so visitors can look closer, and a mailbox to send letters to Santa. There’s also a spot to drop off toys for Miss Minnie’s Kids which sends the items to children in Jamaica. Ashley Stier said in addition to putting money aside for Serenity’s and Storm’s college funds, the family will also donate some of the $50,000 prize to the nonprofit.
Recently, a Girl Scout Troop that had dropped off a playhouse a few years ago stopped by to see their contribution, which is now the gumdrop house.
“It’s kind of nice because it went from doing something for our family and now it’s turning into a community thing, everyone is a part of it in a way,” Ashley Stier said.
The episode, Season 10 Episode 5, can be viewed on ABC on demand or Hulu.
People are waiting once again for COVID-19 and other tests at local urgent care centers. File photo by Lina Weingarten
Around this time of year, parking lots are often full.
That’s true of the mall parking lot, as people go out to shop for holiday gifts for their friends and family, but it’s also true, especially this year, for hospitals and urgent care centers.
With the so-called “tridemic,” which is a combination of viruses that typically affect the lungs, including COVID-19, the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV), infecting people of all ages, the need for health care and medical attention has been high in the weeks leading up to the holidays.
When Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, arrives at work at 7 a.m., she drives past urgent center parking lots that are “full for a reason. It’s because people are sick” and need medical attention at the start of the day.
Indeed, the combination of the three viruses, as well as other viruses and bacteria in the community such as adenovirus and enterovirus, has made it difficult for some children to attend schools and for adults to go to work.
For the week ending Dec. 10, which is the most recent period for which data is available, Suffolk County reported 3,936 cases of the flu, which is up 35% just from the prior week. The week ending Dec. 10 alone represents more than half of all flu cases for the entire 2019-2020 season, according to data from the New York State Department of Health.
At the same time, COVID and RSV numbers have climbed.
“We almost doubled our COVID census over the last three to four weeks,” Dr. Michael Khlat, chief medical officer at St. Catherine of Siena Hospital in Smithtown, explained in an email. St. Catherine currently has almost 60 COVID-positive patients. Nearly a third of those patients are admitted for COVID and are receiving intravenous remdesivir, while the others are incidental findings in the context of other medical needs.
“What is special about this surge is that it is inclusive of COVID, influenza, rhinovirus as well as RSV,” Khlat wrote. “The symptoms are very similar, and treatments are all supportive at this time.”
Family gatherings at Thanksgiving contributed to the increase, adding “extra turbocharging to the current respiratory viruses,” Nachman said.
The most vulnerable patients are the immunocompromised, patients with diabetes, chronic lung and cardiac disease, obese residents and patients with chronic liver and kidney disease, Khlat added.
Demand for beds
The influx of patients has meant that St. Catherine has had to increase its capacity of staffing using nursing agencies to meet the needs of the community for “seamless, high-quality care,” Khlat explained.
St. Catherine has also added more providers on the medical wards to care for patients and has load balanced patients with their Catholic services partner St. Charles Hospital and other Catholic Health facilities.
Nachman urged residents to see their primary care doctor if they have routine viral symptoms. Coming directly to the emergency room slows the process of delivering urgent care.
To be sure, Nachman urged anyone with chest pains or stroke-like symptoms should head directly to the emergency room.
Nachman said Stony Brook Children’s Hospital is transitioning to a model in which they triage patients who walk into the ER to assess the need for services.
As people prepare for family gatherings, Nachman suggested that they evaluate the risks of interacting with others.
People with an immune deficiency might want to wear masks or speak outside with others, particularly if someone in the group had one of the respiratory viruses.
Viruses like RSV are generally contagious for about three to eight days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
RSV spreads through close contact, which means that passing someone in a supermarket won’t likely spread the virus, while sitting and doing homework or eating a meal next to someone could.
As for COVID, Nachman continued to urge people to get the bivalent booster shot.
Every study, she said, shows that the booster drastically reduces the risk of being hospitalized with COVID.
We often think of our country as the greatest in the world. In many ways, it is, but we are falling behind other first-world countries regarding health care costs, life expectancy, high-speed transportation and more.
Among our country’s greatest weaknesses is a lack of affordable child care options for parents.
Local Republican elected officials recently held a press conference on Thursday, Dec. 15, to raise awareness about this important issue.
Their mission was to implore New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to include increased aid for child care services in the 2024 state budget. Hochul’s budget is still in its early stages and is expected to be released next month.
While the issue was addressed to an extent in last year’s budget, the elected officials said more needs to be done. Their plea is for the governor to consider how the cost of living varies throughout the state, with Long Islanders spending more than many of their fellow New Yorkers.
For these reasons, a statewide child care eligibility level makes little sense for Long Islanders. If the statewide standard is not amended to reflect these differences, more people will flee this Island for more affordable regions of the state and nation.
In New York, more funding and incentives are needed to make child care more accessible for working parents, including building more facilities and encouraging employers to offer on-site options. We are seeing the exact opposite take place within our region, with many child care facilities cutting back their services or closing shop altogether.
The low salaries of those working in the industry also need to be corrected. Many are making minimum wage or close to it. It’s inexcusable that those responsible for taking care of children are paid so poorly that they can make the same or more while working for a fast-food restaurant or retailer.
The onset of the pandemic demonstrated how vital child care is to families. While many worked from home, those deemed essential workers, such as people in the medical, emergency, media and food industry fields, could work on-site. Child care facilities remaining open for these workers enabled them to continue providing residents with necessary vital services.
At the same time, many businesses deemed nonessential were shut down. With employees working from home, child care services experienced a drop-off in enrollment. The result was a decrease in cash flow, creating financial burdens on many facilities and several shutting their doors for good.
In addition to helping families afford these services, it’s imperative that our child care providers and professionals receive the financial support they need to open centers and keep them open with properly paid staff members. These are all serious red flags for our regional economy.
On-site day care is more than babysitting. The benefits of attending a child care center include improved social-emotional skills and children who are better prepared for elementary school.
The need for more child care assistance for Long Islanders should be a nonpartisan issue, something every elected official should be rallying for in the near future. We hope to see more public leaders speak up about the need and get behind any legislation to improve child care in our state.
The financial stability of New Yorkers — and most importantly, our children’s futures — depend on it.
Last Sunday was a very good day for Seawolves #2 Frankie Policelli. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics
Graduate forward Frankie Policelli had a career day for the Stony Brook men’s basketball team, helping the Seawolves come-from-behind to defeat the Army Black Knights, 66-59, on Dec. 18 at Island Federal Arena.
With just under seven minutes remaining in the game, Policelli began to heat up. First, the New Hartford, New York native drove down the lane and made a layup to bring the Seawolves within two points of Army.
After getting a stop defensively, the Seawolves came back down the floor on their next possession. Stony Brook went right back to Policelli in the post and he drained a hookshot from inside the paint to tie the game at 50-50.
Army failed to score on its next two possessions and once again Policelli got the ball on the offensive end and swished a turnaround jumper to give Stony Brook its first lead of the game, at 52-50, with 4:59 remaining.
Policelli then drained two free-throws on the next offensive possession, after another defensive stop. He scored eight-straight points and extended the Seawolves’ lead to 54-50 with 4:24 remaining. Policelli finished the game with 22 points, which tied his career-high, and he hauled in a career-high 19 rebounds. It was his second-straight game with a double-double and his third in the past four contests. It marked his fifth double-double of the season. He shot 8-of-12 from the floor, 2-of-4 from three-point range, and 4-of-7 from the free-throw line.
The Seawolves’ defense helped the squad come-from-behind and hold on to win. Army went on several scoring droughts of at least two minutes in the second half, which opened the door up for Stony Brook.
Senior guard Tyler Stephenson-Moore was also a huge factor in closing out the game with a win. He extended the team’s run to 11-0 with two free-throws with 3:50 to go. Stephenson-Moore went on to score eight-straight points for Stony Brook.
The Seawolves finished the game with five-straight made shots from the floor and behind crucial free-throw shooting and stifling defense down the stretch, they were able to pull out the win and improve to 4-8 on the season and 4-1 at home.
Next up, the team will travel to Morgantown to take on the West Virginia Mountaineers on Dec. 22. Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. and the game will be broadcast live on ESPN+.
Our story begins some time around now. No, there’s no chocolate, despite the season, and there’s no meadow where everything is edible.
No, our modern-day story begins where so much of us live these days, online.
You see, a famous and once marvelous company called Twitter is run by an eccentric, wealthy and successful businessman named Elon Musk, who somehow figured out how to create and mass produce electric cars that require no gas and that sound like spaceships.
Musk has decided, after many hours of running Twitter, that he needs to find a successor.
So, borrowing a page from Willy Wonka, he provides invitations that cost 3 cents per tweet to enter a sweepstakes.
When he narrows the field down to those who get the golden tweet, he plans to invite a group of five people to come to a virtual, top secret Twitter tour.
A few people try to make fake tickets, but the ever vigilant Musk spots the fraud. Day after day, people wait until, finally, five people, some of whom have never tweeted in their lives, have a chance to run the company.
Musk appears on screen wearing a top hat and a menacing smile. He demands that no one record what they see or take a screenshot of the secrets he is prepared to share.
Each person has a tiny image — about 1/4 the size of Musk’s — as they virtually walk through a factory floor.
On the first stop, Musk invites them to join him in the secret Hunter Biden/ New York Post room. Ah, yes, the story about the infamous laptop, which will undoubtedly become a part of an extensive investigation into the Biden progeny, is in this room.
“Don’t try to read anything!” he snaps.
But, of course, one of the contestants can’t resist. With a special tool that tracks eye movements, Musk knows that contestant No. 1, who is chewing gum constantly, is trying to decipher all the information. Her screen develops a horrible virus that turns it (and her entire computer) purple.
“You see?” he says, shaking his virtual head at the other small characters. “That’s what you get when you don’t listen. Oh, look, here they come now.”
Wearing virtual clothing embroidered with the Tesla logo, a modern day group of Oompa-Loompas appears on screen.
“Oompa, loompa, doompa dee do.
I’ve got another riddle for you.
Oompa loompa, doompa dee dee
if you are wise, you’ll listen to me.
What do you get when you don’t listen to Musk?
A virus on your computer that will kill it before dusk.
Who do you think should have the last laugh?
It certainly won’t be you or your staff.
Take a moment to ponder this fact,
Running Twitter may take too much tact.”
“Well,” Musk interrupts, waving away the virtual characters. “That’s enough of that. Now, let’s go for a virtual boat ride.”
In everyone steps as a boat careens through a choppy river, passing one door after another, with the names of celebrities who have been suspended hanging from each virtual room.
The boat stops near an embankment. The Musk character invites his guests to look at some special doors.
When he turns around, his virtual eyes widen in shock, his lower jaw drops down to his knees, and he hunches his shoulders.
“How? What? Wait, what’s going on?” he stammers, looking closely at the faces of his remaining four contestants.
Sure enough, on screen, Musk recognizes that two of the faces are the same as his, while the other two look like versions of Donald Trump.
“No, but, I made this game,” he whines. “How will we find out who wins?”
“Ah,” one of the Trumps says. “For that, you’ll have to tune into the sequel, which will only cost $99 and will become a collector’s item in no time.”
Peace. That is what religions ask for, what billions of people across all nations pray for. Why in our family of humanity is that goal so elusive?
Perhaps this is a question only for theologians andphilosophers to answer. But now, in this glorious holiday season, when we speak and sing of Peace on Earth, we all articulate the ideal.
Many seek, and indeed can find inner peace. But the dream of peace, the kind of peace that is defined as lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between individuals and groups, has never been achieved.
When will there be such peace?
The answer, it seems, is when all humans are of good will.
And what does that involve?
For starters, it requires acceptance and respect for the “other.” We need to see each other as humans with the same ambitions and desires and feelings. Rather than look down on and despise people who are simply different, we can be intrigued and interested in those differences and therefore in those who are different.
We can invite into our world those who are different from us in the way of skin color or appearance or beliefs. And if we can do so, we can see them as humans, just like us, and bigotry cannot exist. For we cannot look down on ourselves. If we are to do so, starting now, racism and antisemitism and every other sort of hatred of our neighbors disappears.
For there to be Peace on Earth, it must start with accepting the stranger, the “other” among us.
Above, members of North Country Peace Group on Saturday, Dec. 10. Photo by Raymond Janis
This month, North Country Peace Group marks its 20th anniversary.
Posted at the southeast corner of Route 25A and Bennetts Road in Setauket, NCPG has maintained a visible weekly presence within the community, advocating various causes throughout its history. On Saturday, Dec. 10, some members reflected on this milestone year for their organization and discussed why they remain committed to their cause.
Roots
Bob Becherer was among the founding members of the peace group. He traces the organization’s origins beyond 20 years when, in the early 1990s, a group of civic-oriented parishioners of the St. James R.C. Church formed the Peace and Justice Community.
“It was really out of that group that we became the North Country Peace Group,” Becherer said, crediting Bill McNulty as the founder and leader of both organizations.
In an exclusive interview, McNulty chronicled his “traditional, apolitical” upbringing and his eventual reawakening. Growing up, he said he maintained a 16-year connection to the military. Between U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, ROTC, active duty and active reserve service, McNulty kept in close contact with the military and military culture. Over time, however, he began to question these ties.
Catalyzing McNulty’s transformation was America’s foreign policy throughout Latin America during the 1970s and ’80s. His early advocacy work centered around the School of the Americas, a training ground founded as a bulwark against the spread of communism. Over time, McNulty said, the school devolved. A string of murders and rapes connected to the School of the Americas prompted him into action.
During that time, McNulty said he devoted his energies to “increase the knowledge among the American population that this school existed and that we were, through our tax dollars, paying for training for these soldiers.” His resistance led him to a federal prison, where he served for six months.
Within the full swing of these events, McNulty soon got involved with the Peace and Justice Community, initially focusing on America’s involvement in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War (1990-91). As the PJC’s work took on more secular aims, they moved out of the church and onto the streets. NCPG emerged from the second Iraq War (2003-11).
Organizational principles
Above, Bill McNulty, one of the founders and thought leaders within NCPG. Photo courtesy Myrna Gordon
McNulty offered some of the philosophical precepts underpinning the NCPG’s activism. He said the group seeks to challenge conventional wisdom, to prompt community members to think critically about the information authorities give them. Through this, he said the group has often met fierce resistance from dogmatists and partisans.
“Very often, when you bring a message that’s contrary to the conventional wisdom, they get angry at you,” he said. “They don’t want to hear what you have to offer because it’s very startling and shocking. There’s a cognitive dissonance.”
McNulty maintained that NCPG, since its inception, has rejected the notion of reciprocal violence. “The Old Testament thinking of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, you have to break it with that idea of love and acceptance,” he said.
He viewed the human propensity toward violence as a conflict between instincts and ideals. Though he held that most people are born peaceful and good, he sees many as conditioned to accept violence and war as the natural order.
“People, I think, are pretty good, but they acquire a lot of these characteristics as a result of what they experience in life,” he said. “Down deep, people are good because they always act well when the dog falls down the well or when the tornado rips the roof off the house.”
McNulty said that overcoming aggression requires conscious effort, but doing so may be the recipe for lasting peace. “The idea is to take the words of the song, the words of the poem, to take the suggestion of the painting or the sculpture or whatever else and to put it into practice,” he said. “It’s a very hard job.”
Two decades into thestruggle for peace
One of the essential features of NCPG throughout its 20-year history has been the persistence of its members. Member Susan Perretti regards the organization as a weekly reminder to the community that there is an alternative to unceasing human conflicts worldwide.
“We’re sort of a reminder to the community that passes us by,” she said. “It’s a reminder that we still have war — endless war — going on and that violence itself is not the answer.”
Robert Marcus, another NCPG member, said the fight for peace and preserving democracy go hand in hand. He said that standing on the street corner is a way to promote both ends.
“We have to do everything we can to make a more peaceful world,” Marcus said. “We can’t just take it for granted. We have to work really hard for peace and to strengthen our democracy because it’s under threat.”
For John Robinson, participating in the peace group’s various activities is a way to connect to a larger cause and to make a difference on a grander stage. “It feels good to be around people who have the same concerns, the same thoughts, the same issues that I do,” he said. “Coming out here makes a real statement about the need for peace and the need to treat each other well.”
Myrna Gordon said she and NCPG use their platform to advocate a new mode of thinking around the way the United States government spends its taxpayer dollars. According to her, too great a share of the federal budget is devoted to perpetuating violence.
“We need to move the money out of the military and back into human needs and human lives so that we will have that money and be able to fix roads, provide better education, health care and everything else,” she said.
An alternative to war
‘We have to evolve past this idea — as a human species and not just as Americans — that war and killing one another is the only solution.’
— Susan Perretti
McNulty was asked if he believes a lasting peace is possible or if humanity is doomed to a fate of unending war. He admitted that lasting peace may not be attainable but that pursuing such an ideal is.
“We would like to hope that it is possible,” he said. “We helped each other to a great extent, and we have affected a few people around our immediate neighborhood, but they’re still making war. The School of the Americas is still open, still training soldiers to keep people under control.”
Perretti offered a slightly different take by suggesting humanity could adapt itself to a condition without war.
“The point is that we have to evolve past this idea — as a human species and not just as Americans — that war and killing one another is the only solution,” she said. “I don’t know what that takes, but for me I’m here because I won’t give up the struggle, and I want to be faithful to what I believe in my heart.”
Whether humans can coexist and overcome violence is still to be decided. Twenty years after their organization’s founding, members of North Country Peace Group remain stationed at their usual street corner, committed to giving peace its fair shake.
From left, Patricia Wright with Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society with the Warrior Award, a depiction of a tree growing out of rock, designed and created by artists at the Corning Museum of Glass. Photo courtesy of Amanda Lindley
By Daniel Dunaief
For only a short period of time, Patricia Wright was just a primatologist who studies the charming lemurs of Madagascar.
Now the Herrnstein Professor of Conservation Biology and Distinguished Service Professor at Stony Brook University, Wright first trekked to the island nation off the southwest coast of the African continent in 1986 to understand and study these unique primates.
Within a year, she realized she wouldn’t have much to observe and understand in a perilously short time if she didn’t also work to protect them, their habitat, and many other threatened and endangered animals and plants.
With the help of the government of Madagascar, Wright created a protected area known as Ranomafana National Park, which includes 41,500 hectares of space, keeping loggers, poachers and others from threatening to eradicate animals and plants that are unique to the country.
Between the original effort to create the national park and today, Wright has collected numerous honors and distinctions. She has won three Medals of Honor from the Malagasy government and become the first female recipient of the coveted Indianapolis Zoo Prize in 2014.
Recently, the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York named Wright its inaugural “Conservation Warrior,” providing her with a $20,000 prize in recognition for conservation work that has had a lasting, meaningful impact on species survival.
Patricia Wright with her Warrior Award from the Seneca Park Zoo.
“Dr. Wright’s early years were spent in Rochester, New York and it is fitting that the inaugural Conservation Warrior award be bestowed upon arguably the most influential conservationist to come out of the Finger Lakes region,” Pamela Reed Sanchez, President and CEO of the Seneca Park Zoo Society, explained in an email.
The newly anointed conservation warrior recently traveled to Montreal as a member of the Madagascar delegation at the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP-15.
While she’s in Montreal, she plans to meet with conservation donors in an all-out effort to save wildlife on Madagascar, where almost all the reptiles and amphibians, half of its birds and all of its lemurs are only found on the island nation.
Wright hopes to raise $250 million for the country and $50 million for Centre ValBio (CVB), the research station she created in Ranomafana in 2003 and that employs 80 Malagasy staff. CVB has developed a conservation network around CVB that includes work with 75 villages.
Drew Fellman, who directed and wrote the Island of Lemurs documentary, encouraged donors to support Wright’s efforts. Wright and CVB are at the “front line of defense and anyone who cares [about] wildlife and endangered species should lend them a hand,” Fellman wrote in an email. He described how some species of lemurs are down to fewer than 10 individuals and “without conservation, there will be nothing left to research.”
In areas where conservation isn’t a priority, the region has lost habitat and biodiversity. In the northern areas of Madagascar, loggers and timber exporters reduced rainforest areas to grasslands, she said.
In the bigger picture, Wright said Madagascar needs funding immediately as the country is “closer to the brink of extinction with so many more species.” Saving plants and animals in Madagascar extends beyond committing to the protection and stewardship of vulnerable creatures. It also could provide benefits for people.
“So many lemur species are close relatives [to humans] and contain genetic information” about Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other conditions, she said. Additionally, creatures like bamboo lemurs regularly eat large quantities of cyanide, which would kill humans. Understanding how they can tolerate such high quantities of cyanide could provide an antidote.
The forests in the national park, which might otherwise attract loggers, prevent erosion, silting and landslides, she explained.
The benefit of a research stations like CVB extend beyond gathering information and conducting experiments.
In a recent correspondence in Nature Communications, lead author Timothy Eppley, a postdoctoral fellow at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance along with three other scientists including Wright, argues that field research stations “are on the front line of biodiversity conservation, acting as no-take zones that rewild surrounding ecosystems.”
In the correspondence, Eppley and his colleagues said that these stations are “invisible” in global environmental policy, despite their importance in conservation.
“Our point in the paper is that this has not been given any conservation attention,” said Wright. “Nobody is funding us for doing conservation” even though these sites are “conservation engines. We should be given recognition and more conservation money.”
Eppley, who leads SDZWA’s lemur conservation program, added that the Nature correspondence didn’t include any of the data the group collected.
While Eppley cautioned in an email sent from Madagascar that it’s difficult to generalize about conservation efforts at field stations, he said many have some conservation initiatives or projects, or that some element of their research includes a strong conservation component.
“Without the conservation piece, all other research will eventually disappear: we need the ecosystem and animals to exist in the first place,” he explained.
Eppley suggested that scientists often approach conservation initiatives that they can test on a small scale and then, if they are effective, find the best way of scaling up those initiatives for entire protected areas, landscapes, countries or broader geographic regions.
As for the honor Wright received from the Seneca Park Zoo, Eppley believes such recognition dovetails with their recent correspondence piece in Nature Communications.
Wright “founded CVB and has been tirelessly building it into a globally recognized field research station,” he wrote.
Bringing international recognition to the work being done at CVB “highlights the overall importance of field research stations and why they need to be included in global environmental policy frameworks,” Eppley added.
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