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D: None of the Above

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I’ve been on a long journey that’s taken me around the world for more than two and a half years. Many hosts have provided for me, enabling me to grow and, in some cases, make changes.

I don’t recall the beginning. The first host I remember was an incredibly kind doctor. She spent countless hours caring for others, looking into their eyes, assuring them she would do everything she could for them.

She was so focused on helping others that she didn’t even know she was hosting me. I stayed quiet just long enough to make the jump to a famous American actor who was working in Australia.

He and his wife didn’t enjoy their time with me. They warned the world about me and my extended family.

My next host was a businessman. He had been in a hospital with his son, who had a broken leg. The businessman stayed in the waiting room for hours, trying to do his work but unable to focus because he was so concerned about his boy.

Finally, after hours of surgery, the doctor came out to talk to him and that’s when I found a new host.

This businessman worked hard. Once he discovered his son was safe, he ignored me and my needs.

I developed without anyone noticing me. At one point, I heard someone come looking for me, but I hid just far enough away. I traveled a great distance on a plane with him. Once we were in a new country, I had so many choices.

Realizing it was time to go, I jumped to an elderly bus driver. He was a gentle man. The lighter laugh lines near his eyes looked like waves approaching the shore on his dark chocolate skin.

Before he collapsed into bed the second evening we were together, he seemed to be staring directly at me. In his house, I had a choice of other possible hosts, but decided to hitch a ride with his son.

That one almost cost me my life. His son soon realized I was there, and he stayed away from everyone. I was curled up alone with him. He barely moved for long periods of time, except when he coughed or sat up and sent text messages and emails. One night, when he was finally sleeping, a man came into his room to clean it. That’s when I escaped.

This man didn’t even know he hosted me. He wasn’t stuck in bed, and he didn’t cough. I traveled with him to several events. After other trips, I found an important politician. We took a ride in a helicopter and went to a hospital where doctors provided all kinds of new medicines.

I became like a game of telephone, passing along from one person to the next. And, like a game of telephone, the message changed, as I demanded different things from my host.

I found myself at a concert with a young woman who sang and danced for hours. She looked so vibrant and full of life.

She was a friendly enough host, until I set up camp with her mother. Then, she shouted at me, praying to keep me away. She took me to a hotel, where she seemed to stare at me while she prayed.

When someone delivered food and walked in the room to wait for payment, I made the jump to him. During the day, he was a student with a full and busy life. I didn’t stay long, moving on to his girlfriend, her roommate, and, eventually, to a professor.

I stayed with the professor for over a week. She spent considerable time grading papers, writing at her computer, talking to family members, and taking medicine.

I have made some changes along the way. I don’t travel with as much baggage as I used to. I know people think I’m not as much of a burden as I was in the early days. My most recent host would disagree. He couldn’t talk, had trouble sleeping and was exhausted all the time. I’m getting ready to travel the world again this fall and winter. You can ignore me all you want, but I’m still here, making changes and preparing to find more hosts.

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

In tougher days before our son had a driver’s license and I had to pick him up from school, I brought the dog in the car. I’d see my son walking from school, head down, shoulders slumped, with the equivalent of a teenage angst enveloping him.

He’d get to the car, ready to throw himself into the seat next to me, to tell me his day was “fine” or that he “didn’t want to talk about anything,” and then he’d see the dog, wagging and prancing in the back seat and he was helpless against such charm and unbridled joy.

Our dog would throw his head into his hands, letting our son know that anything and everything our son did, particularly when he pet our dog’s ears, was welcome and appreciated.

While I know many people love puppies, with their fluffy fur and their playful demeanor, I have become increasingly attached and fond of our dog as he has aged.

And, as my wife has said, the feeling appears to be mutual.

When he was younger, our dog rarely came when I called him. He seemed fine with my petting him, but he didn’t go out of his way to get up from a comfortable nap.

But, then, something happened in the last year. Maybe it’s because we’ve traveled to visit family and friends for weddings and we haven’t taken him on each of our trips, or because he suddenly figured out that I feed him, provide water and take him for his necessary walks.

Whatever the case, he’s as happy to see me as I am to see him. At the same time, he’s become increasingly sensitive to the stress I’m feeling. When I get off the phone after an exasperating call with a customer service representative, he comes wagging over as if to say, “Yeah, that was annoying, but you’ll be fine and I’m still incredibly soft. Don’t you want to check?”

Recently, I contracted COVID-19. My wife, who hasn’t been feeling too well herself, took incredible care of me, picking up food and medicine while I shivered in bed and struggled to swallow through the razor blades dangling in the back of my throat.

In addition to the necessary and helpful support from my wife and brothers, I received encouragement from our dog, who seemed to recognize something was amiss. He came to the side of the bed and leaned his head into my hand. He put his paw up near my arm as well, wagging cautiously and looking into my eyes.

He reminded me of our dog from my childhood. Also, a golden retriever, our earlier dog raced to the kitchen door to be let out (yes, that was a different time). He used to return when he was ready and after he’d visited the neighbors and tended to his physical needs.

In my junior year of high school, I developed a migraine that limited my ability to see and gave me a horrific headache. At the same time, all physical contact was uncomfortable, from my friend touching my hand to guide me to the nurse to my mother escorting me to the car.

When I returned home, I lay in a dark room, miserable under the searing pain. The dog, who wasn’t used to having me home during the day, stayed in my room all day. He didn’t move or make a sound and, more amazingly, he never tried to touch my hand.

He finally went outside after I got up and felt better. He stood guard all those years ago, just as our pets do now, protecting us against strangers and offering support in our lowest and most emotionally vulnerable moments.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

My grandmother was a worrier. 

Even she, however, would have had a hard time worrying about other major challenges, problems and threats during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That, it turns out, was also true for the world during COVID when it came to discussions about the threat from climate change.

In a recent study published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oleg Smirnov, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University, examined the level of concern on Twitter about climate change during 2020 and 2021 and compared those numbers to 2019, the last year before COVID.

According to the pool of finite worry, which Princeton professor of Psychology Elke Weber developed, environmental and climate concerns decline amid worries about other major threats.

Smirnov found that the total number of tweets that mention climate change dropped to 5.6 million in 2020 and 5.3 million in 2021, from 8 million in 2019. This, Smirnov points out, occurred despite an increase in Twitter users, more climate disasters and more climate news in 2021.

“The psychological foundation tell us that people may only really respond to one threat at a time,” Smirnov said in an interview. The anxiety and the reaction to that threat may be limited because it requires major energy.

“Maybe, for biological reasons, [people] put all their energy into responding to the most immediate threat,” Smirnov added.

By tracking daily tweets and various measures of COVID cases, Smirnov found on a finer scale as well that discussions of climate change diminished amid higher infections and mortality.

For every thousand new COVID-19 cases in the United States, climate change tweets decreased by about 40.5 tweets per day. Every thousand new deaths resulted in 3,308 fewer climate tweets.

While Smirnov understood the need to focus on the pandemic, he suggested a lack of concern about climate change could disrupt efforts to protect the planet

“This has profound implications,” Smirnov said. “Without a focus on climate change, without an emphasis on its importance, there is less urgency and less pressure on politicians to do something about it.”

Even in better times, climate change efforts are “fragile,” he said, which adds to the uncertainty about the ability to address the challenge adequately.

Indeed, even the sentiment analysis, in which Smirnov reviewed the emotional content of words used to describe climate change and the threat to the planet and humanity, became less negative during the worst of the pandemic.

When asked about the possibility that climate change concerns might have declined during COVID in part because the carbon footprint declined amid travel restrictions and slowdowns in industrial production, Smirnov likened such an approach to short-term fasting or extreme dieting.

While spending a few days on these extreme diets can reduce a person’s weight over the course of days, such an approach provides “no substantial improvement in your health” longer term, he said.

So, what about now, as concerns about the pandemic abate, people have stopped wearing masks and schools and stadiums are full?

Smirnov plans to continue to collect Twitter data for the remainder of this year, to see whether a return to normalcy brings the focus back to the threat from climate change.

As for his own experience, Smirnov recognized that climate change took a back burner amid the worst of the pandemic.

“My attention certainly was hijacked by COVID-19, despite the fact that climate change is part of my work,” Smirnov said. In April of 2020, Smirnov recalled worrying about where his family would find food instead of thinking about greenhouse gases and rising sea levels.

In the present, Smirnov remains concerned about the kind of tipping points and climate inertia that threatens the future.

Ever the worrier, my grandmother might be relieved enough by the less virulent form of the virus and the availability of vaccines and treatment to return to worrying about the threat climate change poses.

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Metro photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

I have never been as happy to hear a Madonna song as I was this weekend.

Let me back up. My family and I attended our second familial wedding of the last three months. This one was a destination wedding in Ithaca, New York.

Stepping out of the rental car at the hotel on campus, I realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, as shorts, a T-shirt and a sweatshirt weren’t sufficient for the cooler upstate air.

In the hours before the ceremony on Saturday, my son, brother-in-law, his grown sons and I threw a tiny gift shop Nerf ball around on the baseball field, while surrounded by a visual collage of multi-colored foliage. That tiny football was probably the best $7.50 I’ve ever spent at a wedding.

With the wedding in the hotel, we only had to push an elevator button to get to the correct floor.

The bride and groom exchanged vows that they hadn’t previously shared with each other. Not too surprisingly after dating for close to a decade, the vows included many of the same references to things they each enjoyed about their time together, including dancing in the kitchen while making dinners, watching TV shows together during college, and running to the clock tower and back.

During the cocktail hour, I excused myself from my social circle to go to the bathroom, where I overheard the first of two unusual restroom conversations. The groom and his young cousin were chatting.

“You know the secret to a successful marriage?” the young man asked, eager to share the accelerated wisdom he’d accrued during his short life.

“What’s that?” the groom asked gamely.

“Separate vacations,” the sage young man suggested.

“Hmm, well,” the groom continued, “thanks so much for coming. I appreciate it.”

“My mom said my grandparents would have wanted us to come, so we came,” the unfiltered young man added.

Fortunately, neither of them could hear me inhale sharply.

Listening to the toasts and comments from the parents of the bride and groom, each side seemed to think the new member of the family would help soothe their partner. Perhaps, that says something about the way the bride and groom interact with their parents?

After dinner and before the music started, I returned to the restroom. This time, a man was standing at the sink, washing his hands.

“Out of respect for the gentleman who just walked in, I’m going to end our conversation about poop,” he said to a friend in the stall.

“Oh, uh, I’ll be leaving soon,” I offered, not wanting to interrupt.

“It’s okay,” he added. “We were done.”

Returning to the ballroom, I raced to the dance floor once the music started. My wife, children and I love to dance, with each of us smiling and shimmying as we jump, sway and sing the lyrics of the music. Somehow, our daughter knows the words to just about every song at most of these events, singing and shouting them to her cousin’s girlfriend, who has the same encyclopedic knowledge of modern music. I chime in with the chorus, while our son glides around, often with his arms in the air.

And here’s where Madonna came in. After bending my knees and swaying to numerous rap songs I had never heard before, I was thrilled to hear the familiar intro to a Madonna hit.

Buoyed by throwback sounds from an earlier decade, I threw myself around the floor, crooning for all I was worth.

When the rap songs returned, I scanned the floor and saw the bride, groom and their friends sharing their euphoria for the moment and for their familiar music. While Frank Sinatra never made an appearance, the happy couple were clearly doing it their way.

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Cell phone etiquette. METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

You’re meeting with your boss, and you can feel your phone vibrating in your pocket with a new text message, an incoming email or a good old-fashioned phone call.

What do you do?

You’d be on pins and needles if someone you knew, your spouse or partner, perhaps, were expecting a baby. Or, perhaps, someone was traveling a great distance through a storm and you were eager to hear that your friend or family member had arrived safely.

But most of the time, the stakes aren’t quite as high with incoming information. In fact, some of the time, we’re getting spam that seeks our attention.

So, when we are talking to our boss, we generally realize that responding to our demanding electronics probably isn’t a great idea.

But what about when we are talking to a parent, a friend, a child or a neighbor?

Given the frequency with which I have seen the tops of people’s heads as they look down at their phones instead of in their eyes, it seems people have concluded that eye contact is so 20th century.

Since when did people outside the room become so much more important and demanding than the ones with whom we are interacting? If we can’t find people who are as interesting in person as the ones far away, perhaps it is time to move to interact with some of those fascinating folks.

I understand that people online don’t have bad breath and messy hair and aren’t wearing the same clashing outfit that they wore last week, and that continues to threaten to give us a migraine.

Maybe we ought to consider classes in electronic etiquette that teachers can share with students or with people who are receiving their first phone.

We can address not only how to handle an incoming text while in the middle of a conversation, but also how to unplug ourselves and our lives from endless messages, games, movies and TV shows.

If I could go back to the time when we handed phones to our children, ensuring that the phone would eventually replace bedtime stories, dinnertime conversation and eye contact, I would consider establishing our own “Ten Commandments” of phone ownership and usage.

These might be:

10. Limit the time each day when you use your phone, with only extraordinarily limited exceptions. If you need to use your phone for schoolwork for two or three hours, that still counts as phone usage.

9. Leave the phone in another room when you’re not using it.

8. If you can’t say something supportive or pleasant on social media, don’t say anything.

7. No anonymous messages or criticism. If you can’t use your name or stand behind what you write, you shouldn’t have written it in the first place.

6. Don’t take embarrassing pictures of your parents and share them with your friends. Older people don’t tend to look as glamorous in digital pictures as younger people, so be kind.

5. Internet fame is not a life goal.

4. When you become better at using your phone than your parents (which occurs in a surprisingly short time), share your wisdom and skills with them. Think of it as familial community service.

3. Don’t assume everything you find online is true. In fact, at least once a week, or even once a day, find something on the internet that you think is false. Use trusted sources to contradict what you think an internet provider got wrong.

2. If it looks like everyone else is having a better time than you, put your phone down. They aren’t.

1. If you can tell your parents to wait while you respond to a text or call from a friend, make sure you tell your friends the same thing when your parents reach out to you.

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Facebook photo/New York Yankees

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

If I were pitching to Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, I would probably take a long pause before throwing my first pitch.

I know it’s absurd to think of this older man who never threw a ball much harder than low high school level pitching to a generational legend, but let’s play out the fantasy for a laugh or two.

I wouldn’t pause so I could figure out how to get him out. Sure, it’d be nice to do my job well and my teammates might appreciate it if I gave us a better chance to win a game.

Instead, I would need to ponder the moment that history might be calling. I’d be thinking about the best choreographed reaction to him hitting a home run. I mean, after all, the pitchers who surrender his long home runs are, in their own way, famous.

They share the moment between when they release the ball, and he obliterates it into the night sky, sending thousands of people screaming out of their seats, arms in the air, sharing in the majesty that wouldn’t be possible without my meatball pitch sputtering, laughably, towards his powerful bat.

If he sent a ball out of the stadium, I would be joining select company, with so many pitchers around the majors surrendering home runs in a historic year.

I’d be thinking about how I’d look in newsreels or newscasts or digital versions of the Aaron Judge year to remember.

I could imagine ways to overreact. I could throw my glove on the mound, gesture wildly by putting my hands in the air, or shake my head so violently that my manager and the trainer would have to waddle out to the mound to put me in a neck brace.

Or, maybe I’d hold my glove up to my face and appear to yell a stream of expletives into my mitt, as if, somehow, I knew I should have thrown a different pitch in a different spot.

Then again, I could rub my fingers in some dirt and write a capital “AJ” on my uniform, like scarlet letters, except it wouldn’t be anything puritanical, and I would be acknowledging my inferiority.

None of that seems like me, even in my fantasy world.

Being stoic would make me too much of a personality-less pitcher. Let’s face it: even in my imaginary moment of being an above average starter or relief pitcher, the time to focus on me would be incredibly short.

Let’s say I didn’t blink after he hit the home run. Or, maybe, I tracked the flight of the ball carefully, like a zebra eyeing a lion suspiciously in the Serengeti. That might get me on TV and make me more than just another guy who gave up a home run to Aaron Judge.

Maybe I’d wait at home plate and give him a high five or a fist bump to acknowledge a full season worth of greatness. While kids do that in Little League, professional players generally don’t acknowledge the remarkable achievements of their opponents.

When he reached second base, I could put down my glove and clap from the mound, ever so briefly. Then, perhaps, I’d take off my hat and salute him.

Or, maybe I could take a page out of the more subtle but celebrated Mona Lisa textbook. I could give just a hint of a smile as if I were saying, “you beat me and you’re a pretty spectacular hitter. There’s no shame in losing this battle and now we’re weirdly connected, like we’re kind of twins, except that you’re great and going to be remembered forever and I’m just going to be remembered for starting the ball on its magical journey into the history books.”

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Queen Elizabeth II. Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

During the Platinum Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate the monarch’s 70 years on the throne, Clary Evans, a radiation oncologist who works at Northwell Health, her husband Tobias Janowitz, a scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and their families got together with another English family to mark the occasion.

They made a cake and had tea, “aware that this was probably the last time” they would celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s lengthy legacy, Evans recalled in an email.

Residents of Suffolk, England, Evans’s parents Philip and Gillian shared memories and thoughts on Queen Elizabeth II, who died last week at the age of 96.

Before Elizabeth’s coronation at the age of 27, Philip Evans, who was a teenager, traveled with his brother Anthony to Trafalgar Square, where they camped out near the fountain.

After a night filled with an early June rain in 1953, Evans and his brother awaited the moment to see the queen, whose coronation occurred 16 months after she became queen.

Gillian and Philip Evans with their Patterdale terrier puppy in Mettingham, Suffolk, UK in August of this year. Photo from Clary Evans

The next morning, as crowds continued to grow, the police pushed the newer arrivals in front of the group, which meant Phillip was in the third tier of onlookers.

Through the crowd, he caught a glimpse of the young queen, offering a stiff wave to her subjects.

“It was a marvelous thing to do,” Evans said by phone from his home. The travel and waiting in the rain meant it “wasn’t easy.”

Gillian Evans, meanwhile, traveled with her family to visit her aunt, who, at the time, was the only one in her family who owned a television.

“It was lovely to see what a beautiful spectacle it was,” Gillian Evans said.

The queen executed her duties admirably under an intense spotlight that never dimmed during her over 70 years of service, she added.

“What a remarkable lady she had been,” Gillian Evans added. “She said she would give herself to the nation for as long as she lived, and she did. Right up to the very, very last, which is wonderful.”

While Gillian Evans thought such conditions were akin to being in  prison, with all the limitations and the constant responsibilities, she believed the queen “loved it. It showed in her face.” Being a part of a “love match” with her husband Prince Philip “must have helped enormously.”

The Evans matriarch, 83, who is a retired diagnostic radiographer, is amazed at the effect the queen’s death is having on residents.

Philip Evans, who said the queen did “jolly well,” recognized that the queen made mistakes, one of which arose during her muted reaction to the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997.

“She had a really bad time when Princess Diana was killed,” said Philip Evans, who retired in 2000 as a general surgeon. “She was just pulled down by the power of the press. In legalese, ‘she was badly advised.’”

During a recent visit to the ophthalmologist, Evans chatted with three people about the queen and her son Charles, who has now become King Charles III.

People were saying “the queen had done a good job” and that they believed her son was “well suited” for his new role.

Philip Evans has noticed that the church bells ringing in the aftermath of her death don’t have their typical sound.

The sound alternates between loud and muted. The churches are using a so-called half-muffled peal, which creates a somber echo. The bells rang the same way last year after Prince Philip’s death.

“It’s very alarming and tells you that something is odd,” Evans said.

As the country prepares for the funeral of a queen born eight years after the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 and who died two years after COVID-19, Clary Evans recognized that Queen Elizabeth II was a “link to those values of duty and service that were strong in those war and post-war years.”

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Glass of water. METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

For decades, my wife and I have had one of those five-gallon water dispensers in our house. We enjoy the taste of ice cold water, and we recycle the empty containers when we’re done.

We have a regular water delivery service. Our monthly order varies depending on how many of our children, and their friends, are in the house. Typically, the best, and only way to connect with our water delivery service, is through an online interaction. Reaching an agent has been close to impossible.

Recently, we had one of those surreal technological moments with our company.

I received our usual email message, reminding me that the next day was my delivery day and I should leave out my empty bottles.

I did as I was told, because it’s so comforting to take instructions from an automated system. That night, on my last walk with our dog, I noticed that the empty bottles were still where I put them.

Okay, I thought. Maybe they’ll bring them the next day.

When I checked my emails, I received a notification indicating that the bottles were delivered and asking if I’d like to tip the driver. Realizing that my powers of observation could have been faulty, I went back outside, where the reality of the empty bottles defied the assertion of the automated email.

I tried to reach the water company through a chat service, but the automated system explained that agents were busy and couldn’t handle my request.

I found an old email from the company and wrote to them, explaining that they thought they had delivered a product, for which I would likely be charged.

On my second try the next morning, I reached a live person. Tempted as I was to exclaim my glee at speaking with a real person, I remained focused on the mission. I explained that I hadn’t received the water and would like them to bring it as soon as possible.

“You’re not scheduled for another delivery for a month,” she explained.

“Right, but I didn’t get the water yesterday,” I replied. “Can you send a truck with water?”

“Well, it says you did get the water,” she said.

“Who is saying I received the water? I’m telling you no one delivered the water,” I answered. “Can I please get the water I’m paying for?”

“Hold on,” she said, putting me on hold for several minutes.

“No, sir, I’m sorry, but we have a new computer system and I can’t reschedule the water delivery for you. I can credit you for this month.”

“Well,” I sighed. “I appreciate the gesture, but you’re not proving all that reliable. I pay for you to provide water. Maybe I’ll switch companies.”

“I can give you $5 off the water for next month,” she said.

“That’s assuming you deliver the water,” I replied.

“Let us know what you’d like to do. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Tempted as I was to answer that she hadn’t done anything for me, I said I appreciated her effort.

That night, I brought the empty bottles back into the house and discussed the situation with my wife.

The next evening, five water bottles appeared in the usual spot. I brought them in and was pleased I hadn’t shopped for more at the supermarket.

By the next evening, I could barely contain my laughter when I found five more bottles in the usual spot. I quickly canceled the delivery for October and lugged the next five bottles into the house.

Concerned that these deliveries might become daily, I approached the usual spot with trepidation the next evening. I was relieved to see that the deliveries stopped.

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Coach Ashley Langford. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Parents, coaches and teachers offer words of wisdom, guidance and advice.

At the same time, however, they also have opportunities to learn, particularly after the end of one year and the start of another.

And so it is for Stony Brook University women’s basketball coach Ashley Langford.

A year after she took her first head coaching job at Stony Brook, Langford took stock of her experience, while contemplating the next steps.

“I’m still high energy and enthusiastic,” Langford said at 3 p.m. .on the first day of school from her car as she headed to a late lunch. “I’m still excited to be head coach.”

A self-described “high achiever” who “wants to be the best,” Langford acknowledges that she may be an over achiever as well.

“Even when I reach my goal, for me, you’re supposed to,” she said. “There were times [last year] when we would win and I wouldn’t be happy. I want us to be our best.”

Langford, however, recognizes that emphasizing ways to improve, even after winning a game, was not ideal for her players.

“They are 18- to 23-year-olds,” she said. “They need to enjoy that win, regardless of how it looked. They need to be praised right in the moment.”

That doesn’t mean teaching and improving ends after a win. The next day, she said she felt more comfortable talking about how to avoid the possibility of letting a game slip away.

In her second year, Langford hopes she, her coaches and the team become more visible to the community, particularly because the team plays a “fun brand of basketball.”

Her debut season involved ongoing restrictions related to the pandemic, preventing her from connecting with the community.

“I need to be more visible,” Langford said. “It’s important that Long Island knows who we are.”

She is eager to go into schools and engage with members of the community.

“Community service is a huge piece of that,” Langford said. “It’s us going to schools and reading” or interacting in other ways with residents.

This summer, the basketball program ran an elite camp for players who were not at a recruitable age. Participants in the camp can come back to games for free, which, Langford hopes, can encourage other spectators to join them.

“Maybe they’ll bring a friend or two,” she said.

The Seawolves coach is excited for the opportunity to compete in the Colonial Athletic Conference. After participating in the America East conference since 2001, the Stony Brook Athletic Department decided to move to the CAA starting this season.

Langford will rely on some of her knowledge of her competition. Prior to arriving at SBU, Langford spent four years at James Madison University, which is a member of the CAA.

“I know the DNA of certain teams,” Langford said. She recognizes, however, that teams change, which means that the Seawolves have to be “ready to pivot.”

As she prepares the team, which includes four transfer students, for the upcoming season, she believes Stony Brook will be competitive in a demanding conference.

“We’re not in a league where you can have an off night and think you’re gong to win,” she said. “We’ve got to be ready to give our best.”

Thoughts from a former player and her father

Former fifth-year player India Pagan, who is preparing to play professional basketball in Germany this winter (see story in Arts and Lifestyles), remains connected to her former team.

“I’m really proud that we made it to another league,” she said. “We have to elevate our level, our intensity. I say, ‘We,’ like I’m still on the team.” Pagan said she still feels committed to a team she helped lead to consecutive conference championships.

Thinking back to the beginning of his daughter’s college basketball experience, India’s father Moises Pagan cited Stony Brook’s eagerness to recruit her.

“The fact that they put this powerpoint together, it blew us away,” Pagan said. “We walked away saying, ‘Stony Brook really wants our daughter.’”

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Upon prompting from tour boat operator Reggie Domangue, a 10-foot alligator approaches the covered boat amid a steady drizzle. Photo by Daniel Dunaief
Inches from its unsuspecting processed prey, an alligator closes in on a marshmallow. Photo by Daniel Dunaief
A self professed walker of the fine line between crazy and stupid, Reggie hand feeds an alligator marshmallows. Photo by Daniel Dunaief
Capable of swimming 10 miles an hour on the surface of the water, an alligator swims alongside the boat. Photo by Daniel Dunaief
A tug boat pushes a barge through floating plants along the Intracoastal Canal in Louisiana. Photo by Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

The drive to the Louisiana swamps took over half an hour and was a world away from the incredible jazz, po’ boys and other sites, sounds and tastes of New Orleans.

Once we left the highway, the road curled so dramatically that 15-mile-per-hour speed limit signs seemed unnecessary.

Homes along the way provided a snapshot into the sobering reality of the lives of people who live along the path. The roof of a dilapidated front porch looked like a crushed soda can, blocking the entrance to a house. Across from another home, a white hearse with a rusted roof was parked feet from the intracoastal canal. In a steady drizzle, the driver’s side window remained open.

Once we parked at the Louisiana Tour company’s parking lot, we waited on a small dock, watching a tug boat push an enormous ship about 50 feet from us through floating plants.

Our tour guide and driver Reggie Domangue provided a compelling commentary.

Passing a cemetery along the water’s edge, Reggie described how flood waters pushed a friend’s grandmother above ground twice, forcing his friend to bury his grandmother three times.

Downstream from the cemetery, a fishing boat called Perfect Coup rested on its side, its decaying carcass a testament to the destructive force of an earlier hurricane. 

Reggie didn’t let several missing teeth slow him down. Sharing a narrative that mirrored the winding path through the water, he offered a few verbal gems. When talking about edible parts of the alligator, he suggested, “You fry it, we’ll eat it.”

Warning passengers about the dangers in the water, Reggie cautioned some clothing was more problematic than others. “You go swimmin’ out here, you don’t want to wear no white.” Moving slowly along the canal, he  pointed out the ubiquitous Spanish moss. Years ago, Reggie said, people stuffed it in their pillows until they realized the dried-out moss was flammable.

Heading toward a highlight of the trip, Reggie described the territorial alligators. Noticeable from the ripples atop the water and its v-shaped wake, a 10-foot alligator approached, as Reggie yelled in French, “ici,” for “here.”

Reggie tossed marshmallows to the alligators. He hand-fed one of the alligators, whose mouth closed so rapidly its teeth snapped. As we coasted slowly through the bayou, alligators swam up to the boat. Two raced toward the same marshmallow. After colliding, the only thing left temporarily unscathed was the floating marshmallow.

Reggie said alligators swim on top of the water at 10 miles per hour and below the water at 15. On land, they can move as quickly as 25, although they can’t make quick turns.

Alligators eat small animals and birds. If they catch deer, they can’t eat them because the meat is too tough. Instead, they trap them under a branch, marinating them for two weeks.

The gender of newborn alligators depends on the temperature of the water. Below 86 degrees, the alligators are female. Above that, they’re male.

Female alligators maintain a territory of half a mile, while males have one-mile territories. A male in search of a mate can travel 10 miles a day.

Louisiana has strict poaching rules. Anyone caught poaching an alligator can receive a mandatory 10 years in prison. “People have done less time for murder,” Reggie said.

If you think Reggie sounds like he’s straight out of central casting, you’re not alone. The writers of Disney’s “Princess and the Frog” movie agreed. According to Reggie, Disney executives came on one of his boat rides and modeled the character Raymond, the firefly who’s also missing teeth, after Reggie.

Disney thanked Reggie in the credits. His passengers, including my wife and me, felt the same way after a memorable journey.

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