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Leah Dunaief

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

If you like spy stories, read on. The riveting part about this one is that it is real. The account jumped off the front page of The New York Times to me on Tuesday and speaks to the state of the world today. The recent large East-West prisoner exchange unearthed this tale that could be a streaming series but is reality.

Slovenia, once part of Yugoslavia, is a small country in central Europe. It is bordered by Austria and Hungary on the north, Croatia on the east, the Italian port city of Trieste on the southwest and  it has coastline along the Gulf of Venice. Although controlled by the Soviet Union for most of post WWII, it is now a member of NATO and the European Union. 

It was there that Russian Anna Dultseva and her husband, Artem Dultsev, set up an online art gallery and passed themselves off as Argentines. He started a bogus high tech business. Using the name Maria Rosa Mayer Munos, she organized frequent trips to Britain and even arranged for art exhibitions in Edinburgh.

Tipped off by intelligence in Britain, the couple was arrested in December 2022 in their comfortable home near the capital, Ljubljana, as they were communicating with Moscow, using special equipment that bypassed phone and internet lines.

Their lives must have been constantly tense for the wife and husband. They had two children, a daughter, now12, a son, now 9, and a small dog. They kept to themselves, spoke to no one, and seldom had visitors, according to neighbors in the suburb. The children attended the nearby British International School, and the family spoke Spanish and English at home. 

Although people sometimes gossiped about them, wondering what they were doing there, they were mostly ignored because they did not cause trouble. Their financial filings might have sparked interest, since they showed little income, yet they lived in a three-story house with a small garden and a wooden fence and sent their children to a school that charged $10,000 per pupil. The art they sold was the kind bought in China for little money.

The authorities are still trying to figure out what the couple was up to since their arrival in 2017, although probably not fully activated until war with Ukraine five years later. Large sums of cash were found in the house, causing speculation that they were paying off a network of sleeper agents and other Russian operations throughout Europe. 

Apparently Russian intelligence has an elaborate network of deep-cover sleeper spies trained to impersonate citizens of other countries by Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. This is, apparently, a real life version of a television series called “The Americans,” that was in turn inspired by the arrest in 2010 of a ring of sleeper spies in the United States.

According to NYT reporter, Andrew Higgins, Russia has a long history of fielding such undercover spies “who burrow deep into target countries over many years.” This is something that President Putin has supported since his days in the K.G.B. These “illegal” spies have no diplomatic cover, no obvious connection to Russia, and suffer the consequences on their own if caught.

Whatever the pair did is considered to have been extremely important because, when they were released, were rejoined by their children, and landed in Moscow, they were greeted by a smiling Putin, who addressed the children with the Spanish words, “Buenas noches.” 

They were also greeted by Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR intelligence agency. If unaware of their parents’ real jobs, as the Kremlin asserted, those must have been two very confused children.

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Here are a couple of tidbits from the news that I think are worth sharing with you. 

First, good news for those who dislike having to endure colonoscopies, which I guess is all of us. A relatively recent diagnostic, this test has proven highly effective against colorectal cancers, but it essentially takes away two days from our lives: the day to prep by cleaning out the colon with a mighty laxative, an unpleasant procedure on its own, and then the afternoon to recover from the anesthesia at the end.

The FDA has now approved a simple blood test for detecting colon cancer when it is in the early stages and most likely can be cured. This is even easier than the fecal sample test, which is in turn easier than a colonoscopy but is not the most aesthetically pleasing.

The blood test, however, also leaves something to be desired. It has a poor record of finding precancerous growths, which a colonoscopy detects. These can be removed before they become malignant, but they have to be discovered.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in the United States, with 53,000 deaths expected this year. My father was among those felled by this disease many years ago, and had he lived long enough to have the benefit of the various diagnostic tests, his life might not have ended as it did. 

The idea is to have as many people over 45 tested as possible, and the blood test, called Shield by Guardant, can discover 87 percent of cancers that are at an early stage. But it only found 13 percent of large polyps. There is a false positive rate of 10 percent. Nonetheless, this is an advance in detection and perhaps an encouragement to be checked. As many as 50 percent of those who should be are not. For more information on this, look up the New York Times story published on Tuesday, July 30 or the New England Journal of Medicine on March 13 of this year.

Another interesting bit of news is the popularity of portable solar panels that cost some $217 each and work by plugging in to an electrical socket to give the home energy. They can be hung over the railing of a balcony or installed in yards and they are taking over the landscape in some towns in Germany. Each panel only produces enough electricity to power a small refrigerator, a laptop or even a portable air-conditioner in a bedroom. More than 500,000 of the systems have been set up, adding 10 percent more solar energy capacity to the country. Two-thirds of those were installed on buildings,“like hanging wet laundry in Italy,” commented one owner.

Part of the incentive for Germany is to move away from their dependence on Russian natural gas. It is also a great satisfaction for the people employing these systems to be taking steps toward providing a better environment. Most of the solar panels are made in China, although some, of lesser grade, are manufactured in Europe. These plug-in systems send the direct current (DC) produced by the panels from the sun to an inverter, which changes it to an alternating current (AC). Then they can be plugged into a conventional wall socket and feed power to the home. There are videos online explaining how these panels work and how to use them. Complete sets, which can be bought in big box stores, include mountings, an inverter, and cables, double the price.

A helpful concurrent development has been the small scale batteries that allow the panel users to store some electricity that can then be used in the evenings or when the sun is not shining. My guess is that before long, we will see those panels appear here.

The last item that caught my eye was about corn. Now, I love corn, especially on the cob. I enjoyed a lot of it fresh from the fields when my family visited relatives in the Catskills in my early years. Turns out, it’s a pretty healthy vegetable, if starchy, that is loaded with fiber. And fiber is good for us. It can even lower colon cancer risk.

Photo from Staller Center Facebook

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

It may be summer, but the livin’ certainly hasn’t been easy. Events have been like rapid tidal waves breaking against the news shore. First came the fumbling performance by President Biden in his televised debate with ex-President Trump. Just as we were coming to some sort of terms with that, there was an assassination attempt on Trump’s life, with a bullet from a high powered rifle nicking his right earlobe as he began his speech at a rally in Pennsylvania. Millions of dollars then poured into his campaign chest. 

Next came Biden’s withdrawal, after his adamant refusal to do so, from running for re-election. That was quickly followed by Vice President Kamala Harris announcing her bid for the presidency a mere 105 days before the vote. She immediately garnered support from many other Dems and a rapid accumulation of millions of campaign dollars. Speculation about who her vice presidential choice might be now dominates the news. Somewhere in the midst of those events was the GOP National Convention and the announcement of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate.

It’s been a remarkable past month, and as the news has see-sawed between the parties, many have reacted with anxiety. I can suggest an antidote.

Go see the nightly selection of movies at the Stony Brook Film Festival at the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University. This year is the 29th such offering, and you can judge what Alan Inkles, the director, and his talented staff call “the best in new and independent films.” It is a contest, and we, the audience, decide the winners. There were initially over 2000 entries that the staffers pared down, and until it ends Saturday night, there is still time for enjoying the program. Tonight and tomorrow will feature two movies, each preceded by a short. Saturday, July 27, the closing night, there will be one short, one full length movie and then a presentation of awards to the winners.

To me, movies are magic carpets that take us away from our lives to other worlds. We meet new people in different situations, whose stories may make us laugh or tear up, and we go back home somehow aired out. One we saw was “The Strangers’ Case,” a moving story about the terrified society enduring the Syrian Civil War, as Assad’s forces want to squelch the rebels, and the desperate people who try to flee. We view their plight as they become refugees in another country, strangers in a strange land, risking their lives on rubber rafts over open ocean to get there.

The convenience of attending this festival is top notch. Parking in the adjoining garage is ample and free, and the drive to the Center and back home takes mere minutes and is usually without traffic. Admission is reasonable, and there is pleasure in experiencing the movie with neighbors as a community. And, as in all good movie theaters, snacks are sold in the lobby. I even enjoyed my favorite ice cream pop, an almond-crusted coffee toffee delight, one night during intermission.

Another way to escape the inevitable current events stress is with immersion in a family visit. That, of course, assumes we don’t start talking politics at the dinner table. It just so happens that two of my sons have birthdays two days apart and right around the time the Film Festival opens, and so we get a double distraction from the news. They come, with my daughters-in-law, and we celebrate together.

Each of us has our particular task. One of my daughters-in-law decorates the house with Happy Birthday banners. Another makes her fluffy chocolate-covered cupcakes to host the candles. My job is to provide the food — their favorite dishes, of course — and to fulfill any specific request for a birthday cake. This year’s star selection was a banana cream pie. We happily endured the annual sugar rush that ensued.

As you might guess, after the family leaves, we all go on diets.

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

In some ways, the 2020s appear to be similar to the 1920s. We humans like to look for historical parallels, I think, in hopes of using the past to predict the future, futile as that might be. Call them coincidences between the two centuries, if you will, but let’s look at them and judge if history is repeating itself.

The most obvious is the raging coronavirus pandemic of this century and its resemblance to the Spanish Flu that began in 1918 and lasted into the early 1920s.The flu killed some 50 million people worldwide, with 675,000 being Americans. Covid killed 6.5 million, including 1.1 million in the United States. 

And although no plans existed for coping with a pandemic in 1918, individual cities did implement  school closings, banned public gatherings, issued quarantines and encouraged social isolation. Public health and medical advances have made huge strides, which account for the global change, although the world population has quadrupled in the last 100 years.

We can compare cultural shifts, too. Liberal views toward equality of women and minorities, drug use and sexuality blossomed then, as well as backlashes to these ideas, setting us up for issues that have followed. Marijuana became popular in what was termed “The Jazz Age,” especially among musicians and those in show business. These themes, along with their inherent tensions, are prominently with us today, even if we consider that we have made significant progress in some ways. 

Geographically, more of the population began to live in cities than on farms then, and that holds true for our cities and suburbs now. But the divide today is not so much physical as generational. Social media and video games are the provenance of the young, while older Americans still read, watch TV and film.

The stock market and the financial world are strikingly similar while a century apart. Stocks are roaring today, much as they did in the Roaring Twenties. America’s wealth more than doubled in the decade of the 1920s. But it was a time of immense economic prosperity for upper-class white American men. Most Americans, with minimal wages, only experienced income inequality. It was also a time of the one percent owning a widely disproportionate share of that wealth, some 23.9 percent. 

Sound familiar? And because the wages of the working class were not brought along with that of the wealthy, as consumers, they could not keep up their vital role. Consumers are responsible for as much as 70 percent of the economy. Depression followed. Again, today the top one percent own some 26 percent, and again income inequality is rampant.  

Then there was Prohibition. In 1920, the 18th Amendment banned the making and selling of alcohol. But alcohol didn’t simply go away. It went underground, making petty gangs who transported and sold liquor into powerful forces in the country. Fast forward 100 years and we have drug lords with the same sort of influence over society as a result of similar incredible profits. The legalization of pot is clearly an attempt to learn from the century-old Temperance Movement. The turnaround in policy toward cannabis has provided a big economic boon, as the product has made its way into fiber, food and medicine.

Technology in the 1920s was dramatic and had a profound effect on people’s lives. Fridges, vacuums, telephones, radios, electricity and automobiles changed daily living. Again, major technological innovations, coming along at an exponentially faster pace, are transforming lives today. Consider internet expansion, 5G connectivity, 3D printing and artificial intelligence among most recent debuts. A few people are amassing unprecedented wealth with these marvels. Here we go again with an ever-increasing wealth gap. Plus, both centuries saw workers worried for their job, first with industrialization and now with knowledge. Advancing technology provides miracles and threats. It is also a crucible for social unrest in both centuries.

And then there is transportation. Lindbergh crossed the ocean in 1927. We are on course to fly to Mars in 10 years. Both centuries’ 20s hosted marvels. But the 1920s set the stage for WWII. 

Are we learning from history?

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Aging has become a frequent subject in the media, perhaps propelled there by our presidential race and its elderly candidates. We are all, of course, aging, and we all want to age well. This plethora of information gives us a chance to measure our health against standard values for our age. The statistics are also comforting: we are not alone with our symptoms and infirmities. We want to be equal or better than predicted for our age.

But are we?

I accepted a delivery from the messenger at my front door and reached for my wallet to pay him the charge. But herein lies the story. 

Years ago, I gave up carrying a pocketbook because I was getting lame from carrying everything in there but the proverbial kitchen sink. My doctor, whom I had visited with complaints of an aching shoulder, and who noticed my dead weight tote, pointed out that most men don’t carry pocketbooks and they seem to do fine. Men, after all, keep everything they need for daily living in their pockets. 

He advised me to do the same.

He was right. I observed men carefully at checkout lines in supermarkets and in restaurants. They settled the bills with whatever they withdrew from their pockets and went merrily on their way. They carried their door keys in their pockets, and some even took out a comb occasionally to run through their hair. I reasoned that I could do that, too,  with my lipstick. The doctor changed my life that day. And my shoulder never again bothered me.

Since then, I have bought clothes with pockets and used them instead of a pocketbook for my routine needs unless I am wearing a gown or a bathing suit. So I was wearing shorts that day, when I paid the driver, then replaced my wallet in my pocket. 

Or so I thought.

Later, when I was getting ready to go to my annual dentist appointment, I reached into my pocket to check for my wallet and panicked. It wasn’t there. I could feel the coarse material at the bottom. The pocket was empty.

What had I done with my wallet after I paid for the package? I pivoted to look next to the still unopened box on the front hall table. Nothing. Thinking I absent-mindedly carried the wallet into the living room and put it down next to my reading chair, I entered and found only the day’s newspaper there. Concern mounting, I quickly walked around to the kitchen and scanned the empty counters.

Now I was beginning to panic. If I didn’t find my wallet quickly, I was going to be late for my appointment. It came to me in a flash. I must have brought the wallet to my bedroom. I rushed up the stairs and into the room, searching the bedside table, the thickly padded bedroom chair, the ottoman and even the bathroom. No luck. 

Then I ran downstairs and repeated all those steps, hoping I had missed something the first time around. Still nothing. Wait. Had I looked in my closet, where I had earlier pulled out my sandals? Taking flight, I charged back up the stairs and into the walk-in closet. No sight of the stupid wallet.

Overheated and gasping for air, I realized I was going to miss the dentist. I sat down in my bedroom chair, dialed his number and got his receptionist. Breathlessly I explained my predicament and that I would call for another time. She was sympathetic and told me how often that happens to her with her car keys. I wasn’t mollified. I had everything in my wallet: driver’s license, insurance card, credit cards, money.

I hung up and leaned back into the chair, only to feel a lump against my lower back. What had I left in the chair? Nothing, but there was something in the back pocket of my shorts.

There it was. I had forgotten I had back pockets in these shorts. My wallet was running around the house with me the entire time. Duh! 

Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

My parents married for the second time on July 4th. That was 99 years ago, and it was the religious wedding. Three years earlier, they were married in a civil ceremony during their lunch hour in New York’s City Hall. How did that come about? 

I will tell you the story.

When my dad was 13, he was told by his father that he was now a man and should go off to the city and start his own life. So he left the dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains, where he was raised, and joined his older brother in Brooklyn at a boarding house. It was the beginning of the 20th century, and that was where renters, usually men, slept and got their meals. 

One day, his brother told him he had gotten engaged and asked if my dad would like to join him for a visit to his fiancée’s home in Queens. The two of them entered the house just as the fiancée’s younger sister was coming downstairs. To hear my dad tell it, he looked up, saw this beautiful young lady in a red dress descending the stairs and instantly fell madly in love. I can vouch for the fact that he stayed that way for all the rest of his life. She became his wife and he adored her always.

But I get ahead of myself. 

They both worked in the Wall Street area, and my father would contrive to have lunch with my mother as often as possible. One day, when she was 15 and he 17, he suggested they walk over to City Hall and get married. 

Now my father was clearly a romantic. My mother, by contrast, was a clear-headed, practical woman. She, too, must have been in love because she agreed on the spot. They overcame the obstacle of not having any witnesses by asking men who were getting their shaves in the barbershop on the block to help. Two men gallantly agreed, threw off their bibs, wiped their faces and proceeded to swear that my parents were 18 and therefore of age to marry. Their signatures on my parents’ wedding license has forever endeared them to me, though they were total strangers.

Not knowing what to do next, they went back to their jobs and then to their respective abodes.

When my mother returned home that night, she encountered a raging father. He had been reading the local evening newspaper, in which those who married that day were listed, and he was both furious and terribly hurt. Head hanging, she acknowledged her deed. When he finally calmed down, her father laid down the law.

My father, his new son-in-law, would move into their home but two floors separately from my mother. He would join the family at meals and in every other non-marital activity, and if they all agreed, there would be a “proper” religious ceremony to consecrate the marriage when my mother turned 18.

So it was decreed and so it happened. The extended family, who all lived in the three story house, came to love my father during those ensuing years, especially my mother’s aunt. She shared memories with him about the “old country” and the family that was left behind when they immigrated to America a decade earlier. He said they would sit together in front of the coal stove, in the parlor, until late in the evening, as she told her stories. That is what I am lucky enough to know about the family’s history, for he in turn enjoyed telling me.

At the assigned time, my parents married and moved out of the house to start their own family. A couple of years later, my brother was born. My parents are gone now, and with remarkable coincidence, my brother joined them, dying 64 years later on July 4th.

Wherever they are now, they must be having a great party.

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Speaking of our health, which we often do with friends, there were a couple of interesting bits of news this week in that department.

Probably the most dramatic is the idea that by delaying the onset of menopause, a woman’s life and good health might be extended. The health benefits that women have before menopause lessen as we age past that mark. So current longevity research is asking if the whole picture could be slowed. And so, Dr. Jill Biden announced from the White House a new health initiative to pursue this concept, with Dr. Renee Wegrzyn steering the research.

Ovaries, which seem to play a role throughout a woman’s lifetime, not just until menopause, are the main focus. “Researchers think that prolonging their function, better aligning the length of their viability with that of other organs, could potentially alter the course of a woman’s health—and longevity research overall,” according to Tuesday’s front page story in The New York Times.

Using hormones like estrogen and progesterone, ovaries communicate with every other organ in the body. When they stop communicating, “all kinds of problems arise.” They stop when the eggs that they carry are gone, at which point risk increases for dementia, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and other age-related diseases and lifespan, according to The Times. Women whose ovaries have been prematurely removed for other health reasons are at greater risk, which suggests that even after all the eggs are gone, ovaries may still play a protective role.

All of this is subject to much further investigation. Researchers are not sure whether aging negatively affects the ovaries or if the ovaries cause other organs to age. But prolonging ovarian function in lab animals does seem to improve their health and longevity. This encourages further research into reducing the number of eggs lost by a woman during each menstrual cycle, thus preserving ovarian function. (Women shed may eggs many cycle but one ovulates). A current drug, rapamycin, which is an immunosuppressant used in organ transplants, is being studied for that role.

Anti-aging research is highly popular among scientists these days.

Another surprising article in the same issue of The Times, this one in the ScienceTimes section, has to do with our sense of smell. Though it lessens with age (and might as the result of infections, like Covid), “A diminished ability to smell is associated with worsening memory, cognition and overall well-being—as well as dementia and depression.”  The good news is that such a situation may be reversible. 

We can train our noses with smelling exercises, and our ability to smell, in turn, may improve not only depression but also help remember words faster. One explanation for this is “the areas of the brain involved in smelling are uniquely connected to parts involved in cognition, such as the prefrontal cortex.”  Further to the point, “The olfactory system is the only sensory system that has a direct superhighway projection into the memory centers and the emotional centers of your brain,” according to Professor Michael Leon of the University of California, Irvine.

So take out products from your kitchen cabinets and alternately smell cinnamon, honey, coffee, wine or others and sniff each of them at least 30 seconds at a time, once in the morning and once more at night. Small studies have indicated this not only tests one’s power to smell but also enhance cognitive abilities.

Finally for this column, I would like to quote the Times’ article on the Walking Cure for Lower Back Pain. Although those with pain may be loathe to exercise, movement can strengthen muscles that support the back and ease the pain. This is a conclusion that is supported with any number of studies over the past few years. 

“Researchers found that regular exercise combined with physical education was the most effective way to prevent lower back pain from recurring,” according to The NYT.

Walking can help strengthen the support muscles at the base of the spine. When they weaken, it can lead to pain.

So, as the song goes, “Shake, Shake, Shake Your Booty,” for good health. 

The sculpture of Borghese's Itala in Kirov, Russia. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

This month marks an anniversary of the Peking to Paris Road Race of 1907. Now there is a recent book to recount the adventure, “The Race to the Future,” by Kassia St. Clair. Five automobiles, so newly invented that people weren’t sure what to call them, turned out for the 9000-mile trip over unpaved deserts and mountains, rivers and forests to win the acclaim, and a magnum of Mumm champagne, that would go to the first person to reach the finish line.

More than a race, it was really a challenge to promote the use of motor cars. The Paris newspaper. “Le Matin,” on January 31, 1907 wrote the following:

“What needs to be proved today is that as long as man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Paris to Peking by automobile?”

The race actually started in the other direction, from the French embassy in Peking (now Beijing) on June 10th and came down to between two very different men, ending on August 10th.

The winner was the car carrying the imperious Italian Prince Scipione Borghese, Ettore Guizzardi, who apparently did most of the driving, and journalist Luigi Barzini, who in 1908 wrote a book about the trip, “Peking to Paris.” Frenchman Charles Godard was the raffish driver of the second car, and he had no money, begged for petrol, borrowed the Dutch Spyker for the trip, and was arrested for fraud near the end of the race. One of the other cars, the three-wheel Contal cyclecar, bccame bogged down. Godard and the journalist with him ran out of fuel in the Gobi desert and almost died. Borghese’s personal car, The Itala, was technically superior to the others.

Gasoline and provisions were carried ahead by camel and horseback, and newspapers arranged for a reporter in each car to track the progress and send back articles. Because the race followed a telegraph route, stories could be posted regularly from the stations to Paris. 

Some of the areas in Asia were so remote that people were unfamiliar with automobiles, only using horses to reach them. And St. Clair, in the book, recounts episodes like the search in the Urals for carpenters to repair the cars’ smashed wooden wheels. The direction of the book, however, is always forward, as can be guessed from the title. The decadent empires of Russia and China that the racers were traversing were fading but the adventure of the remote villages and primitive Siberian settlements must have been fantastic experiences.

The race has stimulated the imagination of many over the century, and there have been reenactments during that time. In 1908 The Great Auto Race, which went from New York west (by sea for part of the way) to Paris, tried to capture the excitement of that first race. When Russia became the USSR after the 1917 Revolution, that route was barred; only when the Soviet Union dissolved in the 1990, were racers allowed back.

Other routes for similar car races include the 1997 “Second Peking to Paris Motor Challenge” that went through Tibet, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy, a more southerly trail. And there have been others through the years.

For me, the excitement of the open road is irresistible, whether it is intercontinental or merely out east to the Hamptons. The unknown that lies beyond the next bend promises, if not rugged terrain, at least new sights, sounds and contacts. It’s not necessarily a race that beckons, only the adventure of the different and unexpected. 

For me, the challenge is not the wild terrain but merely navigating the traffic. As the houses drop away and the farms and vineyards come into view, I can feel myself physically relax and breathe in the smells of flowering fields and sod farms.

I can only imagine the thrill of crossing unchartered lands.

Trustee candidates Kyle Hill, Marie Parziale, and Xena Ugrinsky sit before the audience at the Meet the Candidates event on Tuesday, June 11. Photo by Aidan Johnson

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

This Tuesday, I went to a Meet the Candidates night in Port Jefferson Village. I left, some two hours later, feeling proud — proud of being an American and proud of my neighbors. 

The Village will hold its election for trustees next week, and this was an attempt by those residents who are running for office to inform the voting public about their positions and qualifications. It was jointly sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the Civic Association in the Village Center. 

There are a number of villages along the North Shore, where our newspapers service the communities, that hold local elections, and I would like to think my experience was typical of all of them. The occasion was an example of representative democracy, in which a candidates who best reflects one’s beliefs earns that person’s vote. The winner in a subsequent free and supervised election then becomes the elected official. 

That’s America.

I was also proud because the audience, of some 75 people I would guess, listened politely, applauded spontaneously if a candidate’s words touched a nerve, then broke into small groups to chat with each other at the end. In this case, there are two trustee vacancies with three residents running. And while there was mention throughout the speeches of clearly different positions with acknowledgement of much passion throughout the village, information at this forum was the order of the day. There were no invectives thrown, no voices raised or denigrating asides. The candidates smiled and shook hands at the end.

That does not mean there are no serious problems for Port Jefferson and that residents here are less caring. Quite the contrary. Problems like erosion, development, environmental sustainability, flooding, government transparency, municipal services, parking, and safety are common to villages and hamlets throughout the North Shore and Long Island. And not surprisingly, they excite passionate response, but the response does not have to be insulting or threatening if we see each other as neighbors, not colors.

We, of course, care deeply about the places in which we live. It’s not only a matter of economics, where development could impact property values, for example, but also our pride of place that comes into play during meetings. But insults and put downs are not necessary and would even be a hindrance during attempts to work together toward solutions.

And that is the key: working together. The candidates all got that.

I have great respect for neighbors who are willing to put themselves out there to run for office. Perhaps they are interested in the glory of office, but it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to stump for election. And in this day, candidates not only open themselves up for scrutiny, they bring their families to the forefront also to be evaluated. Privacy vanishes, and often, so does respect. They are fair game as targets for everyone’s freedom of speech. Libel law does not much protect candidates who become public figures.

The format of the Port Jefferson meeting was somewhat restrictive. Candidates were each given short intervals to speak—one to three minutes per question or summation. And the questions from the audience were written on 3×5 cards and passed along to a three-person panel before asked by the moderator, with an eye toward relevance and civility.

Candidates were prepped in advance, not given the actual question but with a heads up as to the likely issues to be covered. The two women and a man who were running probably knew what some of those issues were, but a little planning can help keep things calm and on track.

Did the informational meeting sway voters in any way? My guess is that most came already knowing whom they would vote for, but perhaps some were undecided. Even for those who knew, confirmation was helpful. It’s nice to see who will be the faces of the Village and how they comport themselves.

I hope, during this election season for villages and primaries, you, too, feel proud. 

METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

A number of my relatives and friends were born in June, so that means lots of birthdays to celebrate. My dad was born in June, and so was my brother. My granddaughter’s birth, the first child of my middle son and daughter-in-law, lit up the month of June for me. She was the first girl in a long familial string of boys. Then there is my West Coast cousin and several friends who all made their appearance on Earth in the same month.

I’m not good at buying presents or mailing cards, but I do try my best to remember the dates and to extend happy wishes. I adore celebrations and the digital age has helped in that regard. I send texts and emails, and if I don’t think it will cause too much grief hearing my atonal voice, I call the person and sing a heartfelt “Happy Birthday.” 

I learned of the entitlement of birthdays when I started elementary school. Feeling left out, I watched as classmates offered cupcakes and blew out candles that their mothers brought to class, while I rued the fact that I was a summer baby: no classmates, no groups  to sing to me.

Little did I know then that my dad’s family never celebrated his or his siblings’ birthdays. Perhaps it had something to do with there being nine children and that they were dirt poor.

My unfortunate mother never knew when she was born. Her mother, who could have told her, died when she was an infant, and I guess no one else really cared. All she knew was that it was sometime during harvest season. 

Well, I changed all that.

I came home from school one day, I guess about second grade, and professed outrage at never having a birthday party. My parents, innocently trying to eat dinner, seemed at first puzzled, then embarrassed at the oversight. They asked me what a party would entail, and I explained about the cake, the candles, the guests and the presents. And when it was time for my birthday, they made amends, that year and every subsequent year until I was married.

I appreciated their response, even going so far as to assign my mother a birthday in the midst of October, which I assumed was harvest time, and which we then celebrated annually—I believe to my mother’s delight.

Did you know that birthdays are a fairly recent consideration?

According to “The Atlantic,” only in the middle of the 19th century did some middle-class Americans celebrate birthdays, and not until the early 20th century, when my parents were born, did birthday celebrations start to be a nationwide tradition. The magazine ties together birthday observances with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, during which the matter of time became more of a focus generally due to factory and labor hours.

The song, “Happy Birthday to You,” the most popular song in the English language according to the Guinness World Records, is only somewhat older than its 100th birthday.

Supposedly two American sisters, Patty and Mildred J. Hill, composed the melody in 1893, but that’s disputed.

As the 20th century unfolded, birthdays became a time to honor ordinary individuals, usually with cakes and candles, but in some circles, with fruit. It has also become a reason for families and friends to gather, both to appreciate one of its members and to reunite, however briefly. Birthdays ending in 0’s and 5’s are particularly special.

Today, birthdays are often regarded by those experiencing them as a time for evaluating their lives. Have they met their goals? How are they doing compared to their contemporaries? Do they look their age? Are they living the lives they desire? 

It’s a day to be pampered by one’s friends and loved ones and to pamper one’s self. Some people go on trips. Others buy themselves presents that perhaps they have always wanted. 

And some, at the end of their day, breath a sigh of relief, knowing that they don’t have to face another birthday for a whole year.