New Year’s Eve lived up to its name as Amateur Night for those drinking before they turned pro. But it was also a nightmare of people from Omaha coming to New York to see the ball drop and thinking a yellow cab was some kind of tour bus where a friendly driver with amusing patter would show them the sights.

Still, you did make good money, even if it produced cabbie PTSD that could last into March. 

About Thanksgiving, I should have listened to my friend Donahoe, a former cabbie who scored a job as a police photographer. Low man on the totem pole, he was assigned the 4 p.m. to midnight tour one Thanksgiving, shooting mugs in the basement of the precinct house. “The usual parade of skells and knuckleheads, but now and then there’d be a regular person standing with the height numbers behind him, looking at the camera like he was about to be hanged,” Donahoe said. “A cousin, who’d been invited by some family member who thought he’d finally make up with a relative he hadn’t talked to in years — and who hated him. But too many cocktails and it started all over again. Fistfights and, you know, at Thanksgiving you have those big serving forks? And knives? It was awful, these guys in nice clothes with blood on their shirts, asking me what came next, you know? What could I tell them?”

Mary and I got married in August and on Thanksgiving, figuring we could use the money and then have a long weekend, we had the meal and did the family thing before I went to work.

There were just a few guys waiting for cabs to come in off the day line when I took a seat on the bench next to Fitz. He was an old guy who was one of the great raconteurs. Everybody — from the young Black, Latino and white guys to the old cabbie wizards — talked and listened to him.

Fitz was an immigrant who came to America as a young man and achieved the dream. He started out selling insurance and worked up to running his own agency in Queens, getting married and starting a family.

But then he lost it all, through years of betting on slow-running horses. Coming to his senses at rock bottom, he got help and started over, driving a cab. He helped some other guys in the garage to find help.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he greeted me. “Get out of here. Don’t you have a home to go to?”

I told him I’d heard it was a good night to work. Lots of happy and generous people splurging on cabs. Plus, all the restaurant workers and everyone else punching clocks on Thanksgiving would be ready to treat themselves by hailing a cab home.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Fitz said, and told me a story.

One Thanksgiving afternoon, he got a fare 20 minutes out of the garage on Park Avenue, an elderly man, holding a bouquet of two dozen roses, dressed in a three-piece suit, a camel’s hair topcoat, leather gloves and a jauntily angled fedora.

“The smell of those flowers in the cab,” Fitz said. “The smell of money.”

The old gentleman gave him an address in Little Falls, N.J. Any trip beyond the city limits automatically meant the fare would be doubled.

“I told him about double the meter and he knew all about it. I thought, ‘I’m gonna be rich tonight, mining gold in Jersey.’ ”

The dapper old gentleman was going to his brother’s, he said. He and Fitz chatted about Thanksgiving, covering everything from the proper way to cook a turkey to whether the Lions had a chance against the Packers. “He directed me to Little Falls and then started to direct me through the streets,” Fitz said. “It was already dark when he said, real quiet, ‘Here. Here we are.’ ” It was a cemetery. The passenger directed Fitz in through the gates. “I saw him in my mirror slumped in the back, his face white as a sheet. Staring straight ahead.”

The passenger told Fitz to stop and wait for him, got out and climbed a hill with his bouquet, stopping at a grave. “After a while I could see his shoulders heaving,” Fitz said. The bouquet was hanging straight down from his hand, touching the ground. Fitz waited 20 minutes before he got out and went up to the man and put his hand on his shoulder. He had pulled himself together by then, putting the flowers on the grave, drying his eyes.

Back in the cab the man apologized, saying he was alone today — some kind of old family dispute — and had suddenly wanted to be with his only brother, who had been kind to him. He had somehow neglected to express his love for him when he was alive. “I’m alone and so is he,” the man said.

Fitz suggested a cup of coffee. “We went into a diner, sat and talked. He was a terrible old man, really,” Fitz said. “Tossed his life away by not paying attention to those nearest to him.” On Park Avenue the old gentleman paid the double fare. “And stiffed me on the tip,” Fitz said, with a smile.

“A real prince,” I said.

“Where’s the wife today?”

“Home,” I said.

“What are you doing here?” Fitz asked, his voice soft. “Do you have to work today?”

I took the subway home, and going down the hall to our apartment, I saw the light under the door.

It was then I realized I’d forgotten to ask Fitz why he was working on Thanksgiving. 

The post Guest Column: A working holiday appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

 Our local turkeys can become truly annoying if a number of them decide to kick back on your patio or porch. One way to keep them from roosting near your favorite chair, or strutting around the patio and interfering with the plants, is fencing, but that might not be too effective either.

Even though these avian comedians world look clumsy, they can fly, so hopping a fence is no problem. When they take wing, they’re as graceful as any bird, sometimes reaching speeds up to 50 miles an hour.

On Shelter Island, animal control officer Jenny Zahler constantly advises residents to treat turkeys the same as any wildlife: Observe and enjoy, but don’t interact unless absolutely necessary.

If you’ve ever been close to a wild turkey (and what North Forker hasn’t), the first impression is how magnificently ugly they are, with the heads of space aliens and those dangling red wattles.

Rare birds, they’re most content being earthbound, strutting around with the couldn’t-care-less attitude of bored aristocrats.

They can also transform themselves in a flash into completely different beings, flaring out their feathers and changing the color of their fleshy necks to blue, gray or, being an American species, red, white and blue. The toms preen like this when they’re scared or angry or looking for love.

MYSTERIOUS BEINGS

How the birds got here in the first place is a mystery. The National Wild Turkey Federation has found there are about 7 million wild turkeys roosting in 49 states (Alaska is turkey-free), beginning to approach the numbers from before Columbus landed, when there were about 10 million of them.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was a close call whether the wild turkey would survive. Hunting and loss of habitat were the factors decimating the American rafter. (Rafter is the correct term for a group of turkeys. At least that’s according to James Lipton, author of “An Exaltation of Larks,” and many ornithologists back him up. Lipton teased out the derivation of the term from a group of logs bound together to form a raft.)

An act of Congress saved the American turkey from extinction with the Wildlife Restoration Act passed in 1937, providing money for wildlife habitat enhancement programs.

According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, turkeys were reintroduced to New York from Pennsylvania in 1959 when about 1,400 birds were let loose in the wild.

At one time there were so many wild turkeys in New York that the state exported almost 700 of them to Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and the Province of Ontario, helping to re-establish populations throughout the Northeast.

BORN IN THE U.S.A.

They’re called turkeys because of a British misunderstanding. Mario Pei, a Columbia University professor of Romance languages, has written that turkeys, though American born and bred, were imported to Britain after a stopover in the Middle East.

The Brits called everything coming from that part of the world “turkey,” as in Persian carpets becoming “turkey” carpets.

Their All-American status was famously enshrined by Ben Franklin, who wanted to make the turkey our national bird. It speaks volumes about Franklin’s personality that he preferred the basically gentle but fiercely independent (even cranky) turkey to the predatory bald eagle.

The eagle, Franklin wrote, “is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly … like those among men who live by sharping and robbing … he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little king-bird, not bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district … For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours …”

Peculiar might be the last word, when it comes to all things turkey.

The post Thankfully talking turkey appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

The first Monday in September was earmarked Labor Day as an election year appeasement by President Grover Cleveland. During the Great Depression of 1893, a strike by Pullman railroad car workers in Chicago went national and it took 12,000 federal troops to break it.

The leaders went to federal prison and the group spearheading the strike, the American Railway Union, was disbanded and most of the other industrial workers’ unions were done in. But protests with new fervor continued, and soon after the bloody end of the strike, legislation was passed by both houses of Congress and President Cleveland signed Labor Day into law to cool things off.

Unions went into hibernation after the Pullman strike, but roared back during the next Great Depression beginning in 1929. Organization and collective bargaining thrived for several generations, contributing to one of history’s triumphs: the rapid and extensive expansion of the American middle class. In the 1950s, 50% of American workers held union cards. Today, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, only 11.1% of workers are represented by unions.

The left and the right both complain about the middle class shrinking over the last several decades, and both political wings have their reasons for this. One argument for the stagnation of real wages is that with the death of unionized labor, real money in the pocket has shrunk.

This upcoming Labor Day brought to mind my own experience scuffling at low-paying jobs and the three union cards I carried. The experience showed me unions from three distinct angles — the weird, the great and the awful.

But first, some thoughts on why some people think unionizing fast food workers or baristas is strange or funny. These jobs are widely disparaged in American culture — someone “flipping burgers” is a figure of fun. We should remember that most of these employees aren’t kids, but people trying to support families. The U.S. Department of Labor, for example, found the median age of these workers is over 28.

So — my three unions. As a high school kid I landed a full-time, year-round night job at a municipal golf course. My duties: Starting at 4:30 p.m. in the summer, I ran a truck following the final foursome around the 18 holes, setting up sprinklers when they cleared the greens, moving the hoses after a couple of hours and, later, driving around and shutting them off and coiling them in the bed of the truck.

I then went into watchman mode, although what I was watching for was never spelled out. In the fall, winter and spring months after school, I was all watchman from 4:30 p.m. on. I did my duty by sprawling on a broken couch in a shack in the woods off the 15th hole, listening to the radio and reading. By midnight I was done, racing to catch the last bus home.

I was paid peanuts, but it kept me out of the pool hall. The job improved immediately one night around 9 p.m. when a guy in a suit walked into the shack. This was startling, since for a year I’d seen no one after that final foursome. Was he the one I should have been watching for? Before I could say anything, he introduced himself, calling me “Brother.”

I was now a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs and Warehousemen of America. I was told a few dollars in dues would be taken out of my paycheck next week, handed a pamphlet and a card and got a handshake. Before I could ask a single question, my new union brother vanished.

The few dollars were removed from my check, but more were added. I got an immediate 20% raise and ever since have never laughed at Jimmy Hoffa jokes.

Did I deserve the raise? Asking that question defines you.

A few years later, at loose ends, I went one morning to a State Labor Department office in Manhattan. By that afternoon I was running an elevator — a bit erratically, for sure — at a five-story school on Central Park West. Soon I was a member of Local 32B of the New York Building Services Union.

The pay was good and there were benefits, including medical and dental. Summers, when school was out, the doormen and elevator operators became maintenance men, and I painted classrooms and hallways, did pointing on the roof facade and was a plumber’s assistant.

Walter Brown, our shop steward, kept telling me to pay attention, plumbers made way more than elevator jockeys. Did I listen to Walter? If I had, my address today might be Easy Street, Fat City.

My final union was the New York City taxi drivers union, where I paid dues for four years. The union, and the industry as a whole, have changed radically since those days. Back then, the union was led by mobbed-up goons who were in bed with the big taxi fleet owners.

The general union meetings were chair-throwing parties — literally. If you went down to the hall on Park Avenue South to get some clarification on dues or rules, a couple of union brothers named Sonny and Junior were happy to clarify you out in the parking lot.

But whenever I hear of people trying to organize, I remember the cabbies I shared long afternoons with at the fleet garages shaping up for work, and the Teamsters I came to know, and especially Walter Brown, who truly believed in a union of bread and roses.

Happy Labor Day.

Ambrose Clancy is editor of the Shelter Island Reporter and interim editor of The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review. He can be reached at aclancy@timesreview.com.

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Pollutant of concern: Ozone

Residents advised to reduce environmental health risks

The New York State DEC has issued an air quality health advisory for Wednesday, July 30, 2025, for the following regions: Long Island Region, and the Metropolitan New York City Region.

The pollutant of concern is ozone.

Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. Gregson Pigott advises that all residents, especially young children, seniors, those who exercise outdoors, and those with pre-existing respiratory or heart problems, limit strenuous outdoor activity. Ozone levels are often elevated after noon through early evening on hot, sunny days. If you experience eye, nose and throat irritation, shortness of breath, chest pain contact your medical provider.

Ozone is the principal component of the mixture of air pollutants known as “smog” that is produced from the action of sunlight on air contaminants from automobile exhausts and other sources. Ozone levels are most likely to be elevated after noon through early evening on hot, sunny days.

Information about ozone and health is available on the New York State Department of Health Website at:

http://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/outdoors/air/ozone.htm

For more information about air pollution and tips for reducing your risks from pollutants, visit “Fossil Fuels” on our Cancer Prevention and Health Promotion page.

Air Quality Forecasts are available on the Department of Environmental Conservation website at :

http://www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/aqi/aqi_forecast.cfm

For the air quality index in your area, visit www.AirNow.gov.

The post Air Quality Health Advisory for today, July 30 appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Wrong.

Most signers put their “John Hancocks” on the document on July 2, 1776. After signing, Mr. Hancock remarked, “Gentlemen, we must now all hang together,” placing on a tee a reply for Ben Franklin: “Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Franklin’s wit contains the bravery of the men in Philadelphia that summer. They knew if things went sideways, the document they had just signed guaranteed they’d wind up swinging from the wrong end of an English rope.

Who are among the most ignorant people in the word when it comes to their own history? 

We the People.

A data research outfit, Lincoln Park Strategies, ran a poll and found that a whopping 72% of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure which states were part of the 13 original states; only 24% could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the light bulb; only 24% knew the correct answer as to why the colonists fought the British; around 12% incorrectly thought World War II Gen. Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War; 6% thought he was a Vietnam War general. 

But don’t get down if you missed some (all?) of those questions. America is the land of second chances, and so is this column, so here’s an opportunity to prove your knowledge of our country’s history.

Answers at the bottom. Eyes on your own paper. Check your work at the end.

Begin … Now. 

1) Where was the Battle of Long Island fought?

A. Brooklyn

B. Penn Station, before the last trains to Ronkonkoma between Christmas and New Year’s.

C. Southold

2) Who said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

A. Richard Nixon

B. Donald Trump

C. Samuel Johnson

3) What American president imported Spanish fly for personal use?

A. George Washington

B. Andrew Johnson

C. William Henry Harrison

4) Who was William Floyd?

A. Billy “Sandman” Floyd, president and CEO of Calverton’s Dig This, Inc., indicted, never convicted of bid rigging contracts for concrete for the parkway named for him.

B. Only Long Islander to sign the Declaration of Independence.

C. Will “Iron Hands” Floyd, personal bodyguard to Robert Moses.

5) How many presidents are not buried on American soil?

A. Five

B. One

C. None

6) Who said that along with age and citizenship, business experience should be a qualification for the presidency?

A. Donald Trump Jr.

B. Ronald Reagan

C. Steve Jobs

7) Name the last five businessman presidents.

8) What political leader compared himself to Charles DeGaulle, Margaret Thatcher, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, Marion Barry and Ho Chi Minh?

A. Joe Biden

B. Newt Gingrich

C. Mitch McConnell

9) What does the Japanese word “Bushusuru” mean?

A. Choking on a pretzel

B. Defeating Al Gore

C. Publicly vomiting

10) Name the president who once worked as a hangman.

A. Grover Cleveland

B. Ulysses S. Grant

C. John Adams

11) Who was the only president who held a license to tend bar?

A. Abraham Lincoln

B. George W. Bush

C. Ulysses S. Grant

12) Harry S. Truman and Ulysses S. Grant share the same middle initial. What does the “S” in both cases stand for?

A. Simpson

B. Samuel

C. Nothing

13) Who said: “Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change government.”

A. Donald Trump

B. Ronald Reagan

C. Abraham Lincoln

14) What was the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought over?

A. Money

B. Defamation charges in newspapers

C. “Sassy” Sarah Lippincott

15) Which Supreme Court chief justice rejected calls to adopt a judicial code of conduct?

A. John Marshall

B. Earl Warren

C. John Roberts

16) What did Dolley Madison save from the White House before it was torched by the British?

A. A portrait of George Washington

B. An ice cream maker and baking sheet

C. The silver

17) In Thomas Jefferson’s editing of his Declaration of Independence, what did he change to make the final “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?

A. “… life, liberty and the pursuit of the indolency of the body and the possession of outward things.”

B. “… life, liberty and property.”

C. “… life, liberty and the pursuit of slaves.”

Quiz Answers

1) A   2) C   3) A   4) B 5) A — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden   6) A   7) Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Donald Trump   8) B    

9)C   10) A   11) A   12)  C   13) C   14) B   15) C   16) A and C  17) B

Happy Independence Day. Class dismissed. You’re free.

The post An American Quiz appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

No, not late. I’m always early.

Reaching my destination, I have to walk around blocks, drive in circles, drink too much coffee in diners or cafes so I’m wound like a meth fiend when I show up on time, saying something on the order of, “Hi! Yeah! It’s me!” My host or the strangers I have the appointment with saying something on the order of, “Uh, you all right?”

Once I phoned the author Tim Robinson for a date to interview him for a newspaper article. He didn’t give a time, but rather said to “just come by tomorrow morning.”

Banging on the door at 7 a.m., it was opened by Tim’s wife, Máiréad, in her robe with bed hair and panic-stricken eyes, expecting a firefighter or a police officer. I introduced myself. She stared, the panic in her eyes turning to flint, and said what I’ve heard too many times: “Do you know what time it is?”

I could have countered by quoting the Bard: “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late,” but she was in no mood for anything except to see the back of me. As the door shut in my face I heard, “Later? Please?”

When I arrived at 10, Máiréad said, with a lovely smile as she put a mug of tea in my hand, that it was really no shame to admit my problem and seek help.

Tim generously said he, too, had the affliction. “Years of deadlines,” he said, “completely mangles the mind’s sense of time.”

For the chronically late — what is it with these people? — the cellphone is a godsend. I have a couple of friends I can count on to text half an hour before we’re to meet with the “running late” thing. Running? No, if you were running, you’d be here, dammit.

Being late saves lives, of course. How many times do you read of people who miss the plane that crashes because they were, yes, running late? Being early, you can find us in the obit column. Franklin D. Roosevelt tied a bow on the idea: “I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.”

It’s a relief that I’m not alone. Barbara Jaffe, Ed.D., a fellow in UCLA’s Department of Education, has written: “I know that nothing catastrophic would happen if I were minutes late to an appointment; nevertheless, I begin to sweat. My on-time legacy comes from eons of programming along with a ‘time-sensitive’ genetic component. My family’s ‘arriving late gene’ is completely missing; instead, I come from a rather long line of (extremely) early people.”

I can relate.

I get it from my father. With a wife and five children, he alone was on time — meaning early. Getting organized for a family outing, like Sunday Mass, visits to friends or starting a road trip, was like a mini midnight Black Friday at the mall, and my father was always at the door, waiting, in turn looking at his watch or scowling at us dashing around.

Once, I was being shepherded to put a move on by my older sister, Peggy. She was gently pushing me in the back and guiding me toward the door. She put a cap on my head, and then I followed Peg as she pulled me by the arm to the window where the rest of the tribe stood, all looking out. 

There, in the driveway was Dad behind the wheel of the car, motor running, staring straight ahead.

It was good we were inside, because it allowed us one of those cherished moments in life when you laugh until you ache.

Pavlov had it down — if I’ve got to be somewhere, my mind is dashing here and there, and the ghost of Dad is standing, scowling.

But it’s not only ghosts, but dreams that drive my obsession. Once, Mary and I went on vacation with our friend Marilyn and checked into an inn. It was run by a couple; a charming woman and a not-so-charming husband. He was a German who seemed to think being an innkeeper was the same as commanding a battalion under siege on the western front, ordering people around, barking at you if you asked for information.

The first night we went out to dinner and Marilyn decided she would be the designated driver, and I would take the role the following evening. That night, having a nightmare of being late for something, I came awake to find myself shaking Mary’s shoulders, looking wild-eyed into her face, imploring her to tell me, “Am I the designated German?”

Again, after the shock, non-stop laughing. When we finally stopped, one of us would, on an outflow of breath, just giggle a little, and then we were gone again, worthless for minutes.

But hey, what time is it? Oh, no. Gotta go.

The post Column: A matter of time appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

He was suddenly, fully awake from a sound sleep at 1 a.m., the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Something was seriously wrong.

He felt as if his upper torso was encased in a band, tight and growing tighter. And it hurt. And he had a strange taste in his mouth.

He knew what it was, but as he got out of bed, he was already in the process of denying it. Downstairs he walked around, drank ginger ale, spending close to an hour as the pain increased. Finally, he woke his wife and told her how he felt and that he had to go the emergency room.

She was calm, asked a couple of questions and said she’d call an ambulance, already starting to get dressed. No, he said, he’d drive. She said quietly that if he insisted on being mule-headed about the ambulance, she’d drive. No, he told her, let’s go. I’m driving. Not wanting to upset him further, she reluctantly agreed.

He’d already made three huge mistakes. First, if you have symptoms of a heart attack, don’t deny it. Second, don’t wait to get help. And third, never drive yourself or have someone drive you to the hospital. Call an ambulance. It will respond quickly, make no driving errors and, most important, will have experienced professionals on board who can administer medicine and first aid.

The Riverhead resident, who preferred not to give his name for this article, said that at Peconic Bay Medical Center’s Emergency Room, after giving his symptoms to a nurse at the desk, he was put on a gurney and wheeled into a room. Blood pressure and heart rate were documented, blood was taken and other data recorded.

A doctor saw him and spoke with him for a few minutes and morphine was administered for the pain. In his 70s, he had never had any serious illnesses, he told a nurse who was gathering more data, and lived a relatively healthy life. When asked if there was any cardiac illness in his family, he told her that his two brothers and his father had died of complications of cardiac disease.

“Classic,” she said.

Within a few minutes he was taken upstairs to the Kanas Regional Heart Center facility, where he was prepped for surgery. He was given fentanyl, and soon a surgeon and his team were cleaning out plaque blocking arteries by running a catheter through his wrist before inserting two stents — tiny metal coils that keep the artery open and blood flowing.

Discharged from the hospital after three days, he had recovered, and felt lucky for the speedy, efficient and professional care he received. Many are not so lucky. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women and people of most racial and ethnic groups. According to the latest statistics available from the CDC, 702,880 people died from heart disease in 2022.

At home, he and his family gave thanks for his recovery. But had he really recovered? Research shows that many cardiac patients experience waves of depression, anxiety, fear, anger and overall helplessness. Our patient summed it up to his wife this way: “I feel beat down. Diminished.”

It was by being in and completing this program at PBMC, that he considered himself truly lucky.

ON THE WAY BACK

Shelter Island Town Justice Stanley Birnbaum also participated in PBMC’s Cardiac Rehab program and has high praise for the activities and lessons provided — but most of all for the staff.

“Coming to grips with your own mortality is a unique experience,” Judge Birnbaum said, not completely tongue-in-cheek, after completing the program.

It started for him last July, when he began feeling fatigue nearly every day. After tests from a cardiologist, he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. An angiogram found he had a 90% heart blockage, and a stent was inserted.

“Cardio rehab was next for me,” Judge Birnbaum said. “Each staff member is a true, dedicated professional. Their knowledge, courtesy, patience, consideration and skill sets are second to none. Each patient receiving treatment is respected and catered to. The attention that is shown to everyone is meticulous. Health, exercise, hydration, follow-up treatment, aftercare and diet are all emphasized. They dot their i’s and cross their t’s.”

MAKING IT WORK

In an office off the gym where patients work out three days a week for 12 weeks, Anna Szlejter, director of Rehabilitation Services at PBMC, said the program “is for any kind of heart condition — heart attacks, stent replacements — anything to do with the heart muscle.”

Unique to the region, it’s been accredited by American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation, and staffed by specially trained physical therapists and registered nurses certified in advanced Cardiac Life Support. In 2024 there were 6,261 visits, Ms. Szlejter said, with 174 patients completing all 36 sessions. Over the past few years, PBMC’s Cardiac Rehab has had the highest program completion rate in New York State.

Every patient, upon arriving for each scheduled session at the gym, is asked by the staff how they’re feeling and if there has been any change in medication or lifestyle. Blood pressure is taken on arrival, the first of three times during the hour-long session, again after the exercise session is over and finally after “cooling down” for a few minutes.

Before exercise starts, wireless leads are attached to the patients’ chests that record a constant EKG, monitored by the RN at the desk.

The workouts involve treadmills, a stair-stepper, weight training equipment, an elliptical, an arm bike and what most patients start with, the NuStep, a recumbent cross-trainer working the arms and legs. The staff gets them started and checks in throughout the workout.

Every session is monitored electronically, and patients are asked to rate how they feel after each exercise, and are also asked to increase the difficulty, if they’re able.

Speaking with Ms. Szlejter at the gym’s office, the sounds of therapists speaking to patients drifted in — upbeat conversations, with occasional laughter, the back-and-forth of friends encouraging, razzing and complimenting each other.

A testament to the staff’s dedication is that more than 80% of patients complete the 36-session program, Ms. Szlejter said.

As Judge Birnbaum said, “No one is overworked. Each patient does the best that he or she can do.”          

HEART AND HEAD

“The psychological aspect of the program is on par with the physical exercise and the discussion on nutrition,” Ms. Szlejter said.

According to an article published by the National Institutes of Health, evidence suggests that between 30% and 40% of cardiac surgery patients experience a form of psychological depression before and/or after the surgery takes place.

Each patient in PBMC’s cardio rehab is twice given what the therapists call “homework” — professionals know it as PHQ9 scoring — to evaluate their emotional health.

Sample questions given to patients are: does the individual have little interest or pleasure in doing things; is she/he feeling down, depressed, or hopeless; has trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much; has poor appetite or is overeating; is feeling bad about themselves or that they are a failure or have let themselves or their families down; or have had thoughts that they would be better off dead, or of hurting themselves.

“Based on that scoring, we try to cater to their limitations,” Ms. Szlejter said. “And if they score a certain level, then we’re involving a psychiatrist to come and speak to them.”

Ms. Szlejter said more women than men are in the category of needing counseling. “A lot of women care for their families first before themselves,” she said. “They put their emotional health on the back burner because they think, ‘Oh, I have to take care of X, Y and Z before I get to me. How am I going to be the caregiver?’ But, of course, this also happens to men, too.”

THE ORIGIN OF COMING BACK

Paul Furbeck, formerly PBMC’s director of therapy, along with physical therapist Claudia Cebada Mora — who is still with the program — R.N. Ruth Gueli and Ms. Szlejter took 18 months to research and study other rehab centers before designing and launching the program here.Ms. Cebeda Mora, who has a doctorate in physical therapy, spent time at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., studying their Cardio Rehab program to apply methods and procedures at PBMC to gain national accreditation from the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation.

As a physical therapist, Ms. Cebeda Mora evaluates each patient and works with them on their exercise routines. She also throughly monitors their workouts, and their emotional states.

“Managing stress is key to being heart healthy,” Ms. Cebeda Mora said. “We want this to be social, fun, and want people to speak to us. We always make it personal, that they aren’t part of a mass production.”

The work is extremely rewarding, she said, especially when the staff sees a patient progressing and eager to work out, and “when we see people sticking with it and continuing after they leave.”

Judge Birnbaum spoke about the restoration of emotional balance and optimism given to patients by Cardio Rehab staff after the experience of heart surgery. “Confidence was instilled from the very beginning. Encouragement never disappeared,” he said. “The staff is the epitome of the adage, ‘Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.’ “

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What? You had Danish and bacon for breakfast, chicken nuggets and fries for lunch and plan on beers and pizza-with-extra-cheese with the gang for dinner? And who is that evil person who left black-and-white cookies on the kitchen counter? Don’t they know you’ve become a healthy, weight-conscious person?

What happened? Well, take comfort in knowing you’re not alone in making the effort. According to research conducted by Boston Medical Center, 45 million Americans go on a diet every year and spend up to $33 million on magic food and other products that will supposedly make them slim.

The problem with weight is an American plague. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, more than two-thirds of U.S. adults are considered overweight or obese. It’s no wonder so many of us are trying to drop a few pounds, but the success rate is abysmal. 

As Jackie Gleason (aka, “The Great One” — and not just for his fame) said: “The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day, you’re off it.” 

And for those who stick it out for two weeks or more, and then fall hard for bagels and bacon cheeseburgers, failure can be even more discouraging.

No fun? No gain

New Year’s resolutions on dieting, getting on an exercise program or changing your daily routine in any way can be setting sail in calm waters that quickly turn into stormy seas. 

As Dr. Anthonette Desire wrote a few years back in her “The Doctor Is In” column for the Shelter Island Reporter, “I once resolved to attend spin classes. It looked like fun. There I was, in class, in January, in the front row, when the instructor made the side comment that there will be room in the class by February. As factual as that was (that was my last class), how we think about our resolutions can make all the difference.”

Dr. Desire suggests setting “S.M.A.R.T.” goals, as in “choosing to accomplish something that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.” 

And with these markers in mind, it’s essential that you take the prison-sentence aspect out of your resolutions. “We develop bad habits because they are enjoyable,” Dr. Desire wrote. “Use enjoyment for something good.” She cited a study that concluded “that contrary to popular belief, only enjoyment predicted long-term persistence. It didn’t matter how important your goal was. Instead, what really mattered was how much pleasure you received from your initial efforts.”

Opening the door for yourself

Columnist Nancy Green, a social worker and a member of the Shelter Island health and wellness committee, looks at January promises to yourself with as cold an eye as Dr. Desire. 

“Most New Year’s resolutions dissolve somewhere around Jan. 10,” Ms. Green said. “The gym is very busy that first week of the year, as is Weight Watchers.” 

She questions the whole idea of resolutions, because the result of not keeping a promise to yourself can often lead to frustration and humiliation.

But do not abandon all hope, Ms. Green said. “There’s something about New Year’s resolutions that is inherently hopeful,” she added. “The implication is that we will do better, and we will be better. A resolution can denote a real self-improvement vow, such as visit Mom more often, or try to listen better.”

Anything that opens a door to self-reflection is a true gift to yourself, Ms. Green said, “and may be the first step toward positive change. It just needs to survive past January and into the spring to become real.”

Getting serious about dieting

Registered dietitian-nutritionist Rachel Ezelius believes most diets are too complicated and just too difficult. “Like anything, when the change is too extreme, it’s almost impossible to be successful,” she said, offering the example of someone who’s never seriously run suddenly entering a marathon. “It’s unlikely you can go out the next day and run 26.2 miles successfully.”

A crash diet really can lead to a crash, Ms. Ezelius added, so start by giving yourself a good talking-to, and accept that there will be difficult days ahead. Also, seek professional help.

“Let’s say you had a Porsche, but it badly needed work on the engine,” Ms. Ezelius said. “I don’t think you’d YouTube it to try and fix it yourself. Same with your body, which is your most valuable possession.”

Your own best friend

Dori Fortunato is also a skeptic when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. “For most of us, they bring much unnecessary expectation, which inevitably comes with resistance and then ultimate failure to meet our own self-proclaimed goals,” said Ms. Fortunato, who’s written a health and wellness column, “Be well with Dori” for our papers, and is a doctor of acupuncture and herbal studies. “Yet, we all desire to look forward with positivity and create new possibilities.”

She believes in starting small and winnowing down your goals. To improve yourself, find one subtraction in your daily life, one addition and one accomplishment. “You’ll probably find that adding something you desire, automatically down the line subtracts something you no longer want, which will inevitably lead you to new accomplishments.”

Most importantly, Ms. Fortunato advises that you cut yourself some slack. “Don’t analyze or criticize yourself,” she said. “Forgive yourself when you do. Learn to be kind to yourself and your process. If you don’t, who will?”

Okay? Ready? Good luck. And good health in 2025.

Ambrose Clancy is the editor of the Shelter Island Reporter. He can be reached at a.clancy@sireporter.com.

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Scientists, along with Shelter Island’s Town deer and tick committee, have noted that increasingly warm winters over the last few years have been a factor in keeping ticks more active year-round. But summer is their time to really thrive. When they bite and infect a human, it’s not a minor event; Lyme disease and other tick-related illnesses initially produce fever, chills and severe head and muscle aches.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases has stated: “The most distinct symptom of Lyme disease — the circular red rash known as erythema migrans (EM) — does not appear in at least one-quarter of people who are actually infected with Lyme bacteria. Also, current diagnostic tests do not always detect early Lyme disease since antibodies take time to rise to detectable levels. Because treatment is generally more effective in early stages of the disease, it is important to develop new tools that can help doctors make an early diagnosis.”

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Regional Tick-Borne Disease Center in Hampton Bays is the first, and so far the only, tick clinic in the Northeast, specializing in diagnosing and treating children and adults with tick-borne illnesses. According to hospital officials, Stony Brook hospitals across Long Island have seen a spike in cases since March, and believe the trend will continue now that summer is here.

Last August, a “skyrocketing” increase in ticks wasn’t manifesting itself in people developing tick-borne diseases, according to Dr. James Bevilacqua, chairman of Shelter Island’s deer and tick committee. Numbers weren’t exact, he said, but the best local information came last summer from the number of people being prescribed doxycycline — a class of medications to treat infections. 

The tick-borne disease babesiosis has been said to be increasing, but the black-legged ticks responsible for the spread of the disease were not up significantly last summer on Shelter Island, according to Beau Payne, who works for the local police department in two roles — assisting with animal control incidents and as a bay constable.

Since 2019, when the state Department of Environmental Conservation banned the use of 4-poster units — feeding stands that brush deer with a tickicide, permethrin — strategies to combat ticks have had to change. Shelter Island was among the first communities used as a test site for 4-posters when the program began in 2008. The town applied for an exemption to the ban, hoping to be able to continue the use of 4-posters, but the DEC refused.

This March, the island committee member leading the educational effort, Julia Weisenberg, has been working with fellow member Scott Campbell, Ph.D., who is the Suffolk County Department of Health Services Arthropod-Borne Disease lab director, to put in place efforts to step up a promotional campaign aimed at alerting residents to protecting themselves from tick-borne diseases.

Social media is being used to get out information to the community. Teaming up with Mashomack Preserve’s education and outreach coordinator Cindy Belt and outreach program coordinator Rebecca Kusa, Ms. Weisenberg worked with students in grades 3 through 6 on fun educational efforts to teach them ways to avoid tick bites.

All experts at town, county and state levels agree with Dr. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease expert from Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, that to avoid disease:

• When you go outside, be sure to wear mosquito or insect repellent. Be sure to apply insect or tick repellent containing 20%-30% DEET.

• Wear long pants and tuck the legs of the pants into your socks. This prevents ticks from crawling up onto your skin.

• When you come back inside, remove your clothes and shoes. Then, place them in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes to kill any ticks that might be on them.

• Check your body, particularly in skin folds and hairy areas, for any ticks.

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Our institutions and traditions, handed down in America through the generations, are now under assault and seem unsteady, not able to withstand the shock of a new authority sweeping away what once we held as inviolable.

I’m speaking, of course, about Major League Baseball’s seemingly endless rule changes. Last year the vulgarians in power scrapped the requirement that an intentional walk must consist of four balls thrown outside the strike zone. A manager now has only to indicate to the home plate umpire that his team wants to put the opposing batter on first base.

The intentional walk, part of the chess match played by heavily tattooed men chewing tobacco, is employed if a team doesn’t want to face a hot hitter or to set up a double play.

Question: Why change a quirky and fascinating moment in a game that true fans relish?

Answer: The baseball powers-that-be believe it will quicken the pace of the game.

Somewhere: Abner Doubleday is weeping.

Baseball is a game requiring great skill. It’s been said that consistently hitting a ball thrown at 90-plus mph that is not moving in a straight line is the hardest feat in all of sports. (If you can do that only three out of 10 times you will be paid many millions.) It’s also the slowest of our games, and the most beautiful, because of the leisurely procession of its moments.

The pace of the summer game has always been a respite from the manic rush of American life. Baseball says, “Slow down. Really watch. There’s more here than meets the eye. Learn something.” It’s not for nothing that the political world has co-opted the expression “inside baseball” to describe intricate maneuvering.

These days, with human attention spans on par with squirrels because of touch-screen tyrants in everyone’s fist (Americans on average check their phones every four minutes), baseball is the closest thing to Zen you can have while eating and drinking stuff that’s bad for you.

The need for speed is to get younger people to watch the sport. Team owners want more folks to watch the games and make more money. I get it. It’s just how you go about it.

New rules for 2023 include putting a timer on a pitcher, giving him 15 seconds to deliver to the plate when he gets the ball with the bases empty, and 20 seconds with a man on. Also, infield shifts are banned, and two infielders must be positioned on either side of second base when the pitch is thrown, and all four infielders have to have both feet on the infield dirt. The size of the bases will be increased from 15 inches square to 18 inches.

Wonders never cease — I agree with the baseball barons on eliminating shifts and making the bases bigger. But the pitch clock? No way. In a tight game, in the late innings, with runners on base, it’s a delight to take time to anticipate the next pitch, and not have to watch an electronic indicator counting down the seconds. Take your time!

But it’s not just a matter of time. It’s also allowing the fans to see something unexpected, such as that old-time intentional walk. It used to be that the catcher looks for a sign from his manager in the dugout, who tucks his thumb under and holds up four fingers.

The catcher relays the info to the pitcher and stands behind the plate, rather than crouching. The pitcher delivers a pitch that is two or three feet off the plate, and the catcher makes a graceful, two-step sideways move to catch the ball. Four times and the batter heads to first.

Don Drysdale, the great Dodger ace (or borderline psychopath) of long ago, didn’t like the intentional walk. A pitcher known for occasionally throwing at a batter’s skull, Big D was said to hit an opponent on his first pitch after he got the signal to issue the free pass, which automatically awarded first base to the batter. His irrefutable logic was why waste three perfectly good pitches to put a man on?

Making the intentional walk automatic robs the fan of seeing once-in-a-blue-moon screwups. There have been occasions when the pitcher has thrown wildly, missing his moving target, and a runner has scored from third, and also on occasion a pitcher has thrown a little too closely to the plate and a batter has reached out and stroked a base hit. Not often, but it’s happened.

As Casey Stengel would say, “You could look it up.”

The abomination known as the designated hitter is now entering its second year in the National League. This means there are 10 players to a side, and not the mystical number of nine players, corresponding in perfect harmony with nine innings, which relates to three, an unbreakable relationship with nine, as in three strikes, three outs.

But four balls, you say? Never contradict a person when he’s being mystical.

It’s probably best to leave the final word to someone who actually played the game. Asked about rule changes, former Major League catcher Russell Martin told Sportsnet: “My thing is, if they really want to speed up the game, then when a guy hits a home run, to speed up the game should a guy, just like in softball, when he hits it, should he just walk to the dugout? It’d be quicker. I’m just wondering, at what point do we just keep the game, the game?”

Amen, brother Martin.

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