Big finish: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, as we burn through the abbreviated workweek and steam toward Christmas.
We also bid farewell to triumphant, tumultuous and all-around testy 2021; this is our last newsletter of the year. We’ll be back Jan. 3 to kick off Innovate Long Island’s seventh (!) year of covering the regional innovation economy like nobody’s business – and everybody’s business, which it is.
Until then, peace and good health upon your house – enjoy the holidays, enjoy family and friends, stay smart and safe and keep an innovative thought.
It’s a date: Loafing around every Dec. 22.
Are you nuts: It’s Dec. 22 out there, and if you had a gifted bakester in your lineage, then you fully appreciate National Date Nut Bread Day.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to acquire a taste for date nut bread, perhaps you’ll have better luck with National Cookie Exchange Day, also fresh from the oven this and every Dec. 22.
Long and the short of it: Off-menu, today is both National Forefathers Day (memorializing the long-ago landing at Plymouth Rock, more below) and National Short Person Day (honoring great people in small packages).
Pilgrim problem: So yes, National Forefathers Day is today – but any sixth-grade history student can tell you the Pilgrims disembarked at Plymouth, Mass., on Dec. 21, 1620 (Why the difference? Some Gregorian calendar screw-up.)
Eyes all aglow: Christmas decorations were reborn on Dec. 22, 1882, when an employee of Thomas Edison’s electric company showed off a large indoor pine adorned with “many colored globes about as large as an English walnut,” according to the Detroit Post and Tribune – the first recorded example of electric Christmas tree lights.
Under budget: The Lincoln Tunnel – an 8,200-foot tube connecting Midtown Manhattan and Weehawken, NJ, under the Hudson River – opened to vehicular traffic on Dec. 22, 1937.
The ambitious Great Depression-era public works project was completed for a then-staggering $85 million – roughly $1.5 billion these days.
Once and future fish: Old green eyes is back.
Back from the brink: The coelacanth – a rare deep-sea fish thought to have gone extinct 66 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous epoch – was rediscovered alive and well 83 years ago today off South Africa.
Signals from space: And it was this date in 1968 when Apollo 8 astronauts conducted the first television broadcast from a manned spacecraft, 130,000 miles away and speeding toward the moon.
Showing Earth through the window as a blurred ball of light, spacemen Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders would beam in again two nights later with their famous Christmas Eve readings from the Book of Genesis.
I am Grote: Amateur U.S. astronomer Grote Reber (1911-2002) – an intuitive engineer who built the world’s first radio telescope from spare parts in his mother’s yard, before mapping the galaxy and discovering radio waves from outside the Milky Way – would be 110 years old today.
“20/20” hindsight: And next-generation vision … Diane Sawyer has seen it all.
Also born on Dec. 22 were the Rev. Nicholas Callan (1799-1864), an Irish physicist who invented the induction coil and otherwise advanced electrical science; French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), who authored many popular bug books; Russian chemist Constantin Fahlberg (1850-1910), who “discovered” and marketed saccharine; Bee Gees Maurice (1949-2003) and Robin Gibb (1949-2012), who was about a half-hour older; and Australian-American speaker, author, trainer and nutritionist Susan Powter (born 1957), a true motivator.
The adventures of Diane Sawyer: And take a bow, Lila Diane Sawyer! The trailblazing American journalist – the first female correspondent on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” a longtime anchor of “20/20,” “Good Morning America” and other ABC newsmagazines and one of the most recognizable and respected faces in broadcast news history – turns 76 today.
Wish the all-world reporter – once suspected of being infamous informant Deep Throat – a happy birthday at editor@innovateli.com, where we can’t keep your news tips and calendar events secret.
About our sponsor: Whether it’s helping in site selection, cutting through red tape or finding innovative ways to meet specific needs, businesses that settle in the Town of Islip soon learn that we take a proactive approach to seeing them succeed. If your business wants to locate or expand in a stable community with great quality of life, then it’s time you take a closer look at Islip.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Cold start: Christmas came early this year for E&M Logistics, an ice cream/frozen foods distributor about to build a 58,000-square-foot Hauppauge distribution center.
The circa-2015 startup found a Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency tax-incentives package wrapped in its stocking, triggering a $13.4 million construction plan that will replace a 20,600-square-foot Oser Avenue building with an all-new facility, more than twice as large. The state-of-the-art construction will feature a 28,000-square-foot cold storage and distribution center, a 28,000-square-foot basement storage area and office space for E&M Logistics, which will relocate its headquarters from the Bronx to Suffolk County.
The IDA must still review and officially approve the tax deal, but with 50 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs on the table, supporting E&M Logistics – which employs roughly 250 people across Greater New York and North Carolina and subcontracts with numerous local delivery companies to fill last-mile orders – was an easy call, according to Suffolk IDA Executive Director Tony Catapano. “The food manufacturing and distribution industry is an important sector of the Long Island economy,” Catapano noted. “[This project] will create new jobs and generate a significant economic benefit for the region.”
Cut above: Barber, psyched up.
Psychodynamic duo: Adelphi University faculty members have graced “the bible of psychotherapy,” once again.
Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology Dean Jacques Barber and Interim Dean J. Christopher Muran (holding down the fort while Barber is on sabbatical) have collaborated on a revised chapter covering psychodynamic therapy in the seventh edition of Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, the preeminent compendium of the psychotherapy field. Barber and Muran worked to update a chapter they originally published in 2013, discussing a therapeutic approach that emphasizes the psychological forces influencing human emotions and behavior.
Returning after eight years to update what was the textbook’s first-ever psychodynamic psychotherapy chapter is a triumph for Barber, a “leader in the psychodynamic world,” according to Muran. “This is not only a significant chapter in terms of what it tried to organize and how it tried to inform,” the interim dean noted. “It’s also a significant tribute to him.”
POD PEOPLE
Episode 17: Girl talk with author, teacher and motivator Renee Flagler.
Teacher, award-winning writer and passionate public speaker Renee Flagler, executive director of Girls Inc. of Long Island, joins Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast to discuss critical capital campaigns and the “human duty of service.”
Sponsored by once-in-a-generation clean-energy pioneer ThermoLift, Season 2 of Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast checks in with the coach and biggest cheerleader of the next generation of professional women.
TOP OF THE SITE
Prescription intervention: “Medication nonadherence” is fritzing healthcare with often deadly consequences – so the Feinstein Institutes are turning up the tech.
Beach front: A $1.7 billion state and federal repair-and-resiliency effort will make a comprehensive stand against coastal erosion in vulnerable Suffolk County.
Healthy start: Kick off the New Year with some good karma – individual subscriptions to this amazing newsletter for your entire innovation team are always easy, easy free and always appreciated!
VOICES
With national supply chains suffering, Voices food-and-beverage anchor Nancy Pak – CEO of Westhampton Beach-based Tate’s Bake Shop – offers some constructive suggestions on strengthening local lines during the COVID resurgence (and beyond).
STUFF WE’RE READING
Hallmarks of success: Reshaping “families” in Christmas movies. Harper’s Bazaar redefines.
Menu madness: Grocery supply-chain disruptions are changing holiday traditions. USA Today substitutes.
Not just Christmas music: Hark, the professional carolers sing. HuffPost harmonizes.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ Parallel Learning, a New York City-based digital-health company providing psychoeducational services for the learning disabled, raised $2.8 million in funding led by Eric Reiner and Dan Povitsky of Vine Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Great Oaks, Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson and Noah Beck, among others.
+ ezCater, a Massachusetts-based provider of corporate food solutions, raised $100 million in Series D-2 funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Quadrille Capital, GIC, ICONIQ Growth, Insight Partners and others.
+ Sparta Biomedical, a North Carolina-based med-tech maker, raised $5 million in seed funding led by Nanosha LLC, Duke Angel Network and others.
+ Hive Technologies, a California-based manufacturer of renewable energy-powered EV charging stations, raised $30 million in funding. Backers included iSun, Galway Sustainable Capital and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator’s Impact Fund.
+ Ophelia, a NYC-based provider of digital, medication-assisted opioid-use treatments, raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Refactor Capital, 640 Oxford Ventures, Interplay Ventures, PillPack founder Elliot Cohen and Good Friends.
+ Mightier, a Massachusetts-based creator of therapeutic videogames, raised $17 million in Series B funding led by DigiTx Partners, with participation from the Sony Innovation Fund and PBJ Capital.
BELOW THE FOLD (Last-Minute Gifting Edition)
Wrap it up: There’s still time for the procrastinating gifter.
Boys and their toys: The year’s hottest holiday gifts for men.
Ladies’ firsts: The year’s top holiday gifts for women.
Come all: Oh, the heck with it – here are all the best 2021 holiday gift guides science can compile.
Gifted insight: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including the Town of Islip Office of Economic Development, where they always unwrap the best business-development packages. Check them out.
