You deserve this one: Well done, intrepid innovators! With the hot and historic Summer of 2023 crawling toward its finish, you’ve raced to the end of another challenging workweek – and earned yourself another glorious late-season weekend.
Sour grapes: Actually, those are cherries and oranges, essential ingredients on National Whiskey Sour Day.
Labor of love: Before we put a bow on this five-day socioeconomic sprint and get to our two-day blow, a quick scheduling note about Innovate Long Island’s extended Labor Day plans.
Please enjoy your regularly scheduled newsletters next Monday (Aug. 28) and Wednesday (Aug. 30) – after that we’ll be back Sept. 5 with fresh website content, podcasts and newsletters. More reminders next week.
This will make you feel better: Crushed by the notion of us skipping a newsletter or two? Perhaps National Whiskey Sour Day and/or National Banana Split Day will cheer you up.
Both are also useful icebreakers on National Kiss and Make Up Day, deescalating marital tiffs and sibling rivalries every Aug. 25.
Long view: He’d kiss and make up with the Catholic Church later (kinda), but Italian inventor and philosopher Galileo Galilei started down the road to cosmic immortality on this date in 1609, when he demonstrated his telescope for the first time.
Who dat? French Regent Duke Philip II of Orléans attained a bit of immortality himself on Aug. 25, 1718, when Louisiana Gov. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville founded the City of New Orleans on the western banks of the Mississippi River.
Park place: Already pretty famous was President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Organic Act 107 years ago today, creating the National Park Service (currently serving and protecting more than 84 million acres of pristine federal lands).
Scan fan: CT technology has changed medicine.
Inner space: Helping to protect our bods are CT scans (for “computerized tomography”), known alternately as CAT scans (for “computed axial tomography” or sometimes “computer assisted tomography”). Whichever acronym you choose, the science entered U.S. play on this date in 1973.
Outer space: And it was this date in 2012 when the Voyager I space probe quietly passed through the heliosphere – our Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer – and entered interstellar space.
Packing the famous Golden Record (everything aliens need to know about humans, plus directions to Earth), the first human-made object to explore beyond the Solar System is now about 15 billion miles from home, cruising at roughly 38,000 mph toward a star in the constellation Camelopardalis (ETA: about 40,000 years).
Model behavior: American inventor and industrialist Joshua Lionel Cowen (1877-1965) – who leveraged his tinkering skills (and a $12,000 U.S. Navy contract) into the startup that eventually rolled out the beloved Lionel Trains brand – would be 146 years old today.
Making a racket: Gibson overhand-smashed through racial barriers.
Also born on Aug. 25 were American inventor and entrepreneur Arnold Neustadter (1910-1966), who spun up the Rolodex; American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who collected awards, degrees and decorations by the bushel; American tennis and golf pro Althea Neale Gibson (1927-2003), the first African American to win a tennis Grand Slam title; Scottish actor Sir Thomas Sean Connery (1930-2020), the definitive Bond and a whole lot more; and American cook, TV personality, businesswoman and author Rachael Ray (born 1968), who’s cooked her last dish as host of a syndicated daytime talk show.
Oh, the horror: And take a bow, Timothy Walter Burton! The American filmmaker, animator and artist – known best for gothic fantasies including “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and the late-1980s “Batman” revival – turns 65 today.
Wish the Big Fish well at editor@innovateli.com, where we’re lost in the Dark Shadows without your news tips and we have a Nightmare Before Christmas (and at all other times) without your calendar events.
About our sponsor: SUNY Old Westbury empowers students to own the future they want for themselves. In a small-college atmosphere and as part of the dynamic, diverse 5,000-strong student body, Old Westbury students get up close and personal with the life and career they want to pursue. Whether it’s a cutting-edge graduate program in data analytics, highly respected programs in accounting and computer information sciences, or any of the more than 70 degrees available, a SUNY Old Westbury education sets students on a course toward success. Own your future.
BUT FIRST, THIS
School of rock: The center of Long Island’s music-and-entertainment universe is channeling star power into regional classrooms.
The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame has scheduled two free teacher workshops in collaboration with TeachRock, a New York City-based philanthropic-education organization founded in 2002 by legendary rocker Steven Van Zandt (with help from Bono, Bruce Springsteen and others). TeachRock provides free resources for underfunded K-12 music programs, and the workshops – essentially, a TeachRock review by former Freeport Public Schools music teacher and current TeachRock “star teacher” Stephanie Arnell – deepen a LIMEHoF/TeachRock partnership announced earlier this year.
The Sept. 17 and Oct. 15 workshops rock on multiple fronts, according to LIMEHoF Educational Programs Director Tom Needham, who cheered both learning and brand-building advantages. “We are so excited to give teachers this opportunity to learn more about Steven Van Zandt’s TeachRock curriculum and to give them some time to explore our museum,” Needham said Thursday. “My hope is that this leads to many music-themed lessons in the classroom and field trips to the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame.”
In the works: A new affordable-housing complex may rise on Freeport’s dilapidated Moxey Rigby property. (Artist rendition: Nixon+Pope)
Showing some Moxey: Developers hoping to replace a dilapidated Freeport public-housing development (rents subsidized by the government) with a new affordable-housing complex (rents locked below median income levels) may get a helping hand.
The Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency has issued preliminary approval for a tax-incentives package benefitting The Gardens at Buffalo, an LLC spun off Lawrence-based BOSFA Properties. The developer is planning to remake the circa-1958 Moxey Rigby property – a former Freeport Village-managed public-housing development, uninhabitable since 2012’s Superstorm Sandy – into a 200-unit affordable-rental complex with 100 one-bedroom, 70 two-bedroom, 20 three-bedroom and 10 studio apartments.
The $49 million renovation project has nothing to do with the new Moxey Rigby namesake development opened in 2019 by the Freeport Housing Authority on a nearby site. And while the economic-benefits package must undergo a full IDA review and final vote, you can pencil that in now, according to Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency CEO Frederick Parola, who this week trumpeted “a tremendous positive boost to the community by ridding it of a blighted structure and providing much-needed housing.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Standing together: As reported cases increase, The Safe Center Long Island is working proactively to give Nassau students the tools and techniques they need to battle cyberbullies.
Resource-rich: Both Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast and our amazing Voices team deliver front-line perspectives and expert opinions on law, education, marketing, healthcare, workforce development, social justice, commercial real estate and other socioeconomic staples. Pick a point, choose a champion and get smarter now!
ICYMI
Leading Long Island organizations and top regional rainmakers have been busy this summer playing C-suite musical chairs.
BEST OF THE WEST (AND SOMETIMES NORTH/SOUTH)
Innovate LI’s inbox overrunneth with inspirational innovations from all North American corners. This week’s brightest out-of-towners:
From Iowa: Ames-based soil-biology pacesetter Trace Genomics sends next-generation testing capabilities north in key Canadian collaboration.
From Texas: Austin-based water-gun wunderkind Gel Blaster brings videogames into the real world via wireless Blaster Portal smart-targeting system.
From Iowa: Ames-based veterinary-software leader GlobalVetLink teams with Boston-based BetterVet to streamline USDA documentation for international pet travel.
ON THE MOVE
Edward McCabe
+ Edward McCabe has joined Uniondale-based Sahn Ward Braff Koblenz as a partner in the Hauppauge office. He previously managed his own general law practice.
+ Heather Banoub has been hired as assistant vice president of community relations at Stony Brook University. She was assistant director of communications for the Office of Government and Community Affairs at New York University in Manhattan.
+ Gregg Marano has been promoted to senior resident director at Merrill in Smithtown. He was the Long Island east market sales manager.
+ Meghan Tyrrel has been promoted to assistant director of pharmacy at Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Commack. She was supervisor of pharmacy.
+ Dwight Chase has been promoted to project hydrogeologist at Bohemia-based P.W. Grosser Consulting. He was a field hydrogeologist.
+ Tami McElwee has been appointed director of humanities for the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District. She was the principal of Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in Oyster Bay.
+ Christina Graziano has been hired as an elementary education teacher at Lindell Elementary School in Long Beach. She was a pre-kindergarten teacher at Lawrence Early Childhood Center No. 4 School in Inwood.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know (just ask SUNY Old Westbury). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Shopping Around Edition)
Line items: “Shopping” ain’t what it used to be.
Mall rats: American retailers have sucked the fun out of “going shopping.”
Dead lift: Shoplifting is back, it’s organized and it’s hurting major box stores.
Don’t drink and buy: Behold, “drunk shopping” – America’s $14 billion shame.
Bang for your buck: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including SUNY Old Westbury – among the best college experiences your (very reasonable) tuition can buy. Check them out.
