Fall in: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and not just any Wednesday but the first Wednesday of the new month and the new season, with Labor Day – and, unofficially, Summer 2024 – behind us (autumnal equinoxes notwithstanding).
However you slice your seasonal pie, schools are open, Halloween decorations have overrun our supermarkets and it’s pretty dark out there by 7 p.m. – for all intents and purposes, Fall has arrived.
Make it a double: Why stop at one? It’s Eat an Extra Dessert Day!
Hire ambitions: Today is Sept. 4 and other new arrivals are shining on Global Talent Acquisition Day, an international homage to the critical importance (and difficult nature) of recruiting ace professionals (an especially daunting challenge on Long Island).
Lower rung: Today is also National Newspaper Carrier Day, saluting what was (for many) a first-ever job and is (in the digital age) a dying breed.
Also making news is Eat an Extra Dessert Day, a super-sweet ending encouraging us to double up on dinner’s closing course every Sept. 4.
Los Angelenos: Marking more of a sweet start, the City of Los Angeles – more accurately, El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles (“The Town of the Queen of the Angels”) – was founded on this date in 1781.
The river of dreams: Back here on the East Coast, after years of engineering and trial runs, master innovator Robert Fulton launched scheduled passenger service aboard the steamboat Clermont – traveling the Hudson River between NYC and Albany – on Sept. 4, 1807.
Seen the lights go on on Broadway: Elsewhere in the city, the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. flipped the switch on the first central electric station to supply commercial power – located on downtown Pearl Street – 142 years ago today.
Big shot: Also based in New York was world-class inventor/industrialist George Eastman, who received a U.S. patent for his legendary box camera on this date in 1888.
Sarge in charge: Before he enlisted, lazy Beetle Bailey was a laid-back college student.
The ballad of Billy Beetle the kid: And it was Sept. 4, 1950, when beloved Mort Walker comic strip “Beetle Bailey” first appeared in American newspapers.
Known best for the titular layabout’s time in the U.S. Army, the strip didn’t start out as a military lampoon. At first, Beetle was a lazy college student; with the Korean War raging, he actually ducked into a military recruitment office to avoid an amorous coed, and the rest is Sunday-funnies history.
The rest of the story: Legendary American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey (born Paul Harvey Aurandt, 1918-2009) – an ABC News Radio commentator and unflinching columnist who was the voice of rational conservative thought for decades – would be 106 years old today.
Hat’s off: Piazza joined Tom Seaver as the only two Hall of Famers to don Mets caps.
Also born on Sept. 4 were American machinist and inventor Cullen Whipple (1801-1868), who created the first pointed screw-making machine; American inventor and draftsman Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928), a remarkably comprehensive African American inventor and patent-holder who fled slavery for greatness; American mechanical engineer and naval architect Simon Lake (1866-1945), who obtained 200-plus patents and designed many of the U.S. Navy’s earliest submarines; American cognitive scientist John McCarthy (1927-2011), the “Father of Artificial Intelligence” (and progenitor of the phrase); and American singer, songwriter and businesswoman Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter (born 1981), the Grammy-winning cultural icon known well as “Queen Bey.”
The pizza man: And take a bow, Michael Joseph Piazza! The retired American baseball player – counted by many among history’s greatest hitting catchers, decried by others as a steroid-enhanced asterisk and, either way, one of only two National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees to go in as a New York Met – turns 56 today.
Give the current manager of the Italian national baseball team your best at editor@innovateli.com, where we take your news tips deep – and your calendar events always go yard.
About our sponsor: Stony Brook University Economic Development collaborates with regional innovators, supports startups and facilitates early-stage enterprise by leveraging the resources of a SUNY Flagship University and partner Brookhaven National Laboratory. Combining state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, the world-class expertise of 900-plus scientific investigators and best commercialization practices, Economic Development and its partners have the collective imagination and ability to attain exciting new heights for the Long Island innovation economy. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Keith Brown: Sewer school.
In the flow: A leading Long Island architectural firm has led regional lawmakers on a deep dive into stormwater.
Melville-based H2M architects + engineers joined New York State Assemblyman Keith Brown (R,C-12th Dist.) to host an Aug. 20 “lunch & learn” seminar for local-government officials focused on updated New York State requirements for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems. Known colloquially as MS4s, the public systems – which typically include storm drains, gutters, manholes and catch basins – collect and reroute stormwater overflow to minimize contaminated runoff into Long Island Sound and other surface waters.
Speakers including H2M Project Environmental Planner Angelica Apolinaris, H2M Senior Civil Discipline Engineer Sean Callahan and Town of Huntington Senior Environmental Planner Christian Granelli addressed the specifics of obtaining state stormwater-discharge permits on highly urbanized Long Island. “As Long Islanders, we have to be especially vigilant about stormwater runoff and its ecological impacts,” Brown noted. “I am very proud to have collaborated with H2M on this presentation and grateful to see so many attendees … who are committed to improving our stormwater infrastructure and improv[ing] the quality of the water surrounding our island.”
They care: The Nassau County Bar Association has lent a helping hand to the county’s leading victim-service organization.
Through its charitable We Care Fund, the Bar Association has issued a $10,000 grant to the Client Needs Project at The Safe Center, a Bethpage-based 501(c)3 organization dedicated to assisting victims of domestic abuse. The center and its Client Needs Project provide essential resources to abuse survivors including transportation, temporary housing, food, clothing, legal representation, infant-care necessities, moving fees and more – everything survivors and their children need to escape from dangerous and dehumanizing domestic-violence situations.
Founded in 1988 and supported by Nassau-wide attorneys and judges, the We Care Fund has distributed more than $5 million in charitable grants to improve the quality of life of children, the elderly and less-fortunate residents of Long Island’s western county – and the Client Needs Project is grateful to be counted among those recipients, according to The Safe Center Associate Executive Director Debbie Lyons. “This grant allows our staff to provide the children and adults fleeing their abusers with necessities to begin their lives again,” Lyons said in a statement.
TOP OF THE SITE
Making them hole: Port Washington-based Helen Keller Services chose a special bagel-making event to showcase its new state-of-the-art kitchen for deafblind chefs.
Listen (to your heart): University presidents, leading lawmakers, nonprofit trailblazers, top researchers, iconic innovators, renowned entertainers and more … hear directly from Long Island’s greatest leaders on Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast, featuring intimate one-on-ones with the smartest and most creative thinkers behind the regional innovation economy. Success stories, big ideas and lots of laughs, in half-hour chunks.
VOICES
Welcome to Innovate Long Island’s Voices column, where exclusive experts in media, law, healthcare, technology, social services, history and more share their unique perspectives and best practices – innovative solutions to ripped-from-the-headlines socioeconomic problems, waiting for the established executive and the up-and-coming entrepreneur in our vast Voices library. Choose an issue, pick a pro and get smarter now!
STUFF WE’RE READING
End of the line? The electric-vehicle surge is creating a used-car problem. Vox guts gas-guzzlers.
Drawing a (cruise) line: Why this major cruise company won’t simulcast presidential debates on public screens. The Street watches in private.
Below the “time poverty” line: Real life has caught up with many overworked U.S. collegians. The Conversation explores structural inequities.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ PsychoGenics, a New Jersey-based biotech specializing in artificial intelligence-enabled phenotypic drug discovery, received a $3 million SBIR grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
+ Peregrine Exploration, a New York City-based blockchain R&D company, raised $3.6 million in funding led by Polychain Capital and Dragonfly.
+ Melodi Health, a Minnesota-based medical device manufacturer, raised $10.75 million in Series A funding led by HM Venture Partners, Engage Venture Partners, Southeast Minnesota Capital Fund and Three Bridges Private Capital.
+ Comun, a NYC-based, Latino-founded fintech, raised $21.5 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures.
+ Parry Labs, a Virginia-based defense-technology developer, closed an $80 million first funding round led by Capitol Meridian Partners.
+ Diakonos Oncology Corp., a Texas-based clinical-stage immuno-oncology pioneer, raised $11.4 million in seed funding led by Restem Group.
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 Stony Brook University). Marlene McDonnell can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (Back To School Edition)
Slow learners: More districts are waking up to the idea that smartphones are a dangerous distraction in schools.
Before school: Including clothes and required tech, supplies now average nearly $900.
During school: School-building cellphone bans are catching on fast.
After school: Why schools are finally rethinking homework.
School pride: Please continue supporting the innovative institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including Stony Brook University Economic Development, the business-development muscle power-lifting the SUNY flagship school. Check them out.
