Donald Boomgaarden

Pandemic Primer October 19, 2020

Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus

The COVID-19 pandemic and its evolving aftermath are reshaping the world around us, and myriad Long Island forces – large and small, corporate and nonprofit, industrial and academic – have risen to the challenge. Innovate Long Island presents Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus as a real-time journal of this region’s resourceful response to the greatest global challenge since World War II. Stay healthy, dear readers. Halloween is hell on wheels for ‘alternate…

Newsletters June 12, 2020

No. 509: On peanut butter cookies, LaGuardia Airport and kelp – plus baseball (remember that?)

Phase 2 Friday: You’ve done it again, dear readers! Another tough workweek conquered – and, as your reward, Long Island’s first weekend under Phase 2 reopening protocols. Well played! It’s June 12 out there, and while you’re probably itching for your teenager to find a summer job after a half-year of home learning, it is indeed the U.N.’s World Day Against Child Labour, which is a very different matter and no joke. That’s, like,…

Newsletters June 10, 2020

No. 508: Boomgaarden rocks, Judy Garland sings, industrial forces go home and gougers get theirs

Big day: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and not just any Wednesday but the day Long Island engages Phase 2 in Albany’s official reopening playbook – an important step for those still following the social-distancing rules (including you, we hope). That means it’s June 10 out there – Army Day in Jordan, Navy Day in Italy and, here in the States, National Iced Tea Day, defending the nation from thirst. Well, that’s new: Today…

The Debrief June 9, 2020

Debrief: Big stage, challenges for sonic Boomgaarden

For his next number, Donald Boomgaarden is playing way past Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” (an aria plus 30 riffs, mastered years ago). The longtime concert pianist became St. Joseph’s College’s eighth president in July 2017, high note (so far) of a crescendo career soaring from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music (master’s and doctoral degrees) to the Harvard Institute for Management and Leadership to the University of Salzburg’s Institut für Musikwissenschaft, part of a…

Newsletters May 27, 2020

No. 504: On Phase 1, thousands of grads and 918 million degrees (but who’s counting)?

Cross your fingers: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and not just the midpoint of this abbreviated WFH workweek, but possibly the Phase 1 reopening Long Island has been waiting for. Stay tuned. All over the map: Either way, it’s May 27 out there and a busy one on Planet Earth, featuring Nicaragua’s Armed Forces Day, Bolivia’s Mother’s Day, Nigeria’s Children’s Day and Slavery Abolition Day in Guadeloupe. Here in the States, nothing quite so…