Long Island

What does a day in the life on&nbsp;Long Island look like? 
Follow along live as we capture the longest day of the year, and share your part by including #DayintheLifeLI in your photo and video posts from today on Instagram. (If you're participating, make sure your social media accounts are set to "public.")

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Newborns, Pride, surfing, and more from Day in the Life

From firefighters in training to hundreds of fish flopping in a boat — that's what a day in the life of Long Island looks like. We captured the longest day of the year, and shared your part by including #DayintheLifeLI in your photo and video posts from Friday, June 21 on Instagram. 


Day in the Life of Long Island 2019: How it unfolded

Newsday

Watch: Here's what the first day of summer looked like

Rachel Weiss

“You can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor from an old fruit jar.” 
This is James Penca’s first solo in “Million Dollar Quartet.” On June 21, he sang to a lively crowd as Johnny Cash, a role he’s played before and will play again, this time at the Argyle Theatre in Babylon. 
As he finished his moment in the musical’s opening number, “Blue Suede Shoes,” audience members shifted in their seats and some stole glances at each other. “He sounds just like him,” someone whispered. 
“Million Dollar Quartet” is based on the true story of a night of stars: On Dec. 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis assembled at Sun Records Studios in Tennessee for a one-night-only jam session. The musical follows the clash of personalities and professional pursuits that unfolded throughout the evening. 
Penca grew up in Cleveland, and “Million Dollar Quartet” marked his theatrical debut on Long Island. But in some ways, he’s a local — Penca is a hockey buff and since there’s no professional team in Cleveland, he grew to love the New York Islanders and has attended several games at the Nassau Coliseum. He’s also collaborated with Joe Iconis, a Garden City native and Tony nominated composer of the musical “Be More Chill.”
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Penca, 27, started performing in 2006. He studied musical theater at Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio, but says he didn’t fully catch the theater bug until he was working on summer stock shows in Vermont. “I thought, ‘Here are real, professional actors, people who gave their lives to the theater,’” he said.&nbsp; 
Everything changed after that. “It was the only real thing I was good at,” said Penca with a grin. 
Some of his past credits include the frustrated, misunderstood teen Moritz in “Spring Awakening” and the first-class ship designer in “Titanic: The Musical.” He previously played Johnny Cash in a production of “Million Dollar Quartet” in Weston, Vermont. 
Penca felt he was ready to take on the character because of his musical upbringing. The Beatles served as his gateway into a whirlwind of iconic discography. There, he discovered some of his favorite Cash tunes: “A Boy Named Sue” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” 
“So when it came time to sit down and learn the part, I knew all of it,” Penca said while getting ready in his dressing room. It was the last weekend of performances at the Argyle.<a data-onecms-id="contentid/storywidget.1.33341295" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="#/content/contentid/storywidget.1.33341295">Story Widget Link</a>
 
His warm-up routine is pretty relaxed —&nbsp;in fact, he says minimal preparation is best for this role. “The less I take care of myself, the better I sound,” he said with a laugh. “I could wake up at 5 a.m. and do the whole show from my bed, and sound amazing.” 
But the rehearsal process was another story. Penca says this is the hardest he’s ever worked on a character, but it became the easiest one to play. 
“It’s so overwhelming to do an impersonation of someone everyone knows,” he said. “Because every facet of the performance, everyone has a reference for it.” 
Penca has been playing the guitar for just as long as he’s been pursuing theater, and says he essentially had to reteach himself how to play in order to hold his instrument the way Cash did: up high and outstretched to the left. “It took forever to learn,” he noted. 
Even the way Cash held his pick differed from what Penca does. While Penca strums by pinching the pick and letting his other fingers relax, Cash held his in a closed fist. “That took weeks to perfect.” 
Along with those physical mannerisms, Penca spent plenty of time perfecting perhaps the most important and intimidating part of the role: the voice. He said “thankfully” the singing came easy, since he already has those signature&nbsp;low&nbsp;notes in his range. But Cash’s specific Arkansas accent lent itself to some in depth practice.&nbsp; 
Penca scoured YouTube for videos of Cash giving interviews, and focused on the way he said specific words, like “school,” and pronounced certain letters: whistle S’s, hard R’s. He also watched him singing just to get a sense of his rowdy stage persona, as perhaps most notably seen in his prison performances.<a data-onecms-id="contentid/storywidget.1.33341296" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="#/content/contentid/storywidget.1.33341296">Story Widget Link</a>
 
“The hardest thing was — and this took the entire rehearsal process until the day before opening — was singing so far forward in the nose, or mask,” Penca said. 
But he kept working at it. By the time opening night came around, he felt ready. And by the time the final weekend of performances came around, he was already thinking about what parts of Cash he’d focus on next, when he plays the role this summer in another production in Gainesville, Florida. 
“Next, I’m gonna work on the accent more,” Penca said. 
Those moments in the shadows before “Blue Suede Shoes” begins were some of Penca’s favorite times on stage. Looking out into the audience, he would reflect. “I’ll always think, ‘I’m doing theater and being paid to do it,’” he said. “And it’s great taking in that moment.” 
Penca delivered showstopping performances of Cash classics all night long, including his personal favorite, “Folsom Prison Blues.” Penca says he uses that time to really sink into character, drawing parallels between the lyrics and Cash’s current predicament of feeling trapped by his record label.&nbsp; 
Dressed head to toe in black — “Looks like you’re going to a funeral,” Vivian Cash told her husband in the 2005 biopic “Walk the Line” — Penca commands the stage with a quiet gravitas that can’t be rehearsed. Even when his Cash is playing the straight man to the likes of charmer Presley and rambunctious Jerry Lee, his stoic presence looms and lingers from the sidelines. He was met with hardy applause after his rendition of “I Walk The Line” in Act Two. 
No matter where Johnny Cash takes him, at the Argyle Theatre, the Cleveland native seemed right at home.

Suffolk

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The first day of summer was rainy and dark, but that didn’t stop Marissa Caira from bringing the beach to her students. 
Caira is a teacher at Brookville Center for Children’s Services at the AHRC Nassau campus. The six students in her class are all on the autism spectrum. Since they’re in school all summer long, Caira hatched the idea to bring a little bit of the beach indoors on June 21. 
“Since they do have special needs, going to the beach can be a challenge for some of them,” said Caira, 29.<a data-onecms-id="contentid/storywidget.1.33038777" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="#/content/contentid/storywidget.1.33038777">Day In The Life</a>
 
The beach can cause “sensory overload,” she said, particularly for individuals with autism. There are plenty of loud noises, from people shouting to seagulls screeching, plus all kinds of textures, such as concrete, the boardwalk&nbsp;and, of course, sand, often hot to the touch. The big crowds can also be very overwhelming, especially in the heat. 
So, Caira’s plan was to have her class lead a special sensory activity with a summertime twist. The students would get to experience the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of the beach, all from inside the multipurpose room. At a long table, Caira set up videos of sea life playing on iPads, candles that smelled like sunscreen and ocean mist, drums filled with beads that mimic sounds of crashing waves, juicy watermelon to snack on, and boxes of sand and water to touch. 
Caira’s class sat behind the table while other students, ranging in age from 4 to 15, tried out each station. If anyone got overwhelmed, they were able to take a break and color some beach scenes at another table. 
In addition to learning about the beach, Caira also wanted her students to build their socialization skills through the activity, and “think of their peers as their friends.”&nbsp; 
This is Caira’s second year in a row teaching this particular group of students. Prior to the activity, she taught a lesson about going to the beach and her students colored a banner to hang in the multipurpose room that said: “We Sense It’s Summer.” They were also able to choose which station they wanted to sit at, with taste and touch being the most sought-after activities, Caira said. 
“The kinetic sand is weighted,” she said. “So the weight feels good on their hands. They can bury their hands and let it sit on top.” 
The room was also decorated to look like the beach. Jake Baron, a staff trainer, brought in his own surfboard for the occasion.
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Over the course of the morning, 10 classes came in for 15 minutes at a time to get a sense of summer. Individuals of all different abilities came together, and from the comfort of the multipurpose room, the sound of crashing waves and the texture of sand didn’t seem too intimidating. 
One student, Christian Schuffenhauer, 7, is nonverbal and uses an iPad to communicate. He smiled while visiting each station, spending a lot of time playing with the ocean drum and dipping his hands in the sand. He used his iPad to say that his favorite part of summertime is swimming in the pool, and made little strokes with his arms before returning to the touch station. 
After all of the students went back to their classrooms, Caira said she was surprised by how much everyone seemed to enjoy their day. She added that she hopes to do this activity again, for every season. 
“You never know if they’re going to be overwhelmed by something,” she said. “But here, they can enjoy [the beach] in a safe environment.” 
The biggest surprise, though, was which station was the most popular: touch. “I’m surprised the watermelon wasn’t a bigger hit!” Caira said with a laugh.

Nassau

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Teacher brings summer to students with disabilities through five senses

LI teacher brings beach to students with disabilities

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Mark Harrington

&nbsp;As the season for menhaden, a bait fish also known as bunker,&nbsp;winds down in the bays of Long Island, the jack-of-all-trades reality of being a bayman was evident on a recent Friday morning on the Peconic River.&nbsp; 
It's&nbsp;just before 5 a.m. when&nbsp;Tom Gariepy arrives&nbsp;at a Riverhead Town boat launch to play his part in&nbsp;one of the last bunker hauls of the season. By midday, he'll&nbsp;be on his second boat on the Great South Bay, hauling 60 crab traps. Earlier this month, he harvested horseshoe crabs by the full moon.&nbsp; 
"Nowadays, you just can't support yourself on one fishery," says&nbsp;Gariepy,&nbsp;29, of Bluepoint, who fishes for eight or nine different species all year round. "You have to bounce around from fishery to fishery."&nbsp;<a data-onecms-id="contentid/storywidget.1.33038777" data-onecms-type="storywidget" href="#/content/contentid/storywidget.1.33038777">Story Widget Link</a>
 
He backs&nbsp;his trailered sharpie boat into the still, 68-degree water of the Peconic River, parks&nbsp;his pickup on the road and waits&nbsp;for veteran fishermen Lenny Nilson and Kenny Andersen before the three push&nbsp;off in two boats for the waters around Indian Island, in Riverhead. 
On the way out, Gariepy sees&nbsp;a giant school of bunker just beyond the launch point, but Nilson has&nbsp;a feeling about the waters to the north and east. Water in the Peconic River, Nilson says, “is like root beer,” from sediment and runoff, and the fish don’t like it. Still, at the eastern end of the river, just inside of Little Peconic Bay, the surface bristles&nbsp;with fish as they speed around Indian Island to the north near Meeting House Creek. 
The men&nbsp;set their net around a sizable school of bunker just off the beach at Indian Island, gather&nbsp;the seine-net ends on the shallow waters and begin hauling in by hand. The 30-foot bag at the net's middle point, known as a purse,&nbsp;&nbsp; gradually fills&nbsp;with shivering silver fish. Gariepy and Andersen, 38, of Sayville,&nbsp;heft&nbsp;the bag end into Nilson’s sharpie by hand. 
But it’s not enough. 
The boats can hold around 4,000 pounds of fish each. This haul is&nbsp;1,000 pounds. After scouting the quiet waters of Jamesport, they head&nbsp;back to the Peconic. 

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Bunker are an essential fish&nbsp;in the food chain, preyed on by everything from bluefish and&nbsp;stripers to&nbsp;whales, and harvested by the ton to supply lobstermen, crab trappers and sport fishermen with bait. The bony fish are just over six inches long.&nbsp; 
The bunker quota for this time of year is 40,000 pounds per licensed fisherman per day, but demand is low right now, Nilson says, with a glut of bunker filling the pipeline from Maine to the Carolinas. Nilson, 72, who&nbsp;founded and owned L&amp;L Wholesale Bait of Islip but sold the business eight years ago and its waterfront land this spring, won’t take anywhere near the limit today. He fishes for bunker to supply his former business during the spring season, but these days he spends the off season watching his grandchildren. Between the two boats they’ll bring home around 5,000 pounds.&nbsp; 
Gariepy has&nbsp;a long day ahead, finishing the morning on the Great South Bay.&nbsp;It’s considered a necessity for full-time commercial fishermen&nbsp; to have multiple licenses and harvest&nbsp;multiple species, given season closures, migrating fish populations and restrictive quotas. Gariepy also fishes for horseshoe crabs, eels, shiners, clams and conch.&nbsp; 
As the men return&nbsp;to the Peconic after a disappointing haul at Meeting House Creek, Nilson points&nbsp;out a “wall of water” up ahead, and soon&nbsp;a steady spring rain drenches them. They pilot through it and set their nets where Gariepy saw a giant school an hour earlier. Soon, both boats are half-filled with fish, enough for the day.

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