Michael Dobie

Long Island

Columnist and Editorial Board Member at Newsday

Editorial board member, @newsdayopinion, #NYU, #newshaiku, proud grandpa

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Articles

On this Memorial Day, let us never forget

1 week ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Our nation was forged by war. And in the two-plus centuries since, we have gone to battle over and over for many different reasons, some noble, some less so. We learn about these conflicts in real time from news media and then from a distance in textbooks, historical nonfiction, films, and TV shows. But unless we have the opportunity to absorb in person a firsthand account of the fighting, it can be easy to keep the reality of war at a distance.
Pete Rose saga is a story for our times

2 weeks ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

The Pete Rose saga is a story for our times — messy, complicated, fueled by competing passions, with a plot line that includes a president whose presence sometimes seems inescapable. It's a tale that is about much more than whether or not the deceased baseball great gets into his sport's hall of fame. The bare facts are simply stated.
A lesson from Roger Daltrey in dealing with ravages of time

3 weeks ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

The Song is Over. That famous tune title is also the cheeky name of the upcoming concert tour by The Who — the band's final road trip, its members say. They bade audiences goodbye once before, more than four decades ago, but this one has a heavier air of finality. Perspective comes from lead singer Roger Daltrey, now 81, who told the crowd at a charity concert at London's Royal Albert Hall in March that he was suffering from hearing and vision loss. "The joys of getting old mean you go deaf.
Listening hard for the sounds of silence

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

We were out in the yard the last couple of weekends, immersed in tasks that were mundane and yet glorious. Weeding vegetable beds. Filling the bird bath. Adding to the compost bin. Replacing the hose that snakes through the raspberries. Pruning the blueberries and blackberries. Planting the rows of peas. Cutting down the ornamental grasses that waved bravely through the winds of winter, making room for the green shoots that now are thrusting forth with the hope of spring. There is joy in such immersion.
Trump administration push for more babies not an easy task

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

It should be no surprise that the Trump administration is exploring ways to convince Americans to have more babies.
Astronomers find new clue in hunt for life in the universe

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

As long as there have been humans, we have looked to the sky and wondered what — and who — was out there, and where it all came from. One who did that ages ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, proposed that the universe contained many worlds, some old, some new, all with beginnings and ends. In recent centuries, the search for life on other worlds has picked up steam with occasional revelations piquing the probe.
Return of dire wolves is not what it seems

1 month ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

The headlines and TV chyrons delivered the breathless news: The dire wolves had returned. It was kind of thrilling, even if you were not a fan of “Game of Thrones” where the creatures were a baleful presence. The idea that a species that went extinct some 12,500 years ago had somehow come back to life — epitomized by a haunting photo of two young white wolves against a wintry landscape of snow and ice — was intoxicating. Too bad it wasn’t really true.
Trump, Booker, Musk, tariffs: reading tea leaves of an extraordinary week

2 months ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Well, that was a week. The kind of week that makes you wish you could see deep into the future to learn how history will record it. A blip or a boulder? A particle or a pivot? A fleeting moment in time or something with very long tendrils? It was the kind of week that produced such a whiplash of news that even some ground-shifting election results Tuesday were specks in the rear view mirror by Friday. Which is not to say they ceased to have significance, just that we quickly lost sight of them.
Searching for the signs of spring

2 months ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Spring has sprung. Or has it? Sometimes it's hard to tell. We all have our own yardsticks. For some, it's the first robin hopping around the lawn. For others, it's the crocuses or daffodils pushing their way up through the slowly warming soil, injecting splashes of color back into what's been a dreary landscape. Baseball is a signifier for others, with the transference of winter to spring marked by pitchers-and-catchers giving way to actual games.
The tale of the doctor in the Bronx and the Gila monster

Mar 9, 2025 | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Have you heard the story about the scientific gold in Gila monster venom? With what's happening in Washington these days, it's a tale worth telling. The best starting point for this decades-long drama is the late 1980s at the VA Hospital in the Bronx. That's where young endocrinologist John Eng, who was treating veterans with diabetes and whose research specialty was peptide hormones, was seeking to identify new hormones whose benefits for human health had yet to be tested.