Michael Dobie

Long Island

Columnist and Editorial Board Member at Newsday

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

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Articles

Sly Stone, Brian Wilson and the leaving of legacies

1 week ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

We lost two music luminaries this past week. Sly Stone and Brian Wilson died two days apart, both 82 years old, geniuses of vastly different musical persuasions whose periods of greatest flourishing melded into one another. That their disparate sounds — psychedelic soul-funk and California surfer pop-rock — could be so popular and so influential during the same era is more proof that the stretch from the mid-60s to the mid-70s was our greatest period of music.
Electric flight from East Hampton evokes LI aviation history

2 weeks ago | newsday.com | Michael Dobie

Flying high has deep roots on Long Island. Aviation is as much a part of our history as any industry or pastime in a region where taking to the air has been almost as important as getting in the water. So it was appropriate that Long Island again found itself at the center of the aeronautics world last week when the first fully electric passenger-carrying plane to land at one of the metropolitan area's major airports took off from East Hampton and landed at JFK.
On this Memorial Day, let us never forget

1 month 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

1 month 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

1 month 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

2 months 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

2 months 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

2 months 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.