Where exactly is Long Island heading?

Some news gnaws at you.

Such was the case when the Shelter Island Heights Pharmacy shuttered its pharmacy operation. It was the only place on Shelter Island where residents could get prescriptions filled. The owner closed what was essentially a local monopoly because of what it termed “significant operating deficits in recent years.”

While the store will remain open to sell over-the-counter medications and other products and to keep running its soda fountain and lunch counter, prescriptions are being transferred to Southold Pharmacy on the mainland, inconvenient at the least for Shelter Island residents, especially its senior citizens.

But empathy, palpable and personal, is not the source of the disquiet. That stems from the pharmacy itself and its closure during these tenuous economic times. It’s another chord in a dissonant soundtrack, another piece of kindling for a fire that continues to smolder until . . . what exactly? Where exactly is Long Island heading?

The uncertainty evokes an Ernest Hemingway character in “The Sun Also Rises” who is asked how he went bankrupt. “Gradually, then suddenly,” he responds, a reply at once cheeky and ominous.

Long Island has seen troubling trend lines for years. Scarce and expensive housing, exorbitant child care, rising insurance premiums. Health care costs that never stop spiking and new fare increases approved recently by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the new year.

And taxes — oh yes, taxes — remain high, thanks primarily to school district levies that are worth it in some high-performing districts but of questionable value in others where it’s not clear that you are getting what you are paying for. What is clear is that taxpayers are buckling under the strain.

It’s no wonder many Long Island residents have long predicted the region’s demise, but it hasn’t happened. Yet. Where are we on the continuum?

Communities, like people, can die from a thousand paper cuts but most of that time you’re just bleeding. How will we know when we’re getting close to the cut that kills?

We would be wise to watch carefully our small businesses. They are the engines of our neighborhoods and possibly the canaries in this particular coal mine. It’s tough to open and sustain a small business in the best of times and we clearly don’t have those right now. Many small businesses are teetering on an increasingly thin edge of profitability for reasons ranging from the new tariff regime to higher insurance and labor costs to spikes in the prices of things like coffee beans. Small businesses here and elsewhere are putting plans on pause because of uncertainty and concern.

While dog-eat-dog reality is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism, the status quo feels like something other than the natural result of free market competition.

The Shelter Island pharmacy’s news followed the beloved Eastport General Store’s announcement that it will close later this month, a decision owner Amber Otto attributed to “the constant struggles and stressors of owning a small business.” And upscale Asian fusion restaurant Mito in Babylon recently ceased operations after only two years, joining more than 30 other Long Island restaurants to close their doors this year as charted by Newsday.

When a business closes, it’s not just an economic loss. It tears the fabric of a community and leaves many of us poorer, at least in spirit. Blithely counting on an endless well of entrepreneurs to replenish our Main Streets is not a sound strategy, especially now.

My wife and I were walking through Babylon Village last week when we came upon the spot where Mito had stood. The building was dark, a sign on the door announcing its closure. The sidewalk was quiet, the parking lot alongside the building empty.

We lingered for a moment, then walked away, gnawing on the news.

Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie1@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.