Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News
November 11, 2023
The lawn at Fort William Henry bears 9,000 flags this year as part of its 8th annual Field of Flags created to honor veterans. Photo: Ashley Orzech/Fort William Henry.
Dear Colleagues and Friends:
Today is Veterans Day, observed on November 11 each year since 1918, when on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a temporary cessation of hostilities was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in World War I.
It became known as Armistice Day and became a federal holiday in 1938. In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, Armistice Day became Veterans Day. Across the country, Americans will mark this important day with speeches, parades, and moments of silence for the fallen. In Santa Monica, California, Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters will fly over the Santa Monica Pier and a West Point drill team will put on a demonstration.
In the Midview school district in Ohio, 50 veterans’ homes have been decorated with custom yard signs and handmade cards from elementary students. Local men and women who served in the nation’s military were greeted with a simple message: “Freedom isn’t free. Midview thanks this veteran.”
Fort William Henry in Lake George, N.Y., will honor veterans today at its eighth Field of Flags ceremony, Inspired by “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red,” a public art exhibit installed in the moat of the Tower of London in 2014. The event started with 53 flags. Today at 11 a.m. re-enactors and guides from the museum will fire a 21-gun salute over 9,000 flags.
In whatever way you choose to observe this important day, please thank a veteran for his or her service.
SHOPPING FORECAST: Consumer spending drives the U.S. economy and, by the numbers, the forecast for how much Americans will spend during the holidays looks solid. Yet small business owners appear to have a collective anxiety about the months ahead, according to this AP report. Americans kept up their spending over the summer; the economy grew by 4.9% in the third quarter. But consumer debt is also at historic levels. A recent AP-NORC poll found that many Americans are concerned about their financial future.
THE WRIGHT STUFF: Burlington, Vt., is home to a new manufacturing facility that will mass produce planes that fly on batteries. Last month, a plane built by Beta Technologies took off from Burlington and flew down the East Coast through congested airspace over Boston, New York, Washington and other cities. Beta is one of many companies working on electric aviation. Its airplane has flown as far as 386 miles on a single charge, but the company said it expects its customers to generally use it for trips of 100 to 150 miles – say, Burlington to Syracuse. “We’re doing some really meaningful work for our state, our country and the planet,” says a Beta pilot who formerly flew for the Air Force, National Guard and Delta.
OTHER WORLDLY: Euclid, the space telescope, is beginning to reveal its findings. This week, the European Space Agency shared the first images from the robotic telescope in space. Euclid is on a quest to map a third of the extragalactic sky and to reveal how the mysterious influences of dark matter and dark energy have shaped the structure of the universe. The new images are just a taste of what scientists expect the space telescope to reveal. Perhaps most striking is a shot of the Horsehead Nebula, a star factory 1,375 light-years from Earth with a distinct equine-shaped cloud.
TALKING IN CLASS: When the kids at Timber Creek High School headed for the courtyard to eat lunch, something ubiquitous was suddenly missing: Cell phones. The kids hung out, talked, even played a pick-up game of pickleball. The Florida school has banned cell phones for fear that they might be used to incite or promote violence. At a minimum, they have become a major distraction and impediment to learning. Parents and kids are uneasy with the ban. Teachers take a different view. “Oh, I love it,” said Nikita McCaskill, a government teacher at Timber Creek. “Students are more talkative and more collaborative.”
ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE: One in two Americans reported being lonely before COVID. Now, the numbers are much higher, and a small, informal, bipartisan group of members of Congress is exploring solutions. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy calls loneliness “one of the most important political issues of our time.” He’s pursuing a national strategy to improve social connection and proposed a White House office, an advisory council, and $5 million in research funding. This week, New York Gov. Hochul named Dr. Ruth Westheimer, 95, New York’s first ambassador to the lonely.
Photographer Julie Dowd of Red Hen Studios captured frosty leaves on a chilly morning last week. Credit: Red Hen Studios.
AIR QUALITY: Remember those hazy days last summer, when the air in upstate New York was thick with smoke from wildfires in Canada? Many turned to an EPA website to find out about local air quality. Alistair Hayden, a professor at Cornell University, discovered that 28 of the state’s counties – nearly half-- lacked real-time information because they didn’t have an air-quality sensor that could detect fine particulate matter. Hayden collaborated with county health organizations and Cornell Cooperative Extension to get the sensors in place. Data will be used to issue alerts to the public, and to help public health officials decide when to close schools or recommend that events be postponed.
NO DECLINE AT THE TIMES: In recent years, when The New York Times was a print publication only, it circulated something in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 copies a day. This week it announced it has passed 10 million digital subscribers along with 670,000 print subscribers. In the age of circulation declines for many newspapers, The Times is growing its digital numbers through “verticals” – essentially special publications on topics of interest to Times readers, especially food and a new sports-coverage partnership with The Atlantic, and games like Wordle.
POLES ARE UP: Trees, especially very tall, straight, knot-free Pine trees, are back in demand and harvesters are cutting as fast as they can. Why? Utilities need more power poles to carry the energy that electric cars need, to support the solar buildout, to prepare for strong storms and support broadband expansion. This summer Montreal’s Stella-Jones, one of the two firms that dominates the pole business, bought pole facilities in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, where it also opened a new plant to peel bark. Additional plants are planned for next year in British Columbia and North Carolina. Stella also installed automated drilling equipment at its Eugene, Ore., facility and is looking for other places robots can speed output.
THE BOOKS YOU GIVE: In the Summer of 2022, four Saratoga Springs, N.Y., women, concerned about the national trend toward banning children’s books, waged a little literary protest of their own. They created a free community library in a box beautifully painted and placed outside Caffe Lena. Recently, right after the book shelves had been stocked with more than 30 books, somebody stole all but one, “The Hate You Give.” When news of the theft surfaced, one of the stolen books was returned: “The Bible.”
TOO COOL: National Geographic dispatched teams of journalists around the world to tell its 2.2 million readers the 30 coolest places to visit in 2024. Some are what you’d expect: The Alps, Pompeii, Lima, Belfast, and Europe by train. And then this: Upstate New York.
FEMME À LA MONTRE: Pablo Picasso’s painting of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, one of many the artist created of her, sold at auction for more than $139 million this week, becoming the second most valuable work by the artist ever sold at auction.
SEAFOOD COURSE: With just 13 days until Thanksgiving, our thoughts naturally are turning to preparation of all the traditional fixins, as Julia Child might have done. Julia, as you know, cut no corners in the Thanksgiving kitchen – except when it came to this.
OLEG PROTOPOPOV: Russian ice-skating pair (and husband and wife) Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova were called romantic, creative, bewitching, elegant and graceful. They won Olympic gold medals in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1964, becoming the first skaters from Russia or the Soviet Union at large to win the gold in Olympic pairs, then won again four years later in Grenoble, France. Creating their own choreography, they also captured every world and European title from 1965 through 1968. But in 1969, Soviet officials decided the Protopopovs, as they were known, were too old for competition. The couple’s response was to defect to the United States and continued skating as touring professionals. The couple summered in Lake Placid and spent winters in Grindelwald, Switzerland. Ludmila died in 2017 at 81. Oleg Protopopov died on Oct. 31 in Interlaken, Switzerland. He was 91.
ALAN HEVESI was a college basketball star, a cerebral and aggressive political figure, a giant killer, who rose from the New York State Assembly to become New York City Comptroller and later New York State Comptroller. Back-to-back scandals cost him his job and reputation. He served 20 months in prison and died in an assisted living facility at 83.
“It’s incredible. It gets back to the reason we’re still here. We’ve had a lot of success here, but it isn’t even about that. It’s about the community and the infrastructure we have here with Saratoga and Skidmore. ... It’s hard, but it’s also a learning lesson and life experience that people go through. It’s a big part of why you develop a community of friends and surround yourself with good people when you need each other, you have people to lean on and this place has been awesome.”
— Skidmore College Men’s Basketball Coach Joe Burke, following the fire that destroyed his home on Sunday. A GoFundMe page had raised nearly $60,000 as of Thursday night.
EYE TO THE SKIES: Cleaning at the Albany International Airport was Virgil Sager’s day job for 24 years. His hobby is now the subject of an exhibit in the airport. Ever since he was a child, Sager was obsessed with space travel. He remembers, as a sixth grader, watching the launch of the Saturn V moon rocket in his Schenectady classroom on Nov. 9, 1967. He followed all the news of space exploration and saved thousands of news clippings, magazine spreads, booklets, photographs, and commemorative postage stamps. The airport gave Sager an opportunity to share his collection with a wider audience. Called “Souvenir,” the exhibition closes Dec. 27.
LAST WEEK, we misidentified the Warren County Historical Society’s director and co-host of the “History on the Road” television show. He’s Don Rittner. Not Dan Ritter, nor Tex Ritter, nor Dan Rather. Our apologies, Don.
Some of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.
Principal Author: Leigh Hornbeck
Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, Bill Callen, John Brodt, Kristy Moore, Tara Hutchins, Troy Burns.
FACING OUT is what we do. We help companies, organizations and individuals work effectively with their most important external audiences – their customers, their shareholders, their communities, the government and the news media. www.behancommunications.com
Facing Out features news and other nuggets that caught our eye, and that we thought might be of value to you, our friends and business associates. Some items are good news about our clients and friends, others are stories that we hope will leave you a bit more informed or entertained than you were five minutes ago. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback.
Let’s make it a conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com
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