Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

December 16, 2023

Fresh tracks mark a dusting of snow under the moonlight at the Round Lake Nature Preserve in Mechanicville, N.Y. John Bulmer

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Every now and then, you come across a story that just radiates joy, and perspective. And these days, who couldn’t use more of that?

For Sophie Ten Broeke, an 11-year-old from Lansing, Mich., joy is a motorized wheelchair that will help her play outside more often with her 9-year-old sister and keep pace with her middle school friends.

“I can finally keep up with my friends in the hallway now,” Sophie, who has cerebral palsy, told the Lansing State Journal. “It's exhausting just trying to keep up with my friends in the manual one.”

The wheelchair was procured from a thrift store for $300, a fraction of the cost of a new one. “It's the most exciting thing to happen to me,” she said. “Everybody will notice my new wheelchair.” You go, girl.

STEADILY BUILDING SUCCESS: “I’m looking at my watch, not the calendar.” The late Don Led Duke, longtime leader of Albany, N.Y.-based construction giant BBL, liked to get things done — and those oft-stated words of his still guide the company’s work today. This year, however, we’re guessing a glance at the calendar would gladly be allowed. It’s BBL’s 50^th anniversary of service to clients across New York’s greater Capital Region and more than 30 other states. In that time, BBL has grown to employ more than 400 people, become a nationally recognized leader in design-build construction, and expanded its services to encompass property management, and hotel and restaurant operations. BBL’s success is a tribute to smart, strategic decision-making and loads of sweat equity on the part of people across the company. As Mr. Led Duke was also fond of saying, “If it was easy, anybody could do it.”

WHY NOT? Edwin Castro won the largest Powerball jackpot of all time ($2.04 billion, or a mere $997 million lump sum after taxes) a little over a year ago, then promptly turned off his phone and disappeared for a while. He took a group of friends to Fiji to celebrate his final few weeks of anonymity, stayed off social media, and began to think about how to manage his new fortune. He has sunk tens of millions into real estate and luxury automobiles, hired security for his family and dealt with the inevitable scammers who chase the newly wealthy.

THE CHIPS ARE UP: New York is making no secret of its ambition: To make Albany the anchor of a new National Semiconductor Technology Center, the centerpiece of the federal government’s $52-billion effort to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Expanding domestic chip manufacturing has become a priority as concerns grow about China’s expanding grasp over the industry. “Chips are increasingly seen as a crux of geopolitical power, underlying advanced weapons for militaries and sophisticated artificial-intelligence systems,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who sponsored the CHIPS act under which this project is being pursued, says he’ll ensure Albany has a good shot at getting the Center, which could create 700 to 1,000 jobs. To lay the groundwork, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced this week the state will spend $1 billion to purchase an advanced lithography machine used in semiconductor manufacturing and to build NanoFab Reflection to house the tool and feature more than 50,000 square feet of cleanroom space. Semiconductor companies including Micron Technology, IBM, Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron are expected to invest $9 billion in support of the partnership. 

NEW MEDIA: One year ago, a job like this would have been unthinkable, but here we are: The New York Times has named an Editorial Director of A.I. Initiatives. He’ll help establish principles for how the Times will and will not use generative artificial intelligence in its journalism, though an unattributed statement posted to a company website assured readers, “One reason we’re excited to have Zach (Seward) in this role is that he shares our firm belief that Times journalism will always be reported, written and edited by our expert journalists.” Such was not the case at Sports Illustrated, as we reported last week. It was caught publishing articles bylined by nonexistent writers, accompanied by fake head shots. The owners this week fired CEO Ross Levinsohn. And in Syracuse, N.Y., Advance Media, which publishes the local newspaper, hired an editor to lead This is CNY, a digital publication in partnership with the local economic development organization.

The Olympic Regional Development Authority is hoping to lure some events of the 2026 Winter Olympics to Lake Placid, N.Y. Nancie Battaglia

GOING FOR THE GOLD: Lake Placid, N.Y., is making a bid to host the 2026 Olympic bobsled, skeleton and luge events, potentially bringing part of the Olympics back to the United States. The 2026 Winter Olympics are in Milan-Cortina, Italy, but the venue has had trouble putting together a plan for sliding sports. Organizers in Milan reached out to the United States, and the Olympic Regional Development Authority stepped up with a proposal. Lake Placid has twice hosted the Winter Olympics, in 1932 and 1980.

CHRISTMAS SPIRIT: We figured it took a lot of hands to get the White House looking festive for the holidays. We didn’t know those hands belonged to volunteers. Each year, 200 to 300 people are invited to decorate the White House, most chosen through an application process that starts in the summer. Kelly Marcelo, an interior decorator from Indianapolis, got her opportunity through Pinterest, which selected 12 of its content creators to join the four-day task of remaking the White House into a “winter wonderland.” “Seeing all the finished decorations was thrilling,” Marcelo told the Indianapolis Star. “At some point as a grown-up, it's hard to feel the magic of Christmas. It starts to become repetitive. It starts to become a chore. But in that moment, during our final walkthrough, I felt like a kid again, like the magic of Christmas had returned.” Those who celebrate Christmas and favor natural trees over artificial, take heart — those trees are good for the environment and help to promote biodiversity.

HE'LL BE HOME: Tony DeSare is coming home for Christmas to Hudson Falls, N.Y., the place where he grew up jamming with his guitarist Dad and where he first played the piano and sang in public. That was a long time ago … before Carnegie Hall, Birdland and Blue Note, before Vegas, before the off-Broadway tribute to Sinatra, before conducting orchestras, before his albums made it big on Billboard. This weekend, he’ll be at Hudson Falls’ Strand Theater, another local gem, restored and reborn by his friend Jonathan Newell.

SHINING THE LIGHT: 720,420 of them, to be exact. The Gay family of Dutchess County, N.Y., are in the Guinness World Records for most lights on a residential property, and they’re not quite ready to relinquish the spectacle. Once again, their rural property is ablaze with Christmas lights, a display that draws thousands of visitors to their small village each year. The family uses the visibility and the slow-moving visitors to collect donations for various charities (it’s the biggest annual fund-raiser for the local fire department) and most people love it, though of course any small town has its busybodies and killjoys who say it’s all too much. Timothy Gay shrugs them off.  “If you bring joy and happiness to 50,000 people and you have 10 or 20 don’t like you,” he told The New York Times, “I think that’s a fair trade off.” 

ALONE NO MORE: The national mainstream media, reflexively critical of U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik for her support of Donald Trump and his false election claims, are still struggling over what to make of the Elise Stefanik they saw last week – the one who famously dismantled the Ivy League over its inexplicable unwillingness to condemn outrageous statements about killing Jews. Saturday Night Live reverted to the usual approach: It ridiculed her as a hypocrite and a nut, rather than skewering the academics who deserved it. Others are seeing in Stefanik a leader who speaks up for those tired of being lectured to, canceled and silenced by the left. In the middle of her congressional district, where it really counts for Stefanik, Glens Falls Chronicle editor Mark Frost wrote: “Elise will be known in history for this galvanizing breakthrough (his column is on page 8). It laid bare a mind-set that has made colleges smug, divisive, hateful. Now the big challenge: Restore fairness, open minds, civility, tolerance, genuine free speech, and mutual respect.”

INTERNET CONNECTIONS: Teachers, lawyers and others in prominent fields who post content on subscription-based adult websites have lost their jobs, raising questions about how far employers can go to avoid stigma related to employees’ legal, free-time activities. “You’re tainted and seen as a liability,” one teacher posted to Facebook after her suspension for posting on OnlyFans, known for its explicit content. OnlyFans also played a role in a recent confrontation between U.S. Rep. Brandon Williams of Central New York and two aides he had recently fired. Williams told Politico the aides threatened to retaliate by revealing that Williams’ 27-year-old daughter is on OnlyFans.

MIRACLES DO HAPPEN: Something happened in sports this week that called to mind the words of the great Shirley Povich in describing the amazing feat he had just witnessed — The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this week, quarterbacks Zach Wilson of the New York Jets and Tommy DeVito of the New York Giants — who seems to be living his best life — were named Offensive Player of the Week for their respective conferences.

BLUE AND GREEN: Japanese unicorn Shohei Ohtani last weekend signed the largest contract in sports history — $700 million to play baseball for 10 years for the Los Angeles Dodgers. As if there weren’t enough buzz about the number itself, Ohtani, the only two-time unanimous Most Valuable Player selection in baseball history, is deferring all but $2 million a year, with the rest to be paid after the completion of the contract. Ohtani also negotiated a clause allowing him to opt out of the contract if the Dodgers part ways with specific personnel — the president of baseball operations and the controlling owner. As an aside, baseball fans were all over social media and on flight-tracking websites when word broke last Friday that a private jet was headed from Orange County, Calif., to Toronto. Surely, it was bearing the great Ohtani to sign with the Blue Jays. When it landed, excited Canadian border control officials rushed on board. A star was on board, just not that one — Robert Herjavec, a Canadian businessman known for his longtime role on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” was returning from a visit to California with his young twins.

PIER PRESSURE: The good news: The harbors of New York and New Jersey are cleaner than they’ve been in decades. The bad: the cleaner waters are a more welcoming environment for a voracious and ancient species that is devouring the timber pilings that support the wharves overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The agency’s board recently approved $180 million over five years to replace or fortify 1,700 of nearly 100,000 support beams deemed a priority, the Poughkeepsie Journal reports, with plans to replace the timber with steel pilings or temporarily encase it with cement. The culprit goes by many names — marine worm, shipworm, naked clam — but whatever it’s called, it has been menacing seafarers for thousands of years. “These animals destroyed [Christopher] Columbus’ fleet on his third voyage to the Americas, so they’ve literally changed the course of humanity,” Reuben Shipway, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth in England who has studied marine borers around the world, told the Journal. “Ever since humans started using wooden structures to navigate, to trade, to explore, these animals have caused this havoc, and millennia later we’re still facing these issues. It’s pretty incredible.”

A FIX FOR TESLA: Tesla is recalling nearly every vehicle it has sold in the U.S. — more than 2 million — to fix a system that is supposed to warn drivers who are improperly using the vehicle’s Autopilot feature. In the new world of self-driving vehicles, a “recall” is an automatic over-the-air software update. An investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that Autopilot’s controls were inadequate and could lead to “foreseeable misuse of the system,” The Associated Press reported. Several Teslas have been in accidents while Autopilot was engaged, some deadly.

MIRACLE BABY: A 4-month-old torn from his father’s arms and sucked from his family’s mobile home in a tornado near Clarksville, Tenn., was found alive in a fallen tree in pouring rain. The infant, his 1-year-old brother and their parents escaped with minor injuries.

EXCEL CHAMPIONSHIPS: For some of us, the mere sight of an Excel spreadsheet makes us long for the days of paper ledgers. Others, though — let’s just say they’re a bit more enthusiastic, as in enough to compete in Las Vegas in something called the Excel World Championship. “The passion, the energy, the excitement that you bring to spreadsheeting. You are legends,” Microsoft’s Johnnie Thomas said at the outset, according to The Wall Street Journal, which had the good sense to send a reporter who captured the scene in all its quirky fun. “I hope your calculation engines are on full throttle and your fingers are feeling nimble.”

SNOOPY’S STILL GOT GAME: Gen Z kids born in the 1990s are enthusiastically adopting Snoopy, the comic strip beagle that creator Charles Schulz introduced in Peanuts 70 years ago. And why not? Snoopy was smart, well read, a dreamer who understood big plans were the route to a big life. He was also full of love for his owner, Charlie Brown, though he sometimes seemed to forget his name. Now, Snoopy is all the rage again, decked out in a little blue puffer and a striped hat, and they can’t keep him on the shelves at stores where he’s sold.

… NOT AS I DO: New York State is famous for prohibiting motorized vehicles in wilderness areas in the 6-million-acre Adirondack State Park. So you can imagine the surprise when the vice chair of the Adirondack Wilderness Advocates saw state Department of Environmental Conservation staff surveying the scene of a wilderness area fire on ATVs. The agency has acknowledged DEC violated the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, the Adirondack Explorer reported, and said it “has taken steps to assure that future patrols will not create this kind of intrusion.”

SHARON SULLIVAN owned and operated a hotel for more than 20 years while raising four children. She restored books as a volunteer at Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, N.Y., and gardened in her backyard and her children’s homes. Her passion and skill for gardening were seen in the gorgeous landscapes she helped perfect at Fort William Henry in Lake George. Kathy Flacke Muncil, CEO of the Fort William Henry Corp., said, “We at Fort William Henry were blessed to be her family for many years of her later life. Sharon brought her significant gardening talent to our property — every particular plant had a place and purpose. She saved us from ourselves many times as we tried our hand at plant decorating. Sharon’s gentle, determined and brilliant presence and explanation would prevail always to the goal of making our property shine and our guests joyous. Sharon loved her family beyond words. Her eyes twinkled when speaking of each child or grandchild. Whether a talented seamstress who worked magic bringing sheers and curtains back to life or planning the presentation of flowers at our Fort to assure our significant history was etched in our guests’ mind, Sharon always succeeded in making all our lives better.” She was 73. 

ANDRE BRAUGHER was an actor who defied typecasting, winning an Emmy as hard-edged Baltimore Det. Frank Pembleton in “Homicide: Life on the Street,” before shifting to comedic success as Capt. Ray Holt alongside Andy Samberg for eight seasons on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” He had his breakthrough role as union corporal Thomas Searles in the Civil War film “Glory,” which won Denzel Washington an Oscar, but was known mainly for his work on the small screen, racking up 11 Emmy nominations and two victories. He died of lung cancer at 61.

“… (Y)ear after year you had to live up to what was built all the years before and every woman who came there knew the assignment. You show up and be a part of the best program in the country. … (A)nyone who’s been a part of that women’s soccer program over the last 20 years could play anywhere they wanted. We went there for Laurie and that soccer program.”
—    Former College of Saint Rose soccer player Eliza Whipple, reflecting on the career and legacy of longtime coach Laurie Darling Gutheil. The College of Saint Rose will close in June, at the end of the academic year.

DOPEY DEALER: Last week we told you about a shoplifter in a store full of cops. This week, it’s a drug dealer texting a video “showing large quantities of marijuana along with the different prices being charged” to a police officer in Richmond, Ind. Richmond police said the suspect had a previous encounter with the officer. Police watched the video, then went and seized more than 14 pounds of marijuana, 633 grams of THC wax valued at $7,000, several bags of gummies, a handgun and $522 in cash.

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Principal authors: Bill Callen and Mark Behan

Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Troy Burns, Kristy Miller, Leigh Hornbeck, Claire P. Tuttle, Nancie Battaglia and John Bulmer.

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