Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

April 12, 2025

Asgaard Farm in Au Sable Forks, N.Y., homestead of the renowned Adirondack artist Rockwell Kent, against a backdrop any artist would appreciate. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Something remarkable happened in Sackets Harbor, N.Y. — many things, actually.

Before recent events, Sackets Harbor was best known as a peaceful little lakeside village that served as the primary staging area for U.S. military operations on the Great Lakes in the War of 1812, and where U.S. and British forces twice collided. It enjoyed another brief jolt of fame in 2003, when a group of friends from the community pooled their money on a gelding named Funny Cide, who nearly won thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown.

Then, on March 27, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents executed a criminal search warrant centered on a dairy farm and petting zoo with an unthreatening, pastoral name: Old McDonald’s Farm. The target was someone there who was peddling child pornography. They found and arrested the suspect, a South African immigrant. But ICE agents also encountered an undocumented family that “lived in a house on the same road” and, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, "arrested seven illegal aliens, including a mother and her three children.”

The mother was a 15-year employee of the zoo. She and her children are migrants who were actively seeking U.S. citizenship and had previously declared themselves to immigration judges. Nevertheless, they were shipped off to an ICE detention center in Texas for 11 days.

Sackets Harbor, in reliably red Jefferson County, happens to be the hometown of President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, who did a lengthy interview about the operation and subsequent detentions with WWNY-TV. There, more than 1,000 community members took to the streets advocating for the family’s release, grandmothers and teachers protesting outside Homan’s summer home. “They are not criminals. They have no ties to any criminal activity,” wrote the principal of the Sackets Harbor public school. “The fact that our students were handcuffed and put into the same van as the alleged criminal from down the street is unconscionable. When I think of my third grader's experience, my stomach twists and it is hard to breathe.”

The family was finally released and the kids are back in school, but Sacketts Harbor’s latest collision with the forces of history — and the community’s response — will not soon be forgotten. 

NORTHERN EXPOSURE: 2024 was a banner year for tourism in Essex County, N.Y., helped in part by the total eclipse in April, and local promoters are hopeful that the celebration of the country’s 250^th anniversary in 2026 will lure more visitors to the region’s historic sites, but the forecast for the remainder of this year remains clouded by what appears to be a precipitous decline in foreign visitors, especially Canadians. Already there are signs that tariffs are causing hardship in U.S. communities near the Canadian border. “We surveyed 40 of our manufacturing companies in the region,” Garry Douglas, President and CEO of New York’s North Country Chamber of Commerce, told The Atlantic. “One sources raw materials from Canada and is looking at a $16 million cost increase to their U.S. operation.”

DON’T FEED THE TROLLS: James Briggs is about as middle-of-the-road as you will ever find in a metro newspaper columnist, issuing carefully calibrated opinions from his perch at the Indianapolis Star. And the performative trolling he is witnessing from three of his state’s top elected officials is more than enough. Writing about incidents in which a U.S. senator insulted a constituent on camera, the attorney general posed next to a pride flag for an April Fool’s prank, and the lieutenant governor responded to criticism that he used taxpayer dollars to buy a luxury SUV by parking a Tesla Cybertruck in his spot at the Statehouse, Briggs writes, “This is what you get when narcissists turn the public sector into an online fandom. ... They are not working for you. They are insecure men laboring to fill up balloons of self-importance.”

BUSINESS SENSE: Michael Satterlee is a high school senior in Clifton Park, N.Y., who wondered how he might use the 3D printer in his bedroom to make a little cash. He checked around and found that accessories for Crocs, the popular, airy plastic shoes, were popular online. Soon he was producing his own Crocs accessories under the business name Solefully, and they sold so well that he needed new 3D printers. Then he needed a lot of them. Today, he leases a 1,500-foot-warehouse with 50 3D printers and expects to earn $300,000 this year in gross revenue. “Some people are fanatics about Crocs. Crocs actually has a core fan base, when you get really deep to it. It's super niche, but that's what you're really targeting,” he told the Albany Business Review.

The Milky Way pops above the horizon on a starry night near the Lake Placid Olympic Ski Jumping Complex. John Bulmer

LAP OF LUXURY: Most of us will never know what it feels like to fire up a Rolls-Royce and hit the open road, unless you’re one of the lucky few who land a gig volunteering at a little-known and seldom-visited museum near Harrisburg, Pa., where 29 antique and collectible Rolls-Royces and Bentleys that date as far back as the late 1920s are on display and occasionally taken out for a spin. “I often wonder if the homes around here know the (Rolls-Royce) foundation exists,” one of the volunteers told The Associated Press. “Or if they always just wonder, ‘Why do we see these vintage Rolls-Royce and Bentleys roaming around from time to time?’” Meanwhile, they may never match the class and elegance of those vintage luxury cars, but many modern carmakers are adding wellness features designed to make their owners feel more relaxed and invigorated.

NOTABLE STREAKS: Baseball is a sport known for oddities, but this one will be tough to beat — two Metropolitan New York college teams that entered play having lost a combined 141 consecutive games broke their streaks the same day against each other. Lehman College snapped a 42-game losing streak with a 7-6 win in extra innings over Yeshiva University in the first game of a doubleheader, Yeshiva’s 100^th consecutive defeat. Yeshiva turned the tables in the nightcap, winning 9-5 to end the longest active losing streak in college baseball. At the other end of the spectrum, Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y., has a 26-game winning streak — the past nine by a combined 103-13 — heading into play today against Mohawk Valley Community College and has risen to No. 5 in the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III rankings.

A GRAND FINALE: Dawson Gabe was enjoying his time as a graduate student pitching for the University of Indianapolis baseball team, grateful for the unexpected opportunity to keep playing after he had earned his undergraduate degree in 2023. His teammates looked up to him, aware that he had played in two Division III College World Series, and appreciated the time he invested in helping them better understand and play the game. Their admiration became something closer to reverence when cancer that had been discovered last fall was found to have returned in February. He would need surgery that would end his baseball career. But not before he pitched one last game that no one who saw it will ever forget. “The whole day, you saw a whole lot of grown men cry," his teammate, Diego Cardenas, told the Indianapolis Star. “Watching everything leading up to his final out was just art. He put on a display of just raw art. It was awesome to watch.”

THAT’S RICH: Self-styled champion of the working-class Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was photographed flying first-class to, of all things, a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Las Vegas hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Said one observer, “hypocrisy is the operative word.” Her campaign and district offices declined to comment.

WORM’S EYE VIEW: U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once copped to having a dead worm in his brain, is telling the CDC to stop recommending fluoridation for drinking water. Adding low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century, credited by the American Dental Association with reducing tooth decay by more than 25% in children and adults.

UNEXPECTED BENEFIT: A public health study led by Standford Medicine in Wales found that older adults who received the shingles vaccine were 20% less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who hadn’t, supporting an emerging theory that viruses that affect the nervous system can increase the risk of dementia.

HOMETOWN LOVE: Rosemary Bucci, one of two women in the Syracuse University College of Law class of 1964 and the top student in the class, practiced matrimonial law in her Central New York hometown of Baldwinsville for 58 years. She died at 92 in 2022, and this week the Central New York Community Foundation announced she had left $1.5 million to benefit nonprofit organizations in Baldwinsville and nearby communities.

CHARACTER TEST: Recruiters are constantly looking for tells outside the normal give-and-take of interviews to determine whether someone might be a good fit for their organization.  One has devised what he calls the coffee cup test, and it’s all about assessing the candidate’s attitude.

THE GREAT 8: Washington Capitals legend Alex Ovechkin last weekend broke Wayne Gretzky’s NHL career record for goals, netting the 895^th of his career in a 4-1 road loss to the New York Islanders. Amazingly, if you subtracted every goal he scored from his career points total, Gretzky still would be the NHL’s all-time leader in points.

“I’D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD…” A 24-year-old U.S. tourist hoping to share a Diet Coke with the Sentinelese people, who are untouched by the modern world, was arrested after sneaking onto a highly restricted island to meet them. Outsiders, Indians and foreigners alike are banned from traveling within three miles of the Bay of Bengal island to protect the indigenous people from outside diseases and to preserve their way of life.

LIFE LESSON: A group of about 30 middle school students from Gouverneur, N.Y., who were observing a debate in the state Assembly chamber as part of a school field trip were kicked out after a Republican member gestured toward them while making a point about a GOP-backed bill on child care providers, which in the view of the Democrats who control the chamber meant the visitors were “a prop.”

OCTAVIO DOTEL started his major league career in 1999 with the New York Mets, the first of 13 teams he would pitch for. Effective at most every stop, he helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series toward the end of his career in 2011. He once saved 36 games in a season, the highlight of a career that spanned 15 seasons and saw him record 109 saves and pitch to a respectable 3.78 earned-run average. He, fellow former major leaguer Tony Blanco, and Nelsy Cruz, governor of the Dominican Republic’s Monte Cristi province and sister of former big-league star Nelson Cruz, were among more than 220 people confirmed dead after the roof collapsed at a popular nightclub in Santo Domingo. He was 51.

BOB McMANUS was an old-school newspaper guy who pilloried the powerful in print and in person was a gentle, funny, sentimental soul. He was also keenly aware of his own power as a longtime investigative reporter, editor and columnist for the Albany Times Union and later, famously and for almost 30 years, as editorial page editor of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. He was a patriot, having served in the U.S. Navy first on a destroyer and then on a submarine, and was proud of his time in “silent service.”  He dropped out of Siena College three credits short of graduation to become a copy boy at the Times Union. The New York Times honored McManus with an obituary that said in part: “Mr. McManus pulled no punches but still managed to be widely liked.” He was 81.

JAY NORTH, to a generation of TV viewers, will always be Dennis the Menace, the mischievous towhead who was always finding ways to flummox and torment his grumpy neighbor, Mr. Wilson. He was 6 when he was cast for the CBS adaptation of Hank Ketcham’s popular comic strip. The show aired on Sunday nights from 1959 to 1963, when it was canceled, but it lived on for decades in syndication. North later appeared in a series of 1960s TV shows, including The Lucy Show, My Three Sons and Lassie, as well as in a handful of movies, the last Dickie Robert: Former Child Star in 2003. He died of colon cancer at 73.

ADAM COLE was a three-sport athlete in high school who never lost his passion for sports or his willingness to lend a hand. A teacher and coach in several school districts around New York’s Capital Region, he also volunteered a great deal of time to help Section II high school basketball as a member of the boys’ basketball committee and at the state boys’ and girls’ basketball tournaments. When there was no one available to produce a program for the Section II tournament, Cole took on the task. “Especially in a time where there’s not a lot of volunteers, he stepped up and took over a lot of work, and devoted a lot of time to Section II,” Will Ferguson, the Section II boys’ basketball coordinator, told the Albany Times Union. “He was so kind. Thoughtful. A great man,” said Andy Wright, a longtime friend and fellow coach. He died at 46 of an aortic aneurysm.

THEODORE McCARRICK, the defrocked former cardinal of the Washington, D.C., archdiocese, was once one of the most prominent Catholic leaders of his generation, with decades of administrative and diplomatic experience, a record of fundraising success and a reputation for ease with the faithful and access to the powerful. Fluent in five languages, he was a Vatican emissary to such trouble spots as East Timor and Rwanda. He had begun his career as a priest in New York City in 1958. In the mid-1980s, unknown to the public, a New York Catholic mother sent out an anonymous letter to every cardinal in the United States detailing concerns that McCarrick is “attracted to boys” after she observed McCarrick rubbing her sons’ inner thighs and chests and after being told he bought alcohol for the young men on overnight trips. Elevated to cardinal in 2001, he was removed from the priesthood by Pope Francis in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he had molested adults and children. The scandal created a crisis of credibility for the church, already dealing with thousands of cases and allegations of priests sexually abusing children. He was 94.

“I expect if you’re coming to a meeting with me that you’re prepared. And I expect that you bring passionate intensity to your work. Generally those types of people enjoy working with and for me. Others, maybe not so much.”
— Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York Police Department, billionaire heiress and potential candidate for mayor of New York City.

FOR THE BIRDS: Boris Johnson — he of the wild hair and wild COVID parties — has lots of experience handling pesky agitators. After all, he was mayor of London, then a member of Parliament, then British Prime Minister. But last week in Texas he may have met his match: A frisky ostrich.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Kristy Miller, Jim Murphy, Amanda Metzger, Lisa Fenwick, 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