Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

April 20, 2024

Photo of an ovation and tip of the cap to the Adirondack Civic Center Coalition for its work transforming the Cool Insuring Arena in Glens Falls, N.Y. An ovation and tip of the cap to the Adirondack Civic Center Coalition for its work transforming the Cool Insuring Arena in Glens Falls, N.Y. (Brennan Dowd)

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

This weekend, Downtown Glens Falls, N.Y.,  is bustling, and crowds are streaming into the Cool Insuring Arena to participate in a local brewfest and to see the semi-finals of the ECHL hockey championships. A few weeks ago, the arena hosted thousands of spectators for the New York State High School Basketball championships, where two local teams scored big triumphs in front of hometown crowds.

All of it is reminder of the central role the Cool Insuring Arena plays in Glens Falls and the Capital Region – and the remarkable transformation that has taken place there since it came under local, private-sector management in 2015.

The Adirondack Civic Center Coalition, a group of local business and community leaders, raised and invested more than $6 million in the facility, including the revenue generated from the sale of the naming rights to Cool Insuring. And the return on investment has been dramatic: The Arena hosted only about 60 events annually when the coalition took over. Last year it hosted 130. When members of the coalition purchased the Adirondack Thunder hockey team, it was losing a million dollars a year. Now, the Thunder are drawing an average of 4,200 people per game, with 15 standing-room-only games this season. They’ve just set franchise records for wins, points, and attendance, and they’re breaking even.

New York State, the Warren County Board of Supervisors, and the City of Glens Falls, which still owns the building, have helped, too. The $2.75 million in state grants received in the last nine years have helped pay for new video and LED boards, a new audio system, the outside video billboard, and renovations to the food and beverage areas and locker rooms. The City of Glens Falls put a new, $2 million roof on the arena. Heritage Hall was renovated with a $900,000 investment. Five new suites welcome corporate groups and parties and a new hockey retail store is thriving. And still more improvements are coming, under the direction of the Civic Center Coalition led by retired banker and community leader Dan Burke, local entrepreneur Ed Moore, General Manager and Hockey President Jeff Mead, and Coalition members Marc Monahan, Sarah Wright, Claude Loiselle, Fred Vogel, Nick Caimano, retired Judge David Krogmann, Tyler Herrick, Elisabeth Mahoney, Doug Kenyon, Pete Fitzgerald, Melissa Davidson, Arleen Girard, Tony Mashuta, and Todd Tierney.

The Cool Insuring Arena’s success is part of the ongoing renewal of downtown Glens Falls.

LAST CALL: John Sterling, the colorful play-by-play radio voice of the New York Yankees since 1989, retired this week, effective immediately, ending a 64-year broadcasting career. Sterling, who is 85, was known for his signature home run calls (for Aaron Judge: All Rise! For Alex Rodriguez: An A-bomb, from A-Rod) and drawn out pronouncement that thuh-uh-uh-uh Yankees win. He will be honored today at Yankee Stadium. MLB.com’s coverage included some of Sterling’s more memorable calls for the Yankees, but his description of an improbable home run by light-hitting Braves pitcher Rick Camp and Larry Bird’s 60-point scorching of the Atlanta Hawks are worth a listen, too.

LOWDOWN ON LYME: Dog owners in the Northeast are well aware that there are products on the market to protect their pooches from Lyme disease and other tickborne illnesses, which are off to a rousing start in New York in 2024, thanks to the mild winter. So why are there no similar products to prevent the tens of thousands of cases of Lyme disease that pop up among humans each year? A human vaccine for Lyme was on the market at the turn of the 21st century but was pulled after reports of serious side effects caused sales to plummet. Researchers are working on new vaccines and medicines, but it will be years before they’re on the market. Meanwhile, best to be on the lookout, especially if you like to walk in wooded areas. Lyme is nothing to mess with.

SCAMMING THE SCAMMERS: Kitboga is an American hero, with three million Twitch and YouTube subscribers cheering him on. His niche: Engaging scammers in hours-long, meandering ruses whose purpose is to waste their time, leaving less of it to use going after the love and life savings of their vulnerable victims, all on livestream. He’s helped several victims escape the clutches of scammers and disrupted large fraud operations (Americans lost a record $12.5 billion to internet crimes last year, according to the FBI). “Getting emails from someone saying, ‘I knew that this was a scam because of your video,’ ends up being a really cool mission-accomplished type feeling,” Kitboga told NPR.

SQUEEZING RENTERS: A Texas company called RealPage is selling software to property managers with an algorithm that tells landlords exactly how much rent they should be charging, using a blend of public information and private data that property owners give to the company. RealPage says its service helps clients “outpace the market in good times and bad,” Business Insider reports. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has another term: collusion. “This is price fixing, and it is illegal.”

RAISING THE GAME: Nearly 2.5 million people tuned in to watch this week’s WNBA draft, in which Iowa sensation Caitlin Clark was selected No. 1 overall by the Indiana Fever. The audience was four times larger than the previous record for a WNBA draft, when UConn’s Diana Taurasi was taken No. 1 in 2004. Ticket prices for Fever home and away games are surging, and the team will make several national television appearances during Clark’s rookie season. Of course, Clark’s entire team will be paid less than an NBA scrub (Clark will make $76,000 in salary; the top NBA pick makes $10 million), though let’s hope rising popularity of the women’s game may result in more pay down the road. Speaking of NBA scrubs, Toronto Raptor forward Jontay Porter just got permanently banned from the league for violating gambling rules.

BUYING GOLD: Millennials are helping to drive gold purchases in the U.S., citing uncertainty around inflation, global strife and the financial system. Gold futures rose 13% in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported, a year in which bank stocks fell nearly 5%. Warehouse retailer Costco started offering gold bars online and in a few stores last year, and can’t keep them in stock, even at $2,000-plus an ounce. “It’s just nice to have options when we don’t really know what’s going on,” one buyer told the Journal.

ON THE MOVE: In the summer of 1976, Whitehall, N.Y., was living in fear of a hairy, eight-foot-tall beast that local people called Big Foot. A local police officer reported that Big Foot came within 25 feet of his squad car before a state trooper scared him off by shining a light in his red, beady eyes. For nearly 100 years, local people had made occasional reports of encounters with the beast with thin lips, an eerily human face, and feet wider and three times longer than a human’s. Big Foot was said by the Glens Falls, N.Y., Post-Star to make a sound that resembled “a loud pig squeal or a woman’s scream, or both.” Big Foot never hurt anyone, as far as we know, and over the years, Whitehall replaced its fear with fun, hosting Big Foot festivals and Sasquatch calling contests. But the legend of Sasquatch lives on. He’s got a big movie coming out, “Sasquatch Sunset,” and recently took part in a “sighting” in New York’s Central Park.

Photo of new spring growth beginning to emerge after a controlled burn in the Albany Pine Bush Reserve in Albany County, N.Y.New spring growth is beginning to emerge after a controlled burn in the Albany Pine Bush Reserve in Albany County, N.Y. John Bulmer

DARK DAYS: Tim Neville couldn’t stop watching the videos, couldn’t stop marveling as people described with wonder and gratitude what it was like to emerge from complete darkness, some for as long as 40 days. “There’s no familiar orientation for what to do with this,” a barefoot guy in a purple V-neck said in one video, as described by Neville in an essay for Outside. “It’s like being born.” So Neville decided to see what it was all about, conquering his fears and committing to 82 hours, alone, in total darkness inside a cave in southern Oregon. If you ever wondered what that’s like, Neville describes it vividly — the hallucinations, the disorienting anxiety and, ultimately, the clarity. “It is as if I’ve been an airless balloon all my life and the dark has just shown me how to inflate it,” he writes. “I went in scared. Eighty-two hours later I’m coming out terrified, because I know that feeling of fullness will fade under the weight of the world.”

LEGO LEGIONS: Lego, the world’s largest toy maker, has been a childhood staple for decades, despite prices that were on the high side even before inflation (The Babylon Bee, a satirical website, recently published a piece under the headline, Financial Advisor Reminds New Parents It’s Never Too Early To Start Saving Up Money For Legos). Fortunately for Lego, their young fans grow up and make money of their own, which many of them are happy to shell out hundreds of dollars at a time as they rediscover their love of the little plastic bricks. “We don’t buy every new set that comes out,” one 38-year-old enthusiast told The Wall Street Journal. “We’ve got to eat.”

BREAD BONANZA: Carl Griffith was the keeper of a unique heritage — a sourdough starter that had been in his family for generations and dated to when his ancestors traveled west from Missouri along the Oregon Trail in 1847. Griffith would share his dried starter with anyone who sent him a self-addressed stamped envelope, building a nationwide community of like-minded bakers. In 2000, a Colorado woman volunteered to be the keeper of the tradition, typically sending out between 30 and 150 a week. That all changed beginning in January, when a video about the starter and its ties to the Oregon Trail went viral on TikTok, resulting in “an unbelievable flood” or requests, Mary Buckingham told The Denver Post. “This week, we have well over 1,000 requests coming in. It’s insane.”

01_Nuggets.jpgHER TIME: U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik earned national attention when she grilled Ivy League college presidents about antisemitism on campus and found their answers bankrupt of common sense. Now, the congresswoman representing New York’s North Country and the most senior woman in the House Republican leadership has been named one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2024 by Time. In 2019, the same publication had her on its “100 Next” list.

EDITOR QUITS: Uri Berliner, a senior editor on NPR’s business desk who caused a stir when he wrote an essay criticizing the network and arguing that a liberal bias had cost it the trust of listeners, resigned this week, a day after news that he had been suspended for violating company rules about outside work.

BIRD-TINIS: On a street full of bars, restaurants and a meat center, two crows got into an uncovered dumpster. They feasted on meat scraps and fruit from cocktails. No one paid much attention until somebody noticed the crows could not fly. They were drunk.

THE NEWS: Remember Huey Lewis? Back in the 1980s. he had a string of memorable hits like “Hip to be Square” and “Workin’ for a Livin’.” Fast forward to 2020. Lewis announced he was losing his hearing and his ability to play music. Undeterred, he began work on a new Broadway musical, and now “The Heart of Rock and Roll” is opening next week at the James Earl Jones Theater in New York.

FEAR WINS: The University of Southern California canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, citing safety concerns. The valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, has expressed pro-Palestinian views. A suit at USC said permitting her to speak would have presented “substantial” security risks.  

02_Lives.jpgCARL ERSKINE pitched in five World Series over his 12-year major league career, all with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He won a championship in 1955, two years after striking out a then-record 14 Yankees in a complete game victory in Game 3 of the World Series. Known for a sharp curveball, he threw two no-hitters in a career that saw him win 122 games. The last living member of the famed “Boys of Summer,” chronicled in a 1972 book by Roger Kahn, Erskine was an outspoken advocate for Special Olympics and a fierce defender of the rights of people with special needs — his son had Down Syndrome — as well as a fighter for racial equality. The Baseball Hall of Fame last year honored him with the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to an individual “for their extraordinary efforts to enhance baseball's positive impact on society.” He was 97.

WHITEY HERZOG was a no-nonsense manager who led the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and a World Series title in 1982, blending speed, defense and pitching to overcome power deficits — his championship team hit 67 home runs all season, three fewer than Mark McGwire hit for the Cardinals in 1998. Before managing the Cardinals, he managed the cross-state Kansas City Royals to division titles from 1976-78, losing each year in the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees. He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010, his plaque noting his “stern, yet good-natured style.” He was 92.

FORREST RICHARD BETTS was born on December 12, 1943, and grew up in Bradenton, Fla., the son of a fiddler. He started playing the ukulele at 5. He graduated to guitar and formed a couple teenage bands, which is how he met future guitar god Duane Allman. He was not a brother, but always a guiding force, of the Allman Brothers Band whose sound came to define Southern rock.  Mr. Allman once said: “I’m the famous guitar player, but Dickey is the good one.” Dickey Betts succumbed to cancer and COPD at 80.

ROBERT SHAW was an accomplished gospel singer, touring the country with Homeland Harmony in the 1940s before serving in Japan during the Korean War. He joined another group upon returning, then left to go into the life insurance business. He soon took an interest in conservative politics, at a time when Republicans in Georgia were as rare as an October ice storm. He ran unsuccessfully for the state senate in 1964 as an unapologetic supporter of Barry Goldwater, then rose to become state GOP chairman in the early 1970s and served a term as vice president of the Republican National Committee. “He helped create the modern Republican Party,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whom Shaw encouraged to run for office, told The Wall Street Journal. “You go back and look at how much we were a minority party, how limited our elected officials were, and you compare that to where we are today, he was one of the people who made the transition.” He was 94.

AMITRAL “A.J.” SIMON was star defensive lineman for the University at Albany football team, recording 12.5 sacks, two forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries during a 2023 season that saw the Great Danes advance to the semifinals of the FCS, a level below the top tier of collegiate programs, for the first time. A first-team all-CAA selection, he had been preparing for next week’s NFL draft, where he was considered a late-round prospect. “The scouts are saying some positive things,” Simon told the Albany Times Union in late March. “You just never know. It’s time to play the waiting game. Just stay in shape. My chances (of being drafted), I feel like they’re pretty high.” The university’s football program announced his death, at 25; no cause was given.

03_Almost Final Words.jpg“He’s done everything for me my whole life. He’s always been there. Ever since I was 8 years old, when my mom passed, he’s had no choice but to step up, and you can’t do nothing but really respect someone like that. I just wanted to let him know that I care and I appreciate everything he does. He’s just a great father.”
—    Trae Hawthorne, a 15-year-old with terminal cancer who started a fundraiser to benefit his father, Tim Hawthorne. You can contribute by Venmo to @Timothy-Hawthorne-6

04_signoff.jpgWILD AND WOOLY:  A Dallas-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company is working on artificial egg and sperm cells in an effort to create an elephant that “both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species” — the wooly mammoth. 

05_Bottom.jpgSome of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.

Principal Author: Mark Behan.

Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, Leigh Hornbeck, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, John Behan, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, Brennan Dowd 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 conversationmark.behan@behancom.com

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