Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

April 27, 2024

It’s always a risk to herald the changing of the seasons in the Northeast, where 75-degree days can start with frosted windshields. Nancie Battaglia.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

If you’ve already gone green, consider going blue.

Around the country, conversations are picking up on a concept popularized by a Netflix documentary: Blue Zones, areas where the people of an entire community focus on living healthier and extending their lives, to, say, 90 or 100 years, by adopting healthy habits and surrounding themselves with others committed to the same lifestyle. Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, N.Y., recently hosted Dan Buettner, the National Geographic Fellow and author of a book on the topic and the subject of the Netflix program.

Blue Zoners advocate a diet heavy in vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish, and nuts, and lots and lots of walking. But they also focus on community-building, gratitude and fostering more meaningful connections with family and friends. More than 80 communities in the United States have gone blue. The first was Albert Lea, Minn., home of the Mayo Clinic. Bakersfield, Calif., and Ave Maria, Fla., followed. Now, La Jolla, Calif., Columbia, S.C., and the state of Vermont are considering it. Skeptics dismiss it as crass marketing (they always do) and the whole concept scares some people (change and progress always do). For example, when a developer proposed an exclusive “blue zone” community in Pawling, N.Y., local people came out in large numbers to oppose it. Of course, New Yorkers famously hate everything, so who knows?

PARENT TRAPPED: The news about teens and social media isn’t good, and hasn’t been for a long time. If it makes sense that schools would take steps to address the issues and distractions caused by constant access to phones by limiting phone use during the school day, congratulations, you are not a snowflake. It seems schools that seek to enforce limits on phone access are getting an earful not from students, but from parents who insist they must be able to reach their child at all times. Seriously. Whatever happened to calling the office and leaving a message?

BABY BUST: The U.S. birth rate in 2023 reached its lowest point since the government started tracking it in the 1930s, according to preliminary federal data. About 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females between 15 and 44. It’s the fewest number of babies born in the U.S. since 1979. The birth rate was just below the previous record of 56 per 1,000 in 2020. The birth rate fell among most age groups between 2022 and 2023, with the teen birth rate hitting a record low 13.2 births per 1,000 females, 79 percent lower than its peak in 1991. Low birth rates led, in part, to the current American worker shortage and that is likely to continue.

TIME TO RUN: Half the world’s population will elect new national government leaders in 2024. India, Russia, El Salvador, Indonesia, Mexico and, of course, the United States are among the 50 nations holding elections to choose new leaders. We use the term “elections” loosely, of course. Many of these exercises will be coronations. As always, even the world’s most authoritarian leaders want to be able to say they were “elected.”

CHOPPERS AND CHERRIES: A dentist visiting his parents’ newly renovated home found a human jawbone embedded in a stone entranceway. The stone came from Turkey, and the fossil is believed to belong to a modern human or an extinct Homo erectus or Neanderthal, between 24,000 and 1.9 million years old. Meanwhile, archeologists working at the Mount Vernon home of George Washington found two jars of cherries buried in the basement. Even after hundreds of years, the cherries still look like cherries: Plump with pits and stems.

POWER PLAYERS: Data centers — large warehouses full of computer servers and the equipment to cool them — have sprouted across the Washington, D.C. suburbs, especially in Northern Virginia, home to about 300 of them. Local governments love the annual tax revenue, but there are growing concerns about the energy that is required to serve all those big consumers and whether there will be enough for everyone, especially with questions about the future of a major source of their energy — coal-fired power plants.    

The tulips are in bloom along Broadway in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

THE KA 5K: The annual Mother’s Day embrace of hope, love, family and friendship known as the Mother-Lovin’ 5K Run/Walk to benefit Kelly’s Angels will be held Sunday, May 12, at New York’s Saratoga Spa State Park. Kelly's Angels has been bringing joy to the lives of Capital Region children and families affected by life-threatening illness or other forms of adversity for 14 years, giving away more than $100,000 annually. It was founded by NewsChannel 13's Mark Mulholland and his children Connor and McKenna to honor their late wife and mother Kelly, who passed away in 2007 at 37 after a battle with breast cancer. Kelly’s Angels is a completely volunteer-run charity, and all funds raised by Kelly's Angels go directly to those who need help. You can register here.

COIN COLLECTORS: Americans, it seems, are becoming increasingly indifferent about our spare change. Whether sucked up in vacuums, left at airport security (hundreds of thousands of dollars a year’s worth) or otherwise carelessly discarded, lost change adds up to more than $60 million a year, according to a Pennsylvania company that sorts and washes incinerated trash, looking to reclaim some of those lost coins. In the seven years since it started the effort, the company told The Wall Street Journal, it has collected at least $10 million worth of coins, nickel-and-diming its way to a hefty return on investment.

TIME TO FLY: Edward J. Dwight Jr. was a captain in the U.S. Air Force in 1963, when he became the first African American selected as a potential astronaut. When it became clear he wouldn’t ever make the jump, he left for what became a renowned sculpting career, which includes pieces displayed at the National Museum of American History. Soon, at 90, he’ll get his chance to go to space, on an 11-minute flight aboard a Blue Origin rocket. He will become the oldest person ever in space, surpassing William Shatner, who flew aboard a Blue Origin rocket in 2021.

COLOR THEIR WORLD: Too much lawn to mow at their new home in Chittenden, Vt., led former Long Islanders Jonathan Yacko and Natalie Gilliard to plant wildflowers. Lots and lots of wildflowers. First came the baby’s breath, and now the yard is a fruited plane of vibrant color. The bees and the butterflies are happy, and so, too, are the neighbors. With No Mow May on the horizon, more communities are embracing their wild sides.

RUNAWAY HORSES: Five horses from a British army unit caused a stir in central London when they bolted during their morning exercise and ran through the city. Four threw their riders, three of whom were injured. Two of the horses also were reported seriously injured, including one that was covered in blood as it ran through the streets. All were recovered. 

PRICE OF INJUSTICE: Larry Nassar is serving decades in a federal prison for sexually assaulting female athletes under the guise of medical care in his role as a team doctor for USA Gymnastics and at Michigan State University. This week, the Justice Department acknowledged the abuse lasted longer than it needed to because the FBI grossly mishandled the initial allegations against Nasser. The bureau has now agreed to a $138.7 million settlement with more than 100 victims. The combined amount of settlements for Nassar’s victims reached $1 billion.

THE SUN SHONE: One million people were expected to visit Buffalo for the April 8 eclipse and, while the crowd may have been smaller, sky-watching spenders showed up in force: Visit Buffalo Niagara, the region’s tourism group, estimates the eclipse crowds spent $14.7 million, including $7.4 million at local hotels, based on year-over-year comparisons.

CANCEL CULTURE: The University of Southern California, which sparked controversy  when it canceled a planned commencement address by the class valedictorian over concerns about her pro-Palestinian views, this week canceled its main stage ceremony entirely in the wake of campus unrest. USC is the first known major university to cancel graduation ceremonies as a result of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

FRENCH FRIED: Frederic Weis is very upset that Joel Embiid will play basketball for Team USA instead of for France in the upcoming Summer Games. He’s so angry, in fact, that he says Embiid should be turned away if he tries to enter the country. We’re sure that Weis’ bitterness has nothing to do with the fact that he will be forever known as the guy who sniffed Vince Carter’s shorts as Carter scissored over him in the 2000 Olympics for what became known as “the dunk of death.”

RESTING PLACE: Human remains uncovered during a construction project in 2019 will be laid to rest at a new memorial site in Lake George, N.Y. The 18th-century remains of 44 people, many of them young, were accounted for, based on examinations of teeth and bone fragments.

SWIFT KICK: Hours after announcing that Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” had become the first album ever to amass 200 million streams on its platform in a single day, Spotify amended its announcement — the number had actually surpassed 300 million.

CELEBRATE THE USA: America250, the organization Congress established to coordinate celebrations of our nation’s semiquincentennial, wants to send 75 high school students on the field trip of a lifetime to the Statue of Liberty, Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National Park, the Library of Congress and National Archives, among others. The winners will be chosen based on essays they submit on “What Does America Mean to You?”

TERRY ANDERSON was a reporter for The Associated Press, covering the Middle East, when he was kidnapped in 1985 from a Lebanese street and held for nearly seven years as a hostage by the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah. Kidnappings of Americans in the wore-torn country were not uncommon, but Anderson’s captivity was among the longest. After his release in 1991, Anderson returned to the United States and wrote a best-selling memoir about his ordeal. A federal court awarded him millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, agreeing the country was behind his kidnapping, but he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and lost much of his money to bad investments. He died, at 76, of complications from recent heart surgery.

“If you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”
— Eric Hovde, candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, in a radio interview.

CHILLI OUT: Jason Kelce, who just retired from the Philadelphia Eagles, appears to have lost his Super Bowl ring after putting it in a pool of chili during a fan event in Cincinnati. A thorough search turned up beans.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen.

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

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