Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

April 6, 2024

A fiery dawn greets the day at a farm in Easton, N.Y. John Bulmer

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Those of us who live in the Northeast don’t typically experience the earth moving beneath our feet, but that’s what happened around 10:20 Friday morning when a magnitude 4.8 earthquake centered about 50 miles west of Manhattan shook buildings across the region. The quake was strong enough to rattle walls and windows — and, no doubt, some nerves — in the Albany area. It was the strongest tremor to hit the East Coast since 2011. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

IT’S ALMOST HERE:  We trust that by now you’ve made your plans for Monday’s big event (no, not that one). If you haven’t, there’s still time to make plans for viewing the solar eclipse, though those who traveled to the Southwest in hopes of better odds for clear skies may be regretting that choice. Inmates — sorry; “justice-involved persons” — in New York State sued to be allowed to watch the eclipse after prison (“involuntary detention facilities?”) officials announced lockdowns during the event. They argued an eclipse has “great religious significance to many.” The state Department of Corrections caved.

NEW HEIGHTS: The women’s NCAA Tournament action in Albany, N.Y., last weekend did not disappoint. Sellout crowds who packed MVP Arena watched undefeated South Carolina keep its quest for a perfect season alive, then, Monday, were treated to an epic showdown between last year’s national finalists, Iowa and LSU, won by Iowa and its transcendent star, Caitlin Clark, before the largest television audience ever for women’s collegiate basketball. The momentum is carrying over to this weekend’s Final Four, with tickets for the women’s games in Cleveland selling at twice the price of men’s Final Four tickets. The surge in popularity has some wondering whether cities like Albany are big enough to host future events. The feel-good nature of the weekend was marred when it was discovered that the 3-point line on the court for the regionals in Portland, Ore., was incorrect at one end of the floor, prompting a white-hot shaming from Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, who wrote that the women’s tournament “is still being treated with a combination of incompetence and indifference by its stagers,” and not just because of the floor fiasco.

PRE-ECLIPSE SHADE: By now you’ve probably heard that ESPN color analyst Rebecca Lobo caused quite the stir when, in response to a story about Caitlin Clark telling her brothers to leave her alone and find something to do, Logo chuckled and said, “And, by the way, good luck finding something to do in Albany.” The responses were predictably performative and over the top, including from a bar owner who suggested that local bars and restaurants cancel their ESPN subscriptions. Credit to the Albany Times Union’s Kristi Gustafson Barlette, who dared to ask the question: What if Lobo is right? “I am not saying I cannot find things to do, but the activities I enjoy (active, family-friendly, during the day) aren’t necessarily what sports fans traveling to our host city from around the country like,” she writes. “Also, when we’re talking a Monday night in April, the options aren’t as robust as, say, a Friday night in August.” Hard to argue.

EWWW-EW, THAT SMELL: As if being labeled boring didn’t leave enough of a mark, Albany officials have been grappling for months with a foul, sewage-like odor near a highway interchange. “Despite our best efforts to determine the source, we have been unable to identify exactly where the odor is coming from,” the mayor’s chief of staff wrote in an email to the Times Union. The state is looking into it and asking residents to report any “unfamiliar and unpleasant” odors. The executive director of the Albany County Water Purification District speculated the odor could be coming from outside the county. The Times Union sought to explore whether the culprit could be a sewage treatment plant across the Hudson River in Rensselaer County, but officials there, including the county spokesman — whose job is to talk with reporters — ignored its questions.

MEDAL GRATES: For runners, the Boston Marathon isn’t just another race. It’s the Holy Grail, a selective event that one must qualify for by running an exceptional time in another marathon, unless you’re running for a charity. For years, finishers have received a medal emblazoned with the gold unicorn logo of the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the marathon and associated activities, and noting the year and edition of the race. This year’s medals include the logo of the event’s main sponsor, Bank of America, and purists are not pleased. “I don’t like that it suddenly looks like it’s the Bank of America Marathon,” one participant told The New York Times. Another asked, “Why mess up a good thing? This isn’t a turkey trot.” Meanwhile, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which gets ripped off for hundreds of millions a year by fare evaders, wants the New York Road Runners to pony up $750,000 for the loss of toll revenue when New York City Marathon runners cross the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Gov. Kathy Hochul told the MTA to back off.

Lake Placid, as seen from Whiteface Mountain, will see even more tourists than usual for Monday’s solar eclipse. Nancie Battaglia

RETIREMENT WORRIES: A study by insurance and financial services firm Northwestern Mutual found a widening gap between what the average person believes he or she will need to retire comfortably and the amount actually saved. A majority of retirees surveyed said they will need $1.46 million to retire comfortably, a figure that increased 15 percent from last year and is up an eye-opening 53 percent since 2020. The average saved: about $88,400. Larry Fink, a 71-year-old hedge fund billionaire, has a solution — just keep working. “No one should have to work longer than they want to,” Fink wrote in his annual letter to shareholders. “But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age, 65 years old, originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.”

DISHING THE SCOOPS: Jazlyn Guerra — Jazzy for short — is making a name for herself in the broadcasting business with old-fashioned doggedness that has landed her some snazzy scoops, most recently the first interview with North West, the 10-year-old daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. The Brooklyn resident has also interviewed such A-list names as Cardi B, Jay Z, Michelle Obama and Shaquille O’Neal (twice) for her YouTube channel, Jazzys World TV, which is nearing 700,000 subscribers. Did we mention she’s 13?

HUMAN TOUCH: When Matthew Sloane was hired as principal of a combined middle and high school in rural upstate New York, he found a dispirited student body that was pessimistic about the future and opportunities close to home. He knew a reset was necessary, and so he set out to change the culture of the school, beginning with ditching a dress code that prohibited boys from wearing hats. “Students realized I wasn’t going to penalize them for these trivial things. Make them feel they belong here as humans,” Sloane told the Albany Times Union. He focused on quality-of-life issues, down to how teachers greeted students at the beginning of class and how they conveyed to students the meaningfulness of what they’re learning. He even shadows random students during the school day, to experience the school from their perspective, which led to efforts to set up snack kiosks and get more comfortable seats for classrooms. The result: attendance and test scores are up, behavioral referrals are down, and Sloane was named the state’s top secondary school principal by the School Administrators Association of New York State.

BUZZ AROUND CICADAS: Cicada fans, rejoice: for the first time since 1803, more than a trillion of two distinct periodical cicada broods will surface at the same time, their deafening chirps providing a cacophonous soundtrack for large swaths of the Midwest and southern U.S. One cicada enthusiast created a Cicada Mania Facebook group to celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime phenomena. Those of us living elsewhere can celebrate in silence.

FISH STORIES: A massive liquid fertilizer spill caused by a valve left open killed just about every living creature for a 50-mile stretch of the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa, according to state conservation officials. In Oregon, a truck transporting about 102,000 young salmon for release to the wild overturned on a windy road, spilling its load. Fortunately, the road was near a creek, and about three-quarters of the fish flopped their way into it. The driver had minor injuries.

SPACE INVADER: A nearly two-pound chunk of debris hit a two-story house in Naples, Fla., punching through the roof and both floors. NASA collected the item and is examining it to determine if it came from the International Space Station.

BRAZEN BANDITS: Thieves broke into a Los Angeles money storage facility on Easter Sunday, cracked the safe and got away with $30 million in cash, a crime that was not discovered until operators of the business opened the vault on Monday. Sources told the Los Angeles Times the burglary crew broke through the roof to gain access.

PROPER PENMANSHIP: The Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest crowned its 2024 grand champions this week, rewarding nine students from six states for their precise penmanship (80,000 entered the contest). Various studies published over the past decade have detailed how writing with pencil and paper can benefit memory, cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, and a growing number of states (now 22) require cursive to be taught in schools.

REVOLUTIONARY DISCOVERY: A sketch that hung for 40 years in an art collector’s bedroom in New York City turned out to be an eyewitness depiction of the North Carolina Brigade of the Continental Army passing through Philadelphia in 1777, on its way to meet George Washington’s army to fight in the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. The owner donated it to the Museum of the American Revolution’s collection.

This past Thursday morning greeted the Capital Region and North Country of New York with heavy, wet snow to shovel, power lines to restore, and a stubbornly long winter to lament. But for many of us, the morning also brought the sad news that we lost a friend. Dennis Dickinson, longtime town supervisor of Lake George, had passed away the night before after battling a long illness. Initially inspired into public service by President John F. Kennedy, Dennis was first elected town supervisor in 1979 and served until 1982, then returned to the position 30 years later. He was most recently re-elected last fall. Dennis was a great many things: a loving family man, successful engineer and land surveyor, respected community leader, and passionate defender and steward of Lake George’s environmental and historical integrity. He was simultaneously self-effacing and assertive. His opinion mattered and his colleagues respected him. But the thing I will remember most about Dennis is the warm and almost mischievous aura he carried with him. Any room Dennis entered was instantly a happier and funnier place. He had a magical ability to make everyone – even his adversaries — grin merely at the thought of what he might be thinking and what he might say. I don’t know a single person who knew Dennis and never laughed with him. He made both the excitement and the drudgery of public life more enjoyable experiences just by being in the room. Working with him was fun; he was honest, fair, knowledgeable and capable, and these things made him effective. We miss him already. — Ryan Moore

“I want his story to be told. (In war), the people that suffer are the mothers, the fathers, the sons, the daughters, the survivors of what is insanity.”
—  John Flickinger, whose son, Jacob was among the World Central Kitchen workers killed by Israeli airstrikes on their convoy, which sparked furious backlash against Israel, led to the firing of two senior officers and prompted  World Central Kitchen founder and chef José Andrés to write in a New York Times op-ed, “Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.”

PROPERTY WRONGS: The owners of a $930,000 investment property in Queens are being sued by squatters who took up residence and refused to leave, then claimed rights to the property. Believe it or not, a homeowner in New York City was arrested for changing the locks on a $1 million home she had inherited after discovering squatters had moved in. Local news reporters encouraged homeowners to put up No Trespassing signs and to take a time-stamped photo to prove it was up before squatters arrived. Is it any wonder, then, that so many property owners aren’t bothering to pay their property taxes?

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Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, Mark Behan, Leigh Hornbeck, John Bulmer, 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