Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

May 4, 2024

Sierra Leone strolls casually across the track at Churchill Downs, where he figures to be moving much faster this afternoon as a favorite in the 150^th Kentucky Derby. Skip Dickstein

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Thoroughbred racing’s biggest weekend is here, with crowds gathering in Louisville, Ky., for all the pageantry of the 150^th running of the Kentucky Derby.

New York’s Capital Region loves horse racing as much any other part of the country, as witnessed by the crowds that show up by the thousands each summer to watch the races at Saratoga. This year and next, the region is experiencing a case of Triple Crown fever, with the Belmont Stakes moved to Saratoga while Belmont Park undergoes major renovations. Local leaders are ready to welcome big crowds with special events around what they’re calling the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga.

The Kentucky Derby is one of the most-watched thoroughbred races of the year, a spectacle that draws hundreds of thousands of fans to Churchill Downs and millions more to betting windows and TV screens. Everyone who is a fan of the sport, an admirer of its graceful fluidity and pulse-quickening competition, is of course hoping to avoid a repeat of the tragedy that shadowed thoroughbred racing in 2023, when more than two dozen horses died in training or racing accidents at Churchill Downs and Saratoga. Veteran New York Times racing journalists Melissa Hoppert and Joe Drape — who clearly love the sport — capture the heartbreak in the documentary, “The New York Times Presents: Broken Horses.”  Hoppert summarizes the stakes the industry may be facing if the catastrophic injuries, which have been trending downward in recent years, continue: “the track might not be around long enough for our children to take their children there.”

DA DRAMA: We’ve never understood ordinary people who berate police who pull them over, or who think refusing to stop will end well for them. It’s appalling, too, when you read about some politician invoking his or her position to bully their way out of trouble. But it’s downright dumbfounding to watch the district attorney of the county surrounding Rochester, N.Y., not only ignore the police officer who tried to stop her for speeding, but demean him as his bodycam rolled. The DA, Sandra Doorley, apologized, saying, “I've been humbled by my own stupidity, and I'm fully to blame.” The county ethics board is investigating, and the governor has referred the incident to the state’s Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct.

ANOTHER COLLEGE CLOSING: Wells College, a 156-year-old private college in Central New York, announced this week that it would close at the end of the spring semester. Established as a women’s college in 1868 by the founder of Wells Fargo and the American Express Company, Wells began accepting men in 2005 in an effort to boost enrollment, but had just 300 undergraduates this semester. It joins the list of more than 50 colleges nationwide that have closed since 2020.

OLDER AND LIVING LONGER: The world’s population is up to 8 billion, according to the United Nations. The United States has 335 million people; India — expected to become the world’s most populous country this year — and China each have more than 1.4 billion. Interestingly, the world’s population is growing not because of high birth rates, but mainly because people are living longer. The global birth rate doubled between 1960 and 2000 but has continued to slow since. The global median age is 32; the U.S. median is 39. People under 25 account for more than 40% of India’s population.

ELEVATING AIRPORTS: Not long ago, New York’s airports — LaGuardia, JFK and Newark — were laughingstocks, derided as among the worst in the country and poor reflections of the city that considers itself the greatest in the world. But the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has poured billions of dollars into a complete transformation of the facilities. The result: gleaming new terminals and amenities that are winning accolades from happy passengers helped the three airports collectively set a record for total passengers in 2023.

HUDSON VALLEY HIP: Not far from the Hudson River, New York’s Hudson Valley is in the midst of a commercial building boom. On Thursday, local and state officials joined private investors and friends to cut the ribbon on the Inn at Bellefield in Hyde Park, part of a $1-billion development across from The Culinary Institute of America and near the historic home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  The development project, dubbed Bellefield at Historic Hyde Park, will ultimately include more hotels, agritourism, homes, culinary shops, restaurants and retail stores. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was among the many dignitaries offering congratulations on a development he says will make the region thrive as a world-class agricultural and travel destination.

The Corning Tower in Albany, N.Y., emerges from the sepia mists, climbing 589 feet above the city. John Bulmer

PRIME EXAMPLE: Hise Gibson, a senior lecturer in the Harvard Business School, knows what successful leadership looks like. And as a former football player at West Point who spent 25 years in the Army, he is tuned to the familiar cadence and clarity of the commanding officer, traits that he recognized in an up-and-coming college coach known more for flash than for the firm hand with which he builds football programs. Gibson sees in coach Deion Sanders a military commander’s approach to organizing and motivating his teams. “The name of the game?” Avery Forman writes in HBS’ Working Knowledge,  “Sanders sets high expectations, clearly lays out the plan, checks to make sure people are following through, and provides all the logistical support the team needs to succeed both on and off the field.” Sound advice for any business leader.

A FITTING END: The Honor Flight was scheduled for September, but David Bulterman’s family knew there wasn’t time. A heart attack had severely weakened him. Working with Honor Flight, the organization that brings veterans on trips to visit the war memorials in Washington, his family was able to get the 83-year-old Vietnam veteran from Watertown, N.Y., on a flight last weekend, escorted by a daughter and joined by 81other veterans from the Syracuse area. There, he beamed as two young boys thanked him for his service. “Honor Flight Syracuse gave my dad a huge gift,” his daughter told NNY360. Back home, he died the next morning.

POLICE PRESENCE: For the first time since 2020, police departments across the U.S. are reporting an increase in their ranks, though police forces in large cities continue to recover from an exodus that accelerated during the early days of the pandemic and in the wake of widespread scrutiny and unrest following the death of George Floyd. More sworn officers were hired in 2023 than in any of the previous four years and fewer officers resigned or retired, according to survey numbers reported by The Associated Press. Large departments are still more than 5% below their pre-pandemic staffing levels, the AP reports.

STAGED FOR SUCCESS: Thirty years ago, the Adirondack Theater Festival opened in Glens Falls, N.Y., with a brave mission to showcase new musicals and plays. Theater experts said it would never work. Summer stock audiences like big-name musicals and lighter fare. But in the last six months alone, shows that ATF presented like Pump Up the Volume received a Broadway industry presentation, Mystic Pizza launched a West Coast tour, Murder for Two traveled to Shanghai, and The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers bowed off-Broadway. This season ATF, with professional actors from New York City and around the country, is presenting Todd vs the Titanic; a new Broadway-aimed pop musical The King’s Wife; an edgy new adaptation of Dial “M” for Murder, and Worth: An Intimate Exhibition, a one-person play written and performed by Jessica Frances Dukes, who starred in the Netflix hit Ozark as Agent Maya Miller. 

HAPPY ENDING: A neighborhood cat whose abduction and dumping outside a closed animal shelter on a freezing night caused a media sensation in New York’s Capital Region, was returned to his owner by a couple who lived several miles from where he was last seen. “I’m overjoyed,” his owner told the Albany Times Union. “I never gave up on Kane and I’m so happy other people didn’t either.”

NOTHING TO SEE: A Japanese town known for its scenic views of Mount Fuji has decided to provide fewer of them, erecting a large black screen along a stretch of sidewalk to discourage tourists from stopping to take pictures. Signs in several languages urging visitors not to run into the road and to use the designated crosswalk, and even hiring a security guard as crowd control, didn’t work.

TOSSING AND TURNING: One on five Americans sleep fewer than five hours a night, a shocking finding in a poll that found 57% of Americans said they would benefit from more sleep. Stress is the biggest culprit keeping us awake.

WOKE BROKE JOKES: Comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld said concerns about political correctness and fears of offending anyone are producing predicably bland results. “When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups: ‘Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy,” Seinfeld told “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” “They move the gates, like in skiing. Culture, the gates are moving.”

ROBBI MECUS was a revered New York State ranger who for 25 years specialized in notoriously rugged search-and-rescue operations in the Adirondacks, a surprising career pursuit for a kid who grew up in a working class family in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She rescued lost and injured climbers facing hypothermia and frostbite. At 44, she came out as transgender and then worked to foster a supportive community for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning climbers in the North Country of New York. She died in a climbing accident at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. She was 52.

NORMAN KANSFIELD grew up in South Holland, Ill., among farmers who were devout members of the Dutch Reformed Church. He became a professor of theology and president of the school that trains Dutch Reformed ministers, the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey, the oldest seminary in the United States. On special occasions, he gave sermons in Dutch. When his daughter Ann revealed to him that she was gay, he went far beyond warm acceptance and, when the time came, he insisted on performing her wedding. The Seminary board fired him. The General Synod pronounced him guilty of failing to keep his ordination vows, to heed the admonitions of the General Synod and to keep the faith of the denomination. He lost his status as a professor of theology and was defrocked as a minister. He died in Manhattan at 83.

PEGGY MELLON HITCHCOCK, a member of the family of the Pittsburgh industrialist who was secretary of the Treasury under three presidents, took in Timothy Leary when his teaching career at Harvard blew up in 1963. She found a home for Leary and his comrade Richard Alpert in the Hudson Valley village of Millbrook where he conducted his experiments on LSD. She was 90.

A CAT’S TALE: Galena the cat crawled into a box of boots just before her owner taped it shut and dropped it for return to Amazon. Six days later, a worker found the box in the back of a loaded trailer 650 miles away, the cat hungry, thirsty and more than a bit freaked out but otherwise in good shape and soon to be reunited with her family.

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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, Skip Dickstein 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