Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News
June 22, 2024
It’s the fireflies’ time to shine, swarms turning themselves into, in the photographer’s apt title, Forest Stars. John Bulmer
Dear Colleagues and Friends:
Seventy summers ago, two iconic Lake George, N.Y., tourist attractions opened their doors to children and adults from near and far. They were betting that, as soon as children got out of school, their parents would pack the woodie for the open road and explore the beautiful Adirondacks.
The two attractions helped create magical, memorable Lake George summer vacation experiences for thousands. Storytown USA, founded and developed by Charles R. Wood, was one of America’s first theme parks, opened a year before Disneyland. The restored Fort William Henry offered an immersive introduction to the battle of the world’s great powers to control North America. This year, both are celebrating 70th anniversaries.
The Fort kicks off the festivities today. Stewart’s Shops, another iconic local business, created Cookies N’ Cannons ice cream — which will be served to attendees of Fort William Henry Community Day from noon to 3 p.m. — to recognize the Fort’s anniversary.
Storytown USA — now the Six Flags Great Escape — will be celebrated over 11 nostalgic days, beginning June 27, with music and appearances from beloved old Storytown characters.
Later this summer, the Warren County hospitality community will gather to honor the contributions of the late Mr. Wood and the late Robert Flacke, longtime leader of Fort William Henry. The late Lake George Supervisor Dennis Dickinson and current Lake George Supervisor Vinnie Crocitto also will be honored, along with Lake Luzerne Supervisor Gene Merlino, Six Flags Great Escape President Rebecca Wood and Fort William Henry President Sam Luciano.
CAMPING WITH WOLVES: For more than a decade, now, the Wolf Conservation Center in upstate New York has invited guests to a unique sleepover program that allows them to experience what it’s like to live among wolves. Called “Sleeping with Wolves,” the program lets you camp among the creatures of the night, though for obvious safety reasons the center’s 25 wolves are kept at bay. There also are opportunities to watch the wolves in their enclosures. A reporter for Gothamist took it in with his family and, while they had a great time, didn’t get a lot of sleep. “It’s truly a cool experience, and if I go again, I won’t expect to get any rest.”
CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING: Squirrel around the depths of your junk drawers. You’re likely to find some. We’re talking about old matchboxes and matchbooks, the ones nobody offers anymore because smoking — cigarettes, at least — has become unfashionable. They were once the colorful contents of big glass bowls, a marketing staple for bars, restaurants and other businesses as common as business cards. Now they are relics, relegated largely to the private collections of phillumenists.
HARD KNOCK LIFE: Things aren’t as glamorous for social media influencers as they might seem on camera, according to The Wall Street Journal. First, a definition: a social media influencer or content creator is someone who posts videos to TikTok or YouTube about their lives, opinions, make-up tips, outfits, parenting, interior design, gaming (the list is endless). Popularity comes in the form of views and followers. If those numbers are high enough, the platform pays for the content. More dollars roll in if someone selling, say, a face cream, weight-loss tea, shape wear garment, dietary supplement or destination takes notice and hires the content creator to advertise their wares. But the market is crowded and the algorithm is a fickle beast. Last year, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Only 13% made more than $100,000.
MUSIC MAN: Country singer George Strait, who has more No. 1 singles than any other country performer, added another milestone to his legendary career — largest ticketed concert in U.S. history. His performance at Texas A&M’s football stadium drew 110,905 fans, about 3,000 more than the previous record, for a 1977 Grateful Dead concert in New Jersey. By contrast, what was supposed to have been a blockbuster spring for a stable of pop stars — Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and even Jennifer Lopez — has instead been something of a flop.
“Strikingly handsome, with jewel-like red eyes and an unearthly yet beautiful call.” A mother loon on the nest. Nancie Battaglia
DEEP, DISTURBING DIVE: The world watched in shock and horror a year ago as a small vessel carrying five people to explore the wreckage of the Titanic suddenly lost contact. It would be days before confirmation of the news that the Titan submersible had imploded 2 ½ miles below the surface of the North Atlantic. Just as shocking is a report in “Wired,” based on a trove of leaked documents and interviews with former employees of OceanGate, the maker of the ill-fated vessel, that illustrates the corners that were cut in rushing the Titan into service. Referencing OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among those who died in the implosion, Wired reports, “Most of all, the documents show how Rush, blinkered by his own ambition to be the Elon Musk of the deep seas, repeatedly overstated OceanGate’s progress and, on at least one occasion, outright lied about significant problems with Titan’s hull.”
GOLLY, EVEN DOLLY?: In case you hadn’t heard, Dolly Parton, quite possibly the most unassailable American public figure in the past half century, is under attack, called out in harsh terms for citing her faith as her reason to be inclusive and accepting of all. The writer of the article walked back some of her words, but the rhetorical shots had been fired. “Parton has long been the great equalizer,” Allison Hope writes for CNN. “I long joked — and worried — that Parton was the canary in the coal mine and when they came for her, all hope was officially lost. As long as Dolly Patron remained cheerful and unscathed, I surmised that America had a chance at overcoming its challenges and moving forward as a united nation. But now, with the arrows aimed at Parton, all I feel is existential dread.”
SCHOOL DAZE: Private colleges in the U.S. have been closing at a rate of about two per month, leaving tens of thousands of students in an unexpected and bewildering limbo. A trade group for college executives says as many as half of those students never return to college, and many others lose credits or have to spend more to enroll elsewhere. “You don’t really know where to start,” an 18-year-old student of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which just announced its closure, told The Associated Press. “It’s very numbing.”
OWNING HISTORY: A private island on a cozy lake high in the Adirondacks with a history of high-profile guests and owners is on the market. The 8.6-acre island and five-bedroom home, built in 1928, are listed for just under $3 million. Previous owners include Brooke Shields, and guests over the years included Eleanor Roosevelt. The home is on the National Register of Historic Places.
THE PRESIDENT’S MAN: Have you heard about the New Yorker seeking a second, non-consecutive term in the White House? And about that sex scandal? How history repeats itself. Historian Maury Thompson looks back.
BEACH BUMS: A Pennsylvania couple were arrested by New York State Police, who allege they left their infant alone on a beach in Lake George, N.Y., for about 15 minutes while they went boating. They’re charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
SECRET SERVICE STICKUP: A Secret Service agent in Southern California for a fund-raiser for President Biden was robbed at gunpoint in a residential community about an hour southeast of Los Angeles. Police said the agent had his bag stolen. He fired his weapon, but there’s no indication the robber was hit.
PUSHING THOU VIEWS: Louisiana will require every public school classroom — including universities — in the state to display the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font,” which presumably will be much larger but no less readable than the lawsuits that will confront this latest salvo in the endless culture wars.
CIVICS LESSON: An elected official in Massachusetts who evidently has never heard of the First Amendment threatened a local reporter with felony charges for recording a public meeting without first announcing he was doing so. Karen Kevin Canty cited “a wiretapping statute” in making the threat. The reporter, somehow, managed not to laugh out loud.
WILLIE MAYS was, to many, the greatest baseball player who ever lived, and it’s hard to argue. Leave aside the astounding statistics — he’s the only player in major league history with at least 3,000 hits, a .300 batting average, 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases — over a 13-year period, he finished in the top six in MVP voting 12 times, in the top three six times, and won it twice. He led the league in home runs four times, stolen bases four times, slugging percentage five times, total bases three times and triples three times. His defense was second to none (he won 12 Gold Gloves, the record for a center fielder), and his catch on the dead run with his back to home plate in the 1954 World Series remains one of the most famous plays in baseball history. Mays, who had been the oldest living Baseball Hall-of-Famer, was 93.
NATALIE GILLIS became known to New York’s Capital Region through tragedy, as the pilot of a small plane that crashed into the woods shortly after takeoff from Albany International Airport. But the more local reporters looked into her, the more they found to admire, right up until her final heroic acts, which residents of a senior housing development are convinced saved theirs and many other lives. Gillis, the plane’s sole occupant, lived a life of adventure and service — an ocean kayaker, wilderness pilot, photographer, poet and guide who left behind a beautiful and inspiring body of work and whose magnetic personality instantly won new friends. Her photographs captured the animals and landscape of some of Earth’s most inhospitable places with uncommon grace. Explore her legacy here. She was 34.
CASEY O’CONNOR was a consummate “baseball guy,” an assistant at The College of Saint Rose and at Christian Brothers Academy near Albany, N.Y., before taking over the CBA program in 2014. He was known as much for his personal warmth and individual approach to player development as he was for his teams’ success on the field, opening the CBA gym Sunday nights for optional workouts in the winter and offering feedback to every player who showed up. “He’d know every single kid’s name,” CBA assistant coach Jeff Pesnel told the Albany Times Union, “and he’d know everything about them.” Diagnosed with rectal cancer in February 2023, he continued to coach through the season that ended just last month. In his final days, he visited a lot with family and friends, played Wiffle ball and laughed, his widow told the Times Union, laughing as she recounted how her husband described it: “He called it his ‘Living wake.’ That was his personality.” He was 48.
DONALD SUTHERLAND was among the most versatile and enduring actors in Hollywood, equally entertaining as a puckish soldier-prisoner in The Dirty Dozen and Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H. as he was as a tightly wound and wounded father in Ordinary People or the imperious and chilling President Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games series. A winner of the Order of Canada, the country’s second-highest honor, he got his start in London theater and British television in the 1950s and never stopped working, logging appearances in nearly 200 films and series during his decades-long career. His son, actor Kiefer Sutherland, wrote on X that was his father was “Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.” He was 88.
“I hope Jim, my legislative colleagues, all of our statehouse staff and those who work in this building, and the citizens of Vermont can forgive me for my poor judgment and actions and allow me to take the necessary steps to repair what I have done.”
— Vermont state Rep. Mary Morrissey, after she was caught on video pouring water into a tote bag belonging to fellow Rep. Jim Carroll, behavior that lasted for five months.
MOBILE HOME: An 1834 Pennsylvania brownstone mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs, built as a summer residence and reportedly a stop on the Underground Railroad, can be yours for free, as long as you can move it, and do it fast. The property’s owner is eager to get rid of it, with plans to build warehouses on the land.
Some of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.
Authors and Contributors: Bill Callen, Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Leigh Hornbeck, Troy Burns, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, 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
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