Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

June 28, 2025

When a bicyclist noticed a baby deer trapped in the Feeder Canal at Glens Falls, N.Y., city firefighters responded. In a scene worthy of Hollywood, Glens Falls Firefighter Jerrod Barton, with help from his C Crew colleagues, suited up in water rescue gear and gently carried the fawn to safety. (IAFF Local 2230 photo)

Dear Clients and Friends:

How hot was it this past week?

Plattsburgh, N.Y., just 25 miles from the Canadian border, tied an all-time record of 101 degrees, as did North Hartland, Vt., on the New Hampshire border, and New York City. The New York Post reported that Glens Falls, N.Y., hit 97 degrees. Boston hit 100. Baltimore reached 104, just shy of the 106 reading at Death Valley. An Amtrak train had to be evacuated after becoming stuck in a tunnel near Baltimore when the “feels-like” temperature approached 112. After a gym workout, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was hospitalized for dehydration in Washington, D.C. In Cape Girardeau, Mo., a road buckled and sent a car airborne. And the water temperature of chilly and very deep Lake George, N.Y., hit the mid-70s.

NOT WHAT THEY SEEM: Last week we told you about an incident in Albany in which a knife-wielding illegal immigrant apparently approached and threatened John Sarcone, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York. After the incident, Sarcone made much ado over the Albany City Police response to the incident, saying: “I’m appalled that there was no police presence around the Capitol. In fact, Albany police never even showed up on the scene. You have the U.S. attorney chased down the street with a knife; a knife-wielding maniac. Not one call from the chief of police. Not one squad car pulled up.” Not so fast, say law enforcement officials, who note Sarcone never called 911 to report the incident, instead calling County Sheriff Craig Apple’s cell phone. Albany Police representatives tell the Times Union: “While it is entirely possible that Mr. Sarcone is unaware of this, he should certainly be familiar with the decades-old emergency reporting system known as '911'. It is truly appalling that a sitting U.S. attorney would fail to use a system that provides the absolute fastest police response, especially under circumstances where he claims someone could have been seriously injured or killed.” The man with the knife who allegedly threatened Sarcone was from El Salvador and in the United States illegally. Upon further investigation, it seems Sarcone has residency problems of his own. The affidavit he filed with police lists his residential address as a three-unit building in Albany that hasn’t had a valid occupancy permit since last year, and has plywood boards covering its entrance and windows and a “No Trespassing” sign tacked to the plywood covering the front door. Sarcone claims his residence within is fully renovated and arranged a call between the Times Union and the building’s developer, who offered to provide photos of the finished space. When the reporter requested the photos, however, the developer could not produce them and instead threatened the newspaper not to pursue the story: “I know many, many people at Fox and such action would induce me to pen an op-ed in the New York Post noting how this 'hit piece' seemingly superseded actual news, considering all that is currently transpiring in New York, in America and worldwide, a viewpoint that would rival even the biased trash seen on The View.” Trash indeed.

CHIN UP: If you think the Trump Administration is remaking the face of the federal government, you ought to see what’s happening with Washington’s jaw lines. Plastic surgeons and dermatologists are busy making over the mandibles of the powerful and those who aspire to be. A strong jawline, natural or constructed, is associated with authority and masculinity – and, for political figures, that’s all the more desirable now because of high-definition cable television.  New York plastic surgeon Darrick Antell collected Google images of the mostly male CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, measured their faces, and determined that 90 percent of them had strong jawlines and chins, compared to 40 percent of the general population.

TEN YEARS ALREADY? State Police Sgt. Jay Cook grew up and worked near the Canadian border in northern New York and knew the area well. He was on patrol there on June 26, 2015, when he came around a corner by the old McDonald Farm in Constable and spotted something in the brush – a lone figure in camo with a backpack. When he called out, the individual began to run away. It turned out to be convicted murderer David Sweat, who had escaped with another convicted murderer from the state prison at Dannemora. Cook threw open the door of his patrol car and began the chase. He drew his service weapon. After Sweat ignored multiple orders to stop, Cook fired two rounds from about 70 yards away, hitting Sweat in one shoulder blade and then the other. Sweat went down, ending the longest manhunt in New York State history.

STILL IN CIRCULATION:  Nestled in beautiful Cleverdale, N.Y., on the eastern side of Lake George, Mountainside Free Library is a chapter right out of history—with a welcoming front porch complete with Adirondack Chairs that practically beg you to sit down with a good book. Built in 1904 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, this original Carnegie Library is still very much open for browsing, borrowing, and basking in the beauty of the Adirondacks. Inside you’ll find thousands of titles ranging from books to movies for all ages. Mountainside is maintained by volunteers and open year-round. Carnegie once called a library “a never-failing spring in the desert.” At Mountainside, that never failing spring continues to refresh readers of all ages in every season. On Saturday, July 12, from 10 a.m. to noon, Mountainside Library invites you to a Garden Party to celebrate this community treasure and thank all who help keep it circulating. Enjoy refreshments, baked goods, a raffle and good company at this community event. Admission is free, just like the library.

GOLDEN ADVOCATE: When independent regional and national environmental groups joined forces to increase their influence 50 years ago, the Adirondack Council was formed. Present at the birth was a young Glens Falls, N.Y., lawyer with a lifelong interest in the Adirondacks and a gift for making complex environmental matters understandable to judges and the public.  Robert J. Kafin became a founding member of the Adirondack Council board and later served as vice chair, chair and a longtime adviser. “Many stakeholders have played pivotal roles in shaping the Adirondack Council over the years,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Raul J. Aguirre. “But few have had more impact than Bob Kafin. From the beginning, Bob has been a trusted advisor and friend to the Council. He served on our board for almost half of those 50 years, always close at hand, always a strong voice for the Adirondacks. His legal insight and strategic counsel have helped us secure victories for clean water, healthy air, and protected wild lands.” Kafin will receive the Council’s lifetime achievement award July 19 at the Silver Bay YMCA facility on northern Lake George.

“Lake George captures your soul. Soothes body and mind. Inspires art, music and healthy living. Makes memories that last forever.”  — The Lake George Association. Tickets on sale now for its July 11 gala. (Luke Dow photo)

FLAGG MAN: Cooper Flagg won’t turn 19 until December, but this week, to almost no one’s surprise, he was the #1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft. As a high school freshman in Maine, Flagg won a state championship and was named the Gatorade Player of the Year. He and his twin brother transferred to Montverde Academy in Florida, a pipeline for NBA talent. In his second season there, Montverde went 33-0. Now, after just one year at Duke, Flagg will play for the Dallas Mavericks. He is not the youngest ever #1 pick – that distinction belongs to LeBron James, who was 18 years and 178 days old when the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted him in 2003. Flagg is 18 years and 186 days old.

EYES OFF THE PRIZE: The widespread desire to bring manufacturing and good manufacturing jobs back to the United States has run into a demographic reality. We just don’t have enough people who want manufacturing jobs. “We spent three generations telling everybody that if they didn’t go to college, they are a loser,” one economist said. “Now we are paying for it. We still need people to use their hands.” Today, much of manufacturing is a high-tech enterprise requiring the use of sophisticated equipment and special training and familiarity with software. Attracting motivated young people to manufacturing careers remains a challenge, however, when some high school guidance counselors are still judged by how many students go on to college.

IN WITH THE NEW: There was a time when working at the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters of Walmart meant days spent in warehouse-like buildings with wood-paneled offices and few windows. But that won’t fly now. The world’s largest company by revenue is competing with tech companies for top talent. That’s why Walmart has a new 350-acre Bentonville campus with a hotel, a food hall, an amphitheater, and massive fitness and child-care centers. There are electric bikes to get around. Robots cut the grass and clean the windows. Winding paths, which are open to the public, snake through it all. The idyllic grounds, with more 750,000 native plants, would not be out of place among those of the biggest tech companies in the world from which Walmart is poaching employees while persuading them life in the Ozarks can be as good as San Francisco, Seattle or New York.

UPSTATE CALIFORNIA? Beyond Hudson, Millbrook and Beacon, the characterization by some of the Hudson Valley and Catskills as “the new Hamptons” never really stuck. To some it was aspiration; to others a good joke. But over time, strong investments in hotels, restaurants and distilleries have advanced the cause of remaking parts of upstate New York in the image of Napa Valley. Now, it’s not uncommon to read that a Michelin-starred chef has taken over a local restaurant or that a local hotel’s “modernist suite” is going for $1,200 a night. Welcome to the Californication of Upstate New York.

CHANGE COMES TO ALBANY: If she wins the November election, and that looks likely, Democrat Dorcey Applyrs, currently Chief City Auditor, would become the first Black mayor of Albany, N.Y. Applyrs won the Democratic mayoral primary this week, defeating tech executive Dan Cerutti, Common Council President Corey Ellis and Albany County Legislator Carolyn McLaughlin.

DOUBLE H TODAY: Al Roker invited NBC’s Today show viewers along as he made his way to Lake Luzerne in Warren County to report on the Double H Ranch, the Charles R. Wood-Paul Newman collaboration that created one of the first summer camps for seriously ill kids.  Campers attend free of charge, and 80,000 have done so since the camp opened in 1993.  

DISNEY 5.0: Disney is considering building another major theme park, or two smaller parks, in Orlando. Though announcements have not been made, planning documents exist, and they were released to PEOPLE by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

MATTERS OF THE HEART: Heart attacks are no longer the leading cause of death in the United States, Stanford University researchers report. But chronic heart disease – including heart failure, arrhythmia and hypertensive heart disease – remains at the top of the list.

SMOKE ‘EM IF YOU GOT ‘EM: Glens Falls, N.Y., was a manufacturing center for wood products, black marble, lime, bicycles, early automobiles, gloves, shirts, dresses, and catheters. Who knew about cigars? It’s true: the city also was a 19^th century center of cigar manufacturing, and one of its leading political lights lighted up a Colvin – sparking statewide media attention. Historian Maury Thompson separates the smoke from the fire.

THINKERS AND DOERS: Steve Jobs once opined that history’s greatest innovators were the people who not only thought up great ideas but also had the ability to execute them. "It's very easy to take credit for thinking," he said. Leonardo da Vinci not only conceived of great art, Jobs noted, but mixed his own paints.

FRED SMITH earned only a C on the economics paper he wrote at Yale. His professor thought Smith’s idea for a nationwide overnight delivery system would never work. Smith persevered. After serving in Vietnam, he went to Little Rock, Ark., and at 26 launched the business with private investments of $80 million and a handful of small planes. It was a simple concept: People would pay “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight,” which would become the Federal Express advertising slogan. He later moved FedEx to Memphis, Tenn. Over five decades, Smith built a global delivery giant with more than half a million employees, hundreds of jets crisscrossing the planet and annual revenue of around $90 billion. He even made a cameo appearance in the Tom Hanks film “Castaway.” He was 80.

CAROLYN McCARTHY came home from a Christmas concert on Dec. 7, 1993, to find a Christmas tree lying in her driveway. She was annoyed that her husband and son had not taken it inside and put it up. Her husband Dennis McCarthy was dead, her son Kevin gravely wounded and not expected to survive, both victims of a mass shooting on the 5:33 p.m. Long Island Rail Road train out of Pennsylvania Station. Five others were killed as well. She gave herself a moment to grieve, then rushed to the hospital to save her son, the natural reaction of a nurse familiar with the miracles that sometimes happen in emergency rooms. Against all odds, Kevin pulled through and returned to work, albeit paralyzed and unable to perform simple tasks like lacing his shoes. Ms. McCarthy threw herself into gun-control advocacy and, a political rookie at 52, ran for Congress. She found little support in her own Republican party and served nine terms as a Democrat. She was 81.

BILLY DON MOYERS was born in Hugo, Okla., the son of an unskilled laborer. In high school, he took a writing job with a local newspaper. The editor sliced the Y off his first name. His parents hoped he would become a Baptist minister, but Bill Moyers was drawn to journalism and politics and to the work of Lyndon Baines Johnson, then the majority leader of the United States Senate. On Nov. 22, 1963, Moyers was present on Air Force One in Dallas when Johnson took the oath of office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He played a pivotal role in the inception of Johnson’s Great Society programs. He was the president’s top administrative assistant and press secretary when Johnson sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight in the Vietnam War. He supervised the drafting of the legislation that created the Peace Corps and at 28 became its second in command. After Washington, Moyers became publisher of the Long Island newspaper Newsday, then made his way to PBS and CBS and back again. He turned down a job with NBC to co-host the Today show. He won more than 30 Emmy awards “in an age of broadcast blowhards” by bringing his soft-spoken, earnest, deferential style to interviews with poets, philosophers and educators, often on the subject of values and ideas. He was 91.

If you brook mediocrity, eventually you will become mediocre.
— Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express

RAY HATED IT: Ray Romano’s brother was a New York City police officer who complained that he was shot at frequently, but when his brother went to work nothing bad ever happened because “everybody loves Raymond.” Over Romano’s objection, that became the name of the hit comedy that ran for nine seasons. Marking 30 years since the show’s debut, Romano said he hated the name from the start and begged the head of CBS to change it.

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Authors and Contributors: Mark Behan, Amanda Metzger, Ryan Moore, Troy Burns, Jim Murphy, Kristy Miller, John Brodt, Bill Callen, Luke Dow and John Behan.

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