Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

June 29, 2024

We’re with you, Zephyr; nothing beats a relaxing afternoon lakeside in your favorite Adirondack chair. David Howson

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

If you’re reading this, congratulations; you’ve survived the first presidential debate. The bad news is, we’re in for another 18 weeks or so of nonstop vitriol and degradation, to be followed, no doubt, by interminable wailing from the losing side. No wonder The Washington Post focused on “double haters” as the voters most likely to decide the race at the top of the ticket: “Both options suck,” one Wisconsin voter said, “And it’s going to, I think, boil down to what sucks less.”

The heck with all that. Let’s celebrate Independence Day and count our blessings.

CRISIS OF COMPETENCE: Speaking of politics, a national progressive advocacy group whose job was to get Democrats to vote in New York’s primary election on Tuesday texted the wrong polling locations to voters, in some cases suggesting their polling place was a three-hour drive away. When the error was brought to their attention, they attempted to correct it, but again sent people the wrong information. The Albany Times Union reported that the company also screwed up in 2022 and 2023. Note to Democrats: maybe try another service provider? And while we’re on the subject of competence, we told you a couple weeks ago about a proposal to redevelop an old dirt racetrack near Albany into a substantial mixed-use development, the type of project that typically gets unveiled publicly only after lots of private discussions to get buy-in and, importantly, build relationships with the people who will decide. Yeah, the developers didn’t bother with any of that; instead, they sprung it on the town during a public comment period at a public meeting, infuriating members of the Town Board and local residents.

CLEAR ADVANTAGE: Just in time for summer, Travel + Leisure reminds readers that the waters of Lake George, N.Y., are the cleanest of any lake in the United States, while a prominent conservationist in the Adirondacks reminds the Lake George Park Commission, steadfast in its haughty determination to overrule thousands of people who adamantly oppose the injection of chemicals to control weeds in the lake, that it wouldn’t exist but for the public acquisition of lands and a clause in the state Constitution that designates the Adirondack Park as “forever wild,” which “when viewed broadly, imposes restraints on governments placing herbicides into the lake purely on an expedient, experimental basis.”

ANIMAL KINGDOM: Two friends on a quick fishing trip to a lake in Mississippi and their guide noticed a commotion in the water and, when they checked it out, found more than three dozen hounds treading water. The dogs were part of a fox hunt and apparently chased a deer into the lake. The anglers retrieved the hounds and delivered them to their relieved owners. In Brazil, officials at a high-security prison have replaced the expensive, high-maintenance dogs that once patrolled an area between the prison’s walls and an outer security fence with nine geese, which are fiercely territorial, cheap, make an awful racket when anyone comes near and are incorruptible. “They hate everyone,” the prison’s director told The Wall Street Journal. “They have zero loyalty, even to the people who feed them every single day.” Playing some golf in North Carolina? Let a llama carry your bag. Lost your donkey? He may be hanging out with some elk. A 6-foot, 220-pound sturgeon was caught in the Hudson River. USA Gymnastics has a therapy dog. And we don’t care what others say, buddy, all dogs are beautiful in our book.

SEA MONSTERS: You’ve come to Maine and bought yourself a gorgeous home overlooking Camden Harbor. Everything is great, except those pesky trees in your neighbor’s yard that are keeping your view from being just so. So you do what any level-headed, completely normal, not insanely entitled person would do — you dump a bunch of pesticides around your neighbor’s oaks, killing the trees, leaching into a nearby public park and beach and making an entire town of 5,000 people want to feed you through a wood chipper. But hey, for a few million in fines and penalties, you literally got your killer view.

YOU’RE EXCUSED: President Biden this week pardoned potentially thousands of former members of the U.S. military who engaged in consensual sex and were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy in the days before the military lifted restrictions on service based on sexual orientation. “Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves,” the president said in a statement. The move came a week after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order pardoning more than 175,000 marijuana convictions in the state, including more than 150,000 misdemeanor convictions for simple possession of cannabis and more than 18,000 misdemeanor convictions for use or possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia.

A fire in the sky welcomes a blazing day during the recent Northeast heat wave. Smoke from wild fires, much in the news last summer, is still moderate, impacting the reds and oranges of sunrises and sunsets. You can view a current smoke and fire map here. John Bulmer 

PUBLIC SERVANTS OR PUBLIC MENACE? A fierce debate is taking place in Long Island’s Nassau County, where the county executive is defending a program to recruit and train armed citizen volunteers for deployment during natural disasters and other major emergencies, with one critic hitting the “broad and dangerously vague authority to respond, armed with deadly weapons, in the event of an emergency,” The Associated Press reports. The AP reports that 25 people have completed the county’s training program. The county executive, Bruce Blakeman, told the AP the citizen deputies, if needed, would be assigned to protect critical infrastructure, such as government buildings, hospitals and houses of worship, not to deal with crowd control or protestors, another fear voiced by opponents.

SLICE OF LIFE: Free advice to avocado lovers: Use the cutting board. Thousands of people each year slice their hands and fingers in the course of cutting avocados, often because they choose to hold the avocado in one hand and the knife in the other. Hand surgeons, The Washington Post reports, even have a name for the condition: Avocado hand. “Cutting an avocado seems so harmless, but we’ve seen some pretty bad injuries from it,” one hand surgeon told The Post. “By far and away the most injuries I’ve seen are from avocado injuries.”

DIGGING HISTORY: A team led by the chair of the Skidmore College Anthropology Department spent a hot, humid afternoon this week just off the southern shore of Lake George, looking for clues to a historic past near the site of a 1750s military barracks. Their initial discovery — a pile of beer caps and pull tabs that dig leader Siobhan Hart dryly noted was “an indicator of the more recent land use as recreational space” — soon gave way to what appeared to be an 18^th-century trash pit. Exploration can be fickle like that. The Adirondack Explorer reported that the New York State DEC, which manages the land where the dig took place, said it is consulting with the State Museum in Albany and may allow more archaeological research at the battlefield in the future.

SAND CASTLES: A standoff between the Army Corps of Engineers and private property owners along Florida’s hurricane-swept Gulf Coast is setting the stage for even greater catastrophes from future storms. The issue is the rebuilding of protective dunes, a standard service performed by the Army Corps to prevent the next major storm surge from wiping out beachside homes. The Army Corps wants property owners to grant easements to facilitate the efficient rebuilding of damaged dunes and is refusing to move forward as scores of property owners refuse to grant public access. Meanwhile, the beaches continue to erode.

QUITE A BARGAIN: A Mayan vase that is at least 1,200 years old is headed back to its homeland, four years after a Washington, D.C., resident paid $4 for it at a Maryland thrift store.

THE WATCH: A watch carried by Theodore Roosevelt as he led the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, traveled the Amazon River, and served as New York’s governor and the nation’s 26th president has at last been recovered. The watch, loaned to the Wilcox Mansion in Buffalo, where Roosevelt was sworn in as president in 1901, was stolen in 1987.  

SMOKY NOTES: The world’s oldest wine, discovered at a Roman burial site in Spain that had been sealed since around the first century, was found inside a glass funeral urn along with the cremated ashes of a man and a gold ring. Cheers.

DINING OUT: Millions of Americans take for granted a home with a dining room, a place to gather for family meals, store the good plates and silverware, do homework or have a private conversation. Don’t look now, but that longtime staple of residential architecture is being drawn out of the picture, replaced by rooms that double as kitchens or living rooms, and sometimes even those are too small for a simple table.

THE BEAR: Cultural phenomenon. Indictment of toxic chefs. The TV show that critics said got cooking right, got kitchens right, got grief right, got addiction right, got Chicago right is back.

HOT HEAD: A 6-foot wax replica of the Lincoln Memorial, allegedly built to withstand 140 degrees, melted during a sustained heat wave near Washington, D.C. Of course, memesters couldn’t resist having fun with images of the wax head slumped backward, like, as one described it, someone who just received another annoying email.

6 DIGITS: The state of Vermont has agreed to pay $175,000 to settle a lawsuit for criminally charging a driver who flipped off a state trooper. The state will pay $100,000 to the driver, Gregory Bombard, and $75,000 to the ACLU of Vermont and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which filed the suit on First Amendment grounds.

GENNY BRODT had loves beyond numbering: Her late husband John Sr., to whom she was married for more than half a century; her children, John, Michael, Danielle and Denise and their spouses Lisa, Michelle, Jeff and Ross, respectively; her grandchildren Nicole and husband Brian, Steven and wife Sidney; Reilley, Maddox, Jenna, Cassie, Leah, Lilly, Alex, and Parker, and her great granddaughter Madilynn; the students, teachers, staff and administrators of the Hudson Falls, N.Y., School District (where, as telephone operator, she was the voice of the district for many years); her children’s spouses and their families, her grandchildren’s school friends and teammates; longtime neighbors; summer days at the pool; baking pies and delivering finger rolls at Christmas; reading to the kids; and, of course, the New York Yankees, for whom she rooted for 40 years. The mother of our own John Brodt, she grew up among other Polish families in an area she lovingly called “down home way,” under the hill in the Village of Hudson Falls, and became matriarch of a family she and her husband raised to be strong, kind, and conscientious. She was 90.

“A lot of people (talk about) healing, but I don’t think the victims of Oxford or the victims of (Michigan State) or the victims of the splash pad, or the victims that we see every day ‘heal.’ They learn how to process, how to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. Our people that deal with all of that every day need that same process. They need a healthy way to offload some of that because in the moment we're trained to suck it up. ... But after that situation and that critical moment resolves itself, you have to give them the support and help to process and work through that.”
— Oakland County (Mich.) Sheriff Michael Bouchard, after one of his deputies was killed in an ambush while following a stolen car.

GAME OVER: A 20-year-old New Jersey man is facing decades in prison after, officials say, he boarded a red-eye, flew 1,000 miles to Jacksonville, Fla., and attempted to kill a stranger he had been playing the same fantasy video game with hours earlier.

Facing Out will take a break along with everyone else for the long Fourth of July weekend. Have a safe and festive holiday; we’ll be back July 13.

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AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS: Bill Callen, Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Leigh Hornbeck, Troy Burns, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, David Howson 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