Facing Out: The Most Interesting News of the Week

June 7, 2025

The quiet Adirondacks town of Long Lake, N.Y., moved a step closer to a substantial change in fortune with word that Whitney Park is under contract. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

The news little Long Lake, N.Y., has been waiting for arrived this week in the Adirondack Explorer, the first to report that a Dallas-based developer has placed the vast Whitney Park under contract, saying with a $125 million asking price, “I couldn’t get there fast enough.”

The late John Hendrickson, widower of heiress Marylou Whitney, directed that proceeds from the sale be given as an unrestricted gift to the Town of Long Lake, a town of 791 people that expects to collect a bit under $5.8 million in local tax revenue this year. The couple enjoyed the hospitality they felt in Long Lake, were generous supporters of local causes and wanted their gift to reflect their gratitude.

The developer, Todd Interests, has experience building high-end housing, golf courses and resorts, among the uses chairman Shawn Todd told The Explorer he is considering for the 36,600-acre property. “We found the perfect buyer,” said Hendrickson’s brother and estate executor, Ed.

Developing the property is certain to face hurdles. Already, environmental groups are pointing to permit provisions they argue require the preparation of a comprehensive master plan before anything can be built on the property, a cumbersome, lengthy and expensive proposition. Todd told The Explorer he would be willing to consider conservation easements, something the state will likely be pushed to pursue.

AN HOUR PAST: Consistent with data showing Americans are consuming less alcohol and in light of the residual effects of covid-era workplace policies, happy hour appears to be on its way to joining the office ashtray as a relic. “Marshaling a troop of drinkers to a bar isn’t easy when your office floor is empty, and that hindrance would persist deep into our age of institutionalized remote work — in which face-to-face intraoffice interactions are filtered exclusively through the cloudy lenses of MacBook cameras,” journalist Luke Winkie writes for Slate. The New York office of Slate had become “fossilized into a Chernobyl-like stasis” when he started there in 2023. “(Y)ou could argue that the story of COVID, and of the 2020s in general, is the detachment of the office from civil procedure.” 

NOT ALL GLAMOUR: Jon Hamm and John Slattery shared a stage again in Austin, a decade after an acclaimed run as the leading men of Mad Men, an exemplar of the so-called Golden Age of Television. There was plenty of fond reminiscing — “it was such a gift,” Slattery said — but the actors agreed that smoking so many rose petal and marshmallow cigarettes and downing so much onion-infused water, used to replicate a vodka martini, is something they could’ve lived without. “Pop another pearl onion in your glass of water, and then smoke 26 more fake cigarettes and it’s 9:30 in the morning!” Slattery recalled.

Space Churn Red, 1968, by George Rickey, whose work is being celebrated in an exhibit at The Hyde Collection. George Rickey Foundation, Inc.

MOVING ART: George Rickey grew up surrounded by mechanical geniuses and mechanical equipment, son of an MIT graduate and engineering executive at Singer Sewing Machine Co., and grandson of the only clockmaker in Athol, Mass. Rickey was one of two major 20th-century artists to make movement a central feature. Alexander Calder was the other. Rickey was teaching art at Indiana University when he discovered the work of American sculptor David Smith of Bolton Landing, N.Y. Rickey eventually joined the faculty at RPI and moved to East Chatham, N.Y., where he created some of the 3,000 sculptures that now have a home in major museums in the United States and in most European capitals. An exhibition of Rickey’s work is opening at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, the first stop in a traveling exhibition and the first time some of Rickey’s work is being shown in public.

DISPATCH FROM KIEV: More than three years after Russia attacked his homeland, and despite the daily toll the fighting is taking on both sides, Nikita Nakonchnyi insists the Ukrainian will is as strong as ever. “We want to live here, in Ukraine, all of our lives,” he told the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union in what has become an annual interview with the former summer chef at Fort William Henry Hotel in Lake George. “I was born in Ukraine. I study in Ukraine. I fall in love in Ukraine. I want to have a child with my girlfriend in Ukraine. I want to stay here. This is not Russia. I want to stay in freedom. I want to speak in my language, I want to believe in my God. I want to live. … I just want to live my life.” He understands there are more sacrifices ahead. “We will lose our people. We will lose our homes, but we will never lose hope,” he said. “We will fight, even if Ukraine is not on your map.”

THAT WAS FAST: The bromance is over. The “First Buddy” is no more. Elon Musk trashed President Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill. Then, Trump threated to pull Musk’s federal contracts. Musk called for Trump’s impeachment and posted on X that “Trump is in the Epstein files.” And Trump signaled he’s done with Musk, telling CNN, "I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem, the poor guy's got a problem." MSNBC’s Steve Benen notes that Musk has become the latest of an extraordinary number of people from Trump’s team who no longer support him. Some Americans have also had enough and are making good on their vows to leave the country. Meanwhile, a student journalist at Brown University sent an email to thousands of university employees posing Muskian questions — and quickly became the target of a university investigation. 

THE MATTER OF FACTS: Ken Jennings, the host of the long-running and still popular TV quiz show Jeopardy!, laments the trivialization of the word trivia. In truth, he writes in The New York Times, trivia contests, whether on his program or in your neighborhood pub, reinforce the importance of knowing accurate, factual, shared information and are an unspoken acknowledgment that facts prevail. If only the same were true of our broader society, where facts and scientific consensus are pushed aside in service of an agenda. “Trivia, of all things, is a ray of hope in our moment of national crisis,” he writes. “Somehow, it’s still an arena where ideological projects are completely ignored and the thing that matters — the only thing that matters — is the right answer.” 

CHRISLEY’S CRUSADE: Todd Chrisley, the reality TV star imprisoned for bank fraud and tax evasion before being pardoned by President Trump, said he and his family would work for prison reform and to fix flaws in the justice system. Chrisley told reporters he witnessed what he regarded as racially motivated acts of injustice toward fellow inmates, while continuing to maintain he and his wife and co-star, Julie, were unjustly convicted. “They were denied programming. They were denied access to certain things,” he said. “I was not denied that, but we know why I wasn't denied that. And so I think that that is a much bigger picture that we all as a society as a whole need to look at: that we are one.”

TARGETING MOSQUITOES: Breakthroughs in research and gene editing techniques are making it theoretically possible to drive mosquitoes and other pests to extinction, with some doctors and scientists advocating exactly that to stop malaria, dengue, West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne illnesses from inflicting such widespread human suffering (nearly 600,000 died of malaria in 2023, most in Africa). Others warn that it is dangerous to play with nature, and that mosquitoes might not be as useless as they seem. One expert argued, “You can get rid of malaria without actually getting rid of the mosquito.” Now, can we talk about black flies?

FAIR FIGHT: Street fairs and festivals enliven cities large and small across America, especially in summer. They’re places for vendors to sell handmade jewelry or second-hand clothing or lemonade that makes you squint, and for people to mingle as a local band plays in the background. They’ve grown in number and popularity, but rapidly rising costs for equipment rentals, materials, permits and various other expenses are clouding the future for community festivals. An annual festival that draws thousands to Chicago last year lost money for the first time in two decades. “We’re a nonprofit, so we’re pretty used to running thin budgets,” the executive director of the local chamber of commerce that sponsors the event told Sherwood News, “but negative budgets can’t work.”

BELMONT AT THE SPA: Journalism gets all the ink, and Sovereignty has the Kentucky Derby roses, but don’t count out Rodriguez and Baeza in today’s 157^th running of the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga, where 50,000 people and the fastest horses in North America will gather. The Belmont, first run in 1867, is the oldest of the Triple Crown races but still a slightly younger sibling to Saratoga’s Travers, first run in 1864. Post time is 7 p.m.

GLOBAL IMPACT: GlobalFoundries, the maker of semiconductors and a major economic force in New York’s Capital Region, said this week it would spend $3 billion more – on top of $16 billion already committed — in New York and Vermont for advanced semiconductor research and development, innovative packaging, silicon photonics and next-generation technologies. GlobalFoundries is the largest employer in Saratoga County, with roughly 2,500 people at its Malta facility.

LANDMARK OPPORTUNITY: The Chrysler Building is practically synonymous with the Manhattan skyline, rising more than 1,000 feet above Lexington Avenue since 1930. The Art Deco landmark is on the market, its value having declined from when the government of Abu Dhabi paid $800 million for a 90% stake. One expert said, “There aren’t that many global icons in the world, and this is one of them, so there will be an enormous appetite for the building.”

FRIENDLY SKIES: Max Comer, an airplane mechanic and widowed dad from Oklahoma, has attracted more than 1.2 million Instagram followers and nearly half a million more on TikTok with his reassuring videos addressing common in-flight worries and demystifying what happens behind the scenes to keep travelers safe.

MYSTERY SOLVED: Skeletal remains that washed up on several New Jersey beaches starting in 1995 have been identified as those of Henry Goodsell, a 19th-century ship captain who was commanding a schooner loaded with marble that wrecked in 1844 while enroute to Philadelphia. His remains were discovered as recently as 2013.

TOUGH MOTHER: Stephanie Case is a human rights lawyer, mom, and elite distance runner. She combined the latter two in a performance to remember. Competing in a 100-meter (62-mile) race in Northern Wales, the 42-year-old stopped three times to breastfeed her 6-month-old and still finished first among female competitors.

“This bill is nothing less than an attack on New York’s family farms. It’s written by people who have never milked a cow, never walked a pasture and have never once asked how the milk gets into their morning latte.”
— New York State Assemblyman Chris Tague, an upstate Republican, on a bill by two New York City Democrats to cap the number of dairy cows a farm can legally own.

HEADS-UP HORSEMAN: A man on horseback in suburban New Jersey helped police corral a suspected hit-and-run driver. The man was showing his horse, Shiny, to friends when they witnessed the incident. He was able to ride Shiny close enough to get a partial license plate number, which he furnished to police.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Kristy Miller, Jim Murphy, Amanda Metzger 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