Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

August 10, 2024

The sun rises over a beautiful day of fishing on Lake Algonquin in Wells, N.Y. Paul McEvoy

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Since “weird” seems to be the word of the moment, we thought we’d hop right in with some news about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presidential candidate of the Comic Relief Party.

Where to begin? With his admission that he dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park 10 years ago? Or that he once had a freezer full of roadkill meat? Or that doctors told him he has a dead worm in his brain? Or that he somehow believes, according to testimony he gave this week in an Albany, N.Y., courtroom, that an intent to move somewhere is “the only requirement for residency?”

Come to think of it, we love that last idea. We all hereby declare our intent to move to Texas. Sorry, New York State; no more income taxes from us! Thanks, Bobby!

SPACE WAIT: American astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are two months into a mission that was supposed to last a week, and they won’t be coming home any time soon. The Boeing Starliner that flew them to the International Space Station on June 5 developed problems before docking, and it’s not clear whether NASA will use it to return the astronauts. They could be up there until February.

RALLYING FOR JOBS: Corrections officers and their families, along with other friends and supporters who included elected officials from both parties, gathered nearly 1,000 strong on a Sunday afternoon to protest the announced closure of a state prison in rural Washington County, N.Y. The Great Meadow Correctional Facility is scheduled to close Nov. 6, and while the state says all workers at the prison will be offered opportunities to transfer, either to another prison or elsewhere in state government, that assurance was no comfort. Speakers criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul for ignoring the needs and concerns of their community, though an advocate for prison reform had no sympathy for their economic arguments. Historian Maury Thompson looks back to the early days of Great Meadow, built more than a century ago.

ROOM TO ROAM: The Adirondacks has its share of rustic wilderness outposts and popular destinations, but the sheer size of the Adirondack Park — 6 million acres, more land than any of the five smallest U.S. states — means there are lots of places to explore outside the mainstream. The New York Times has a few suggestions. “The quieter parts of the park are untouched,” one local tourism official told The Times. “You can find solitude and a real connection with nature. That’s why we love it.” The solitude can also make it difficult to get a cellphone signal, as Gov. Kathy Hochul learned when she was unable to place a congratulatory phone call to Vice President Kamala Harris. State Sen. Dan Stec, whose district includes a large chunk of the Adirondacks, called on the governor to encourage the Adirondack Park Agency to revisit its policy on cell phone towers, enacted in 2002. “While a lack of (cell service) prevented your ability to make a congratulatory call to the Vice President,” he wrote in a letter to the governor, “an inability for our residents to use a cell phone to call 911 is literally a matter of life or death.”

LAUDABLE LEADERSHIP: Trinity Alliance of the Capital Region was on financial fumes when Harris Oberlander arrived in 2004, after 17 years with another Albany, NY.-based nonprofit. “I was not cashing my checks,” he said. “It was that close.” His successor as CEO won’t have to worry about that. Oberlander announced his retirement this week, having led the organization’s transformation into a social services juggernaut whose more than 100 employees serve thousands of the community’s most vulnerable people. “Trinity has been serving our community since 1912,” he said. “It is my hope and vision that we will continue to serve for another century and more.”

UNDER FIRE: When Laura Kavanagh became the first female commissioner of the New York City Fire Department since its founding in 1865, she immediately set about to diversify the traditionally male ranks, improve pay and benefits, promote women to leadership positions, prepare firefighters to deal with terrorist attacks and mass shootings, procure next-gen safety equipment, get language translation apps in the hands of first responders, and work with churches and schools to promote fire safety. Now after only three years, she’s out, a casualty of hostile internal politics.

General Electric set up shop in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1886, transforming a former agricultural area to The City that Lights the World. John Bulmer

BOSTON STRONG: A collaboration between Boston police and community leaders, launched as the city was rocked by increasing gang-related violence in the 1990s, is being credited for a dramatic reduction in violent crime. So far this year, the city has reported eight homicides — Albany, Ga., with about one-tenth the population of Boston, has had 12 — continuing a downward trend. By this time last year, Boston had two dozen homicides, still well below historical averages. One particularly successful element of the program, radio station WBUR reports, are weekly “peace walks,” where police, clergy, community leaders and residents walk together in neighborhoods with high incidents of crime, greeting residents and asking about their lives and challenges. “We practice community policing,” Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox told WBUR. “That's a little different than policing in some other places and just going around and arresting people. Community policing is doing what we're doing right now: building trust, partnering with people in the community, listening to them, address the needs they have and if we can't solve the problem, connect them with the people who can.”

GAMES PLAYER: Each Olympics introduces us to star athletes many have never heard of and makes stars of athletes with compelling back stories. But no Olympics before Paris ever had the magnetic star power of Snoop Dogg, whose celebrity has only risen, if that’s possible, with his work as a prime-time correspondent for NBC. “When the lights are on, that’s when I shine the best,” he told The Associated Press. “This opportunity was nothing but a chance for me to show the world what it’s supposed to look like when you put the right person in the right environment.” Veteran former North Country Public Radio newsman Brian Mann is there, too, and loving every minute of it.

FOOD SENSITIVITIES: American consumers battered by years of inflation are adjusting their eating habits, spending less on eating out and instead splurging more here and there on higher-end foods they can make at home. It surely doesn’t help that while prices are up across the board, restaurant prices have risen more than grocery prices, especially noticeable in the past year, when, according to federal data, the cost of the average restaurant meal grew 4.1%. Trouble keeping low-income customers was behind McDonald’s recent reintroduction of $5 value meals.

CHALLENGES AHEAD: Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter, spent nearly a year and a half as a political prisoner in Iran, held on bogus charges until he was freed in a prisoner exchange, a nauseating tactic favored by authoritarian regimes. But even as we celebrate the safe returns of four people snatched for leverage by Russia, Rezaian writes, it’s important to remember that returning to daily life can itself be a hellish experience — in his case, dealing with credit that was wrecked because of unpaid bills, among other obstacles. “The U.S. government can do more to support the social reintegration of returned hostages,” he writes. “It can, to start, provide point people to help clear the burdens that have piled up — from renewing expired driver’s licenses and accessing health care to dealing with back taxes and financial liabilities.” Lest we forget, the Russians got people back in the exchange, including a couple of deep-undercover spies whose story will be very familiar to fans of the TV series The Americans.

BORDER HOUNDS: Restrictions designed to control the spread of rabies have gone into effect at the U.S.-Canada border, and no one, politicians included, is happy about them. To enter the United States now, a dog must be at least 6 months old, be microchipped, and be accompanied by a “dog import” form, a real killjoy for people who just want to take their dogs on a family vacation. When the Centers for Disease Control initially announced the new policy, it was even more onerous, requiring examination papers and a special certificate from a qualified veterinarian. “The rules will do little to safeguard dogs,” Chris Churchill writes in the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, “they’ll only be a hassle for owners.”

END OF THE ROAD: The legendary rock band Aerosmith announced late last week that it would no longer tour because lead singer Steven Tyler’s voice had been permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury that he suffered last fall. “He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury,” the band said in a statement announcing its retirement. “We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear, that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible.” 

GOODNESS PREVAILS: An Albany, N.Y., resident whose car was stolen in a carjacking in May has a new one, thanks to community fundraising efforts and a couple who handed her a $10,000 check after seeing a TV news story about her plight.

SWIFT ACTION: Authorities in Austria thwarted a planned terrorist attack targeting a sold-out Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, leading to the cancellation of all three scheduled performances. Police announced that suspects had taken “concrete preparatory measures” for a terror attack.

HIT THE SHOWERS: The most popular and notable meteor shower, the Perseid shower, is visible from the dark skies of the Adirondacks through August 26. The showers are generally expected to reach their peak on August 12 and 13. In the Adirondacks, you may see as many as 50 or 75 shooting stars per hour on peak nights.

DREAM BUILDERS: Legoland, the resort in the Hudson Valley, is hiring a master builder to create and maintain more than 15,000 installations across its 150 acres, Gothamist reports. It’s hosting a two-round competition for finalists in front of live audiences. The winner will work fulltime for the resort for $19 an hour plus benefits.

STEALING HISTORY: Markers commemorating historic people and places are disappearing in New York City, evidently a result of high scrap metal prices. It could be worse: an estimated 300 fire hydrants have been stolen in Los Angeles.

MUSK’S MISFIRES: Elon Musk, who’s using X to push and amplify far-right views, deleted an image of a fake story reporting that the British prime minister was considering building “emergency detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands, in the wake of widespread rioting in England. Musk earlier posted that civil war in England was “inevitable.”

BILLY BEAN spent time with three teams across eight major league seasons, and likely would be little remembered if not for a revelation made four years after his final game, when he publicly came out as gay. He was the second former major league player to do so, after the late Glenn Burke. He was hired by Major League Baseball as an Ambassador of Inclusion in 2014, the first position of its kind in the sport, and later became Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a Special Assistant to the Commissioner. In a statement from MLB, commissioner Rob Manfred called Bean “one of the kindest and most respected individuals I have ever known.” He died of leukemia at 60.

CHI CHI RODRIGUEZ was the second oldest of six children, born to sugar cane farmers in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. He learned to play golf by hitting tin cans with a guava tree stick and then found work as a caddie. By the age of 12, he claimed he could shoot a 67. No one from Puerto Rico had ever made it to the PGA Tour. Rodriguez was determined to not only get there, but to beat the best. He joined the PGA Tour after service in the Army in 1960 and won eight times during his 21-year career, though he was perhaps best known for fairway antics that included twirling his club like a sword, sometimes referred to as his “matador routine,” or doing a celebratory dance with a shuffling salsa step after making a birdie putt. He was 88.

SCOTT MEYER was raised on Long Island but came to Albany as an undergraduate and stuck around to become the well-regarded and respected co-owner, with his wife, Annette Nanes, and another couple, of the Spectrum Theatre, growing it into a thriving, eight-screen movie house that was the heart of its commercial strip. After years of listening to patrons talk about dinner options, Meyer and Nanes opened New World Bistro just down the street in 2009. It, too, became a commercial success, with crowds of diners drawn to the culinary creativity of chef Ric Orlando. “He was great to work with,” Orlando told the Albany Times Union. “He really understood what customers wanted and how to make the place run.” His widow added, “I know Scott was extremely proud — we both were — with what we brought to that block for so many years.” He died at 73.

“The myth of Coca-Cola is true.”
— Australian marathon swimmer Moesha Johnson, acknowledging to The Wall Street Journal that she and many other open water swimmers reach for a Coke first thing after emerging from the water, having bought into a popular if medically questionable tip passed through the generations: The best way to stave off infection from whatever might be living in the water is good, old-fashioned Coke.

TASTE TEST: Chipotle has just launched its first beauty product — Lipotle, a burrito-proof lip stain made in partnership with the Tik-Tok famous Wonderskin. It applies like a lip gloss and has its own green, foil-inspired look, Food & Wine reports.

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PRINCIPAL AUTHOR: Bill Callen

CONTRIBUTORS: Leigh Hornbeck, Bill Callen, Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Troy Burns, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, Paul McEvoy 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