Facing Out: The Week’s Most Interesting News

September 20, 2025

Gary Koch, 75, has climbed each of the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks 100 times, capped by his recent summiting of Whiteface Mountain. He completed the feat about a month after 102-year-old Kokichi Akuzawa became the oldest climber to reach the summit of Mount Fuji. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Boy, do we love our dogs. Maybe a bit too much, according to a research team at Cornell, which found that “modern dogs now occupy roles historically reserved for close human relationships and often receive greater moral concern than people.” Curious about the implications, they presented dog owners with moral dilemmas forcing a choice between the welfare of a dog and that of a person. More than half of dog owners said they would choose to save their dog over a human stranger, and one in four said they would give money to a puppy in need over a child in need.

“The moral elevation of dogs,” they wrote, “may reflect — and potentially contribute to—declines in human social connection.”

Then again, our affection for dogs as a society has led to some pretty cool ideas, such as a program in Indiana that trains rescued dogs for various police tasks. And whereas the team at Cornell has concerns that people are turning away from each other and toward their dogs, it’s also true people will do some special things to comfort a complete stranger when they know that person is losing one.

CAT PEOPLE: The rest of us can have our dogs; the Bowling Green Falcons football team will keep purring along with an adorable orange cat named Pudge, who has become the breakout star of the young college football season. Pudge, who belongs to the Falcons’ long snapper, made his first appearance in the Falcons’ locker room last month and became an instant sensation, with social media posts featuring the smush-faced feline generating millions of views, an NIL deal with an apparel company and invitations for public appearances. “He's brought me so much joy,” Pudge’s owner, George Carlson, told ESPN. “I'm so happy he's bringing that joy to others.”

ICE AGE: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues making waves with its aggressive crackdown on those in the country illegally, sparking pushback and protests like those that occurred last week in Rochester, N.Y., when a crowd of more than 100 people confronted immigration officers and forced them to retreat from a roofing job site, driving away in a vehicle with four slashed tires. About the same time, at a border patrol station not far away in Oswego, two officers pointed weapons at protesters who were shouting at them as vehicles left the facility. That protest formed not long after federal agents raided a food manufacturing plant in Cato, N.Y., removing nearly half of the 150 people who worked there, an experience the owner said left him feeling “terrorized.” The Supreme Court ruled that ICE is free to conduct roving stops of people suspected of being undocumented, a 6-3 ruling that outraged Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Feldman. “It should be a basic principle of US law that ethnicity cannot be treated as a statistically appropriate factor in arresting people for any purpose,” he writes. “The same should be true of the language people happen to be speaking at a given moment, the accents they have, and where they work. It should go without saying that many US citizens are or appear to be Latino; speak Spanish or accented English; and work in low-wage day-labor jobs. It should be more obvious still that individuals have a fundamental constitutional right to be or do any of these things without being arrested and held until they provide documentation proving their citizenship.”

Chilly and clear, Lake George welcomes another beautiful late summer day. Francine Nemer

THE SILENT BURDEN: For many years, Karen DeWitt was a New York State Capitol fixture, the steady, respected voice reporting on legislative and political issues for New York public radio listeners. Unknown to her audience: She was also caring for her husband, a professor and researcher at the Department of Neuroscience at Albany Medical College, who was diagnosed in 2018 with frontotemporal lobe dementia, or FTD, the same degenerative disease afflicting actor Bruce Willis. “Until seven years ago,” DeWitt writes, “I never really knew anyone closely who had dementia. Now it seems like everyone I know has someone near to them who has been stricken with the disease. Or perhaps, now, I am drawn to those people.”

PERFORMANCE ENHANCERS: As any recreational marathon runner can tell you, a spot in the Boston Marathon is the ultimate achievement because there are cut-off times to qualify — if you’re not fast enough, you’re not getting in. Recognizing this, many other marathons will advertise an event conducive to qualifying for Boston — a course with few hills, moderate climate, supportive atmosphere, plenty of aid stations. Lately, however, a more divisive trend has taken hold — marathons that start in the mountains and basically head straight downhill, dropping thousands of feet and shaving many minutes off a typical runner’s finishing time. The Wall Street Journal reports that about 2,000 invitees to last year’s Boston Marathon made it in by running races that were at least 2,000 feet downhill. This spring, the Boston Athletic Association, which administers the Boston Marathon, said it would begin to add minutes to times of runners who use downhill courses to qualify.

ZONING OUT: This year marks 50 years since Rod Serling, the legendary writer, master of plot twists, metaphors and the macabre, died suddenly at age 50 of a heart attack. With deep roots in upstate New York — born in Syracuse, raised in Binghamton, vacationing in the Finger Lakes where he is buried, and teaching at Ithaca College from 1967 to 1975 — Serling affectionately referred to Binghamton as his hometown. Through Sunday, fans at the annual SerlingFest in Binghamton will honor his legacy, hear from fellow Serling enthusiasts and Serling’s daughter Anne, and preview an authorized documentary being developed by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and directed by Jonah Tulis.

A HOME FOR PEACE: Imagine what might have been: A global organization devoted to promoting understanding, protecting human rights and keeping the peace, established in a place of serenity and beauty resplendent with forests, lakes, parks and trails. The Times Union reflects on the 1945 campaign to make Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the UN’s headquarters.

TEEN SAINT: Young Carlo Acutis loved soccer, video games and computers but was drawn to religion, as well. After making his First Communion, he began teaching religion to younger children and built a website cataloging more than 100 Eucharistic miracles around the world. In 2006, at just 15 years old, he suddenly fell ill and died of acute promyelocytic leukemia. Now canonized by Pope Leo XIV, he has become the first millennial saint.

SWANK SINAI: Mount Sinai, where Moses is said to have been given the Ten Commandments and one of Egypt’s most sacred places, is being transformed by luxury hotels, villas and shopping bazaars, leading to upset local residents and tensions with Greece regarding the 6th century St. Catherine's Monastery, run by the Greek Orthodox Church, which is also located there. 

CONTRA BOND: Oliver North, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who became famous for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal that shadowed the later years of the Reagan presidency, and Fawn Hall, his document-shredding secretary, were quietly married last month in Virginia. Both were widowed.

ON TOP: Albany Law was ranked the top law school in the country for students aspiring to a career in government service. Founded in 1851, Albany Law is the nation’s oldest independent school of law.

CHECK THE CHECKERS: An auditor who worked for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance accepted more than a dozen free trips plus cash and other perks in exchange for helping a publicly traded owner of strip clubs avoid more than $8 million in state taxes, according to a 79-count grand jury indictment.

ROBERT REDFORD was everything you imagine a Hollywood star to be — handsome, charismatic, charming, magnetic. He played iconic roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “The Sting,” “All the President’s Men,” and “The Natural,” (filmed in Buffalo) and won an Oscar for “Ordinary People,” his directorial debut. The rebellious son of a Santa Monica milkman, he starred in 16 feature films, many of them hits, and directed nine others, including  “A River Runs Through It,” “The Horse Whisperer” and “The Legend of Bagger Vance.” He used his celebrity and fortune to found the Sundance Institute, and its signature Sundance Film Festival, an annual event since 1985, helped launch the directing careers of such luminaries as Quentin Tarantino, John Sayles, Christopher Nolan and the Coen brothers. He was 89.

“I started driving it around, saw the movie again and realized it’s like the wagon in the movie. I thought, let’s throw luggage on top and an Aunt Edna and see what happens. People loved it.”
— Tom Dittus, a resident of Lake George, N.Y., who drives a Ford Country Squire station wagon that he has turned into a replica of the Griswold Family Truckster, the vehicle driven by Chevy Chase in “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” much to the delight of practically everyone who sees it.

JUST PLANE WRONG: It’s apparently a thing now for some passengers to do meal prep on airplanes, ignoring warnings about how gross the average airplane is, in addition to boundaries and common sense.

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Principal Authors: Bill Callen.

Contributors: Mark Behan, Ryan Moore, Jim Murphy, Amanda Metzger, Kristy Miller, John Brodt, Nancie Battaglia and Francine Nemer.

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