Facing Out: The week’s most interesting news

September 9, 2023

Photo of boat in a lake.The freshwater abundance of the Adirondacks is on full display this weekend for the 40th anniversary of the Adirondack Canoe Classic, a three-day, 90-mile paddle from Old Forge to Saranac Lake whose 700 participants include our own Leigh Hornbeck. The event includes solo, tandem, four-person, and eight-person canoes as well as solo and tandem kayaks, one- and two-person guideboats, and stand-up paddle boards. (Leigh Hornbeck)

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

The world experienced its hottest month ever recorded in July, and August and September are the hottest on record. That has us thinking about the blessed abundance of cool waters in the Adirondacks, our corner of the planet.

The extraordinary abundance of water in the Adirondacks is the envy of a world in crisis. Globally, more than 700 million people lack access to clean water — 1 in 10 on the planet. Between 2 billion and 3 billion people experience water shortages for at least one month per year. The World Resources Institute says 25 countries with a quarter of the world’s population are facing perilous water shortages.

By contrast, the Adirondack Park is home to more than 30,000 miles of brooks and streams, 1,500 miles of rivers, 3,000 lakes and 8,000 ponds. The globally unique wetlands, lakes and ponds sustain life in all its forms. And they provide other “services” as well:  They are the wellspring of the region’s tourism economy, as surveys indicate 85 percent of visitors desire waterside lodging and approximately 70 percent want to swim, fish, or boat while visiting the Adirondacks. Water also is the reason people are moving to the Adirondacks to escape the effects of climate change elsewhere in the country.

While water is abundant in the Adirondacks, some if it is threatened, and these threats have suddenly taken on a new urgency. A New York state task force focused on the use of road salt this week issued a long-awaited report that recommended steps to reduce its use on roadways, citing the damage caused by excessive salt use and runoff to waterways and the potential risks to human health when salt reaches drinking water wells. This is a fraught issue — how to ensure safe, passable roads in winter and how to protect water supplies — that requires careful, but urgent, balancing.

In addition, many small Adirondack communities have aging wastewater plants built decades ago and lack the financial resources to upgrade or replace them. Some property owners are still relying on failing septic systems that allow pollution to enter waterways, including those that are drinking water sources.

The bottom line is, a lot of work, investment, science and good will are necessary to protect these precious freshwater resources so they remain the envy of the world.

A DAVIS SUPERFECTA: A few weeks ago, we introduced you to the Davis family of Saratoga Springs who, we think it’s safe to say, will never forget Sunday’s second race at Saratoga Race Course. Jockey Katie Davis won the $30,000 claiming race on Bon Adieu. She was seven lengths ahead of Mim, a horse ridden by her brother Dylan. Rounding out the triple was Embraceable Gal, ridden by Katie’s husband Trevor McCarthy. To finish off the family superfecta, Sweet Liberty finished fourth under Jackie Davis, who is the sister of Dylan and Katie and the daughter of retired jockey Robbie Davis and his wife Marguerite. “I looked at the screen because Danny (Gargan) said look at the superfecta, it was all four of you,” Katie told the media afterward. “I was waiting for this moment. We made history again, and it was really nice to beat Dylan this time. I looked back and thought here he comes, I've got to ride harder.” A 10-cent superfecta wager on the four paid $26.35. The four members of the extended Davis family were all regular members of the power-packed Saratoga jockey colony this summer, but this is the first time they swept the top four places in one race. The feat is thought to be a first. (Another Davis child, Eddie, works for trainer Bill Mott and is the exercise rider for Cody’s Wish, a 5-year-old who has won nine of 14 career starts and earned nearly $2.5 million).

WE’RE WORRIED: By some measures, these are salad days, or so it seems, at Saratoga. The 40-day thoroughbred meet ended on Labor Day with nearly $800 million in total handle — the third-highest total of any Saratoga meet (9 percent off last year’s record total). There’s excited chatter about running the Belmont Stakes there in 2024 and 2025 as Belmont Park undergoes renovations. But the death of at least 14 horses this summer – seven while racing – casts a heavy pall. The American public will not long tolerate a sport that puts animals at grave risk of death. Horse racing is not bullfighting. The Saratoga legacy is grace and class. Consider the loss of public confidence when respected journalists like The New York Times’ Joe Drape write: “It has become an all-too-common scenario: a thoroughbred suffers a ghastly injury before a packed grandstand and a national television audience and has to be euthanized by injection on the track.” All-too-common? A change is gonna come. Let’s hope it’s the right change.

Photo of the surface of the Tomhannock Reservoir in Pittstown, N.YIt may not feel like it in the Northeast, but summer indeed is fading like the sun over the surface of the Tomhannock Reservoir in Pittstown, N.Y. John Bulmer

FIRST IN CLASS: SUNY Geneseo, a college in the Finger Lakes region of New York, is the best in the nation when it comes to “contribution to the public good,” according to Washington Monthly, which ranks colleges according to “social mobility, research, and promoting public service.” According to Washington Monthly, “It’s our answer to U.S News & World Report, which relies on crude and easily manipulated measures of wealth, exclusivity, and prestige.” The college placed #1 in service, #2 in research, and #69 in social mobility among 604 peer institutions. It’s a challenging time for the nation’s colleges and universities — undergraduate enrollment has dipped by 2.5 million over the past decade, with the percentage of high school graduates who go straight to college declining from 70 percent in 2016 to 62 percent now, according to The New York Times.

GIVING BACK: When he was a child battling neurofibromatosis, a rare condition that causes tumors to form on nerve tissue, the Double H Ranch in Lake Luzerne, N.Y., gave Gabe Donovan a chance to be himself among other children with serious illnesses. “It really was life-changing,” he told the Albany Times Union’s Chris Churchill. “It gave me confidence. It gave me people to know and to talk to. It changed me.” Today, after many summers as a camper at Double H, he’s a student at Villanova University who just returned to school from another summer at Double H, this time as a counselor. Double H, founded by Paul Newman and local businessman Charles Wood, holds its annual fund-raising gala Sept. 23 at the Great Escape.

ANOTHER BATTLE: Alex Smith was an NFL quarterback whose career was nearly ended by one of the most gruesome on-field injuries any athlete has ever endured, a compound fracture of his lower right leg that led to an infection that threatened his life. He made a remarkable recovery and even returned to the field before retiring after the 2020 season. He had never been scared, he told The New York Times, even when doctors told him the infection might cost him his leg. But learning that his 7-year-old daughter had a brain tumor was another matter entirely. “It’s different when it’s your little girl,” he told the Times, “and you’re helpless with how terrifying that is.”

THE WANDERER: Historian Maury Thompson looks back at the brief tenure of a former local newspaper editor who eschewed the grind of hard news for the pleasures of poetry and the circus, one of several former journalists at the Pulitzer Prize winning Post-Star of Glens Falls, N.Y., who went to achieve prominence elsewhere.

POWER SURGE: Pattern Energy, one of the world’s largest wind and solar development companies, broke ground last week on a $10 billion transmission line project in New Mexico that the company’s CEO said will carry more energy than is produced by the Hoover Dam. The SunZia project will carry renewable energy about 550 miles from central New Mexico to Arizona and California. The Associated Press reported that developers say it will be capable of transporting more than 3,500 megawatts of new wind power to 3 million people in the West.

FINAL FOUR: Melanie Sawyer lives off the grid in the Adirondacks, where her pursuits include teaching wild food foraging and primitive survival, so she was a natural for season 10 of the History channel’s reality show “Alone,” which this year dropped 10 contestants in the Saskatchewan wilderness with limited supplies and a camera crew in tow, with a $500,000 prize to the contestant who could last the longest. Sawyer, who’s 55 and was among three women chosen (43,000 people applied), made it 43 days before giving up the quest, making her one of the final four contestants. She described the experience to the Adirondack Explorer’s Gwen Craig.

BUILDING CAPACITY:  Women make up almost 11 percent of our nation’s massive construction industry. Some volunteered at a summer camp run by the National Association of Women in Construction at a high school in Maryland last month to introduce a field hungry for workers to girls who might not see themselves in hard hats. “We want to inspire girls to be the next generation here,” Haley Moyers, a former wedding planner who’s now director of workforce programs and initiatives at Associated Builders and Contractors, told The Washington Post. The trade group said it expects the construction industry will be short 650,000 workers this year.

Nuggets.jpgTHE ROLLING STONES, in their seventh decade together, this week announced the release of their first album of original music in 18 years, titled “Hackney Diamonds.” It’s their first album since the death of drummer Charlie Watts, who played on two of the tracks.

A LUCKY SHOPPER in New Hampshire paid $4 at a thrift store in 2017 for what turned out to be a 1939 painting by renowned American artist N.C. Wyeth. The painting is expected to sell for up to $250,000 when it is auctioned Sept. 19.

COCO GAUFF became the first American teenager since Serena Williams, her idol, to reach the final of the U.S. Open, defeating Karolina Muchova in straight sets in a semifinal that was interrupted for 50 minutes when some dork glued his feet to the concrete floor of the stands as part of a climate protest.

 A TRANSATLANTIC DELTA FLIGHT bound for Barcelona was forced to return to Atlanta this week when a passenger “had diarrhea all the way through the plane,” which in sanitized pilot language is “a biohazard issue.” The passengers were put on another plane and arrived eight hours late.

KUDOS TO Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Southern Adirondacks, based in Glens Falls, N.Y., which recently was named Agency of the Year among the national nonprofit’s small and midsize agencies.

Lives.jpgJAMES WILLIAM BUFFET took up the trombone at St. Ignatius Catholic Elementary School in Mobile, Ala. By the time he was in college at the University of Southern Mississippi, he was performing in local nightclubs. In 1969, he moved to the French Quarter of New Orleans; in 1970, to Nashville. He found his true rhythm, though, when he moved to Key West, where he began producing albums full of hit sing-along songs and became a successful author, sailor and entrepreneur, with “Margaritaville” launching an empire that was thought to make him a billionaire. “I’m just a son of a son, son of a son / son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.” Jimmy Buffet, who lived his life in the sun, died of a rare, aggressive skin cancer at 76.

BILL RICHARDSON was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary under President Clinton before he was elected to the first of two terms as governor of New Mexico in 2002. Before that, he served 14 years in Congress representing the northern part of the state. Prevented by state law from seeking a third consecutive term as governor, Richardson devoted his later years to securing freedom for Americans detained by foreign governments, including journalist Danny Fenster, U.S. Navy veteran Taylor Dudley, Marine veteran Trevor Reed and WNBA star Brittney Griner. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. Richardson, who as a college kid played in the Cape Cod Baseball League as a pitcher, died in his sleep at his home in Chatham, Mass., at 75.

STEVE HARWELL was the founding lead singer of the rock group Smash Mouth, best known for the chart-topping singles “All Star” and “I’m a Believer.” The band was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for “All Star,” which rocketed in popularity when it was chosen for the sound track of the 2001 animated hit film “Shrek.” Harwell left the band because of health issues in 2021 and died at 56 of an undisclosed cause.

03_Almost Final Words.jpg“I’m a person who looks at outward signs, and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. He did that one time, two times, three times, and obviously that’s something that you should pay attention to. And I asked the staff, ‘Well, he wants to be here. Would anybody like to have a dog?’ ”
—    Marna Robertson, administrator of a nursing home in northern Michigan that adopted an abused stray mutt named Scout after he repeatedly escaped an animal shelter across the road and made his way to the lobby of the nursing home. He quickly bonded with staff and residents, who adore him.

signoff.jpgCALLING GENGHIS KAHN: Authorities in China have detained two people who are suspected of using an excavator to cut a hole through the Great Wall of China to create a shortcut for their construction work.

Nuggets_bottom.jpgSome of the linked material in Facing Out requires a subscription to read.

Principal Authors: Mark Behan, Bill Callen

Sincere thanks to our contributors: Ryan Moore, Tina Suhocki, Leigh Hornbeck, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Troy Burns, Gordon Woodworth, Maury Thompson, John Bulmer, Claire P. Tuttle, and Tara Hutchins.

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 conversationmark.behan@behancom.com

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