The Week: What Caught Our Eye

February 18, 2023

A report this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 57% of teen girls surveyed in 2021 reported feeling “persistently sad or hopeless” over the past year, and that nearly one in three had seriously considered suicide. (Adobe Stock)

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We begin today with sobering report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found more than half of teen girls in the U.S. reported feeling “persistently sad or hopeless” in 2021, highlighting the depth of the mental health crisis facing America’s young people. The report also found spikes in teenage girls who said they had experienced some form of sexual violence and in girls who said they considered suicide. “America's teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma,” the CDC’s chief medical officer, Debra Houry, said at a press briefing Monday. LGBTQ+ students also reported high levels of sadness and hopelessness. The director of Domestic Violence Institute at Northeastern University’s School of Law said the report is a wake-up call to make more resources available to address root causes of what feels like an epidemic of sadness. “Whenever the data is so dire, there’s an opportunity,” Margo Lindauer said. “It’s imperative we use this data to compel some really good, wrap-around, holistic and culturally appropriate services for young women.” 

TODAY IN LAKE GEORGE: NBC’s Today Show has been teasing viewers with stories of balmy wintertime escapes. But on Monday the show will offer a cold dose of reality from Lake George where it plans to feature (it hopes) a wintry escape. The broadcast will originate at the historic Fort William Henry Hotel overlooking Lake George and feature the Lake George Winter Carnival and other Adirondack wintertime fun. NewsChannel 13 morning co-anchor Chris Onorato will serve as Today’s on-the-scene local host and interview Mayor Bob Blais, who is wrapping up his 52-year run as leader of the community he likes to call “America’s first playland.”

TESTING THE WATERS: Vivek Ramaswamy has a vision for America. Just 37, the son of Indian immigrants, born in Cincinnati, he made his fortune as a biotech entrepreneur and developer of medicines, and his name as a bestselling author and sough-after cable TV talker standing firmly against forces of “wokeism.” His denouncements and warnings about businesses engaging in virtue signaling and social activism have a receptive audience among the Republicans he is courting with a message of revitalizing the American spirit and celebrating merit, with his own journey offered as proof of concept. His platform includes firing the “managerial class” of the federal government and substantially reducing its size. He even has prospective Cabinet officials in mind. “I think the GOP has a historic opportunity to answer the question of what it means to be an American at the moment where we lack a national identity,” he told Politico. “I’m grateful that many Republican governors and other leaders have borrowed my message and woven it into their policy agendas. But when it comes to who leads our country next, I believe that it’s going to take a leader who shares his own vision, not someone else’s, and that’s what calls me to do this.”

ALL-EVERYTHING: Lexi Dellinger has never been one to back down from a challenge. It’s the only way a 5-foot-5 point guard could become her high school’s all-time scoring leader, success she carried over to her career at Indiana’s Anderson University. These days, she is in her 5^th grade classroom at Lapel Elementary each day by 7:30 a.m., ready to teach her 28 students. … and still starring as a record-setting scorer for the basketball team at Anderson, often with her students cheering her on as she lights up the scoreboard. "She is really inspiring,” one of her freshman teammates told the Indy Star. “No matter if it's an early morning, no matter if it's a late night, she shows up and she works.” Said Dellinger, who also is working toward a master’s degree in business: “Being a first-year teacher is challenging and I just added a lot more stress to myself by playing basketball. But I love how I can build relationships with my kids and know that I am having an impact on their life.”

FREE MARTY: A robotic assistant that has become familiar to grocery shoppers in Pennsylvania gave them an unexpected chuckle when it wandered out of the store and into the parking lot before store employees corralled it. The robot, known as Marty, is used to identify spills and other hazards in Giant and Martin’s (thus the name) food stores. Video of the wayward robot had more than 5 million views on Facebook.

GET TO WORK: Shopify caused a buzz last month when it announced it was doing away with most meetings in an effort to simply get more work done. Skeptics wondered if it would work or how long it would last, but Shopify says it’s pleased with the results so far. The company’s chief operating officer told NPR the company, which has about 10,000 employees, had wiped 322,000 hours of recurring meetings off people’s calendars, which he said resulted in a productivity equivalent of about 150 new employees.

BRING ON THE BAN: Author Margaret Atwood has a message for those engaged in renewed efforts to ban certain books from school libraries — have at it; your actions will only make more people want to read the books. Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a popular target of book censors who perceive it as sexually explicit, though Atwood suspects critics of her book are more perturbed by their perception of an anti-Christian message.

Migration of residents from high-tax states like California and New York accelerated in 2022, a year in which six Southern states combined to add more than 1.25 million people. (Adobe Stock)

A REAL RED WAVE: Census data for 2022 show a mass exodus of people from traditionally blue states and an influx to states in the South, with Florida and Texas alone combining to add more than 915,000 people. California and New York combined to hemorrhage 650,000 residents. Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania also saw big drops. Taxes are a major reason (Florida, with more people than New York, has a state budget half as large), as are traffic and perceptions of crime. The ability to work remotely is a huge factor as well. Commenting on the trend, Joe Concha writes in The Hill, “Do we want a country that looks like California or Texas? One that mirrors New York or Florida? The next election may come down to the answers to questions as simple as these.”

TRAGEDY IN VERMONT: An annual ice fishing tournament on Lake Champlain northwest of Burlington, Vt., was canceled after three fishermen fell through the ice and drowned, including two elderly brothers who died hours before the event was called off. Temperatures in the Northeast have been well above average throughout the winter, resulting in more variance than is typical in ice conditions on area water bodies.

GOOD PEOPLE: Jenay Chartier, a soil erosion officer with a county government in Southeast Michigan, was supposed to be in Texas that day, one of the coldest of the year, but the trip was canceled. So Chartier went to work. She was driving through a planned subdivision, conducting a routine inspection, when she spotted what she thought was trash in the road. It turned out to be a young cat, three of its paws and its tail frozen to the icy pavement. Chartier wrapped it in towels, used water to free it and took it home, where she intends to keep it. “Maybe it’s just meant to be,” Chartier told the Detroit Free Press about the cat, which she named Freezy. “I just want her to have a great life.”

WORDSMITH: Elise Corbin and her dad started working on crossword puzzles together in 2018. Not solving them — building them, first by hand, and then using online software. At first it was something to pass the time, but as the covid pandemic took root, she got a lot more serious about the craft. Now, at 17, and after dozens of submissions and rejections, the high school senior from Niskayuna, N.Y., has had one of her puzzles published in The New York Times.

BIRTHDAY WISHES: Michael Jordan knows a thing or two about making wishes come true. Just ask fans of the 1990s Chicago Bulls. Now, to celebrate his 60^th (!) birthday, Jordan is making a $10 million gift to Make-A-Wish, the largest individual donation in the organization’s 43-year history. Jordan has worked with Make-A-Wish since 1989, granting hundreds of wishes to children all over the world. He was named Make-A-Wish chief wish ambassador in 2008 for what the organization called the “life-changing impacts he has had on wish kids and their families.”

BOUNCE FOR AIRBNB: Airbnb announced it turned a profit for the first time in 2022 as the travel industry continued to recover from covid-related shutdowns and disruptions. Fourth-quarter bookings were up 24% from the year before, and showing no signs of letting up in the new year. “No matter what happens in the world, people want to travel” because they are stuck at home more often, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on a call with analysts. “The office is now Zoom, the mall is now Amazon, the theater is now Netflix.”

STRANGER THAN FICTION: Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, are dealing with the real-life drama of a frightening train derailment and chemical fire, the environmental and health effects of which will not be known for some time. Some of them had a little practice, if only make-believe. The makers of “White Noise,” a 2022 movie based on a novel about a family trying to resume its life after a toxic air release caused by an accident involving a freight train and a tanker truck, shot some of the scenes in and around East Palestine, with locals as extras.    

LEARNING TO DISCERN: New Jersey has become the first state to mandate the teaching of informational literacy to public school students, designed so students learn about how information is produced and spread on the internet, critical thinking skills, the difference between facts and opinions and the ethics of creating and sharing information both online and in print. The bill received overwhelming bipartisan support, somewhat surprising in an era when attempts to apply standards to content dissemination are often met with protest. “This law isn’t about teaching kids that any specific idea is true or false,” said Republican state Sen. Mike Testa. “Rather, it’s about helping them learn how to research, evaluate, and understand the information they are presented for themselves.”

DEEP DISCOVERY: The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum this week confirmed the discovery of a barquentine known as the Nucleus more than 150 years after it sank in 600 feet of water in Lake Superior. The barquentine was a multi-masted sailing ship popular in the 1800s. This particular ship had “a checkered past,” the museum said, ramming a sinking another ship in Lake Huron and sinking twice itself before finally being lost for good in 1869 as it carried a load of iron ore. Remarkably, all of the crew was rescued.

LIVES

NORMAN WOLGIN and his family looked across Lake George and grew tired of watching the 100-year-old Sagamore Hotel deteriorate. So, in 1981, they took matters into their own hands. The Wolgin family and other investors bought the Sagamore and, against stiff odds, successfully transformed it into the acclaimed resort that it is today, with a world-class spa, fine dining, Donald Ross-designed golf course and an economic and social impact on Lake George unmatched in the 20^th century. Norm and Marian Wolgin, Philadelphians who had been generous to their hometown, became major forces in philanthropy throughout the Lake George region and the Adirondacks. He died at 95.

TIM McCARVER spent nearly three decades as a color analyst on televised major league baseball games, calling a then-record 23 World Series and 20 All-Star Games over three networks, delivering insights with a slight Memphis twang and his signature “Oh baby, I love it,” which became the title of autobiography. He spent 21 years as a catcher in the big leagues, winning World Series titles with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 and ’67. He was given the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2012 for his Emmy-winning work in the booth. He was 81.

RAQUEL WELCH had more than 30 film and 50 TV credits in a career that spanned more than half a century and won a Golden Globe for acting in 1975, but she is best known simply as a cultural icon of the time. “Playboy” called her the “most desired woman” of the 1970s, and it is a poster of Welch that covers the hole in Andy Dufresne’s prison cell when he makes his break in “The Shawshank Redemption.” Talking to The Associated Press in 1981 about her role in “One Million Years B.C.,” the film that she expected to be forgettable but which launched her to stardom, Welch said, “It turned out that I was the Bo Derek of the season, the lady in the loin cloth about whom everyone said, ‘My God, what a bod.’ ” She after a brief illness at 82. 

TED LERNER borrowed $250 from his wife to start a real estate company that would go on to become Lerner Enterprises, the largest private development company in the Washington, D.C., area. A lifelong baseball fan, Lerner used the fortune he amassed to return major league baseball to the Nation’s Capital after a 33-year absence in 2004, when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals. He was a philanthropic giant as well, supporting numerous institutions in and around Washington through his charitable foundation and as a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was 97.

HILARY TANN was a professor of music at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., for nearly 40 years. A prolific composer, Tann’s work was featured on more than 60 CDs and performed worldwide. Born and raised in Scotland, she found inspiration both in nature and in Japanese culture and the traditional music of Japan. Tann learned to play the shakuhachi, an ancient Japanese vertical bamboo flute. She also was a member of a Saratoga County haiku group and coordinated Union's 2015 hosting of Haiku North America, the largest and oldest gathering of haiku poets. She and her husband, David Bullard, who survives her, lived in the Marshall House, a Schuylerville home of historic significance that dates to the Revolutionary War. She died unexpectedly at 75.

BOB BORN was just out of college with a degree in engineering physics when he watched the men and women at the candy factory painstakingly making marshmallow Peeps by hand and realized there had to be a better way. It took him and another engineer nine months to build a machine to automate the process and the rest is sweet history. Born’s invention helped make Peeps an Easter staple and something of a celebrity in the confectionary world, with newspaper contests devoted to creative Peeps displays and an annual Peepsfest in Bethlehem, Pa., where its maker, Just Born Quality Confections, is located. “Did I have any idea Peeps could become art?” he repeated in response to a reporter’s question in 2015. “That’s a question for a philosopher, not for me.” He was 98.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“Basically, trust and safety was the first thing to go. The veneer of civility is expensive.”
—    Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of a firm that tracks hate and extremism on social media, on news that social media companies are laying off employees who were assigned to combat false and misleading information on their platforms.

“At the end of the day, the congressman has a job to do and he needs people to help him do that. Someone's got to do it.”
—    Gabrielle Lipsky, 24-year-old press secretary to U.S. Rep. George Santos, the latest and arguably more flagrant iteration of our era of shamelessness in politics.

“I'm very appreciative of the time that the administration and Capitalize Albany have given to this. When we knew we couldn't come to an agreement, we left the table in a very respectful manner. We're going to let democracy play its course.”
—    Albany (N.Y.) Common Councilman Alfredo Balarin, discussing Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s veto of a housing ordinance that was unanimously passed by the council, which now will consider an override.

THE SIGNOFF

WOOF HOUND: A police department in Southeast Michigan had people laughing this week when they reported the investigation of a theft within the ranks, along with a mug shot of the suspect and a description of the crime. K-9 Officer Ice, the department noted, had taken the 5^th and was not cooperating in the case of the stolen lunch.

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THANK YOU to our contributors: Bill Callen, Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Leigh Hornbeck, Lisa Fenwick, Troy Burns, 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. 

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