The Week: What Caught Our Eye

March 4, 2023

The calendar has turned to March, but those who love snow sports know they can still find sanctuary in the Adirondacks. (Photo by Nancie Battaglia)

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Welcome to March, that leonine season that holds the promise of new beginnings, new possibilities. William Wordsworth spotted its arrival:

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun.

There will be a new beginning in the Village of Lake George before March departs. A new mayor will be elected and, for the first time in 52 years, it will not be the eminently popular Bob Blais, though no matter who holds the elected position Bob Blais will always be the “Mayor.” 

GRANDMA’S PASSING: Over the river and through the woods for Grandma’s pies we would go, in numbers so great the police would be called to handle traffic control. That was then: Grandma’s Pies, the Colonie, N.Y., restaurant, closed in 2020. This is now: Stewart’s, another venerable upstate New York institution, is proposing to take over the space. We can only hope they find a way to bring back those memorable pies.

GRANDMA’S PASSING YOU: The playwright George Bernard Shaw has been dead more than 70 years, but it seems as if this generation of older folks is determined to live by his wise words: “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Americans over 50 generally are far more active than their parents were, embracing physical challenges that test the hardiest of souls. In the past decade, the Washington Post reports, the number of people 60 and older registering for Ironman’s 140.6-mile and 70.3-mile triathlons has quintupled from around 2,500 in 2012 to nearly 13,000 last year. Many endurance athletes say their performance improved as they aged. Jill Jamieson, who lives in the D.C. suburbs, just ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, the last the day before she turned 57, despite a stomach bug that prevented from eating for four days. “I wasn’t going to stop,” Jamieson said. “But I did throw up on all seven continents.”

SPECIAL DELIVERY: A DoorDash driver in Michigan wrecked her car on the way to a delivery, leaving it inoperable and her with a trip to the doctor. The load of groceries she was carrying to deliver to a single mom with four children remained in the backseat as the vehicle was being towed, so she asked one of the police officers who responded to finish the delivery, which he did. “The Sterling Heights Police Department strives to deliver above and beyond service at all times,” a spokesman for the department said. “This is just another exemplary incident by our officers to best serve our community.”

IT TAKES A VILLAGE: What will become of beautiful old churches, the work of a lifetime for immigrant craftsmen, a spiritual refuge for generations, now under-used or abandoned, too expensive to maintain and yet too beloved to let go? In Troy, N.Y., the masterpiece that is St. Patrick’s Church is to be sold to a Florida real estate executive. In Albany, the city is hoping to unload St. Joseph’s for $100,000. Saving these architectural and historical gems of the 19^th and 20^th century may require taking a page from the 14th. In Milan, the beloved Duomo Cathedral, the fifth largest Christian church in the world, has been under constant construction and reconstruction since 1386, with the Milanese bearing the non-stop expense.

HUMANE CUISINE: “How’s the food?” is quickly becoming “how are the food workers?” and the hospitality industry is paying close attention. The concern that diners once had (and still have) about where their food originated and whether it was treated humanely before it landed on their plates is moving in a new direction. Diners want to know, how are the food workers being treated? Newspaper investigations and a Netflix series are shining a harsh light on the poor conditions in which many food workers toil at some of the highest-end restaurants in the world.

AMERICAN ORIGINAL: Jessie Diggins is, in the estimation of Bill McKibben of The New Yorker, “as great an endurance athlete as America has produced perhaps since Joan Benoit Samuelson took home the gold medal in the first women’s Olympic marathon, in 1984.” Diggins’ sport, cross-country skiing, is dominated on the world stage by athletes from Scandinavia, though Diggins earned a silver medal in the grueling 30-kilometer race in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Diggins, a Minnesota native, made history this week, becoming the first American ever to win a gold medal in an individual cross-country skiing race at a world or Olympic championship event, winning the 10k race F.I.S. Nordic World Ski Championships in Slovenia. 

Will an increase in the minimum wage kill jobs or help people make ends meet? Maybe both. Will it make it easier for some businesses to attract and retain workers, or will it kill opportunities for teenagers? New York legislators are wrestling again with a proposal to increase the minimum wage, this time to $21.25 by 2027. (Photo by John Bulmer)

DILBERT IMPLODES: Newspapers already were canceling Dilbert faster than Southwest cancels flights when creator Scott Adams’ agent, publisher and distributor fired him as well in the wake of Adams’s comments that Black Americans are members of a “hate group,” that he would no longer “help Black Americans,” and that his advice to white people is to “get the hell away” from Black people. It wasn’t the first time Adams courted controversy.

RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN: For decades, the shorthand definition of conservatism has been protection of the status quo and resistance to change and liberalism has meant welcoming of change. Many conservatives tend to see the world as a more dangerous place. But new research from the University of Pennsylvania is testing this long-held theory and suggesting that the key difference is that conservatives see the world as hierarchical while liberals are more inclined to see hierarchy as superficial and contrived. Jer Clifton, a senior research scientist at Penn, wrote in Scientific American, “To reach a point of cooperation — even amid intense disagreement — people often need to grasp the other perspective. Our work shows that conservatives and liberals disagree more about the meaning of differences than the prevalence of danger. That insight may seem modest, but it’s a big step in the right direction.”

WHEN IT’S TIME TO GO: When Ray Dalio finally left Bridgewater, the $125 billion hedge fund he founded, one of his two successors sent a celebratory note to customers proclaiming, “the transition from Ray is done.” It had taken 10 years, and still may not be complete. Dalio’s departure is reigniting a conversation about CEOs who just can’t seem to leave, or who “leave” but still hang around, or who are called back into service after their departure. Why for so many in power it's hard to know when it’s time to go.

FAMILY MATTERS: Developers are often required to build sidewalks or put aside land for a park as a condition of, say, building a new subdivision. The Commerce Department is applying the same basic logic to semiconductor manufacturers who are competing for chunks of more than $50 billion in federal subsidies, requiring applicants for funding through the CHIPS and Science Act to include “a plan for how they will provide affordable and accessible childcare for their workers,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters this week. The rule applies to construction companies that build the facilities, as well as to the companies operating them.

REENGAGING HAITI: Andy Olsen, a senior editor at Christianity Today, takes readers on a long journey to explore Haiti’s history of occupation and evangelism, balancing the tremendous humanitarian work of missionaries with an introspective question: How did the most evangelized realm in all the world become a nation so deep in anarchy? “Foreign evangelicals cannot end Haiti’s problems, but we can stop doing our own thing,” he writes. “Careful listening — to what Haitian churches want, to what Haitian community leaders want — will be one of the most powerful tools for building back a nation. … It will not be easy. It will have risks. And it will be frustrating. But we know the alternative: In the absence of a functioning Haitian state, leaders of multiple ministries have told me their organization may not survive much longer.”

WHERE’S THE RUBBER? Last year, the government of Singapore and U.S. petrochemicals company Dow Inc. announced an initiative to collect donated used sneakers and grind the rubberized soles and midsoles to make new playgrounds and running tracks in the country. Sounds like a great cause. Reuters, the international news service, decided to test the premise, secretly implanting tracking devices in 11 pairs of donated shoes. Three pairs ended up for sale in crowded bazaars. Four pairs ended up in Indonesian locations too remote for reporters to visit. None ended up in a playground or running track. Dow and other partners in the project blamed a used-clothing exporter that had been hired to collect the donated shoes. “The project partners do not condone any unauthorized removal or export of shoes collected through this program and remain committed to safeguarding the integrity of the collection and recycle process,” Dow said in a statement on behalf of all program partners.

A HEALTHY BREAK: A study published this week by the American Psychological Association found that limiting screen time to an hour a day helped anxious teens and young adults feel better about their body image and their appearance. Researchers recruited a few hundred volunteers between 17 and 25, all of whom had symptoms of anxiety or depression, and divided them into groups — one didn’t modify their screen habits, the other limited screen time to 60 minutes. The people in the 60-minute group reported improved perceptions about their looks and weight. The research was led by a doctoral student at McGill University in Montréal, who told NPR, “What I noticed when I was engaging in social media was that I couldn't help but compare myself.”

RUNNING FREE: Caleb Daniloff had all but given up. His daughter, Shea, was disintegrating before his eyes, addicted to heroin and fentanyl, disappearing for days at a time. In those desolate, desperate days, only Hank, a dog Shea rescued from the streets, could help, forcing him out the door, joining him for runs in a nature preserve near Boston that made him concentrate only on the next step, not the chaos consuming his life. “The sound of my feet scraping across hardened dirt, the clinking of Hank’s tags, and the breath filling my ears, soon grew into a chorus that began, little by little, to drown out the cacophony of guilt, rage, and failure that kept me company,” he wrote in Runner’s World. “Hank at the Fells came to represent not just a sanctuary, but a place to manage my hopelessness.” (Shea is clean now and works as a recovery coach at a treatment center). Running, it turns out, is the catalyst for a lot of really fine writing.

POEMS WITH A TWIST: For poetry’s sake, why not a visit to Indian Lake? Where rhyming lines you can glean, from a – what? – from a gumball machine.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: In the crawl space beneath the basement of Cohasset High School in Massachusetts, police say, the town’s facilities manager was running a cryptomining operation using the school’s electricity. Now the plug’s been pulled.

LIVES

BOB RICHARDS was a three-time U.S. Olympian who won gold medals in the pole vault in 1952 and 1956, becoming a Cold War hero to millions and the first athlete to appear on a Wheaties box, stamping him forever as athletic royalty. An ordained minister who was known as the “Vaulting Vicar,” Richards enjoyed a long career as a motivational speaker — remarkable, given that he stuttered as a child, which he overcame by reading the Bible and preaching. A member of both the U.S. Olympic and the National Track & Field halls of fame, he was 97.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“Me and the league are finished. They can’t tell me what to do anymore. We’re done.”
—  George Toma, the 94-year-old groundskeeper who for decades prepared fields used in the Super Bowl but who came under heavy criticism this year because of the slick conditions of the turf in Super Bowl LVII. Toma blamed it on the NFL’s field director, a former protégé.

THE SIGNOFF

OFF BASE: The New York City Department of Transportation took some chin music this week after unveiling a road sign in Queens directing people to “Jakie Robinson Parkway.” “That’s just government,” a Queens waitress told The New York Post.

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THANK YOU to our contributors: Bill Callen, Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Leigh Hornbeck, Lisa Fenwick, Nancie Battaglia, John Bulmer, 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. 

Let’s make it a conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com