The Week: What Caught Our Eye

April 1, 2023

The thawing snow will become gushing water as whitewater rafting season begins in the Adirondacks, enjoyed here by a group guided by Adirondack River Outfitters on the Black River. (Nancie Battaglia)

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

When the comprehensive history of miscreants and misdeeds is written, the name from the past week that will surely endure is that of Marcus Stroman, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs who on Opening Day threw six scoreless innings in a win over Milwaukee but also became the first player in the history of major league baseball to be charged with violating the new pitch clock rule. Or maybe it will be Boston’s Rafael Devers, called out for not being ready to hit on time in the Red Sox’s Opening Day loss to the Orioles. Did we miss anyone?

A LESSON IN FRIENDSHIP: If a new school in Ghana trains kids for a lifetime of distinguished public service, you’ll know why. It’s the new Robert (Bob) Blais Elementary, founded by Sayuti Sulemana, who came to Lake George, N.Y., on a student visa in 2008, worked for the Village of Lake George cleaning bathrooms, and got to know the mayor. Sulemana went on to become a diplomat for Ghana and came to Lake George as a surprise this week to honor his mentor and friend as Blais concluded his 52 years in public service.

INNOVATION IN THE AIR: Thomas Edison famously said he looked for what the world needed and then tried to invent it. His successors at GE Research and Development in Niskayuna, N.Y. – a task force of 50 scientists – are working on ways to capture and remove carbon dioxide from the air and safely store it for other uses. CO₂ causes global warming and climate change. The leading maker of jet engines and turbines already has developed technology that can suck a football field’s worth of air in one second.

HARDEN OUR HEARTS? Four years ago, Watertown, N.Y., surprised the bicoastal elites by being named America’s politically most tolerant community. Tolerance? In rural Northern New York, home of any Army base? The Atlantic magazine hired researchers to track data on political tolerance in every county in the United States. Suffolk County, Mass. – the Boston area – was deemed least tolerant. The Atlantic marveled at how residents of Watertown worked together, served on the PTA together, went to church together and coached Little League together even when their political philosophies sharply diverged. They appreciated each other’s contribution to the community. This all came to mind this week when The Wall Street Journal issued a new poll that found big declines in the numbers of Americans who say patriotism, having a family, practicing a religion, being involved in the community and working hard are important to them. Not surprisingly, tolerance for others also declined. Some commentators quickly cried our souls are rotting, but it’s more likely these things wax and wane. Interestingly, the one thing a majority of Americans now say is more important? Money. Hardly news.

PUBLIC ENEMIES: Carlos Moreno has been a business professor in Paris for 40 years. He’s developed some ideas about smart cities, about how if homes, schools, and important services were placed in proximity, people could walk or bike anywhere in 15 minutes. For that dangerous notion, which he’s been developing for more than a decade, he’s lately been receiving death threats. Conspiracy theorists see a dark plot to control the populace. “I wasn’t a researcher anymore, I was Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler,” he told The New York Times. “I have become, in one week, Public Enemy No. 1.” He is among many researchers who are subject increasingly to online attacks and threats. Covid-19 researchers are especially large targets, with more than one in five who had given media interviews reporting they were threatened with violence and 15% reporting death threats.

FRONT LINES: There were notable skirmishes in the culture wars this week. A first grade class in Wisconsin was told it could not sing “Rainbowland,” a Dolly Parton-Miley Cyrus duet promoting LGBTQ acceptance, because the song “could be perceived as controversial.” The principal of a classical high school in Florida was fired because sixth grade art students learning about the Renaissance were shown a photo of Michelangelo's “David,” as they had been for years without controversy. And Disney’s lawyers may have found a way to slip Gov. Ron DeSantis’ lasso and tie his hands with it.

PRECOCIOUS EYE: If you find yourself feeling pessimistic, let us suggest an antidote — Grey Gardner. In a first-person account for LOCALadk Magazine that is illustrated by his own breathtaking photography, he writes with wonder and appreciation about life in the Adirondacks, camera in hand, surrounded by nature’s works of art. “To get the chance to live and have fun in a place so full of beauty and adventure is pretty awesome,” he writes. “Sometimes all I have to do is walk in my yard to catch a glimpse of something beautiful.” He writes, too, about his service with the local fire department, and about his job at the hardware store. At 14, Grey Gardner seems to have a pretty firm grip on what’s important in life.

A rare sight in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. — all quiet on Caroline Street, heart of the city’s nightlife. (John Bulmer)

THE TAXMAN COMETH: Matt Taibbi is unknown to much of the country, but he’s become well known in media and political circles as a provocateur, talker, writer, and podcaster who offends both conservatives and liberals. He’s astute and prolific, a New Jersey native and son of an NBC News reporter who spent time as a freelancer in the Soviet Union, played professional baseball in Uzbekistan and Russia and professional basketball in Mongolia (where he was known as the “Mongolian Rodman”). Now he’s writing about politics for Rolling Stone. But it is his reporting on Twitter that’s drawn the most attention. In December 2022, Taibbi began a Twitter thread disclosing emails that Twitter executives exchanged concerning whether to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden. Turns out, he got the embarrassing emails from an insider — Elon Musk himself. Controversy erupted over whether Twitter was under pressure by Democrats to shield then-candidate Joe Biden’s family. A couple weeks ago, Taibbi was called to testify in front of a congressional committee on the matter. And while he was away from home, who came calling but the IRS?

A HERO’S HONOR: Sgt. Henry Johnson is a revered name in Albany, N.Y., where he settled with his family as a teenager in the early 1900s. A monument to him stands in the city’s well-traveled Washington Park, not far from a boulevard that bears his name. He earned these distinctions with his heroism in World War I, where he fought under French command because America refused to let Black men fight. He was Awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously by President Obama in 2015. Soon, Johnson’s legacy will be honored once again with the renaming of Fort Polk in Louisiana to Fort Johnson.

COUNTING EELS: In the Hudson River, ’tis the season for striped bass and eels. At 11 sites along the Hudson, from the Capital Region to New York Harbor, scientists, volunteers, and students are counting translucent, two-inch long glass eels — the juveniles that are born in the Atlantic and migrate to the Hudson each spring. After being counted, most of the eels are released above dams, waterfalls, and other barriers to their migration, so that they have better access to habitat. Eels will live in freshwater rivers and streams for up to 30 years before returning to the sea to spawn. Meanwhile, the recreational striped bass fishing season in the Hudson River and its tributaries north of the George Washington Bridge begins today, and in marine waters south of the George Washington Bridge on April 15. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation invites people fishing for striped bass to share fishing trip information, whether they take home a keeper or throw it back.

REMARKABLE RESILIENCE: Mora Leeb was born in September 2007, a seemingly healthy child who met the normal milestones of early infancy. But when she was about three months old, she started having seizures, almost one right after the other. An MRI immediately spotted the issue — an intrauterine stroke had killed much of the left hemisphere of her brain. Doctors removed the damaged brain tissue, leaving essentially half her brain. Now 15, she lives the life of a typical teenager, the right side of her brain having taken on tasks such as speech, memory and learning, jobs normally done by the brain’s left side, in what is known as brain plasticity. “Every time I see her,” Dr. Lisa Shulman, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York told NPR, “she's done something I could not have imagined when I first met her.” Doctors hope her experience can help them find ways to help others recover from traumatic brain injuries.

HART AND SOULS: Hart Island, a strip in Long Island Sound off the coast of the Bronx, is the final resting place for a million New Yorkers whose bodies were unclaimed or who died without means for a private burial, a potter’s field where the city still buries 1,100 people a year. Long off limits to the general public, Hart Island will soon become more of a traditional park, with nature classes and tours led by urban park rangers. The unmarked mass graves will not be disturbed. The island is rich with history, including having served as a prison for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

A NAC FOR NOTORIETY: Saranac Lake, N.Y., with only 5,000 people and an internationally famous neighbor in Lake Placid, has a knack for gaining notoriety for itself. It’s now in the running in a national contest to be crowned America’s strongest town. Its slogan is “Decidedly Different,” and that’s an important clue. The contest honors small communities that strive day by day to be more livable, more connected, more resilient, more walkable, more flexible, more accountable and more welcoming. The home of the beautifully restored Hotel Saranac has known the national limelight before: In 1995, it was named the best small town in the state and 11th in the United States. In 1998, the National Civic League named Saranac Lake an All-America City, and in 2006 it was named one of the “Dozen Distinctive Destinations” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation because 186 buildings in the village are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And, of course, it’s the inspiration for a popular beer. Saranac Lake is running against Flossmoor, Ill. We’d be accused of bias if we said there’s no contest.

BUT THERE’S MORE: One measure of a small town’s strength might be its contribution to the world through the people it sends forth. Here, Flossmoor has game: Michael Beschloss, George Shultz, John Dean (deduct two points for Dean) and a host of professional athletes and rappers. Saranac Lake, by comparison, counts among its famous sons and daughters: Faye Dunaway, Rosalind Russell, Veronica Lake, Garry Trudeau, Edward Livingston Trudeau, and a bevy of bobsledders, biathletes and ski jumpers.

DEAN’S LIST DESIST: Camp out in the library and pull all-nighters, you University of Pennsylvania grinders, but no matter how well you do, you will not make the Dean’s List. Penn announced this week it is abandoning the tradition of honoring students with the highest grades. At a time of rising concern about students’ mental health, the Dean’s List is believed to put too much pressure on students and “not reflect the breadth and evolution of students’ academic achievements over the course of their education at Penn.” 

WORTH THE TRIP: A Delaware man vacationing in Florida bought a $20 scratch-off lottery ticket from a grocery store. He’s now $3.96 million richer, having taken a lump-sum payment for his $5 million prize. No word on whether he plans to join the stream of New Yorkers who are relocating permanently to the Sunshine State; New Yorkers outnumbered purchasers from other states in Miami, Tampa and Orlando.

LIVES

BOBBY DICK and his band The Sundowners opened for the Rolling Stones, The Who, the Dave Clark Five and Tina Turner, toured famously with The Monkees and Jimi Hendrix, chatted with Elvis and with Dick Clark, played the Hollywood Bowl, and rubbed shoulders with The Byrds and the Beach Boys. They cut an album with limited sales, played the New York City club scene until somebody realized they were under-age, and had a long-running gig at the Red Velvet on LA’s Sunset Strip. A consummate entertainer, promoter and crowd pleaser, with a powerful voice, Dick was a Brooklyn native who came to play Lake George in the 1960s and later, when the West Coast life got old, came back. He played colleges, weddings, parties, and local bars where big, appreciative crowds loved his take on Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley, the Beach Boys and The Beatles. America’s oldest teenager was 76.

EMILY FISHER LANDAU — born Emily Lanzer in Glens Falls, N.Y., in 1920 — turned misfortune into magnificence. The valuable jewelry she received as gifts from her real estate developer husband were kept in a safe in their Manhattan home, until they were stolen in a 1969 robbery. She took the proceeds of a large insurance settlement and began buying art, amassing some 1,200 works. She pledged 100 to the Whitney Museum and displayed others in her own museum, the Landau Art Center in Queens. She endowed museums and art exhibitions — a floor at the Whitney is named for her — and served in leadership roles at the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. She was 102.

JOSEPH MARCUS RUSLANDER was born in Buffalo, N.Y., the son of a gas station attendant and a department store clerk. He grew up to be Mark Russell, the leading Washington wit of his day. He specialized in skewering presidents, playing Bail to the Chief for Richard Nixon, urging George H.W. Bush to retire “to a home for the chronically preppy,” and comparing Jimmy Carter’s plan to streamline government to “putting racing stripes on an arthritic camel.” He was 90.

THE SIGNOFF

CARD GAMES: A driver pulled over by a deputy in Chisango County, Minn., had a second document to give the officer along with a driver’s license — a tattered pink “Get Out of Jail Free” card from “Monopoly.” The department had some fun with it, posting an image of the card on Facebook and noting that, “Unfortunately, the state of Minnesota does not recognize this as a valid document.”

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Principal Author: Bill Callen.

Thank you to our contributors: Ryan Moore, Leigh Hornbeck, John Brodt, Lisa Fenwick, Troy Burns, John Behan, Claire P. Tuttle, Tara Hutchins, Maury Thompson, Nancie Battaglia 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