The Week: What Caught Our Eye

April 8, 2023

In this season of rebirth and renewal, we wish you days of joy, peace and hope. Adobe Stock.

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

We hope this weekend, as many celebrate Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, you will embrace hope. 

It is the essential ingredient in resilience and happiness, all year long but especially in this season of light, renewal and charity. Hope is the power to move forward against odds big and small, and the will to change things, including yourself. Hope is not a strategy, some will sniff. No, it’s more important than any strategy: Without hope, what is possible?

Hope is not the naïve belief that everything is fine or will be OK, says writer Rebecca Solnit. It’s the belief that you have power – the power to make your future better than your past. Interestingly, hope is a skill that can be learned. More than 1,000 studies have demonstrated that people with stronger hope skills perform better in school, sports and work. They cope with illness, pain and injury better and score higher on assessments of happiness, purpose and self-esteem. Among victims of domestic violence, child abuse and other forms of trauma, hope appears to be one of the most effective antidotes yet studied.

At the University of Oklahoma, the Hope Research Center is training government employees to cultivate hope intentionally — not just among individuals but across entire systems, in welfare programs, school districts and prisons, among other places. They find hope reduces burnout and improves outcomes for workers and those they serve. “It literally is strategic planning,” Chad Hellman, co-author of the book “Hope Rising,” told The Washington Post. “Hope is the process. Well-being is the outcome.” So, here’s to hope.

GOING PLACES: Did you know, the truck driver asked the reporter, that breweries and soda companies halt all other production to bottle water during national emergencies? Or that drivers who ship the syrup for Coca-Cola need a HAZMAT license because it contains flammable material? That the onions you buy in a grocery store have been in a warehouse for a year? Jess has a lot of stories like that, earned over years driving her 1994 truck, the Black Widow, on deliveries across the South and Midwest. The road has been her home ever since she scraped together enough money to leave a controlling husband and enroll in driving school. It has given her freedom and power she never imagined, though the days can be grinding and the isolation intense. Her first year on the job, Jess and her young daughter solved math problems with dry erase markers on the truck’s windows and played catch in warehouse parking lots, journalist Meg Bernhard writes in a fascinating profile that is part travelogue and all admiration for a gritty, determined subject who is carving a life on her terms. “No one says, ‘I’ve always dreamed of being a truck driver.’ ”

NUISANCE JOURNALISTS: In truth, the Dayton Daily News probably has been a nuisance from time to time for officials in Dayton, Ohio, but this was a surprise. When reporters sought a list of the city’s nuisance structures, they found a familiar address: Their office. But the Dayton Daily News is housed in a modern, renovated office building, and city officials quickly agreed the listing was a mistake.

Oh, the places Barkeater Chocolates of North Creek, N.Y., has been, as illustrated by the many far-flung locations to which they’ve shipped their sweets. Barkeater is celebrating its 15^th anniversary with a series of events and collaborations that begin this month.

SWEET ADIRONDACK SUCCESS: Just in time for your Easter candy purchases, Barkeater Chocolates in North Creek, N.Y., is celebrating its 15^th anniversary. The chocolate delights that owners Deb and Jim Morris create in the Adirondacks have been shipped to all 50 states and even to Australia. Visitors to their North Creek store hail from 80 countries. When they went into business in 2008, artisanal chocolatiers were hard to find. Deb Morris decided to start with truffles, having studied the techniques of chocolatiers and chefs. She created the artisanal truffles in the kitchen of North Creek’s Café Sarah during the off hours, and sold them at farmers’ markets, craft fairs and online. After two years, Barkeater Chocolates became a full-time operation on the lower level of Café Sarah. They grew their line of chocolates to include bars, bark and peanut butter cups, with truffles still being an anchor. In 2013, Barkeater Chocolates purchased a building on Route 28, just a mile from the café, and has been operating there ever since. This month, Barkeater kicks off a series of anniversary events and collaborations with other companies, including Common Roots Brewery, Northway Brewing, Adirondack Winery and Seasons, the SUNY Adirondack culinary arts program restaurant in Glens Falls.

UPTOPIA: Here in beautiful Upstate New York, where we drive thoughtfully in electric pickups and share all the right opinions, our neighbors shovel our driveways and we all enjoy the clean, convenient public transportation that costs nothing and does not add to our meager tax burdens. We chop wood for exercise, make millions writing, and we’re never a burden on the Earth. Even our vermin are perfectly cordial and cooperative. Care to join us?

ADIRONDACK GETAWAY: Last year we learned FBI Director Christopher Wray slipped away from Washington’s heat for a quick family retreat in the Adirondacks. This week came news that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginny have been regular visitors at Topridge, the Upper St. Regis Lake home of billionaire Harlan Crow. (Thomas failed to disclose the generous hospitality, bringing renewed calls for ethical reforms for justices). A former Great Camp near Saranac Lake, Topridge was by built by Alvin M. Lothrop in 1897. After his death in 1912, it was purchased by Marjorie Merriweather Post, founder of General Foods and the daughter of C.W. Post of the cereal fortune. She “entertained Washington politicians, military brass, big business moguls, international diplomats, and members of foreign royalty. General George C. Marshall, Prince Felix of Luxembourg and Mme. Nehru visited the camp.” Post bequeathed Topridge to New York State in 1973. Some of the nearby land became part of the state Forest Preserve. The buildings were sold to a private owner who went bankrupt. Crow acquired it in 1994.

KIDS BEAR THE CREDIT: When New York State ordered public school districts to eliminate Native American mascots and icons, controversy erupted in many places, some communities were split, and adults squared off against each other. One community we know well put the decision in the hands of the kids who led the successful, collaborative process to select a meaningful, new mascot. Kudos, Glens Falls, and go Black Bears!

WINNING ATTITUDE: At one point last Sunday, 12.6 million viewers were tuned in to watch LSU play Iowa for the women’s college basketball national championship, the most watched game in the history of the sport. They watched LSU pull away from Iowa and its buzzy superstar, Caitlin Clark, and they watched as LSU’s star player, Angel Reese, made sure Clark knew the Tigers were about to win a ring. Reese’s gesture initially was met with high-profile condemnations on social media, exactly the type of reaction, writes columnist Karen Attiah of The Washington Post, that elite Black women athletes have long dealt with. “The White backlash shows that for Black women playing their hearts out for the respect they deserve, the game is rigged,” she writes. “From Serena Williams to Sha’Carri Richardson, confident, dominant Black female athletes have long been demonized, and Reese is no different.” Later, Reese publicly scoffed at First Lady Jill Biden’s suggestion that both LSU and Iowa be celebrated with a White House ceremony, an idea that was later walked back. Attiah loved it. “In a society that expects Black people to perform instant forgiveness after racial slights,” she writes, “I’m so here for this energy.”

FOREVER WOKE: Turns out some businesses woke up a long time ago. Whether we see it as authentic or contrived, “woke capitalism” has a long history. Consider 19th century British chocolate magnate George Cadbury. He helped educate and house residents of his factory town. Or Boston department store owner Edward Filene, who promoted credit unions and led a 1930s campaign against Nazi-era anti-Semitism. Or computer company founder An Wang, who helped revive the small Massachusetts mill town that his company called home. To survive, woke businesses still have to satisfy consumer demand and preference. Remember American Motor Company CEO and future Michigan Gov. George Romney, who tried to sell small cars to Americans as part of his belief in “modest consumerism?” Today AMC is nowhere to be found.

The neighborhood around the Oklahoma Training Track in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is attracting some high-profile personalities. Skip Dickstein.

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD: First, celebrity chef Bobby Flay purchased a home on Saratoga Springs’ Fifth Avenue to be near the race course’s Oklahoma Training Track. Now, the Albany, N.Y., Times Union reports, Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy is purchasing a home there, too. Meanwhile, Saratoga Springs’ West Side Sports Bar and Grill is in the running to be named one of “America’s Best Restaurants,” the online marketing effort to help independent restaurants survive.

LAUNCHED FROM RPI: G. Reid Wiseman, a 1997 graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., will command the Artemis II on a mission around the moon. Three Americans and one Canadian comprise the four-person crew, announced this week. Wiseman and the other two Americans have lived on the International Space Station. The mission, to launch no sooner than the end of 2024, is the first to the moon in more than 50 years and is a prelude to a planned lunar landing. The New York Times has it all covered from just about every imaginable angle. That wasn’t the only exciting moon news in recent days: scientists report discovering water in the glass beads that are formed by the molten heat when an asteroid or meteorite slams into the moon’s surface. They speculate the beads could hold up to 300 billion tons of water.

ON SECOND THOUGHT: The school board in Easthampton, Mass., withdrew an offer for the superintendency after its selection, Vito Perrone, addressed the board’s chair and executive assistant as “Ladies” in a follow-up email. The Daily Hampshire Gazette reports that Perrone, who was prepared to take a pay cut to accept the job because of previous connections to the school system, said he was told that use of the term “ladies” is a microaggression and “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.”

GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY: The first call from a wireless cellular phone took place 50 years ago this week, on a Manhattan sidewalk. Its inventor, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, made the call. Today, there are more cell phones than people on Earth. Smithsonian Magazine takes a journey through the history of the cellphone and wireless communications, which morphed quickly from the realm of science fiction to an essential — and not altogether healthy — tool of modern life. “We never could have predicted what has happened to the technology over the years since we created that first cellphone,” Cooper once said. “Fifty years after the Motorola DynaTAC transformed communications technology,” Michelle Delgado writes, “he’s still exactly right.”

CAN’T SPELL DISNEY WITHOUT DIS: Bob Iger, the once and future powerful CEO of Disney, made it clear this week that he’s in no mood to de-escalate the company’s feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state legislators who moved to punish the company for speaking out against the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. During the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Iger called DeSantis “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.” Noting that Disney has more than 75,000 employees in the state, brings around 50 million visitors to Florida every year and is the state’s largest taxpayer, Iger said, “A year ago, the company took a position on pending Florida legislation. And while the company may have not handled the position that it took very well, a company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do. The governor got very angry about the position Disney took and seems like he’s decided to retaliate against us, including the naming of a new board to oversee the property and the business. In effect, to seek to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right. And that just seems really wrong to me.” Whenever Iger is ready to relinquish the reins a second time, he’s got someone eager to follow in his footsteps — 18-year-old Cori Borgstadt, who has attended every Disney shareholders meeting since she was 3 and once asked Iger what advice he would give “a kid who wants your job some day.”

THEIR BIG DAY: Khalia Beckford and Peter Don planned a quiet civil wedding this week at the Manhattan City Clerk’s Office. Little did they know the day they had chosen would be the same day former President Donald Trump was to be arraigned in the courthouse next door. “I did not plan for this,” Beckford told BuzzFeed News. “I heard about it at work but didn’t know this was happening. But it’s dope. It’s a moment, and it’s not going to ruin my big day. The cameras [are] for me. Everyone came for me.” Yusef Salaam celebrated a different way. Salaam was a member of the Central Park Five, a group of teens convicted of a brutal rape but later exonerated. Before they were exonerated, Trump took out infamous full-page ads calling for the teens to be executed. Salaam, now a candidate for the New York City Council, bought his own full-page ad in The New York Times excoriating Trump, and ending with, “And if the charges are proven and you are found guilty, I hope that you endure whatever penalties are imposed with the same strength and dignity that the Exonerated Five showed as we served our punishment for a crime we did not commit.”

LAWN GAMES: A lush, green, golf course-like lawn is the dream of many a homeowner, but the price is steep. Landscapers are expensive, water is in short supply in some places, and storms wreak havoc. What’s the answer? Paint.

LIVES

BERNARD NEWCOMB — “Bing” to his many friends and loved ones — was born with congenital cataracts and legally blind, but nothing held him back or dampened his zest for life. The valedictorian of his high school, he became the first in his family to graduate from college, ranking third in his College of Business class at Oregon State. Upon graduation, he found that accounting firms and banks did not consider him employable because of his blindness. His college placement counselor persuaded General Electric to hire Newcomb in their data processing department at the Hanford Project in Richland, Wash., where he was employed for three years. With Bill Porter, he co-founded E*TRADE, the online brokerage firm, and when the company went public in 1996, Newcomb described it as a “14-year overnight success.” He used his wealth to support and lift up others, encouraging his beneficiaries to give to others as well. He died at 70 after a brief illness.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have. We don't realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren't put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously.”
—    John O’Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher

THE SIGNOFF

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: A 60-year-old man was arrested in Warren, Mich., for aggravated assault after clobbering a store clerk over the head with a 4-pound frozen fish after being told the counter had closed early because of Ramadan. Not far away, in Detroit, an 18-year-old was busted for impersonating a police officer when he attempted to make a traffic stop, only to discover the woman driving the other car was an off-duty cop.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen. 

Sincere Thanks to Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Troy Burns, Leigh Hornbeck, Lisa Fenwick, Skip Dickstein, 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