The Week: What Caught Our Eye

May 27, 2023

Originally known as Decoration Day, a day for townspeople to honor their Civil War dead by decorating their graves, Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971. A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3 p.m. local time each Memorial Day. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Welcome to the unofficial start of summer. We’re glad you’ve chosen to spend part of your holiday weekend with us.The New York Times called him the greatest American artist of his century, the dean of American  metal sculptors, a sacred name in American art. He was David Smith of Bolton Landing, N.Y., a painter, drawer and “iron-working wizard” in The Washington Post’s view. He came to Bolton in 1940 with his wife, the artist Dorothy Dehner, his inspiration and support and the woman who persuaded him to go to the Art Students League of New York. Together they renovated an old fox farm and became part of the lakeside community for 26 years before his death in a car accident in 1965. 

“For Smith was an artist on the heroic scale,” The Times wrote. “The goals he set for himself were large and ambitious, and he had both the energy and the talent to meet them. Especially during the last two decades of his life, when he was almost unbelievably productive, turning out a steady succession of masterpieces in a medium — welded-metal construction — which discourages quick solutions  … He continued to astound his friends and admirers by the quality and quantity of his work until the day of his death.” 

The Times’ legendary art critic Hilton Kramer saw in Smith the “aspiration to contribute something major to the mainstream of modernist art and the desire to retain an ethos of the American small town and the pastoral beauty of the American landscape.”

His American small town was Bolton. “Bolton Landing remained until the end of his life the principal scene of his artistic triumphs. He filled the meadows beyond his house with the hundreds of sculptures that came from his studio, and the entire property, indoors and out, became a combination museum, warehouse, and private park for his accelerating production. No one who ever saw Smith’s sculpture in this poetic landscape could doubt that he had seen it in its ideal setting.” From the Bolton barn he called Terminal Iron Works came works of art that found their home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Storm King Art Center, among others.

“Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music and Dance” will open June 24 at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the influence of music and dance on Smith’s painting, drawing and sculpture.

This summer, to celebrate its 60^th anniversary as a public museum, The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls is bringing David Smith home, opening a major exhibition on the artist who was a supporter and trustee of The Hyde Collection in its earliest days and curator of its first summer show. “Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music and Dance” will open June 24, the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the influence of music and dance on Smith’s painting, drawing and sculpture. It will include, appropriately, a selection of works by Dehner, a painter and sculptor. Smith’s daughters, Rebecca and Candida Smith, co-presidents of the Estate of David Smith, played an active role in the creation of the exhibition.

FRIENDS IN NEED: A simple gesture of humanity has made Alexander and Andrea Campagna heroes half a world away from their home near Buffalo, N.Y. Last December, as a fierce and deadly blizzard whipped Western New York, they opened their door to find 10 South Koreans whose van had become stuck in the relentless snow. The Campagnas, who happen to like Korean cuisine and had the items in their kitchen to prove it, took them in, feeding and sheltering their stranded guests. South Korea repaid the Campagnas’ kindness with a 10-day, expenses-paid trip that featured meals in some of the country’s finest restaurants, private tours of historic sites and a visit to the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. They also learned about inyeon, or fate, and Andrea Campagna, who ate Korean food with her husband on their first date, is a believer. “How did they end up on our street in Buffalo? In a home where we happened to love cooking Korean cuisine and have those spices?” The New York Times reported. “How did that all happen?

WATCHING, WAITING: A Candlewood Suites hotel on the outskirts of Syracuse, N.Y., became a scene of drama and anticipation this week when word spread that a busload of asylum-seekers from New York City was on its way. The town supervisor and county executive sought, and won, court orders to stop the transport, but before that, Syracuse.com sent a reporter and photographer to the hotel to document the preparations and the anxieties of the hotel’s long-term residents, who fear displacement. Their gripping account, which included a preposterous threat of arrest for doing their jobs, shines a light on the chaos surrounding efforts to provide shelter and services to the newly arrived, complete with a Dumpster full of discarded food meant for the people on the bus that never came. Similar scenarios are playing out across upstate New York.

FIT TO SERVE? In FDR’s day, an admiring press corps kept the public from seeing or knowing much about the president’s physical disability. Now, journalists recognize a duty to report on elected officials’ health and fitness to serve. Enter U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, now 89, senior senator from California, who has returned to Washington, frail and diminished, after a bout of shingles and follow-on encephalitis caused vision and balance impairments and facial paralysis, and may have also caused bouts of confusion. Sen. Feinstein is critical to the Democrats’ one-vote control on the Judiciary Committee, which vets judges that receive lifetime appointments, so her staff is doing its best to protect her from contact with colleagues or journalists. Yet some wonder if she is truly fit to serve and whether such questions are routinely raised about the octogenarian men of the Senate.

 CARRYING ON: Hospice care is generally regarded as a gentle acknowledgment that doctors have done all they could and now the focus becomes keeping the patient comfortable. A study published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine found roughly half of hospice patients died within three weeks, and more than a third died within one week. Then there’s Jimmy Carter. America’s 39^th president, a 98-year-old brain cancer survivor, announced three months ago that he had entered hospice care. He’s spent the time since with his wife, Rosalynn, his constant companion, enjoying the company of family and regular servings of ice cream. “That’s been one of the blessings of the last couple of months,” the Carters’ grandson, Jason Carter, told The Associated Press. “He is certainly getting to see the outpouring and it’s been gratifying to him for sure.”

FLY, EAGLE: When Dana Schmid was little, she was told she couldn’t be a Boy Scout like her brother, because she’s a girl. Girls have been allowed to join what’s now called “Scouting BSA” since 2019, but few Scouts of either gender reach the rank of Eagle. That Schmid, an 18-year-old from Wilton, N.Y., did so in the face of skepticism that persisted even after girls were allowed to join made the achievement even sweeter. Her father is an Eagle Scout, as is her brother, Evan, who was the MC at her Court of Honor ceremony. One of the men who worked closely with Schmid said he asked her at her Eagle board appearance, “how will you change the world?” Her answer: “I already have.” 

CYCLE OF LIFE: On the day he graduated from Harvard, Bill Dutcher was wearing motorcycle-racing leathers under his cap and gown. Diploma in hand, he bolted Harvard Yard for the track — and promptly crashed his motorcycle. Cycling was his life. He devoted his career to the industry and by 1981 needed a new challenge. He and his wife Gini created a touring rally, Americade, now the world’s largest motorcycle touring rally, which celebrates its 40^th anniversary in Lake George this week, under the direction of their son Christian and his team.

A CITY IN CRISIS: If you follow the news, you may be aware that San Francisco is a city in serious trouble since the onset of the pandemic. A stark report from Elizabeth Weil for New York paints a vivid portrait of just how serious — 30,000 tech jobs shed by just two major employers, millions of square feet of downtown office space abandoned, shuttered businesses, services cut. The human costs are staggering to consider. A native San Franciscan, Weil writes that she realizes the people in her hometown hate the type of pieces she finds herself compelled by the truth to write. “When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall.”

ADIRONDACK REFUGE: For some, the Adirondack region is no longer just a seasonal getaway. Increasingly, affluent “climate refugees” are fleeing fires, extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes and finding new homes in the temperate, water-rich Adirondacks. Communities are becoming younger and more diverse and struggling with the need for more housing. It is a welcome development for many rural Northern New York places that have struggled with declining populations and school enrollment.  

AM REPRIEVE: We can leave landlines, manual car windows and boomboxes in the past, but not AM radio! Ford was ready to ditch AM radios beginning with the 2024 model year, but reversed course after government policy leaders expressed concern about keeping emergency alerts that often are sounded on AM stations.

TOP THIS: Take a look around and it’s likely you’ll see people of all types wearing baseball caps. Traditional caps, colorful caps, bedazzled hats, caps with logos of every kind. Caps on the young, caps on the old. All those caps got MLB.com’s Michael Clair thinking about their origins. He dove to the depths of baseball history to trace the evolution of the baseball cap, pausing to marvel at the simple genius of the man who recognized that all those caps could be turned to walking advertisements if he lifted the front and made a crown. The senior curator for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum told him, “The baseball cap is a really great marketing tool. I don't think they realized it was a marketing tool for a long, long time. People get it now, right? I mean, entire businesses are based on it. Because it's right there. It's a billboard, right above your head, where people pay attention.”

HE GETS THE MESSAGE: Frank Luntz for years was the wordsmith Republican politicians trusted to shape messages that moved the masses. It was Luntz who advised them to call the estate tax the “death tax” so it sounded bad and to call global warming “climate change” because it sounded not so bad. A respected and successful strategist, Luntz honed language by field testing it with focus groups, all the while maintaining a cordial demeanor that won him friends across the political spectrum. These days, he’s still coming to terms with the changes that have swept the GOP, which severely diminished his influence and, he said, had serious consequences for his health.

LIVES

TINA TURNER was a singular talent, a combination of vocal range, energetic athleticism and stage presence — combined with a personal story of triumph over very public adversity — that made her one of the top-selling musical performers of all-time. She won eight Grammys, including three consecutive for best female rock vocal performance in the 1980s, when she emerged from a successful but tumultuous partnership with her first husband, Ike Turner, with whom she was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. A natural performer, she recounted in her memoir being paid at 4 or 5 years old to sing radio hits she had memorized for the salesgirls when she went shopping. She struggled for a time after leaving her husband and starting her solo career in 1976, but broke through in 1984 with “Private Dancer,” which featured the smash hit “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” followed by a star turn in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” which introduced “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).” She died after a long period of illness at 83.  

RICK HOYT was an inspiration to millions over many decades, participating in road races and triathlons along with his father, Dick Hoyt, who pushed his son’s wheelchair in more than 1,000 races, including 32 Boston Marathons. In 1992, they completed a cross-country run and bike in 45 days. “Rick along with our father, Dick, were icons in the road race and triathlon worlds for over 40 years and inspired millions of people with disabilities to believe in themselves, set goals and accomplish extraordinary things,” the Hoyt family said in a statement. A statue of the two men was erected 10 years ago near the Boston Marathon’s starting line. Rick Hoyt, who had cerebral palsy, died at 61 of complications with his respiratory system.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“You can anticipate an influx of people during a time of year that’s usually very slow for us.”
—    Michelle Clement, director of marketing for the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism in Lake Placid, N.Y., on the crowds that are expected to flock to the Adirondacks in April 2024 hoping to witness a total eclipse of the sun.

“If a cherry pie is misbranded as an apple pie, and the consumer has a strong preference for or dislikes cherries, they may experience disappointment, dissatisfaction, or a negative eating experience.”
—    An attorney for an Albany, N.Y., woman who is suing a local grocery store for $35,000 after it allegedly sold her a mislabeled pie.

THE SIGNOFF

SINKING FEELING: A study led by a researcher with the United States Geological Survey found that the weight of New York City’s buildings and their contents — an estimated 1.7 trillion pounds — is causing the city to sink a millimeter or two each year, making the city increasingly vulnerable to rising seas.
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Principal Author: Bill Callen. 

Sincere Thanks to Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Lisa Fenwick, Leigh Hornbeck, Troy Burns, Lee Leibowitz, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, and Nancie Battaglia.

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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