The Week: What Caught Our Eye

July 1, 2023

Photo of fireworks.“May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!” — Daniel Webster. Happy Fourth of July! Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Let freedom ring. Let it ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire and the mighty mountains of New York, said Martin Luther King. Let it form the breath life for nations, said George Bernard Shaw. Let it be celebrated in boldness, wrote Robert Frost. And at family picnics with iffy potato salad, said Erma Bombeck. And let it not perish from this Earth, said Abraham Lincoln.

NO QUIT IN HER: Virginia Oliver has been hauling lobster traps in the waters off Maine for 95 years. That is not a typo. Known to most as the Lobster Lady, her longevity has turned her into something of a celebrity, with people stopping her on the street to say they’d seen her on TV or ask for her autograph. She started driving her father’s lobster boat at 8, married a man she worked alongside for 61 years and has four children, three of them lobstermen, including an 80-year-old son who has been her lobstering partner since her husband died in 2006. Oliver recently renewed her commercial license and is excited to soon be “getting out on the water,” she told The Washington Post, “and doing what I’ve always done.”

BELLY UP: Remember the early days of the pandemic when the conventional wisdom declared things like handshakes and buffets a thing of the past? If you’ve driven past a Golden Corral parking lot lately, you know those are making up for lost time, with the CEO reporting revenue is up 20% so far this year. Reservations are harder to come by and wait times are up at Las Vegas’ famous high-end buffets, as well. “Americans love big things. That’s it,” one woman who hit four buffets on a five-day Vegas trip told The New York Times. “We just love more. I’m not saying that’s good. I’m just saying it’s who we are.”

HIM AGAIN? Ryan Seacrest, famous for being famous, is about to add another platform from which to reach into American homes. Seacrest, the longtime host of “American Idol” and “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” and former co-host of the morning show “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” has signed a long-term deal to replace Pat Sajak beginning next season as host of “Wheel of Fortune.” Wheel watchers who wondered if Vanna White would stick around after Sajak left got a bit of reassurance from Seacrest, who said as part of the announcement, “I can’t wait to continue the tradition of spinning the wheel and working alongside the great Vanna White.”

NO REGRETS: William Lance Wilkerson, a 39-year-old handyman, borrowed $400 from an uncle to pay for the gas that would fuel the most important road trip of his life. He got in his 24-year-old pickup and headed east from Mitchell, Ind., bound for Washington, D.C., where he would join others protesting the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. He admits he was inside the Capitol briefly after rioters breached it on Jan. 6, 2021, but said he got out of there when the vandalism started. He was arrested this month and charged with four federal crimes. He has no regrets, telling a reporter that he did what he thought was right and that his home repair business has picked up customers since news of his arrest. “They thank me, and congratulate me,” he said. “They say Trump should have won.” As for his family and children, Wilkerson said, “Twenty years from now, they'll say your dad went to the Capitol building on Jan. 6 to fight for your rights.”

GOVERNOR UNKNOWN: Martin Glynn was a beloved son of Irish Albany, the smart and able pride of the Democrats who controlled the city. He was a graduate of Fordham, served one term as a member of Congress, wrote for and edited the Times Union, and pursued enhanced reforms to protect workers and government employees. But Tammany Hall did not brook upstate competition from another Democrat, so a Republican candidate somehow defeated Glynn for re-election. Undeterred, Glynn began a public career as an international statesman, seeking the establishment of an Irish Free State. Former British Prime Minister Lloyd George said, “No man did more to bring a settlement of the Irish Question and no man did more to end the feud that lasted 700 years.” And then, suddenly, Martin Glynn was gone.

Photo of waterfall.Runoff from recent rain flows over Paint Mine Falls in John Boyd Thacher State Park near Albany, N.Y. The falls typically are dry during the summer. John Bulmer

OUTDOOR LIVING: When it comes to backcountry survival skills, Melanie Sawyer is more accomplished than most people, even the flinty types who pride themselves on needing little to thrive. She lives off the grid in a house in the Adirondacks, regularly forages for food and is both a student and teacher of Adirondack life in the 18th and 19th centuries. A former model who was raised in England before settling in the Adirondacks, Sawyer is among the 10 contestants on season two of “Alone,” a popular History Channel program set in the wilds of northern Saskatchewan that awards $500,000 to the last one to quit. (The season is ongoing, so you’ll have to tune in to see how she fared).

ONE HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Dr. Robert Moore is a lifelong dog lover, so to celebrate his 100th birthday, his family used social media to invite dog owners to form a pooch parade. His daughter told a San Francisco Bay Area TV station that she was expecting 20 or 30 dogs. Closer to 200 showed up, some dressed in tuxedos, in a line that stretched around the block. “My father, he was so touched. He pet every single dog that came through. Every person brought the dog up to him. It was so lovely,” his daughter said. “It makes you feel wonderful about your community that people would come out and do that for your dad who you love so much. It was really special.”

MORE MOORE: The Times of London christened her the “best American writer of her generation.” The New York Times called her work “brilliant,” and Newsweek said she’s “one of her generation’s wittiest and shrewdest writers.” Glens Falls, N.Y., native Lorrie Moore is out with her first new book in 14 years. In 1994, Moore wrote about her teenage summer job at Storytown, U.S.A., (today’s Great Escape) in “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?” Her new book, “I Am Homeless if This is Not My Home,” like her earlier work, creates intimacy while keeping her readers at arm’s length, The New York Times writes. “Her young women are as genteel as Moore herself, who was raised in a churchgoing family in small-town upstate New York. But the barbed wit with which her characters treat their relationship emergencies, an archness that fails to conceal a desperate, sincere sadness, offered readers — especially young people with literary aspirations of their own — a new way to think about the painful predicaments of their own lives.”

RISKY BUSINESS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long influential among Republican policymakers and elected officials, has lost a lot of its clout with the GOP since the party started embracing populist views that are often at odds with the interests of business, such as restrictions on immigration and trade. Party leaders accuse the chamber of focusing too much on divisive social issues, and were angry when the chamber endorsed a number of Democrats for House seats in recent elections. State and local chambers of commerce are eagerly filling the void. “It’s pretty common knowledge that the House leadership on the Republican side is not very enamored with the U.S. Chamber,” former GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, a lobbyist who sets up meetings between state chambers and Republican House leadership, told The Wall Street Journal.

HEADS UP: The number of pedestrians killed by vehicles, on the rise since 2010, hit a 41-year high in 2022, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, which reported 7,500 walkers were killed, a figure that excludes Oklahoma because it didn’t get its numbers in on time. The increase since 2010 has been attributed to the higher number of SUVs on the road and poor infrastructure. For the seventh year in a row, New Mexico was ranked as the most dangerous state for pedestrians.

GEOGRAPHIC DISLOCATION: National Geographic, a staple in waiting rooms across America and renowned for its stunning photography and in-depth reporting about the natural world, announced this week that it had laid off its remaining staff writers and would rely mainly on freelancers to fill the magazine and website. The magazine already announced plans to stop newsstand sales in 2024. At its peak in the late 1980s, National Geographic reached 12 million subscribers in the United States, and millions more overseas. It remains among the most widely read magazines in America, with just under 1.8 million subscribers at the end of 2022.

A COMPETITIVE PICKLE: Insurance giant UBS Group AG opened some eyes this week when it estimated that pickleball injuries would cost Americans up to $500 million in 2023, a result of booming popularity, especially among competitive older adults. The company’s analysts estimated pickleball players would account for 67,000 emergency room visits, 366,000 outpatient visits, 8,800 outpatient surgeries, 4,700 hospitalizations and 20,000 “post-acute episodes” in 2023. “While we generally think of exercise as positively impacting health outcomes,” UBS writes, “the ‘can-do’ attitude of today's seniors can pose greater risk in other areas such as sports injuries, leading to a greater number of orthopedic procedures.” 

CRIME DOESN’T PAY: The former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives was sentenced to 20 years in prison this week for his role in a $60 million bribery scheme that was secretly funded by a utility that sought — and received — a $1 billion bailout to keep nuclear facilities in the state operating. Larry Householder, twice elected speaker of the Ohio House and one of the state’s most powerful politicians, “acted as the quintessential mob boss, directing the criminal enterprise from the shadows and using his casket carriers to execute the scheme,” federal prosecutors wrote in requesting a sentence of 16 to 20 years.

ALL GOOD FEELINGS: Comic genius and Glens Falls, N.Y., native John Phillips has another Hollywood hit on his hands. Phillips co-wrote “No Hard Feelings,” the summer film starring Jennifer Lawrence. The premise: Parents of a sheltered 19-year-old son headed to Princeton think he needs to experience the world first, so they hire a young woman to date him. Enter Lawrence as a 32-year-old Uber driver having trouble paying taxes on an inherited Long Island home. Variety, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times loved it. WSJ wrote: “‘No Hard Feelings’ adroitly updates the salacious teen comedy for the moment, when survey after survey tells us that young people raised online are unable to relate to each other in person, much less strike up a romance. One especially well-aimed joke arrives at a house party like the ones that were a staple of raunchy ’80s comedies: This time, the youngsters pair off, sneak upstairs to the bedrooms and … look at their phones. “Doesn’t anyone [have sex] anymore?” cries Maddie. It’s a pertinent question. A sex comedy that seeks to be honest about today’s youth would have to be nearly an oxymoron, with a title like “Risk-Free Business” or “Slow Times at Ridgemont High.”

WORKER PROTECTIONS: New workplace rules for pregnant women and new mothers took effect this week, including accommodations for workers who are on their feet a lot or who must travel for work. In addition to making the workplace more comfortable, supporters say, the accommodations, which apply to employers with 15 or more employees, should increase workforce participation. “The intent is to keep pregnant employees working and healthy and boost the economy by making it easier for those people to stay employed,” one HR specialist told worklife.com.

LIVES

RICHARD RAVITCH never held elected office, but figures across the political spectrum hailed him as one of the most consequential public servants of the 20th century in New York State. Then-Gov. Hugh Carey asked him to run New York City’s massive Urban Development Corp. in 1975, soon after major banks told Carey they would no longer lend it money, touching off a financial crisis that Ravitch expertly navigated. A few years later, he was put in charge of the foundering Metropolitan Transportation Authority and turned it around. He served 18 months as lieutenant governor to David Paterson after Paterson replaced the disgraced Eliot Spitzer. “From President Lyndon Johnson to Gov. David Paterson, Ravitch was the guy elected leaders summoned to public service when things went awry and needed the deft touch of an economic whiz,” City & State founder and publisher Tom Allon wrote in an appreciation. “Like so many civic-minded New Yorkers, I am grateful that we had Dick Ravitch in the arena to rescue our city and our state in tough times the past five decades. We need more leaders like Dick Ravitch to emerge in the coming years to fill his very big shoes.” He was 89.

JOHN GOODENOUGH, a faculty member at the University of Texas for more than 40 years, in 2019 became the oldest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize, sharing the prize in chemistry for helping to develop lithium-ion batteries, the first truly portable and rechargeable batteries and the key to our cellphones and even electric vehicles. “We thought it would be nice and help in a few things,” Goodenough said after receiving his award, “but never dreamed it would revolutionize electronics and everything else.” Born in Germany, Goodenough grew up in the United States and began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research laid the groundwork for development of random-access memory for the digital computer. He was head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford in England when he made his lithium-ion discovery. He was 100.

JULIAN SANDS was a British actor best known for his roles in the Oscar-winning “A Room With A View” and TV dramas “24” and “Smallville.” An avid and accomplished hiker, Sands disappeared during a January hike in bad weather in the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California, near his home. Walkers found human remains that were formally identified as Sands. He was 65.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“Well let’s see. I have so many of them, you know. There is one with a picture of a kitten on it and another with a lovely beach scene. Do you like kittens or beaches?”
—    “Whitey” Whitebeard, an AI-generated voice that responds to telemarketers by keeping them talking in circles. It was created by Roger Anderson, of Monrovia, Calif., who employs chatbots and AI to waste the time of telemarketers and scammers and whom we hereby nominate for every humanitarian award ever created.

THE SIGNOFF

… NOT AS I DO: A prominent Harvard Business School professor who researches dishonesty and unethical behavior has been accused of falsifying data in at least four reports. A team of investigators said the professor may have falsified data in “perhaps dozens” of academic research papers.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen

Sincere Thanks to Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Lisa Fenwick, Tina Suhocki, Leigh Hornbeck, Kristy Miller, Troy Burns, Mike Cybulski, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, 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 conversationmark.behan@behancom.com

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