The Week: What Caught Our Eye

July 15, 2023

Long Lake, N.Y., was left this week to clean up the remnants of severe flooding in the heart of the popular vacation hamlet. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleague and Friends:

Wherever you may be, we hope you came through the wicked weather of the past week unharmed. A lot of our neighbors to the north, east and south did not.

Though much of the media’s focus was on flood damage in New York’s Hudson Valley and Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, the news was no better for Hamilton and Essex counties in New York’s North Country, which sustained some extreme damage at a critical time in the summer tourism season.

The key intersection in Long Lake was closed. Roads were washed out. As one local town supervisor put it, there was “a lot of carnage.”

The Adirondack Foundation is collecting donations to help people with the extraordinary expense of cleaning up.

While the Northeast soaked, other parts of the country were dealing with punishing heat as experts fretted that daily climate disasters have become the new normal.

FLIGHT FOR ONE: Phil Stringer and four good-natured American Airlines flight attendants have joined the ranks of the Internet famous, with Stringer’s cheerful video documenting his journey as the only passenger on a midnight flight gathering more than 10 million likes on TikTok. Stringer wasn’t meant to be the only passenger, but after a series of delays, he was the only one left for the roughly 2½-hour flight from Oklahoma City to Charlotte, N.C. The positivity resonated, with strangers reaching out to thank him and TV producers wanting to tell the story. “We were like, look, we can either be negative about the situation and make a bad situation worse by our attitude, or we can be positive, lighthearted ... and try and make something of this and at least just have fun,” Stringer told NPR. Contrast Stringer’s attitude and behavior with that of a business class passenger on a flight from Houston to Amsterdam, whose outburst over not receiving his preferred meal caused the flight to be diverted to Chicago. It continued on after he was removed and arrived three hours late.

SAFE SPACES: Rocket Mortgage, one of the nation’s largest home mortgage lenders, for the second year in a row named Glens Falls, N.Y., the safest city in America, based on factors such as violent and property crime rates, population, median household income and median home price. Other Northeast cities in the top 15 include State College, Pa. (3); Cambridge, Mass. (7); Kingston, N.Y. (9), Portland, Maine (13) and Worcester, Mass. (14).

LEGO LIBRARY: If you’re a parent or grew up in the last quarter of the 20^th century, there’s a good chance your home has at least one Lego set, and those with one often have many more. If your building instructions are long gone, Archive.com has you covered, publishing downloadable instruction booklets for every Lego set issued to date — all 6,854.

UNVARNISHED TRUTH: A judicial candidate in Central New York took the extraordinary step of proactively revealing that her husband was convicted of a sex offense as a young man, before the couple met, and is listed on Florida’s sex offender registry. Lourdes Rosario, seeking the Republican and Conservative Party designations for an Onondaga County Family Court judgeship, explained to the parties’ selection committees that her husband, when he was 22 and living in Miami, had used an Internet chat to solicit what he thought was a 16-year-old for sex and convicted of a third-degree felony. The Republicans designated her to be their candidate for the November election. The Conservative Party chose someone else.

AMERICAN TRAGEDY: We hate to bring such disturbing news, but this feels too important to simply turn away. The Indianapolis Star, reporting in the aftermath of a 2020 incident in which an Indiana man murdered his wife and two children before killing himself, analyzed media reports and data from the national Gun Violence Archive to conclude that family annihilation — an act exactly as heinous as it sounds — had occurred at least 227 times in the U.S. since 2020, an average of one every five days, a mind-numbing number and what appears to be a uniquely American phenomenon. The killer was a male in 94% of the cases, and three-quarters of the cases occurred in the South and Midwest, 33 in Texas.

HEROES OF HOSPITALITY: The Warren County/Lake George hospitality community will gather Thursday to honor five “heroes of hospitality” whose contributions to the success of the tourism industry produced joyous and memorable vacations for millions of families and provided employment and opportunities for thousands of local people. Among those who will be honored are retired Mayor Bob Blais of Lake George, America’s longest-serving mayor; lake protection advocates Jim Kneeshaw and Jeff Killeen; the Lake George Steamboat Co.’s Bill Dow; and community leader Helene Horn. Meanwhile, the push to make Lake George a preeminent year-round destination for visitors is gaining new momentum.

The red sky in morning that sailors know to heed presaged another stormy afternoon this week in New York’s Capital Region. John Bulmer

CAVE DWELLER: A fascinating standoff is unfolding in Israel between a man who, over 50 years, has carved himself an intricate home from the sandstone seaside cliffs near Tel Aviv, and a government that’s trying to force him out. Nissim Kahlon has lived in a subterranean home overlooking the Mediterranean since 1973, ignoring a government order the following year to dismantle the home and move on. Instead, he has continued to build new chambers that he lines with colorful, detailed mosaics using tiles scrounged from dumpsters around Tel Aviv. The Israeli government has made alternative housing arrangements, but Kahlon told The Associated Press, “I am not leaving here. I am ready for them to bury me here. I have nowhere to go, I have no other home.”

SMOKIN’ JOE: President Biden, we learned this week, cranks up the fury and salts his language with profanity when dealing behind the scenes with aides who aren’t meeting his expectations. Axios reported that “no one is safe” from the president’s scrutiny and ire. We’re not questioning the accuracy of the reporting or of the particular anecdotes shared in the piece, which portrayed the president as sharp on details and quick to grill aides to test their command of policy, but it’s fair to note that the report landed at a time when a large chunk of the electorate questions whether he’s up for the rigors of the job.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FUNGI: The density of forests in the western U.S. make them a wildfire hazard that the federal government is trying to address by thinning about 50 million acres over the next decade. Foresters strip the trees that fall and, when the conditions are right, burn them in large but contained fires that can blister the soil and delay regrowth of vegetation. Now some environmental scientists believe they’ve found a less destructive but still effective way to break down the deadwood — mushrooms.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: An Ohio plastic surgeon who goes by “Dr. Roxy” was stripped of her medical license after she was accused of injuring patients while livestreaming some procedures on TikTok. The State Medical Board of Ohio voted to permanently revoke the medical license of Dr. Katherine Roxanne Grawe, who the board said neglected her patients as she livestreamed parts of their procedures, spoke into a camera, and answered viewer questions while the surgeries were taking place. “As I stand here today, I see how many of those silly videos seemed unprofessional,” Grawe told the board, according to USA Today.

OTTER HUBRIS: A frisky otter is harassing surfers and kayakers in the Pacific Ocean off Santa Cruz, Calif. State wildlife officials are hoping to catch the otter, which has jumped on, scratched and wrestled surfboards away from startled surfers, prompting officials to post beachside warnings. The otter has a sad backstory that might help explain her lack of fear.

THE SCIENCE OF FISHING: Every successful angler has honed his or her tricks and techniques over time, developing a sense for where the fish might be, what the right conditions were and the baits they were likely to chase. Liu He has used a trick of his own to become arguably the best angler in Indiana — data. Liu, a PhD student at Purdue University, has earned 22 Fish of the Year awards from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources since moving to Indiana in 2019, including 15 in 2022. Turning to his skills in computer science and data analysis, Liu uses a spreadsheet to track water temperature, air temperature, barometric pressure and other weather data for each fishing trip, along with information about every catch. As his database grew, so did the trends and patterns it revealed, helping him predict the best times and conditions to catch a specific species.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“We’ve always approached the issue of gambling from the proposition that players and other people who are in a position to influence the outcome of the game are going to be subject to a different set of rules than everyone else in the world. Pete Rose violated what is sort of rule one in baseball, and the consequences of that are clear in the rule, and we’ve continued to abide by our own rules.”
—    Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, explaining to reporters why he does not intend to alter Pete Rose’s lifetime ban for betting on baseball.

THE SIGNOFF

BROKEN TOWS: New York City police this week arrested the man who allegedly was carrying out a brazen vehicle theft operation targeting older cars in his East New York community. Police say 21-year-old Franklin Payne was using his customized pickup to tow cars and SUVs off the street and to a Long Island car crusher, where he signed paperwork claiming to own them and collected cash for the scrap value. He selected only vehicles more than eight years old to avoid a state-mandated requirement to prove ownership. In all, 12 stolen cars were crushed.​​​​

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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, 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 conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com