The Week: What Caught Our Eye

July 8, 2023

There were few things more welcomed this week — when the average daily global temperature set records on consecutive days — than relaxing by, or in, a cool mountain lake. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

It’s been a notable week – the hottest ever on Earth, or so we’re told. The Great Resignation has officially ended. The United States destroyed the last of the chemical weapons stored since World War I. Somebody dropped a little cocaine in the White House. And a new microblogging app called Thread was launched to compete with Twitter and immediately signed up 30 million users, becoming a trending topic on – where else? – Twitter.

SUMMER TRAVEL: Susan Straight, an author and professor based in California, set out on a vicarious adventure five years ago, reading classic novel after classic novel of American life, stories deeply rooted in place, with the purpose of placing the locations literally on a map of the U.S. Her online project — “1,001 Novels: A Library of America” — is now complete. “This is my love letter to the United States, to our powers of narrative and laughter, to the way we need to treasure every region of this extraordinary country, with geography that shapes all our lives, to honor the rivers and mountains, subways and freeways, deserts and forests, bayous and canyons of the nation,” she writes. “And all this happened because my mother, who immigrated to California from Switzerland, gave me Heidi so I would understand her homeland, and my stepfather from Maritime Canada gave me Anne of Green Gables, so I would understand the place he’d left.”

CRIME STOPPERS: A nationwide theft ring that operated for nearly a quarter-century and focused on sports collectibles and jewelry, stealing items worth millions of dollars, was broken up with the help of evidence collected by a small police force in Central New York investigating the 2015 burglary of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. One of the thieves was cut, possibly by broken glass, and the blood submitted to a national crime database. A match was made about a year ago, and last month, federal authorities announced conspiracy charges against nine people for operating the ring that stole Yogi Berra MVP plaques, World Series rings, paintings, antique guns, boxing championship belts and other items. Authorities said there were 21 break-ins, targeting museums celebrating baseball, golf, racing and boxing icons, a college and several jewelry stores.

STOPS AND STARTS: Fourteen million electric vehicles will be sold globally this year, nearly one-fifth of all vehicle sales, but building cars that run on batteries has been a long, bumpy road. Thomas Edison promoted battery-operated cars in his day, and GE began making electric cars and tanks around World War I. Engineers at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y., really stepped on the gas with production of a sleek car known as the GE-100 during the 1970s gas shortage. Across the state in Buffalo a decade ago, New York State invested nearly $1 billion to build and equip a factory that Elon Musk could lease, for $1 a year, to build the “solar roofs” he would sell to help Tesla owners afford the cost of charging their electric cars. Tesla has created 1,700 jobs in Buffalo, but sales of solar roofs have been slower than expected. Progress rarely follows a straight line.

OUTDOOR LIVING: People who live in areas with plenty of parks and other green spaces are, on average, 2½ years younger biologically (which measures factors beyond chronological age) than people who spend nearly all their time in a built environment, according to researchers who spent two decades following more than 900 subjects from four U.S. cities. The benefits were not evenly shared. Black people with more access to green space were only one year biologically younger; white people on average were three years younger. “Other factors, such as stress, qualities of the surrounding green space, and other social support, can affect the degree of benefits of green spaces in terms of biological aging,” said Kyeezu Kim, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. “We believe our findings have significant implications for urban planning in terms of expanding green infrastructure to promote public health and reduce health disparities.”

SHE’S EVERYWHERE: In case your power’s been out for weeks or you’ve studiously avoided watching TV or reading the news, you know the “Barbie” movie, starring Margot Robbie, is hitting theaters later this month. Even if you’re more or less checked out on pop culture, it’s impossible to miss the cross-promotional brand collaborations that have flooded the marketplace. You name it, the team at Mattel has probably thought about it — more than 100 collaborations in all, including with Progressive Insurance, the Gap, Microsoft, Forever 21, even Airbnb. Mattel wants to get “everyone playing with Barbie,” the company’s president and COO, Richard Dickson, told The Wall Street Journal, “and that doesn’t necessarily mean playing with a doll. … The bigger opportunity for us is going to be outside of the toy aisle. That is the drive for where we see the monetization for the brand moving forward.”

HEADED FOR OFFICE: Yusef Salaam, who as a teenager was among a group wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned for a brutal 1989 Central Park assault that made national news, this week won a contested Democratic primary for a seat on the New York City Council representing Central Harlem, all but assuring he’ll be elected in November. Salaam was part of the “Central Park Five,” a group of Black and Latino teens from Harlem who spent seven years in prison before DNA evidence exonerated them. A political novice, he defeated a field that included New York Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC: Three nights of live music, food trucks, crafts and fun come to beautiful Shepard Park in the center of Lake George Village, N.Y., beginning Thursday, July 12. It’s the inaugural Kelly’s Angels Summer-Lovin’ Funfest featuring a first-ever nighttime drone fireworks show over the lake. The event will benefit Kelly’s Angels, the Capital Region charity that helps children and families struggling with cancer or other serious illnesses.

The sweeping view from Grant Cottage State Historic Site in Wilton, N.Y., where America’s 18^th president spent his final days finishing his memoir. Tina Suhocki

BURNED OUT: If the persistent hazy smoke that blanketed much of the eastern U.S. in recent weeks — the result of fires in the Canadian wilderness — has you stressed, you’re not alone. Feelings of anxiety and claustrophobia are understandable, a psychologist told Scientific American. “It looks troubling; it feels troubling, the smell, the haze,” said Thomas Joseph Doherty, who practices in a part of the country — Portland, Ore. — that is much more accustomed to the mental and physical tolls of wildfire smoke. Studies on air pollution broadly suggest that people who breathe bad air have higher rates of anxiety and depression, and facing wildfire smoke for the first time can cause a spike in stress, Doherty said. “It’s normal to feel overwhelmed. It’s a lot to take on.”

RAREST OF HONORS: Halley’s Comet has come and gone twice since the last time anyone had his or her image added to the broad, soaring sandstone colossus that is the Great Western Staircase — better known as the Million Dollar Staircase — in the New York State Capitol in Albany. That’s about to change. Artists are finishing the last details before a sculptured image of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazing and consequential Brooklyn native, is publicly unveiled sometime in August. She’ll be the first addition to the staircase in 125 years — a period that included three high-profile Roosevelts and countless other worthy New Yorkers — and the seventh woman. Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Beecher Stowe are among the others. “This is just gorgeous material,” stone carver Adam Paul Heller told Gothamist.com, describing the sandstone of the staircase, where he was tasked with carving Ginsburg’s name while working on a platform 40 feet off the ground. “It's been a delight to work with. It's very refined, carves really well, as evidenced by this building. There's just amazing, intricate, exuberant carving everywhere.”

TOWERING CONTROVERSY: A proposal to build the world’s tallest flagpole in rural Maine — 1,461 feet, to be exact, taller than the Empire State Building — and top it with a U.S. flag larger than a football field as part of a $1 billion patriotic theme park was offered as a gesture of unity, its backer said, but instead has stirred opposition from people who say such a development is out of place in their quiet corner of the state. The project is the brainchild of Morrill Worcester, who runs a wreath-making business and started the Wreaths Across America program, which provides wreaths to military cemeteries and gravesites. “We want to bring Americans together, remind them of the centuries of sacrifice made to protect our freedom, and unite a divided America,” Worcester said in his pitch for the project. In March, residents of Columbia Falls overwhelmingly approved a six-month moratorium on large developments to give the town time to develop the needed rules and regulations. An Army veteran who is a friend of Worcester’s told The Associated Press, “I’m gonna tell you right now, he’s gonna build that flagpole. So why shouldn’t it be Columbia Falls?”

WHAT A GUY: A California man has confessed to hiding his mother’s death for more than three decades to continue collecting her benefits, drawing more than $830,000 over that period. He also took possession of her home. As part of his plea deal, Donald Felix Zampach agreed to forfeit the money, relinquish the house and pay restitution to lenders who lost more than $28,000 when he fraudulently opened lines of credit in her name. His mother moved to Japan, her native country, after a cancer diagnosis and died there in 1990.

HISTORIC FIND: Construction crews working on a dam in the Isar, a river that flows through Munich, discovered the remains of what used to be the city’s main synagogue, which was demolished on orders from Adolf Hitler 85 years ago. The find included a tablet bearing the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, which the director of the Jewish Museum Munich told NPR was “especially touching” because of its prominent place in the synagogue, where “all worshippers look to it.” The 150 tons of rubble workers recovered so far will be examined over the next couple years, with the possibility that additional rubble will be unearthed as work on the dam progresses.

CROWD PLEASER: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced this week that seven state-run campgrounds would open next April — weeks ahead of schedule — to accommodate travelers who are expected to flock in to observe the total solar eclipse. Six of the campgrounds are in the western part of the state, which is in the heart of the area that will experience a 100% eclipse.

SUSPENDED DISBELIEF: A roller coaster at a county festival in Wisconsin stopped because of a mechanical failure with several riders trapped upside down, where they would remain for hours as rescuers figured out how to get them down safely. One rider was later taken to the hospital. The incident followed soon after a large roller coaster at an amusement park in North Carolina was shut down when visitors reported a crack in one of its steel support beams.

LIVES

BRAD MIDDLETON was a third-year medical student who had found his professional home in the Emergency Department at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y., a poised and capable physician beloved by colleagues and patients alike for his calming human touch amid the chaos and confusion of a busy emergency room. Suddenly, he collapsed at home and was rushed to the emergency room where he worked and was pronounced dead at 34. He met his wife Liz in Queensbury. They were awaiting the birth of their third child.

COCO LEE was a star whose career spanned three decades and featured success in music, movies and television. Long popular in Asia, she rocketed to global fame in 2000, when she sang the romantic ballad “A Love Before Time” for the hit film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” She performed the song before tens of millions of viewers at the 2001 Oscars ceremony. In more recent years, she appeared on Chinese singing competition television shows. The announcement of her death sparked shock and grief online, with the topic gaining nearly 1.4 billion views on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. She died by suicide at 48.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“We want to remind people that they are never alone. We thank the family for sharing Terry's story in hopes of saving lives.”
—    Lindsey Weber, manager of community relations for the St. Louis Cardinals, who last week honored the family of Terry Badger III, a 13-year-old Indiana boy whose dream was to play for the Cardinals but who died by suicide after relentless bullying at school.

THE SIGNOFF

COLD PLAY: We would never expect a company that for decades has been the dominant brand in its category to make such a rookie mistake, but that’s what Heinz did this week with a five-word tweet: “Ketchup. Goes. In. The. Fridge!!!” Everyone knows ketchup belongs in the pantry, even if a poll that accompanied the tweet got agreement from more than 63% of respondents.

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Principal Author: Bill Callen. 

Sincere Thanks to Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Tina Suhocki, Leigh Hornbeck, Kristy Miller, Troy Burns, 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. 

Let’s make it a conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com