The Week: What Caught Our Eye

August 12, 2023

The only thing that does not race at the Saratoga Race Course is time.  Skip Dickstein

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

Don’t look now, but we’re already at the halfway mark in the annual eight-week thoroughbred meet at Saratoga, America’s oldest thoroughbred race track. The storied Saratoga meet typically draws the finest thoroughbred racehorses and the media and money that follow them. For many, it’s the defining event of the summer. This summer’s story thus far: Too much rain, some notable performances by horses and trainers, and three sibling jockeys, plus the biggest race of the year is just ahead. Journalist and author Mike Kane, who’s covered the track for more than 40 years, takes us trackside.

 CANOPY KID: The Race Course is a place to make money for some, the August home of many young entrepreneurs selling tip sheets, roses and paintings. Not to mention those who are hawking bottles of water outside the gates. Griffen Miller, 15, with help from his mom, has come up with a new way to serve race fans: make a reservation with the Canopy Kid and he’ll set up a canopy, table, and six chairs in the spot of your choosing on track grounds.

YOUR TABLE, SIR: On the other end of the Saratoga spectrum, Michael Stone and his mustache have held court graciously and unflappably at Siro’s, the post-race, go-to place for celebrities and those who think they are for decades. He’s been the maître d’ since 1994. (It’s likely he was on duty the night our CEO, Ryan Moore, met his future wife, Katy Delgado Moore at Siro’s.) Stone granted The Times Union’s Steve Barnes an interview, but don’t expect this soul of discretion to spill the tea. Stone was also the maitre d’ at Cafe L’Europe in Palm Beach for 32 years and he knows how to keep the juiciest stories on lockdown.

HOME RULE: You may not have noticed, but the New York State Legislature quietly passed a bill at the end of session this past spring to move important local elections (Town Board, Town Supervisors and others) from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years. The move would put these races on the ballot with races for president and governor, among other statewide contests. It sounds good at first: “hey, we go to the polls then anyway, let’s do it all at once!” But in practice, the important local issues that directly affect people’s everyday lives -- and their taxes -- deserve greater scrutiny these days and are likely to be drowned out by national rhetoric. When these elections are placed so far down the ballot, voters may well miss them. The bill is about to come before Gov. Kathy Hochul for her signature, but the New York Association of Counties and others are hoping for a veto.

A STORY TOLD AT LAST: Seventy eight-years ago, 2,500 Jewish people, moments from almost certain death on a broken down Nazi train in Magdeburg, Germany, were liberated by American soldiers. The liberators included an American serviceman from Johnstown, and their story is among the many that retired Hudson Falls teacher Matt Rozell is bringing to the world. Now, for the first time, film of the rescue, buried in the National Archives, has come to light. Mark Mulholland brought the dramatic footage of the first moments of liberation to Capital Region television viewers.

Elliott P. Laws is the administrative trustee of our longtime client RACER Trust. This week at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Brownfields Training Conference in Detroit, Elliott was named winner of the Charlie Bartsch Lifetime Achievement Award for brownfields professionals by the Phoenix Award Committee and the International City/County Management Association.

A LIFETIME ACHIEVER: We’ve been fortunate over the years to work with many exceptional individuals, men and women who have risen to the top of their professions and lead with integrity and purpose. None is more impressive or inspiring than Elliott P. Laws. Elliott is the administrative trustee of our longtime client RACER Trust, the organization created after the General Motors bankruptcy to take ownership of former GM properties in 14 states, including New York, clean them up and sell them for redevelopment. There was a lot of skepticism that RACER — which stands for Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response — would be successful, but the record speaks for itself. He’s also a partner in a major law firm and a former U.S. EPA assistant administrator who was instrumental in creating the framework and the knowledge base for the cleanup and safe reuse of contaminated properties nationally. His command of the law and regulations is matched by a genuine concern for the wellbeing of communities and matters of environmental justice. This week, Elliott accepted a national award for lifetime achievement among people who have dedicated their careers to addressing environmental impacts and creating healthier, more vibrant communities. The standing ovation from the packed room at a Detroit convention center as he was introduced said it all. It is our pleasure and privilege to work with Elliott and RACER.

BEER BRAWL: All the underage kid wanted was a beer, but rather than go the usual route, swiping one from home or a convenience store, he took himself to a swanky five-star hotel bar in his Upper East Side neighborhood.  Seventeen-year-old kids aren’t among the regulars there, and the veteran bartenders at The Mark recognized he was underage right away. They politely refused him service. Not once but several times. The kid got aggressive. The bartenders stood their ground. Then things got ugly, with picket signs and protests, false claims and now a defamation suit.

ADIRONDACK BOOST: Starting and sustaining a small business anywhere is a tough task, but doing so in the rural Adirondacks can be a particularly tough climb. And yet small businesses are the backbone of the economy of the Adirondacks – and indeed New York State. So, the Board of Directors of the Adirondack Foundation has decided that, in addition to its historic approach to helping local communities by making grants, it will also invest in small businesses that serve and employ most local people. It’s teamed up with the Cloudsplitter Foundation, Weatherup Family Trust, and New York State to create a $1 million revolving loan fund.

THE GRATITUDE CYCLE: Have you considered writing down one thing a day for which you are thankful? Dr. Robert Emmons published a groundbreaking study 20 years ago that showed that acknowledging the good things in your life improves psychological wellbeing and strengthens personal relationships. Now, there’s evidence to suggest that gratitude not only improves the well-being of the giver and the recipient, but it may also be good for those who witness it: Watching an act of gratitude between two people can cause an observer to feel more warmth and affinity toward them both. So, a sincere thank you to our loyal readers and dear friends.

PARADISE FOR YOUR PUPS: Turns out the best place in the United States to go camping with your dog is in Lake George, N.Y. So says The Dirt, a camping website that used artificial intelligence to comb through reviews to find the most popular places for four-legged campers. Lake George RV Park topped the list, outranking campgrounds from Ohio to Arizona. Lake George RV Park is home to Charlie’s Bark Park, which offers dogs two acres of off-leash, fenced-in fun, featuring a dog spray fountain, a pet treat vending area, shaded walking trails and an indoor dog washing station.

CUE THE ORCHESTRA: The Lake George Music Festival is under way. Two weeks of chamber music and orchestral concerts curated by Artistic Directors Barbora Kolarova and Roger Kalia highlight new compositions and beloved masterworks performed by a roster of established professionals and emerging artists in the newly restored historic Carriage House at the Fort William Henry Hotel. What’s ahead: “Piano Mania,” (1 p.m. 8/13); 10 world premieres by the fellows of the Composition Institute (2 p.m. 8/17) and The Grand Finale Symphony Orchestra concert (7:30 p.m. 8/17) featuring Dvorak, Carnival Overture, Igor Stravinsky, The Firebird Suite (1919), and Sheridan Seyfried and the world premiere of The Promise of America.

TAXES, REDEFINED: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of the most important tax cases in history, Moore v. United States, which imposed a mandatory repatriation tax on pre-2018 profits that companies and some U.S. shareholders stored abroad. Previously, foreign business profits went untaxed until they returned to U.S. shareholders. But under mandatory repatriation tax, passed as part of Republicans’ comprehensive international tax reform, profits were taxed even if shareholders never received the income. The question before the court: Is this mandatory tax on foreign profits that shareholders never actually received constitutional under the 16th Amendment? The Supreme Court has maintained since 1920 that income must be “clearly realized” for it to be taxable. Yet the U.S. tax code is riddled with taxes on unrealized income.

BARBIE WORLD: Barbara Lakin is a retired fashion designer who still plays with Barbie dolls. She collects donated Barbies and buys them at garage sales before giving them a wash in her East Village studio, a new outfit and a new owner. And that’s not all. At Team TLC’s migrant relief donation center in New York’s Bryant Park, Lakin looks for dads and daughters shopping together and presents the little girl with a Barbie whose outfit matches the shirt Lakin made that Dad could wear. Lakin dresses mostly white Barbies because that’s what she finds in donations and tag sales, but she hopes to find more brown-skinned dolls so the Latina girls she meets can have a doll who looks like them.

A NEW ADDAMS FAMILY: In 2021, Heather Blumberg and her family toured a former funeral home that was on the market in Dresden, Ontario. Rather than feeling put off by it, Blumberg loved the nearly 150- year-old mansion. “We wanted to see it preserved and not turned into a condo, or worse — have something built over it. We felt that the house was meant for us and that it needed us.” The Blumbergs and their Great Danes use all 38 rooms. They share the space with ghosts, Blumberg said, but the spirits haven’t summoned Beetlejuice to rattle the Blumbergs.

FINALLY, a hearty standing ovation from the crowd for our longtime friend, Greg Brownell, who is retiring after 42 years as a sports writer and editor at The Glens Falls Post-Star. If you or your children were involved in athletics in the Glens Falls area over the last four decades, you knew Greg, the kind, witty, humane and meticulous chronicler of all sports, from high school football, basketball and baseball and soccer to professional hockey, baseball and horseracing. Greg has earned a rest. We wish him the very best.

HIS HIGHNESS: Bluetooth technology is omnipresent – you may be using it right now -- but less well known is the origin of its name: A 10^th century King of Norway and Denmark, Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson, who is believed to have lived around 910-940 AD and was credited with uniting the warring Scandinavian tribes.

CAROL LAGRASSE moved off the grid to the bucolic Adirondack community of Stony Creek from her beloved New York City, a civil engineer by training, and soon discovered something quite unexpected: The environmental movement she once admired was buying up private lands everywhere and, in the process, depriving ordinary Adirondackers of forestry, construction and other employment opportunities, and threatening the existence of family businesses, small towns and local culture. She founded the Property Rights Foundation of America and undertook a nationwide fight to strengthen the American tradition of private land ownership. She presented expert testimony eight times before committees of the United States House and Senate, conducted annual conferences, and was published and quoted widely in legal and political journals.  “The environmentalist assault on the future of the small communities in New York's Adirondack region awakened me to the world-wide movement to eradicate local rural cultures and was the reason for the founding of this organization. I like the name inadvertently used for us by a local tradesman, "Property Rights for the People," because property rights protect the family, the community, and much of what the ordinary people hold dear.”  She was 81.

JAMIE ROYAL ROBERTSON was born in Toronto to a Mohawk mother and a factory worker father. His mother often took him to the Six Nations Reserve where “it seemed to me that everyone played a musical instrument or sang or danced. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get into this club.”  He joined his first band shortly after his 13th birthday and went on to become the chief songwriter and guitarist for The Band, writing classics like “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” His music answered the storm of psychedelic rock with vintage American storytelling.  Robertson and bandmates formed a close bond with Bob Dylan, served as his backup group during a 1965-66 tour, and went to live with him in Woodstock, N.Y., in 1967 to record a trove of music. He was 80.

ALICIA RIZZO was a first-year principal at Lynwood Elementary in the Guilderland school district near Albany, N.Y., in 2011 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Known as a “girly girl” who loved to accessorize and wore a pink suit to her interview for the principal’s job, Rizzo wore a wig and focused on the problems in front of her: low test scores. “Commitment to purpose and mission” pulled her through cancer treatment and the work of implementing a new approach at the school. Students’ test scores improved and Rizzo recovered. In 2019, the cancer returned. The school community rallied around her, wearing pink shirts and celebrating their principal, who led by example. Rizzo died Aug. 7, surrounded by her family. She was 54.

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN was best known as the Oscar winning director of "The French Connection" and the "The Exorcist.” Friedkin was just 32 when he won Best Director for The French Connection in 1971. The movie also won Academy Awards for best picture, screenplay and film editing. Friedkin never recaptured the success of his early work, but he never stopped creating. Other film credits included "To Live and Die in L.A.," "Cruising," "Rules of Engagement" and a TV remake of the classic play and Sidney Lumet movie "12 Angry Men." Friedkin also directed episodes for such TV shows as "The Twilight Zone," "Rebel Highway" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." He said in a 2001 interview, "I remember listening to [dramatic radio] in the dark. Everything was left to the imagination. It was just sound. I think of the sounds first and then the images." Friedkin was 87.

“Everything is gone, every single one of our family homes. The entire Lahaina Town and the entire subdivision of Lahaina – gone. While driving through the neighborhood, it looked like a war zone. Houses throughout that neighborhood were already on fire. I’m driving through the thickest black smoke, and I don’t know what’s on the other side or what’s in front of me.’’
—    Lahaina resident Jordan Saribay, on the catastrophic wildfires in Hawaii that killed more than 50 people

SNAKES ALIVE: First, a snake falls from the clear blue sky and wraps itself tightly around the arm of a woman working alongside her husband in their back yard. The snake is threatening her, hissing and lunging at her face and striking her glasses. Then a hawk swoops down, talons extended to strike the snake, wrench it from her arm and reclaim his dinner. The woman is frantic, badly scratched and bleeding. Her husband eventually noticed.

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Principal Author: Leigh Hornbeck

Sincere Thanks to Our Contributors: Bill Callen, Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Kristy Miller, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, Mike Kane, Skip Dickstein, Troy Burns and Mike Cybulski.

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