The Week: What Caught Our Eye

August 5, 2023

Left: Nancie Battaglia as you’ll often find her, gazing intently until the right moment to capture her next spectacular photograph. Photo Leigh Hornbeck. Right: Mist greets the dawn on an August day at Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, N.Y. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends

We’re honoring a dear friend and colleague this weekend. Nancie Battaglia, the still photographer, has not sat still in 40 years. She’s covered 12 Olympics since her first, the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid. But her eye finds beauty and meaning everywhere. Her photos of Adirondack scenes and people tell the truths only a poet might attempt. For publications like The New York Times, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, as well as global news sources like The Associated Press, she is the go-to photographer in the Adirondacks. She is also a dedicated advocate of historic preservation and has documented historic sites throughout the region. Next weekend, she will be honored by Adirondack Architectural Heritage at the Wiawaka Center for Women on Lake George. Tickets are still available.

THE PEOPLE’S HORSE: A while back, we told you about a special bond between a thoroughbred horse and a young boy named Cody Dorman who suffers from a debilitating condition that inhibits growth and development known as Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, The folks at Make-A-Wish arranged for Cody to meet the young horse at a farm in Kentucky and an immediate bond formed. The young horse laid his head in Cody’s lap and kept it there, the genesis of his name Cody’s Wish. Their kinship has endured. That horse grew up to be a champion. Today, he will be at Saratoga Race Course as the overwhelming favorite for the 96^th running of the $1 million Whitney handicap. Cody Dorman will be there, too, among the thousands of fans rooting for Cody’s Wish. There’s in a movie in all this.

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE: One of the more searingly emotional stories we’ve come across in quite some time involves an Arkansas family that was confronted by police who, guns drawn, warned everyone to keep their hands visible or they may get shot. An officer in suburban Dallas started the whole dangerous fiasco by incorrectly entering the vehicle’s license plate, resulting in an alert that the vehicle was stolen. “I’ve never been in trouble a day of my life,” the driver, a Black woman, can be heard pleading on police video of the incident. “This is scaring the hell out of me.” Her husband, sobbing, told police he dropped his phone after the car was stopped. “If I would have went to reach for my phone, we could’ve all got killed.” Police acknowledged their mistake and are apologizing.

CHEMO TO HERO: Josh Houthoofd grabbed a bat, stood in the left-hand batter’s box and waited. Whatever the pressure of the moment — tie game, extra innings, championship on the line, crosstown rival — it was nothing the 4-foot, 3-inch 9-year-old from Bay City, Mich., couldn’t handle. After all, he was used to going straight from chemotherapy to practice with his Greater Bay Little League teammates. Baseball had always been what motivated young Josh as he endured transfusions, chemotherapy and long hospital stays while battling acute lymphocytic leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow that was diagnosed when he was 7. Winning this game meant a chance to play another day, so of course young Josh delivered.

STAYING ALIVE: People who swim in the ocean for fitness at 5 a.m. must, as a rule, be presumed strong and hardy. Let’s face it, there are more hospitable environments to swim in at that hour, and more hospitable hours, for that matter. Those traits might help explain Dan Ho, a 63-year-old who was swept out to sea by a strong current and spent five hours treading water in the Atlantic Ocean before he was rescued. He found a broken fishing pole in the waves and used it to fashion a flag that he waved over his head, catching the attention of two fishermen who pulled him to safety.

 SPACE INVADER: Investigators have determined the origin of a hunk of metal that washed up last month in Western Australia, drawing curious onlookers and global attention. The cylinder was part of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) had previously launched, a director at ISRO told CNN. The Australian Space Agency had earlier tweeted that it reached the same conclusion. CNN reported the object was covered with barnacles, suggesting it spent significant time at sea before washing up.

Storm clouds glower over Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River near Albany, N.Y. John Bulmer

INSIGHT FOR EYES: A 14-year-old boy, blinded by a rare genetic condition that causes blistering of his skin and eyes, had his sight restored by eyedrops derived from the same gene therapy treatment that had improved his skin in a clinical trial. The discovery, The Associated Press reports, could open doors to similar therapies that could potentially treat millions of people with other eye diseases, including common ones.

CANCER CRUSHER? Researchers at the City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles spent two decades researching and developing a drug that, according to the Daily Mail of London, “was tested on 70 different cancer cells in the lab — including those derived from breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin, and lung cancer — and was effective against them all.” The drug is currently being tested on humans in a Phase 1 clinical trial at City of Hope. The doctor leading the research described the drug’s effect this way: “Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells.” Meanwhile. Researchers in Australia think they’ve advanced understanding of why some get cancer and others don’t.

FERVOR FEVER: Author, physician and political philosopher Ronald W. Dworkin, whose work explores people’s obsession with happiness, sees a lot to be worried about with respect to the ratcheting of political passions and the factors feeding this new reality.  As more Americans try to understand their private pain by seeking answers in political ideology,  American politics grows increasingly extreme, chaotic, and uncompromising. These “people inject into the American political system problems that the system was never designed to handle,” he writes in “When Politics Becomes Therapy.” “They seek to understand the mystery of what they feel as much as they seek relief from their condition. Who can have sent this enemy into the camp of our lives, they ask? And who exactly is this enemy?”  

CLOSE TO HOME: Bath & Body Works is in seemingly every mall in America (not necessarily a good thing these days, with mall values spiraling), shelves continuously stocked with fragrant products that racked up $7.56 billion in sales last year, a $2 billion increase over the pre-pandemic 2019. The company didn’t suffer the same supply bottlenecks that their competitors and so many others have dealt with because it has brought nearly all of its production to its “beauty park” campus on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, a decision in service of a goal to get new products to market faster. Chief Executive Gina Boswell told The Wall Street Journal that locating corporate executives just a short drive away from key manufacturers allows problems to be fixed and new products to be developed quickly. “That’s magical, especially when you need speed and agility,” she said.

NOVEL DETECTIVE WORK: A librarian was reshelving books at a public library in Staten Island, N.Y., when she found an envelope stuffed with cash between the pages of, coincidentally, a mystery thriller. The envelope, which contained $1,200 and a receipt, had a partial name. Staff at the library worked with New York Public Library security to solve their own mystery and reunite the cash with its owner. A retired NYPD detective sergeant who serves as the library’s assistant director of security put his training and instincts to work and was able to track down the owner, a 73-year-old woman with no cell phone or email address who had withdrawn the money to pay her rent and other bills and had prayed for its return.

HONORING HISTORY: A historical marker honoring the 19^th century Adirondack settlement of Blacksville will be unveiled this weekend in Loon Lake, N.Y. The marker notes the establishment nearby of a Black settlement by Brooklyn newspaper editor Willis Hodges with the help of abolitionists (John Brown was a good friend). The community was short-lived, and, as the Adirondack Almanack reports, no lasting relic or structure speaks for Blacksville today. “That’s why this sign is so important,” Adirondack scholar Amy Godine said. “It is a tangible reminder of a moment in Adirondack history when this wilderness stood for suffrage justice, Black economic self-sufficiency, and the hope of peaceful integration.”

WHAT’S NEXT: “Hamilton” writer Lin-Manuel Miranda is reportedly at work on a new musical, an adaptation of Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel “The Warriors,” about violent gang battles in New York City during the sixties.
 

“No longer the grist of science fiction, life in space is expected to soon become a reality for growing numbers of astronauts and space tourists. NASA is planning a long-term base on the moon in addition to a Gateway station in lunar orbit in which scientists will work and eventually launch missions into deep space, including to Mars. And private companies are racing to build out commercial programs. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is already advertising for reservations for its Starship mission to the moon’s orbit saying, it will eventually carry ‘up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights.’ ”

The Boston Globe
“To Prep for Space Doctors Travel to the Ends of the Earth”
July 30, 2023

“The Dave Matthews Band “is the second-largest ticket-seller in the world, according to the trade publication Pollstar, which tracked the top touring artists of the last 40 years. … In 2020, the Dave Matthews Band was nominated by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for induction and was entered into a public voting contest, which the group won. The band, however, did not garner enough support from the organization’s voting committee and was not included in the nominees list for the next three years.”

The New York Times
“Why Are Dave Matthews Band Fans So Loyal?”
July 30, 2023

“The U.S. women’s soccer team is without a doubt considered the best in the world. They have won four World Cup titles, four Olympic gold medals and have never come lower than third place in a World Cup … One of the main reasons for the team’s success is the implementation of Title IX in 1972 …  In 1971, only 700 girls across the nation played high school soccer. By 1991, that number had jumped 17,000% to 120,000. Currently, over 370,000 girls play high school soccer.”

KCRA, Sacramento
July 24, 2023

LIVES

PAUL REUBENS was, to millions, Pee-wee Herman, the goofy man-child with the silly chuckle and a red bowtie, a staple of late-1980s Saturday morning television whose popularity spanned generations. “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” the live action show that launched Reubens to fame, followed “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” a modest box office hit that was the first feature film directed by Tim Burton. He played more varied roles later in his career, which had been derailed but not demolished by tawdry brushes with the law, including as a drug-dealing hairdresser in the movie “Blow.” His fellow stars remembered him as a generous and thoughtful friend. “His surreal comedy and unrelenting kindness were a gift to us all,” Conan O’Brien said in a statement. “Damn, this hurts.” Reubens died of cancer, a battle he kept private, at 70.

SHEILA OLIVER was the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly, the second in the nation to lead a house of a state legislature. A native of Newark, she was elected lieutenant governor in 2017 and re-elected with Gov. Tom Murphy in 2021. She was serving as acting governor while Murphy was vacationing with his family in Italy when she was suddenly hospitalized. Murphy called selecting Oliver as his running mate, “the best decision I ever made.” Former Gov. Chris Christie, a political rival, posted on social media, “It is a sad day for NJ and for me personally. The passing of Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver is a loss for our state. I will miss Sheila. She served as speaker in my first term and we treated each other with kindness and respect. We got things done. She was a great person and partner.” She died of an undisclosed cause at 71.

ROBERT KERKER had a hiking nickname, Steady Eddy. He started a trek along the Appalachian Trail in the Catskills on June 1 and was last seen at a shelter in Vermont on July 9, the day before catastrophic rainfall and flooding hit the state. He is believed to have been swept away while attempting to cross the swollen Stony Brook in Stockbridge, Vt., the second person known to have died as a result of the flooding there. He was 67.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“The tone of the citizenry even in my home, my little hometown of Tupper Lake, has changed dramatically. I don't mind being yelled at when someone has a problem or an issue. But it has become so uncivil on a lot of issues. Before someone would call and say, ‘Mayor, you know my sewer is backing up’ or ‘can you help me, my boy was just or my family member was just arrested. And, you know, I would work on it. But people have gotten so uncivil that I just didn't think, number one, it was worth me going through all that. I've tried to use my positions wherever I was, with Senator (Ron) Stafford or with Senator (Betty) Little or as a legislator or then as mayor, to do what I could for my hometown. And I think I've done the best that I could. But people just want more.”
—    Six-term Tupper Lake (N.Y.) Mayor Paul Maroun, on his decision not to seek re-election after nearly 50 years in public service.

THE SIGNOFF

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: A Dane named Torbjørn “Thor” Pedersen achieved his goal of visiting and spending at least 24 hours in every country in the world without flying, a nearly 10-year journey that ended when he reached the Maldives in late May. He did it on a budget of roughly $20 a day. He initially planned to take about four years but bureaucratic delays, conflicts, equipment breakdowns and the global pandemic all factored into keeping him on the road much longer.

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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, 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