Writer, mom. Organizer, optimist. Dog-walker, coffee lover, sometimes gardener. Past-life Canadian, I'm sure of it. Editor, reporter at @waterburyround.
Hi, Donald. Midcoast Mainer here.
You did not, in fact, “have to go to Japan” to get a Maine lobster before you. We sold millions. Our lobster fishery is one of the most valuable in the U.S.
It’s a big reason why people come here, in case you didn’t know!
If anything is hurting our lobstermen, it’s inflation (which you apparently “love”).
Also, exactly *zero* Maine fishermen run their boats at three knots. More like 30 knots—and some go even faster. You should check out a lobster boat race sometime!
I think it might be time for one of your famous Oval Office naps, because you have ZERO idea what you’re talking about.
In May 1944, 23-year-old Phyllis Latour jumped out of a US bomber and parachuted into occupied Normandy, France. Her mission was to gather information about Nazi positions in preparation for D-Day. Once on the ground, she quickly buried her parachute and clothes, and began a secret mission that would last four months, pretending to be a poor teenage French girl.
Phyllis had been trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). She learned how to send secret messages in Morse code, how to fix wireless radios, and how to spy without being caught. She also went through tough physical training in the Scottish highlands. Phyllis wanted to get revenge on the Nazis who had killed her godfather.
Phyllis said, “The men who had been sent before me were caught and killed. I was chosen because I would be less suspicious.” She would ride a bicycle through the region, pretending to sell soap, and secretly pass messages to the British about German locations. She acted like a country girl chatting with German soldiers to avoid raising suspicion. She moved from place to place to stay hidden and often slept in forests finding her own food.
Phyllis also came up with a clever way to hide her secret codes. She wrote them on a piece of silk and pricked it with a pin each time she used a code. She kept it hidden inside a hair tie. Once when the Germans briefly detained her and searched her she took out the hair tie and let her hair fall, showing she had nothing to hide. In the summer of 1944, Phyllis sent 135 coded messages helping Allied bombers find German targets.
After the war, Phyllis married and moved to New Zealand. Her children didn’t know about her wartime service until 2000, when her oldest son found out online. This hero passed on October 7, 2023. May she rest In peace.
Private Carlton Barrett was possibly the smallest man in his regiment.
5 feet 4 inches tall. 125 pounds.
On the morning of June 6, 1944, he landed at Omaha Beach in neck-deep water, machine gun fire cutting the surface all around him. He made it to shore.
Then he turned around and went back in.
A soldier was drowning. Barrett pulled him out. Then another. Then another. For hours, under constant fire, this 125-pound man waded back into the surf again and again, pulling drowning men to safety and physically carrying the wounded to evacuation boats offshore.
But he didn't stop there.
He ran dispatches the full length of the fire-swept beach. He found soldiers paralyzed by shock and calmed them back into action. He appeared wherever the crisis was worst, doing whatever needed doing, treating rank and personal safety as irrelevant details.
He did this for hours without stopping.
His Medal of Honor citation says his courage had "an inestimable effect on his comrades." That is military understatement for: this small, anonymous man held that section of beach together through sheer force of will.
He survived the war.
His comrades later said his life darkened after he came home. He lived quietly and died in 1986 in California, largely unknown outside of military history circles.
5 feet 4 inches. 125 pounds. He went back in.
Remember him.
Three male National Guard soldiers approach a woman while she sits alone on a bench outside her home.
As she attempts to walk back inside, the soldiers physically surround her and block her from leaving.
On the audio, she says clearly, “You have absolutely no authority to detain me” and “get…away from me” before screaming for help as the soldiers close in on her, tackle her to the ground, and handcuff her.
Community members who witness law enforcement agents interacting with individuals should record the incident.
Footage and photos should be sent to [email protected].
Link to full story:
https://t.co/GWUbF3nNUF
D-Day commemoration, Omaha Beach, June 6 2024
Zelensky arrived, the crowd applauded. And then this happened:
🇺🇸 veteran: You’re a saviour of the people
Zelensky: No, no, you saved Europe
🇺🇸 veteran: My hero
Zelensky: No, you are our hero
🇺🇸🇫🇷🇺🇦
Dear Scott Pelley: pull the entire 60 Minutes team together and go to MSNow and offer a package deal to recreate the show for Sunday night and call it The Hour
If I had a time machine, I'd go back in time and stop The Apprentice from ever becoming a TV show. Really think that would fix a lot of our problems today.
BREAKING: Google is planning to release 32 million mosquitoes across Florida and California.
The company has asked the EPA for permission to proceed, with the public given until June 5 to respond.
The mosquitoes are infected with Wolbachia bacteria, which stops them from reproducing and slowly collapses the wild population from within.
Google's previous Debug Project trial in California's Central Valley nearly eliminated mosquitoes from three test sites entirely. A separate trial in Singapore cut dengue cases by 70% within 12 months.
Google has now released over 1 billion mosquitoes across four continents. This new proposal is the largest deployment in US history.
Do you ever really get overwhelmed by how our current reality is a genuine dystopian nightmare, yet everyone still acts like it is completely normal ??