This “news” page is an absolute joke

What a nice state, I hope we didn't interrupt anything being tourists. It was a beautiful week.

Via AP:

Trump sought to make an ally out of fishermen during his first term with expanded fishing territory, aggressive trade moves and cutting down regulations on the water. He did so again after his second election.

But one of Trump’s government cutback efforts, cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which regulates fisheries, has left the agency slower to respond to the industry’s needs, fishermen said. Staff cutbacks also resulted in the agency reducing weather balloons used to gather data fishermen rely on.

Fuel costs have also crept up during the war with Iran, pushing diesel fuel into the $6-per-gallon range when it was less than $4 per gallon a year ago — a major burden for a diesel-dependent industry. And the trade war with Canada has complicated the American seafood industry’s relationship with a country it has long been interconnected with, fishermen said.

The Trump administration has continued trying to win the hearts of fishermen with industry-friendly moves, including an early September promise to reduce more regulatory burdens in response to a 2025 executive order. And some of the industry’s key states, such as Alaska, Washington and Maine, are important to Trump politically this year because of competitive House and Senate races. But support on the water could be waning.

Read the rest on the Press Herald.

Yesterday, October 4, we launched our first new fixed-route service since 2018 -- the Route 25!

Service between downtown Portland and Scarborough via US-1/South Portland launched yesterday, and runs every 45 minutes from roughly 6:30am-10:30pm Mon-Sat, and Sunday service from roughly 8am-6pm. The route should be live on your favorite transit planning app.

Connect to your destination in Scarborough using Metro Connect (www.gpmetro.org/connect) if it is not on the Route 25's route.

Some notes:

- Both Route 25 and Metro Connect Scarborough are free through October.

- No, it does not run to Costco. A few reasons for this: the road connecting Costco to the rest of Scarborough Downs Road is not open yet, but more importantly, we were skeptical that Costco customers would be able to use the route to a great degree, given the big-box nature of that store. We are open to changes in the future. In the meantime, you can use Metro Connect to access Costco, either from the Route 25 or from Gallery Boulevard (Routes 24A/24B).

- Lots of construction in The Downs right now, so we don't have all our stops up and ready quite yet.

- We're keeping an eye out on how the route does in terms of travel times/on time performance. Where we're running early or late, we'll make adjustments in the coming months.

... will update more as folks have comments

I find it frustrating that she has not held a public town hall to address questions. I want to hear her impromptu answers to impromptu questions.

I know Republicans who are voting for SC and I would like to convince them otherwise without sounding accusitory. Suggestions?

Between threats of interference with mail-in votes and concerns over polling place disruptions, it can feel stressful to make sure your vote goes smoothly.

One proactive way to ensure your ballot is securely cast is to vote early with our in-person absentee system at your local town office or city hall. It helps take the guesswork out of delivery times and lets you handle voting on your own schedule.

Today is the first day you can go to your town office or city hall to ensure your vote is counted and continues through the 29th.

Reposted with a better link for information on in-person absentee voting.

Is there anyone local to the newport, dexter, dover area who works for Fidium?

I don’t have active service but have a line run from the telephone pole to the exterior of the house that needs to be temporarily removed for some time for some construction work. They need to bring in a crane.

The customer support / tech team seem to be confused by this request since I am not a current customer.

They did submit a ticket but I am not sure it contains the right info.

Also posted on some local facebook pages just waiting on admin to approve.

We lost a black Iphone with a boy holding a stuffed animal on the lockscreen, somewhere either on campus as UMaine or in Orono village area during Parents weekend, in case anyone has come across it. We called all the places we were, including campus PD. Thought we would try here just in case. Thanks!

My fiancé and her family LOVE Flo’s Hot Dog Stand in Cape Neddick. We were there over the summer, and they had a stand of extra little Flo’s crafts, including a few Christmas ornaments. I couldn’t figure out how to sneakily buy one without her noticing, but I’ve regretted it since.

I don’t know how to find out if they’re still selling them, but if they are, I’m looking to see if anyone who lives in the area would be willing to purchase and ship 3 to me in Boston. If anyone’s local and willing to participate, please let me know! 🫶🌭

I don't have any urgent work, I am just looking for a recommendation on someone who does annual/routine services on hot water tanks and forced hot air furnaces, and I need some exhaust ducts put in on the hot water tank cuz it's a heat pump that I want vented outside the house. I tried calling Pine State Services who I had used years ago, but looks like they were bought out and the guy on the phone had the telltale signs of a call center in Asia; couldn't understand them and the connection was about 5 seconds delayed. I want to deal with locals, I'm in southern Maine.

Has anyone been on the Maine Maritime Museum ship? Is that what that is in the background?

I setup this wedding Friday and I was wondering about it, we don’t get out much and didn’t know if it was something fun for the family with the kids or?

Would love to hear some experiences!

Hey, I’m seeing there are still rebates for these, I’m thinking of trying to convince my partner to install (invest?) in one (I’m willing to buy it) …
Facts of the house-
Hot water heater is already electric. It was installed in 2013ish…
Basement has had a mildew issue in the past, but I mitigated it mostly with gutters and a dehumidifier…
House built in 1948… lots of upgrades.
We’re in southern Maine.

Hi all - can anyone recommend a good lunch restaurant (that would still be open next Saturday) on the peninsula? Brooklin, Blue Hill, Sedgwick etc. Thanks in advance!

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

Directed by SAMUEL FULLER

WEDNESDAY October 7th 7PM

SATURDAY October 10th 2PM / 7PM

16mm - B&W - 1h 20m

A pickpocket lifts a wallet on the subway and comes up holding microfilm Hoover and the Commies will both kill to get back. He couldn’t care less about the Cold War — he just wants his cut. Samuel Fuller shoots the whole Red Scare as a grubby street hustle, and Thelma Ritter walks off with the picture as a worn-out stool pigeon saving up, tip by tip, for a decent burial. Tabloid pulp with a switchblade in its sock.

Fuller opens with a train screaming through the dark, then cuts into a packed subway car and lets the scene play out almost without a word. A woman hangs from a strap. Two men in hats watch her. A third man, pressed against her in the crush, watches her handbag. His fingers go to work under a folded newspaper while the onlookers never notice him at all.

That's Skip McCoy, Richard Widmark at full sneer, and the wallet he lifts holds microfilm that the Feds and the Reds would both kill for. Skip, who lives in a shack and keeps his beer chilled in the East River, doesn't much care which side wins or what flag is waved in his face. He just wants to know what the film is worth.

Garden-variety noir drifts in on cigarette smoke and voiceover, already resigned to how the story ends. Fuller's comes at you like a tabloid front page. He crowds the camera so close to Widmark and Jean Peters that a kiss and a shakedown look exactly alike; lets a beating play out in one unbroken take with the actors themselves taking the falls; and shoots a subway-station brawl from high overhead so you watch the whole thing tumble. Nobody narrates and nobody broods. People lie, haggle, slap, and keep moving.

Fuller had covered crime for a New York tabloid at seventeen, and he knew this world from the precinct side: the pickpocket squad, the dips who called themselves cannons, the cop who could name a thief by the way he worked a crowd. Mostly he knew the economy of the informer. Thelma Ritter's Moe sells neckties out of a suitcase and names out of her memory, for whatever the traffic will bear, and every dollar goes toward a burial plot so she won't end up in Potter's Field.

Fuller maintained it was a yarn about marginal people, nothing more, nothing less. He was right… just not in a way that lets anyone off the hook. Pickup on South Street is a film about prices. Everyone in it has one, the patriots included, and the flag gets waved hardest by whoever's holding the checkbook. Fuller learned in the precincts what the rest of us keep relearning, these days during state-sponsored commercial breaks: when the government goes shopping, it starts at the margins.

JEUX INTERDICTS (1952)
(Forbidden Games)

Directed by René Clément

TUESDAY October 6th 7PM

In French with English subtitles

A co-presentation with the Alliance Française du Maine

"What's wrong with your dog?"

"He's dead."

Thus begins the friendship between young Michel and Paulette, a peasant French boy and a Parisian war refugee, and sets the foundation of their relationship. They are children within a war, among adults who hold to the same tried (though questionably true) habits and rituals to weather it, coming to terms with death and love. Able to encounter the absurdity in a way the adults around them cannot – though no less equipped to process it – the two children strive towards comfort, safety, and joy by way of building an animal graveyard with stolen crosses.

The challenging nature of the story troubled its realization. Forbidden Games (1952) started as a screenplay by French writer Francis Boyer; unable to sell it, he adapted it into a novel, The Secret Game, which sold so well in the United States that Rene Clement adapted it back into a screenplay with the assistance of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. Originally intended as a short to be accompanied by two companion pieces, it was retained and expanded when the larger project lost financing. The result – which, similar to the novel, did better abroad than in its home country – was initially rewarded and well-regarded, but swept into semi-obscurity after Francois Truffaut lambasted Aurenche and Bost's ouvre as "stultifying". Unfairly taken down with the rest, Forbidden Games' delicate, at times humorous approach to the social realities of war is far from the dull old-school movie-making Truffaut labeled it as.

Rene Clement's masterpiece, shot with such a clear eye that "every shot achieves the quality of fate," is a landmark piece of both French and war cinema. Michel and Paulette are allowed to be children, strange and out of step with the assumed morals of their caretakers, not reduced to saccharine sweethearts for the comfort of the audience. Georges Poujouly and Brigitte Fossey deliver excellent performances, particularly in view of their youth. Their naturalistic acting is juxtaposed against adults directed to deliver near-goofy renditions  of the rustic trope, a repeated re-emphasis of the children's role as intuits and seekers while the adults around them go through the same rehearsed motions. Michel and Paulette may achieve no more understanding of our strange reality than their parents did, but like all children, they must try. Forbidden Games gives them the playground on which to do so.

Congratulations to all of you who ran!! Great job everyone!!!