Well, at least we don't have 700 Legendarios camped out at Tod's Point – at least we don't have THAT!

/

but i can smell a novel ….

Hundreds of chanting men have this Maine town searching for a law to stop them

KINGFIELD, Maine — The rolling hills around Tufts Pond are nearly silent on a September afternoon. Several times this summer and last, that quiet was broken by the sound of hundreds of chanting men.

Members of Legendarios, an evangelical men’s group that was founded in Guatemala about a decade ago and has a Massachusetts chapter with a heavy Brazilian following, first showed up at Deer Farm, a shuttered campsite by the pond last year. They have named it “Patriots Valley,” hosting several retreats that neighbors say are disruptive and may violate local laws.

The clash is as novel as it is loud. The international movement has found an isolated pond in the Maine mountains. Kingfield, a western Maine town of less than 1,000 people with no noise ordinance, no event permitting system and no history of policing outside groups, is trying to figure out whether it has any legal tool to respond in the face of resident complaints.

Kingfield resident is used to outsiders passing through for skiing at nearby Sugarloaf or hiking along the Appalachian Trail. The sudden influx of worshippers is different. Locals say there have been tour buses full of them, clearing unauthorized paths in the woods, marching and chanting both day and night.

Lance Dutson, a longtime Maine Republican political operative who lives across the water from the campsite and has been organizing opponents of the gatherings, said the group chants and “barks” in unison, adding that “this pond acts kind of like an amphitheater.” 

The Legendarios first turned up around Tufts Pond last summer. Kate Dutson, Lance’s wife, said she encountered a work truck with Massachusetts plates and roughly a dozen men with landscaping equipment. On four separate weekends, locals report seeing large groups marching through the woods, sometimes with torches, leaving the campground at night and cutting trails.

The Boston chapter, which puts on the Kingfield retreats, could not immediately be reached for comment. Photos posted by the group on social media show large marches, religious ecstasy and apparent baptisms in the pond. The group says on its website that it “exists to help men reconnect with God, strengthen their families, build brotherhood and walk with purpose.”

But those on the pond are not loving their neighbor.

“There’s been some comment about this group… of all the people to have gathering on the pond, having some church come up here is the most benign type of group, but they have been acting with just complete disregard to the neighborhood,” Lance Dutson said.

The men, more than 700 of them at an August event by the organizers’ count, arrive by the busload. They march through trails around Tufts Pond dressed in orange, with Brazilian and American flags on their sleeves, often at night, and allegedly through private property beyond Deer Farm.

“It’s a huge respect thing,” Kim Jordan, a member of the town’s Board of Selectmen, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “It took people waking up in the middle of the night and got [300-400] people walking through their yard.”

“It’s terrifying!” one woman said aloud.

…. Rumor has spread in town that the Legendarios may be planning a return to Kingfield in October. It’s unclear whether the town will be able to regulate or shut down the event before buses start arriving.

I must have missed their celebration of the 4th of July

/

The Normans built Cardiff Castle after William the Conqueror took control of England and Wales in 1066 AD. It was constructed on top of a 3rd-century Roman fort.

Pakistani flag raised over historic British castle

Cardiff Council flew the Pakistan flag in August for two days to mark Pakistan's independence from Britain. This is very important now to the cultural identity of the British nation, I guess!

Here were more celebrations from last month:

Not to worry, our president’s on it:

New broker, same low price, but who wants to spend $12 million, when a house twice as large as your own trophy home is going up down the street?

/

16 Park Avenue, new construction, is back on the market after changing brokers, priced at $11.995 million. A multi-year, 18,600 sq. ft. (plus garaging for 40) house project has been proposed for 4 Park Avenue (and half of Maple), and while it hasn’t been approved yet, something similar is bound to be — the owner has the land and even the zoning for it — and given its size, Park Avenue’s going to be a blasting/construction hell street for years, no?

Hard pass.

Stick a fork in its battery; the EV is done

/

The auto industry has a new solution to Americans’ fear that electric vehicles will run out of juice: a gasoline engine.

Hyundai, Ford Motor F -2.80%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Jeep parent Stellantis STLA -2.61%decrease; red down pointing triangle are among the first U.S.-market automakers planning to roll out a new kind of plug-in vehicle called an extended-range EV. It is a fully electric car with the security blanket of a gas-powered generator to charge the battery, if needed—ensuring you won’t end up stranded as long as a gas station is nearby.

“It is simply a good answer,” said Micky Bly, head of propulsion systems at Stellantis, which aims to kick off the “EREV” trend in the U.S. later this year or early next with its Jeep Grand Wagoneer SUV. A second range-extended vehicle, a pickup truck called the Ram 1500 REV, will follow it. The truck couples a large EV battery with a gas V-6 to recharge it, promising up to 690 miles of driving—more than twice the typical EV in the U.S. 

In late August, Korean giant Hyundai announced that its next Santa Fe SUV will offer an EREV version in 2027. Hyundai has said it would provide about 600 miles of driving. Its luxury brand Genesis will offer a similar vehicle. And after canceling its money-losing electric F-150 Lightning truck last December, Ford says it will resurrect that truck as an EREV.

Titanic, Department of Chair Rearrangement

...“Now we’re throwing in another layer of complexity and oddity,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at car-shopping site Edmunds. “There’s going to be a major level of education required.”

Nick Phucas, a mechanical engineer in Virginia, recently swapped a Rivian EV truck for a Ram gas pickup. Phucas said the EREV concept is intriguing, but wonders whether the truck’s performance will be compromised when relying on the gas generator. Other unknowns remain, he said.

“If I get to the end of my (EV) range and I refill with gas, what will my range be?” he said.

And why did they feel compelled to add a teeny, tiny gasoline battery charger to an already complicated and finicky machine?

“Should” — love that word.

...Engineers say EREVs should deliver a better experience than current plug-in hybrids. Most of those don’t offer much electric range before reverting to the gas engine. The Subaru Crosstrek plug-in—discontinued after 2023—got a paltry 17 all-electric miles. The plug-in Jeep Wrangler, discontinued after 2025, got about 20 miles.

The first mass-market EREV in the U.S. did a little better. That was General Motors’ groundbreaking Chevrolet Volt, built from 2011 to 2019, which could achieve about 50 miles of battery-only driving. 

This new crop of EREVs will have more than 100 miles of all-electric range, meaning most drivers should rarely have to put gas in them, said Sam Abuelsamid, an engineer and industry analyst at Detroit research firm Telemetry.

Crucially, EREVs can use gas to tow heavy loads without running out of range. Towing is a key reason that larger electric trucks such as the F-150 Lightning and the Chevrolet Silverado EV failed to sell in large numbers.

With the gas generator, “You’re not really sacrificing anything in terms of how far you can tow, how long you can tow,” Abuelsamid said.

Not sacrificing any of a gas engine’s performance, but not gaining anything either, except a useless powerpack.Some months ago I posted about a Car & Driver (Road & Track?) performance test of a Chevy Silverado EV with the extra-large, super-powerful battery pack towing a 10,000 lb camping trailer. Result? 80 miles, and that was in warm weather; figure 50 when heading into the Sierra Nevadas for that ski vacation. Would you pay an extra $30,000 to display your green credentials? If so, you are alone.

Things aren’t going well for electric cars now that the rich have purchased their eco-consciousness symbols (while keeping second and third ICE vehicles for real driving) and the subsidies for the chumps have dried up. I’ll try to shed a tear.

More on the Bagel Club

/

Apparently, I was in error as to the purpose of the institution

Back in April I posted on the sale of 161 Pecksland Road and mentioned the Beagle Club, speakeasies, and Babe Ruth. Now a reader has supplied some interesting, corrective information, and because comments are attached to the original post they’re related to, this one would be buried, so I’m reprinting it here.


Barbara25 minutes ago

As an old Glenville history buff who came across your delightful site, I wanted to clarify the location of the speakeasy, which was across the road at Pecksland and Riversville closer to the river (some give the address 100 Riversville, though that was the site of the club / restaurant building, not the speakeasy). The $8m+ Pecksland McMansion was neither on the site of the former Byram River Beagle Club nor the speakeasy. The Beagle Club began at the bridge across the street, spanning both sides of the Byram River in the direction of Glenville Rd, bordered by the current Bailiwick development on the other side of the river.

The site holds an incredible amount of history. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz famously eloped at the Byram River Beagle Club in November 1940, and later had an episode about the club on their show. Babe Ruth frequently dined there with Yankees teammates when Riversville Road was still dirt and gravel, and old bottles from the speakeasy were uncovered in the area.

The land across Riversville road bordering Pecksland, close to the home you reference here, was also historic as it was actually part of the last large Rockefeller family holding in Greenwich. It was sold in 2023 to Greenwich Academy, which thankfully seems on board to preserve the virgin forest to prevent further sprawling development in that immediate area (though nobody is complaining about the new DeCicco's down the road).

After the Beagle Club closed, the parcel was purchased and a home was built right above the river's banks in the late 1940s, changing the property's address to 56 Riversville. The Hollywood actress Margaret Sullavan later bought it, designed and added an acting studio, and lived there until she died in 1960, hosting many celebrity friends like the Fondas and Jimmy Stewart. Her daughter, actress and Andy Warhol muse Brooke Hayward, referenced the home and its brick patio overhanging the Byram River in her bestselling 1977 memoir, Haywire, which she wrote after divorcing Dennis Hopper.

An opera singer and her banker husband bought and later subdivided the Beagle Club property. She kept the original 1940s home, River Song, along with a stretch of land across the river to preserve her view, and lived there until right before her death in 2012. But before the newer developments across the river bordering Bailiwick were approved, archaeological surveys were conducted. These documented the ruins of the Beagle Club and uncovered artifacts from the site's time as a farm, a speakeasy, and before that, a Native American encampment (the Siwanoy tribe lived along the same banks, with some Greenwich Siwanoy artifacts dating back to 4,000BC). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local historical experts including the Greenwich Historical Society have also done surveys, and an earlier one was completed of a Siwanoy camp on the river in the 1920s. There's a lot of history online about this fascinating spot's history, but the Historical Society has the most complete survey of its history and prehistory in their archives. Greenwich has little nooks like this that are saturated with history, and brings me great joy to imagine.

We can expect to witness this same flip-flopping from Hochel, Ned Lamon and every Democrat governor who held office in the past 20 years. But never an admission of fault

/

“I stopped two pipelines!”

So what do we have instead? Global warming”reparations” law suits and continuing bans on pipelines and against oil and gas companies, blocking ol terminals, and ridiculous local laws lie this one:

Tar sands ban: Maine city blocks crude oil shipments

July 22, 2014

A Maine city council voted 6-1 late monday to block the shipment of so-called tar sands oil from western Canada through South Portland, Maine. Environmentalists say tar sands oil is difficult to clean up, but supporters of the pipeline say blocking it will kill jobs.

Operators of a pipeline and the president of the Maine Energy Marketers Association are blasting a decision by the South Portland City Council that bans the transfer of crude oil onto ocean tankers.

Councilors voted 6-1 Monday night in favor of zoning changes that would effectively end any attempt to bring so-called tar sands oil from western Canada through a pipeline from Canada to South Portland.

Environmentalists say tar sands oil is difficult to clean if spilled and dangerous to ship.

No oil, no gas, but a pittance of windmill electricity on windy days, so that’s all right.

AI Overview

The Hartford Courant reports that the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has halted the final construction phase of Eversource's southeastern Connecticut gas resiliency project. [1]

Key Details of the Stalled Project

  • Progress: Workers had already built 31 of 34 planned underground miles and spent $150 million over seven years.

  • The Halt: DEEP ordered a comprehensive environmental review for the final remaining mile of construction.

  • The Impact: This regulatory decision creates a potential multi-year delay just as the project nears completion.

  • Goal: The pipeline was designed to improve natural gas reliability for the local economy in southeastern Connecticut. [1]

Other Pipeline Opposition in Connecticut

  • Iroquois Pipeline Expansion: A $272 million compression upgrade project in Brookfield faces strong local resistance and new environmental review demands. [1, 2, 3]

  • Public Pushback: Environmental groups and local residents continue to protest fossil fuel expansions over greenhouse gas goals and air pollution concerns. [1, 2]

Even one generation of imported imbeciles is enough

/

adios!

(cont.)

“He had no fear whatsoever harassing an ICE agent, letting him know how he’s planning to vote in the midterms and wants to take their immunity away.”

“That, obviously, got the agent interested to see whether he WAS registered to vote. That’s how he came on their radar.” Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores checked the citizen box on November 4, 2025.

Two felonies. Deportation if convicted.

Bill Essayli: first of many. California still won’t audit the rolls.

“Darwin” Rivera Flores — ‘nuff said.