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  • A lesser-known Farmers’ Almanac will fold after 2 centuries, citing money trouble

    PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — It’s the Maine one, not the main one — a 208-year-old, Maine-based publication that farmers, gardeners and others have relied on for planting guidance and weather predictions will publish for the final time.

    The Farmers’ Almanac, not to be confused with its older, longtime competitor, The Old Farmer’s Almanac in neighboring New Hampshire, said Thursday that its 2026 edition will be its last. The almanac cited the growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the book in today’s “chaotic media environment.” Access to the online version will cease next month.

    The Farmers’ Almanac was first printed in 1818 and the Old Farmer’s Almanac started in 1792, and it’s believed to be the oldest continually published periodical in North America. Both almanacs used secret formulas based on sunspots, planetary positions and lunar cycles to generate long-range weather forecasts.

    “It is with a heavy heart,” Editor Sandi Duncan said in a statement, “that we share the end of what has not only been an annual tradition in millions of homes and hearths for hundreds of years, but also a way of life, an inspiration for many who realize the wisdom of generations past is the key to the generations of the future.”

    Editors at the other publication noted there’s been some confusion between the two. “The OLD Farmer’s Almanac isn’t going anywhere,” they posted online.

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    The two publications come from an era where hundreds of almanacs served a nation of farmers over time. Most were regional publications and no longer exist. The Farmers’ Almanac was founded in New Jersey and moved its headquarters to Lewiston, Maine, in 1955.

    They contain gardening tips, trivia, jokes, and natural remedies, such as catnip as a pain reliever and elderberry syrup as an immune booster. But its weather forecasts make the most headlines.

    Scientists sometimes disputed the accuracy of the predictions and the reliability of the secret formula. Studies of the almanacs’ accuracy have found them to be a little more than 50% accurate, or slightly better than random chance.

    The almanac was a “quaint relic” with a special kind of charm, but its use as a forecasting tool was debatable, said Val Kiddings, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and a longtime researcher of science and agriculture.

    “It might have had some value looking back, as a historical indicator,” Giddings said, “but I never took any of its prognostications at all seriously.”

    Readers, saddened to hear the news, posted online about how they used it in their families for generations as a guide to help them plant gardens and follow the weather.

    Julie Broomhall in San Diego, California, told The Associated Press in a social media post that she’s used the Farmers’ Almanac for years to decide when to take trips and plant flowers.

    She said she planned a three-month, cross-country trip last year by reading the almanac. On one leg of it, she left Oklahoma the day before a prediction for a major snowstorm in the area. It snowed.

    “I missed several I-40 mishaps because of the predictions,” she wrote.

    In 2017, when the Farmers’ Almanac reported a circulation of 2.1 million in North America, its editor said it was gaining new readers among people interested in where their food came from and who were growing fresh produce in home gardens. It developed followers online and sent a weekly email to readers in addition to its printed editions.

    Many of these readers lived in cities, prompting the publication to feature skyscrapers as well as an old farmhouse on its cover.

    Among Farmers’ Almanac articles from the past is one from 1923 urging folks to remember “old-fashioned neighborhoodliness” in the face of newfangled technology like cars, daily mail and telephones. Editors urged readers in 1834 to abandon tobacco and, in 1850, promoted the common bean leaf to combat bedbugs.

    The almanac had some forward-thinking advice for women in 1876, telling them to learn skills to avoid being dependent on finding a husband. “It is better to be a woman than a wife, and do not degrade your sex by making your whole existence turn on the pivot of matrimony,” it counseled.

    ___

    McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

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  • From Stephen King to New Jersey diners, History Press books cover local lore around the US

    NEW YORK (AP) — With deep knowledge of Stephen King’s books and curiosity about their inspirations, writer Sharon Kitchens began a journey around Maine. As she learned about the real-life settings and people behind such fiction as “IT” and “Salem’s Lot,” she arranged them into an online map and story she called “Stephen King’s Maine.”

    “It was amateur hour, in a way,” she says. “But after around 27,000 people visited the site one of my friends said to me, ‘You should do something more with this.’”

    Published in 2024, the resulting book-length edition of “Stephen King’s Maine” is among hundreds released each year by The History Press. Now part of Arcadia Publishing, the 20-year-old imprint is dedicated to regional, statewide and locally focused works, found for sale in bookstores, museums, hotels and other tourist destinations. The mission of The History Press is to explore and unearth “the story of America, one town or community at a time.”

    The King book stands out if only for its focus on an international celebrity. Most History Press releases arise out of more obscure passions and expertise, whether Michael C. Gabriele’s “The History of Diners in New Jersey,” Thomas Dresser’s “African Americans of Martha’s Vineyard” or Clem C. Pellett’s “Murder on Montana’s Hi-Line,” the author’s probe into the fatal shooting of his grandfather.

    A home for history buffs

    Like Kitchens, History Press authors tend to be regional or local specialists — history lovers, academics, retirees and hobbyists. Kitchens’ background includes writing movie press releases, blogging for the Portland Press Herald and contributing to the Huffington Post. Pellett is a onetime surgeon who was so compelled by his grandfather’s murder that he switched careers and became a private investigator. In Boulder, Colorado, Nancy K. Williams is a self-described “Western history writer” whose books include “Buffalo Soldiers on the Colorado Frontier” and “Haunted Hotels of Southern Colorado.”

    The History Press publishes highly specific works such as Jerry Harrington’s tribute to a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor from the 1930s, “Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall.” It also issues various series, notably “Haunted” guides that publishing director Kate Jenkins calls a “highly localized version” of the ghost story genre. History Press has long recruited potential authors through a team of field representatives, but now writers such as Kitchens are as likely to be brought to the publisher’s attention through a national network of writers who have worked with it before.

    “Our ideal author isn’t someone with national reach,” Jenkins says, “but someone who’s a member of their community, whether that’s an ethnic community or a local community, and is passionate about preserving that community’s history. We’re the partners who help make that history accessible to a wide audience.”

    The History Press is a prolific, low-cost operation. The books tend to be brief — under 200 pages — and illustrated with photos drawn from local archives or taken by the authors themselves. The print runs are small, and authors are usually paid through royalties from sales rather than advances up front. History Press books rarely are major hits, but they can still attract substantial attention for works tailored to specific areas, and they tend to keep selling over time. Editions selling 15,000 copies or more include “Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee,” by Lloyd Arneach, Alphonso Brown’s “A Gullah Guide to Charleston” and Gayle Soucek’s “Marshall Field’s,” a tribute to the Chicago department store.

    The King guide, which has sold around 8,500 copies so far, received an unexpected lift — an endorsement by its subject, who was shown the book at Maine’s Bridgton Books and posted an Instagram of himself giving it a thumbs-up.

    “I was genuinely shocked in the best possible way,” Kitchens says, adding that she saw the book as a kind of thank-you note to King. “Every choice I made while writing the book, I made with him in mind.”

    Getting the story right

    History Press authors say they like the chance to tell stories that they believe haven’t been heard, or were told incorrectly.

    Rory O’Neill Schmitt is an Arizona-based researcher, lecturer and writer who feels her native New Orleans is often “portrayed in way that feels false or highlights a touristy element,” like a “caricature.” She has responded with such books as “The Haunted Guide to New Orleans” and “Kate Chopin in New Orleans.”

    Brianne Turczynski is a freelance writer and self-described “perpetual seeker of the human condition” who lives outside of Detroit and has an acknowledged obsession with “Poletown,” a Polish ethnic community uprooted and dismantled in the 1980s after General Motors decided to build a new plant there and successfully asserted eminent domain. In 2021, The History Press released Turczynski’s “Detroit’s Lost Poletown: The Little Neighborhood That Touched a Nation.”

    “All of the journalist work that followed the story seemed to lack a sense of closure for the people who suffered,” she said. “So my book is a love letter to that community, an attempt for closure.”

    Kitchens has followed her King book with the story of an unsolved homicide, “The Murder of Dorothy Milliken, Cold Case in Maine.” One of her early boosters, Michelle Souliere, is the owner of the Green Hand Bookstore in Portland and herself a History Press writer. A lifelong aficionado of Maine history, her publishing career, like Kitchens’, began with an online posting. She had been maintaining a blog of local lore, “Strange Maine,” when The History Press contacted her and suggested she expand her writing into a book.

    “Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State” was published in 2010.

    “My blog had been going for about 4 years, and had grown from brief speculative and expressive posts to longer original research articles,” she wrote in an email. “I often wonder how I did it at all — I wrote the book just as I was opening up the Green Hand Bookshop. Madness!!! Or a lot of coffee. Or both!!!”

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  • OceanGate employee pushes back against idea of ‘desperation’ to complete missions

    OceanGate employee pushes back against idea of ‘desperation’ to complete missions

    A key employee with the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic pushed back at a question from a Coast Guard investigator about whether OceanGate felt a sense of “desperation” to complete the dives because of the high price tag.

    Amber Bay, director of administration for the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible, insisted Tuesday that the company would not “conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need.”

    But she agreed that the company wanted to deliver for those who paid $250,000 and were encouraged to participate as “mission specialists.”

    “There definitely was an urgency to deliver on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,” she told a Coast Guard panel.

    OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023.

    The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

    On Tuesday, Bay pushed back at earlier testimony from Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor who said Bay told her “you don’t seem to have an explorer mindset” after she raised safety concerns. Bay said Wilby’s concerns were noted at the time and treated with respect. Bay added that her own duties did not include engineering or operations.

    She later broke down in tears when discussing the tragedy, which was personal, because she knew the victims.

    “I had the privilege of knowing the explorers lives who were lost,” Bay said through tears. “And there’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of them, their families and the loss.”

    Earlier in the hearings, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

    Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

    On Tuesday, submersible pilot and designer Karl Stanley of the Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration testified to provide perspective about deep-sea submersible operations and safety. He said the phenomenon of “billionaires courting scientists” has upset the economics of the industry.

    Stanley also said he viewed OceanGate’s characterization of paid passengers as “mission specialists” to be an attempt to avoid accountability.

    “It’s clearly a dodge with trying to get around U.S. regulations with passengers,” Stanley said.

    Additionally, the company’s “entire business plan made zero sense,” Stanley said. He also said he felt the implosion ultimately stemmed from Rush’s desire to leave his mark on history.

    “There was nothing unexpected about this. This was expected by everyone who had access to a little bit of information,” Stanley said.

    The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.

    Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, said during testimony Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.

    “This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” he said.

    Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

    OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

    During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

    When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

    OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

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  • NTSB engineer says carbon fiber hull from submersible showed signs of flaws

    NTSB engineer says carbon fiber hull from submersible showed signs of flaws

    The carbon fiber hull of the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic had imperfections dating to the manufacturing process and behaved differently after a loud bang was heard on one of the dives the year before the tragedy, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.

    Engineer Don Kramer told a Coast Guard panel there were wrinkles, porosity and voids in the carbon fiber used for the pressure hull of OceanGate’s Titan submersible. Two different types of sensors on Titan recorded the “loud acoustic event” that earlier witnesses testified about hearing on a dive on July 15, 2022, he said.

    Hull pieces recovered after the tragedy showed substantial delamination of the layers of carbon fiber, which were bonded to create the hull of the experimental submersible, he said.

    OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the Titan submersible imploded in June 2023.

    Kramer’s statements were followed by testimony from William Kohnen, a longtime submersibles expert and key member of the Marine Technology Society. Kohnen emerged as a critic of OceanGate in the aftermath of the implosion and has described the disaster as preventable.

    On Wednesday, Kohnen pushed back at the idea the Titan could not have been thoroughly tested before use because of its experimental nature. He also said OceanGate’s operations raised concerns among many people in the industry.

    Kohnen said “I don’t think many people ever told Stockton no.” He described Rush as not receptive to outside scrutiny.

    “This is not something where we don’t want you to do it. We want you to do it right,” Kohnen said.

    The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the submersible’s carbon fiber construction, which was unusual. Other testimony focused on the troubled nature of the company.

    Another Wednesday witness, Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering Services of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, testified about his review of the OceanGate submersible’s development. He expressed particular concern about the sub’s window.

    “This is consistent with something on the path of failure,” Kemper said.

    Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

    Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

    Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

    The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.

    The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans. Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster.

    OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

    During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

    One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.

    When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

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  • Report shows system deficiencies a year before firefighting foam spill at former Navy base

    Report shows system deficiencies a year before firefighting foam spill at former Navy base

    BRUNSWICK, Maine (AP) — A fire suppression system at a Brunswick Executive Airport hangar showed deficiencies about a year before it discharged gallons of firefighting foam containing harmful chemicals in Maine’s biggest accidental spill of the fire suppressant on record, according to a recently released report.

    It’s not known, however, if those deficiencies, which included some non-functioning sensors, led to what happened on Aug. 19 i n Hangar 4. The system released 1,450 gallons (5,490 liters) of firefighting foam concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water at the former Navy base.

    An investigation is underway into why the fire suppression system discharged. The foam, which contains chemicals known as PFAS, was removed and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention had advised the public not to consume or to limit consumption of freshwater fish from four nearby bodies of water.

    The Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, which is overseeing redevelopment of the property, recently released a fire suppression inspection and testing report from July 2023. The authority was actively trying to get a technician out to address any deficiencies following the report, Kristine Logan, the group’s executive director, told The Associated Press in an email on Friday. She said “no one was able to be scheduled.”

    Logan also said the group also was working on finding alternatives to having an active foam system in the hangar.

    “We were not ignoring the issue,” she said.

    Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are found in everything from food packaging to clothing and are associated with health problems including several types of cancer. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency, for the first time, proposed limits on the chemicals in drinking water.

    Brunswick Naval Air Station officially closed in 2011, and automated fire suppression is mandated in large hangars. The hangars once housed P-3 Orion subhunters and other aircraft.

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  • Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news stories spread to millions more swiftly than ever before

    Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news stories spread to millions more swiftly than ever before

    James Peeler’s phone blew up with messages as he drove home from church in Texas. Reading a book on her couch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Wendy Schweiger spied something on Facebook. After finishing a late-night swim in the Baltic Sea off Finland, Matti Niiranen clicked on a CNN livestream.

    Each learned that President Joe Biden had abandoned his re-election bid minutes after he dropped a statement online without warning on a summer Sunday.

    Eight days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, it marked the second straight July weekend that a seismic American story broke at a time most people weren’t paying attention to the news. Biden’s announcement was a startling example of how fast and how far word spreads in today’s always-connected world.

    “It seemed like a third of the nation knew it instantly,” said longtime news executive Bill Wheatley, “and they told another third.”

    News travels fast, as they say

    Wheatley, now retired and summering in Maine, had sat down to check his email and absent-mindedly refreshed the CNN.com home site on his computer. If he didn’t learn the news that way, text messages from friends would have alerted him soon after.

    At 1:46 p.m. Eastern Time, the moment Biden posted his announcement on X, an estimated 215,000 people happened to be logged on to one of 124 major U.S. news websites. Fifteen minutes later, those sites had 893,000 readers, according to Chartbeat.

    On apnews.com, 3,580 people entered the site during the 1:46 p.m. minute. Nearly an hour later, at 2:43 p.m., The Associated Press’ online news destination site hit the afternoon’s peak of 18,936 new visitors. CNN.com and its news app saw its usage quintuple within 20 minutes of the news breaking, the network said.

    Television networks broke into regular programming for the story between 1:50 and 2:04 p.m. During the relatively quiet quarter-hour before 2 p.m., a total of 2.69 million people were watching either CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC, the Nielsen company said. The audience on those three networks swelled to 6.84 million between 2 and 4 p.m. Eastern. Add ABC and CBS, which also had special coverage in those hours, and there were at least 9.27 million following the story on television.

    How did everybody get there so quickly? As Wheatley suggested, word of mouth played a big role. To his credit, Peeler said he didn’t open his text messages until stopping his car.

    Many people also have alerts set up on their phone.

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    “Our phones are constantly chirping at us and we have them with us all the time,” said Brian Ott, a media and communications professor at Missouri State University and author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”

    Ott and his wife were traveling in Belgrade, Serbia, and, with the time difference, had gone to bed on Sunday night before Biden made his announcement. Ott found out the next morning when he checked news sites online and told his wife when she woke up.

    “Oh, I already know,” she responded. She had logged on to X when she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

    Since then, as he has moved on to Italy, visiting Rome and Florence, Ott said everyone he’s run into who hears he speaks English has wanted to talk to him about Biden.

    “My sense is that the compulsion is the same for everyone,” he said. “In our digital world, information is capital, and everyone wants to demonstrate their capital.”

    Finding out in various ways

    At his summer house in Pyharanta, Finland, Niiranen has taken a keen interest in U.S. politics, which the semiretired writer said dates to his time as an exchange student in Michigan. He had gone for a swim after 10 p.m. on Sunday, since daylight lingers longer there.

    Niiranen had read speculation that Biden might drop out, so when he sat down on his deck after getting out of the water, he checked the CNN stream and found that was the case.

    “Interesting election you have there!” he said. “I’ll be watching it.”

    Visiting family in Canaan, New Hampshire, Tracy Jasnowski was having a mostly unplugged week because of spotty internet service. Once a day, adults and children alike retreated with their devices to a spot on the lawn where the service is more consistent. That’s when she found out.

    “Honestly, I thought I might vomit,” she said. “I was shocked. I was cast adrift. I had no idea that would happen.”

    Even if she hadn’t learned it then, Jasnowski said she quickly got text messages from friends. And when her father woke up from his nap, he turned on Fox News.

    A generation or two earlier, people would have to be watching TV or listening to the radio to hear a special report about momentous news, said Wheatley, a former executive at NBC News. Then people would spread it by telling friends or family. Now with social media, text alerts and websites available at a click, news moves “much, much faster.”

    “The next logical question,” he said, “is how accurate is it?”

    Get it first, but first get it right

    It’s a mantra drummed into young journalists: Get the news fast but, more importantly, get it right. A mistake on a major, breaking story can derail a career. This month’s big stories illustrated the pressure that comes with the need for speed.

    Almost immediately after Biden’s announcement, it became a major part of the story journalists were filing that he hadn’t endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him. He did within a half hour, but that’s an eternity for those who want to raise questions or float conspiracy theories.

    Similarly, video of the Trump rally where shots were fired appeared instantly on television screens. But most initial news reports were extremely cautious, sticking to what was known: Trump was hurried off the stage by Secret Service agents. Blood was visible. There was a noise that sounded like gunshots.

    That, in turn, led some to criticize journalists for being too wary, too reluctant to call it an assassination attempt. Yet not all facts are quickly known; nearly two weeks later, at a congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said it still wasn’t fully clear whether Trump had been hit by a bullet or shrapnel. The next day, the FBI announced it had concluded it was a bullet.

    In other words, it’s common that there’s more to a story than meets the eye, and the frenzy of initial breaking news requires strong adherence to the facts available at the moment, no matter what becomes clear later.

    When Peeler arrived at his destination in Texas last week and checked on what his friends had texted him about Biden, he called up the websites of local TV network affiliates. In Pennsylvania, Schweiger turned immediately to the AP and The New York Times online.

    Both were grateful they had someplace they considered reliable to learn the facts.

    “I operate under the assumption that news is 24 hours, and that you always have people that can be pressed into service for anything at any time,” Schweiger said.

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

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