We normally can observe five terns in Maine, ranging in size from the larger Forster’s tern to smaller least tern. The Forster’s tern can be identified by its distinctive comma-shaped black ear patch and is restricted to breeding and wintering along coastal marshes.

Good news for our customers who like entertainment while throwing away trash and recycling. The Horseshoe Crabs will be back for a second transfer station performance on Saturday, Sept. 10 from 10 a.m. until noon. This will be our way to celebrate the end of a beautiful summer and welcome in the fall.

This is the time of the year in Maine when one should not blink if you don’t want to miss the end of the summer. For anyone with a garden, the months of anticipation, hard work, and frustration have finally yielded results. We need to savor them with the bright sunlight and breathe a sigh of thanks for last week’s rain.

“Sometimes I thought I could hear the heat too. On the hottest summer afternoons, if I slipped into my bedroom to lie on the bed and read, I could sense an audible quiver… Might it be the ground resisting, then giving away, as the heat rose and fell in attacking waves?” — Susan Allen Toth

Hi, dear readers. Here I am again in the third week of August with more Marilyn Beane’s World news of my and my sweetheart husband Elden Beane’s lives at Crawford Commons Assisted Living, 132 Middle Road, Union, ME 04862-0628.

Back during World War II (yes, I am old enough to at least have been alive then) I remember the little square banners with a star on them that a very sad but proud mother or father, or both, would have displayed in one of the windows of their home, signifying that a son (or later, maybe even a daughter) had been lost in the war, killed in some place named something like Okinawa or The Black Forest.

The new film “A German Life” draws on 30 hours of conversation with Brunhilde Pomsel, the 105-year-old former secretary to Hitler’s propaganda minister. The film mirrors everything she has done wrong, she admits, “but really, I didn’t do anything other than type in Goebbels’ office. It was just another job.” Indeed: classic disinformation. Just as Exxon and the Koch brothers have been distorting the energy and climate debate by pouring tens of millions of dollars into groups that deny climate change, funding campaigns like Fueling U.S. Forward, fuelingusforward.com. Fueling U.S. Forward is aimed at “rebranding” fossil fuels by carefully crafted oil-industry messages reminiscent of BP rebranding itself “Beyond Petroleum” and Shell, Chevron, and others publishing ads portraying oil as green.

Blackberries abound this year, despite the overall lack of rain, and they are ripe this week. At our house, we gather some each morning and begin our day with their sweetness for breakfast. I think of a dear friend when I pick blackberries – she’s passed now – yet one summer she and I picked huge bowls of them. She made a pie from the berries that endures in my mind’s eye as one of the best ever eaten.

Didn’t catch that much of the Olympics, but what fun it was to watch all these citizens of the world compete to the limit of their hearts, minds, and bodies. Something for everyone – rugby, field hockey, badminton, table tennis, beach volleyball, archery, swimming, decathlon – whew, I’m out of breath just thinking about this!

Another very busy week is in the books. The crew of S.B. Nichols got a week’s vacation to rest their weary bodies and they came back on Monday morning, Aug. 22, ready to go. Boy, what a little bit of a break can do for you!

The Washington Schoolhouse received its crowning weathervane last week. It has taken many years and a lot of work on the part of the schoolhouse board to complete this project. The majority of the weathervane is original to the school. The quill and the ball were newly fabricated in steel instead of the original wood and then painted with gold leaf. Mike Alderson and Shawn Hickey were the brave men on top of the cupola installing the weathervane. Leon McCorkle of Padebco Custom Boats was manning the crane.