The Desert of Maine, A Mysterious Goat Murder, and, of Course, Tucker Carlson
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Welcome back to Maineweek Madness, an occasional column where Jezebel checks in on the Pine Tree State. This installment is dedicated to the haunting and elusive “ghost lobster,” last captured by a local fisherman in 2018.
The Desert of Maine, a charming attraction and campground that since 1925 has reimagined an over-farmed wasteland as a Saharan wonder, has been under new management recently. The camel statues remain; it appears the gemstone hunts, during which children searched for planted stones among the so-called desert’s dunes, are on hold. Mela and Dough Heestand, the couple who bought the property in late 2018, have focused on separating myth from fact in their Desert of Maine tours, notably finding no historical trace of William Tuttle, the man long said to have failed to rotate his potato crops, thus exposing the 30-odd acres of glacial silt from which the desert gets its name.
Now, the Heestands have asked to rezone parts of their fallow empire, asking the town of Freeport to create a Desert of Maine district to allow them to build modernities like a cafe and a 200-seat venue for “mostly acoustic-type musical performances,” as well as A-frame cabins for more comfortable camping. If the plan is successful, the Desert of Maine may resemble something more like a surrealist frontier town, and one in which this blogger, at least, would be delighted to live.
Tucker Carlson, a man whose home and studio in Maine have been the subject of several news stories over the years, targeted a Belfast journalist working for the New York Times in a manufactured controversy that certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that a sexual assault lawsuit filed against Carlson and his colleagues broke around the same time. Last week, a day after said lawsuit was filed in New York Federal Court, Carlson accused the paper of planning to run a story about “where my family and I live … to inflict pain on my family, to terrorize us,” and suggested his viewers do the same for the reporter, whose photograph he aired and whom he referred to as a “political activist.”
The Times story has yet to appear, but it’s a well-documented fact that Carlson owns a home and large garage in Woodstock, Maine; sold his home in Washington, D.C., recently; and that his official residence is Florida, probably for tax purposes. The lawsuit—which alleges Carlson professionally retaliated against a subordinate for refusing to go to a hotel room with him while his family was out of town—is ongoing.
