I want to be the first person to break this story.
I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh but I check his transcripts from time to time. On Tuesday, I found this:
"We all owe a debt to a smoker. A guy in his house wanted to smoke a cigarette. His wife would not let him smoke the cigarette inside. So he went out in the backyard, and while he was smoking his cigarette he's looking at his boat. And he said, "There's something strange about that boat." Something didn't look right. It was his boat, so he climbed up on his boat while he's out in the backyard smoking a cigarette, he unzips the protective winter cover that he has on his boat, and he sees the bleeding, half conscious Boston Marathon Muslim bomber. Remember that old saying, for the want of a nail the kingdom was lost, something like that? "This guy wants a cigarette. We hate cigarettes. We hate smokers. But, if not for this guy being a smoker, if not for this guy being forced to the backyard to smoke his cigarette, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might still be in that boat bleeding out. He might not have been caught if it hadn't been for that smoker. Now, we don't know because the guy did get caught, and it's all downhill from there. I just wanted to let everybody know. "Mr. Limbaugh, you really enjoy this, don't you? You know that everybody hates smoking and you like smoking and so you just had to --" I'm just pointing out what happened. I'm happy the guy smoked. Smokers do a lot of good in this country, and they're a maligned group and I just wanted to single this guy out."
Great story, right? There's just one problem. There isn't a word of truth in it. Here is the interview David Hennebery, the man in question, gave to WCVB Channel 5 in Boston. Since he's a neighbor of mine--we haven't met, but I live a little over two blocks away--I feel strongly. Excerpts:
WATERTOWN, Mass. —David Henneberry calls himself an "incidental hero." The Watertown man, who found Boston Marathon bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a boat in his backyard ending a week of terror for the region, told NewsCenter 5's Ed Harding exclusively that his one hope is to bring closure to the families of those killed and those who were wounded. "I'm just glad," Henneberry said as he struggled to control his emotions. "I hate to use clichés. If people who were killed can get some (comfort), then I am at peace with it. If I help these people that lost people, if I can help them in their mind, then everything is good with me here." View a slideshow of the bombing victims | View a slideshow of Henneberry's storyHenneberry's first-person account of his discovery of Tsarnaev, 19, differs in one important way from that told by law enforcement the night of the arrest. It was a discovery driven by his obsession with, of all things, the shrink wrap on the boat he calls his "baby," the Slip Away II. Like all Watertown residents, Henneberry stayed in his Franklin Street home as the hunt for Tsarnaev paralyzed much of eastern Massachusetts on Friday. When he looked out the window at his boat at one point during the day, he noticed something was amiss. "I put pads between the shrink wrap, and it stopped the chaffing and two of those had fallen down to the ground. It was really windy, so I didn't think twice about it," he said. When the "shelter-in-place" order was lifted just after 6 p.m., Henneberry said he went outside.
"Go out and get some air. I am just going to put the pads back. They were bugging me all day. So I went out in the yard and felt the freedom that everyone is Watertown was feeling. When I pulled the strap, it was a lot looser than it usually is. But again, the wind could have loosened things up," he said. Despite official accounts that he saw blood on the outside of the boat, Henneberry said that is not true. "No indication of anything. I know people say I saw blood on the boat, 'He saw blood on the boat.' Not true," he said. "I said OK, everything is fine. There are no visible signs of blood outside the boat. I went inside," he said. But something was nagging at him and his obsession with his boat soon had him taking another walk into the yard. This time, he put a ladder up to the side of the boat to take a closer look. "I got three steps up the ladder and rolled the shrink wrap. I didn't expect to see anything, but I saw blood on the floor of the boat. A good amount of blood," he said. "And I said 'Wow, did I cut myself last time?' I thought. I was in the boat a couple of weeks ago. Then I just look over there, and there is more blood," he said. Then he saw Tsarnaev. [End of interview excerpts.]
That's it, Rush. Would you care to identify your source? Would you care to apologize? Would you care to give your readers a better idea of how seriously they should take what you say by owning up? Or is making things up just part of "having more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have," as you so charmingly put it?
Alright, I hope this isn't too last-minute of a notice, but I think we've come to a consensus. Although I did say I'd do a tour with just a few people, it seems that there are several people who can't make it this week, but can make it next week. Since this isn't anything where there's a reservation or set plans involved, I've decided to wait the extra week in order to allow more people to attend. I hope this isn't a problem for those who said they could come this week. And for what it's worth, the Weather Channel's long-term forecast has it in the 70's with a 0% chance of rain on the 21st. All in all, this seems like the best thing to do. We can nail down a time that's best for everyone, but since a few seemed to indicate that early afternoon was good, I'm suggesting 1:00 for now. The tour should take somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on how much I ramble on. As I mentioned before, we'll walk through the...
This is another item from the cache given to me by Fran Casarino, descendant of the Banks and Chambers families. (The Jabez Banks items from a previous post came from her, as well.) I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, but I thought it was certainly interesting enough to share with everyone. It's a newspaper article from 1959 that mentions an item I had seen referenced once before. One that would have been quite familiar to Mill Creek Hundred residents a century and a half ago. As seen in the photo on the right, the item in question is a flag, purchased by a group of MCH residents in 1844. The accompanying article, shown below, gives the rest of the story. (Reminder: click on the image to view a larger, easier to read version.) Way back (in this blog's very first post , as a matter of fact), it had been noted that the Mermaid Tavern on Limestone Road (just north of the Pike Creek Shopping Center) was for many years the polling place for the hundred. One of the r...
FLY WITH A ROGUE by Elena Greene Available Now! Having fallen on hard times, Emma Westfield provides for herself and her young brother by teaching at the school in their village. Life has taught her to hide her passionate nature, but her resolution wavers when a handsome aeronaut crashes his balloon nearby and is brought to her cottage. Estranged from his family, Captain Gilbert Manning has spent most of his life in the British army, campaigning from India to Waterloo. Now that the war is over, he supports himself and veterans of his company by giving balloon exhibitions. Emma learns that the outwardly devil-may-care rogue recovering on her sofa bears inner scars as grim as those on his body. Gil knows he’s not an eligible suitor, but he longs to teach Emma to embrace life despite all its tragedies. Although they struggle against it, their passion sweeps them along, taking them on a scandalous flight across the English countryside. They must marry, but can...
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