RED WHITE & BLUES

07/11/2026

Join us this Saturday, July 11, to support a deeply meaningful cause for our community! 🇺🇸 CIVOC and The Wall That Heals Cape & Islands Committee are hosting Fundraiser for The Wall That Heals: Music, Food, Fun to support bringing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica to Yarmouth. Come out for a great afternoon of food, live music, and fantastic auction items and raffle baskets! 🍔🎶🎟️

When: Saturday, July 11, from 12 – 4 PM
Where: Clark-Haddad Post 188 American Legion, Sandwich, MA
Live Music: Wheelhouse Band l 1– 4 PM
Cost: $25 for vets, spouses, widows | $40 for non-veterans

Every bid, ticket, and raffle purchase directly supports bringing this moving tribute to our area. Head over to to: https://wl.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E361750&id=4 secure your tickets online ahead of time, or you can pay at the door!

Let’s come together to honor their service and remember their sacrifice. See you Saturday! ❤️💙

07/09/2026

Medal of Honor Monday: Army Sgt. Thomas Alexander Baker Jr.

July 6, 2026 | By David Vergun

Army Pvt. Thomas Alexander Baker Jr. was an infantryman who served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the Battle of Saipan.

Baker was born in Troy, New York, on July 25, 1916, to Thomas Alexander Baker Sr. and the former Emma Balser. He had an older sister, Marion, and a younger brother, Joseph.

After graduating high school, Baker enlisted in the Army Oct. 8, 1935, and was assigned to Company A, 105th Infantry Regiment, a New York Army National Guard unit. He separated from the Army Oct. 7, 1938, and rejoined the same unit Oct. 15, 1940.

The 105th Infantry Regiment was federalized and inducted into active service Oct. 15, 1940, and assigned to the 27th Infantry Division through the Army's wartime mobilization process.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other bases on Oahu, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941, Baker and the 105th Infantry Regiment deployed to Hawaii in March 1942, marking the regiment's move into combat training in the Pacific Theater.

The 27th Infantry Division left Hawaii, May 31, 1944, and landed on Saipan, June 17, 1944 — two days before the start of the Battle of Saipan — the regiment's first combat action in the Pacific Theater.

After heavy fighting in the hilly, well-fortified southern part of the island, the 27th Infantry joined forces with the 2nd and 4th Marine divisions. Near the end of the battle, the 105th Infantry was attacked by the war's largest banzai charge, a large-scale, mass infantry assault tactic used by the Japanese soldiers. Baker's Medal of Honor citation states that his company was held up from advancing by automatic-weapon and small-arms fire from strongly fortified enemy positions that commanded the view of the company. He voluntarily took a bazooka and dashed alone to within 100 yards of the enemy. Despite heavy small-arms fire, Baker eliminated the enemy positions, enabling his company to assault the ridge.

Some days later, while his company advanced across an open field, flanked by obstructions and places of concealment for the enemy, Baker again voluntarily took up a position in the rear to protect the company against surprise attacks and came upon two heavily fortified enemy pockets manned by two officers and 10 enlisted men that had been bypassed.

Despite being outnumbered, Baker attacked and killed them all without hesitation. About 500 yards farther, he discovered six more Japanese troops, who had concealed themselves behind friendly lines, and he killed all of them.

On July 7, 1944, Baker's perimeter was attacked from three sides by an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Japanese soldiers. During the early stages of this attack, he was seriously wounded but insisted on remaining and fired at the enemy at ranges sometimes as close as 5 yards, until the ammunition in his M-1 Garand rifle ran out.

Without ammunition and with his own weapon battered to uselessness from hand-to-hand combat, Baker was carried about 50 yards to the rear by a comrade, who was then himself wounded. At this point, Baker refused to be moved any farther, saying that he preferred to be left to die rather than risk the lives of any more of his friends.

A short time later, at his request, Baker was placed in a seated position against a small tree. Another comrade offered assistance, but he refused, insisting that he be left alone.

He was given an M-1911 pistol with eight rounds of ammunition. When last seen alive, Baker was propped against a tree, smoking a cigarette, pistol in hand, calmly facing the enemy.

When Baker's body was recovered later, it was found in the same position — pistol empty — with eight Japanese soldiers lying dead before him.

Baker was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Medal of Honor on May 9, 1945. His mother received his medal during a ceremony held May 27, 1945, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. During the ceremony, Baker's commander, Army Lt. Col. William Joseph O'Brien, also received the medal posthumously. In 2002, Army Capt. Ben L. Salomon, a dentist for the 105th's 2nd Battalion, also received the medal for his actions that day.

Baker was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu and later moved to the Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery in Saratoga, New York.

Baker's home state has not forgotten him.

During Armed Forces Week in May 1951, Frear's Department Store in Troy prominently displayed photos of Baker and O'Brien in a window display.

In November 2009, the city unveiled a memorial in a Rensselaer County government building honoring Baker and O'Brien and Army Maj. Gen. Ogden J. Ross, another Troy native who commanded the 105th Infantry.

In September 2014, officials from Fort Drum, New York, and the New York Army National Guard honored Baker by renaming the building housing the engagement skills weapons simulator as the Baker Weapons Training Facility.

07/09/2026

The USS Constitution Navigates Future

By Steve Infanti, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division

For more than two centuries, the USS Constitution has relied on the stars, the sea and traditional paper charts to navigate. But as the historic vessel prepares for nine America 250 fleet events in 2026, Old Ironsides is receiving a critical digital navigation upgrade courtesy of Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division.

"NSWCPD delivers solutions that keep ships at sea and sailors mission ready, whether that ship was commissioned in 1797 or 2026," said Navy Capt. Ashley Wright, NSWCPD commanding officer. "[The] USS Constitution is a living symbol of our Navy's heritage, and this project shows how our engineers can tailor modern capability to meet a one-of-a-kind mission while preserving a national treasure."

The transition marks a significant milestone for the ship and the Navy. In December 2024, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially sunset the distribution of paper charts, making electronic charting the standard for modern maritime navigation. Today, every commissioned surface and subsurface vessel in the Navy relies on a certified Electronic Chart Display and Information System.

NSWCPD serves as the in-service engineering agent for the navigation system across the surface and, more recently, the subsurface fleets. The system provides electronic charting and navigation information that helps ship operators maintain awareness of the vessel's position and movement. It represents a significant advancement over the manual plotting and chart updating processes traditionally associated with paper charts.

When the Constitution recently transitioned to become a Commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic asset, the command required the historic ship to be equipped with ECDIS to ensure navigational safety during the highly anticipated America 250 fleet events. However, outfitting an 18th-century wooden-hulled frigate with 21st-century technology presented a unique engineering challenge.

A traditional surface-ship installation is designed for modern naval vessels with complex operational requirements, established shipboard configurations and multiple layers of system resiliency. For the Constitution, that type of installation would have exceeded the ship's unique mission needs and posed challenges because of the vessel's historic design, limited space and preservation requirements.

To meet the requirement without altering the ship's historic integrity, the NSWCPD team developed a streamlined solution. Leveraging the flexibility of the systems engineering process, the team outfitted the Constitution with an emergency navigational laptop.

"We didn't need to reinvent the wheel. We needed to apply existing fleet technology in a smart way," said James Vaites, NSWCPD ship navigation system technical specialist. "The emergency navigational laptop we provided to [the] Constitution uses the same hardware and software carried as a critical backup across the modern surface fleet. For Old Ironsides, it gave us the real-time charting capability we needed in a compact, portable format that fit the ship's unique mission requirements."

The navigational laptop is the same technology provided to every ship in the surface fleet as a backup to its primary ECDIS, in the event of an operational or power failure. For the Constitution, however, it serves as the ideal primary tool — delivering the necessary real-time charting and safety data in a compact, unclassified and highly portable format.

By thinking beyond the traditional installation model, the NSWCPD team successfully met safety requirements, equipping the Navy's oldest commissioned warship afloat with its newest navigational standard and getting her underway on time for the nation's birthday celebrations.

The effort highlights NSWCPD's role in supporting current fleet readiness and the Navy's historic legacy. As the USS Constitution prepared to represent the Navy, Old Ironsides did so with the help of modern navigation technology adapted for one of the fleet's most unique ships.

07/08/2026

06/14/2026

Advance Praise for Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life:
"Samar Yazbek is a renowned Syrian journalist and novelist whose fearless reporting has earned her the PEN Pinter Prize and the French Best Foreign Book Award...Her latest work, Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life, is a vital, harrowing document of survival in Gaza following October 2023. Through the testimonies of twenty-six Palestinians, Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged 13 to 65. The title is taken from the actual flyers dropped by the military before bombings, providing a human portrait of one of the most devastating military offensives in recent history."
—THE MIRROR

"Yazbek decided to document the personal stories of....survivors, giving a voice to the invisible and to those who lost so much of their physical selves. Documenting the terrifying inhumanity and depth of suffering also takes a severe personal toll on those doing the documenting."
—ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

"Yazbek is no stranger to war journalism. While known primarily as a novelist, she has dedicated much of the last decade to documenting atrocities, particularly in her home country, before any archival dust settled on them...While narrating death and destruction, the witnesses Yazbek spoke with still found a way to illustrate that, in the words of Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah, they taught life. Many insisted on showing Yazbek pictures of their families and of themselves when their bodies were still whole; some entrusted her with a list of names of the people they lost; they defied erasure by every means available to them...Yazbek’s collection of testimonies, spanning the shattered lives of children as young as thirteen to the weary wisdom of the elderly, refutes the diminishment intended by the airdropped leaflets. If the leaflets claim their presence is a danger, Yazbek proves their erasure is the true catastrophe."
—ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

"In her latest work, Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices From Gaza, Syrian journalist Samar Yazbek collects the testimonies of 26 Gazans who describe their accounts of genocide...Yazbek hopes that this book of testimonials “will be a cry against the brutal barbarity that the Palestinians are enduring,” pulling together people across age, gender, and geography to present a complete as possible picture of the ongoing genocide. Together, the testimonies speak to a constant flux between life and death."
—THE SKINNY

"Adapted from the warning pamphlets dropped over Gaza moments before bombardments, Your Presence Is A Danger To Your Life is a harrowing yet vital account of life in Gaza after October 7. Compiled from the testimonies of 26 Palestinians living under the genocidal siege imposed by the Israeli Defence Force, Syrian writer and journalist Samar Yazbek captures the unimaginable realities faced by the men, women, and children of Gaza...This is not an easy book to read, but it is an essential one...One fine thread through this work is the persistence of hope, and therefore resistance. Miraculously, the testimonies leave little room for hatred: instead, they focus on mourning the dead, preserving memory, and finding the strength to overcome unimaginable brutality."
—BUZZ MAGAZINE

“These testimonies of the unconscionably injured are among hundreds of thousands such testimonies emerging from Gaza since October 7, 2023. Despite Israel’s genocidal drive to silence Palestinian voices, despite Western complicity in this silencing, these twenty-six testimonies—shared with Yazbek and translated by Price—now exist as pages. If, like me, you have the means and the capacity to read them in all their blistering detail, and if you too have no personal knowledge of the unspeakable zannanat that plague these pages, then you—we—have a particular duty: not only to read these precious words, but to act on them.”
—Natasha Soobramanien, coauthor (with Luke Williams) of Diego Garcia

“A work of profound ethical significance, a direct offering of words from voices that should never be silenced. Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life is almost too painful to read, but so deeply humane and important that it compels us not to look away.”
—Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath

“This is a remarkable, shattering book that holds its voices with dignity and care. It speaks to us from a red world of absolute loss, yet is suffused with an extraordinary persistence of love. Beyond geopolitics, rhetoric, territory, and leaders, there remains the bare fact of broken lives and the unbearable weight of human love.”
—A. L. Kennedy, author of Alive in the Merciful Country

“Since the start of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, I have been grasping for words. Yazbek has done something extraordinary. She has captured the vocabulary we have all been searching for by turning to the people who witnessed this violence firsthand in Gaza. The book does not make heroes of genocide survivors, nor does it romanticize their struggle. Instead, we are invited to mourn with them, to marvel at their endurance, and to be sobered by humanity’s capacity for barbarism. Yazbek shows us what it means to bear witness, to make space for grief, pain, and suffering too vast to be contained, and how to do so with dignity, respect, and humility. She has once again modeled what it means to be a keeper of humanity’s memory.”
—Tareq Baconi, author of Fire in Every Direction
Praise for Samar Yazbek:
“One of Syria’s most gifted novelists.”
—CNN

“Yazbek’s is the urgent task of showing the world what is happening. Thanks to her, we can read about the appalling things that go on in secret, underground places.”
—THE GUARDIAN
Additional Praise for Samar Yazbek (Where the Wind Calls Home):

***A 2024 National Book Award Finalist***
“The potent latest from Yazbek (Planet of Clay) weighs the consequences of the Syrian civil war after a 19-year-old soldier, Ali, survives his patrol station’s 2013 bombing in the Lattakia mountains. This slim novel packs a punch.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Where the Wind Calls Home, Syrian author Samar Yazbek’s latest novel to be translated into English, is a stunning offering of spirituality, memory, and all those implacable, liminal spaces wherein only the mind may venture.”
—ASYMPTOTE JOURNAL

“An evocative…meditation about people caught in the turning wheel of Syria’s violent present.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
Additional Praise for Samar Yazbek (Planet of Clay):

***A 2021 National Book Award Finalist***
“Planet of Clay gives a haunting and unflinching look at the horrors of war―the bombing, the starvation, the fear―all seen through the eyes of Rima, a young girl with a vibrant imagination.”
―NPR

“The young, mute narrator of this compassionate novel becomes a poignant emblem of the Syrian women confined by war…a bold portrayal of besieged people.”
―THE OBSERVER

“Wrenching…offers a remarkable account of wartime despair.”
―PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Karen: From Samar Yazbek, the acclaimed Syrian journalist and a 2024 and 2021 National Book Award finalist for Where the Wind Calls Home and Planet of Clay, comes a vital portrait of October 7, 2023, and its aftermath through the harrowing yet life-affirming accounts of 26 Palestinians. In her own words, her work “is a response to our collective indifference, and our ugly habituation to violence and brutality”. YOUR PRESENCE IS A DANGER TO YOUR LIFE: Survival and Witness in Gaza (Other Press Trade Paperback Original; On Sale: 8/18/26) challenges this indifference, showing not just the suffering of the Palestinian people but the power of their voices and their stories.

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like since that pivotal date. In YOUR PRESENCE IS A DANGER TO YOUR LIFE—a title adapted from one of the flyers dropped on the residents of Gaza minutes before a bombing—Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged 13 to 65, who have witnessed what history may remember as one of the most savage military offensives of our time.

Their stories reveal a nightmarish dystopia, where each survivor has endured unimaginable loss—homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated— many have been treated in hospitals ravaged by Israeli attacks. But these survivors remain determined to share their experiences, and cling to the hope that their voices will resonate.

More than a record of horrors for posterity, this breathtaking collection testifies to the power of education and writing, which remind us of our common humanity. It’s a heartbreaking exposure of the horrors of modern warfare and a stark reminder of the importance of Palestinian narratives. I hope to stay in touch with you about possibilities for it.

About the Author: Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist who has been a prominent advocate for human rights, and more specifically women’s rights, in Syria. In 2010, Yazbek was selected as one of the “39 most promising authors under the age of 40” by Beirut39, organized by the Hay Festival. In 2011, she took part in the popular uprising against the Assad regime and was forced into exile soon after. In 2012 she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize “International writer of courage” for her book In the Crossfire, and received the Swedish Tucholsky Prize and the Dutch Oxfam/PEN Prize the following year. In 2022, Yazbek was chosen by the Royal Society of Literature as one of twelve International Writers. Yazbek has published two short-story collections, seven novels, and four nonfiction literary narratives. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages.
About the Translator: Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, 2021, and 2019. Her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

YOUR PRESENCE IS A DANGER TO YOUR LIFE: Survival and Witness in Gaza • By Samar Yazbek • Translated by Leri Price •
Other Press Trade Paperback Original • ISBN: 978-1-63542-612-0 • On-Sale Date: Aug 18, 2026 •
Price: $17.99

06/14/2026

Award-winning Palestinian War Reporter Rami Abou Jamous' THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER (On Sale: September 2026)

Karen: I’m honored to bring you a work of defiant hope from an extraordinary individual and multiple-time Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award winner for war correspondence, Rami Abou Jamous. A Palestinian journalist and war reporter dispatching from the Gaza Strip, Rami currently acts as board chairman of Press House Palestine and the founder of GazaPress Network, which helps foreign journalists in Gaza and other parts of Palestine. Since the start of the war in Gaza in 2023, he has also been regularly reporting for French media, including France 24 and Radio France; intertwining politics with his personal experiences that have resulted from living through war, displacement, and siege. THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER: The Story of a Father and His Son (Other Press Trade Paperback Original; On Sale: 9/8/26) was written amidst the daily churn of endless violence in the Gaza strip and depicts a father’s fight not only to keep his young son alive but to preserve his childhood as best as he can. Rami decides to create a bubble around this little boy that fear, anxiety, and sadness will not be able to pe*****te. Explosions are fireworks, drones are birds in full flight, and his 2-year-old son, Walid keeps smiling. Through a series of forced moves from Gaza City to Rafah to Deir al Balah, from a large, modern apartment to a refugee tent, Rami fights to preserve the safety and dignity of his family and neighbors. It is a Palestinian journalist’s extraordinary account of family, survival, and resilience in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Rami Abou Jamous is already packed. A Francophone journalist from Palestine, he is familiar with conflicts and quickly grasps what the scale of the Israeli response will be. His emergency bag containing passports, clothes, medical supplies, and cash is never far away—Rami is the father of a 2-year-old son, Walid, whom he must protect at all costs, physically and psychologically.

Through the eyes of a father trying to protect his child, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER illuminates the civilian experience of war. There is constant fear, forced displacement, and the loss of basic security. Yet, there are also moments of tenderness, humor, and resilience that make survival possible. Presenting a voice that is honest, clear, and deeply human; rather than an ideological discussion, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER reminds of the precious sanctity of human life that hangs in the balance of the statistics and scale of war’s destruction. Illustrating what it is like to raise a child under bombardment, to explain the unexplainable, and to keep passing on values in a crumbling world, THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER is direct and unflinching; at times, harrowing, yet sustains the dignity of its characters.

This declaration of a father’s love for his son, reminds that behind every war, there are lives, voices, and stories that refuse to be silenced. I hope to stay in touch with you about this unique and priceless testimony about the human capacity to persevere and preserve.

About the Author: Rami Abou Jamous is a journalist and three-time winner of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents, which pays tribute to those who work in hazardous conditions to provide access to information.
About the Translator: Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than ninety books, including Marc Petitjean’s The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris and Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly and Eléctrico W, winner of the French-American Foundation’s 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction. She lives in Kent, England.

THE STARS SHINE BRIGHTER: The Story of a Father and His Son
By Rami Abou Jamous • Translated by Adriana Hunter •
Other Press Trade Paperback Original •
ISBN: 978-1-63542-585-7 • On-Sale Date: Sep 8, 2026 • Price: $16.99