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Some of what Phoebus coach Jeremy Blunt hears is heartbreaking. Two-way lineman Markus Hopson and linebacker Kaleb Tillery, the Peninsula District Defensive Player of the Year, both have lost friends to gun violence.None

Jim Jordan cheers Wray resignation, but says he's not done probing his FBI tenureThe Philadelphia Eagles clinched the NFC East division title on Sunday, handing the Dallas Cowboys a humiliating 41-7 defeat while the Buffalo Bills secured the second seed in the AFC with a 40-14 crushing of the New York Jets. The Cowboys were already eliminated from playoff contention and without top receiver CeeDee Lamb with a shoulder injury, but it was their defense that struggled. Eagles starting quarter-back Jalen Hurts missed the game due to concussion. Kenny Pickett got the start but had to leave the game in the third quarter with a rib injury with Philadelphia 24-7 up. That meant third-choice Tanner McKee took over under the center and two of his four passes were for touchdowns. The real damage to the Cowboys, who gave up four turnovers, was done by the Eagles star running back Saquon Barkley who put up 167 yards on 31 carries to pass the 2,000 yard mark for the season. Barkley, who has 2,005 yards needs to put up 101 yards next week to break Eric Dickerson's record for the most rushing yards in a season, set for the Los Angeles Rams in 1984. The win means the Eagles are guaranteed at least the number two seed in the NFC. The Bills take the second seed in the AFC, behind the Kansas City Chiefs, after taking care of business against the New York Jets. The Bills led 12-0 at the half before their quarterback Josh Allen took total control of the game with touchdown passes to Amari Cooper and Keon Coleman either side of a rushing score from James Cook. Allen, who threw for 182 yards, had opened the scoring with a one-yard rush. Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers threw two interceptions and was sacked four times. The Indianapolis Colts were eliminated from playoff contention after falling 45-33 to the 3-13 New York Giants. While the Giants had nothing to play for, quarterback Drew Lock enjoyed himself -- he matched his career high of four touchdown passes and rushed for another score as the Giants ended their 10-game losing streak. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers kept their post-season hopes alive as Baker Mayfield threw for 359 yards and five touchdowns in a 48-14 rout of the Carolina Panthers. Later on Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings, searching for the top seed in the NFC, take on NFC North divisional rivals the Green Bay Packers. The Washington Commanders would book a playoff berth if they can beat the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday night's game. sev/bbEagles clinch division title, Bills claim AFC second seed

FBI Director Wray says he intends to resign before Trump takes office in January

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga., Dec. 19, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lendmark Financial Services today announced Bret Hyler has been promoted to President & Chief Operating Officer, effective January 1, 2025. Joe Burgamy, Chief Business Officer and Mark Lawrence, Chief Privacy and Information Security Officer, will be retiring from Lendmark January 15, 2025. Hyler will be responsible for leading comprehensive strategies to maximize the organization’s value and enrich the culture for its approximately 2,400 employees. By creating market differentiation, advancing expansion opportunities and driving operational excellence across 515+ branch locations, Hyler will ensure Lendmark’s diverse product offerings meet the needs of its ~500,000 customers, 3,700 retail sales finance dealers, and nearly 19,000 direct automobile dealer merchants. “Bret is a seasoned servant leader who has the breadth of consumer lending expertise required to carry Lendmark into the next phase of our unprecedented growth strategy,” said Bobby Aiken, founder and CEO. “Bret started his 20-year career on the front line, rising through the ranks and learning our business inside and out with each successive assignment. I am confident he’s ready to take on responsibility for leading business operations for the entire organization.” Hyler will continue demonstrating his business acumen and exceptional people leadership abilities in this new role, creating even more value for all of our employees, customers, partners and key stakeholders. Aiken will focus specifically on driving key strategic and administrative initiatives and fostering financial and investment growth opportunities. Hyler will continue reporting to Bobby Aiken, founder and CEO. Most recently, Hyler served as Chief Operating Officer and was instrumental in expanding the business to amplify the company’s annual operating and capital budgets. He led all branch operations, strategic growth and planning initiatives, and financial and credit management programming. Hyler holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Averett University. C-Suite Retirements “Joe Burgamy is one of the organization’s original employees of our 28-year-old company, and his fingerprints are on everything,” said Bobby Aiken, founder and CEO. “He has the highest level of integrity and commitment, and he has made an indelible mark on Lendmark. We will miss him tremendously.” “Mark Lawrence is one of the finest people I’ve ever worked with,” said Bobby Aiken, founder and CEO. “He has been instrumental in establishing and expanding our rock-solid technology practice and we wish him the very best as he embarks on his retirement.” About Lendmark Financial Services Lendmark Financial Services (Lendmark) provides personal and household credit and loan solutions to consumers. Founded in 1996, Lendmark strives to be the lender, employer, and partner of choice by protecting household wealth, offering stability and helping consumers meet both planned and unplanned life events through affordable loan offerings. Today, Lendmark operates more than 515 branches in 22 states across the country, providing personalized services to customers and retail business partners with every transaction. Lendmark is headquartered in Lawrenceville, Ga. For more information, visit www.lendmarkfinancial.com . Media Contacts Lisa Burby Vice President, Corporate Communications O: 678-913-1720 C: 407-921-7775 lburby@lendmarkfinancial.com Jeff Hamilton Senior Manager, Corporate Communications O: 678-625-3128 jhamilton@lendmarkfinancial.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6a83c4a1-d43c-4870-b047-3b695f1a40f9

Filmi Chakkar – SACHIN CHATTEKids send a taste of home to troops serving overseas for the holidays

The game industry is no stranger to boom-and-bust cycles, in which scores of opportunistic developers fall over themselves to release copycat competitors to the latest massive hit, and most, if not all, fail. Perhaps the biggest instance — and certainly the most embarrassing for almost everyone concerned — was the race to release the mythical “ WoW killer” : a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that would unseat Blizzard’s global megahit, World of Warcraft , and earn its makers millions of dollars in monthly subscription revenue until the end of time. It turned out to be an industry-wide epic fail — and I had a ringside seat to this unfortunate spectacle. My career in games journalism began in 2004, just a few months before WoW was released. My obsessive love of the game threatened to tank that career before it had really begun, but instead I turned it to my advantage, specializing in covering a genre of game that was too arcane and time-consuming for most staff writers and editors to get their heads around. I traveled to scores of preview events for MMO hopefuls that public relations reps would optimistically tout as “ World of Warcraft , but for soccer,” or “ World of Warcraft , but for vehicular combat.” In 2008, I was hired by Eurogamer as the editor of its short-lived MMO section — let’s not pretend that we in the press were immune to the same wrongheaded gold-rush thinking — and discovered firsthand exactly why the whole enterprise was doomed to fail. One reason is that World of Warcraft — especially during its 2004-to-2010 heyday — was simply too good to beat. But another is that hit-chasing, not a great strategy at the best of times, is almost impossible to pull off in the world of social, online games. The hits garner intensely loyal, invested audiences who play them month in, month out, and who aren’t really looking for something else to move on to. Those audiences are hermetically sealed within their own fandoms and care much less about shiny graphics or other technical advancements, while the constantly updated games have plenty of room to innovate and evolve the genre within themselves. The time-honored tactic of “just slap a big license (like Star Wars) on it” is less effective in this sphere, too, because the appeal of famous characters and storylines doesn’t necessarily apply — the players are more invested in their communities. Yet the industry continues to make this critical error with online games. Just look at the spectacular crash and burn of Concord earlier this year, itself just the latest of countless attempts to elbow Overwatch off its hero-shooter throne. In the spirit of constructive learning, and only a little bit of schadenfreude , let’s look back at some of the games that failed to put a dent in World of Warcraft ’s hegemony... and the few that did. The failed WoW killers The Lord of the Rings Online (2007): This entry is perhaps a little unfair, since various people had been trying to make a Middle-earth MMO based on Tolkien’s works long before Blizzard had even thought of WoW . The original developer, an MMO specialist called Turbine, probably thought it was just making another niche online game before publisher WB Games got unduly excited about its potential. The game was fine, but clearly a generation behind WoW in terms of its design. People still play it, though! Age of Conan (2008): Oh dear . The first and most instructive case of post- WoW hubris came from Funcom, a Norwegian specialist that got way out of its depth trying to push cutting-edge graphics, gore, sex, and dynamic real-time swordfighting into an MMO based on Robert E. Howard’s lusty fantasy world. Publisher Eidos put all its chips down; I remember attending an absurd press event staged in Oslo’s 1952 Winter Olympic park, which had been transformed into a medieval setting with horse-riding barbarians and fireside feasting. (A PR rep I was with got very drunk and stole a sheepskin rug, roaring incoherently into the Scandinavian night while wearing it around his shoulders.) The game was a mess at launch, and tanked hard. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (2008): EA’s big play made sense on paper; the Warhammer license is probably as close as you can legally get to the Warcraft setting, and developer Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot was beloved by the MMO hardcore. The game was lavish and expensive but limited in design, too focused on massive player-versus-player combat whereas WoW excelled at embracing almost every possible play style. Warhammer Online was shut down in 2013. APB: All Points Bulletin (2010): A Grand Theft Auto-style massively multiplayer game boasting intense levels of player customization, and masterminded by GTA’s creator himself, David Jones? What could go wrong? Everything! APB was stacked with ambitious features but notably lacked, you know, gameplay. Also, Jones’ company Realtime Worlds, which had previously made the excellent Crackdown for Xbox, was in far too deep. A disastrous launch was followed within a couple of months by the developer going bankrupt and APB getting shut down. Another company bought and relaunched it, but didn’t succeed in putting an actual game in there. Rift (2011): The MMO gold rush wasn’t just about games; entire companies sprang up, drawing huge investment on the promise of some revolutionary technology or other. Trion Worlds was one example that boasted fancy server-side tech that was supposed to take MMOs closer to the fully simulated cloud-gaming dream. Unfortunately, its flagship fantasy MMO Rift was very boring. Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011): Smarting from the failure of Warhammer Online , EA was nevertheless up for another crack at smashing WoW , armed with the Star Wars license, its star in-house developer BioWare, and an apparently limitless budget. The hype was off the charts, but BioWare’s expertise was in single-player games. Everybody bought it, played the story through, and moved on, which is... not the idea. BioWare didn’t give up, though, and steadily built out a proper massively multiplayer game around the story campaigns. After a successful free-to-play relaunch, The Old Republic still has an audience. Guild Wars 2 (2012): Guild Wars 2 is actually a fantastic game, easily the best on this list — I feel bad including it. It has refined combat and employed several genre-defining ideas that were later copied by WoW , Destiny , and others. But the scope of this relatively streamlined game was not equal to the hopes publisher NCSoft loaded on it — and the ever-expanding WoW presented a moving target that could never be caught. WildStar (2014): NCSoft, a big player in Korea, made its most determined attempt to crack the West with WildStar , a game by former Blizzard devs with a very Warcraft-y color palette and art style. It was cute, expensive, action-forward, and had some fun ideas, but it was also very obviously a trend-chasing mishmash with no reason to exist beyond trying to top WoW . NCSoft shut it down and closed developer Carbine in 2018. The game almost did kill WoW Final Fantasy 14 (2013): The prize for perseverance goes to Square Enix, which simply didn’t give up — and which, importantly, had reasons other than competing with Blizzard to be making an MMO. Final Fantasy 11 had been a pre- WoW hit in 2002; the first attempt to follow it up with FF14 in 2010 was a disaster, but Square Enix bravely scrapped it and asked producer Naoki Yoshida for a complete do-over. It was a question of honor, if anything. Yoshida’s reboot ruled, and Square Enix didn’t falter when it didn’t immediately do WoW numbers, but continued to invest. FF14 steadily got bigger and better, and it was ready and waiting when Blizzard stumbled through a succession of PR disasters and lackluster WoW expansions in the late 2010s and early 2020s. WoW streamers and players starting leaving for FF14 in droves, and Square Enix’s game is, at last, the competitor that WoW has always deserved. Analysis Fantasy Gaming PC World of Warcraft World of WarcraftCoffee prices hit record high as cost for beans soar and drinkers could be hit too

Consultation with substance users lays out solutions to Canada's drug crisisFORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Hailey Van Lith scored 17 points and Madison Connor made four 3-pointers and added 14 points on Sunday to help No. 11 TCU beat Brown 79-47. Van Lith added five assists, five rebounds and three steals and Taylor Bigby scored 11 points for the Horned Frogs. TCU (13-1) has won four games in a row since an 82-54 loss to No. 3 South Carolina on Dec. 8 at the Coast to Coast Challenge. Grace Arnolie hit three 3-pointers in the first five minutes and Olivia Young added another with 4:34 left in the first quarter to give Brown a 12-8 lead. The Horned Frogs responded with a 9-2 run to close the period, scored 12 of the first 14 second-quarter points to extend their lead to 13 points and took a 34-25 lead into the intermission. Bigby hit a 3 to open the scoring in the third quarter and TCU led by double figures the rest of the way. The Horned Frogs outrebounded Brown 54-28, including 20-6 on the offensive glass which led to TCU outscoring the Bears 27-5 in second-chance points. Isabell Mauricio led Brown with 17 points on 7-of-16 shooting Brown (6-7). The rest of the Bears players combined to made 10 of 41 (24.4%) from the field. Arnolie added 13 points. TCU made 11 3-pointers on 27 attempts (41%) and the Horned Frogs' 148 this season are the most in Division I. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketballNextCure stock hits 52-week low at $1.00 amid market challenges

China-based hacker charged in Hammond federal court; developed malware infecting 81k firewalls, including in NW IndianaSeas to Skies Conference: A Successful Summit for a Greener Future

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude Oil prices rallied on Wednesday, jumping around 2.75% and clipping into $70 per barrel after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a steeper drawdown in US Crude Oil reserves than energy traders anticipated. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has lowered its forecasts for global Crude Oil demand growth, however barrel traders are still banking on growing energy demand from China to sop up the extra. According to the EIA, US Crude Oil Stocks Change for the week ended December 6 fell by 1.425 million barrels, below the forecast -1.1 million and declining further from the previous week’s decline of over 5 million barrels. With US Crude Oil reserve drying up in the pipe, barrel traders found the buy button on the expectation that US processors will be forced to increase the pace of their market buying. reduced its forecasts for global Crude Oil demand growth in the coming year, dragging the Crude Oil consortium’s lofty expectations closer in-line with the more demure forecasts posted by the EIA. OPEC now anticipates that global oil demand will increase by 1.61 million barrels per day in 2024, a reduction from last month's forecast of 1.82 million barrels. Additionally, for 2025, they have revised their growth estimate down to 1.45 million barrels per day from the previous 1.54 million barrels. Crude Oil price forecast Crude Oil prices have been traveling in a rough downside wedge since dipping below $66 per barrel in September. bids, despite finding a technical floor below $68 per barrel, have been unable to decisively pierce above the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), and intraday price action is poised to continue battling the moving average in the near term. Despite barrel prices seemingly held aloft of further downside pressure from a bidding zone just north of the $66 key handle, topside momentum remains limited, and Crude Oil bulls will continue to find themselves short-changed as swing highs continue to grind lower below the 200-day EMA near $73.80. WTI daily chart WTI Oil FAQs WTI Oil is a type of Crude Oil sold on international markets. The WTI stands for West Texas Intermediate, one of three major types including Brent and Dubai Crude. WTI is also referred to as “light” and “sweet” because of its relatively low gravity and sulfur content respectively. It is considered a high quality Oil that is easily refined. It is sourced in the United States and distributed via the Cushing hub, which is considered “The Pipeline Crossroads of the World”. It is a benchmark for the Oil market and WTI price is frequently quoted in the media. Like all assets, supply and demand are the key drivers of WTI Oil price. As such, global growth can be a driver of increased demand and vice versa for weak global growth. Political instability, wars, and sanctions can disrupt supply and impact prices. The decisions of OPEC, a group of major Oil-producing countries, is another key driver of price. The value of the US Dollar influences the price of WTI Crude Oil, since Oil is predominantly traded in US Dollars, thus a weaker US Dollar can make Oil more affordable and vice versa. The weekly Oil inventory reports published by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Energy Information Agency (EIA) impact the price of WTI Oil. Changes in inventories reflect fluctuating supply and demand. If the data shows a drop in inventories it can indicate increased demand, pushing up Oil price. Higher inventories can reflect increased supply, pushing down prices. API’s report is published every Tuesday and EIA’s the day after. Their results are usually similar, falling within 1% of each other 75% of the time. The EIA data is considered more reliable, since it is a government agency. OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is a group of 12 Oil-producing nations who collectively decide production quotas for member countries at twice-yearly meetings. Their decisions often impact WTI Oil prices. When OPEC decides to lower quotas, it can tighten supply, pushing up Oil prices. When OPEC increases production, it has the opposite effect. OPEC+ refers to an expanded group that includes ten extra non-OPEC members, the most notable of which is Russia.LIPHOOK, United Kingdom, Dec. 19, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — , a global leader in technology-driven meeting solutions across Annual General Meetings, Investor Relations, and Member meetings, proudly announces the acquisition of Assembly Voting, a technology company specializing in end-to-end verifiable, cloud-based elections and voting solutions via its proprietary platform, Electa. This strategic acquisition reinforces Lumi Global’s commitment to innovation while expanding its capabilities beyond the live meeting environment to new market opportunities. “This acquisition marks a bold step forward for Lumi Global, as we extend our product capabilities beyond the meeting day and into the wider elections market,” said Richard Taylor, CEO of Lumi Global. “The integration of Assembly Voting’s innovative technologies with Lumi’s Global platform will unlock new opportunities, ensuring we remain at the forefront of technology-driven meeting, election and voting solutions in Annual General Meetings, Investor Relations, and Member organization worldwide.” “We are thrilled to join Lumi Global, a company whose vision and innovative approach align perfectly with ours,” said Jacob Gyldenkaerne, CEO of Assembly Voting. “This partnership not only expands the reach of our technology but also enhances our ability to serve an even more diverse, global client base with end-to-end verifiable election solutions.” Lumi Global’s acquisition of Assembly Voting underscores its dedication to powering the meetings and elections that matter for trusted decisions worldwide. As live meetings and general assemblies transition to increasingly digital formats, elections have similarly evolved from traditional paper ballots to more secure and reliable digital platforms. This digital transformation creates the opportunity for a unified platform that seamlessly serves both needs. Lumi Global’s clients are increasingly seeking a comprehensive solution that delivers this integration. Lumi Global powers the meetings and elections that matter for the world’s most trusted decisions, ensuring seamless, engaging experiences for in-room and online participants. Lumi Global’s cutting-edge technology and unique global presence empower informed decision-making across annual meetings, elections, member meetings, legislative meetings, IR meetings, and earnings calls. For over 30 years, Lumi has driven industry innovation, co-creating solutions with customers to simplify the complex and deliver stress-free, flawless meetings that foster accountability and meaningful engagement. For more information, please contact: Chief Business Strategy Officer A video accompanying this announcement is available at

 Powerful spotlights Wednesday night dance to the music on top of Jason Mills’ home at 74 Warren Road in Monmouth. The lights have prompted questions and speculation from residents miles away. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal MONMOUTH — It’s not unusual, some evenings, for people to pull to the side of the road, get out of their cars and just start dancing in the street in front of Jason Mills’ house on Warren Road. “We’ve had people out there singing at the top of their lungs, too,” says Mills, “and it’s just fun and funny. We really enjoy seeing people out there.” These spontaneous displays of singing and dancing aren’t the work of lunatics. They are among the many who stop in front of Mills’ house in the early evenings to enjoy the elaborate Christmas light show going on there. And when we say “elaborate,” we really mean it. We’re talking 18,000 LED lights flickering, flashing and kind of dancing along in exotic ways in sync with the music. We’re talking computer controlled projectors beaming images onto the windows, where exotic swirls of light move in every imaginable way. Every once in while, you’ll see the ghostly image of a guitarist jamming along to the music of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Mills’ front door. The lights spin and throb and pulsate in such a wild variety of ways, it’s mesmerizing. The experience is almost psychedelic. It is, without question, hypnotic. Sheets of LED bulbs change with the music at Jason Mills’ home in Monmouth. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal And there are four moving spotlights atop Mills’ roof, as well. They shoot out beams of light and move every which way based on the music. The light dances playfully on whatever sky cover there happens to be that night, and people have reported seeing this phenomena as far away as Turner and Greene, Lewiston, Auburn and Poland, in some cases attributing it to UFOs or the northern lights. When it comes to his Christmas light show, Mills, an assistance chief with the Monmouth Fire Department, does not mess around. His show is carefully curated through computer software that allows him to adjust the timing of every bulb and get every flash and flicker in line with the beat of the holiday season songs on his playlist. This is not traditional Christmas decorating. The display is all encompassing. From the great spotlights on the roof to the animated Christmas trees and candy canes on the front lawn, Mills has used the latest in lighting technology to present one of the grandest displays one will find in the region. It’s a lot of work and none of it is cheap: The spotlights alone run about $1,000 apiece and the LED lights were at one time selling for about a buck a bulb. Yet, Mills has been doing this for years and his officially named Monmouth Lights show gets wilder with each new Christmas season. Jason Mills stands Wednesday night in front of his home at 74 Warren Road in Monmouth., where his ever-evolving light display is attracting people from across the region. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal “Inspiration for my light show came from a few places,” says Mills, in a way that is both modest and alive with childlike enthusiasm. “When I was a kid, my grandmother had an amazing Christmas light display every year and I see this as my way of carrying on that piece of her legacy. I am also a big fan of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and started going to their concerts around 20 years ago. The lighting at those concerts is a show of its own and, as a bit of a tech geek, it garnered my interest immediately. So in 2012 I started Monmouth Lights with a few strings of traditional Christmas lights and some controllers that I put together. I had a couple different songs each year and we would see a handful of cars each night stop by. We did that for three or four years before work got in the way.” Things went along at that tempo for a few years. Then Mills stepped things up a notch or three. “In 2019, we moved to our current house and I started looking into smart lighting options,” Mills says. “I built a few small controllers and played around with some LED strips before stumbling across some information about connecting them into a Christmas light show. That’s all it took to throw me back into the hobby and I started putting together a small show. We didn’t expect a lot of visitors, but that was 2020 and a lot of normal Christmas events and traditions weren’t happening that year, so we had more than we anticipated and we ended up causing a few traffic problems.” Mills lives on a pretty quiet stretch of Warren Road. In order for someone to cause traffic problems there, people would have to be coming from miles around to see the show. That’s exactly what happened, and the show draws even more interest these days now that it’s bigger and brighter and more intense than ever. Viewers watching the light show from their cars can tune their radios to 91.7 FM to hear the music while the lights dance. The closer Christmas gets, the more Christmas music is being added to the playlist. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal The popularity of Mills’ light show got a boost recently thanks to a bunch of threads on social media where people — including Sun Journal photographer Russ Dillingham — reported seeing lights in the sky in far-flung places like the wilds of Turner. Some folks thought it was Elon Musk’s Starlink they were seeing up there in the heavens. Others thought UFOs were making regular stops to the area. When it was finally sorted out, many made the drive out to lonely Warren Road to have an up-close look at Mills’ fancy display. By then, Mills already had a pretty good following. There is rarely a time between 4:30 and 9 p.m. that at least one vehicle isn’t stopped in front of his house to enjoy the show — which takes an amazing 22 minutes to cycle from start to finish before beginning all over again. Mills gets help from his wife and two daughters, both with the setup and the computer controls. “My oldest daughter is just in high school,” Mills says. “Now she’s kind of getting into computer programming and stuff, so she’s starting to learn how to program the songs so she can pick some of her favorites and make some light shows from them.” The light show at the Monmouth home of Jason Mills includes thousands of LED lights, projects, spotlights and even a collection box for families to drop off their letters to Santa. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal Mills adds new songs to the mix every week. Right now, there’s a little bit of everything in there, but as it gets closer to the holiday, Mills will switch over to Christmas music exclusively. He also gets a little help from Maine Equipment Rental, which partners with Mills and made it possible for him to work safely and with a little bit of a break on his own costs. Mills said he’s never considered asking for help from the public to pay for his setup. He does this for them and all he wants is for families viewing the show to have a good time. Families can drop off letters to Santa and watch the light show choreographed by computer to an ever-changing playlist of music. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal “We do this show for the community,” Mills says, “and there is never a charge to come and see it. We do have a Santa’s mailbox where families can drop their letters to Santa and we will get them to the North Pole. If they include a return address, we do our best to make sure they get a personal replay.” Some folks will leave donations in a box at the roadside, but Mills gives 100% of anything collected to local youth STEM and arts programs, including Monmouth VEX Robotics and the Monmouth Community Players’ kids program. The show runs nightly and Mills plans to keep the display going until the new year. Those who stop to take in the grand show can tune their radios to 91.7 FM to hear the music or they can download the PulseMesh app on their phones. In spite of the breathtaking magnitude of his light show, Mills doesn’t consider himself any kind of local king of Christmas displays. In fact, he says that some spectacular light shows at nearby homes — on Small Road and on Hallowell Road in Litchfield — make it so that the drive to the area is three times as special for those out to enjoy Christmas decorations in the area. You can find more information about Mills’ work at the Facebook group Monmouth Lights , but take it from us. This is the kind of Christmas decoration that has to be seen to be believed. We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use . More information is found on our FAQs . You can modify your screen name here . Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday as well as limited hours on Saturday and Sunday. Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve. Please sign into your Sun Journal account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe . Questions? Please see our FAQs . Your commenting screen name has been updated. Send questions/comments to the editors. « Previous