WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Audio Archives

Host/Producer: Amy Browne Guest: Carolyn Schwartz, Executive Director, Maine Jewish Film Festival   FMI: mjff.org/ About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Host/s: Linda Small and Mackenzie Kelley Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Lucas Brown and Sarah Johnson | MUSIC – Samuel James Justice Radio is a WMPG production Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine. This week: Join us for part II of the discussion with special guest Susan Mason, the formerly incarcerated Executive Director and Co-founder of What’s Next Washington, as they talk about the systemic challenges returning citizens with conviction histories face and the progress and obstacles toward economic justice. Guest/s: Susan Mason, Executive Director and Co-founder of What’s Next Washington FMI: www.whatsnextwashington.org/ About the hosts: The Justice Radio team includes: Leo Hylton is currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison, yet is a recent Master’s graduate, a columnist with The Bollard, a restorative and transformative justice advocate and activist, a prison abolitionist, and a Visiting Instructor at Colby College’s Anthropology Department, co-teaching AY346 – Carcerality and Abolition. Catherine Besteman is an abolitionist educator at Colby College. Her research and practice engage the public humanities to explore abolitionist possibilities in Maine. In addition to coordinating Freedom & Captivity, she has researched and published on security, militarism, displacement, and community-based activism with a focus on Somalia, post-apartheid South Africa, and the U.S. She has published nine books, contributed to the International Panel on Exiting Violence, and received recent fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. MacKenzie Kelley is a formerly incarcerated woman in long term recovery. She is a teachers assistant for inside-out courses through MIT. MacKenzie works at the Maine Prisoner Reentry Center as a reentry specialist, peer support and recovery coach. She is the program director for Reentry Sisters, a program designed to assist women reentering the community from prison. Zoe Brokos (she/her) is the executive director of the Church of Safe Injection, a comprehensive harm reduction program that operates in Southern and Central Maine. Zoe is a person who uses drugs, a mom, a wife, and has led harm reduction programs in Maine for 15 years. She is part of the Maine Drug Policy Coalition, sits on the board of Decriminalize Maine and joined Justice Radio to promote compassionate conversations and drug user-led advocacy efforts that focus on evidence-based, public health responses to the housing and overdose crises in Maine. Marion Anderson: Before joining The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in January of 2022, Marion worked as a harm reductionist, housing navigator, certified intentional peer support specialist, CCAR recovery coach, and a re-entry coach for a diverse range of non-profit organizations. Charlotte Warren is a former State Representative. She served on the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee for eight years – six as the house chair. Warren previously served on the Judiciary Committee and as the house chair of Maine’s Mental Health Working Group and the house chair of the Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole. Previous to her time in the legislature, Charlotte served as Mayor of the city of Hallowell. Linda Small is the founder and executive director of Reentry Sisters, a reentry support organization specializing in a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach for women, serving Maine and beyond. She is a Project Coordinator for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. Linda serves on the Maine Prison Education Partnership board at UMA and the New England Commission for the Future of Higher Education in Prison through The Educational Justice Institute at MIT.

Producer/Host: Olivia Paruk Theme music by Zeke Sacaridiz. All other music is royalty free. This project was made possible by the generous support of the Maine Community Foundation. NextWave Radio Hour is a program focused on and featuring folks around their 20s and 30s from all across Maine. In this program, host Olivia Paruk talks with young people who trailblaze their own paths in our modern political, economic, and social climate, and provides unique perspectives and stories of life from the next generation working to create the future they hope to see. In this episode: – Perspectives of being in your young twenties – Being a college student, specifically studying acting – Navigating uncertain life paths Guest/s: Emily Paruk About the hosts: Pepin Mittelhauser (he/they) is the Digital Media Coordinator at WERU Community Radio, and an avid gardener and farmer, musician and singer, and lover of nature and the outdoors. He graduated from College of the Atlantic in ’19 with focuses in sustainable agriculture, food systems, and live and recorded audio engineering and production. He has lived in Downeast Maine his entire life. Olivia Paruk (she/her) is a local college student and gardener who is passionate about people and this journey called life we are all on together. She is not a “true” Mainer but moved to Southern Maine with her family when she was ten, but she has been living on Mount Desert Island for three years while attending College of the Atlantic. In addition to radio, Olivia loves analyzing movies with her sister, dancing in her kitchen, attempting to sew, and getting lost in her imagination.

Host/Producer: Amy Browne Guest:  Melanie Sturm, Forest and Wildlife Director, Natural Resources Council of Maine FMI: Natural Resources Council of Maine: www.nrcm.org/ Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC):  www.maine.gov/dacf/lupc/ About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Host/Producer: Amy Browne Guest:  Melanie Sturm, Forest and Wildlife Director, Natural Resources Council of Maine FMI: Natural Resources Council of Maine: www.nrcm.org/ Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC):  www.maine.gov/dacf/lupc/ About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Producer/Host: Donna Loring Other credits: Technical assistance for the show was provided by Joel Mann, WERU Orland Maine. Music by Ralph Richter, a track called little eagles from his CD Dream Walk Wabanaki Windows is a monthly show featuring topics of interest from a Wabanaki perspective. This month: In this episode we review the readings of the 1942 Transcripts and their incredible revelations of the Long Term Strategic Planning of the State to assimilate and eliminate the Wabanaki Tribes and the impact these discussions have on policy and Tribal State Relations up to this day. Guest/s: Eric Mehnert, Chief Judge of the Penobscot Nation Tribal Court Professor Harald Prins is a Native of the Netherlands he is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and an Emertus at Kansas State University. Professor Darren Ranco, Penobscot Nation Tribal Member, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Native American Studies at the University of Maine. Our Special Guest will give a view from the Federal Indian Law and Human Rights Perspectives on the Transcripts and Strategic Long Term State Plan to eliminate the Tribes. Special Guest Law Professor/ Attorney Rebecca Tsosie is a Regents Professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. Professor Tsosie, who is of Yaqui descent, is a faculty member for the Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, and she is widely known for her work in the fields of Federal Indian law and indigenous peoples’ human rights. She has published widely on sovereignty, self-determination, cultural pluralism, environmental policy and cultural rights. She teaches in the areas of Federal Indian Law, Property, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Cultural Resources Law. She is a member of the Arizona Bar Association and the California Bar Association. Professor Tsosie serves as a Supreme Court Justice for the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and as an Associate Judge on the San Carlos Tribal Court of Appeals. About the host: Donna M Loring is a Penobscot Indian Nation Tribal Elder, and former Council Member. She represented the Penobscot Nation in the State Legislature for over a decade. She is a former Senior Advisor on Tribal Affairs to Governor Mills. She is the author of “In The Shadow of The Eagle A Tribal Representative In Maine”. Donna has an Annual lecture series in her name at the University of New England that addresses Social Justice and Human Rights issues. In 2017 She received an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Humane Letters from the University of Maine Orono and was given the Alumni Service Award. It is the most prestigious recognition given by the University of Maine Alumni Association. It is presented Annually to a University of Maine graduate whose life’s work is marked by outstanding achievements in professional, business, civic and/or Public service areas. Donna received a second Honorary Doctorate from Thomas College in May of 2022

Producer/Host: Larry Dansinger About the host: Larry Dansinger (no pronouns) of Bangor came to Maine in 1974 and has been here ever since. Some of Larry’s activities since then: Done community organizing on numerous issues through INVERT and then Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), committed civil disobedience several times, grown a garden yearly since 1977, joined various food cooperatives and two men’s groups, refused to pay federal income taxes for war, lived on a community land trust for 23 years, and met a wonderful partner whom Larry has loved for over 40 years. Larry has produced Outside the Box features on WERU since 2007 and continues to look for unique ways of seeing almost any problem or situation.

Host/Producer: Amy Browne Guests: Dean Donovan and Luna, from Downeast Communities Partners Climate Corps.  FMI: www.downeastcommunitypartners.org/ About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

Host/Producer: Amy Browne Guest: Kristie Billings, author of Sea Witch: Photographs, Poems and Forget-Me-Nots from a Mainer Growing Up. The publisher’s website is seapointbooks.com/ About the host: Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021. Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International License

CJ Kenna | Producer + Reader/Writer

Poets Aloud! At the 2023 Word Literary Festival Recorded Saturday, October 21, 2023, 3pm to 5pm at the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill. A variety of poetic voices at this year’s reading. Word welcomes the following poets to the stage: Meg Weston, co-founder of both Poets Corner and the Camden Poetry Festival; Chen Chen, whose work has appeared in The New York Times and three editions of The Best American Poetry; Meghan Sterling, Program Director at MWPA and winner of the Paul Nemser Book Prize (2022). Finally, in a special tribute, Maine’s fifth Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum (2016-2021) will read the work of the late Paul Nemser of Harborside, poet of “a thousand brilliances’ (Red Mountain Press), who died earlier this year. Recorded by Matt Murphy.

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark The peak of the Orionid meteor shower this year is 10/21/23. What causes them and why do these happen this time every year? Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. About the host/writers: Joe Horn lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder of Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide and Carpenter. He is passionate about fishing, cooking, and making things with his hands. He has both an MBA in Sustainability and an MS focused in Environmental Education. Joe can be reached by emailing naturephenology@gmail.com Hazel Stark lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder and Naturalist Educator at Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide. She loves taking a closer look at nature through the lens of her camera, napping in beds of moss, and taking hikes to high points to see what being tall is all about. She has an MS in Resource Management and Conservation and is a lifelong Maine outdoorswoman. Hazel can be reached by emailing naturephenology@gmail.com

Good Morning, People! This is your cosmic curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for the week of October 21st and the days ahead. The spotlight for the month is on the sign of Libra. Libra is a cardinal air sign, rued by Venus. Libra is represented by the scales of balance – a perfect indication of the libra ideal – you have to strike a balance in relationships… About the Host: Tom Yaroschuk is a Vedic Astrologer. His intention is to help people understand their karma and the issues they may confront to cultivate more fulfilling lives. Tom is writing a memoir of the spiritual lessons derived from his work in a Homeless Day Center in between a career as an award winning television and documentary producer.

Producer/Host: Anu Dudley About the host: Rev. Dr. Anu Dudley is an ordained Pagan minister and a retired history professor. She continues to teach classes, including the three-year ordination curriculum at the Temple of the Feminine Divine, and others such as History of the Goddess, Paganism 101, Ethical Magic, and Introduction to the Runes. Currently she is writing a book about how to cast the runes using their original Goddess meanings. She lives in the woods off-grid in a small homesteading community in Central Maine.

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn. Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics This month: – Some of them are citizen initiatives; some of them are constitutional amendments. What’s the difference? – What do they mean, what will they do, where did they come from, who supports and who opposes, and whose money is being spent? Guest/s: Will Hayward, Advocacy Program Director, LWVME – www.lwvme.org/lwvme-staff Steve Mistler, Maine Public’s chief politics and government correspondent – www.mainepublic.org/people/steve-mistler To learn more about this topic: www.lwvme.org/www.vote411.org www.maine.gov/meopa/ www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/ballotquestionsnov2023.html www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/pdf/citizensguide23.pdf www.mainepublic.org/tags/political-pulse archives.weru.org/democracy-forum/2023/04/democracy-forum-4-21-23-ballot-questions-whose-initiatives-are-they/ About the host: Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.