Outside the Box 3/21/23: “Sixth Extinction”

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Nature of Phenology 3/18/23: Sea lampreys

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn
Host: Hazel Stark

The ecosystem importance of this fish where they are native cannot be overstated.

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Cosmic Curator 3/18/23: Behold the Dreamer Cometh

This is your Cosmic Curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for today, Saturday March 18th and the week ahead.

The day begins with Pisces rising at this hour. Pisces, the mutable water sign represented by two fish swimming is opposite directions. The symbolism is all about this world of materialism and that world of spirit. Pisces is where love for all is born, where imagination is powerful, the oneness and connection of life is most evident. That famous Pisces Albert Einstein believed imagination was more important than knowledge. He also said time was an illusion…

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Earthwise 3/18/23: The Goddess Idunn

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Democracy Forum 3/17/23: If Small States Rule, Why Are They So Angry?

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, Judith Lyles, Rick Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor
Linda Washburn

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
If Small States Rule, Why Are They So Angry?
Does this small-state bias in the federal government equate to overrepresentation of rural interests?
Does it translate to policies that help rural areas thrive? Are communities in small or rural states actually thriving?
Do people in those communities feel like they’re thriving? Or does “rural resentment” account for minority rule at the federal level?
Senators from small states hold outsize sway in government to the point where they can block measures that the majority of Americans want. How are they using that power?
What does it mean for Maine?

Guest/s:
Amy Fried, John Mitchell Nickerson Professor or Political Science, UMaine
Michael Podhorzer, Chairman of the Board of the Analyst Institute; Assistant to the President for Strategic Research at the AFL-CIO

To learn more about this topic:

Paul Ryan Says Even MAGA Diehards Believe Trump Can’t Win in 2024 – The New York Times, March, 2023
Most Rural States 2023 | World Population Review
The Resentment Fueling the Republican Party Is Not Coming From the Suburbs – The New York Times, January, 2023
Rural Americans aren’t included in inflation figures – and for them, the cost of living may be rising faster | The Conversation, January, 2023
Opinion | Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage? | The New York Times, January 2023
Opinion | How to fix American democracy during a ‘Great Pulling Apart’ – The Washington Post, January, 2023
Opinion | This Is How Red States Silence Blue Cities. And Democracy |The New York Times<, January, 2023 A Policy Renaissance Is Needed for Rural America to Thrive – The New York Times, December, 2022
America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good – The Atlantic, June 2022
Place-Based Resentment in Contemporary U.S. Elections: The Individual Sources of America’s Urban-Rural Divide, Nicholas Jacobs, B. Kal Munis, September, 2022
At War with Government | Columbia University Press, Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris, 2021
How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift – The New York Times, September, 2021
The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide – The Aspen Institute, February, 2021
James P. Melcher and Amy Fried, “Two Maines in a (Potentially) New Swing State”. Chapter 14 in David A. Schultz and Rafael Jacob (editors), Presidential Swing States, Second Edition, 2018.
Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics | Cambridge University Press, David Hopkins, 2017
The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker| University of Chicago Press, Kathy Cramer, 2016
Strangers in Their Own Land | The New Press, Arlie Russell Hochschild, 2016

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Justice Radio 3/16/23: Perpetuating Generational Cycles of Harm

Producers/Hosts: Marion Anderson
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits:TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Emma Reynolds | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine.

This week:
From Our Perspective: Voices of the Directly Impacted | Punishment: Perpetuating Generational Cycles of Harm

Host Marion Anderson and special Guest Kayla Kalel, co-creator and co-founder of The Birth Justice Collective, talk about forms of punishment we use so widely in society through the prison industrial complex that perpetuate generational cycles of harm.
-Generational Trauma
-Cycles of Harm
-Punishment in the prison industrial complex

Guest/s:
Kayla Kalel, co-creator and co-founder of The Birth Justice Collective

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Around Town 3/16/23: Friends in Action Ellsworth

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week:
The mission of Friends In Action in Ellsworth is “to empower older adults and people living with disabilities to thrive and to live independently, with dignity and a strong quality of life.” Executive Director John Lindquist joins us today to talk about the services they provide and how community members can help.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/16/23: Current AI Headlines

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

There have been a lot of headlines in the popular press of late about Artificial Intelligence. On today’s edition, let’s look at a few headlines that may not have made it into the popular press yet.

Here are links for the materials mentioned in today’s edition:

AI artwork can’t be copyrighted rules the US Copyright Office
Robots let ChatGPT touch the real world thanks to Microsoft
NYC AI Hiring Law
Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download