The Nature of Phenology 12/9/23: Ground Cedar

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn
Host: Hazel Stark

Ground cedar and its relatives are spore-producing plants referred to as clubmosses which are more closely related to ferns than anything called a cedar.

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]

Earthwise 12/9/23: The Truth about Santa’s Elves

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.

Let’s Talk About It 12/8/23: Holidays with Abuse

Producer/Host: Patrisha McLean
Production Assistance:
Tammy Oropesa
Music:
Jackie Lee McLean

Let’s Talk About It: Conversations with Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Guests:
Gina Dobson, Sarah Graham, Jennifer Greensmith, Tiffany Pacin, and Mary Kamradt.

Topics include: 
How domestic abuse is worse during the holidays, road rage, when there is no joy for children due to the abuse.

About the host:
Patrisha McLean is the founder/president of Finding Our Voices, the grass roots survivor-powered non profit organization breaking the silence of domestic abuse one conversation and community at a time all across Maine.

Justice Radio 12/7/23: Are Prisons the Answer? – Diversion and Deflection for Community Care

Host/s: Leo Hylton
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 Leo Hylton and special guests Robyn Goff, Director of Community Justice Programs, and Stephen Brimley, Diversion and Deflection Program Manager, both from Volunteers of America Northern New England, as they talk about how diversion and deflection away from the criminal legal system is grounded in community collective accountability, care, and building capacity to meet our basic human needs.

Guest/s:
Robyn Goff, Director of Community Justice Programs for Volunteers of America Northern New England.
Stephen Brimley, Diversion and Deflection Program Manager for Volunteers of America Northern New England.

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.

Around Town 12/8/23: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Guest: Josh Kaupilla, Maine Poor People’s Campaign.

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

Around Town 12/7/23: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Guest: Deiran Manning, Executive Director of Winter Harbor Music Festival.

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

Healthy Options 12/6/23: Brain Health and Aging Well

Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-Producer: Petra Hall

Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well

This month:

Why is this topic & program relevant for people of all ages?
What is Aging Maine?
What is the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Project?
What is dementia?  What is “dementia worry”?
What do we need to do to maintain brain health– and why is exercise & diet so important?
How can we create new neural paths in our brains?
What is neural plasticity?
What does it mean to have meaning in our lives?
Why are social connections so important?
What are/were the effects of loneliness and isolation, especially during the pandemic- and currently?

Guest/s:

Susan Wehry, M.D., geriatric psychiatrist and director of AgingME
www.susanwehrymd.com
agingme.org

About the host:
Rhonda Feiman is a nationally-certified, licensed acupuncturist practicing in Belfast, Maine since 1993. She primarily practices Toyohari Japanese acupuncture, using gentle and powerful non-insertion needle techniques, and also utilizes Chinese acupuncture and herbology. In addition, Rhonda is a practitioner of Qi Gong and an instructor of Tai Chi Chuan in the Yang Family tradition.

Around Town 12/6/23: Local News, Culture and Events

Host/Producer: Amy Browne

Guest: Samantha Hogan, investigative journalist at The Maine Monitor.

FMI: themainemonitor.org/author/samanthahogan/

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